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believe, in the things described, but in their relations to the describer and his hearers. Plutarch tells us that, in his time, the framers of geographical charts proved their ignorance of portions of the countries which they undertook to delineate, by the sort of vague compensation which they offered for them. In the unexplored outskirts of their maps they placed sandy deserts destitute of water, peopled with beasts and monsters,-what Swift calls "elephants instead of towns:"-in other parts, of which they also knew nothing, they laid down insuperable bogs, Scythian snows, or a frozen ocean. Their comparative knowledge, however, of the more central districts, was proved by well-marked coasts, distinct headlands, capes, and rivers, cities and villages, specified with minute accuracy. Such a chart the Odyssey of Homer seems to us to be; and the same inference may be drawn from the different manner in which its central and extreme regions are treated. The Cyclops and Lotophagi are its bogs and deserts, but the meridian, to which all the other lines in it are referred, passes through ITHACA.

It seems highly probable that the Poet has sketched his own character in that of the minstrel Phemius; and that one of his objects was to recover, for the house of Ulysses, the political influence which it appears to have lost by the destruction of the suitors, and to regain for it the royal prerogative and precedence among the rival families of the island.

But what is to be said of the reputed PALACE and CITY of Ulysses? We leave BATHY, the modern capital, for a walk thither. We pass along the barren and rocky shore, by patches of corn, groups of olives, and under hills topped with windmills, and, after a walk of more than three miles, arrive at the foot of the mountain on which the ruins stand. It is called AETO, and is the narrow central isthmus which connects the northern with the southern half of the island. As we climb the rough and rugged paths, and follow the line of these huge unshapen walls, which stretch down from the summit of the hill, we might imagine them to belong rather to a city whose walls have been stratified by nature, than to a work fashioned and elaborated by the hand of man. With these gigantic masses before us, indicative of great physical force simultaneously applied, we feel it easier to pronounce an opinion as to what age they can not, than to what age they can, be attributed. That they do not belong to that of the Odyssey seems clear. They could not have been produced in the state of society portrayed in that poem. The Ulysses of Homer, it is true, is a prince of some power and name, but he is

also represented by the Poet as a mechanic, who shows his ingenuity in the construction of his own bed, and builds his chamber with his princely hands; his good father, Laertes, is found in his orchard, among his olives and peartrees, with a pruning-knife in his hand, and wearing thick gloves to defend himself from the briars and thorns. Although the existence of a public assembly, convoked for national purposes, may be thought to evince some concert among the inhabitants of Ithaca for general purposes, yet the personal influence of those Princes could not be great who were thus left by their subjects to perform menial duties for themselves. Of the public itself executing any national work for its own good, we remember no example in the whole poem. The Fountain of the village (for such the capital of Ulysses seems to have been,) required the successive exertions of three heroes, Ithacus, Neritus, and Polyctor, for its construction. The walls of the city are never once mentioned, though we hear a good deal about the wooden palisades which protected the stalls of Eumæus. Throughout the Odyssey we look in

vain for a hewn stone in the whole of Ithaca.

Half an hour's very laborious ascent brings us to the top of this rocky

THE REMAINS OF THE HOUSE OF ULYSSES?

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hill, which is, as we have mentioned, called AETO, or the EAGLE, because from this point, as a centre, the two wings of the island appear extended from north to south like those of an eagle, somewhat in the same manner as the appearance of the spread pinions of that bird gave the same name, among the ancient Greeks, to the tympanum or pediment of a temple. Here, on the narrow level of the summit, is the Acropolis of the city. The peculiarity of its form, and the loftiness of its situation, seem to have been the causes which procured for it the title of the palace of Ulysses,-a title which it has retained longer, from the well-merited celebrity of the English geographer who first conferred it. We consult the plan founded on his observations of this so-called palace, and endeavour to compare it with the original. On the

bed of these ruins, by a sort of Procrustean topography, the Odyssean palace as described in Homer has been stretched and fitted. Here, in this ruined bulwark, is a curved projection: the plan converts it into an heroic tholus. We pass by a fragment of wall, and we find, to our great surprise, that we

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THE HOMERIC CAVE OF THE NYMPHS.

have intruded into the Gynaceum of Penelope; the apartment to the right is the hyperoum; an orsothuré, or secret door, conveys us from the vestibule to the street, where we come directly upon the corn-mills of Ulysses!

There is a reflection which suggests itself to every one who contrasts the two opposite theories of the geography of Ithaca which we have noticed above, that the one has produced the other. The traveller who discovers everything, leads all the world to suspect that he has, in reality, found nothing. And by such a process as this, the modern Ithaca, from being proposed as too accurate a resemblance of the Ithaca of the Odyssey, has ceased, in the minds of some, to be any resemblance at all.

But a distinction must be drawn between the identification of existing remains with monuments of a perishable character, and that of those which are more permanent in a word, between the identification of works of art, and that of those of nature. We hope therefore that we may be pardoned for having seen what there seems little doubt was the Homeric GROTTO OF THE NYMPHS. In this cave, thanks to the permanence of Nature,—we believe the Author of the Odyssey to have been. A mountain, a valley, a harbour, or a lake, may exist anywhere, and can hardly furnish any characteristic by which one country may be discriminated from another; but a grotto such as this to which we refer is so remarkable and unique an object, that if Ithaca were set afloat like a second Delos in the sea, or exposed to be tossed upon the ocean like the Perseus of Danae, with such a cognizance as this about its neck, the description of the Grotto of the Nymphs, as it exists in the Odyssey, would be the best advertisement to secure its being discovered and brought again to its own home.

Of the cave itself, after Homer's description of it, there remains little to be said. It is situated on Mount SAINT STEPHEN, and is called the cave of Troupus. Its only entrance is at the north-west. At the southern extremity there is a natural ledge descending into the cave, but more practicable for Nymphs than for Men. The northern entrance is narrow, and admits but little day: the interior, and particularly the vault of the subterranean crypt, is lighted up by delicate gleams of a bluish hue, and though of a paler tinge, yet not unlike that blue sky of stone which hangs over the Grotta d' Azzurro in the island of Capreæ. The vault itself is hung with stalactites, some of which expand into what Homer calls webs of stone, where the Nymphs might be supposed to have woven their threads whose colour was like the sea.

We are tempted by the name of a village on the north-west coast of the island to pay it a visit. It is called POLIS. Opposite to it is the islet of DASCAGLIO. This is the only rock in the channel of CEPHALLONIA, and ought therefore to be the ASTERIS, where the Suitors lay in ambush for Telemachus on his return from Pylos to Ithaca. That Dascaglio contains no harbours, which Homer attributes to Asteris, seems no valid objection to this supposition; for, every one knows what Homer's vessels were,-that anchors were no part of their equipment, and that harbours, therefore, were simply places to disembark in. Besides, the name of Asteris sufficiently proves that the Homeric island was a mere starlike rock, which Dascaglio is; and lastly, we would observe here, what is applicable to the poem in general, that it is not the part of sound criticism to fetter the imagination of the poet with rigid material restrictions. The Odyssey is to be regarded as an ideal structure, erected upon geographical and historical foundations. If, now, Dascaglio be Asteris, the Homeric city should be near, and cannot be to the south of it. Was it therefore at Polis? Thus much may be said in its favour: the ruins on the woody hill rising to the north of Polis are of much ruder and more ancient style, though considerably less in extent than those of Aeto. The stones are rough and unhewn, and not closely fitted to each other. The principal remains are on the western side of the summit, and are piled on a very steep rock.

A harbour generally supposes the existence of ancient remains in its neighbourhood. Hence, on our arrival at the port of SANTA EUPHEMIA, on the eastern coast of Cephallonia, we are not surprised to hear that there