March 3rd, 1880.

To her Mother.

Mrs. Coupland’s introductions have been most useful.... Dr. Milschaefer came himself to give us a lesson in modern Greek, and brought such an interesting young Greek to teach us the pronunciation. It is very interesting to see how the young national life is flowing instinctively in the old grooves. The great thing they have progressed in, since their independence, has been education. Their University is evidently becoming remarkable, and people are coming from Asia Minor and Turkey to study. Their girls’ schools and boys’ schools are evidently what they feel they are succeeding in. They regret, however, that everyone tries to be a lawyer or something of that kind; and that agriculture and manufacture are neglected. Evidently agriculture has a great future here. The country is much less fertile than in olden times, partly from the bad systems of cultivation, partly, I should guess, from the neglect of trees. They excuse themselves by saying that the ancient Greeks had slaves; but one feels free men ought to work as well as slaves! and one can see they know they ought to do better. One great want is population. They can and do live by the rudest systems of culture. I daresay the utter insecurity of country life, which for years (I suppose ages) has prevailed, will have prevented anyone seeing to, or caring for, farming. The Greeks look as if they had much more stamina than the Italians. I fancy their sea life has kept it up; and perhaps their mountain fastnesses, and the fiercer oppression have really been better for them than the enervated life of Italian cities under Austrian, or despotic, cultivated home rule, where the richer and nobler classes must have had the ease of civilisation without the responsibility or duty of self-government. But this is all theory to account for the greater energy one sees. Certainly the Greeks seem to me to have dealt really well with brigandage, in contrast with the Italians. After that dreadful affair in 1870,[[93]] the House of Deputies enacted a law for four years, punishing the relations of those who were with the brigands, and the villages near which it occurred, which law the English minister here tells us, really extirpated it in a few months, so that the English consuls were able officially to report that, except on the borders and in Thessaly, it no longer existed. Brigandage broke out some time ago in Acarnania, and they instantly re-enacted the law, and it disappeared. It seems to me wise and right in cases where, as here, the crime could only exist by reason of the collusion of the surrounding people. And it must be much kinder than dallying on, as the Italians keep doing in Sicily, first sending and then withdrawing troops. Mr. Corbett was so kind. Gen. Gardiner got me a letter of introduction thro’ Mr. Eric Barrington, who is Secretary to Lord Salisbury; the letter was evidently a very kind one. Mr. Corbett called at once, and gave us full and kind assurances and directions as to our movements. The border land is evidently, as every one has said thro’out, quite unsafe; but everywhere else confidence has been quite restored for some years. We have the very best advice, and shall strictly follow it, so you need not have any fear. By the way, do you know those four poor gentlemen were given a large escort, and they insisted on galloping on, and leaving them two miles behind!! So Mr. Corbett told us. It really makes a great difference as to the blame attached to the Greek authorities.

BRIGANDAGE IN GREECE

We went up Mt. Pentelicus on Monday. The day was not fine, it was wet and cold, and we had no view from the top; but I did enjoy it so very much. The colours of all the wild landscape near were so exquisite ... I never saw such lights, even in Italy. (Here follows an account of flowers found, and the difficulty of identifying them without botany books.) I never shall forget the sunset light coming back last night, as we saw it on Pentelicus, Parnes and Hymettus, and on the Acropolis of Athens. There was the grey-green foreground of stone and dead thyme; the red ground here and there ploughed up, the grey-green olive, or full dark pine, set far and far between; then there were the blue shadowed sides and bases of the mountains and their snow-covered tops, now in blue shadow, now in rose-coloured light, and then all the sun-lighted sides of the mountains were rose and gold; and the blue-green sea, turned in places into one silver sheet of ripple, broke on the shores with sweet musical voice. It was like a dream of perfect beauty.... Mrs. Corbett turns out to be a cousin of Lady Ducie’s, and writes most warmly about seeing me.

About difficulties in the school.

Athens,

March, 1880.

Octavia to Miranda.

Something has set the girls out of tune. I know how trying it is, and how the sense of it shuts one up, and makes it impossible to be oneself, or to trust to them. But I believe, if one could remember at such times what depths of better things there are in every human heart, and how they only need to be believed in and appealed to (especially in these young things), to spring up and grow and thrive, one would more quickly get past these trying times. There is usually either some stupid misconception, or false standard of what is desirable, confusing the young mind, some phantom, which seems good to it, and is not good; or else some real evil, which the child herself knows to be evil, and against which she—the better self—will side with you the teacher, if you can but assume that she is ready to do so. One may beat about the bush for any length of time, by dealing with manifestations of wrong; but if one can get near people, and get their spirits into harmony with God’s will and purpose, and make them feel that one only wants that done, one strikes at the root of the evil, and loses at once the sense of jar, because it is lost in the sense of harmony with the good in people.