The Human Race Part 12

"A little further on, the most motley groups attracted and retained my notice. Here were Mussulmans, Bosniaks, Pandours guarding the market, their att.i.tudes and costumes carrying me right away to the East, and recalling very old recollections. One of them wore a white turban, which displayed a ma.s.s of plaited hair falling down his neck; he stood erect, his hand supporting the b.u.t.t end of his gun, which rested on his shoulder. A tapestried mantle, adorned with long flocks of wool, which is peculiar to the frontiers of the two countries, was thrown over his shoulders. At his side was another Bosniak, who leant against a wall, clad in a long cloak of red wool; his feet were shod with sandals of tanned leather. Here a rich landowner of the neighbourhood, whose name I really forget, was causing his servants to remove the cattle he had not succeeded in selling: there peasants were remounting their horses, whose gay and picturesque harness I much admired."

[Ill.u.s.tration: 62.--WOMEN OF PESTH.]

Figures 59 and 60 represent, according to M. Perrot, a Bosniak peasant man and woman, and figure 61, a Bosniak merchant.

The Magyars are the natives of Hungary. The chief population of this country is composed of a people who came from Asia under the name of Magyars, and who were, it would seem, a tribe of the Huns. Hungary is believed to have been populated by some of the savage companions of Attila, the terrible king of the Huns, known as the "Scourge of G.o.d."

[Ill.u.s.tration: 63.--HUNGARIANS.]

The Magyars are distinct from other people in their language and costumes.

They are of medium height, with black hair. Their character is warlike, and their state of civilization is superior to that of the other branches of the Slavonian family.

In his "Causeries Geographiques," (from Paris to Bucharest,) M. Duruy has imparted to us his impressions on a journey to Pesth in 1861. The population appeared to him superb.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 64.--A HUNGARIAN GENTLEMAN.]

The women were remarkable through their brightness and decided attractions. In dress, they do not differ much from the men. A chemise gathered in at the neck, with full sleeves richly embroidered, and slightly tightened at the wrists, which are covered with lace ruffles; a jacket body, either red, black, or green, embroidered at the back with fringes and silver b.u.t.tons, sets off a slender and supple form. A light, very ample, but often rather short petticoat; a silken or velvet scarf thrown over one shoulder a la hussarde; the national high brimmed hat surmounted by a plume of feathers as head-dress; well turned feet and ankles, in embroidered shoes, or sometimes in little spurred boots of red morocco, form the Hungarian costume, represented in figs. 63, 64 and 65.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 65.--HUNGARIANS.]

The markets which are held on the quays, have also peculiar features.

You see there, says M. Duruy, groups which call to mind the savage hordes of Attila. M. Duruy almost believed he saw one of the companions of the "Scourge of G.o.d." This was apparently a kind of peasant, flat-nosed, round-eyed, with large projecting cheekbones, and hanging mustachios. He was dark, and dressed in a vest of sheepskin, and breeches of coa.r.s.e cloth, supported at the waist by a scarf falling over his heavily-shod and spurred boots. A large hat, with the edges turned up, covered his head, and beneath it hung two long plaits of hair. The Magyar language is energetic, full of similes, and filled with guttural aspirations which seem derived from the Arabic, while certain soft and caressing intonations remind us of the Italian idiom. National feeling is brisk in the towns and throughout the country. In the latter, it is kept alive by Bohemian songs, and by stories told by the heads of families during the long winter evenings.

About the other races composing the Slavonian family, namely, the Croats, the Tchecks, the Lithuanians, and the Poles, we have nothing particular to remark.

In general, what we have said at the commencement of this chapter, applies to them with but little modification.

THE GREEK FAMILY.

The Greek family comprises the Greeks and the Albanians. These races derive their origin from the ancient tribes known under the name of Pelasgians. The ancient Greeks founded many colonies on the sh.o.r.es of the Mediterranean.

In the fourth century before Christ, led by Alexander, they subdued part of Asia, and carried their victorious arms into Egypt. But these conquests were ephemeral. The Greek empire was in its turn subjugated by other races, of whom the princ.i.p.al were the Romans, the Slavonians, and the Scythians.

In the present day the Greeks compose but a scanty population, concentrated in the Morea, or scattered in the neighbouring districts.

The majority of the people of this race who inhabit the Asiatic continent have adopted even the language of their neighbours, and are merely reputed Greeks because they profess the Greek form of the Christian religion.

The ancient Greeks, civilized by intercourse with Egyptian colonists, already afforded an example of advanced culture, at a time when the other European and Asiatic nations were still immersed in barbarism.

In spite of the misfortunes of a social decay destined to terminate in many centuries of subjection, the Greeks have preserved up to our own day the physical characteristics of their ancestors. Everyone knows that the most beautiful development of the brow, the finest shape of the human head, is that we find traced in the sculpture of ancient Greece.

It had been supposed that the magnificent heads with the n.o.ble outlines, admired in the statues of the Greeks, were not the exact reproduction of nature, and that some features had been exaggerated in the direction of ideal beauty. But, in our own day, the skulls of ancient Greeks have been found whose proportions and whose general outlines demonstrate, that, among the artists of ancient Greece, sculpture did not surpa.s.s nature, but restricted its inspiration to types who actually lived.

The Apollo Belvidere can therefore be considered as a model, but slightly idealized by art, of the general physiognomy of the ancient Greeks. In his "Travels in the Morea," M. Pouqueville gives a description of the physiognomy of the present Greeks, which enables us to judge of the surprising persistence of the most beautiful types, even in the midst of a social condition so deeply modified.

"The inhabitants of the Morea," says M. Pouqueville, "are generally tall and well made. Their eyes are full of fire, their mouth is admirably well formed and full of the most beautiful teeth. The women of Sparta are fair, slender, and dignified in carriage. The women of Taygetus have the gait of Pallas ... . The Messenian girl is conspicuous for her plumpness; she has regular features, large eyes, and long black hair; the damsel of Arcadia, hidden under her coa.r.s.e woollen garments, scarcely allows the regularity of her figure to be perceived ... ."

Here, besides, are the characteristics displayed in their sculpture, and which, according to what we have said, may really be considered those of the Greek type.

A high forehead, rather a wide distance between the eyes, with the slightest possible depression at the top of the nose; this last straight or slightly aquiline; large eyes, opening widely and surmounted by a scarcely arched eyebrow; a short upper lip, a small or medium sized mouth delicately cut; and a prominent and well rounded chin.

Fig. 66 represents the Greeks of Athens; fig. 67 a Greek family and the interior of a house at Athens.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 66.--GREEKS OF ATHENS.]

To give an idea of modern Greek manners and types, we will borrow a few lines from an interesting work by M. Prout, "Journey to Athens,"

published in "Le Tour du Monde" in 1862. Let us first listen to this traveller speaking to us of the inhabitants of Greece:--

"If Fallmeseyer is to be believed, there are no more Greeks in Greece, only Slavonians; it is beyond doubt that the inhabitants of Thrace and of Macedonia cannot boast so immaculate an origin as the mountaineers of Olympus or of Magnus; but it is equally certain that from Cape Malea to the Black Sea, and from Smyrna to Corfu, there are ten million individuals who speak Greek, mixed up with a population speaking Slavonic, and that in the plains of Athens, we easily distinguish the Albanian with the narrow temples and the prominent nose, from the Greek with the wide forehead and the high cheek-bones, although their dress is exactly the same. To converse for an hour with the latter is sufficient to satisfy all doubt as to the authenticity of his origin.

"His qualities of mind have remained the same as in the days of Homer: he has still the same apt.i.tude for thorough and rapid comprehension, the same facility of graceful and metaphorical expression. These qualities give to the Greeks so great a superiority over the other races of the East, that they are liked by none of them. The Turks reproach them with being suspicious and dissimulating, because they have opposed craft to force; the Levantines accuse them of dishonesty in commercial transactions, because they themselves have taken lessons of them, and have often surpa.s.sed their instructors.

"There is no greater bond of sympathy between them and the other nations on the sh.o.r.es of the Mediterranean. Serious and deliberate in disposition, the tone of their mind is foreign alike to raillery and to the rapidity of dramatic intensity. Their grief pursues a peaceful and elegiac course; it is with them a latent sorrow, and not a sharp crisis leading to the ecstasies of madness. Whilst Cupid's weapons, in Naples or in Venice for instance, inflict terrible wounds, the arrows of the Athenian G.o.d neither keep his victims from repose nor from the pursuit of business. The Greeks have preserved their tragic intonation, and are the true children of that wild Orestes who died at more than eighty years of age from the effects of an accident. In their minds, action always takes its course with deliberation and gravity, not without a certain amount of colouring, but never widely straying from reality; interrogating and holding council with itself, and taking time for reflection before making its decision.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 67.--A GREEK HOUSEHOLD.]

"It is astonishing to meet with these a.n.a.lytical and foreseeing tendencies, even among the most ignorant. Above all nations they best understand the art of listening, and whilst saying a great deal are the smallest talkers in the world.

"Everybody is familiar with the Greek dress: the short pelisse, the skirt, which goes by the name of fystan, the small fez with its tufted ta.s.sel falling on the nape of the neck of the wearer, and the embroidered gaiter fitting tight to the leg. The sailors, instead of the fystan, wear a very wide pair of trousers, and stockings instead of gaiters. In winter the talagani, a long close-fitting cloak of lambskin, is added to the rest of the dress. The Greeks, generally speaking, tall slender men of regular features, wear this national costume in a very dashing manner. Young Greece carries its dandyism a little to extremes by over pinching its waist, and exaggerating the width of its skirts.

During the winter of 1858 it was the fashion to wear the entire beard. I trust that this fancy, which gave them the appearance of sappers in petticoats, has disappeared; the finely trimmed mustachios, revealing the lips, are better suited to their delicately chiselled features as well as to their refined and fanciful style of dress. But alas! Athens every day sees the pure gold of its ancient costume bartered for the dross of modern broadcloth fresh from the shelves of the tailor's shop.

Athens now boasts seventy tailors and fifty shoemakers who make in the French style, whilst only six of the former, and three of the latter still work in the spirit of their national traditions. There are sixty-two shops for the sale of female attire, but only three or four ladies are to be seen still faithful to their national dress (I except the maids of honour to the Queen, who wear it by order), and even in their case one half has disappeared. The corsage cut down upon the neck and the taktikios (cap) of Smyrna still remain; but the long narrow skirt has allowed itself to become swollen by the insinuating arts of conspiring crinoline. The style of dress in the islands is more commonplace, but the great quant.i.ty of garments worn one over the other remind one of the childish simplicity of the outlines of our own peasant women. I much prefer, in spite of its stiffness, the long Albanian robe worn by the women of the interior.

"It is particularly at Agora that specimens of all the peasantry of the neighbourhood may be seen walking about in their picturesque costumes.

"This Agora is not the ancient Agora of Ceramica; it is a market-place, composed of worm-eaten sheds roofed in with ragged cloths, in which are exhibited produce of all sorts, from the bursting figs of Asia Minor to the patent preparations of Parisian perfumers.

"On each side of this market-place stands a spectre of antiquity, the tower of the Winds, or clepsydrum of Andronicus, an octagonal monument engraved with pa.s.sably mediocre figures, and the portico of Minerva Archigetis. Archaeologists after noticing the first, hasten across the s.p.a.cious vestibule to visit the second, but those, who are indifferent alike to the criticisms of Martius and of Leake, prefer to pause on the threshold of the market, particularly in the early morning when the peasantry,

'Seated in their chariots of Homeric pattern, Like the ancient Isis on the ba.s.so-relievos of Egina,'

pour in from the highways from Thebes and Marathon. I have said that the men were distinguished for regular symmetry of countenance; but the peasant women are simply ugly. Of middle height, robust, and sunburnt, they have no feminine attributes, in the meaning we give to the word. In commercial circles and among the Phanariots, who come princ.i.p.ally from Asia, where the race has remained pure, there are, on the contrary, many really beautiful women to be seen. Oriental languor gives them a charm unknown in our country; but they walk badly, and are wanting in that elegance of style which French women possess in such a high degree.

"They are rarely to be seen walking out, they seldom leave their houses where they busy themselves with domestic occupations, and employ their leisure in reading romances, princ.i.p.ally translated from the French.

"Although cla.s.s distinctions are gradually disappearing, there are still in Athens two distinct sets of society; the Phanariot, and the Greek, properly so called; the first already quite Europeanized, the second on the high road to become so. The Phanariot ladies are well educated and speak French admirably. The others, whose information is extremely limited, have an instinctive good sense and a tact never at fault, by no means one of the least subjects of surprise to foreigners.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 68.--INTERIOR OF THE AGORA AT ATHENS.]

"... I have heard it said that the price of the honesty of an English trader was a hundred pounds sterling, and that that of his Greek brother was less. Both are absurd statements. It is impossible to draw a hard and fast line in such matters; opportunity makes the thief. Strangers are everywhere the natural prey of the sharper, but not more so at Athens than in any other part of the world. The only difference is that in that city they are more easily taken in, on account of the complication of the currency, this complication being another instance of Bavarian error. Rothschild made an offer to the council of regency to effect a loan payable in coin similar to that struck at the French mint.

The council decided that it was more ingenious, and above all more archaic, to shut their eyes to all known standards, and to reintroduce the drachma with its ancient weight. These badly executed coins were exported in ingots, and hopeless calculations about the smallest transaction are the result; calculations in which the Austrian coins, ugly and disagreeable to the touch, play the princ.i.p.al part, to be finally parted with, with a sense of relief, to the trader, to whatever nation he may happen to belong.

"To have done with the subject of Greek probity, which has been so much called into question; in the country the inhabitants are avaricious because they are poor, but they are honest. Travellers who jump to a conclusion from their experience of inn-keepers, porters, cabmen, &c., come to a wrong decision. These cla.s.ses are everywhere the same. In Athens alone a remarkable self-possession, with a dignified manner, is found, instead of the familiar impudence of Italian facchini, or the deceitful suavity of German attendants. It is worthy of remark that one is never a.s.sailed in the streets with the importunity of beggars. These are few in number, for with the Greeks it is a sacred family duty to a.s.sist its impoverished members, and the few that do beg, shrink from publicity. The streets of Athens have a peculiar physiognomy. The stranger notices there neither the noisy disturbance of the highways of Naples, nor the methodical activity of those of London. They are rather to be compared with those of some of the provincial towns of France, where the leisured citizens stroll about, and retail to one another the gossip of the hour, remaining apparently permanent fixtures of the pavement. Athens has, on the whole, the appearance of a city where time dies hard; the male population encamp themselves during the day in the sunshine of the streets; the shopkeepers while away the hours, one foot within, and the other without their doorsill; and their customers intermingle the tedious arithmetic of barter with familiar conversation, or b.u.t.tonhole the pa.s.ser to gossip about the mutual acquaintance that has just pa.s.sed. Alexander's establishment, amongst others, is one of the princ.i.p.al head-quarters of news.

"Linger for an hour in front of the cafe of _Beautiful Greece_, where Hermes Street and Eolus Street intersect one another, you will see the whole Athenian world pa.s.s before you; the nearest lounger will tell you their names. Here comes the politician who is still in the market, there goes the statesman who has already obtained his price. That is Canaris, whose reputation is European, although his person is so puny: there are Chriesis, Metaxas, Mavrocordato, Rangabe, Miaouli, the celebrities of yesterday and to-day. This man, treading as gingerly as if he stepped upon eggs, and throwing uneasy glances around him, is a Chiotian. As he pa.s.ses, your cicerone scowls, for the Chiotians are not exactly beloved.

Popular tradition declares that the Island of Scios was formerly settled by Jews, but this is erroneous, although the Chiotians have a Jewish appearance, and, like the children of Israel, are very successful in banking and commerce. Commercial apt.i.tude has always been, in ancient times as well as to-day, the basis of the national character of the Chiotian. 'Two reasons,' says M. Lacroix, 'explain this tendency. The position of Scios, situated in the midst of the sea, between Europe and Asia, upon the great maritime highway of ancient commerce, naturally disposed its inhabitants to become traders; while the nature of their island, whose stony soil is little suited to agriculture, rendered such a means of livelihood in part a necessity to them.'

"As the trader of Scios can be recognised by his appearance, so the Ionian islander can be distinguished by his speech. The torrent of his eloquence is heard towering above the voices of every group. I have a great admiration for the Ionians. I do not say that human perfection is to be found in these numerous islands, but wonderful natural qualities, in unison with the healthy civilization bequeathed to them by the Italian republics, are to be seen there. It is but the other day that the ingenious combination of Mr. Gladstone gave Europe an idea of the dignity of their character, the extent of their patriotism, and the wisdom of their mind. To this Greek good sense they add the fire of the Italian. Active, intelligent, good hearted and honest in their dealings, they attract at once the sympathies of all.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 69.--FeTE OF THE TEMPLE OF JUPITER, ATHENS.]