Modern Greece by Thomas de Quincey — Read

'Journal of a Tour in Greece and the Ionian Islands. ' By WILLIAM MURE, / of Caldwell. / [1842.]

What are the nuisances, special to Greece, which repel tourists from that country? They are three; -- robbers, fleas, and dogs. It is remarkable that all are, in one sense, respectable nuisances -- they are ancient, and of classical descent. The monuments still existing from pre-Christian ages, in memory of honest travellers assassinated by brigands of klephts, (Kleptai,) show that the old respectable calling of freebooters by sea and land, which Thucydides, in a well-known passage, describes as so reputable an investment for capital during the times preceding his own, and, as to northern Greece, even during his own, had never entirely languished, as with us it has done, for two generations, on the heaths of Bagshot, Hounslow, or Finchley. Well situated as these grounds were for doing business, lying at such convenient distances from the metropolis, and studying the convenience of all parties, (since, if a man were destined to lose a burden on his road, surely it was pleasing to his feelings that he had not been suffered to act as porter over ninety or a hundred miles, in the service of one who would neither pay him nor thank him); yet, finally, what through banks, and what through policemen, the concern has dwindled to nothing.