Oft have I dream’d of thee! whose glorious name
   Who knows not, knows not man’s divinest lore;
   And now I view thee, ’tis, alas! with shame
   That I in feeblest accents must adore.
   When I recount thy worshippers of yore
   I tremble, and can only bend the knee;
   Nor raise my voice, nor vainly dare to soar,
   But gaze beneath thy cloudy canopy
   In silent joy, to think at last I look on thee.

CHAPTER XVI

Table of Contents

Vostizza—Battle of Lepanto—Parnassus—Livadia—Cave at Trophonius—The Fountains of Oblivion and Memory—Chæronéa—Thebes—Athens

Vostizza was then a considerable town, containing between three and four thousand inhabitants, chiefly Greeks.  It stands on a rising ground on the Peloponnesian side of the Gulf of Corinth.  I say stands, but I know not if it has survived the war.  The scenery around it will always make it delightful, while the associations connected with the Achaian League, and the important events which have happened in the vicinity, will ever render the site interesting.  The battle of Lepanto, in which Cervantes lost his hand, was fought within sight of it.

What a strange thing is glory!  Three hundred years ago all Christendom rang with the battle of Lepanto, and yet it is already probable that it will only be interesting to posterity as an incident in the life of one of the private soldiers engaged in it.  This is certainly no very mournful reflection to one who is of opinion that there is no permanent fame, but that which is obtained by adding to the comforts and pleasures of mankind.  Military transactions, after their immediate effects cease to be felt, are little productive of such a result.  Not that I value military virtues the less by being of this opinion; on the contrary, I am the more convinced of their excellence.  Burke has unguardedly said, ‘that vice loses half its malignity by losing its grossness’; but public virtue ceases to be useful when it sickens at the calamities of necessary war.  The moment that nations become confident of security, they give way to corruption.  The evils and dangers of war seem as requisite for the preservation of public morals as the laws themselves; at least it is the melancholy moral of history, that when nations resolve to be peaceful with respect to their neighbours, they begin to be vicious with respect to themselves.  But to return to the travellers.

On the 14th of December they hired a boat with fourteen men and ten oars, and sailed to Salona; thence they proceeded to Crisso, and rode on to Delphi, ascending the mountain on horseback, by a steep, craggy path towards the north-east.  After scaling the side of Parnassus for about an hour, they saw vast masses of rock, and fragments of stone, piled in a perilous manner above them, with niches and sepulchres, and relics, and remains on all sides.