SEPTEMBER 28, 1861.]


FT-T.


 GREECE,-ITS HUMOUROUS HISTORY.
 BY M'ASSA HOYLE.
 Illustrated wivli Sketches taken on the Spot.
 CHAPTER THE SECOND.
 IT was not to be expected that such a tempting place as Greece was
 cbe "let alone;" the inviting courts of Peloponnesus attracted many
strangers, especially Phoenicians, who looked upon it as a sort of
Rosherville-" a place to spend a happy day;" but who unfortunately
contrived to miss the boat, and stop altogether. DANAUS, with his fifty
daughters, not having a Times newspaper wherein to pour the com-
plaints of his paternal bosom under the sympathy awakening titleof "An
Egyptian Father," and being turned out of his country, was naturally
not only anxious to settle his little family, but also to settle himself.
After looking about for a convenient spot whereon to fix his home, he
came to the conclusion that Greece was an excellent site for a father, and
settled his own and his half a hundred pretty daughters upon the plain
of Argos. The male portion of the inhabitants naturally received them
with open arms. DANAUS gave his name to the warlike Danai, and the
young ladies (the eldest of whom, by the way, can't have been a chicken)
put the native females up to the mysteries of Demeter, and may thus be
said to have first ventilated the vexata qucestio of woman's rites. Be


it understood that the mysteries of De-meter have nothing to do with
secrets of gas. The first Egyptian colony in Attica is said to have
been led by CeCROi's, who is supposed by some to have introduced the
ceremony of marriage ; but both tleso assertions have been frequently
described as fictions, and, as the account of PETlES'S foundation of
another colony has been proved to have sprung from an Attic Ifblo, it
can only be credited by fanatics, and must be looked upon as a third
story. But all these stories must have had some foundation, and as
the inhabitants became for the first time elevated and educated by the
incursions of strangers, we may rest assured that Greece derived much
of its improved taste from foreign sources. The Greeks have always
exhibited so great a tendency to lying, that it is absurd to look upon
them as an upright race, and were so much in the labit of following
their own bent, that they cannot certainly be considered a straight-
forward people. We are consequently oblted to receive all their
early traditions cuin grano salis, or rather, not obliged to receive
them at all, and we shall content ourselves and our readers by taking
a flying leap through the early burly of Grecian history, and by
describing those better authenticated and more widely-known events
of a more advanced period. In order to devote ourselves thoroughly
to this task, we have taken a two-pair back in Greek-street; we eat
of no vegetables but Greek roots, go to no theatre but the Grecian,"
devoting our days exclusively to a-Greek-ciltural pursuits.


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 AllLVAL OF THE WIVES' BOAT AT GREECE. DANAUS DELIVEI1S IlS FIFTY-ONE TICKETS.


 EAR! EAR! long enough) as poor little EMMA ALLEN lins been, we mnakc no doubt
 that their highly respectable parents would have considered the inflic-
 THAT particularly wooden bench, the bench of magistrates at tion of any punishment severer than a mild reprimand to be a gross
Hemel Hempstead, must feel itself exceedingly cut up,-in fact, little piece of presumption and impertinence. As the prisoner in thiH
better than a collection of sticks,-at the manner in which its mag- instance, however, was i c te, tlo magistrates sentenced
unanimous behaviour in the matter of EMirMA ALLEN has been criticized is t e prisonment, and only a br two or the mars.
nan nn emf her to imprisonment, and only for two or three ears.
and condemned. Its conduct has raised a great amount of indignation, __ ______
and brought down an enormous number of stamps. The fine has
been paid out; would we could add that its stony-hearted inflictors A BRL:TE.-Our cynical friend SNOCDMlAss, whose antipathy to
had been similarly treated. Very few among that Solonic set but learned ladies is only to be equalled by his admiration for ignorant,
have in early days delighted in the stolen sweets of the purloined ones, declares that the preference which strong-minded women show
pear or the abstracted apple ; and as for ears of corn, had they, in for blue stockings arises entirely from the fhct of their requiring less
their infantine wanderings, been caught by the ears (they must be washing than white ones.

 VOL. I.


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