Page:Eothen, or, Traces of travel brought home from the East by Kinglake, Alexander William.djvu/61

 she addressed, however, had not gone to Greece with any intention of placing himself under the laws of Lycurgus, and was not to be diverted from his views by a Spartan rebuke, so he took care to find himself windows after his own heart, and there, I believe, for many a month, he kept the Saints' days, and all the days intervening, after the fashion of Grecian women.

Oh! let me be charitable to all who write, and to all who lecture, and to all who preach, since even I, a lay-man not forced to write at all, can hardly avoid chiming in with some tuneful cant! I have had the heart to talk about the pernicious effects of the Greek holidays, to which I owe some of my most beautiful visions! I will let the words stand, as an humbling proof that I am subject to that immutable law which compels a man with a pen in his hand to be uttering every now and then some sentiment not his own. It seems as though the power of expressing regrets and desires by written symbols were coupled with a condition that the writer should from time to time express the regrets and desires of other people—as though, like a French peasant under the old regime, one were bound to perform a certain amount of work upon the public highways. I rebel as stoutly as I can against this horrible corvee—I try not to deceive you—I try to set down the thoughts which are fresh within me, and not to pretend any wishes, or griefs, which I do not really feel, but no sooner do I cease from watchfulness in this regard, than my right hand is, as it were, seized by some false demon, and even now, you see, I have been forced to put down such words and sentences as I ought to have written if really and truly I had wished to disturb the Saints' days of the beautiful Smyrniotes!

Which, Heaven forbid! for as you move through the narrow streets of the city, at these times of festival, the transom-shaped windows suspended over your head, on either side, are filled with the beautiful descendants of the old Ionian race; all (even yonder Empress that sits throned at the window of that humblest mud cottage) are attired with seeming magnificence; their classic heads are crowned with scarlet, and loaded with jewels,