How Could People Who
Knew Leopold Fancy He Would Be So "Jolly Green" As To Take Such A
Berth?
It was only a gobemouche of a Bavarian that could ever have
been induced to accept it.
I beseech you to believe that it was not the bill and the bugs at
the inn which induced the writer hereof to speak so slightingly of
the residence of Basileus. These evils are now cured and
forgotten. This is written off the leaden flats and mounds which
they call the Troad. It is stern justice alone which pronounces
this excruciating sentence. It was a farce to make this place into
a kingly capital; and I make no manner of doubt that King Otho, the
very day he can get away unperceived, and get together the passage-
money, will be off for dear old Deutschland, Fatherland, Beerland!
I have never seen a town in England which may be compared to this;
for though Herne Bay is a ruin now, money was once spent upon it
and houses built; here, beyond a few score of mansions comfortably
laid out, the town is little better than a rickety agglomeration of
larger and smaller huts, tricked out here and there with the most
absurd cracked ornaments and cheap attempts at elegance. But
neatness is the elegance of poverty, and these people despise such
a homely ornament. I have got a map with squares, fountains,
theatres, public gardens, and Places d'Othon marked out; but they
only exist in the paper capital - the wretched tumble-down wooden
one boasts of none.
One is obliged to come back to the old disagreeable comparison of
Ireland. Athens may be about as wealthy a place as Carlow or
Killarney - the streets swarm with idle crowds, the innumerable
little lanes flow over with dirty little children, they are playing
and puddling about in the dirt everywhere, with great big eyes,
yellow faces, and the queerest little gowns and skull-caps. But in
the outer man, the Greek has far the advantage of the Irishman:
most of them are well and decently dressed (if five-and-twenty
yards of petticoat may not be called decent, what may?), they
swagger to and fro with huge knives in their girdles. Almost all
the men are handsome, but live hard, it is said, in order to
decorate their backs with those fine clothes of theirs. I have
seen but two or three handsome women, and these had the great
drawback which is common to the race - I mean, a sallow, greasy,
coarse complexion, at which it was not advisable to look too
closely.
And on this score I think we English may pride ourselves on
possessing an advantage (by WE, I mean the lovely ladies to whom
this is addressed with the most respectful compliments) over the
most classical country in the world. I don't care for beauty which
will only bear to be looked at from a distance, like a scene in a
theatre. What is the most beautiful nose in the world, if it be
covered with a skin of the texture and colour of coarse whitey-
brown paper; and if Nature has made it as slippery and shining as
though it had been anointed with pomatum? They may talk about
beauty, but would you wear a flower that had been dipped in a
grease-pot? No; give me a fresh, dewy, healthy rose out of
Somersetshire; not one of those superb, tawdry, unwholesome
exotics, which are only good to make poems about. Lord Byron wrote
more cant of this sort than any poet I know of. Think of "the
peasant girls with dark blue eyes" of the Rhine - the brown-faced,
flat-nosed, thick-lipped, dirty wenches! Think of "filling high a
cup of Samian wine;" small beer is nectar compared to it, and Byron
himself always drank gin. That man never wrote from his heart. He
got up rapture and enthusiasm with an eye to the public; but this
is dangerous ground, even more dangerous than to look Athens full
in the face, and say that your eyes are not dazzled by its beauty.
The Great Public admires Greece and Byron: the public knows best.
Murray's "Guide-book" calls the latter "our native bard." Our
native bard! Mon Dieu! HE Shakspeare's, Milton's, Keats's,
Scott's native bard! Well, woe be to the man who denies the public
gods!
The truth is, then, that Athens is a disappointment; and I am angry
that it should be so. To a skilled antiquarian, or an enthusiastic
Greek scholar, the feelings created by a sight of the place of
course will be different; but you who would be inspired by it must
undergo a long preparation of reading, and possess, too, a
particular feeling; both of which, I suspect, are uncommon in our
busy commercial newspaper-reading country. Men only say they are
enthusiastic about the Greek and Roman authors and history, because
it is considered proper and respectable. And we know how gentlemen
in Baker Street have editions of the classics handsomely bound in
the library, and how they use them. Of course they don't retire to
read the newspaper; it is to look over a favourite ode of Pindar,
or to discuss an obscure passage in Athenaeus! Of course country
magistrates and Members of Parliament are always studying
Demosthenes and Cicero; we know it from their continual habit of
quoting the Latin grammar in Parliament. But it is agreed that the
classics are respectable; therefore we are to be enthusiastic about
them. Also let us admit that Byron is to be held up as "our native
bard."
I am not so entire a heathen as to be insensible to the beauty of
those relics of Greek art, of which men much more learned and
enthusiastic have written such piles of descriptions. I thought I
could recognise the towering beauty of the prodigious columns of
the Temple of Jupiter; and admire the astonishing grace, severity,
elegance, completeness of the Parthenon.
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