der and the blue and white agnus castus. Vegetables, such as cauliflower, beans, peas, artichokes, salads, and many others, succeed one another throughout the season. Summer, on the contrary, presents a bleak and parched landscape, but an abundance of all kinds of southern fruits in their full perfection. The joyous period-the most pleasant in Greece, as in America-is the fall, the season of the vintage, o trigos, in the month of September, though the grapes begin to ripen so early as July. The general gathering of the olives begins in November and continues to February, every second year. The grapes for the wine-press are, in Greece, kept low on the ground, like in Sicily, but those reserved for the table the Greeks draw on poles along the front of the houses, or across the streets, where they form beautiful and shady bowers. The late Turkish war has destroyed all the splendid vine-bowers, klimatezia, on the Baazars of Athens; but on the islands of Naxos, Paros and Santorini, the inhabitants still pass from one street to another beneath their shady and fragrant canopy. A single cluster of these immense grapes often weigh seven okhas, or fourteen pounds, which is quite a sufficient desert for the numerous guests at a dinner party. The vineyards in Attica are not separated by fences; they cover the whole plain, as a continual garden, and each owner knows his own lot by piles of stones and other marks. During the vintage season a watch, phylax, is placed on a high poplar, overlooking the fields. Among its branches he fastens some mats, forming an awning against the sun; there he is seen sitting all day long with his long Albanian rifle resting in his arm and smoking his pipe. During the night his fierce wolf-dogs scour the vine-gardens, and woe to the imprudent wanderer or grape-thief who then approaches the forbidden fruits. An English sea captain, who, in 1839, visited Athens, and late at night, perhaps in a somewhat frolicksome mood, after a good dinner with the British Consul, John Green, crossed from the high-road into the vineyards, was torn to pieces, and so entirely devoured by the dogs, that only his scull, some knawed bones and his blue coat with brass buttons was found the next day, to the amazement of Court and Capital. When the watch in the day time leaves his aerial mansion and goes to the Baazar in search of his provisions, he erally places his dogs in the mat, and we have often beheld the curious sight of a wild, shaggy shepherd's dog, barking, snarling and furiously springing about in the top of a lofty plane tree, without any possibility of getting down. gen During the month of July the heat of Athens rises to 100, 105, and even sometimes to 112 degrees of Fahrenheit, in the shade; but the atmosphere is then refreshed morning and evening by the delicious sea breeze, embatis, which from the Saronic gulf, breathes softly over the plain. In winter the thermometer generally stands between 58 and 48 degrees; when it happens, however, that it descends to 40 degrees, or even lower, then the Greeks, enveloped in their shaggy capotes, disappear from the streets and public places and bemoaning the horribly cold winter-o tromeros chemon-shut themselves up in their dwellings unfit to undertake anything. In Athens and the principle cities on the coast, the foreigners have now begun to introduce iron stoves, sobas, and other comforts of European life; but their use is not universal; the Greeks content themselves with their small earthen brasier, called payyatı, filled with live coals. In Constantinople and in the houses of some families at Athens, who still adhere to the old oriental manners, this fire-pot is replaced by a large brazen vase, tandauri, standing in the middle of the room or beneath a table which is covered with a large table cloth, hanging down on all sides. The family, young and old, then sit around on low taborets and place their feet beneath the tablecloth, while the person who may be more suffering will raise the cloth over his shoulders and thus warm all his body. These precautions are needless on the islands, and we have spent several winters on Elgeria, Zante and in Symrna, with open windows and without ever kindling a fire in our study. The immense snow-crowned and precipitous mountains of Greece impart a grandeur to the scenery, which we look for in vain in Italy, where the outlines are more level and less striking, but on the other hand, the atmosphere is in Italy more impregnated with light vapors, the exhalations of which, beneath the warm and genial sun, diffuse a glorious coloring of mellow tints, which the elastic transparency of the dry air on the Grecian table-lands cannot produce. This is particularly the feature in the scenery of the higher mountain regions of Arcadia, Phocis and Epirus. But on the plains of Athens and Sparta, on the lakes of Boeotia, and on the islands, these highly colored, warm, purple and violet hues are seen in all their intensity and splendor, as Lord Byron so truly says, in his description of the Corinthian gulf: Where the tints of the earth and the hues of the sky This transparency of the atmosphere in Greece, is really astonishing to every northern and even American traveller. All objects at a distance, mountains, towers, trees, high on the summits of the rocks, present themselves with such a clearness, and their outlines detach themselves, as it were, so distinctly from their background, that you would suppose them to be situ ated much nearer, than they are in reality. Often during our excursions on the hills of Attica and the Morea, we have remarked this curious phemomenon, and sometimes, weary with a long ride, and observing on the slope of an opposite mountain, the convent or village, where we intended to encamp for the night, we would have supposed it to be quite near at hand, from the perfect distinctness with which every object could be recognized-and yet, it would cost us many a toilsome hour's ride, before we, late at night, could reach our resting place. "The extreme parts of the earth" says the father of history, old Herodotus-"have, I do not know how-received the most benign gifts of nature. India possesses the most gorgeous birds, the largest quadrupeds and trees, which, instead of fruits produce the finest wool. Persia has the fleetest steeds; Arabia frankincense, myrrh, and precious spices; Ethiopia gigantic elephants and impervious forests-nay, even the remotest shores of Europe furnish tin and precious amber, and the uncouth Arimaspi, in the hoary north, have plenty of gold; but Hellas, kind nature has granted the brightest and most genial of climates, and man in his greatest perfection and beauty." The dry and temperate climate, and the almost constant serenity of the Attic sky have essentially contributed to preserve the elegant monuments of Hellas and the happy and lively disposition of her spirited inhabitants. They are a healthy, vigorous race, still retaining the full antique form alike perceptible in the regularity of their features, the animated expression of their countenance, and easy independence of their carriage. The men of the main land and the women of the islands, present the true type of classical beauty; it fades more rapidly among the females, while the hardy mountaineer often in his eightieth or nintieth year, still follows his wont occupations in the fields and the chase. Thus the venerable Notaras, of Corinth, in the 110th year of his age, presided at the opening of the National Assembly in 1843. Little children languish during the summer heat at Athens; many die, and all the more independent families generally retire to the Convents on Mount Hymettus during July and August. Fever, pyretos, is the most prevailing disease which is brought on by the exhalations of the marshes, or by want of precaution, exposure to the sun, or night air, or irregularity of diet. Consumption, rheumatism and pulmonary complaints are almost unheard of; many an invalid has recovered his health in the mild and delightful climate of Greece, and if thousands of Philhellenes and Bavarians have perished, they themselves were, by their intemperance, the cause of their death. Thus the chorus in Euripides, hails the ancient Athenians: "Ye god-like sons of Erechtheus, who in your sacred, never conquered native land, nurtured in the noblest science of wisdom and virtue, breathe the purest air, beneath the brightest skies, where the nine sisters, the gifted muses, leaving their chaste retreat on the Pierian mountain, have planted among you their golden seat of harmony and love!" Such was the land of fair Athens and the pleasant climate, which the Olympian gods had granted her. Such it is even to this day, and we may rejoice that the Muses, whom the revolutions and devastations of twenty centuries had frightened away to the west, have once returned to their beloved hills of Attica, where they again, under the mild government of a noble minded prince, king Otho, the Beloved, spread light, love and harmony among her lately so distracted and unhappy sons. Our next article will give an outline of the little known, but not uninteresting history of Athens, during the middle ages. A. L. K. Lancaster, Pa. ART. VI.-GOVERNMENT IN ITS RELATION TO EDUCATION. SOCIETY is not a community of individuals who have voluntarily united for the purposes of convenience or mutual advantage. An individual is not an independent being, who if he chooses to do so, may ignore his connection with his fellows, sever the ties that bind him and them mutually, and still be himself. He is an integral part of a great whole, upon which he depends in every period of life-he is a member of a family, in living connection with which alone can he find the conditions absolutely necessary to the felicitous and harmonious development of his whole nature. Men, accordingly, do not live together in a state of civilized society, because they feel convinced that such an arrangement is a matter of great convenience. All the tendencies of their inner being, determine them to be social long before they can at all reflect upon the comparative advantages of complete isolation and of society. It does, indeed, confer innumerable blessings, but it has also many ills and inconveniences, that har |