executed on a far larger scale than the Scottish plantation of Ulster, which was nearly contemporary, failed as signally as the other succeeded in achieving the objects of the projectors; for, though it left Leinster-the seat of the pure plantation-at once the most prosperous and the most Protestant of the three southern provinces, it did not found a thriving community like that of Ulster, which, though taking root in the bleakest part of the country, could turn its natural resources to such noble account, and create an emporium of manufacturing activity and commercial enterprise, which has always been the envy and the admiration of the South.

The reasons of this comparative failure are very obvious even to a cursory inquirer. The Cromwellian plantation was founded upon the ruthless proscription of a whole nation, and it is a well-known political axiom that no measures can ever finally succeed in which the interests of all classes are not in some way consulted. The Ulster plantation under James I., though founded on the confiscation of the lands of the old, quarrelling, rebellious chiefs, who had to abandon the country, did not displace the native Irish to the same extent as the Southern; for they had their place-though an inferior onein the plan of settlement, and, as a matter of fact, they held directly 60,000 of the 300,000 acres available for plantation, while the majority of the British undertakers had Irish tenants settled on their newly-acquired properties. The lands, too, were generally vacant when the settlers arrived. Again, the Cromwellian officers, as we have already seen, by their eagerness to buy up the portions of the common soldiers, weakened, while they imagined they were strengthening their own position in the country, and thus hindered the formation of a sturdy middle-class; but the Ulster settlement, by strictly guarding the rights of the tenant-occupiers against the encroachments of their landlords, created a class of yeomen, with protection for industry and stimulus to enterprise, who laid the broad and lasting foundation of Northern prosperity. The Scotch settlers, too, brought their families into the country, and thus preserved their religious distinctness in the midst of surrounding Romanism; while most of the settlers of Cromwell, like those of England for many centuries, by neglecting this necessary provision, were obliged to intermarry with the natives, and were thus rapidly absorbed, in the course of a few generations, into the mass of the unenterprising, unimproving, Roman Catholic population. It is not to be forgotten, too, as affecting the Protestant character of the Northern province, that the early settlers had no difficulty in obtaining from

Scotland the services of the most godly and zealous of its ministers, who remained in the country in spite of all the prelatic persecutions of after-times; while, on the other hand, it was a curious and melancholy circumstance, that most of the 130 Independent and Baptist ministers returned to England at the Restoration, on the withdrawal of their salaries, and left the Puritan settlers without any provision for their spiritual wants. No doubt, the restored Episcopacy, though obnoxious to the settlers, took the place in some measure of the fugitive divines of Cromwell; but many of these settlers after the Restoration answered but too faithfully to the description given of them by one who knew them well:-'I have hunted with them,' says he, I have diced with them, I have drunk with them, I have fought with them, but I have never prayed with them; and another might well describe an Irish Protestant as a man who never went to church and hated a Papist. Is it strange, then, that such different fortunes attended the two great plantations of the seventeenth century?

In closing this review, we cannot but congratulate the sistercountry upon its altered condition, since English legislation palsied the arm and broke the heart of local insolence and oppression. We rejoice in the spring-tide of general reason and substantial improvement which is rising and swelling all over the country; and though, in the Southern provinces, where there are no manufactures to employ the redundant population, the unsatisfactory state of the land question must, for some time to come, be a bar to agricultural progress, it cannot now be justly charged upon England that she governs less by the love of the many than by the power of the few, or that she sacrifices the interests of a noble and warm-hearted people to the caprices of power or the supremacy of an intolerant faction.

The prompt and complete success of the vigorous measures taken by the Government in the course of this autumn to expose and crush the Fenian association, has earned for Lord Wodehouse the respect and gratitude of all the educated classes in Ireland, and of the clergy of all denominations. Perhaps it is the first time that measures of repression taken by the Government have been heartily supported by the Irish nation. We hope this will be the last of these obsolete and abortive attempts at revolution, and that the ardent and patriotic youth of Ireland will learn that they have nothing to gain from secret societies or foreign intrigues, but that the future welfare of their country depends on a steady adherence to a liberal policy in obedience to the laws of the United Kingdom.

ART. IX.-An Excursion in the Peloponnesus in the Year 1858. By the late Right Hon. Sir THOMAS WYSE, K.C.B., H.M.'s Minister Plenipotentiary at Athens from 1849 to 1862. Edited by his niece, WINIFREDE M. WYSE. With numerous illustrations. 2 vols. imp. 8vo. London: 1865.

THERE

HERE are few portions of Southern Europe that have been more thoroughly explored, and more carefully described, than Greece. Not to speak of the valuable labours of Sir W. Gell, Dodwell, and other earlier travellers, the elaborate works of the late Colonel Leake are in themselves a perfect storehouse of information. As one of the most able of those who have trodden in his footsteps remarks, All are but 'gleaners after him. . . . His truthfulness, his sagacity, his diligence, and his learning, are above all praise. The skill and sagacity with which he identified the sites of ancient cities, and seized at once the characteristic features of each peculiar locality, with a kind of intuitive perception, remind one of the coup d'œil of an able general, and were probably derived by him in part from early military training; but it is rarely indeed that such a power is combined with learning at once accurate and extensive, and with a calmness of judgment at least as rare in antiquarian pursuits as in others of a more exciting character. When we add to the writers already named the scientific labours of the French commission, and the elaborate survey of the Morea, made by them during the period of their occupation, with a view to the preparation of their great map of the country, as well as the works of a whole host of German savans, who, since the establishment of King Otho on the Hellenic throne, have investigated every corner of the country with their usual diligence-it may suffice here to mention the names of Ross, of Ulrichs, of Forchhammer and Curtius- most persons would naturally have supposed that there remained little for a fresh traveller to glean or to tell.

Yet these volumes prove that there was still ample scope for a very interesting book. The ancient sites had been indeed so carefully sought out, and for the most part so clearly identified, and the existing remains so fully and minutely described, that the mere passing visitor could scarcely hope to add anything to our antiquarian or topographical knowledge. But the surpassing interest of these researches in a land teeming at every step with ancient relics and ancient associations, had in most instances so absorbed the attention of travellers that they almost forgot to record their impressions

of the country and the people as they now are. They have done all in their power to assist the scholar in picturing to himself what Greece was like; but they have contributed comparatively little to answer the question that may naturally be asked-What is Greece like? More than thirty years have passed since she has been established as an independent monarchy, and restored to a place in the European community. Political changes and political troubles have from time to time drawn the attention of the European world to her political condition; but very little is known by the world at large either of the people or the country that have so lately changed one foreign sovereign for another.

Much of this ignorance we believe to be owing to the want of any popular books of travels in the country. Greece has not yet passed into the domain of the mere tourist; while it has ceased to have the attractions which a land comparatively unknown and undescribed possesses for the more adventurous traveller. It is, indeed, remarkable how very small a number of the books of travels that at the present day issue in shoals from the presses of our leading publishers has been devoted to the Greek kingdom. Colonel Mure's Tour in Greece,' the nearest approach to a popular book of travels that we remember, was published five and twenty years ago; and, notwithstanding its title, it is a work addressed rather to the scholar than to the general reader. The same may be said still more strongly of the more recent and equally scholar-like volume of Mr. Clark on the Peloponnesus. * Mr. Senior's book contains some valuable information, picked up during a short residence at Athens; but of the country itself he saw nothing. Miss Bremer's two volumes present some light and pleasant sketches of Athens and the islands; but her excursions in the other provinces of Greece were limited; her notes of them are slight and sketchy; and so little was she acquainted with what had previously been done in the same field, that she assures her readers that great part of Arcadia is still a terra 'incognita to scientific tourists;' but that the traveller who has the courage to venture his life in its unfrequented paths

* Peloponnesus: Notes of Study and Travel. By W. G. Clark, M.A. 8vo. London: 1858.

† A Journal kept in Turkey and Greece in 1857-58. By Nassau W. Senior. cr. 8vo. London: 1859.

Greece and the Greeks: the Narrative of a Winter Residence and Summer Travel in Greece and its Islands. By Fredrika Bremer. Translated by Mary Howitt. 2 vols. 8vo. London: 1863.

'will find in two places temples still standing, which in beauty are inferior only to the Parthenon-the temple of Phigaleia, on the frontiers of Messenia, and that of Apollo-Esculapius at the foot of the mountain, Paleo-Castro!" It is unnecessary to inform our readers that the two temples are in fact one and the same no other than the far-famed temple of ApolloEpicurius at Bassæ, near Phigaleia, the ruins of which were thoroughly explored and minutely described by Count Stackelberg and Mr. Cockerell as far back as 1812, whilst the sculptures from its frieze have long been in the British Museum! When an accomplished authoress, who has spent a whole winter at Athens, can display such ignorance as this, we cannot wonder that little is known of Greece by the bulk of readers at home.

It was, therefore, with the greatest satisfaction that we heard the announcement of a new book of travels in Greece from the pen of the late Sir Thomas Wyse, who so long and so ably discharged the duties of British representative at the court of Athens. It would be impossible to find any one better qualified to supply the deficiency which we have pointed out. To a keen interest in the arts, the literature, and the history of ancient Greece, and a warm sympathy with all that claims the attention of the scholar and the antiquarian, he united exactly those advantages in which the foreign traveller must generally be deficient. His long residence in the country had given him not only a complete familiarity with the language, but with the character and habits of thought of the modern Greeks. His official position gave him access to all available sources of information, while the warm interest that he took in the real progress of the people, and the enlightened zeal with which he sought to promote their true interests, opened to him the hearts of Greeks of all classes. Rarely, indeed, has a minister at a foreign court identified himself in an equal degree with the sympathies and aspirations of a nation, yet without ceasing to regard them from an independent and impartial point of view. And the sincere and general demonstration of regret of all ranks on occasion of his premature death, showed that they were neither unobservant of his efforts nor ungrateful for them. It was not that he was blind to their faults-very far from it. The volumes before us abound with proofs that he was fully alive to the defects and the shortcomings both of the people and of the government. But at the same time he was always disposed to do justice to their good qualities and their good endeavours, and to make allowances for the effect of evil habits rendered inveterate by a long period of servitude.