Snow of course is in these lands to be had only at a much higher level than the snow-line of the Alps, so that the couch of Arethousa stands out yet more conspicuously over the neighbouring heights than it might have done in a more northern region. The inhabitants of Corfu are fond of pointing to the contrast between the well-wooded hills and valleys of their own fertile island and the bare, almost uninhabited, land which lies opposite to them. And of course they do not fail to point the inevitable moral. As in most such cases, there is truth in the boast, but truth that needs some qualifications. Corfu, through all its changes of masters, has always been under governments which were civilized according to the standard of their own times. It has fared accordingly. Epeiros has been handed over to a barbarian master, and it has also been largely colonized by the least advanced of European races. Besides having the Turk as a ruler, it has had the Albanian, Christian and Mussulman, as a settler. In Corfu the Albanian is a frequent visitor; his sheepskin and fustanella may be constantly seen in the streets of Corfu; but he has not—unless possibly in the shape of refugees from Parga—formed any distinct element in her population. It is only in the nature of things that Greeks under successive Venetian, French, and English rule should do more for their land than Albanians under Turkish rule. But we may doubt whether any people under any government could have made the land opposite to Corfu like Corfu itself. Had the mainland shared the successive destinies of the island, it would doubtless have been far better off than it has been. But it could hardly have been as the island. One point of advantage for the island was the mere fact that it was an island. In all but the highest states of civilization, this is an advantage beyond words; and the ancient colonists fully understood the fact.

Still it is a striking contrast to pass across the narrow sea from Corfu to what was Butrinto. Buthrotum, the mythical city of the Trojan Helenos, has a more real being as a Roman colony, and as one of those outposts on the mainland in which Venice succeeded the Neapolitan Kings, and which she kept down to her own fall. Butrinto was once a city no less than Corfu; to Virgil's eyes it was the reproduction of Troy itself. Now we cross from the busy streets and harbour of Corfu to utter desolation at Butrinto. The desolation is greater in one way than any that Helenos or any other primitive settler could have found, because it is that form of desolation which consists in traces of what has been. We enter the mouth of the river, with rich trees and pasturage between its banks and the rugged mountains; we mark ruins of fortresses and buildings on either side, till we come to the ruined castle at the mouth of the lake. The lake is a carefully preserved fishery, and permission is needed to enter it. A few dirty-looking men assemble at the door of a tumble-down building standing against the ruined castle. But among them are personages of some local importance. One is the lessee of the fishery, whose good will is of special importance. There is also a Turkish officer of some kind—more likely a Mussulman Albanian than an Ottoman—with his small and not threatening following. There are one or two native Christians; and it brings the varied ethnology of the land more deeply home to learn that they are neither Greeks nor Albanians, but that they belong to the scattered race of the Vlachs, the Latin-speaking people of the East, whose greatest settlement, far away from Butrinto, has now grown into an European kingdom. It is well to be reminded at such a moment that the Rouman principality, though the greatest, is only one among many, and that the latest, of the settlements of this scattered people. And it brings home the fact to us when we see here, in a land where Greek and Albanian—that is, Hellên and Illyrian—are both at home, the third of the great primitive races of the peninsula, the widely spread Thracian kin, the people of Sitalkês and Kersobleptês, so far away from the land in which alone political geography acknowledges them.

One feeling however the group, so small, but differing so widely in race and creed, seem all to share very deeply. This is a devout reverence for the image of George King of the Greeks, when graven on a five- (new) drachma piece, and held up in the hand of one of the representatives of Corfu in the Greek Parliament. We remember the ancient power of much smaller coins—ὡς μέγα δύνασθον πανταχοῦ τὼ δύ' ὀβολώ—and we begin to doubt whether a smaller sum might not have done the work as well. Anyhow his Hellenic Majesty's countenance, in this attractive shape, acts as a talisman on all, private and official, Christian and Mussulman; it buys off all questions or searchings of any kind, and wins free access to the beautiful scenery of the lake, full licence to poke about among what little there is to poke about in the shattered castle. The thought cannot help coming into the mind that those who so greatly respect the image and superscription of King George would have no very violent dislike to become his subjects. Still it is not without a certain feeling of having escaped out of the mouth of the lion that we cross once more over the channel, and find ourselves at the hospitable door of a Greek gentleman of Koloura.

CORFU AND ITS NAMES.

1875.

The great argument to establish the fact of a long-abiding Slavonic occupation in Greece has always been the changes in local nomenclature, the actual Slavonic names and the Greek names which have displaced older Greek names. The former class speak for themselves; the latter class are held to have been given during the process of Greek reconquest. Nor can there be any reasonable doubt that there is a large amount of truth in this doctrine, if only it is kept in moderation, and is not pressed to the extreme conclusions of Fallmerayer. But it is important to note that the change from one Greek name to another has taken place also in cases when there has been no foreign settlement, no reconquest, no violent change of any kind. One of the greatest of Greek islands has lost one Greek name and has taken another, without the operation of any of the causes which are said to have brought about the change of nomenclature in Peloponnêsos. Crete and Euboia, we may say in passing, seem to have changed their names, when in truth they have not; but Korkyra really has changed its name. It had, for all purposes, become Corfu—in some spelling or other—till the modern revival—unwisely, we must venture to think—brought back, not the true local Korkyra (Κόρκυρα), but the Attic and Byzantine Kerkyra (Κέρκυρα). City and island alike are now again Κέρκυρα; or rather we cannot say that the city is again Κέρκυρα, as the modern city never was Κέρκυρα at all, nor even Κόρκυρα. The modern town of Corfu—in its best Greek form Κορυφώ—stands on a different site from the ancient town of Korkyra, and there can be little doubt that the change of name is connected with the change of site.

The legendary history of the island goes up, we need not say, to the Homeric tales. That Korkyra was the Homeric Scheriê was an accepted article of faith as early as the days of Thucydides. His casual phrase goes for more than any direct statement. He connects the naval greatness of the Korkyraians of his day with the seafaring fame of the mythical Phaiakians (ναυτικῷ πολὺ προέχειν ἔστιν ὅτε ἐπαιρόμενοι καὶ κατὰ τὴν τῶν Φαιάκων προενοίκησιν τῆς Κερκύρας κλέος ἐχόντων τὰ περὶ τὰς ναῦς). Nearly a thousand years later Prokopios is equally believing, though he goes into some doubts and speculations as to the position of the isle of Kalypsô. His way of describing the island should be noticed. With him the island is the Phaiakian land, which is now called Korkyra (ἡ Φαιάκων χώρα, ἣ νῦν Κέρκυρα ἐπικαλεῖται). Against this description we may fairly balance that of Nikêtas (ἡ Κερκυραίων ἄκρα, ἣ νῦν ἐπικέκληται Κορυφώ), with whom the promontory of the Kerkyraians is now called Koryphô. The two answer to each other. To talk of Κερκυραίων ἄκρα was as much an archaism in the eleventh century as to talk of Φαιάκων χώρα was in the sixth. The everyday name of the island in the days of Prokopios was still Κόρκυρα or Κέρκυρα. In the days of Nikêtas it was already Κορυφώ.

We put the two phrases of Prokopios and Nikêtas together, because they are turned out as it were from the same mould. But there is no doubt that the change of name had happened a good while before Nikêtas, and there is some reason to believe that it was the result of causes which are set forth in the narrative of Prokopios. The earliest mention of Corfu by its present name seems to be that in Liudprand, who calls it "Coriphus" in the plural, the Greek Κορυφούς. The change therefore happened between the sixth century and the tenth, the change doubtless of site no less than the change of name. And no time seems more likely for either than the time which followed the wasting expedition of Totilas which Prokopios records. Then doubtless it was that the old city, if it did not at once perish, at least began to decay; a new site began to be occupied; a new town arose, and that new town took a new name from its most remarkable physical feature, the κορυφώ, the two peaks crowned by the citadel, which form the most striking feature in the entrance to the harbour of modern Corfu.

One argument alone need be mentioned the other way, and that is one which perhaps is not likely to present itself to any one out of Corfu itself. The local writer Quirini quotes a single line as from Dionysios Periêgêtês, which runs thus:—

κείνην νῦν Κορφὺν ναῦται διεφημίξαντο.

Dionysios is a writer of uncertain date; but he may safely be set down as older than Prokopios. If then he used the later name, and used it in a form more modern than the Κορυφώ of Nikêtas, the whole argument would be set aside, and the name of Corfu would be carried back to a much earlier time. But where Quirini got his verse is by no means clear. We have looked in more than one edition of Dionysios, and no such verse can we find. The only mention of Korkyra is in a verse which runs thus:—

καὶ λιπαρὴ Κέρκυρα, φίλον πέδον Ἀλκινόοιο.

Nor does the commentator Eustathios say one word as to the change of name. We can only conceive that the line must have been added as a gloss in some copy, printed or manuscript, which was consulted by Quirini.

We will assume then that, as far as the island is concerned, Korkyra and Corfu—in its various spellings—are two successive names, one of which supplanted the other, while, as far as the city is concerned, they are strictly the names of two distinct though neighbouring cities, one of which fell as the other rose. And now the question comes, Is the island of Korkyra the Scheriê of Homer? Is his description of Scheriê and the city of Alkinoos meant for the description of Korkyra or any part of it, whether the historical city or any other? We must remember that the general witness of antiquity in favour of Korkyra being Scheriê loses a good deal of its weight when we consider that the ancient writers felt bound to place Scheriê somewhere, while no such necessity is laid upon us. Bearing this in mind, the plain case seems to be that it is far more likely that Scheriê was nowhere at all. In dealing with Scheriê and its inhabitants, we are not dealing with an entry in the Catalogue of the Iliad, the Domesday of the Mykênaian empire; we are simply dealing with a piece of the romantic geography of the Odyssey. Everything about the Phaiakians and their land reads as if the whole thing was as purely a play of the imagination as the Kyklôpes and the Laistrygones. It is indeed quite possible that, even in describing purely imaginary lands, a poet may bring in his remembrance of real places, just as the features of a real person may be reproduced in the picture of an imaginary event. The poet, in painting Scheriê, may have brought in bits of local description from Korkyra or from any other place. But that is all. As we read the story, it seems quite as reasonable to look on the map for Nephelokokkygia as to look on the map for Scheriê. The thinkers of the days of Thucydides or of some time before Thucydides, deeming themselves bound to place Scheriê somewhere, fixed it at Korkyra. The reason doubtless was that the Phaiakians are spoken of as the most distant of mankind, far away from any others, and that Korkyra really was for a long time the most distant of Greek settlements in this region. When Korkyra was once ruled to be Scheriê, the process of identification naturally went on. Spots received Homeric names. Alkinoos had his grove and his harbour in the historical Korkyra. All this is the common course of legend, and proves nothing for either geography or history. Yet the tale of Scheriê, of Alkinoos, Arêtê, and the charming Nausikaa, is not simply one of the loveliest of tales. Scheriê knew the use of wheeled carriages; therefore Scheriê had roads. Alkinoos, the head king, was chief over twelve lesser kings. Here we get real history, though history neither personal nor local. Scheriê itself may safely be looked for in the moon; but the roads of Scheriê and the Bretwalda of Scheriê have their place in the early history of institutions.

Other names of the island are spoken of, as Drepanê and Makris, descriptive names which perhaps never were in real use, and which, if they were, were supplanted by the historical name of Korkyra. We must again repeat that Korkyra, not Kerkyra, is the genuine local name. It is the spelling on the coins of the country; it is the spelling of the Latin writers, who would get the name from the island itself; it is the spelling of Strabo. But it is equally plain that in Greece generally the spelling Κέρκυρα prevailed. It is so in Herodotus and the Attic writers; it is so in Polybios; it is so in the Byzantine writers, who of course affect Attic forms. It must never be forgotten that, from the time of Polybios, perhaps from an earlier time than his, down to the present moment, written Greek has been one thing, and spoken Greek another. Polybios wrote Κέρκυρα, while its own people called it Κόρκυρα, just as he wrote Ἦλις, while its own people called it Ϝᾶλις. The difference has been thought to have its origin in some joke or sarcasm—some play on κέρκος, κέρκουρος, and the like. But the literary form may just as likely be simply a tempting softening of the local form. One point only is to be insisted on, that the syllable Κορ in Κόρκυρα, and the syllable Κορ in Κορυφώ, have nothing to do with one another. The latter name is no corruption of the elder; it is a genuine case of one Greek name supplanting another—perhaps rather a case of a Greek name, after so many ages, supplanting a name which the first Greek colonists may have borrowed from earlier barbarian inhabitants. In this case the change implies no change of inhabitants, no change of language. It is a change within the Greek language itself, which can be fully accounted for by historical causes. It therefore teaches that changes of name, such as the Slavonic theory insists on in Peloponnêsos, though they do often arise from new settlements and reconquests, do also come about in other ways.

It is for the mythologist to find out whether Homer had Korkyra in his eye when he described the mythic Scheriê. This, be it again noted, is a perfectly reasonable subject for inquiry, and in no way implies any historical belief in the legend. It is simply like asking whether the real Glastonbury at all suggested the mythic Avalon. History begins to deal with Korkyra in the eighth century B.C., when the settlement of the Corinthian Chersikratês added the island to the Greek world. From that day onward the island has a long and eventful story, reaching down to our own times. But, before that story begins, the historian may fairly ask of the ethnologist what evidence, what hints of any kind, there are as to the people whom the Corinthian colonists found settled in the island. It is not likely that they found so promising a site wholly uninhabited. Some branch of the great Illyrian race, the race which is still so near to the island, and which still supplies it, if not with inhabitants, at least with constant visitors, may well be supposed to have made their way into so tempting an island. The harbours of Corfu would surely attract the seafaring Liburnians. We are then brought to the common conditions of a Greek colony, planted, as usual, among pre-existing barbarian inhabitants, and, as Mr. Grote has so strongly enforced, sure to receive a dash of barbarian blood among some classes of its members. The dêmos of Korkyra may well have been far from being of pure Hellenic descent—a fact which, if it be so, may go far to explain the wide difference between the dêmos of Korkyra and the dêmos of Athens. Since the time of the Corinthian settlement, the island has undergone endless conquests and changes of masters, each of which has doubtless brought with it a fresh infusion into the blood of its inhabitants. But since the time of Chersikratês there has been nothing like extirpation, displacement, or resettlement. Korkyra has ever since been an Hellenic land, though a succession of foreign occupations may have marred the purity of its Hellenism. And one point at once distinguishes it from all the neighbouring lands. Among all the changes of masters which Korkyra or Corfu has undergone, they have always been European masters. It is the one land in those parts that has never seen the Turk as more than a momentary invader, to be speedily beaten back by European prowess.

So much for the origin and the name of the greatest of the group which in modern geography has come by the strange name of the Ionian Islands. The only sense in which that name has any meaning is if it be taken as meaning the Islands of the Ionian Sea. It ought to be needless to remind any one that the word in that sense has nothing whatever to do with the real Ionians, with the Ionic dialect or the Ionic order. It certainly has an odd effect when one hears the people of Doric Korkyra spoken of as "Ionians;" and we have even seen the whole group of islands spoken of as "Ionia," to the great wrong of Chios, Samos, Ephesos, and others of the famous Ionian twelve. But having said so much about names, we must in another paper say something of the long series of revolutions which mark the history of Korkyra under its two names, and of their effect on its present state.

CORFU AND ITS HISTORY.

1875.

We have already spoken of the singular change of name which has befallen the most famous and important, though not the largest in superficial extent, of the group known as the Ionian Islands. The change of name, as we hold, followed naturally on the change of site of the city. The new city took a new name, and the island has always followed the name of the city. The old city and the new both occupy neighbouring points in a system of small peninsulas and havens, which form the middle of the eastern coast of the long and irregularly-shaped island of Korkyra. There, to the south of the present town, connected with it by a favourite walk of the inhabitants of Corfu, a long and broad peninsula stretches boldly into the sea. Both from land and from sea, it chiefly strikes the eye as a wooded mass, thickly covered with the aged olive-trees which form so marked a feature in the scenery of the island. A few houses skirt the base, growing on the land side into the suburb of Kastrades, which may pass for a kind of connecting link between the old and the new city. And from the midst of the wood, on the side nearest to the modern town, stands out the villa of the King of the Greeks, the chief modern dwelling on the site of ancient Korkyra. This peninsular hill, still known as Palaiopolis, was the site of the old Corinthian city whose name is so familiar to every reader of Thucydides. On either side of it lies one of its two forsaken harbours. Between the old and the new city lies the so-called harbour of Alkinoos; beyond the peninsula, stretching far inland, lies the old Hyllaic harbour, bearing the name of one of the three tribes which seem to have been essential to the being of a Dorian commonwealth. But the physical features of the country have greatly changed since Chersikratês led thither his band of settlers twenty-six centuries back. It is plain that both harbours once came much further inland than they do now, that they covered a great deal of the low ground at the foot of the peninsular hill. The question indeed presents itself, whether the two did not once meet, whether the peninsula was not once an island, whether the original colony did not occupy a site standing to the mainland of Korkyra in exactly the same relation in which the original insular Syracuse, the sister Corinthian colony, stood to the mainland of Sicily. The physical aspect of the country certainly strongly suggests the belief. And though Thucydides does not directly speak of the city as insular, though his words do not at all suggest that it was so, yet we do not know that there is anything in his narrative which directly shuts out the idea. Anyhow, the great change which has happened is plain when we see how utterly the great Hyllaic haven has lost the character of a haven. It is now called a lake, and exists only for purposes of fishing. We may believe that these physical changes had a great deal to do with the removal of the city to another site, with the change from Korkyra to Corfu.

The description which Thucydides gives of the great sedition brings out a fact which we should at first sight hardly have expected, the fact that the aristocratic quarter of Korkyra was on the lower ground by the harbour, while the upper part of the town was occupied by the dêmos. To one who thinks of Rome, Athens, and ancient cities generally, this seems strange. But arguments from the most ancient class of cities do not fully apply to cities of the colonial class. These, where commerce was so great an object, were no longer, as a rule, placed on heights; convenient access from the sea was a main point, and we can therefore understand that the ground by the coast would be first settled, and would remain the dwelling-place of the old citizens, the forefathers of the oligarchs of the great sedition. There on the lower ground was the agora, where the Epidamnian exiles craved for help, and pointed to the tombs of their forefathers. The impression of the scene becomes more lively when we see not far off an actual ancient tomb remaining in its place, though it could hardly have been the tomb of the forefather of any Epidamnian. This is the tomb of Menekratês of Oianthê, honoured in this way by the people of Korkyra on account of his friendship for their city, a plain round tomb with one of those archaic inscriptions in which Korkyra is rich. Archaic indeed it is, written from right to left, in characters which mere familiarity with the Greek of printed books or of later inscriptions will not enable any one to read off with much ease. It formed doubtless only one of a range of tombs, doubtless outside the city, but visible from the agora. An orator in the Roman forum could not have pointed to the tombs of forefathers by the Appian Way.

The position of the quarter of the oligarchs by the modern suburb of Kastrades seems perfectly clear from Thucydides. The dêmos took refuge in the upper part of the city and held the Hyllaic harbour; the other party held the agora, where most of them dwelled, and the harbour near it and towards the continent (οἱ δὲ τήν τε ἀγορὰν κατέλαβον, οὗπερ οἱ πολλοὶ ᾤκουν αὐτῶν, καὶ τὸν λιμένα τὸν πρὸς αὐτῇ καὶ πρὸς τὴν ἤπειρον). This district marks out the haven by Kastrades, looking out on the Albanian mountains, as distinguished from the Hyllaic haven shut in by the hills of Korkyra itself.

But where was the Hêraion, the temple of Hêrê, which plays a part in more than one of the Thucydidean narratives? and where was the island opposite to the Hêraion—πρὸς τὸ Ἡραῖον—and the isle of Ptychia, both of which appear in his history? The answer to the former question seems to turn on another. Was the present citadel, the true Κορυφώ, itself always an island, as it is now? The present channel is artificial—that is to say, it is made artificial by fortifications—but it may after all have been a natural channel improved by art. And that is the belief of some of the best Corfiote antiquaries. If so, this may well be the νῆσος πρὸς τὸ Ἡραῖον, and Ptychia may be the isle of Vido beyond. The Hêraion would thus stand on the north side of the old Korkyra, looking towards the modern city; it would stand in the oligarchic quarter on the low ground near the agora. It was therefore neither of the two temples of which traces remain. One, of which the walls can be traced out nearly throughout, and of which a single broken Doric column is standing, overlooks the open sea towards Epeiros. Another on the other side overlooked the Hyllaic harbour. This in course of time became a church, a now ruined church, but which keeps large parts of its Hellenic walls and some windows of beautiful Byzantine brickwork. It seems hardly possible in any case that the Hêraion could have been at quite the further end of the peninsula, and that the island πρὸς τὸ Ἡραῖον could be either of the small islands, each containing a church, which keep the entrance of the Hyllaic harbour.

Such then was old Korkyra, the colony of Chersikratês, the Korkyra which figures in the tale of Periandros, the Korkyra which played such a doubtful part in the Persian War, which gained so fearful a name in the Peloponnesian War, and which, within two generations, had so thoroughly recovered itself that in the days of Timotheos it struck both friends and enemies by its wealth and flourishing state. It is the Korkyra of Pyrrhos and Agathoklês, the Korkyra which formed one of the first stepping-stones for the Roman to make his way to the Hellenic continent, the Korkyra whose history goes on till the wasting inroad of Totilas. Then, as we hold, ancient Korkyra on its peninsula began to give way to Koryphô (Corfu) on another peninsula or island, that to which the two peaks which form its most marked feature gave its name.

This last is the Corfu whose fate seems to have been to become the possession of every power which has ruled in that quarter of the world, with one exception. For fourteen hundred years the history of the island is the history of endless changes of masters. We see it first a nominal ally, then a direct possession, of Rome and of Constantinople; we then see it formed into a separate Byzantine principality, conquered by the Norman lord of Sicily, again a possession of the Empire, then a momentary possession of Venice, again a possession of the Sicilian kingdom under its Angevin kings, till at last it came back to Venetian rule, and abode for four hundred years under the Lion of Saint Mark. Then it became part of that first strange Septinsular Republic of which the Tzar was to be the protector and the Sultan the overlord. Then it was a possession of France; then a member of the second Septinsular Republic under the hardly disguised sovereignty of England; now at last it is the most distant, but one of the most valuable, of the provinces of the modern Greek kingdom. But Corfu has never for a moment been under the direct rule of the Turk. The proudest memory in the later history of the island is the defeat of the Turks in 1716. Peloponnêsos, the conquest of Morosini, had again been lost, and the Turk deemed that he might again carry his conquests into the Western seas. The city was besieged by land and sea; the two fleets, Christian and infidel, stretched across the narrow channel between the island and the mainland, the left wing of the Turkish fleet resting strangely enough on Venetian Butrinto, while the ships of Venice and her allies stretched from Vido to the Albanian shore. The statue of Schulemberg, set up as an unparalleled honour in his lifetime, adorns the esplanade of the city which he saved. Unless we count the Turkish acquisition of the Venetian points on the mainland, which, though done under the cover of a treaty, took at Prevesa at least the form of an actual conquest, this was the last great attempt of the Turk to extend his dominion by altogether fresh conquests at the expense of any Christian power.

Korkyra thus gave way to Corfu, and the endless fortifications of Corfu of every date were largely built out of the remains of Korkyra which supplied so convenient a quarry. None but an accomplished military engineer could attempt to give an account of the remains of all the fortifications, Venetian and English, dismantled, ruined, or altogether blown up. But the kingdom of which Corfu now forms a part still keeps the insular citadel, the outline of the two peaks being sadly disfigured by the needs of modern military defence. Of the modern city there is but little to say. As becomes a city which was so long a Venetian possession, the older part of it has much of the character of an Italian town. It is rich in street arcades; but they present but few architectural features, and we find none of those various forms of ornamental window, so common, not only in Venice and Verona, but in Spalato, Cattaro, and Traü. The churches in the modern city are architecturally worthless. They are interesting so far as they will give to many their first impression of Orthodox arrangement and Orthodox ritual. The few ecclesiastical antiquities of the place belong to the elder city. The suburb of the lower slope of the hill contains three churches, all of them small, but each of which has an interest of its own. Of one, known as ἡ Παναγία τῶν βλαχερνῶν , we have already spoken; another, known specially as Our Lady of Oldbury (ἡ Παναγία παλαιοπόλεως), is unattractive enough from any point from which the spectator is likely to see it. Its form is by courtesy called basilican; but, if so, it is like the basilica of Trier, without columns or arches. Within it is a dreary building enough, but it presents one object of interest in a side-altar, a Latin intrusion into the Orthodox fabric. But the west end is one of the most memorable things to be found in Corfu or anywhere else. Two columns, not of the usual early Doric of the island, but with floriated capitals, though not exactly Corinthian, are built into the wall with a piece of their entablature. On this is graven a Christian inscription, which is given in an inaccurate shape by Mustoxidi (Delle cose Corciresi, p. 405), who has further improved the spelling. The spelling is in truth after the manner of Liudprand and the modern shoe-makers of Corfu, and is therefore instructive. At the top come the words of the Psalmist; "This is the gate of the Lord; the writeous shall enter into it":—αὕτη ἡ πύλη τοῦ Κυρίου, δίκεοι εἰσελεύσονται ἐν αὐτῇ. Below come four hexameters:—

Who was this Jovianus? Clearly a Christian as zealous as his Imperial namesake; for he cannot be the Emperor himself, as some have thought. He thought it glory and not shame to destroy the works of the Gentiles—the Ἕλληνες—and to turn them to the service of the royal faith. But are we to take the "royal faith" in the same sense as the "royal law" of the New Testament? or does it mean the "royal faith," as being set up under some orthodox Emperor, when the orthodoxy of Emperors was still a new thing? Anyhow the plunderer of Gentile temples and altars could not keep himself from something of the Gentile in the ring and the language of his verses. And had he made use of his spoil to rear a basilica like those of Constantine and Theodoric, we should, from a wider view than that of the mere classical antiquary, have but little right to blame him. The rest of the columns, besides the two that are left, would have well relieved the bareness of his interior; better still would it have been if Saint Peter ad Vincula had found a rival in two arcades formed out of the Doric columns whose fragments lie about at Corfu, almost as Corinthian and Composite fragments lie about at Rome. The third church, that which professes to be the oldest in the island, that which bears the name of the alleged apostles of the island, the Jasôn and Sosipatros of the New Testament, is a more successful work. Brought to its present form about the twelfth century by the priest Stephen, as is recorded in two inscriptions on its west front, it is, allowing for some modern disfigurements, an admirable specimen of a small Byzantine church. It will remind him who comes by way of Dalmatia of old friends at Zara, Spalato, and Traü; but it has the advantage over them of somewhat greater size, and of standing free and detached, so that the outline of its cross, its single central cupola and its three apses, may be well seen. This church, like most in the neighbourhood, has a bell-gable—κωδωνοστάσιον—with arches for three bells, of a type which seems to be found of all ages from genuine Byzantine to late Renaissance.

1881.

We start again from Corfu, and this time our course is northward. A survey of Greece as Greece would lead us southward and eastward. So would even a complete survey of the subject lands of Venice. For that we must go on to the rest of the western islands, to not a few points in the Ægæan, to the greater islands of Euboia and Crete, to Saint Mark's own realm of Cyprus, which the Evangelist so strangely inherited from his daughter and her son. Not a few points of Peloponnêsos for some ages, all Peloponnêsos for a few years, Athens itself for a moment, comes within the same range. We might write the history of Argos from the Venetian point of view, a point of view which would shut out the history of Mykênê, and would look on Tiryns only as Palai-Nauplia, the precursor of Napoli di Romania. But no man could journey through Greece itself with Venice in this way in his thoughts. Far older, far nobler, memories would press upon him at every moment. The mediæval history of Greece is a subject which deserves far more attention than it commonly gets, and in that history Venice plays a prominent part. But it is hard, in a Greek journey, to make the mediæval history primary, and even in the mediæval history Venice is only one element among others. A large part of Greece fairly comes under the head of the Subject and Neighbour Lands of Venice; but we cannot bring ourselves to make that the chief aspect in which we look at them. It is otherwise with the Dalmatian and Albanian possessions of the Republic. There, though other points of view are possible, yet the special Venetian point of view is one which may be both easily and fairly taken. So too with Corfu; thoroughly Greek as the island is, it still lies on the very verge of continuous Greece. In its history and geography it is closely connected with the more northern possessions of the Republic; its Venetian side is at least as important as any other side; we can without an effort bring ourselves to treat it in a way in which we could hardly bring ourselves to treat Argos. We can then fairly take Corfu into our special Venetian survey; but we can hardly venture to carry that survey further. The rest of Greece, though it has its Venetian side, though it is important that its Venetian side should not be forgotten, can never be looked on in this way as an appendage to the Hadriatic commonwealth. We cannot go through the earliest homes of European civilization and freedom, and keep our mind mainly fixed even on the days when Rome had made them members of her Empire, and when their influence had gone far to make the later power of Rome at least as much Greek as Roman. Still less can we go through them with our mind mainly fixed on the days when so large part of Greece had passed under the rule of a city which was in truth a revolted member of the Empire which it helped to split in pieces.

We start then again from Corfu, with our faces turned towards our old haunts among the Illyrian coasts and islands. In so doing, we pass for a while out of the Christian and civilized world, to skirt along the coasts where Europe is still in bondage to Asia. The wrong is an old one, as old as the days when Herodotus put on record how Greek cities for the first time passed under the rule of a barbarian master. From his day, from times long before his day, from the days of Agamemnôn, perhaps from the days of the brave men who lived before him, the same long strife has been going on, the same "eternal Eastern question" has been awaiting its "solution." And nowhere does that abiding struggle come more fully home to us than in the lands where the Eastern question has become a Western question. The Greek cities whose bondage to the barbarian was recorded by Herodotus were Greek cities on barbarian ground. They were outposts of Europe on the soil of Asia; they were spots in winning which the Asiatic might deem that he was winning back his own. And after all, the barbarian whose conquest of the Greek cities of Asia marks one important stage in this long strife, was a barbarian of another kind from the barbarians whom European lands have in later times been driven to receive as masters. Crœsus worshipped the Gods of Greece, and Greek poets sang his praises. It may even be that the Lydian, like the Persian who succeeded him, was not a barbarian at all in the strictest sense, but that there was some measure of kindred, however distant, between him and his European subjects. It is another kind of master, another kind of bondage, which has fallen to the lot of the lands along whose coast we are now sailing. Here we do indeed see the West in bondage to the East, we do indeed see Europe on her own soil bowed down beneath the yoke of Asia. We pass by coasts which look to the setting sun no less than our own island, but which the Asiatic intruder still holds beneath the yoke,—over some of which he has pressed the yoke for the first time within the memory of living men. On these coasts at least we think of Venice only in her nobler character. Here indeed every island, every headland, which owned her rule, was something saved from the grasp of the enemy; it was indeed a brand plucked from the burning. As we sail northward, we leave spots behind us, memorable in past times, memorable some of them in our own day. We leave behind us Prevesa, where, till almost within our own century, Saint Mark still held his own, hard by the City of Victory of the first Emperor. We remember how Prevesa was torn away from Christendom by the arms of Ali of Jôannina, and how within the last three years freedom has been twice promised to her but never given. We leave behind us more famous Parga, where, within the lifetime of many of us, stout hearts could still maintain their freedom, in the teeth alike of barbarian force and of European diplomacy—Parga, whose banished sons bore with them the bones of their fathers rather than leave them to be trampled on by the feet of the misbelievers. There must be men still living who had their share in that famous exodus, and who have lived to see Europe first decree that their land should be again set free, and then thrust it back again beneath the yoke. We leave behind us Butrinto, happier at least in this, that there no promise of later days has been broken. There we have passed the point beyond which assembled Europe ruled that even the dreams of freedom might go no further. And as we sail between the home of freedom and the house of bondage, our thoughts overleap the mountain wall. They fly to the heights where Souli, birth-place of Botzarês, is left to the foes against whom it so long and so stoutly strove. They fly to Jôannina, so long the home of light and comparative freedom amid surrounding darkness and bondage, but which now, instead of receiving the twice-promised deliverance, is again thrust back into bondage for a while. We pass on by the High Thunderpeaks, fencing in the land of Chimara, famous in the wars of Ali. We double the promontory of Glôssa, and find ourselves in the deep bay of Aulôn, Aulona, Valona, with the town itself high on its hill, guarding the entrance to the gulf from the other side. Here is a true hill-city, unlike Korkyra, unlike even Buthrotum; but while Korkyra and Buthrotum, each on its shore, has each its history, Aulôn on its height has none. We pass by the mouths of the great Illyrian rivers, by Aoos and Apsos, and we leave between them the place where once stood Apollonia, another of the paths by which Rome made her way into the Eastern world. At last we find ourselves in another bay, wider, but not so deep as the bay of Aulôn. Here we look out on what remains of a city whose earlier name dwells in the memory of every reader of the greatest of Greek historians, a city whose later name, famous through a long series of revolutions, ought to be ever fresh in the minds of Englishmen, as having become by a strange destiny the scene of one stage of the same struggle as Senlac and York and Ely. The city on which we look was, under its elder name of Epidamnos, that famous colony of Korkyra which gave an occasion for the Peloponnesian war. Under its later name of Dyrrhachion or Durazzo it beheld Englishmen and Normans meet in arms, when Englishmen driven from their homes had found a shelter and an honourable calling in the service of the Eastern Cæsar.

The city on which we gaze, though it is only by a figure that we can be said to gaze on the original Epidamnos, is one of those cities which, without ever holding any great place themselves, without being widely ruling cities, without exercising any direct influence on the course of the world's history, have given occasion for the greatest events through their relations to cities and powers greater than themselves. Under none of its names was Epidamnos the peer of Corinth in the elder state of things, or of Venice in the later. Yet events of no small moment came of the relations between Epidamnos and Corinth, of the relations between Durazzo and Venice. Greater events still came of the relations between Dyrrhachion and Rome. The three names, though of course the third is a simple corruption of the second, are convenient to mark three periods in the history of the place, just as one of the great Sicilian cities is conveniently spoken of at three stages of its life as Akragas, Agrigentum, and Girgenti. When and how the name changed from Epidamnos to Dyrrhachion is not clear, nor are the reasons given for the change satisfactory. In practice, Epidamnos is its old Greek name, Dyrrhachion its Roman, Durazzo its mediæval name. But the name Dyrrhachion can be Roman only in usage; the word itself is palpably Greek. In strictness it seems that Epidamnos was the name of the city, and Dyrrhachion the name of the peninsula on which the city was built. The change then has some analogy with the process by which the tribal names in northern Gaul have displaced the elder names of their chief cities, or with the change among ourselves by which Kingston-on-Hull, as it is still always called in formal writings, is in common speech always spoken of as "Hull." Anyhow, under Roman rule, the name of Dyrrhachion altogether displaced Epidamnos. The new name gradually came to be mispelled or Latinized into Durachium and Duracium, and, in that state, it supplied the material for more than one play upon words. When Robert Wiscard came against it, he said that the city might indeed be Duracium, but that he was a dour man (durus) and knew how to endure (durare). The Norman made his way by this path into the Eastern lands, as the Roman had done before him; but as his course was quicker, his stay was shorter. Epidamnos, along with Apollônia and Korkyra, were the first possessions of Rome east of the Hadriatic. They were possessions of the ruling city where dominion was for a long time disguised under the name of alliance. But, under whatever name, Rome, Old and New, held them till the Norman came. But the Norman did not hold them till the Venetian came. In a few years after the coming of Robert Wiscard, Durazzo and Corfu were again cities of the Eastern Empire.

Amidst all the revolutions which this little peninsula has gone through, one law seems to hold. Under all its names, it has had in a marked way what we may call a colonial life, in the modern sense of the word colonial. It has ever been an outpost of some other power, of whatever power has been strongest in those seas, and it has been an outpost ever threatened by the elder races of the mainland. Herein comes one of the differences between this Albanian coast and the Dalmatian coast further north. The Roman Peace took in all; but in the days before and after the Roman Peace, the settlements of Corinth, Venice, or any other colonizing and civilizing power, along the coast of which Durazzo was the centre, were merely scattered outposts. There never was that continuous fringe of a higher culture, Italian or Greek, which spread along the whole coast further north. As a colony, an isolated colony, Epidamnos or Durazzo was always exposed to the attacks of barbarian neighbours. And in this land the barbarian neighbours have always been the same. The old Illyrian, the Albanian, the Arnaout, the Skipetar—call him by whichever name we will—has here lived on through all changes. He has indeed a right to look on Greek, Roman, Norman, Angevin, Servian, Venetian, and Ottoman, as alike intruders within his own immemorial land. It was danger from the Illyrian that led to the disputes which open the history of Thucydides, when Corinth and Korkyra fought over their common colony. It was danger from the Illyrian which drove Epidamnos into the arms of Rome. It was the Illyrian under his new name who in the fourteenth century for a moment made Durazzo the head of a national state, the capital of a short-lived kingdom of Albania. Twice conquered by the Normans of Apulia and Sicily, twice by their Angevin successors, granted as part of a vassal kingdom by the Norman and as a vassal duchy by the Angevin, twice won by the Venetian commonwealth, held by the despots of Epeiros, by the restored Emperors of Constantinople, by the kings of Servia, by the native kings of Albania, no city has had a more varied succession of foreign masters; but, save in the days of the old Epidamnian commonwealth and in the days of the momentary Albanian kingdom, it has always had a foreign master of some kind. But in the endless succession of strangers which this memorable spot has seen, as masters, as invaders, as defenders, it is the Englishman and the Venetian who can look with most satisfaction on their share in its long history. Englishmen had the honour of guarding the spot for the Eastern Cæsar; Venice had the honour of being the last Christian champion to guard it against the Ottoman Sultan.

We stand then gazing from our ship on what is left of the city which Robert Wiscard crossed the sea to conquer, which Alexios came with his motley host to defend, and to find that in all that host the men whom he could best trust were the English exiles. There, as in their own island, the English axe and the Norman lance clashed together; there the stout axemen alone stayed to die, while the other soldiers of the Eastern Rome, the Greek, the Turk, and the Slave, all turned to fly around their Emperor. We look out, and we long to know the site of the church of Saint Michael, which our countrymen so stoutly guarded, till the Normans, Norman-like, took to their favourite weapon of fire. But may we confess to the weakness of looking at all these things only from the deck of the steamer? Perhaps there are some who may be forgiven if they shrink from thrusting themselves alone, with no native or experienced guide, into the jaws of the present masters of Durazzo. They may be the more forgiven when those who have the care of their vessel and its temporary inhabitants utter warnings against any but the most stout-hearted trusting themselves to the boats which form the only means of reaching the Dyrrhachian peninsula. Strengthened in weakness by such counsels, there seems a kind of magnanimity in the resolution to abide in the ship, to say that we have landed at free Corfu, that we shall land at recovered Antivari, but that we will not betweenwhiles set foot on any soil where the Turk still reigns. And the time of distant gazing is not wasted. Without risking ourselves either on Turkish ground or on the rough waves of the Epidamnian bay, a fair general view of the city may be had from the steamer. The wide curve of the bay has for the most part a flat shore, with a background of mountains in the distant landscape. Towards the north-west corner, a promontory of a good height, backed by a comb-like range of peaks, rises at once from the water. This is the peninsula of Dyrrhachion, once crowned by the Epidamnian city. The modern town is seen on a small part of the tower slope of the hill. The walls can be traced through the greater part of their circuit; a huge round bastion by the sea, more than one tower, round and square, teach us that Durazzo has been strongly fortified. If we may eke out our own distant impressions by the help of an old print showing what Durazzo was in times past, we see that it was fortified indeed. We can recognize in the picture most of the towers which we have seen with our own eyes, and there is shown also another tower far greater, a huge square tower of many stages, which no imagination of the artist can have devised out of anything which now comes into the sea-view of the city. But that view enables us to trace out a few buildings within the wall. We mark the distinctive symbols of the two stranger forms of worship, from the East and from the West, which have, each in its turn, supplanted or dominated the native Church. The Latin church, with its conspicuous bell-tower, carries on the traditions of Angevin and Venetian rule; the mosque, with its more conspicuous minaret, speaks of the more abiding dominion of the representative of the False Prophet. The native church meanwhile lurks significantly unseen in the general view. Our teacher on board our ship assures us that Durazzo is not without an Orthodox place of worship; but he cannot point out its whereabouts.

And it may be that it is no common anniversary on which we look out on the land which has passed into bondage. Looked at by the evening light of the twenty-ninth day of May, the group of buildings at Durazzo, alike by what is present to the eye and by what is absent, brings to the mind the fate of a greater city than Durazzo was in its proudest day. It makes us muse how, after four hundred and eight and twenty years, we have still to repeat the Psalmist's words: "O God, the heathen have come into thine inheritance; thy holy temple have they defiled, and made Jerusalem an heap of stones." Durazzo has not indeed, like some other cities under the yoke, sunk to a heap of stones; but it is easy to see how the Turkish town has shrunk up within the Venetian walls, and again how narrow must be the circuit of Venetian Durazzo compared with the Epidamnos of the days of Thucydides, or even with the Dyrrhachion beneath whose walls our banished kinsmen so well maintained the cause of the Eastern Augustus. For the church that they so stoutly defended we need not say that it is vain to look in such a Pisgah view of the city as is all that we can take. But to the left of the present wall, where the hill soars, one stage upon another, far above the height of Durazzo that now is, we must surely place the site of the akropolis of the old Korkyraian settlers. Such a post, looking over the wide bay and commanding its mouth, would be just what would commend itself to the Greek colonists for the site of their new stronghold, while the lower city would naturally be spread over the more sheltered ground which holds all that is left of Durazzo under the rule of the Turk. Pausanias indeed implies that there had been a change of site before his time, that the Dyrrhachion of his day did not stand on exactly the same ground as the elder Epidamnos. No doubt the loftier site was the older; men came down from the hill-top as they did at Athens and Corinth. Thus much the passing stranger can see of this historic spot, even without setting his foot on the soil which the barbarian has torn away from Christendom. His course will bear him on to the place of his next halt, to the spot which, only a few months back, was the last soil which Christendom had won back from the barbarian. Since then, if another land has been denied the promised freedom, in a third the boon has been actually bestowed. And we may comfort ourselves by thinking that, while the shame of what is left undone belongs to others, the praise of what is done belongs to our own land only. We may comfort ourselves too by further thinking that right and freedom are powers which have an awkward way, when they have taken the inch, of going on to take the ell. The wise men whose wisdom consists in living politically from hand to mouth, are again crying out against "re-opening the Eastern question." In sailing along the shores, in scanning their history in past and present times, we feel how deep a truth was casually uttered in the shallow sneer which called that question "eternal." We feel how vain is the dream of those who think that this or that half-measure has solved it. As we gaze on enslaved Durazzo, with free Greece behind us, with free Montenegro before us—as we run swiftly in our thoughts over the long history of the spot—as we specially call up the deeds of our own countrymen on the shore on which we look—we feel that something indeed has been done, but that there is yet much more to do. Before us, behind us, are lands to which England, and England only, has given freedom. A day must come when, what England has done for Corfu, for Arta, and for Dulcigno, she must do for Jôannina and for Durazzo.

ANTIVARI.

1881.

We wind up our course with one more of the once subject cities of Venice, one where we can hardly say that we are any longer following in Norman footsteps, but whose history stands apart from the history of Dalmatia and Istria, while it has much in common with our last halting place. But here the main interest belongs to our own day. It is with new and strange feelings that we look out on a land which, when we last passed by it, was still clutched tight in the grasp of the barbarian, but to which we can now give the new and thrilling name of the sea-coast of Tzernagora. And yet it is with mingled feelings that we gaze. We rejoice in the victories, in the extension, of the unconquered principality, the land which has shown itself a surer "bulwark 'gainst the Ottomite" than Hungary or Poland, or even Venice, ever proved. We rejoice that the warriors of the mountain, long shut in by force and fraud, have again, with their own right hands, cut their way to their own sea. And yet we feel that, though the sea to which they have cut their way is truly their own sea, their own ancient heritage, yet the coast and the havens which they have won are not the coast and the havens which they should have won. If all had their own, Dulcigno, Antivari, and the ewe lamb which the rich man stole at Spizza, would be the havens of the free Albanian, while the free Slave would have his outlet to the Hadriatic waters at his own Cattaro and at Ragusa too. In such an ideal state of things, the present lord of Cattaro and Ragusa might reign peaceably and harmlessly in the duchy of his grandmothers, happy in deliverance from the curses of those whom he now keeps back from union with the brethren whom they love and with the one prince whom they acknowledge. The Montenegrin, in short, kept back by wrong from winning his way to the sea by peaceful union with those who yearn for his presence, has been driven to win his way to the sea by the conquest of lands which were once the heritage of his race, but from which his race has now passed away. Forbidden to be the deliverer of the Slave, he has been forced to be the conqueror of the Albanian. The Albanian Mussulman himself has practically gained by being conquered; still, as we said, if every one had his own, arrangements would be different. The blame indeed lies, not with the people who extend their borders when to extend their border is a matter of national life, but with those who, not in the interest of any people, nation, or language, but in the private interest of their own family estate, sit by to hinder them from extending their borders in the right way. We rejoice then as we look for the first time on the sea-coast of Montenegro; but we mourn that the sea-coast of Montenegro lies where it does and not elsewhere. We mourn too that the enlargement of Christendom, the falling back of Islam, has been bought only by the destruction of an ancient and beautiful city from which the memorials at least of Christendom had not wholly passed away.

Antibaris, Antivari, in the tongues of the land, Bar and Tivari, is perhaps rather to be understood as meaning "the Bari on the other side" than "the city opposite Bari." But there is no doubt that its name contains, in one way or another, a reference to the more famous Bari, "Barium piscosum," on the other side of the Hadriatic. And Antivari is the opposite to Bari in a sense which was certainly not meant; no two sites can well be more unlike one another than the sites of Bari and of Antivari. The Apulian Bari lies low on a flat shore, with not so much as a background of hills; the Albanian Bari crowns a height, with a wall of more soaring heights on each side of it. The Apulian Bari had no chance of occupying such a position as this; the marked difference between the two coasts of the Hadriatic forbade it. But the site of Antivari is hardly less unlike most of the other sites on its own coast. Zara, Salona and its successor Spalato, Epidauros and its successor Ragusa, Cattaro, Durazzo, and a crowd of others of lesser name, are none of them placed on heights. Some of them nestle immediately at the foot of the mountain; some have thrown out their defences, older or newer, some way up the side of the mountain; in none is the city itself perched high on the hills. For a parallel to Antivari on this coast we have to go back to the mountain citadel of Aulona. The position and the name of Antivari seem to point to a state of things differing both from the days of the Greek and Roman foundations, and from the days of the cities which arose to shelter their fugitives in the day of overthrow. Long Salona stood low on the shore; the house of Jovius stood low on the shore also; it did not come into the head of the founders of either to plant city or palace on the height of Clissa. When Antivari arose, it would seem that men had gone back to that earlier state of things which planted the oldest Argos, even the oldest Corinth, on mountain peaks some way from their own coasts. The inaccessible height had again come to be looked on as a source of strength. Antivari may take its place alongside of the mediæval Syra, the Latin town covering its own peaked hill—a mons acutus, a Montacute, by the shore—while the oldest and the newest Hermoupolis lies on the shore at its feet. The town does not even look down at once on the haven; it has to be reached in a manner sideways from the haven. It is true indeed that the sea has gone back, that the plain at the foot of the mountains between the town and the shore was smaller than it now is, even in times not far removed from our own. But Antivari was never as Cattaro; it always stood on a height, with some greater or less extent of level ground between the town and its own haven.

The city thus placed has gone through its full share of the revolutions of the eastern coasts of the Hadriatic. Once a commonwealth under the protection of the Servian kings and tzars, it came late under Venetian rule. But it remained under that rule down to a later time than any other of the possessions of the Republic on this coast, save those which came within the actual Dalmatian border and those detached points further to the south which have a history of their own in common with the so-called Ionian Islands. It was for a while in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, what Budua was for so long afterwards, the furthest point of the continuous rule of Saint Mark, a city which remained part of Christendom after Durazzo and Skodra had passed into the hands of the infidel. In earlier times, when Antivari had a separate being, its tendency was rather to a connexion with Ragusa than with Venice. Ragusa, though the nearer of the rivals, was the weaker, the less likely to change alliance or protection into dominion. Antivari too, like most other city-commonwealths, had its patricians and plebeians, its disputes between the privileged and the non-privileged order. As the justice of either side at home was distrusted, it was agreed that the decision of some classes of causes should be referred to the courts of Ragusa. Such a settlement, though taking another and more dangerous form, is the same in principle as the favourite Italian custom of choosing a foreign podestà, as the earlier usage by which cities which had won their independence in all other points were still willing to receive a criminal judge of the Emperor's naming. In all these cases alike, the stranger is looked on as more likely than the native to deal out even-handed justice amid the disputes and rivalries of persons and parties.

Though Antivari stands on a hill, it does not crown any such height as those of Cortona or Akrokorinthos, nor does it call for any such journey as that which leads to the spot which masters of the high-polite style will now doubtless call its "metropolis" at Tzetinje. It stands on an advanced point among the mountains, one easily commanded from higher points, as was soon found in the siege of 1877. A road of no astonishing steepness leads us up to the town—or more strictly to its ruins. We look down on a church in the valley, whose air proclaims it as belonging to the Orthodox communion; and that church seems to be the only untouched building within sight. It is not till we get within the walls that we take in the full measure of the destruction which has been wrought; but the first glance shows that Antivari has suffered not a little from the warfare of our own times. The walls and towers are there; but we see that they fence in only roofless buildings; the mosques, with their minarets, several of them shattered, remind us that we are drawing near to a city which has been won for Christendom from Islam, as a nearer view reminds us that it is a city which had before been won for Islam from Christendom. We halt at a small café outside the walls, where we receive a friendly greeting from the representatives of Montenegrin authority in the new conquest. Here too is the club and reading-room of Antivari, supplied with newspapers in the Slavonic, Italian, and Turkish tongues; the really prevailing speech of the district, the immemorial Skipetar or Albanian, hardly boasts of a representative in the press. Here too are gathered a few fragments from the ruins, a few capitals, sculptures, and inscriptions, all or most of Venetian times. Among them is the winged lion himself, and the epitaph of a local dignitary who bears the very English-sounding title of "justitia pacis." Even among ourselves embodied righteousness sometimes takes the same abstract form, instead of the more mortal and fleshly "justitiarius." A slight descent and a steep ascent leads us through a rebuilt suburb, which now forms the only part of Antivari which serves as a dwelling-place of man. A line of shops, or rather booths, supplies the needs of the neighbouring people, among whom Christians and Mussulmans, Slaves and Albanians, seem pretty equally mingled. A Montenegrin sentinel, whose national coat must once have been whiter than it now is, guards the gate, a Venetian gate where inscriptions in the Arabic character record the dominion of the late masters of Antivari. We enter, we gaze around, we climb a tower for a better view, and we look on a scene of havoc which is startling to men of peaceful lives, and which, one would think, must be unusual even in the experience of men of the sword. We believe that we are speaking the truth when we say that every building within the enclosed space has become uninhabitable; certainly not one seemed to be inhabited. This destruction is indeed not wholly the immediate result of the siege. A powder-magazine was afterwards struck by lightning, and its explosion destroyed whatever the siege had spared. But the havoc wrought by the siege itself must have been fearful. Antivari is as strictly a collection of ruins, and of nothing but ruins, as Ninfa at the foot of the Volscian hills, looking up at the mighty walls of Norba. But Ninfa was simply forsaken some ages back. Its inhabitants fled from an unhealthy site, and left their houses, churches, and military defences, to crumble away. But at Antivari we see the work of destruction in our own day, almost at the present moment. Four years back, the traveller passing along the Albanian coast was shown where Antivari, then an inhabited town, nestled among its rocks. The war was then raging inland; the Montenegrin was then defending his own heights against Turkish invasion; he had not yet come down to win back a fragment of his ancient coast from one of the two intruders who kept him from it. The traveller comes again; this time he does not only look from afar, but examines on the spot with his own eyes. But he finds only the shattered fragments of what four years before was a city of men.

And, small as Antivari must have been even in its most flourishing times, it is no mean city that it must have been. It must be remembered that Antivari, though it was a Mussulman town under Turkish rule, was never in any strict sense a Turkish town. Its history is that of Albania generally, as it is the history of large classes of men in Bosnia. Antivari was easily won by the Turk, and it remained in the hands of its old inhabitants, Christian Albanians and Venetian settlers. Gradually, for the sake of their temporal interests, they conformed outwardly to the religion of their conquerors, and so passed from the subject to the ruling order. At first, this was a mere outward conformity for worldly ends; men still hoped that some chance of warfare would bring back the rule of Saint Mark. If so, they were ready to return to the faith which they still secretly held. But the happy revolution never came; new generations sprang up with whom Islam was an hereditary creed, and Antivari became a Mussulman city. But it never became a Turkish city. The descendants of the once Christian inhabitants lived on in their fathers' houses, and worshipped in the same temples as their fathers, though they were now turned to the use of another faith. Each church had a minaret added, and it became a mosque. In most cases of Mahometan conquest, the conquerors took the head church of the city as a trophy of their own faith, but left the subject Christians in possession of one or more of the lesser churches. So, in this same region, it was at Durazzo; so it was at Trebinje; in both there was a church, or more than one, within the walls. Here at Antivari, as the inhabitants gradually embraced Islam, all the churches became mosques; and thus, for the very reason that there was less of violent disturbance than in most cases of Turkish conquest, Antivari, while never becoming Turkish, became more strictly Mussulman than most cities under Turkish rule. The churches, or rather their ruins, still stand, examples of the usual churches of the country, none of them remarkable for size or antiquity or architectural splendour; but still essentially churches, with their fabrics untouched, save only the inevitable addition of the minaret. Some of them even keep memorials of their earlier use of which one would have expected Mussulman zeal to wipe out every trace as monuments of idolatry. Intruding Turks or Saracens would doubtless have done so; but the Mahometan descendants of the Christian citizens of Antivari still felt a tenderness for the works of their forefathers. Even pictures of Christian subjects have been spared. In one case especially, in a church which does not seem ever to have been a mosque, but, as having perhaps been a private chapel, to have formed part of a private house, among other kindred pictures, the baptism of our Lord in Jordan is still almost as clear as when the painter first traced it on the wall. Old ancestral memories, perhaps the vague feeling that after all a day of change might come—the feeling which led Bosnian beys, while holding their Christian countrymen in bondage, to keep Christian patents of nobility and even concealed objects of Christian worship—were clearly stronger in Antivari than any strict regard to the Mussulman law.