h him during the remainder of his stay in the East. After a
residence of near a fortnight at Patras, he next directed his course
to Vostizza,--on approaching which town the snowy peak of Parnassus,
towering on the other side of the Gulf, first broke on his eyes; and
in two days after, among the sacred hollows of Delphi, the stanzas,
with which that vision had inspired him, were written.[132]

It was at this time, that, in riding along the sides of Parnassus, he
saw an unusually large flight of eagles in the air,--a phenomenon
which seems to have affected his imagination with a sort of poetical
superstition, as he, more than once, recurs to the circumstance in his
journals. Thus, "Going to the fountain of Delphi (Castri) in 1809, I
saw a flight of twelve eagles (H. says they were vultures--at least in
conversation), and I seised the omen. On the day before I composed the
lines to Parnassus (in Childe Harold), and, on beholding the birds,
had a hope that Apollo had accepted my homage. I have at least had the
name and fame of a poet during the poetical part of life (from twenty
to thirty);--whether it will _last_ is another matter."

He has also, in reference to this journey from Patras, related a
little anecdote of his own sportsmanship, which, by all _but_
sportsmen, will be thought creditable to his humanity. "The last bird
I ever fired at was an eaglet, on the shore of the Gulf of Lepanto,
near Vostizza. It was only wounded, and I tried to save it,--the eye
was so bright. But it pined, and died in a few days; and I never did
since, and never will, attempt the death of another bird."

To a traveller in Greece, there are few things more remarkable than
the diminutive extent of those countries, which have filled such a
wide space in fame. "A man might very easily," says Mr. Hobhouse, "at
a moderate pace ride from Livadia to Thebes and back again between
breakfast and dinner; and the tour of all Boeotia might certainly be
made in two days without baggage." Having visited, within a very short
space of time, the fountains of Memory and Oblivion at Livadia, and
the haunts of the Ismenian Apollo at Thebes, the travellers at length
turned towards Athens, the city of their dreams, and, after crossing
Mount Cithaeron, arrived in sight of the ruins of Phyle, on the evening
of Christmas-day, 1809.

Though the poet has left, in his own verses, an ever-during testimony
of the enthusiasm with which he now contemplated the scenes ar