Thus there is no reason why the accent on the first syllable of "Oλvμæos should make that syllable long in point of time, any more than there is any reason why the accent on the first syllable of the English word honestly should make that syllable long, or the second syllable short. Moreover, if any practical Englishman-after reading Pennington's and Blackie's treatises -still asks How Homer or Sophocles should be read? let him reflect that it was probably never intended that they should be read at all, but rather chanted, or recited, as in the recitative of a modern opera. And every one knows that accentuation in singing is a very different thing from accentuation in reading.

We shall now proceed to give some practical directions for the pronunciation of Greek letters according to the practice of the modern Greeks, without entering upon the vexata quæstio of how far their system agrees with that of the ancients. Those sounds only will be noted wherein we Englishmen are at variance with the Greeks. Some explanation will be subjoined of the more striking peculiarities of the Neo-Hellenic grammar and syntax.

a is pronounced by the Greeks like a

ε and a

in

ef, ev effort, ever.

v in English.

(When Greeks wish to express in writing the B and D of English names, they use μ and 7.) y has a sound between the English g and y consonant, akin to that of the same letter in German. Before y, x, %, x, it has the sound of ng. When the Greeks wish to give the sound of our g before the slender vowels, they use yx.

x is pronounced like the English h, with the addition of a slight guttural intonation. There are corresponding sounds in Irish, Scotch, and Spanish. Aspirations are placed by the moderns in writing wherever they were used by the ancients; but in speaking they are quite dropped, as in Italian. Accents are placed wherever they were placed by the ancients. No distinction of sound is made between the circumflex and acute accent.

Number, case, and gender. The same as in the Hellenic grammar, among educated moderns, except that the dual seems universally dropped.

Articles. The definite article is the same as in Hellenic. The indefinite article is borrowed, as in other modern languages, from the first numeral, s, μία, ἕν.

Substantives are declined, as in Hellenic, by the educated in writing, though all sorts of solecisms are committed colloquially. Thus the accusative of imparisyllabic nouns is frequently substituted for the nominative in names both of places and of things. An analogous practice in Latin very probably produced Italian, for the nouns of that language are generally formed from the oblique cases of Latin; e. g. regno from regnum.

It is to be observed that many of the substantives taken from the Hellenic have undergone a remarkable change of meaning. Leake says, "The use of generals for specifics, of specifics for generals, of attributes and accidents for the objects themselves, will account for the etymology of many words in the

modern dialect." Thus äλoyos, irrational, converted into a neuter substantive, has become the common word for horse, as being the irrational animal most frequently mentioned.

Diminutives are used in modern Greek, as in Italian, in a caressing or endearing sense, like the oxogoμos of the ancients (Arist. Rhet., iii.), e. g. zaidi, a child; Tadáxi, a little child. Augmentatives are very rare e. g. rodávn from Tótos. Sometimes caressing expressions are applied to hateful ideas, e. g. the small-pox is called upoyia, just as the Furies were called Eumenides, as if to disarm their wrath. Another class of diminutives is come into great use as patronymics, which have been frequently formed by adding ovas (from whos, by a common and ancient conversion) to the name of a father or ancestor, e. g. Christopulos (Xerórovλos) is made the family name of the descendants of a Christos, &c. Other patronymics have been formed in dns. The last generation of Greek peasants rarely had any surnames. Like their ancestors, individuals of the same name were distinguished by the addition of the names of their fathers, and by those of their native places. Parallel examples may be found in the nomenclature of clans and families in Wales and Scotland.

Adjectives are theoretically the same as in Hellenic ; but in practice there are many corruptions, especially in the degrees of comparison, e. g. μɛyaλńτερος for μείζων.

Pronouns. As in Homer, so in modern Greek, the oblique cases of the article are often used for the third personal pronoun. The enclitics used possessively for the plural of σ and yw are ras and pas, perhaps archaic forms. The ancient possessive pronouns are, however, returning into use among the learned and polished; but the more common way of expressing them is by attaching to nouns the genitive of the primitive pronoun as an enclitic, e. g. yváμn μov, my opinion. There are a host of irregular pronominal adjectives in vulgar use

Verbs have undergone little change in most of their inflexions. The 3rd pers. pl. of the pres. ind. generally ends in instead of -e. g. ye̟áQovv for γράφουσι.

The moderns have adopted as auxiliary verbs the present and imperfect of θέλω, and the past tense of ἔχω; ex. gr. θέλω γράψει, I will write; ἤθελον ypár, I would have written; lixa reatu, I had written. The future active is supplied by the present tense of aw and the Hellenic first future infinitive, with the final elided, according to a common practice. In the passive voice the adjunct is formed by the elision of va from the 1st aorist infinitive. The gradual neglect of the future, and the growing use of its substitute, may be traced up to the earliest period of the decline of the Greek language. Leake quotes from an old Romaic poet the following lines which exemplify the formation of these adjuncts :

θέλεις χαρῆν καὶ τιμηθῆν καὶ ζήσειν καὶ πλουτίσειν,

καὶ τοὺς ἐχθρούς σου στὸν λαιμὸν θέλεις καταπατήσειν.

These verses, moreover, are a sample of the usual metre of Romaic ballad poetry—a metre which Lord Byron compares to that of the famous ditty: "A captain bold of Halifax who lived in country quarters."

The substantive verb pa () is not used as an auxiliary, but it has many irregular inflexions, of which the principal are :-

ειμαι, εισαι, είναι, ἔιμεθα, ἔισθε, ειναι.

ἐστάθην, &c. (borrowed from ἵστημι).

The Imperative Mood in a present or future sense is expressed by as (contracted from oss, let) with the Hellenic subjunctive; ex. gr. as rgán, let him write.

The Infinitive Mood is beginning again to be used as a noun of neuter gender, but as a verb its place is supplied by prefixing và (va) to the Hellenic present or 1st aorist subjunctive; ex. gr. Biáŝeis và yęá‡w, you force me to write.

Adverbs, Conjunctions, &c. are, among the highly educated, the same as in Hellenic; but there are many corrupted forms in vulgar use.

Prepositions have now, in theory, the same rules as in Hellenic, but, in practice, they are generally all coupled with the accusative case.

It is necessary to remark, in conclusion, that the foregoing observations are by no means intended to embrace an entire system of Neo-Hellenic grammar; much less, it is hoped, will they be construed into an ambitious attempt to reduce into order the irregularities of the modern tongue. The uncertainties and variations to which a dialect not yet thoroughly methodised is liable, render almost impossible any such endeavour even in a native of Greece. All that has been attempted is to give such a sketch of the present condition of the language, as spoken by educated Greeks, as will explain some of its apparent anomalies, and facilitate its acquisition sufficiently for common purposes. The great majority of the English travellers who pass annually through Greece converse with no individual among the natives above the rank of a guide or a muleteer, and because the dialect of such men is not purely classical, they jump to the conclusion that the modern Greeks no longer speak the language of Eschylus and Thucydides. These hasty critics forget that if a Greek traveller, well acquainted with English literature (as many Greeks are), were to associate in our own country with none but Highland gillies and London cabmen, he might with about equal reason pronounce that the modern English no longer speak the language of Milton and Clarendon.

o. CHARACTER, MANNERS, AND CUSTOMS OF THE INHABITANTS OF GREECE, AND OF THE GREEK PROVINCES OF TURKEY.

Besides a few thousand Jews in some of the chief towns, and the Turks who form the ruling caste in the Greek provinces of the Ottoman Empire (see Handbook for Turkey), the three distinct nations inhabiting the countries described in the present work are-1. The Greeks; 2. The Albanians; 3. The Wallachs.

1. The Greeks (Hellenes).

The following account of the Greek character, and of the travellers who have described it, is extracted from a letter addressed, in October 1843, to the Morning Chronicle, under the signature of "Demotes :"-" Travellers in Greece are generally of the following classes-classical and literary, who concern themselves little with what has happened there since the days of Pericles, or at least of Marcus Agrippa. The next most numerous are naval and military; the former have seen Greece twenty years since, or during the war of 1824 to 1830, and the era of piracy just afterwards. Their estimate must necessarily be fallacious, for, touching rapidly in many parts, they have only seen the mixed population of the towns, and confuse the Greeks of Hellas with the Montenegrins, the Albanians, the Ionians, the

Turkish Greeks, and the islanders under the sway of Mehemet Ali. They speak of a period only sixteen years since, truly; but, if counted by the progress of a free people, a period as long as from William and Mary to Victoria. They relate habits and anecdotes belonging to that period, and quietly assume them to be just indications of the state of Greece after sixteen years of peace. I have heard one of these gentlemen, who, by the way, commanded a ship at Navarino, loudly declaim against the Greeks, as knowing them well; and upon my asking him if he had been at Athens, he replied, Oh, yes; we sailed round the whole island.' Yet this gentleman's opinions were believed, because he had been in Greece; though he knew not the difference between Poros and Attica. Again, the military travellers are generally young men from the garrisons of the Ionian islands, who at once transfer to Greece all the prejudices they have contracted against the Ionians, a very different race, whom we have certainly not saved from the contamination of Venetian blood and laws. These young men run over a part of Greece rapidly, cast a glance at its mountains and ruins, find muleteers and boatmen cheat them, laugh at Otho's army, and at once condemn the whole race, without knowing a single gentleman, or even a single peasant in the country, or having learned a sentence of the language. "The next class are the passengers to and from India. Accustomed to luxury, they are annoyed at not finding it, and surprised at being at a point as distant from India and England morally as it is geographically; merely passing by accident, a mere passing glance has been sufficient for them, of a country in which they neither feel nor pretend to feel an interest. Next come the book writers-German princes, for instance, or noble marquesses from England, whose books are like Chinese maps, the writer himself representing the Celestial Empire, and the subject some small islands which fill up the rest of the world. These noble authors are not likely to give any very accurate ideas to their respective countrymen.

"Lastly, there are the disappointed jobbers, would be settlers, &c. They have found Greeks a good deal keener at a bargain than themselves, or as they think, stupidly waiting while the Pactolus is flowing before them, and while, in fact, they are Faye biding their time.' Thus it is that fewer travellers can give a decent account of Greece than of any other country, and scarcely any have attempted to speak of the Greeks from personal knowledge, for this simple reason-they have never been able to speak to them for want of a common language. The Greeks are often called assassins, robbers, &c., yet I knew the commander of police well, when a whole winter at Athens-the population being 20,000-and there was no case of housebreaking or murder. Indeed, my kitchen was cleared of its contents, being an outhouse, and a householder killed in a village; but the one, as most other pilferings, was the work of Bavarians, and the other the crime of a British subject--a Maltese. Greeks are generally called rogues, yet in commerce no Greek merchant of consequence has failed; and both an astute English merchant and a canny Scotch agent have often told me a bill, with three good Greek names to it, is security never known to fail. The peasants are in the habit of borrowing money without any legal security, and always repay it; and I have known a couple of sheep-stealers hunted through the country, and forced to take to the mountains for having stolen sheep from their own village-a crime their fellow-peasants never forgive. Lastly, as to cruelty, when the Bavarian army was defeated in 1834, in General Hiedecle's absurd expedition to enforce taxes in Maina, not a single soldier was put to death when the conflict was over, though every one was in the power of the Mainotes. Whatever may be the faults of the Greeks, they

have two great redeeming virtues, which, if fostered, must lead to great results—a universal and deep-rooted respect for the Christian religion, and an ardent thirst after knowledge. Athens, in 1840, had 3000 of its 20,000 souls under education; a larger proportion, perhaps, than any other capital in Europe."

In forming an estimate of the present character and condition of the Greeks, it is only simple justice to bear constantly in mind that we are contemplating a people divided among three different states, and of which more than a full moiety is still subject to the debasing despotism of Turkey, while a generation has not yet passed away since the new kingdom of Greece emerged from a war of extermination. With all their manifold disadvantages the progress effected by the Greek nation during the last quarter of a century entitles it in many respects to our applause and admiration. For example, the hereditary ingenuity and perseverance of the Greeks are displayed to an extraordinary degree by the manner in which they have contrived, in about thirty years, to found and retain their present extensive commerce. Already the large and rapidly increasing corn trade of the Black Sea and a great portion of the general traffic of the Mediterranean are almost exclusively in the hands of Greek merchants. Nor is there a great city in Europe, Asia, or even America, where there are not extensive Greek mercantile houses. In a printed official report, Mr. Green, late British consul at the Piræus, declares-" Though it would be ridiculous to say that the Greeks are not sharp to a defect, I have no doubt but that their success is to be attributed to their talents, foresight, experience, untiring activity, economical habits, and the local advantages which they possess. Those who deal in general accusations against the Greek mercantile body would be more likely to compete with it by the imitation of some of the above-named qualities." The Greek firms in England itself, with branch houses in the Levant, now exceed 200, and the yearly amount of their transactions in the grain trade alone is computed at no less than four millions sterling. Their business is universally allowed to be conducted with the utmost diligence and exactness; and even in Great Britain the Greeks successfully compete with merchants from all parts of the world. This part of our subject may be aptly summed up in the words of the author of The Ionian Islands under British Protection :—“ We shall indeed be proud and happy if any labours of ours, now or hereafter, can prove of service to any part of the Greek race, by diffusing in England accurate information as to their present condition and character. They have been much misrepresented, partly through ignorance, partly through prejudice. Classical travellers have been too ready to look down with cold disdain on the forlorn estate of a people for whose ancestors they profess even an extravagant veneration ;-foreigners resident among them have been too ready to accuse of every meanness and every vice the sons of those fathers who taught honour and virtue to the ancient world."

No doubt the Greek character has suffered much from centuries of slavery. All the vices which tyranny generates-the abject vices which it generates in those who quail under it-the ferocious vices which it generates in those who struggle against it-have occasionally been exhibited by Greeks in modern times. The valour which of old won the great battle of European civilization, which saved the West and conquered the East, was often most eminently displayed by pirates and robbers. The ingenuity, of old so conspicuous in eloquence, in poetry, in philosophy, in the fine arts, in every department of physical and moral science, was often found to have sunk into a timid and servile cunning. Still, to repeat-as foreigners in the