“Smyrna,” says a celebrated French writer, “the queen of the cities of Anatolia, and extolled by the ancients under the title of ‘the lovely, the crown of Ionia, the ornament of Asia,’ braves the reiterated efforts of conflagrations and earthquakes. Ten times destroyed, she has ten times risen from her ruins with new splendour. According to a very common Grecian system, the principal buildings were erected on the face of a hill fronting the sea. The hill supplied marble, while its slope afforded a place for the seats rising gradually above each other in the stadium, or the great theatre for the exhibition of games. Almost every trace of the ancient city, however, has been obliterated during the contests between the Greek empire and the Ottomans, and afterwards by the ravages of Timour, in 1402. The foundation of the stadium remains; but the area is sown with grain. There are only a few vestiges of the theatre; and the castle, which crowns the hill, is chiefly patchwork, executed by John Comnenus on the ruins of the old one, the walls of which, of immense strength and thickness, may still be discovered.” This city was visited a short time since by the celebrated French poet and traveller Lamartine. He has thus spoken of its environs:—“The view from the top of the hill over the gulf and city is beautiful. On descending the hill to the margin of the river, which I like to believe is the Meles, we were delighted with the situation of the bridge of the caravans, very near one of the gates of the town. The river is limpid, slumbering under a peaceful arch of sycamores and cypresses; we seated ourselves on its bank. If this stream heard the first notes of Homer, I love to hear its gentle murmurings amidst the roots of the palm-trees; I raise its waters to my lips. Oh! might that man appear from the Western world, who should weave its history, its dreams, and its heaven, into an epic! Such a poem is the sepulchre of times gone by, to which posterity comes to venerate traditions, and eternalise by its worship the great actions and sublime thoughts of human nature. Its author engraves his name on the pedestal of the statue which he erects to man, and he lives in all the ideas with which he enriches the world of imagination.” According to the same author, Smyrna in no respect resembles an Eastern town; it is a large and elegant factory, where the European consuls and merchants lead the life of Paris and London. Though frequently and severely visited by the plague, it contains one hundred and twenty thousand inhabitants; and may be considered as the great emporium of the Levant[240]. NO. XXXII.—SPALATRO.