with which she seemed made happy for a day, we went on our way to Argos.

a

"Rivers die," it is said, "as well as men and cities." We drove through the bed of "Father Inachus," which was respectable river in the time of Homer, but which, in our day, would be puzzled to drown a much less thing than a king. Men achieve immortality in a variety of ways. King Inachus might have been forgotten as the first Argive; but by drowning himself in the river which afterward took his name, every knowledgehunter that travels is compelled to look up his history. So St. Nepomuc became the guardian of bridges by breaking his neck

over one.

The modern Argos occupies the site of the ancient. It is tolerably populous, but it is a town of most wretched hovels. We drove through several long streets of mud houses with thatched roofs, completely open in front, and the whole family huddled together on the clay floor, with no furniture but a flock bed in the corner. The first settlement by Deucalion and Pyrrha, on the sediment of the deluge, must have looked like it. Mud, stones, and beggars, were all we saw. Old Pyrrhus was killed here, after all his battles, by a tile from a house-top; but modern Argos has scarce a roof high enough to overtop his helmet.

We left our carriages in the street, and walked to the ruins of the amphitheatre. The brazen thalamos in which Dane was confined when Jupiter visited her in a shower of gold, was near this spot, the supposed site of most of the thirty temples once famous in Argos.

Some solid brick walls, the seats of the amphitheatre cut into the solid rock of the hill, the rocky acropolis above, and twenty

or thirty horses tied together, and treading out grain on a thrashing-floor in the open field, were all we found of ancient or picturesque in the capitol of the Argives. A hot, sultry afternoon, was no time to weave romance from such materials.

We returned to our carriages, and while the Greek was getting his horses into their harness, we entered a most unpromising café for shade and water. A billiard-table stood in the centre; and the high, broad bench on which the Turks seat themselves, with their legs crooked under them, stretched around the wall. The proprietor was a Venetian woman, who sighed, as she might well, for a gondola. The kingdom of Agamemnon was not to her taste.

After waiting awhile here for the sun to get behind the hills of Sparta, we received a message from our coachman, announcing that he was arrested. The "evil eye" had not glanced upon him in vain. There was no returning without him, and I walked over with the commodore to see what could be done. A finelooking man sat cross-legged on a bench, in the upper room of a building adjoining a prison, and a man with a pen in his hand was reading the indictment. The driver had struck a child who was climbing on his wheel. I pleaded his case in "choice Italian," and after half an hour's delay, they dismissed him, exacting a dollar as a security for reappearance. curious verification of his morning's omen.

It was a

We drove on over the plain, met the king, five camels, and the Misses Armansperg, and were on board soon after sunset.

LETTER XXI,

Visit from King Otho and Miaulis-Visits an English and Russian frigate-Beauty of the Grecian Men-Lake Lema-The Hermionicas Sinus-Hydra-Efina

NAPOLI DI ROMANIA.-Went ashore with one of the officers, to look for the fountain of Canathus. Its waters had the property (vide Pausanias) of renewing the infant purity of the women who bathed in them. Juno used it once a year. We found but one natural spring in all Napoli. It stands in a narrow street, filled with tailors, and is adorned with a marble font bearing a Turkish inscription. Two girls were drawing water in skins. We drank a little of it, but found nothing peculiar in the taste. Its virtues are confined probably to the other sex.

The king visited the ship. As his barge left the pier, the vessels of war in the harbor manned their yards and fired the royal salute. He was accompanied by young Bozzaris and the prince, his uncle, and dressed in the same uniform in which he received us at our presentation. As he stepped on the deck, and was received by Commodore Patterson, I thought I had never seen a more elegant and well-proportioned man. The frigate was in her

usual admirable order, and the king expressed his surprise and gratification at every turn. His questions were put with uncommon judgment for a landsman. We had heard, indeed, on board the English frigate which brought him from Trieste, that he lost no opportunity of learning the duties and management of the ship, keeping watch with the midshipmen, and running from one deck to the other at all hours. After going thoroughly through all the ship, the commodore presented him to his family. He seemed very much pleased with the ease and frankness with. which he was received, and seating himself with our fair countrywomen in the after-cabin, prolonged his visit to a very unceremonious length, conversing with the most unreserved gayety. The yards were manned again, the salutes fired once more, and the king of Greece tossed his oars for a moment under the stern, and pulled ashore.

Had the pleasure and honor of showing Miaulis through the ship. The old man came on board very modestly, without even announcing himself, and as he addressed one of the officers in Italian, I was struck with his noble appearance, and offered my services as interpreter. He was dressed in the Hydriote costume, the full blue trousers gathered at the knee, a short open jacket, worked with black braid, and a red skull-cap. His lieutenant, dressed in the same costume, a tall, superb-looking Greek, was his only attendant. Hs was quite at home on board, comparing the "United States" continually to the Hellas, the Americanbuilt frigate which he commanded. Every one on board was struck with the noble simplicity and dignity of his address. I have seldom seen a man who impressed me more. He requested

me to express his pleasure at his visit, and his friendly feelings to the commodore, and invited us to his country-house, which he pointed out from the deck, just without the city. Every officer in the ship uncovered as he passed. The gratification at seeing him was universal. He looks worthy to be one of the "three" that Byron demanded, in his impassioned verse,

"To make a new Thermopyla."

Returned visits of ceremony with the commodore, to the English and Russian vessels of war. The British frigate Madagascar is about the size of the United States, but not in nearly so fine a condition. The superior cleanliness and neatness of arrangement on board our own ship are indisputable. The cabin of Captain Lyon (who is said to be one of the best officers in the English service) was furnished in almost oriental luxury, and, what I should esteem more, crowded with the choicest books. He informed us that of his twenty-four midshipmen, nine were sons of noblemen, and possessed the best family influence on both fathers' and mothers' side, and several of the remainder had high claims for preferment. There is small chance there, one would think, for commoners.

Captain Lyon spoke in the highest terms of his late passenger, King Otho, both as to disposition and talent. Somewhere in the Ægean, one of his Bavarian servants fell overboard, and the boatswain jumped after him, and sustained him till the boat was lowered to his relief. On his reaching the deck, the king drew a valuable repeater from his pocket, and presented it to him in the