These musicians began with a symphony on the full band--mandolins leading, drums doing bass, and the whole lot of ugly fellows screeching forth what might have been esteemed air or accompaniment, as the case might be. That a sorry musical effect was produced will surprise no one who considers the build of the most musical of their instruments. The mandolin is by way of being a guitar, or banjo--only in a very small way indeed. Nothing has been added to the idea since first Mercury stumbled on the original _testudo_--indeed, I should guess that the dried sinews of a tortoise would give out a far purer sound than the jingling wires with which the mandolin is mounted. I have sometimes stood at the door of a _cafe_, or, to give it the real name [Greek: kapheneion], and listened in wonder to the strains of some minstrel holding forth within. The wonder was, not that the man should play egregiously ill, but that the effect of good music should be produced by his evil playing. The people were evidently excited to sorrow when the attempt was at a mournful strain, and to ardour when the lilt took a loftier flight. To me who stood by, the difference of intention on the part of the performer was hardly discernible; indeed to be recognised only by the occasional catching of some familiar word in the burden of the song. The same observation may apply to the current Greek poetry. There can be no mistake in the conclusion, that it produces the effect of real poetry on the people, urging them in the direction whither works the imagination of the poet. But men of taste have come to, and can come to, but one decision on the judgment of Romaic poetasters. The spirit of poetry has died out of, and is become extinct from the genius of their tongue. It is but the enthusiasm of by-gone days, the inkling of Attic glory, that lingers about the circumstances of their modern productions, and cheats men with the mere similarity of idiom. Poetry is of universal application, and were the pretensions of the modern Greek genuine, his productions would touch the hearts of the poetic of other lands.