6.
To rive what Goth, and Turk, and Time hath spared.
At this moment (January 3, 1810), besides what has been already deposited in London, an Hydriot vessel is in the Pyræus to receive every portable relic. Thus, as I heard a young Greek observe, in common with many of his countrymen—for, lost as they are, they yet feel on this occasion—thus may Lord Elgin boast of having ruined Athens. An Italian painter of the first eminence, named Lusieri,[1] is the agent of devastation; and like the Greek finder[2] of Verres in Sicily, who followed the same profession, he has proved the able instrument of plunder. Between this artist and the French Consul Fauvel,[3] who wishes to rescue the remains for his own government, there is now a violent dispute concerning a car employed in their conveyance, the wheel of which—I wish they were both broken upon it!—has been locked up by the Consul, and Lusieri has laid his complaint before the Waywode. Lord Elgin has been extremely happy in his choice of Signer Lusieri. During a residence of ten years in Athens, he never had the curiosity to proceed
- ↑ ["Don Battista Lusieri, better known as Don Tita," was born at Naples. He followed Sir William Hamilton "to Constantinople, in 1799, whence he removed to Athens." "It may be said of Lusieri, as of Claude Lorraine, 'If he be not the poet, he is the historian of nature.'"—Travels, etc., by E. D. Clarke, 1810-1823, Part II. sect. ii. p. 469, note. See, too, Poetical Works, 1898, i. 455.]
- ↑ ["Mirandum in modum (canes venaticos diceres) ita odorabantur omnia et pervestigabant, ut, ubi quidque esset, aliqua ratione invenirent" (Cicero, In Verrem, Act. II. lib. iv. 13). Verres had two finders: Tlepolemus a worker in wax, and Hiero a painter. (See Introduction to The Curse of Minerva: Poems, 1898, i. 455.)]
- ↑ [M. Fauvel was born in Burgundy, circ. 1754. In 1787 he was attached to the suite of the Count Choiseul-Gouffier, French Ambassador at Constantinople, and is said to have prepared designs and illustrations for his patron's Voyage Pittoresque de la Grèce, vol. i. 1787, vol. ii. 1809. He settled at Athens, and was made vice-consul by the French Government. In his old age, after more than forty years' service at Athens, he removed finally to Smyrna, where he was appointed consul-general.—Biographie des Contemporains (Rabbe), 1834, art. "(N.) Fauvel."]
