He made no reply—he took his hat, and went
out. After a momentary hesitation, he turned
his face eastward, and called on the shipowners
who employed him, at their office in Cornhill.

TO-DAY IN GREECE.

WHEN that acute observer, Monsieur Edmond
About, embarked for the Piræus on board the
Lycurgus, he indulged in all the schoolboy
dreams which the mere name of Greece awakens.
He reckoned upon finding an unclouded sky, an
unruffled sea, an interminable spring, and, above
all, limpid streams and cool shades. Shadiness
and coolness are topics on which the Greek poets
have been wonderfully eloquent. M. About
forgot that men are apt to set the greatest store
not on the goods they have, but on those they
wish for.

On board ship, his travelling companions—
ensigns going to rejoin Admiral Desfossés on
the station of the Levant—disabused him of
many an illusion. "Ah!" they said; "and so
you are going to Greece without being obliged!
You select your amusements admirably. Fancy
mountains without trees, plains without grass,
rivers without water, pitiless sunshine, merciless
dust, fine weather ten times more wearisome
than rain, a country where the vegetables grow
ready cooked, where the hens lay hard-boiled
eggs, where the gardens cannot show a single
leaf, where the colour green is striped with
rainbows, where your jaded eyes search for verdure
without finding even a salad to rest on!"

On approaching the Piræus, and while bargaining
with a Greek boatman to take him on shore,
M. About was inquired after in French by an
unknown voice. A good-looking man of forty,
with a noble presence, and covered with
magnificent garments, asked the captain, from a
four-oared boat, with great dignity, whether
that gentleman were on board. This worthy
wore such a handsome red cap, such a beautiful
white petticoat—he had so much gold on his
vest, his gaiters, and his girdle—that the stranger
never doubted him to be one of the principal
persons of the state. The two naval officers
pretended that the king, informed of M. About's
admiration for his kingdom, had sent a court
chamberlain to receive him. After accepting a
salutation worthy of his rank, he handed to the
traveller a folded slip of paper, in which was
written:

"I recommend Antonio to you. He is a good
servant, who will save you a world of trouble
with the boatmen, the custom-house, and the
hackney-coachmen."

Consequently, M. About confided his cloak to
this representative of fallen  greatness, who faithfully
served him for ten or twelve hours;
superintending the transport of his luggage and
person; undertook to corrupt, by means of a
franc, the easy virtue of a customs-man; and
delivered him safe and sound at the door of his
appointed residence. Travellers who go to
Greece without knowing Greek, need not fear
one moment's embarrassment. From Syra
forwards, they will find not only Antonio, but five
or six other domestics, equally well covered
with gilding, who speak French, English, and
Italian, and who will conduct them, almost without
robbing them, to one of the hotels in town.

The Piræus is a village of four or five thousand
souls, and entirely consisting of public-
houses and shops. It communicates with Athens
by a road about five miles long. This road is
kept up with some degree of care; nevertheless,
it is horribly muddy in winter, and dusty in
summer. It is bordered, in some places, with
tall poplars of a remarkably robust and vigorous
species. At first nothing is to be seen but
sterile sands, which on the right join the marshes
of Phaleres. Half a mile from the Piræus, a few
vines and almond-trees appear; a little further,
the road crosses an imperceptible brook, which
Antonio declared was the Cephisus. Large
olive-trees, with knotty trunks and pale meagre
foliage, are the only visible verdure in the plain
of Athens during winter. In summer, the
landscape is not much more cheerful. In vain do
the fig-trees spread their broad leaves; in vain
does the vine load itself with foliage and fruit;
a thick dust, which the wind raises in heavy
clouds, clothes every object with a uniform tint,
and gives a desolate air to fertility itself.
Hymettus is a melancholy mountain, with rounded
and insipid outlines, with grey and sombre
colouring. There is not a tree, not a bush upon
it; it hardly maintains a hundred hives, which
supply, as formerly, delicious honey. It is in
Spring that Attica should be seen in all its
splendour, when the anemonies, as tall as garden
tulips, display their brilliant colours; when the
thrushes warble in the olive groves; when the
tender foliage is yet unchoked with dust; and
the grass, which will disappear by the end of
May, rises green and thick wherever it can find
a patch of earth to grow on.

Athens is, perhaps, the town of Greece in
which it rains the least frequently; it is, therefore,
not surprising that Attica should be drier
than Laconia, Argolis, or BÅ“otia. The country
around Sparta is covered with a vegetation as
vigorous as the Lacedemonian people; the
plain of Argos, rich without elegance, has in
its insolent fertility something superbly vulgar
which recalls the pride of Agamemnon; there
is a BÅ“otian heaviness in the greasy fecundity
of the marshes in the neighbourhood of Thebes;
but the plain of Attica is elegant in all its
aspects, delicate in all its lines, like the acute
and graceful people it has produced.

Greece is an unhealthy country. The fertile
plains, the rugged rocks, the smiling shores, all
hide fever. While breathing the balmy air of
orange-groves, you inhale poison; you would
say that in the ancient East the very atmosphere
is falling into decomposition. Throughout the
whole country, spring and autumn produce
periodic fevers. Men suffer, and children die
of them. By expending a few score thousand
pounds, the marshes might be drained, the
country rendered healthy, and the whole nation