Memorials and Other Papers V1

all extremes. My eye had been couched into a secondary power of vision, by misery, by solitude, by sympathy with life in all its modes, by experience too early won, and by the sense of danger cr

risk of crossing at every step the existing law of libel, so full of snares and man-traps, to the careless equally with the conscientious writer. This is a consideration which some of my critics have lost sight of in a degree which surprises me. One, for example, puts it to his readers whether any house such as I describe as the abode of my money-lending friend could exist "in Oxford-street;" and, at the same time, he states, as circumstances drawn from my description, but, in fact, pure coinages of his own, certain romantic impossibilities, which, doubtless, could as little attach to a house in Oxford-street as they could to a house in any other quarter of London. Meantime, I had sufficiently indicated that, whatsoever street was concerned in that affair, Oxford-street was not; and it is remarkable enough, as illustrating this amiable reviewer's veracity, that no one street in London was absolutely excluded but one; and that one, Oxford-street. For I happened to me

f repute, and "gentle thieves," was not inexorable to the petitions of his victim: he would sometimes toss back what was required for some instant necessity of the road; and at his breakfast-table it was, after all, as elsewhere recorded, that I contrived to support life; barely, indeed, and most slenderly, but still with the final result of escaping absolute starvation. With that recollection before me, I could not allow my

ie their daily tasks. I make it no subject of complaint or scorn, therefore, but simply state it as a fact, that few or none of the Oxford undergraduates, with whom parity of standing threw me into collision at my first outset, knew anything at all of English literature. The Spectator seemed to me the only English book of a classical rank which they had read; and even this less for its inimitable delicacy, humor, and refined pleasantry in dealing with manners and characters, than for its insipid and meagre essays, ethical or critical. This was no fault of theirs: they had been sent to the book chiefly as a subject for Latin translations, or of other exercises; and, in such a view, the vague generalities of superficial morality were more useful and more manageable than sketches of manner or character, steeped in national peculiarities. To translate the terms of whig politics into classical Latin, would be as difficult as it might be for a whig himself to give a consistent account of those politics from the year 1688.

ead, less quoted, less thought of, than the elder and graver section of our literature. It is a great calamity for an author such as Pope, that, generally speaking, it requires so much experience of life to enjoy his peculiar felicities as must argue an age likely to have impaired the general capacity for enjoyment. For my part, I had myself a very slender acquaintance with this chapter of our literature; and what little I had was generally, at that period of my life, as, with m

its capital names and their chronological succession. Do I mention this in disparagement of Oxford? By no means. Among the undergraduates of higher standing, and occasionally, perhaps, of my own, I have since learned that many might have been found eminen

ng continually from the judgments of the world, yet never in any violent degree, ascribes to Mr. Wordsworth (in his England and the English, p. 308) "an influence of a more noble and purely intellectual character, than any writer of our age or nation has exercised." Such is the opinion held of this great poet in 1835; but what were those of 1805-15,-nay, of 1825? For twenty years after the date of that letter to Mr. Wordsworth above referred to, language was exhausted, ingenuity was put on the rack, in the search after images and expressions vile enough-insolent enough-to convey the unutterable contempt avowed for all that he had written, by the fashionable critics. One critic-who still, I believe, edits a rather popular journal, and who belongs to that class, feeble, fluttering, ingenious, who make it their highest ambition not to lead, but, with a slave's adulation, to obey and to follow all the caprices of the public mind-described Mr. Wordsworth as resembling, in the quality of his mind, an old nurse babbling in her paralytic dotage to sucking babies. If this insult was peculiarly felt by Mr. Wordsworth, it was on a consideration of the unusual imbecility of him who offered it, and not because in itself it was baser or more insolent than the

sor Wilson and myself, who, in 1802-3, attached themselves to a banner not yet raised and planted; who outran, in fact, their

e as to his deepest admirations; and, perhaps, at that day (1803-8) the occasions would be rare in which much dissimulation would be needed. Until Lord Byron had begun to pilfer from Wordsworth and to abuse him, allusions to Wordsworth were not frequent in conversation; and it was chiefly on occasion of some question arising about poetry in general, or about the

der that I might like all men, I wished to associate with none. Now, then, to have mentioned the Parmenides to one who, fifty thousand to one, was a perfect stranger to its whole drift and purpose, looked too méchant, too like a trick of malice, in an age when such reading was so very unusual. I felt that it would be taken for an express stratagem for stopping my tutor's mouth. All this passing rapidly through my mind, I replied, without hesitation, that I had been reading Paley. My tutor's rejoinder I have never forgotten: "Ah! an excellent author; excellent for his matter; only you must be on your guard as to his style; he is very vicious there." Such was the colloquy; we bowed, parted, and never more (I apprehend) exchanged one word. Now, trivial and trite as this comment on Paley may appear to the reader, it struck me forcibly that more falsehood, or more absolute falsehood, or more direct

, in any sense which can give weight and value to your admiration, presupposes, I presume, some acquaintance with its object. As the earliest title to an opinion, one way or other, of the Greek eloquence, we ought to have studied some of its most distinguished artists; or, say one, at least; and this one, we may be sure, will be, as it ought to be, Demosthenes. Now, it is a fact, that all the copies of Demosthenes sold within the last hundred years would not meet the demand of one considerable town, were that orator a subject of study amongst even classical scholars. I doubt whether, at this day, there exist twenty men in Europe who can be said to have even once read Demosthenes; and, therefore, it was that, when Mr. Mitford, in his "History of Greece," took a new view of this orator's political administration-a view which lowered his character for integrity-he found an unresisting ac

mented him with the title of the English Demosthenes. Upon this hint, Lord Brougham, in his address to the Glasgow students, has deluged the great Athenian with wordy admiration. There is an obvious prudence in lodging your praise upon an object from which you count upon a rebound to yourself. But here, as everywhere else, you look in vain for any marks or indications of a personal and direct acquaintance with the original orations. The praise is built rather upon the popular idea of Demosthenes, than upon the real Demosthenes. And not only so, but even upon style itself, and upon the art of composition in abstracto, Lord Brougham does not seem to have formed any clear conceptions-principles he has none. Now, it is useless to judge of an artist until you have some principles on the art. The two capital secrets in the art of prose composition are these: 1st, The philosophy of transition and connection, or the art by which one step in an evolution of thought is made to arise out of another: all fluent and effective composition depends on the connections; -2dly, The way in which sentences are made to modify each other; for, the most powerful effects in written eloquence arise out of this reverberation, as it were, from each other in a rapid succession of sentences; and, because some limitation is necessary to the length and complexity of sentences, in order to make this interdependency felt, hence it is that the Germans have no eloquence. The construction of German prose tends to such immoderate length of sentences, that no effect of intermodification can ever be apparent. Each sentence, stuffed with innumerable clauses of restriction, and other

h something more than life. Here is the other pole, the opposite extreme. And what is the choice of diction? What is the lexis? Is it Saxon exclusively, or is it Saxon by preference? So far from that, the Latinity is intense-not, indeed, in his construction, but in his choice of words; and so continually are these Latin words used, with a critical respect to their earliest (and, where that happens to have existed, to their unfigurative) meaning, that, upon this one argument I would rely for upsetting the else impregnable thesis of Dr. Farmer as to Shakspeare's learning. Nay, I will affirm that, out of this regard to the Latin acceptation of Latin words, may be absolutely explained the Shakspearian meaning of certain words, which has hitherto baffled all his critics. For instance, the word modern, of which Dr. Johnson professes himself unable to explain the rationale or principle regulating its Shakspearian use, though he felt its value, it is to be deduced thus: First of

we greet modern

in the Shakspearian sense, with relation to a real and serviceable friend, that which the fashion of a thing is, by comparison with its substance. But a still better illustration

saws and mod

tnote: I cannot for a moment believe that the original and most eloquent critic in Blackwood is himself the dupe of an argument, which he has alleged against this passage, under too open a hatred of Shakspeare, as though it involved a contradiction to common sense, by representing all human beings of such an age as school-boys, all of such another age as soldiers, of such another as magistrates, &c. Evidently the logic of the famous passage is this that whereas every age has its peculiar and appropriate temper, that profession or employment is selected for the exemplification which seems best fitted, in each case, to embody the characteristic or predomi

themselves:-All high abstractions end in ation; that is, they are Latin; and, just in proportion as the abstracting power extends and widens, do the circles of thought widen, and the horizon or boundary (contradicting its own Grecian name) melts into the infinite. On this account it was that Coleridge (Biographia Literaria) remarks on Wordsworth's philosophical poetry, that, in proportion as it goes into the profound of passion and of thought, do the words increase which are vulgarly called "dictionary words." Now, these words, these "dictionary" words, what are they? Simply words of Latin or Greek origin: no other words, no Saxon words, are ever called by illiterate person

s yet in those days of maiden innocence, when she had borne no daughter to Jove? Second, I will cite a case which, so far as I remember, has been noticed by no commentator; and, probably, because they have failed to understand it. The case occurs in the "Paradise Regained;" but where I do not at this moment remember. "Will they transact with God?" This is the passage; and a most flagrant instance it offers of pure Latinism. Transigere, in the language of the civil law, means to make a compromise; and the word transact is here used in that sense-a sense utterly unknown to the English language. This is the worst case in Milton; and I do not know that it has been ever noticed. Yet even here it may be doubted whether Milton is not defensible; asking if they proposed to terminate their difference with God after the fashion in use amongst courts of law, he points properly enough to these worldly settlements by the technical term which designated them. Thus, might a divine say: Will he arrest the judgments of God by a demurrer? Thus, again, Hamlet apostrophizes the lawyer's skull by the technical terms used in actions for assault, &c. Besides, what proper term is there in English for expressing a compromise? Edmund Burke, and other much older authors, express the idea by the word temperament; but that word, though a good one, was at one time considered an exotic term-equally a Gallicism and a Latinism.] but never, as could be easy to show, without a full justification in the result. Two things may be asserted of all his exotic idi

ver much out of his own proper jurisdiction and range of inquiry, commands an attention not conceded even to those who speak under the known privilege of professional knowledge. Thus, Cowper was not discovered to be a poet worthy of any general notice, until Charles Fox, a most slender critic, had vouchsafed to quote a few lines, and that, not so much with a view to the poetry, as to its party application. But now, returning to Demosthenes, I affirm that his case is the case of nearly all the classical writers,-at least, of al

e difficulties of the language, lost the main stimulus to its cultivation. Still, I read Greek daily; but any slight vanity which I might connect with a power so rarely attained, and which, under ordinary circumstances, so readily transmutes itself into a disproportionate admiration of the author, in me was absolutely swallowed up in the tremendous hold taken of my entire sensibilities at this time by our own literature. With what fury would I often exclaim: He who loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how shall he love God whom he hath not seen? You, Mr. A, L, M, O, you who care not for Milton, and value not the dark sublimities which rest ultimately (as we all feel) upon dread realities, how can you seriously thrill in sympathy with

reference to the will; and they called it virtue, and the antithesis they called vice. The lacheté or relaxed energy of the will, by which it yielded to the seductions of sensual pleasure, that was vice; and the braced-up tone by which it resisted these seductions was virtue. But the idea of holiness, and the antithetic idea of sin, as a violation of this awful and unimaginable sanctity, was so utterly undeveloped in the Pagan mind, that no word exists in classical Greek or classical Latin which approaches either pole of this synthesis; neither the idea of holiness, nor of its correlate, sin, could be so expressed in Latin as at once to satisfy Cicero and a scientific Christian. Again (but this was some years after), I found Schiller and Goethe applauding the better taste of the ancients, in symbolizing the idea of death by a beautiful youth, with a torch inverted, &c., as compared with the Christian types of a skeleton and hour-glasses, &c. And much surprised I was to hear Mr. Coleridge approving of this German sentiment. Yet, here again I felt the peculiar genius of Christianity was covertly at work moving upon a different road, and under opposite ideas, to a just result, in which the harsh and austere expression yet pointed to a dark reality, whilst the beautiful Greek adumbration was, in fact, a veil and a disguise. The corruptions and t

ed to credit for any discovery at all. The Schlegels, who were the hollowest of men, the windiest and wordiest (at least, Frederic was so), pointed to the distinction; barely indicated it; and that was already some service done, because a presumption arose that the antique and the modern literatures, having clearly some essential differences, might, perhaps, rest on fo

English language. It is a period (that is, a cluster of sentences) moderately well, but not too well constructed, as the German nurses are accustomed to say. Its felicity depends on a trick easily imitated-on a balance happily placed (namely, "in which the wisest of mankind would rejoice to find an answer to their doubts, and rest to their inquiries"). As a bravura, or tour de force, in the dazzling fence of rhetoric, it is surpassed by many hundreds of passages which might be produced from rhetoricians; or, to confine myself to Paley's contemporaries, it is very far surpassed by a particular passage in Burke's letter upon the Duke of Bedford's base attack upon him in the House of Lords; which passage I shall elsewhere produce, because I happen to know, on the authority of Burke's executors, that Burke himself

n concerned-of the point at issue. For, mark, in the very vestibule of ethics, two questions arise-two different and disconnected questions, A and B; and Paley has answered the wrong one. Thinking that he was answering A, and meaning to answer A, he has, in fact, answered B. One question arises thus: Justice is a virtue; temperance is a virtue; and so forth. Now, what is the common principle which ranks these several species under the same genus? What, in the language of logicians, is the common differential principle which determines these various aspects of moral obligation to a common genius? Another question, and a more interesting question to men in general, is this,-What is the motive to virtue? By what impulse, law, or motive, am I impelled to be virtuous rather than vicious? Whence is the motive derived which should impel me to one line of conduct in preference to the other? This, which is a practical question, and, therefore, more interesting than the other, which is a pure question of speculation, was that which Paley believed himself to be answering. And his answer was,-That utility, a perception of the resulting benefit, was the true determining motive. Meantime, it was objected that often the most obvious results from a virtuous action were far otherwise than beneficial. Upon which, Paley, in the long note referred to above, distinguished thus: That whereas actions have many results, some proximate, some remote, just as a stone thrown into the water produces many concentric circles, be it known that he, Dr. Paley, in what he says of utility, contemplates only the final result, the very outermost circle; inasmuch as he acknowledges a possibility that the first, second, third, including the penultimate circle, may all happen to clash with utilit

AGAN

bjects, with outlines imperfectly defined, began to converge the eye, and to strengthen the nascent interest of the spectator. It is true that light, in its final plenitude, is calculated to disperse all darkness. But this effect belongs to its consummation. In its earlier and struggling states, light does but reveal darkness. It makes the darkness palpable and "visible." Of which we may see a sensible illustration in a gloomy glass-house, wher

advanced, pari passu have the masses of darkness strengthened. Every question solved has been the parent of three new questions unmasked. And the power of breathing life into dry bones has but seemed to multiply the skeletons and lifeless remains; for the very n

the scrutiny of glasses more powerful, applied under more combined arrangements, and directed according to new principles more comprehensively framed. We cannot in sincerity affirm-always with immediate advantage. But even where the individual effort may have been a failure as regarded the immediate object, rarely, indeed, it has happened but that much indirect illumination has resulted-which, afterwards entering into combination with other scattered currents

aspect; and yet, after all, we profess ourselves to be dissatisfied. Amongst much that is sagacious, we feel and we resent with disgust a taint of falsehood diffused over these recent speculations from vulgar and even counterfeit incredulity; the one

ond both, the cruel amphitheatre, constituted, for the ancient world, a passionate enjoyment, that by many authors, and especially through one period of time, is described as going to the verge of frenzy. And we, in modern times, are far too little aware in what degree these great carnivals, together with another attraction of great cities, the pomps and festivals of the Pagan worship, broke the monotony of domestic life, which, for the old world, was even more oppressive than it is for us. In all principal cities, so as to be within the reach of almost all provincial inhabitants, there was a hippodrome, often uniting the functions of the circus and the amphitheatre; and there was a theatre. From all such pleasures the Christian was sternly excluded by his very profession of faith. From the festivals of the Pagan religion his exclusion was even more absolute; against them he was a sworn militant protester from the hour of his baptism. And when these modes of pleasurable relaxation had been subtracted from ancient life, what could remain? Even less, perhaps, than most readers have been led to consider. For th

lly, such were the fathers. Amongst the Greek fathers, one might be unusually learned, as Clement of Alexandria; and another might be reputed unusually eloquent, as Gregory Nazianzen, or Basil. Amongst the Latin fathers, one might be a man of admirable genius, as far beyond the poor, vaunted Rousseau in the impassioned grandeur of his thoughts, as he was in truth and purity of heart; we speak of St. Augustine (usually called St. Austin), and many might be distinguished by various literary merits. But could these advan

nd confound the unprincipled opponent, rather than such as would satisfy the mature Christian. If a man denied himself all specious arguments, and all artifices of dialectic subtlety, he must renounce the hopes of a present triumph; for the light of absolute truth on moral or on spiritual themes is too dazzling to be sustained by the diseased optics of those habituated to darkness. And hence we explain not only the many gross delusions of the fathers, their sophisms, their errors of fact and chronology, their attempts to build great truths upon fantastic etymologies, or upon popular conceits in science that have long since exploded, but also their occasional unchristian tempers. To contend with an unprincipled and malicious liar, such as Julian the Apostate, in its original sense the first deliberate miscreant, offered a dreadful snare to any man's charity. And he must be a furious bigot who will justify the rancorous lampoons of Gregory Nazianzen. Are we, then, angry on behalf of Julian? So far as he was interested, not for a moment would we have suspended the descending scourge. Cut him to the bone, we should have exclaimed at the time! Lay the knout into every "raw" that can be found! For we are of opinion that Julian's duplicity is not yet adequately understood. But what was right as regarded the claims of the criminal, was not right as regarded the duties of his opponent. Even

have treated his theme simply with a view to the investigation of the truth, as some recent inquirers have preferred doing; and, in that case, the fathers would have been noticed only as incidental occasions might bring forward their opinions-true or false. But to this author the errors of the fathers seemed capital; worthy, in fact, of forming his principal object; and, knowing their great authority in the Papal church, he anticipated, in the plan of attaching his own views to the false views of the fathers, an opening to a double patronage-that of the Protestants, in the first place, as interested in all doctrines seeming to be anti-papal; that of the sceptics, in the second place, as interested in the exposure of whatever had once commanded, but subsequently lost, the superstitious reverence of mankind. On this policy, he determined to treat the subject polemically. He fastened, therefore, upon the fathers with a deadly acharnement, that eviden

age at that time even more predominant than at present, did in effect employ all his advantages to propagate and popularize the views of Van Dale. Scepticism naturally courts the patronage of France; and in effect that same remark which a learned Belgian (Van Brouwer) has found frequent occasion to make upon single sections of Fontenelle's work, may be fairly extended into a representative account of the whole-"L'on trouve les m?mes arguments chez Fontenelle, mais dégagés des longueurs du savant Van Dale, et exprimés avec plus d'élégance." This rifaccimento did not injur

ns inquires into the machinery and resources of the Oracles during the time of their prosperity. In the first dissertation, the object is to expose the folly and gross ignorance of the fathers, who insisted on representing the history of the case roundly in this shape-as though all had prospered with the Oracles up to the nativity of Christ; but that, after his crucifixion, and simultaneously with the first promulgation of Christ

f evil spirits. He, on the contrary, contends that, from the first hour to the last of their long domination over the minds and practice of the Pagan

drian. He, in his earlier days, whilst yet only dreaming of the purple, had not found the Oracle superannuated or palsied. On the contrary, he found it but too clear-sighted; and it was no contempt in him, but too ghastly a fear and jealousy, which labored to seal up the grander ministrations of the Oracle for the future. What the Pythia had foreshown to himself, she might foreshow to others; and, when tempted by the same princely bribes, she might authorize and kindle the same aspiring views in other great officers. Thus, in the new condition of the Roman power, there was a perpetual peril, lest an oracle, so potent as that of Delphi, should absolutely create rebellions, by first suggesting hopes to men in high commands. Even as it was, all treasonable assumptions of the purple, for many generations, commenced in the hopes inspired by auguries, prophecies, or sortileges. And had the great Delphic Oracle, consecrated to men's feelings by hoary superstition, and privileged by secrecy, come forward to countersign such hopes, many more would have been the wrecks of ambition, and even bloodier would have been the blood-polluted line of the imperial successions. Prudence, therefore, it was, and state policy, not the power of Christianity, which gave the final shock (of the original shock we shall speak elsewhere) to the grander functions of the Delphic Oracle. But, in the mean time, the humbler and more domestic offices of this oracle, though naturally making no noise at a distance, seem long to have survived its state relations. And, apart from the sort of galvanism notoriously applied by Hadrian, surely the fathers could not have seen Plutarch's account of its condition, already a century later than our Saviour's nativity. The Pythian priestess, as we gather from him, had by that time become a less select and dignified personage; she was no longer a princess in the land-a change which was proximately due to the impoverished income of the temple; but she was still in existence; still h

equalities and anomalies of their public experience in regard to the Christian revolution, when collected from innumerable tribes so widely differing as to civilization, knowledge, superstition, &c.; hence it happened that one writer could report with truth a change as having occurred within periods of ten to sixty years, which for some other province would demand a circuit of six hundred. For example, in Asia Minor, all the way from the sea coast to the Euphrates, towns were scattered having a dense population of Jews. Sometimes these were the most malignant opponents of Christianity; that is, wher

machinery, except with timid precautions, and by graduations so remarkably adjusted to the circumstances, that sometimes they wear the shape of compromises with idolatry. We must know the ground, the quality of the population, concerned in any particular report of the fathers, before we can judge of its probabilities. Under local advantages, insulated cases of Oracles suddenly silenced, of temples and their idol-worship overthrown, as by a rupture of new-born zeal, were not less certain to arise as rare accidents from rare privileges, or from rare coincidences of unanimity in the leaders of the place, than on the other hand they were certain not to arise in that unconditional universality pretended by the fathers. Wheresoever Paganism was interwoven with the whole moral being of a people, as it was in Egypt, or with the political tenure and hopes of a people, as it was in Rome, there a long struggle was inevitable before the revolution could be effected. Briefly, as against the fathers, we find a sufficient refutation in what followed Christianity. If, at a period five, or even six hundred years after the birth of Christ, you find people still consulting the local Oracles of Egypt, in places sheltered from the point-blank range of the state artillery,-there is an end, once and forever, to the delusive superstition that, merely by its silent presence in the world, Christianity must instantaneously come into fierce activity as a re?gency of

th this fact we combine the other fact, that all the principal Oracles had already begun to languish, more than two centuries before Christianity, there can be no opening for a whisper of dissent upon any real question between Van Dale and his opponents; namely, both as to the possibility of Christianity coexisting with s

a supposition.] of three centuries back) no sooner received any poisonous fluid, than immediately it shivered into crystal splinters. They thought to honor Christianity, by imaging it as some exotic animal of more powerful breed, such as we English have witnessed in a domestic case, coming into instant collision with the native race, and exterminating it everywhere upon the first conflict. In this conceit they substituted a foul fiction of their own, fashioned on the very model of Pagan fictions, for the unvarying analogy of the divine procedure. Christianity, as the last and consummate of revelations, had the high destination of working out its victory through what was greatest in a man-through his reason, his will, his affec

at coloring of the sequel in two of these cases, indeed, but without effect upon any man's mind. Possibly in the case of Antiochus, who seems to have moved under a burning hatred, not so much of the insurgent Jews as of the true faith which prompted their resistance, there is some colorable argument for viewing him in his miserable death as a monument of divine wrath. But the two others had no such malignant spirit; they were tolerant, and even merciful; were authorized instruments for executing the purposes of Providence; and no calamity in the life of either can be reasonably traced to his dealings with Palestine. Yet, if Christianity could not brook for an instant the mere co?xistence of a Pagan oracle, how came it that the Author of Christianity had thus brooked (nay, by many signs of co?peration, had promoted) that ultimate desecration, which planted "the abomination of desolation" as a victorious crest of Paganism upon his own solitary altar? The institution of the Sabbath, again-what part of the Mosaic economy could it more plausibly have been expected that God should vindicate by some memorable interference, since of all the Jewish institutions it was that one which only and which frequently became the occasion of wholesale butchery to the pious (however erring) Jews? The scruple of the Jews to fight, or even to resist an assassin, on the Sabbath, was not the less pious in its motiv

h diseased the very organ of vision-which not merely distorted a few objects on the road, but spread darkness over the road itself. Yet what is the fact? So far from any mysterious repulsion externally between idolatrous errors and Christianity, as though the two schemes of belief could no more coexist in the same society than two queen-bees in a hive,-as though elementary nature herself recoiled from the abominable concursus,-do but open a child's epitome of history, and you find it to have required four entire centuries before the destroyer's hammer and crowbar began to ring loudly against the temples of idolatrous worship; and not before five, nay, locally six, or even seven centuries had elapsed, could the better angel of mankind have sung gratulations announcing that the great strife was over-that man was inoculated with the truth; or have adopted the impressive language of a Latin father, that "the owls were to be heard in every village hooting from the dismantled fanes of heathenism, or the gaunt wolf disturbing the sleep of peasants as he yelled in winter from the cold, dilapidated altars." Even this victorious consummation was true only for the southern world of civilization. The forests of Germany, though pierced already to the south in the third and fourth centuries by the torch of missionaries,-though already at that time illuminated by the immortal Gothic version of the New Testament preceding Ulppilas, and still surviving,-sheltered through ages in the north and east vast tribes of idolaters, some awaiting the baptism of Charlemagne in the eighth century and th

tian C?sars into collusive adulteries with heathenism. Here, for instance, came an emperor that timidly recorded his scruples-feebly protested, but gave way at once as to an ugly necessity. There came another, more deeply religious, or constitutionally more bold, who fought long and strenuously against the compromise. "What! should he, the delegate of God, and the standard-bearer of the true religion, proclaim himself officially head of the false? No; that was too much for his conscience." But the fatal meshes of prescription, of superstitions ancient and gloomy, gathered around him; he heard that he was no perfect C?sar without this office, and eventually the very same reason which had obliged Augustus not to suppress, but himself to assume, the tribunitian office, namely, that it was a popular mode of leaving democratic organs untouched, whilst he neutralized their democratic functions by absorbing them into his own, availed to overthrow all Christian scruples of conscience, even in the most Christian of the C?sars, many years after Constantine. The pious Theodosius found himself literally compelled to become a Pagan pontiff. A bon mot [Footnote: "A bon mot."-This was built on the accident that a certain Maximus stood in notorious circumstances of rivalship to the emperor [Theodosius]: and the bitterness of the jest took this turn that if the emperor should persist in declining the office of _Pont. Maximus, in that case, "erit Pontifex Maximus;" that is, Maximus (the secret aspirant) shall be our Pontifex. So the words sounded to those in the secret [synetoisi], whilst to others they seemed to have no meaning at all.] circulating amongst the people warned him that, if he left the cycle of imperial powers incomplete, if he suffered the galvanic battery to remain imperfect in its circuit of links, pretty soon he would tempt treason to show its head, and would even for the present find but an imperfect obedience. Reluctantly therefore the emperor gave way: and perhaps soothed his fretting conscience, by offering to heaven, as a penitential litany, that same petition which Naaman the Syrian offered to the prophet Elijah as a reason for a personal dispensation. Hardly more possible it was that

e. So profoundly, therefore, are the fathers in error, that instead of that instant victory which they ascribe to Christianity, even Constantine's revolution was merely local. Nearly five centuries, in fact, it cost, and not three, to Christianize even the entire Mediterranean empire of Rome; and the premature effort of Constantine ought to be regarde

istency, so long as the fathers were obliged to confess that Paganism itself, as a gross total, as the parent superstition (sure to reproduce Oracles faster than they could be extinguished), had bee

the Dissertatio of Van Dale, and the Histoire des Oracles by Fontenelle, are irresistible, though not written in a proper spirit of

rejected by the school of Van Dale. Both the power of at all looking into the future, and the fancied source of that power, are dismissed as contemptible chimeras. Upon the first of these dark pretensions we shall have occasion to speak at another point. Upon the other we agree with Van Dale. Yet, even here, the spirit of triumphant ridicule, applied to questions not wholly within the competence of human resources, is displeasing in grave discussions: grave they are by necessity of their relations, howsoever momentarily disfigured by levity and the unseasonable grimaces of self-sufficient "philosophy." This temper of mind is already advertised from the first to the observing reader of Van Dale by the character of his engraved frontispiece. Men are there exhibited in the act of juggling, and still more odiously as exulting over their juggleries by gestures of the basest collusion, such as protruding the tongue, inflating one cheek by means of the tongue, grinning, and winking obliquely. These

nt spirits. As against Eichhorn, however, though readily conceding that the agency is not often recognized, we would beg leave to notice, that there is a three-fold agency of evil, relatively to man, ascribed to certain spirits in the elder Scriptures, namely: 1, of misleading (as in the case of the Israelitish king seduced into a fatal battle by a falsehood originating with a spiritual being); 2, of temptation; 3, of calumnious accusation directed against absent parties. It is not absolutely an untenable hypothesis, that these functions of malignity to man, as at first sight they appear, may be in fact reconcilable with the general functions of a being not malignant, and not evil in any sense, but simply obedient to superior commands: for none of us supposes, of course, that a "destroying angel" must be an evil spirit, though sometimes appearing in a dreadful relation of hostility to all parties (as in the case of David's punishment). But, waiving all these speculations, one thing is apparent, that the negative allowance, the toleration granted to these later Jewish modes of belief by our Saviour, can no more be urged as arguing any positive sanction to such existences (to demons in the bad sense), than his toleration of Jewish errors and conceits in questions of science. Once for all, it was no purpose of his mission to expose errors in matters of pure curiosity, and in speculations not moral, but exclusively intellectual. And, besides the ordinary argument for rejecting such topics of teaching, as not necessarily belonging to any known purpose of the Christian revelation (which argument is merely negative, and still leaves it open to have regarded such communications as a possible extra condescension, as a lucro ponatur, not absolutely to have been expected, but if granted as all the more meritorious in Christianity), we privately are aware of an argument, far

ssary a way, by adopting the vilest relation to man which can be imputed to a demon-his function of secret calumnious accusation; from which idea, lowering the Miltonic "archangel ruined" into the assessor of thieves, as a private slanderer (diabolos), proceeds, through the intermediate Italian diavolo, our own grotesque vulgarism of the devil; [Footnote: But, says an unlearned man, Christ uses the word devil. Not so. The word used is diabolos. Translate v. g. "The accuser and his angels."] an idea which must ever be injurious, in common with all base conceptio

final question argued by Van Dale-"What was the essentia

uld wish to be understood as speaking particularly

on of that same Oracle

ation to the public

h of Greece in the mysterious pretensions of Oracles were unsettled or disturbed by the several agencies at work that naturally tended to rouse suspicion; such, for instance, as these four which follow:-1. Eminent instances of scepticism with regard to the oracular powers, from time to time circulating through Greece in the shape of bon mots; or, 2, which silently amounted to the same virtual expression of distrust, Refusals (often more speciously wearing the name of neglects) to consult the pro

institutions of the ancient Oracles. To satisfy them, the Oracle should resemble a modern coach-office-where undoubtedly you would suspect fraud, if the question "How far to Derby?" were answered evasively, or if the grounds of choice between two roads were expressed enigmatically. But the to loxon, or mysterious indirectness of the Oracle, was calculated far more to support the imaginative grandeur of the unseen God, and was designed to do so, than to relieve the individual suitor in a perplexity seldom of any capital importance. In this way every oracular answer operated upon the local Grecian neighborhood in which it circulated as one of the impulses which, from time to time, renewed the sense of a mysterious involution in the invisible powers, as though they were incapable of direct correspondence or parallelism with the monotony and slight compass of human ideas. As the s

490 B.C.) the Oracle was charged with Medizing; and in the previous period of Pisistratus (about 555 B.C.) the Oracle had been almost convicted of Alcmonidizing. The Oracle concerned was the same,-namely, the Delphic,-in all three cases. In the case of Darius, fear was the ruling passion; in the earlier case, a near self-interest, but not in a base sense selfish. The Alemonidae, an Athenian house hostile to Pisistratus, being exceedingly rich, had engaged to rebuild the ruined temple o

more interesting, because arising between two leading states of Greece, and in the century subsequent to the ruder age of Crsus (who was about coeval with Pisistratus, 555 B. C.), is reported by Xenophon of the Laced?monians and Thebans. They concluded a treaty of peace without any communication, not so much as a civil notification to the Oracle; to men Teo ouden ekoinosanto, hopis h? eirpnp genoito-to the god (the Delphic god) they made no communication at all as to the terms of the peace; outoi de ebeleuonto, but they personally pursued their negotiations in private. That this was a very extraordinary reach of presumption, is evident from the care of Xenophon in brin

oughtfully pious man and the most crazily superstitious-all spirit of hope would be blighted at once; and the religious neglect would, even in a common human way, become its own certain executor, through mere depression of spirits and misgiving of expectations. Well, therefore, might Cicero in a tone of defiance demand, "Quam vero Gr?cia coloniam misit in ?toliam, Ioniam, Asiam, Siciliam, Italiam, sine Pythio (the Delphic), aut Dodonseo, aut Hammonis oraculo?" An oracular sanction must be had, and from a leading oracle-the three mentioned by Cicero were the greatest; [Footnote: To which at one time must be added, as of equal rank, the Oracle of the Branchides, in Asia Minor. But this had been destroyed by the Persians, in retaliation of the Athenian outrages at Sardis.] and, if a minor oracle could have satisfied the inaugurating necessities of a regular colony, we may be sure that the Dorian states of the Peloponnesus, who had twenty-five decent oracles at home (that is, within the peninsula), would not so constantly have carried their money to Delphi. Nay, it is certain that even where the colonial counsels of the greater oracles seemed extravagant, though a large discretion was allowed to remonstrance, and even to very homely expostulations, still, in the last resort, no doubts were felt that the oracle must be right. Brouwer, the Belgic scholar, who has so recently and so temperately treated these subjects (Histoire de la Civilisation Morale et Religieuse chez les Grecs: 6 tomes: Groningue-1840), alleges a case (which, however, we do not remember to have met) where the client ventured to object:-"Mon roi Apollon, je crois que tu es fou." But cases are obvious which look this way, though not going so far as to charge lunacy upon the lord of prophetic vision. Battus, who was destined to be the eldest father of Cyrene, so memorable as the first ground of Greek intercourse with the African shore of the Mediterranean, never consulted the Delphic Oracle in reference to his eyes, which happened to be diseased, but that he was admonished to prepare for colonizing Libya.-"Grant

scratch inflicted upon his thigh by his own sabre, whilst angrily sabring a ridiculous quadruped whom the Egyptian priests had put forward as a god, he felt quite at his ease so long as he remembered his vast distance from the mighty capital of Media, to the eastward of the Tigris. The scratch, however, inflamed, for his intemperance had saturated his system with combustible matter; the inflammation spread; the pulse ran high: and he began to feel twinges of alarm. At length mortification commenced: but still he trusted to the old prophecy about Ecbatana, when suddenly a horrid discovery was made-that the very Syrian village at his own head-quarters was known by the pompous name of Ecbatana. Josephus tells a similar story of some man contemporary with Herod the Great. And we must all remember

usalem shall

ttending the three minor cases, one single distinction puts all to rights. The Greeks never confounded the temple, and household of officers attached to the temple service, with the dark functions of the presiding god. In Delphi, besides the Pythia and priests, with their train of subordinate ministers directly billeted on the temple, there were two orders of men outside, Delphic citizens, one styled Arizeis, the other styled Hosioi,-a sort of honorary members, whose duty was probably inte

, which demanded no faculty whatever of divination, but the nobler faculty (though unpresumptuous) of sagacity, that calculates the natural consequences of human acts, cooperating with elaborate investigation of the local circumstances. If, in any paper on the general civilization of Greece (that great mother of civilization for all the world), we should ever attempt to trace this element of Oracles, it will not be difficult to prove that Delphi discharged the office of a central bureau d'administ

LUTION O

83

c mind had given way under its new complexion of character; ambition and civil dissension were extinct. It was questionable whether a good hearty assault and battery, or a respectable knock-down blow, had been dealt by any man in London for one or two generations. The doctor carried his reveries so far, that he even satisfied himself and one or two friends (probably by looking into the parks at hours propitious to his hypothesis) that horses were seldom or ever used for riding; that, in fact, this accomplishment was too boisterous or too perilous for the gentle propensities of modern Britons; and that, by the best accounts, few men of rank or fashion were now seen on horseback. This pleasant collection of dreams did Doctor Brown solemnly propound to the English public, in two octavo volumes, under the title of "An Estimate of the Manners and Principles of the Times;" and the report of many who lived in those days assures us that for a brief period the book had a prodigious run. In some respects the doctor's conceits might seem too startling and extravagant; but, to balance that, every nation has some pleasure in being heartily abused by one of its own number; and the English nation has always had a special delight in being alarmed, and in being clearly convinced that it is and ought to be on the brink of ruin. With such advantages in the worthy doctor's favor, he might have kept the field until some newer extravaganza had made his own obsolete, had not one ugly turn in political affairs given so smashing a refutation to his practical conclusions, and called forth so sudden a rebound

to sustain them. Which of us forgets the gallant Mellish, the frank and the generous, who reconciled himself so gayly to the loss of a splendid fortune, and from the very bosom of luxury suddenly precipitated himself upon the hardships of Peninsular warfare? Which of us forgets the adventurous Lee of Lime, whom a princely estate could not detain in early youth from courting perils in Nubia and Abyssinia, nor (immediately upon his return) from almost wooing death as a volunteer aide-de-camp to the Duke of Wellington at Waterloo? So again of Colonel Evans, who, after losing a fine estate long held out to his hopes, five times over put himself at the head of forlorn hopes. Such cases are memorable, and were conspicuous at the time, from the lustre of wealth and high connections which surrounded the parties; but many thousand others, in which the sacrifices of personal ease were less noticeable from their narrower scale of splendor, had equal merit for the cheerfulness with which those sacrifices were made. [Footnote: History of the Greek Revolution, by Thomas Gordon.] Here, again, in the person of the author before us, we have another instance of noble and disinterested heroism, which, from the magnitude of the sacrifices that it involved, must place him in the same class as the Mellishes and the Lees. This gallant Scotsman, who was born in 1788, or 1789, lost his father in early life. Inheriting from him a good estate in Aberdeenshire, and one more considerable in Jamaica, he found himself, at the close of a long minority, in the possession of a comman

ance were appreciated by the ruling persons in Greece, will be best collected from the accompanying letter, translated from the original, in modern Greek, addressed to him by the provisional government of Greece, in 1822. It will be seen that this official document notices with great sorrow Mr. Gordon's absence from Greece, and with some surprise, as a fact at that time unexplained and mysterious; but the simple explanat

ON, a man worthy of all admiration, and a fr

own lust and will. Needs it was that we, sooner or later, shattering this iron and heavy sceptre, should recover, at the price of life itself (if that were found necessary), our patrimonial heritage, that thus our people might again be gathered to the family of free and self-legislating states. Moving, then, under such impulses, the people of Greece advanced with one heart, and perfect unanimity of council, against an oppressive despotism, putting their ha

y, that the rights of nations, liable to no grudges of malice or scruples of jealousy, should be surreptitiously and wickedly filched away, or mocked with outrage and insult; but that they should be settled firmly on th

y, of family ties, and (what is above all) of domestic luxury and ease, and the happiness of your own fireside, you hurried to our assistance. But suddenly, and in contradiction to the universal hope of Greece, by leaving us, you have thrown us all into great perplexit

ast of all, to insult the unhappy and much-suffering people of Greece. Under these circumstances, both the deliberative and the executive bodies of the Grecian government, assembling separately, have come to a resolution, without one dissentient voice, to invite you back to Greece, in order that you may again take a share in the Grecian contest-a contest in itself glorious, and not alien from your character and pursuits. For the liberty of any one nation cannot be a matter altogether indifferent to the rest, but naturally it is a common and diffusive interest; and nothing can be more reasonable

esident of t

SIUS KA

, Minister of Foreig

triotic sword for a patriotic pen-judging rightly that in no way so effectually can Greece be served at this time with Western Europe, as by recording faithfully the course of her revolution, tracing the difficulties which lay or which arose in her path, the heroism with which she surmounted them, and the multiplied errors by whic

era into the hands of the Turkish conqueror; but this is an error. Parts of Greece, previously to that era, had been dismembered from the Eastern empire;-other parts did not, until long after it, share a common fate with the metropolis. Venice had a deep interest in the Morea; in that, and for that, sh

the less a slave, though his master should happen to hold the same creed with himself; and towards a member of the Greek church one who looked westward to Rome for his religion was likely to be little less of a bigot than one who looked to Mecca. So that we are not surprised to find a Venetian rule of policy recommending, for the daily allowa

tical growth, not that of our own Indian empire, had travelled by accelerations of speed so terrifically marked. Not that even Russia could have really grown in strength according to the apparent scale of her progress. The strength was doubtless there, or much of it, before Peter and Catherine; but it was latent: there had been no such sudden growth as people fancied; but there had been a sudden evolution. Infinite resources had been silently accumulating from century to century; but, before the Czar Peter, no mind had come across them of power sufficient to reveal their situation, or to organize them for practical effects. In some nations, the manifestations of power are coincident with its growth; in others, from vicious institutions, a vast crystallization goes on for ages blindly and in silence, which the lamp of some meteoric mind is required to light up into brilliant display. Thus it had been in Russia; and hence, to the abused judgment of all Christendom, she had seemed to leap lik

and clergy; and, thirdly, which is the most surprising feature of the whole statement, the Turks were so far ahead of others in the race of improvement, that to them belongs the credit of having first adopted the extensive use of gunpowder, and of having first brought battering-trains against fortified places. To his artillery and his musketry it was that Selim the Ferocious (grandson of that Sultan who took Constantinople) was indebted for his victories in Syria and Egypt. Under Solyman the Magnificent (the well-known contemporary of the Emperor Charles Y.) the crescent is supposed to have attained its utmost altitude; and already for fifty years the causes had been in silent progress which were to throw the preponderance into the Christian scale. In the reign of his son, Selim the Second, this crisis was already passed; and the battle of Lepanto, in 1571, which crippled the Turkish navy in a degree never wholly recovered, gave the first overt signal to Europe of a turn in the course of their prosperity. Still, as this blow did not equally affect the principal arm of their military service, and as the strength of the German empire was too much distracted by Christian rivalship, the prestige of the Turkish name continued almost unbroken until their bloody overthrow in 1664, at St. Gothard, by the imperial General Montecuculi. In 1673 they received another memorable defeat from Sobieski, on which occasion they lost twenty-five thousand men. In what degree, however, the Turkish Samson had been shorn of his original strength, was not yet made known to Europe by any adequate expression, before the great catastrophe of 1683. In that year, at the instigation of the haughty vizier, Kara Mustafa, the Turks had undertaken the siege of Vienna; and great was the alarm of the Christian world. But, on the 12th of September, their army of one hundred and fifty thousand men was totally dispersed by seventy thousand Poles and Germans, under John Sobieski-"He conquering through God, and God by him." [Footnote: See the sublime Sonnet of Chiabrora on this subject, as translated by Mr. Wordsworth.] Then followed the treaty of Carlovitz, which stripped the Porte of Hungary, the Ukraine, and other places; and "henceforth" says Mr. Gordon, "Europe ceased to dread the Turks; and began even to look upon their existence as a necessary element of the balance of power among its states." Spite of their losses, however, during the first half of the eighteenth c

the tables turned, that, whereas in the fifteenth century her chief superiority over Christendom had been in the three points of artillery, discipline, and fixed revenue, precisely in these three she had sunk into utter insignificance, whilst all Christendom had been continually improving. Selim and Mahmoud indeed had made effectual reforms in the corps of gunners, as we have said, and had raised it to the amount of sixty thousand men; so that at present they have respectable field-artillery, whereas previously they had only heavy battering-trains. But the defects in discipline cannot be remedied, so long as the want of a settled revenue obliges the Sultan to rely upon hurried levies from the provincial militias of police. T

liance on Russian countenance or aid, Greece had since that era received great encouragement to revolt from the successful experiment in that direction made by the Turkish province of Servia. In 1800, Czerni George came forward as the asserter of Servian independence, and drove the Ottomans out of that province. Personally he was not finally successful. But his example outlived him; and, after fifteen years' struggle, Servia (says Mr. Gordon)

his iron yoke of humiliation, we have reason to wonder that the Greeks preserved sufficient nobility of mind to raise so much as their wishes in the direction of independence. In a condition of abasement, from which a simple act of apostasy was at once sufficient to raise them to honor and wealth, "and from the meanest serfs gathered them to the caste of oppressors," we ought not to wonder that some of the Greeks should be mean, perfidious, and dissembling, but rather that any (as Mr. Gordon says) "had courage to adhere to their religion, and to eat the bread of affliction." But noble aspirations are fortunately indestructible in human nature. And in Greece the lamp of independence of spirit had been partially kept alive by the existence of a native militia, to whom the Ottoman government, out of mere necessity, had committed the local defence. These were called Armatoles (or Gendarmerie); their available strength was reckoned by Pouqueville (for the year 1814) at ten thousand men; and, as they were a very effectual little host for maintaining, from age to age, the "true faith militant" of Greece, namely, that a temporary and a disturbed occupation of the

was then exchanged for that of Klefthis [Klept?s] or Thief, a profession esteemed highly honorable, when it was exercised sword in hand at the expense of the Moslems. [Footnote: And apparently, we may add, when exercised at the expense of whomsoever at sea. The old Grecian instinct, which Thucydides states so frankly, under which all seafarers were dedicated to spoil as people who courted attack, seems never to have been fully rooted out from the little creeks and naval fastnesses of the Morea, and of some of the Egean islands. Not, perhaps, the mere spirit of wrong and aggression, but some old traditionary conceits and maxims, brought on the great crisis of piracy, which fell under no less terrors than of the triple thunders of the great allies.] Even in their quietest mood, these soldiers curbed Turkish tyranny; for, the captains and Christian prim

n history. The secret tribunal of the middle ages is not to be compared with it for the depth and expansion of its combinations, or for the impenetrability of its masque. Nor is there in the whole annals of man a manoeuvre so admirable as that, by which this society, silently effecting its own transfiguration, and recasting as in a crucible its own form, organs, and most essential functions, contrived, by mere force of seasonable silence, or by the very pomp of mystery, to carry over from the first or innoxious model of the Het?ria, to its new organization, all those weighty names of kings or princes who would not have given their sanction to any association having political objects, however artfully veiled. The early history of the Het?ria is shrouded in the same mystery as the whole course of its political movements. Some suppose that Alexander Maurocordato, ex-Hospodar of Wallachia, during his long exile in Russia, founded it for the promotion of education, about the beginning of the present century. Others ascribe it originally to Riga. At all events, its purposes were purely intellectual in its earliest form. In 1815, in consequence chiefly of the disappointment which the Greeks met with in their dearest hopes from the Congress of Vienna, the Het?ria first assumed a political character under the secret influence of Count Capodistria, of Corfu, who, having entered the Russian service as mere private secretary to Admiral Tchitchagoff, in 1812, had, in a space of three years, insinuated himself into the favor of the Czar, so far as to have become his private secretary, and a cabinet minister of Russia. He, however, still masked his final objects under plans of literature and scientific improvement. In deep shades he organized a vast apparatus of agents and apostles; and then retired behind the curtain to watch or to direct the working of his blind machine. It is an evidence of some latent nobility in the Greek character, in the midst of that levity with which all Europe taxes it, that never, except once, were the secrets of the society betrayed; nor was there the least ground for jealousy offered either to the stupid Moslems, in the very centre of whom, and round about them, the conspiracy was daily advancing, or even to the rigorous police of Moscow, where the Het?ria had its head-quarters. In the single instance of treachery which occurred, it happened that the Zantiote, who made the discovery

onspiracy mining subterraneously beneath the very feet of their accursed oppressors; whispers of a great deliverer at hand, whose mysterious Labarum, or mighty banner of the Cross, was already dimly descried through northern mists, and whose eagles were already scenting the carnage and "savor of death" from innumerable hosts

a personal inheritance to his children. Over all Greece a sense of power, dim and vast, brooded for years; and a mighty phantom, under the mysterious name of Arch, in whose cloudy equipage were descried, gleaming at intervals, the crowns and sceptres of great potentates, sustained, whilst it agitated their hearts. London was one of the secret watchwords in their impenetrable cipher; Moscow was a countersign; Bavaria and Austria bore mysterious parts in the drama; and, though no sound was heard, nor voice given to the powers that were working, yet, as if by mere force of secret sympathy, all mankind who were worthy to participate in the enterprise seemed to be linked in brother

ter impossibility of training men with no personal hopes to labor for the benefit of distant generations, there was one political argument against that course, which Mr. Gordon justly considers unanswerable. It is this: Turkey in Europe has been long tottering on its basis. Now, were the attempt delayed until Russia had displaced her and occupied her seat, Greece would then have received her liberty as a boon from the conqueror; and the construction would have been that she held it by sufferance, and under a Russian warrant. This argument is conclusive. But others there were who fancie

loved and admired his treasures. However, he was persuaded to wait for his death, which could not (as it seemed) be far distant, rather than risk anything upon the chances of war. And in this prudent resolution he would have persevered, but for an affront which he could not overlook. An Albanian, named Ismael Pasho Bey, once a member of Ali's household, had incurred his master's deadly hatred; and, flying from his wrath to various places under various disguises, had at length t

itor; and solemnly excommunicated by the head of the Mussulman law. The Pachas of Europe

avorite a measure of his policy, and pursued so long, so earnestly, and so injuriously to his credit amongst the Christian part of the population. It happened, at the first opening of the campaign, that the Christians were equally courted by the Sultan's generalissimo, Solyman, the Pacha of Thessaly. For this, however, that Pacha was removed and decapitated; and a new leader was now appointed in the person of that very enemy, Ismael Pasho, whose attempted murder had brought the present storm upon Ali. Ismael was raised to the rank of Serasker (or generalissimo), and was

ity with each other. One of them, and the bravest, was even poisoned by the Serasker. Provisions were running short, in consequence of their own dissensions. Winter was fast approaching; the cannonading had produced no conspicuous effect; and the soldiers were disbanding. In this situation, the Sultan's lieutenants again saw the necessity of courting aid from the Christian population of the country. Ali, on his part, never scrupled to bid against them at any price; and at length, irritated by the ill-usage of the Turks on their first entrance, and disgusted with the obvious insincerity of their reluctant and momentary kindness, some of the bravest Christ

managing the campaign after his own ideas, he speedily involved himself in quarrels, and his army, through the perfidy of a considerable officer, in ruinous embarrassments. This unhappy campaign is circumstantially narrated by Mr. Gordon in his first book; but, as it never crossed the Danube, and had no connection with Greece except by its purposes, we shall simply rehearse the great outline of its course. The signal for insurrection was given in January, 1821; and Prince Ypsilanti took the field, by crossing the Pruth in March. Early in April he received a communication from the Emperor of Russia, which at once prostrated his hopes before an enemy was seen. He was formally disavowed by that prince, erased from his army-list, and severely reproached for his "folly and ingratitude," in letters from two members of the Russian cabinet; and on the 9th of April this fact was publicly notified in Yassy, the capital of Moldavia, by the Russian consul-general. His army at this time consisted of three thousand men, which, however, was afterwards reinforced, but with no gunpowder except what was casually intercepted, and no lead except some that had been stripped from the roof of an ancient cathedral. On the 12th of May the Pacha of Ibrail opened the campaign. A few days after, the Turkish troops began to appear in considerable force; and on the 8th of June an alarm was suddenly given "that the white turbans were upon them." In the engagement which followed, the insurgent army gav

he capital defects, after all, were in himself. His plan was originally bad; and, had it been better, he was quite unequal to the execution of it. The results were unfortunate to all concerned in it. Ypsilanti himself was arrested by Austria, and thrown into the unwholesome prison of Mongatz, where, after languishing for six years, he perished miserably. Some of the subordinate officers prolonged the struggle in a guerilla style for some little time; but all were finally suppressed. Many were put to death; many escaped into neutral ground; and it is gratifying to add, that of two traitors amongst the higher officers, one was

d Kourshid's difficulties were daily augmenting. In July of this year (1821) these various insurgents, actively cooperating, defeated the Serasker in several actions, and compelled a Pacha to lay down his arms on the road between Yannina and Souli. It was even proposed by the gallant partisan, Mark Bozzaris, that all should unite to hem in the Serasker; but a wound, received in a skirmish, defeated this plan. In September following, however, the same Mark intercepted and routed Hassan Pacha in a defile on his march to Yannina; and in general the Turks were defeated everywhere except at the headquarters of the Serasker, and with losses in men enormously disproportioned to the occasions. This arose partly from the necessity under which they lay of attacking expert musketeers under cover of breastworks, and partly from their own precipitance and determination to carry everything by summary force; "whereas," says Mr. Gordon, "a little patience would surely have caused them to succeed, and at least saved them much dishonor, and thousands of lives thrown away in mere wantonness." But, in spite of all blunders, and every sort of failure elsewhere, the Serasker was still advancing slowly towards his main objects-the reduction of Ali Pacha. And by the end of October, on getting possession of an important part of Ali's works, he announced to the Sultan that he should soon be able to send him the traitor's head, for that he was already reduced to six hundred men. A little before this, however, the celebrated Maurocordato, with other persons of influence, had arrive

hants." Its population was about eighteen thousand, of which number two thirds were Christian. In March, when rumors had arrived of the insurrection beyond the Danube, under Alexander Ypsilanti, the fermentation became universal; and the Turks of Patrass hastily prepared for defence. By the twenty-fifth, the Greeks had purchased all the powder and lead which could be had; and about the second of April they raise

having for its president Mavromichalis, Prince or Bey of Maina, a rugged territory in the ancient Sparta, famous for its hardy race of robbers and pirates. [Footnote: These Mainates have been supposed to be of Sclavonian origin; but Mr. Gordon, upon the authority of the Emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitos, asserts that they are of pure Laconian blood, and became Christians in the reign of that emperor's grandfather, Basil the Macedonian. They are, and over have been, robbers by profession; robbers by land, pirates by sea; for which last branch of their mixed occupation they enj

marched to invest the Acrocorinthus. In the Messenian territory, the Bishop of Modon, having made his guard of Janissaries drunk, cut the whole of them to pieces; and then encamping on the heights of Navarin, his lordship blockaded that fortress. The abruptness of these movements, and their almost simultaneous or

commanded; and he rallied them again; but again they deserted him at the sight of their oppressors; "and I," said Colocotroni afterwards,

hich, altering his course, he sailed to Patrass, and reached it on the fifteenth of April. This was Palm Sunday, and it dawned upon the Greeks with evil omens. First came a

his service. This threat, however, proved a gasconade; the Kihaya advanced in three columns; cavalry on each wing, and infantry in the centre; on which, after a single discharge, the Argives fled. [Footnote: It has a sublime effect in the record of this action to hear that the Argives were drawn up behind a wall originally raised as a defence against the deluge of Inachus.] Their general, fighting bravely, was killed, together with seven hundred others, and

At a council of war, in the Greek camp, the prevailing opinion was that an action could not prudently be risked. One man thought otherwise; this was Anagnostoras; he, by urging the desolations which would follow a retreat, brought over the rest to his opinion; and it was resolved to take up a position at Valtezza, a village three hours' march from Tripolizza. Thither, on the twenty-seventh of May, the Kihaya arrived with five thousand

ould retire in the darkness. The twenty-eighth, however, found the two armies still in the same positions. The battle was renewed for five hours; and then the Kihaya, finding his troops fatigued, and that his retreat was likely to be intercepted by Nikitas (a brave partisan officer bred t

ntially, because Mr. Gordon characterizes it as "remarkable for the moral effect it produced;" and he does not scr

e peculiarly brilliant. For the Turkish general had between two and three thousand men, besides artillery; whereas Nikitas at first sustained the attack in thirteen barricaded houses, with no more

g in armed bodies to the west of Athens. Towards the end of April, the Turks, who composed one fifth of the Athenian population (then rated at ten thousand), became greatly agitated; and twice proposed a massacre of the Christians. This was resisted by the humane Khadi; and the Turks, contenting themselves with pillaging absent proprietors, began to lay up stores in the Acropolis. With ultra Turkish stupidity, however, out of pure laziness, at this critical moment, they confided the night duty on the ramparts of the city to Greeks. The consequence may be supposed. On the

nds of the Archipelago. The three principal of these in modern times, are Hydra, Spezzia, and Psarra. [Footnote: Their insignificance in ancient times is proclaimed by the obscurity of their ancient names-Aperopia, Tiparenus, and Psyra.] They had been colonized in the preceding century, by some poor families from Peloponnesus and Ionia. At that time they had gained a scanty subsistence as fishermen. Gradually they became merchants and seamen. Being the best sailors in the Sultan's dominions, they had obtained some valuable privileges, amongst which was that of exemption from Turkish magistrates; so that, if they could not boast of autonomy, they had at least the advantage of executing the bad laws of Turkish imposition by chiefs of their own blood. And they had the further advantage of paying but a moderate tribute to the Sultan. So favored, their commerce had flourished beyond all precedent. And latterly, when the vast extension of European warfar

ven thousand stout and able sailors." Pouqueville ascribes to them, in 1813, a force considerably greater. But the peace of Paris (one year after Pouqueville's estimates) naturally reduced their power, as their extraordinary gains were altogether dependent on war and naval blockades.] nautical confederacy in the Levant, they anticipated a large booty from captures at sea. In that expectation, at first, they were not disappointed. But it was a source of wealth soon exhausted; for, naturally, as soon as their ravages became known, the Mussulmans ceased to navigate. Spezzia was the first to hoist the independen

re, they butchered, in cold blood, several beautiful Turkish females; and a great number of defenceless pilgrims (mostly old men), who, returning from Mecca, fell into their power, off Cyprus, were slain without mercy, because they would not renounce their faith." Many such cases of hideous barbarity had already occurred, and did afterwards occur, on the mainland. But this is the eternal law and providential retribution of oppression. The tyrant teaches to his slave the crimes and the cruelties which he inflicts; blood will have blood; and the ferocious oppressor is invol

affliction; no voice in any quarter of commanding justice; no acknowledgment of a common nature between the belligerents; nor sense of a participation in the same human infirmities, dangers, or necessities. To the fugitive from the field of battle there was scarcely a retreat; to the prisoner there was absolutely no hope. Stern retribution, and the very rapture of vengeance, were the passions which presided on the one side; on the other, fanaticism and the cruelty of fear and hatred, maddened by old hereditary scorn. Wherever the war raged there followed upon the face of the land one blank Aceldama. A desert tracked the steps of the arm

o the facts) from a little work originally composed by an Albanian in modern Greek, and printed at Venice in 1815. This work was immediately translated into Italian, by Gherardini, an Italian offic

g oppressed by the tyranny of the Turks of a village called to this day Gardichi, took the resolution of flying for a distance of six hours' journey to this sylvan and inaccessible position, of sharing in common the few animals which they had, and of suffering voluntarily every physical privation, rather than submit to the slightest wrong from their foreign tyrants. This resolution, they added, must be presumed to have been executed with success; because we find that, in the lapse of five or six years, these original occupants of the fastness were joined by thirty other families. Somewhere about that time

ore" there were barely one hundred men fit for the active duties of war, which, in ordinary states of society, would imply a total population of four hundred souls. That may be taken, therefore, as the extreme limit of the Suliote population at a period of seventy years antecedently to the date of tke conversation on which he founds his information. But, as he has unfortunately omitted to fix the exact era of these conversations, the whole value of his accuracy is neutralized by his own carelessness. However, it is probable, from the internal evidence of his book, which brings down affairs b

mbrances but their arms, ammunition, and a few days' provision, into the four towns of Suli proper, which all lay within that ring fence of impregnable position from which no armies could ever dislodge them; meantime, they secretly drew supplies from the seven associate towns, which were better situated than themselves for agriculture, and which (apparently taking no part in the war) pursued their ordinary labors unmolested. Their tactics were simple, but judicious; if they saw a body of five or six thousand advancing again

long with them; but, if by any chance their husbands behave with cowardice, they snatch their arms from them, and abuse them, calling them mean, and unworthy of having a wife." Upon these feelings there has even been built a law in Suli, which must deeply interest the pride of women in the martial honor of their husbands; agreeably to this law, any woman whose husband has distinguished himself in b

At that critical moment, when Ali was in the very paroxysms of frantic exultation, the Suliote women, seeing that the general fate hinged upon the next five minutes, turned upon the Turks en masse, and with such a rapture of sudden fury, that the conquering army was instantly broken-thrown into panic, pursued; and, in that state of ruinous disorder, was met and flanked by the men, who were now recovering from their defeat. The consequences, from the nature of the ground, were fatal to the Turkish army and enterprise; the whole camp equipage was captured; none saved their lives but by throwing away their arms; one third of the Turks (one half by some acc

st of twelve thousand men, were uniformly beaten; and apparently were content to be beaten. Sometimes a Pacha was even made prisoner; but, as the simple [Footnote: On the same occasion the Pacha's son, and sixty officers of the rank of Aga, were also made prisoners by a truly rustic mode of assault. The Turks had shut themselves up in a church; into this, by night, the Suliotes threw a number of hives, full of bees, whose insufferable s

me, the master watchword of his secret policy. And on the 1st of June, in the year 1792, he commenced his second war against the Suliotes, at the head of twenty-two thousand men. This was the second war of Suli with Ali Pacha; but it was the tenth war on their annals; and, as far as their own exertions were concerned, it had the same result as all the rest. But, about the sixth year of the war, in an indirect way, Ali made one step towards his final purpose, which first manifested its disastrous tendency in the new circumstances which succeeding years brought forward. In 1797 the French made a lodgment in Corfu; and, agreeably to their general spirit of intrigue, they had made advances to Ali Pacha, and to all other independent powers in or about Epirus. Amongst other states, in an evil hour for that ill-fated city, they wormed themselves into an alliance with Prevesa; and in the following year their own quarrel with Ali Pacha gave that crafty robber a pretence, which he had long courted in vain, for attacking the place with his overwhelming cavalry, before they could agree upon the mode of defence, and long before any mo

of any kind with an enemy whom no oaths could bind for an hour, it is but fair to mention that they were now absolutely without supplies either of ammunition or provisions; and that, for seven days, they had suffered under a total deprivation of water, the sources of which were now in the hands of the enemy, and turned into new channels. The winding up of the memorable tale is soon told:-the main body of the fighting Suliotes, agreeably to the treaty, immediately took the route to Parga, where they were sure of a hospitable reception, that city having all along made common cause with Suli against their common enemy, Ali. The son of Ali, who had concluded the treaty, and who inherited all his father's treachery, as fast as possible despatched four thousand Turks in pursuit, with orders to massacre the whole. But in this instance, through the gallant assistance of the Parghiotes, and the energetic haste of the Suliotes, the accursed wretch was disappointed of his prey. As to all the other detachments of the Suliotes, who were scattered at different points, and were necessarily thrown everywhere upon their own resources without warning or preparation of any kind,-they, by the terms of the treaty, had liberty to go away or to reside peaceably in any part of Ali's dominions. But as these were mere windy words, it being well understood that Ali's fixed intention was to cut every throat among the Suliotes, whether of man, woman, or child,-nay, as he thought himself dismally ill-used by every hour's delay which interfered with the execution of that purpose,-what rational plan awaited the choice of the poor Suliotes, finding themselves in the centre of a whole hostile nation, and their own slender divisions cut off from communication with each other? What could people so circumstanced propose to themselves as a suitable resolution for their situation? Hope there was none; sublime despair was all that their case allowed; and, considering the unrivalled splendors of their past history for more than one hundred and sixty years, perhaps most readers would reply, in the famous words of Corneille-Qu'ils mourussent. That was their own reply to the question now so imperatively forced upon them; and die they all did. It is an argument of some great original nobility in the minds of these poor people, that none disgraced themselves by useless submissions, and that all alike, women as well as men, devoted themselves in the "high Roman fashion" to the now expiring cause of their country. The first case which occurred exhibits the very perfection of nonchalance in circumstances the most appalling. Samuel, a Suliote monk, of somewhat mixed and capricious character, and at times even liable to much suspicion amongst his countrymen, but of great name, and of unquestionable merit in his military character, was in the act of delivering over to authorized Turkish agents a small outpost, which had greatly annoyed the forces of Ali, together with such military stores as it still contained. By the treaty, Samuel was perfectly free, and under the solemn protection of Ali; but the Turks, with the utter shamelessness to which they had been brought by daily familiarity with treachery the most barefaced, were openly descanting to Samuel upon the unheard-of tortures which must be looked for at the hands of Ali, by a soldier who had given so much trouble to that Pacha as himself. Samuel listened coolly; he was then seated on a chest of gunpowder, and powder was scattered about in all directions. He watched in a careless way until he observed that all the Turks, exulting in their own damnable perfidies, were assembled under the roof of the building. He then coolly took the burning snuff of a candle, and threw it into a heap of combustibles, still keeping his seat upon the chest of powder. It is unnecessary to add that the little fort, and all whom it contained, were blown to atoms. And with respect to Samuel in particular, no fragment of his skeleton could ever be discovered. [Footnote: The deposition of two Suliote sentinels at the door, and of a third person who escape