One day I went to the waiwode on business. We had a long talk consisting mainly of questions about England, in which he displayed his ignorance to great advantage. After inquiring after his great friend Elfi Bey [? Lord Elgin], he asked what on earth we came here for, so far and at so much trouble, if not for money. Did it give us a preference in obtaining public situations, or were we paid? It was useless to assure him that we considered it part of education to travel, and that Athens was a very ancient place and much revered by us. He only thought the more that our object must be one we wished to conceal. I told him of the fuss made in London over the Persian ambassador, and that if he went all the world would wonder at him. At this he got very excited, and said he wished he had a good carico of oil which he could take to England, thereby paying his journey, and that once he was there he would make everyone pay to see him. All that he knew about England was that there were beautiful gardens there, especially one named Marcellias (Marseilles)! The man's one idea was money, and he kept on repeating that he was very poor. No wonder Greece is miserable under such rulers. Veli Pasha, Governor of the Morea, passed through Athens a short time ago in a palankin of gold, while the country is in misery. The Greeks, cringeing blackguards as they are, have often a sort of pride of their own. One of our servants, who received a piastre a day (1s.), has just left us. His amorosa, who lived close by, saw him carrying water and performing other menial offices and chaffed him, so he said he could stand it no longer and threw up a place the like of which he will not find again in Athens. I went into the council of the Greek primates. There I saw the French proclamation on the birth of the Roi des Romains: 'The Immortal son of Buonaparte is born! Rejoice, ye people, our wishes are accomplished!' The primates, however, soberly objected that none but God was [Greek: athanatos]. What took me there was to back an Englishman who had got into a quarrel with a neighbour, a Greek widow, about 'ancient lights' which were blocked by a new building he was putting up. The woman maintained her cause with much spirit and choice expressions: 'You rascal, who came to Athens with your mouth full of dung! I'll send you out without a shoe to your foot.' Our man retorted 'putana,' equally irrelevantly, and the affair ended in his favour. One morning by agreement we rose at daybreak and walked to Eleusis, intending to dig, but we found the labourers very idle and insolent; and after a few days, discovering no trace of the temple, we gave it up. The better sort of Greeks have some respect for the superior knowledge of Franks as evinced in my drawings; one man, a papa or priest, asked me whether I thought the ancients, whom they revere, can have been Franks or Romaics.