"Eothen, or, Traces of Travel Brought Home from the East"
{11} St. Nicholas is the great patron of Greek sailors. A small picture of him enclosed in a glass case is hung up like a barometer at one end of the cabin. {12} Hanmer. {13} ". . . ubi templum illi, centumque Sabaeo Thure calent arae, sertisque recentibus halant." - Aeneid, i, 415. {14} The writer advises that none should attempt to read the following account of the late Lady Hester Stanhope except those who may already chance to feel an interest in the personage to whom it relates. The chapter (which has been written and printed for the reasons mentioned in the preface) is chiefly filled with the detailed conversation, or rather discourse, of a highly eccentric gentlewoman. {15} Historically "fainting"; the death did not occur until long afterwards. {16} I am told that in youth she was exceedingly sallow. {17} This was my impression at the time of writing the above passage, an impression created by the popular and uncontradicted accounts of the matter, as well as by the tenor of Lady Hester's conversation. I have now some reason to think that I was deceived, and that her sway in the desert was much more limited than I had supposed.