254 Notices of Ancient and Modern Greece. 



The guns of this fortress never could prevent the passage of an 

 army into the Peloponessus, and it is too far from the sea on each 

 side to admit of keeping up its water communication ; so that it can 

 easily be blockaded on all sides, and starvation has been the means 

 employed by Greeks and Turks to take it. 



The remains of the once proud and powerful Corinth, however 

 few, are made striking by contrast with the modern town : every 

 where you meet traces of the works of a mighty and enterprising 

 people, and you gaze with more strange feelings of awe upon the 

 column of a temple, from seeing it made part of the wall of a hut; 

 and the foundations of walls of ancient buildings seem more ever- 

 lasting from their serving for supports to modern houses, hundreds of 

 which have crumbled away in succession, and left them as immova- 

 ble as ever. The position is unhealthy, and this is one of the rea- 

 sons that Corinth has not recovered from that complete destruction 

 which all the towns in the Morea suffered during the revolution ; and 

 it is so great a disadvantage that I doubt whether it will ever recover, 

 and become what it was even ten years ago. Opening commerce 

 will point out the Isthmus as the place best adapted for the town, and 

 I hope future years of security will remove the cause which made 

 the ancient and more modern Greeks choose the site of Corinth; 

 that reason was its vicinity to the Acro-Corinthus, to which they 

 could fly in time of danger. Nor was this the case in Corinth alone ; 

 all the ancient cities of importance were built with the same view : 

 we may except Lacedasmon, where the noble sentiment prevailed 

 that the best walls were the breasts of brave men. 



One of the best proofs of the veracity of the old Greek historians 

 is in the geography of the country; for you may find your way, from 

 place to place, with Strabo and Pausanias alone for guides. It was 

 nature and not human institution that marked the line of division be- 

 tween the different states of Greece ; and the astonishment that one 

 feels in reading the accounts of so many separate independent states, 

 in so small a space, is diminished on visiting the country : you find a 

 plain of twenty, or thirty, or fifty miles in circumference, hemmed 

 in on all sides by mountains; be sure this formed an ancient state: 

 you find, at some part of it, a rocky elevation, still covered with the 

 vestiges of enormous walls; be sure this was its Acropolis; this was 

 the fortress into which the inhabitants of the plain drove their cattle 

 and repaired themselves in cases of invasion. In every part of 

 Greece you meet vestiges, more or less perfect, of those ancient 



