“The stathmos of the good Eumaeus appears to have been little different, either in use or construction, from the stagni and kalybea of the present day.  The poet expressly mentions that other herdsmen drove their flocks into the city at sunset,—­a custom which still prevails throughout Greece during the winter, and that was the season in which Ulysses visited Eumaeus.  Yet Homer accounts for this deviation from the prevailing custom, by observing that he had retired from the city to avoid the suitors of Penelope.  These trifling occurrences afford a strong presumption that the Ithaca of Homer was something more than the creature of his own fancy, as some have supposed it; for though the grand outline of a fable may be easily imagined, yet the consistent adaptation of minute incidents to a long and elaborate falsehood is a task of the most arduous and complicated nature.”

After this long extract, by which we have endeavoured to do justice to Mr. Gell’s argument, we cannot allow room for any farther quotations of such extent; and we must offer a brief and imperfect analysis of the remainder of the work.

In the third chapter, the traveller arrives at the capital, and in the fourth, he describes it in an agreeable manner.  We select his account of the mode of celebrating a Christian festival in the Greek church:—­

“We were present at the celebration of the feast of the Ascension, when the citizens appeared in their gayest dresses, and saluted each other in the streets with demonstrations of pleasure.  As we sate at breakfast in the house of Zignor Zavo, we were suddenly roused by the discharge of a gun, succeeded by a tremendous crash of pottery, which fell on the tiles, steps, and pavements, in every direction.  The bells of the numerous churches commenced a most discordant jingle; colours were hoisted on every mast in the port, and a general shout of joy announced some great event.  Our host informed us that the feast of the Ascension was annually commemorated in this manner at Bathi, the populace exclaiming [Greek:  anese o Chrisos, alethinos o Theos,] Christ is risen, the true God.”

In another passage, he continues this account as follows:—­“In the evening of the festival, the inhabitants danced before their houses; and at one we saw the figure which is said to have been first used by the youths and virgins of Delos, at the happy return of Theseus from the expedition of the Cretan Labyrinth.  It has now lost much of that intricacy which was supposed to allude to the windings of the habitation of the Minotaur,” &c. &c.  This is rather too much for even the inflexible gravity of our censorial muscles.  When the author talks, with all the reality (if we may use the expression) of a Lempriere, on the stories of the fabulous ages, we cannot refrain from indulging a momentary smile; nor can we seriously accompany him in the learned architectural detail by which he endeavours to give us, from the Odyssey,