. Hobhouse's loss embellished
description of this scene;--"The court at Tepellene, which was
enclosed on two sides by the palace, and on the other two sides by a
high wall, presented us, at our first entrance, with a sight something
like what we might have, perhaps, beheld some hundred years ago in the
castle-yard of a great feudal lord. Soldiers, with their arms piled
against the wall near them, were assembled in different parts of the
square: some of them pacing slowly backwards and forwards, and others
sitting on the ground in groups. Several horses, completely
caparisoned, were leading about, whilst others were neighing under the
hands of the grooms. In the part farthest from the dwelling,
preparations were making for the feast of the night; and several kids
and sheep were being dressed by cooks who were themselves half armed.
Every thing wore a most martial look, though not exactly in the style
of the head-quarters of a Christian general; for many of the soldiers
were in the most common dress, without shoes, and having more wildness
in their air and manner than the Albanians we had before seen."

On comparing this description, which is itself sufficiently striking,
with those which Lord Byron has given of the same scene, both in the
letter to his mother, and in the second Canto of Childe Harold, we
gain some insight into the process by which imagination elevates,
without falsifying, reality, and facts become brightened and refined
into poetry. Ascending from the representation drawn faithfully on the
spot by the traveller, to the more fanciful arrangement of the same
materials in the letter of the poet, we at length, by one step more,
arrive at that consummate, idealised picture, the result of both
memory and invention combined, which in the following splendid stanzas
is presented to us:--

Amidst no common pomp the despot sate,
While busy preparations shook the court,
Slaves, eunuchs, soldiers, guests, and santons wait;
Within, a palace, and without, a fort:
Here men of every clime appear to make resort.

"Richly caparison'd, a ready row
Of armed horse, and many a warlike store,
Circled the wide-extending court below;
Above, strange groups adorn'd the corridore;
And oft-times through the area's echoing door
Some high-capp'd Tartar spurr'd his steed away:
The Turk, the Greek, the Albanian, and the Moor,
Here mingled in their many-hued