with but a handful of followers, into the midst of the enemy's camp, whose force was eight thousand strong, and after leading his heroic band over heaps of dead, fell, at last, close to the tent of the Pasha himself.

The mention made in this brave Suliote's letter of Lord Byron's care of his fellow-citizens refers to a popular act done recently by the noble poet at Cephalonia, in taking into his pay, as a body-guard, forty of this now homeless tribe. On finding, however, that for want of employment they were becoming restless and turbulent, he despatched them off soon after, armed and provisioned, to join in the defence of Missolonghi, which was at that time besieged on one side by a considerable force, and blockaded on the other by a Turkish squadron. Already had he, with a view to the succour of this place, made a generous offer to the Government, which he thus states himself in one of his letters: :"I offered to advance a thousand dollars a month for the succour of Missolonghi, and the Suliotes under Botzari (since killed); but the Government have answered me, that they wish to confer with me previously, which is in fact saying they wish me to expend my money in some other direction. I will take care that it is for the public cause, otherwise I will not advance a para. The opposition say they want to cajole me, and the party in power say the others wish to seduce me, so between the two I have a difficult part to play; however, I will have nothing to do with the factions unless to reconcile them if possible."

In these last few sentences is described briefly the position in which Lord Byron was now placed, and in which the coolness, foresight, and self-possession he displayed sufficiently refute the notion that even the highest powers of imagination, whatever effect they may sometimes produce on the moral temperament, are at all incompatible with the sound practical good sense, the steadily balanced views, which the business of active life requires.

The great difficulty, to an observer of the state or Greece at this crisis, was to be able clearly to distinguish between what was real and what was merely apparent in those tests by which the probability of her future success or failure was to be judged. With a Government little more than nominal, having neither authority nor resources, its executive and legislative branches being openly at variance, and the supplies that ought to fill its exchequer being intercepted by the military Chiefs, who, as they were, in most places, collectors of the revenue, were able to rob by authority;-with that curse of all popular enterprises, a multiplicity of leaders, each selfishly pursuing his own objects, and ready to make the sword the umpire of their claims; with a fleet furnished by private adventure, and therefore precarious; and an army belonging rather to its Chiefs than to the Government, and, accordingly, trusting more to plunder than to pay; - with all these principles of mischief, and, as it would seem, ruin at the very heart of the struggle, it had yet persevered, which was in itself victory, through three trying campaigns; and at this moment presented,

in the midst of all its apparent weakness and distraction, some elements of success which both accounted for what had hitherto been effected, and gave a hope, with more favouring circumstances, of something nobler yet to come.

Besides the never-failing encouragement which the incapacity of their enemies afforded them, the Greeks derived also from the geographical conformation of their country those same advantages with which nature had blessed their great ancestors, and which had contributed mainly perhaps to the formation, as well as maintenance, of their high national character. Islanders and mountaineers, they were, by their very position, heirs to the blessings of freedom and commerce; nor had the spirit of either, through all their long slavery and sufferings, ever wholly died away. They had also, luckily, in a political as well as religious point of view, preserved that sacred line of distinction between themselves and their conquerors which a fond fidelity to an ancient church could alone have maintained for them;-keeping thus holily in reserve, against the hour of struggle, that most stirring of all the excitements to which Freedom can appeal when she points to her flame rising out of the censer of Religion. In addition to these, and all the other moral advantages included in them, for which the Greeks were indebted to their own nature and position, is to be taken also into account the aid and sympathy they had every right to expect from others, as soon as their exertions in their own cause should justify the confidence that it would be something

more than the mere chivalry of generosity to assist them.*

none,

Such seem to have been the chief features of hope which the state of Greece, at this moment, presented. But though giving promise, perhaps, of a lengthened continuance of the struggle, they, in that very promise, postponed indefinitely the period of its success; and checked and counteracted as were these auspicious appearances by the manifold and inherent evils above enumerated, — by a consideration, too, of the resources and obstinacy of the still powerful Turk, and of the little favour with which it was at all probable that the Courts of Europe would ever regard the attempt of any people, under any circumstances, to be their own emancipators, assuredly, but a most sanguine spirit could indulge in the dream that Greece would be able to work out her own liberation, or that aught, indeed, but a fortuitous concurrence of political circumstances could ever accomplish it. Like many other such contests between right and might, it was a cause destined, all felt, to be successful, but at its own ripe hour;-a cause which individuals might keep alive, but which events, wholly independent of them, alone could accomplish, and which, after the hearts, and hopes, and lives of all its bravest defenders had been wasted upon it, would at last to other hands, and

*For a clear and concise sketch of the state of Greece at this crisis, executed with all that command of the subject which a long residence in the country alone could give, see Colonel Leake's "Historical Outline of the Greek Revolution."

even to other means than those contemplated by its first champions, owe its completion.

That Lord Byron, on a nearer view of the state of Greece, saw it much in the light I have here regarded it in, his letters leave no room to doubt. Neither was the impression he had early received of the Greeks themselves at all improved by the present renewal of his acquaintance with them. Though making full allowance for the causes that had produced their degeneracy, he still saw that they were grossly degenerate, and must be dealt with and counted upon accordingly. "I am of St. Paul's opinion," said he, "that there is no difference between Jews and Greeks, the character of both being equally vile." With such means and materials, the work of regeneration, he knew, must be slow; and the hopelessness he therefore felt as to the chances of ever connecting his name with any essential or permanent benefit to Greece, gives to the sacrifice he now made of himself a far more touching interest than had the consciousness of dying for some great object been at once his incitement and reward. He but looked upon himself, to use a favourite illustration of his as one of the many waves that must break upon the shore, before the tide they help to advance can reach its full mark. "What signifies Self," was his generous thought, "if a single spark of that which would be worthy of the past can be bequeathed unquenchedly to the future?"* Such

own,

and die

Diary of 1821. - The same distrustful and, as it turned out, just view of the chances of success were taken by him