TO THE SUMMIT OF PARNASSUS. 25o 
Peloponnesus, cannot be described ; for it would ^^.^j^- 
be idle to repeat continually the words grand, u— ^ — * 
and magnificent, as applied to the sublimest 
appearances in nature, without being able 
thereby to suggest the slightest conception of 
the real scene'. 
The village oi jirracovia is rich in comparison condition 
with Castri. It contains two hundred and fifty habiunu" 
houses, inhabited by Albanians and by Greeks, 
'^ without a Turk" among them. This expres- 
sion, " without a Turk," is throughout Greece a 
saying of exultation ; and it is never uttered but 
with an expression of triumph and of gladness. 
Yet some have pretended that there is a mild- 
(l) This has been felt by all who have attempted to describe fine 
prospects without the pencil. " As far as language can describe, 
Mr. Grai/ pushed its powers," observes the Editor of his Memoirs. 
" Rejecting every general unmeaning and hyperbolical phrase, be 
selected the plainest, simplest, and most direct terms : yet, notwith- 
standing his judicious care in the use of these, I must own I feel 
THEM DEFECTIVE. (See Mason's Note to Gray's Letter to fVhurtott; 
Mathius's Edit, vol.1, p. 4G9. Lond. IS14.) Perhaps Grai/ never 
succeeded ■nore happily, than when, laying aside description, he 
simply said, of a view in Westmoreland, "I saw in my 'glass a pic- 
ture, that if I could transmit to you, and fix it in all the softness of 
its living colours, woud fairly sell for a thousand pounds." (Ibid. 
p. 453.) The mast faithful descriptive language may present, it is 
true, a picture to the mind; but then it is not the identical picture. 
" The imagination," says Mason, " receives clear and distinct 
images, but not true and exact images." [Ibid.) 
