the house, or sits by the hearth, or mounts the staircase. Over the doors hang the boughs of figs and pear-trees, which seem to have grown wild. Once, it is said, there were three hundred houses in this village; and there are still more than a hundred cisterns lying close together in the rocky soil. One hut upon the spot still lodges a few goatherds. The former inhabitants of Suli have in their misfortunes one consolation; their courage and their fate have raised them in the eyes of the world from bandits into heroes, and have given to their country an interest and a name equal to that of an ancient republic of Greece.

E take leave, for the present, of the continent, and pass from the coast of Epirus to the ISLANDS of the IONIAN

Sea. We commence with the principal and most northern

of them, that of KORFOU, the ancient CORCYRA.

The modern town of Korfou, which lies in the centre of the eastern coast of the island, is, in its appearance, neither Greek nor Italian, but partakes

262

ANCIENT AND MODERN CORCYRA.

of both characters. On entering its low gateway, from the interior of the island, we are reminded a little of the ancient dwellings of Pompeii by the uniform smallness of the houses, and the narrowness and regularity of the streets. It may be called a geographical mosaic, to which many countries of Europe have contributed a stone and a colour. Thus the streets are Italian, at least in their style and names: the arcades by which they are flanked, might have come from Padua, or Bologna; the winged lion of St.

Mark is seen marching, in stone, along the Venetian walls of its fortress; beneath them you find rusty pieces of cannon stamped with the words Liberté and Egalité, which carry you back to the time when the island was held under French rule; and if you walk to the other end of the Strada Reale, you will there hear, in the market, more than one Ionian vendor debating with an Irish or English soldier, how much he is to receive for his wares in