The Greeks.
We thank a Correspondent forpointing out tO us all elo- quent passage in a former number Qf the Q.arte; Iy ReBiew,. tvhieh places ini a very stronglight one great peculiarity of the Greek character, ancient and modern-wvmean thir- entlhusiastic love of all that relates to the sea-a pecu- liarity wvhichl miust, to a certahi degree, be ascribed to the insular situation of the Gxrecian territories, baxt which no other islanders have exhibited with such intensity and magnitude, except the English: a point of resetnblance, which alone must create in thle minds of our countrymen a vivid interest in the efforts of their brother seamen. The article is, we believe, from the pen of the learned translator of Aristophanes:- (From the Qltarterly Review, No. 61.1 It is evident that the first two books of the Iliad are address 'd to a feeling which lhas predominated among the Greeks from the earliest periods don'n to the present mo- ment. In the first lines almost of that poem, which, thouggh private taste may sometimes give the preference to other cmpositions, the general judgment must pronounce to bethe most wonderfitl -effort of human intellect, the Greeks appear to us more in the character of sailors than of soldiers. It is alonF the sea-shlore that the Grecian army is drawn up; and it is by the sea-side, and in the solemn act of purifieation by its waters, that the first movements of' that army take place. It is by the side of the far-sountl- ing sea that Clhryses walks in the sadness of his heart, and ad,(resses to Apollo that prayer which brings down the ven- geance of Heaven. It is along the unfruitful sea that the royal heraldsproceeed toexecute that message whichoccasions the reader so much anxiety and suspense; anti it is from the bosom of the ocean's indeftnite space, that Trhetis rises like a mist, to sooth or dispel those sorrows wlhich the sufflrer's own position suggests were not to be removed by the feebler abstractions of mare land. To Grectian ears, the catalogue of shils whieh crowds the secondl hoolk of the Iliad would have been agreeable had it been twvice its length. What the sea was to the old Greeks generally, it became to Athens in after-times more particularly; and she hadl some of the swne reasons for her predilection. She was the freebooter of the olden time, though carrying on her piracy in a more civilized manner. It was the element, besicdes, which ljust suited her character. Calm or convulsed, in sanshine or in storm, it was the mirror in whieh she saw her variable character exhibited, and where she tasted those fierce ex- tremes in which she so much delighted. On the sea she felt her own buoyancy of spirit; on the sea she nursed her spirit of commercial cnterprise; on the sea she combated, with most success, her noblest foe of ancient days; and the sea may yet find her an hour of vengeance, over that more ignoble foe of modern days, who, aftcr five centuries of insult and op- pression, remnains still to her victim as the conqueror of yesterday." TI?E GREEkS.