GREECE SUBSEQUENT TO THE ROMAN CONQUEST.

I. GREECE UNDER THE ROMANS.

The Romans conducted their administration of Greece with much wisdom and moderation, treating both its religion and municipal institutions with great respect. As MR. FINLAY says, "Under these circumstances prudence and local interests would everywhere favor submission to Rome; national vanity alone would whisper incitements to venture on a struggle for independence." [Footnote: "History of Greece from 146 B.C. to A.D. 1864;" by George Finlay, LL.D.] But the latter induced the Greeks to attempt to regain their liberties at the time of the first Mithridatic war, about 87 B.C. Sylla, the Roman general, marched into Greece at the head of a powerful army, and laid siege to Athens, which made a desperate defence. At last, their resources exhausted, the Athenians sent a deputation of orators to negotiate with the old Roman; and it is stated that "their spokesman began to remind him of their past glory, and was proceeding to touch upon Marathon, when the surly soldier fiercely replied, 'I was sent here to punish rebels, not to study history.' And he did punish them. Breaking down the wall, his soldiers poured into the city, and with drawn swords they swept through the streets." The severe losses sustained by Greece in this rebellion were never repaired. The same historian adds that both parties--Greeks and Romans-- "inflicted severe injuries on Greece, plundered the country, and destroyed property most wantonly. The foundations of national prosperity were undermined; and it henceforward became impossible to save from the annual consumption of the inhabitants, the sums necessary to replace the accumulated capital of ages which this short war had annihilated. In some cases the wealth of the communities became insufficient to keep the existing public works in repair."

Cilician pirates soon after commenced their depredations, and ravaged both the main-land and the islands until expelled by Pompey the Great. The civil wars that overthrew the Roman republic next added to the desolation of Greece; but on the establishment of the Roman empire the country entered upon a career of peace and comparative prosperity. Says a late compiler, [Footnote: Edward L. Burlingame, Ph.D.] "Augustus and his successors generally treated Greece with respect, and some of them distinguished her by splendid imperial favors. Trajan greatly improved her condition by his wise and liberal administration. Hadrian and the Antonines venerated her for her past achievements, and showed their good-will by the care they extended to her works of art, and their patronage of the schools." It was at this time, also, that the Christian religion was gaining great victories 'over the indifference of the people to their ancient rites,' and was thus essentially changing the moral and intellectual condition of Greece. Aside from its power to fill the void in the heart that philosophy, though strengthening the intellect, could not reach, Christianity bore certain relations to the ancient principles of government, that commended it to the acceptance of the Greeks. These relations, and their effects, are thus explained by DR. FELTON and a writer that he quotes: [Footnote: "Lecture on "Greece under the Romans."]

"Besides the peculiar consolations afforded by Christianity to the afflicted of all ranks and classes, there were popular elements in its early forms which could not fail to commend it to the regards of common men. It borrowed the designation ecclesia from the old popular assembly, and liturgy from the services required by law of the richer citizens in the popular festivities. It taught the equality of all men in the sight of God; and this doctrine could not fail to be affectionately welcomed by a conquered people. The Christian congregations were organized upon democratic principles, at least in Greece, and presented a semblance of the free assemblies of former times; and the daily business of communities was, equally with their spiritual affairs, transacted under these popular forms. 'From the moment a people,' says a recent writer, 'in the state of intellectual civilization in which the Greeks were, could listen to the preachers, it was certain they would adopt the religion. They might alter, modify, or corrupt it, but it was impossible they should reject it. The existence of an assembly in which the dearest interests of all human beings were expounded and discussed in the language of truth, and with the most earnest expressions of persuasion, must have lent an irresistible charm to the investigation of the new doctrine among a people possessing the institutions and the feelings of the Greeks. Sincerity, truth, and a desire to persuade others, will soon create eloquence where numbers are gathered together. Christianity revived oratory, and with oratory it awakened many of the characteristics which had slept for ages. The discussions of Christianity gave also new vigor to the commercial and municipal institutions, as they improved the intellectual qualities of the people.'"

Among the imperial friends of Greece, whose reign has been characterized by some writers as "the last fortunate period in the sad annals of that country," was the Emperor Julian, known as "The Apostate." He ascended the throne in 361 A.D.; and, although he sought to overthrow Christianity and re-establish the pagan religion, "he founded charities, aimed at the suppression of vice and profligacy, and was distinguished for his devotion to the happiness of the people." Well educated in early life, he became an accomplished and cultured sovereign, "and in many ways manifested his passionate attachment to Greece, her literature, her institutions, and her arts."

II. CHANGES DOWN TO THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY.

On the establishment of the Eastern empire of the Romans, with Byzantium for its capital, the Greeks began to exert a greater influence in the affairs of government, and, outside of the metropolis itself, the Roman spirit of the administration was gradually destroyed. In the third and fourth centuries Greece suffered from invasions by the Goths and Huns, and all apparent progress was stopped; but during the long reign of Justinian, from 527 to 565, many of its cities were embellished and fortified, and the pagan schools of Athens were closed. No farther events of importance affecting the condition of Greece occurred until the immigrations of the Slavonians and other barbarous races, in the sixth and eighth centuries. The population of Greece had dwindled rapidly, and its revenues were so small that the Eastern emperors cared little to defend it. Hence these northern migratory hordes rapidly acquired possession of its soil. Finally this great body of settlers broke up into a number of tribes and disappeared as a people, leaving behind them, however, still existing evidences of their influence upon the country and its inhabitants.

THE COURTS OF CRUSADING CHIEFTAINS.

The next important changes in the affairs of Greece were wrought by warriors from the West. In 1081 the Norman, Robert Guiscard, and in 1146 Roger, King of Sicily, conquered portions of the country, including Corinth, Thebes, and Athens; and in the time of the fourth Crusade to the Holy Land (1203), when Constantinople was captured by Latin princes (1204), Greece became a prize for some of the most powerful crusading chieftains, under whose rule the courts of Thessaloni'ca, Athens, and the Peloponnesus attained to considerable celebrity even throughout Europe. "But their magnificence," says a writer in the Edinburgh Review, "was entirely modern. It centered wholly round their own persons and interests; and although the condition of the people was in no respects worse, in some respects palpably better, still they did but minister to the glory of the houses of Neri or Acciajuoli, or De la Roche or Brienne. The beautiful structures of Athens and the Acropolis were prized, not as heirlooms of departed greatness, but as the ornaments of a feudal court, and the rewards of successful valor."

The Duchy of Athens was the most interesting and renowned of these Frankish kingdoms; and in one of his lectures PRESIDENT FELTON [Footnote: Lecture on "Turkish Conquest of Constantinople."] points out the traces which this duchy has left here and there in modern literature. "The fame of the brilliant court of Athens," he says, "resounded through the west of Europe, and many a chapter of old romance is filled with gorgeous pictures of its splendors. One of the heroines of Boccacio's Decameron, in the course of her adventurous life, is found at Athens, inspiring the duke by her charms. Dan'te was a contemporary of Guy II. and Walter de Brienne; and in his Divina Commedia he applies to Theseus, King of ancient Athens, the title so familiar to him, borne by the princely rulers in his own day. Chaucer, too--the bright herald of English poetry--had often heard of the dukes of Athens; and he too, like Dante, gives the title to Theseus. Finally, in the age of Elizabeth, when Italian poetry was much studied by scholars and courtiers, Shakspeare, in the delightful scenes of the Midsummer Night's Dream, introduces Theseus, Duke of Athens, as the conqueror and the lover of Hippol'yta, the warrior-queen of the Amazons."

THE TURKISH INVASION.

Some of these Latin principalities and dukedoms existed until they were swept away by the Turks, who, after the fall of Constantinople and the Byzantine Empire in 1453, by degrees obtained possession of Greece.

III. CONTESTS BETWEEN THE TURKS AND VENETIANS.

Greece was long the scene of severe contests between the Turks and the Venetians. Athens was first captured by the Turks in 1456, but they were driven from it in 1467 by the Venetians, who were in turn expelled from the city by the Turks in 1470. But Venice, as a French historian--COMTE DE LABOURDE--has observed, "Alone of the states of Europe could feel, from a merely material point of view, the force of the blow struck at Europe and her own commerce by the submission of almost the whole of Greece to Turkish rule;" and this feeling survived many centuries. In 1670 the Turks conquered Crete from the Venetians, and in 1684 the latter retaliated by offensive operations against the Peloponnesus, which was soon reconquered by the Venetian admiral Morosini. In 1687 Morosini crowned his successes by the capture of Athens. The Turkish garrison had retired to the Acropolis, and the victory is principally of interest on account of the irreparable injury done to the works of art on that "rock-shrine of Athens." Although he subsequently sought to evade all responsibility for the desolation that ensued, it was Morosini who directed his batteries to hurl their fatal burdens against the Acropolis, and it was he who afterward robbed it of many of its treasures. Hitherto the alterations made for military purposes, and the slight injuries inflicted at various times, had not marred the general beauty and effect of its buildings; but when the troops of Venice entered Athens, the Parthenon and others of that gorgeous assemblage of structures were in ruins, and the glory of the Athenian Acropolis survived only in the past. Contrasting its past glory and its present decay, a writer in a recent Review makes these interesting observations:

"No other fortress has embraced so much beauty and splendor within its walls, and none has witnessed a series of more startling and momentous changes in the fortunes of its possessors. Wave after wave of war and conquest has beaten against it. The city which lies at its feet has fallen beneath the assaults of the Persian, the Spartan, the Macedonian, the Roman, the Goth, the Crusader, and the Turk. Through all these and other vicissitudes the Acropolis passed, changing only in the character of its occupants, unchanged in its loveliness and splendor. With a few blemishes and losses, whether from the decaying taste of later times or the occasional robberies of a foreign conqueror, but unaffected in its general aspect, it presented to the eyes of the victorious Ottoman the same front of unparalleled beauty which it had displayed in the days of Pericles. To him who looks upon it now, however, the scene is changed indeed--changed not only in the loss of its treasures of decorative art (for of many of these it had been robbed before), but with its loveliest fabrics shattered, many reduced to hopeless ruin, and not a few utterly obliterated. Less than two centuries sufficed to bring about all this dilapidation: less than three months sufficed to complete the ruin. If the Venetian, by his abortive conquest, inflicted not more injury on the fair heritage of Athenian art than it had undergone from all preceding spoliations, he left it, not merely from the havoc of war, but by wanton subsequent mutilation, in that state which rendered the recovery of its ancient grace and majesty impossible."

The Venetians evacuated Athens in 1688, and a few years subsequently the Peloponnesus was their only possession in Greece. In 1715 a Turkish army of one hundred thousand men under Al'i Coumour'gi, the Grand Vizier of Ach'met III., invaded the Peloponnesus, and first attacked Corinth. Historians tell us that the garrison, weakened by several unsuccessful attacks, opened negotiations for a surrender; but, while these were in progress, the accidental firing of a magazine in the Turkish camp so enraged the infidels that they at once broke off the negotiations, stormed and captured the city, and put most of the garrison, with Signor Minotti, the commander, to the sword. Those taken prisoners were reserved for execution under the walls of Nauplia, within sight of the Venetians.

In BYRON'S Siege of Corinth, founded on the historical narrative; a poetical license is taken, and the death of Minotti and the remnant of his followers is attributed to the explosion of a powder-magazine fired by Minotti himself. From the fine descriptions which this poem contains we extract the following verses:

Having made a breach in the walls, as morning dawns the Turks form in line, and wait for the word to storm the intrenchments. Coumourgi addresses them--the command is given, and with the irresistible force of an avalanche the infidels pour into Corinth.

Minotti, though an old man, has an "arm full of might," and he disputes, foot by foot, the successful and deadly onslaughts of the Turks. He finally retires, with the remnant of his gallant band, to the fortified church, where lie the last and richest spoils sought by the infidels, and in the vaults beneath which, lined with the dead of ages gone, was also "the Christians' chiefest magazine." To the latter a train had been laid, and, seizing a blazing torch, his "last and stern resource,"

and awaits the last attack of his foes. It soon comes.

IV. FINAL CONQUEST OF GREECE BY TURKEY.

The fall of Corinth opened the way to a successful advance of the Turkish forces through the Peloponnesus, and the Venetians were soon compelled to abandon it. By the peace of PassÄ'rowitz, in 1718, the whole of Greece was again surrendered to Turkey, and under her rule the country, divided into military districts called Pasha'lics, sunk into a deplorable condition which the progress of time did nothing to ameliorate. The Greeks, being virtually reduced to bondage, suffered untold miseries from the rapacity and barbarism of their masters. Says the historian, SIR EMERSON TENNENT, "So undefined was the system of extortion, and so uncontrolled the power of those to whose execution it was intrusted, that the evil spread over the whole system of administration, and insinuated itself with a polypous fertility into every relation and ordinance of society, till there were few actions or occupations of the Greeks that were not burdened with the scrutiny and interference of their masters, and none that did not suffer, in a greater or less degree, from their heartless rapine." For four centuries and over the Greeks suffered under this despotism, which stamped out industry and education, and tended to the extinction of every manly trait in the people, while it also developed the native vices of the Hellenic character.

In a poem written in 1786 by the afterward celebrated British statesman, GEORGE CANNING, the writer, after paying a handsome tribute to the greatness and glory of the Greece of olden time, draws the following truthful picture of her degeneracy in his own day:

In 1810-'11 the poet BYRON spent considerable time in Greece, visiting its many scenes of historic interest, and noting the condition of its people. Here he wrote the second canto of Childe Harold, in which the following fine apostrophe and appeal to Greece, still under Moslem rule, are found:

FIRST STEPS TO SECURE LIBERTY.

Although the oppressive domination of the Turks was tamely submitted to for so many centuries, the Greeks did not entirely lose their national spirit, nor their devotion to their religion and their domestic institutions; and long before Byron wrote, Greece began preparations to break the Turkish yoke. The preservation of the national spirit was largely due to the warlike inhabitants of the mountainous regions of the north, who maintained their independence against the bloody tyranny of the Turks, and continually harassed their camps and villages. These mountaineers were known as Klephts; and though they were literally robbers, ofttimes plundering the Greeks as well as the Turks, yet, on the decline of the Armato'li--the Christian local militia which the Turks attempted to crush out--the Klephts acquired political and social importance as a permanent class in the Greek nation; and, as DR. FELTON says, "When the Revolution broke out, the courage, temperance, and hardihood of these bands were among the most effective agencies in rescuing Greece from the blighting tyranny of the Turks." This writer characterizes the ballads of the Klephts as "full of fire, and redolent of the mountain life, which had an irresistible charm for young and adventurous spirits chafing under the domination of the Turks in the lowlands;" and to him we are indebted for a literal version of one of these ballads, representing the feelings of a young man who had resolved to leave his mother's home and betake himself to the mountains, and "illustrating at once the impatient spirit of rebellion against the Turks, and the sweet flow of natural poetry which was ever welling up in the hearts of the people." [Footnote: This ballad is taken from "a collection published by Zampelios, a Greek gentleman, and a native of Leucadia."]

"Mother, I can no longer be a slave to the Turks; I cannot--my heart fights against it. I will take my gun and go and become a Klepht; to dwell on the mountains, among the lofty ridges; to have the woods for my companions, and my converse with the beasts; to have the snow for my covering, the rocks for my bed; with sons of the Klephts to have my daily habitation. I will go, mother, and do not weep, but give me thy prayer. And we will pray, my dear mother, that I may slaughter many a Turk. Plant the rose, and plant the dark carnation, and give them sugar and musk to drink; and as long, O mother mine, as the flowers blossom and put forth, thy son is not dead, but is warring with the Turks. But if a day of sorrow come, a day of woe, and the plants fade away, and the flowers fall, then I too shall have been slain, and thou must clothe thyself in black.'

"Twelve years passed, and five months, while the roses blossomed and the buds bloomed; and one spring morning, the first of May, when the birds were singing and heaven was smiling, at once it thundered and lightened, and grew dark. The carnation sighed, the rose wept, both withered away together, and the flowers fell; and with them the hapless mother became a lifeless heap of earth."

The last half of the eighteenth century witnessed, in Greece, the first general desire for liberty. Secret societies were formed to aid in the emancipation of the country, and "eminent writers, at home and abroad, appealed to the glorious recollections of Greece in order to excite a universal enthusiasm for freedom." Among the latter may be mentioned CONSTANTINOS RHIGAS, a native of Thessaly, born in 1753, a man of fine accomplishments and an ardent patriot, whose lyric ballads are said to have "rung through Greece like a trumpet," and who has been styled "the TyrtÆ'us of modern Greece." One of his war-songs has been thus translated:

Another poet, POLYZOIS, writes in a similar vein:

It may be stated that Rhigas, having visited Vienna with the hope of rousing the wealthy Greek residents of that city to immediate action, was barbarously surrendered to the Turks by the Austrian government. On the way to execution he broke from his guards and killed two of them, but was overpowered and immediately beheaded.

V. THE GREEK REVOLUTION.

The various efforts made by the Greeks in behalf of freedom, or, as more comprehensively stated by a recent writer, "The constancy with which they clung to the Christian Church during four centuries of misery and political annihilation; their immovable faithfulness to their nationality under intolerable oppression; the intellectual superiority they never failed to exhibit over their tyrants; the love of humane letters which they never, in all their sorrows, lost; and the wise preparation they made for the struggle by means of schools, and by the circulation of editions of their own ancient authors, and translations of the most instructive works in modern literature" --these were the influences which finally impelled the Greeks to seek their restoration in armed insurrection, that first broke out in the spring of 1821, and that ushered in the great Greek Revolution. On the 7th of March Alexander Ypsilanti, a Greek, who had been a major-general in the Russian army, proclaimed from Moldavia the independence of Greece, and assured his countrymen of the aid of Russia in the approaching contest. But the Russian emperor declined intervention; and the Porte took the most vigorous measures against the Greeks, calling upon all Mussulmen to arm against the rebels for the protection of Islamism. The wildest fanaticism raged in Constantinople, where thousands of resident Greeks were remorselessly murdered; and in Moldavia the bloody struggle was terminated by the annihilation of the patriot army, and the flight of Ypsilanti to Trieste, where the Austrian government seized and imprisoned him.

In southern Greece, however, no cruelties could quench the fire of liberty; and sixteen days after the proclamation of Ypsilanti the revolution of the Morea began at Suda, a large village in the northern part of Acha'ia, and spread over Achaia and the islands of the Æge'an. The ancient names were revived; and on the 6th of April the Messenian senate, assembled at KalamÄ'ta, proclaimed that Greece had shaken off the Turkish yoke to preserve the Christian faith and restore the ancient character of the country. A formal address was made by that body to the people of the United States, and was forwarded to this country. It declared that, "having deliberately resolved to live or die for freedom, the Greeks were drawn by an irresistible impulse to the people of the United States." In that early stage of the struggle, however, the address failed to excite that sympathy which, as we shall see farther on, the progress of events and a better understanding of the situation finally awakened.

During the summer months the Turks committed great depredations among the Greek towns on the coast of Asia Minor; the inhabitants of the Island of Candia, who had taken no part in the insurrection, were disarmed, and their archbishop and other prelates were murdered. The most barbarous atrocities were also committed at Rhodes and other islands of the Grecian Archipelago, where the villages were burned and the country desolated. But in August the Greeks captured the strong Turkish fortresses of Monembasi'a and NavarÏ'no, and in October that of Tripolit'za, and took a terrible revenge upon their enemies. In Tripolitza alone eight thousand Turks were put to death. The excesses of the Turks showed to the Greeks that their struggle was one of life and death; and it is not surprising, therefore, that they often retaliated when the power was in their hands. In September of the same year the Greek general Ulysses defeated a large Turkish army near the Pass of ThermopylÆ; but, on the other hand, the peninsula of Cassandra, the ancient Pelle'ne, was taken by the Turks, and over three thousand Greeks were put to the sword. The Athenian Acropolis was seized and garrisoned by the Turks, and the people of Athens, as in olden time, fled to Sal'amis for safety; but in general, throughout all southern Greece, the close of the year saw the Turks driven from the country districts and shut up in the principal cities.

A PROPHETIC VISION OF THE STRUGGLE.

When the revolution of the Greeks broke out the English poet SHELLEY was residing in Italy. It was during the first year of the war that Shelley, filled with enthusiasm for the Greek cause, wrote, from the scanty materials that were then accessible, his beautiful dramatic poem of Hellas; and although he could at that time narrate but few events of the struggle, yet his prophecies of the final result came true in their general import. Forming his poem on the basis of the Persians of Æschylus, the scene opens with a chorus of Greek captive women, who thus sing of the course of Freedom, from the earliest ages until the light of her glory returns to rest upon and renovate their benighted land:

In the farther prosecution of his narrative, the poet represents the Turkish Sultan, Mahmoud, as being strongly moved by dreams of the threatened overthrow of his power; and he accordingly sends for Ahasuerus, an aged Jew, to interpret them. In the mean time the chorus of women sings the final triumph of the Cross over the crescent, and the fleeing away of the dark "powers of earth and air" before the advancing light of the "Star of Bethlehem:"

In the language of Hassan, an attendant of Mahmoud, the poet then summarizes the events attending the opening of the struggle, giving a picture of the course of European politics--Egypt sending her armies and fleets to aid the Sultan against the rebel world; England, Queen of Ocean, upon her island throne, holding herself aloof from the contest; Russia, indifferent whether Greece or Turkey conquers, but watching to stoop upon the victor; and Austria, while hating freedom, yet fearing the success of freedom's enemies. The poet could not foresee that change in English politics which subsequently permitted England, aided by France and Russia, to interfere in behalf of Greece. Hassan says:

Although Hassan recounts the numbers of the Sultan's armies, and the strength of his forts and arsenals, yet the desponding Mahmoud, watching the declining moon, thus symbolizes it as the wan emblem of his fading power:

As messenger after messenger approaches, and informs the Sultan of the revolutionary risings in different parts of his empire, he refuses to hear more, and takes refuge in that fatalistic philosophy which is an unfailing resource of the followers of the Prophet in all their reverses:

When the Jew, Ahasuerus, at length arrives, he speaks in oracular terms, and calls up visions which increase the Sultan's fears; and when the latter hears shouts of transient victory over the Greeks, he regards it but as the expiring gleam which serves to make the coming darkness the more terrible. He thus soliloquizes:

Although the poet predicts series of disasters and periods of gloom for struggling Greece, yet, at the close of the poem, a brighter age than any she has known is represented as gleaming upon her "through the sunset of hope."

The year 1822 opened with the assembling of the first Greek congress at Epidau'rus, the proclaiming of a provisional constitution on the 13th of January, and the issuing, on the 27th, of a declaration that announced the union of all Greece, with an independent federative government under the presidency of Alexander MavrocordÄ'to. But the Greeks, unaccustomed to exercise the rights of freemen, were unable at once to establish a wise and firm government: they often quarreled among themselves; and those who had exercised an independent authority under the government of the Turks were with difficulty induced to submit to the control of the central government. The few men of intelligence and liberal views among them had a difficult task to perform; but the wretchedly undisciplined state of the Turkish armies aided its successful accomplishment. The principal military events of the year were the terrible massacre of the inhabitants of the Island of Scio by the Turks in April; the defeat of the latter in the Morea, where more than twenty thousand of them were slain; the successes of the Greek fire-ships, by which many Turkish vessels were destroyed; and the surrender to the Greeks of Nap'oli di Roma'nia, the ancient Nauplia, the port of Argos. By the destruction of the Island of Scio a paradise was changed into a scene of desolation, and more than forty thousand persons were killed or sold into slavery. Soon after, one hundred and fifty villages in southern Macedonia experienced the fate of Scio; and the pasha of Saloni'ca boasted that he had destroyed, in one day, fifteen hundred women and children.

Goaded to desperation, rather than disheartened by their reverses and the remorseless cruelties of the Turks, the Greeks struggled bravely on, and during the year 1823 the results of the contest were generally in their favor. They often proved themselves worthy sons of those who fell

or on the plains of Marathon. Their patriotic determination to be free, or die in the attempt, is happily reflected in the following lines by the poet CAMPBELL, whose heart beat in sympathy with their efforts for liberty.

AMERICAN SYMPATHY WITH GREECE.

The progress of events in 1822 and 1823 made friends for the Greeks wherever free principles were cherished; and from England and America large contributions of money, clothing, and provisions, were forwarded to relieve the sufferings inflicted by the wanton cruelties of the Turks. It was the United States, however, as the first American Minister to Greece, MR. TUCKERMAN, says, that first responded, "in the words of President Monroe, Webster, Clay, Everett, Dwight, and hosts of other lights," to the appeal of the Greek senate at KalamÄta, made in 1821. When Congress assembled in December, 1823, President Monroe made the revolution in Greece the subject of a paragraph in his annual message, in which he expressed the hope of success to the Greeks and disaster to the Turks; and Mr. Webster subsequently introduced a resolution in the House of Representatives providing for the appointment of an agent or commissioner to Greece. These were the first official expressions favorable to the struggling country uttered by any government; and in speaking to his resolution in January, 1824, Mr. Webster began his remarks as follows:

"An occasion which calls the attention to a spot so distinguished, so connected with interesting recollections, as Greece, may naturally create something of warmth and enthusiasm. In a grave political discussion, however, it is necessary that those feelings should be chastened. I shall endeavor properly to repress them, although it is impossible that they should be altogether extinguished. We must, indeed, fly beyond the civilized world; we must pass the dominion of law and the boundaries of knowledge; we must, more especially, withdraw ourselves from this place, and the scenes and objects which here surround us, if we would separate ourselves entirely from the influence of all those memorials of herself which ancient Greece has transmitted for the admiration and the benefit of mankind. This free form of government, this popular assembly--the common council for the common good--where have we contemplated its earliest models? This practice of free debate and public discussion, the contest of mind with mind, and that popular eloquence which, if it were now here, on a subject like this, would move the stones of the Capitol--whose was the language in which all these were first exhibited? Even the edifice in which we assemble, these proportioned columns, this ornamented architecture, all remind us that Greece has existed, and that we, like the rest of mankind, are greatly her debtors.

"But I have not introduced this motion in the vain hope of discharging anything of this accumulated debt of centuries. I have not acted upon the expectation that we who have inherited this obligation from our ancestors should now attempt to pay it to those who may seem to have inherited from their ancestors a right to receive payment. My object is nearer and more immediate. I wish to take occasion of the struggle of an interesting and gallant people in the cause of liberty and Christianity, to draw the attention of the House to the circumstances which have accompanied that struggle, and to the principles which appear to have governed the conduct of the great states of Europe in regard to it, and to the effects and consequences of these principles upon the independence of nations, and especially upon the institutions of free governments. What I have to say of Greece, therefore, concerns the modern, not the ancient--the living, and not the dead. It regards her, not as she exists in history, triumphant over time, and tyranny, and ignorance, but as she now is, contending against fearful odds for being, and for the common privileges of human nature."

In an argument of some length Mr. Webster forcibly condemns the then existing policy of the European Powers, who, holding that all changes in legislation and administration "ought to proceed from kings alone," were therefore "wholly inexorable to the sufferings of the Greeks, and entirely hostile to their success." He demands that the protest of this government shall be made against this policy, both as it is laid down in principle and as it is applied in practice; and he closes his address with the following references to the determination of the Greeks and the sympathy their struggle should receive:

"Constantinople and the northern provinces have sent forth thousands of troops; they have been defeated. Tripoli, and Algiers, and Egypt have contributed their marine contingents; they have not kept the ocean. Hordes of Tartars have crossed the Bosphorus; they have died where the Persians died. The powerful monarchies in the neighborhood have denounced the Greek cause, and admonished the Greeks to abandon it and submit to their fate. They have answered that, although two hundred thousand of their countrymen have offered up their lives, there yet remain lives to offer; and that it is the determination of all--'yes, of ALL'--to persevere until they shall have established their liberty, or until the power of their oppressors shall have relieved them from the burden of existence. It may now be asked, perhaps, whether the expression of our own sympathy, and that of the country, may do them good? I hope it may. It may give them courage and spirit; it may assure them of public regard, teach them that they are not wholly forgotten by the civilized world, and inspire them with constancy in the pursuit of their great end. At any rate, it appears to me that the measure which I have proposed is due to our own character, and called for by our own duty. When we have discharged that duty we may leave the rest to the disposition of Providence. I am not of those who would, in the hour of utmost peril, withhold such encouragement as might be properly and lawfully given, and, when the crisis should be past, overwhelm the rescued sufferer with kindness and caresses. The Greeks address the civilized world with a pathos not easy to be resisted. They invoke our favor by more moving considerations than can well belong to the condition of any other people. They stretch out their arms to the Christian communities of the earth, beseeching them, by a generous recollection of their ancestors, by the consideration of their desolated and ruined cities and villages, by their wives and children sold into an accursed slavery, by their blood, which they seem willing to pour out like water, by the common faith and in the name which unites all Christians, that they would extend to them at least some token of compassionate regard."

THE SORTIE AT MISSOLONGHI.

One of the noted exploits of the Greeks in 1823, and one that has been commemorated in many ways, occurred at Missolon'ghi, the capital of Acarnania and Ætolia, while that town was besieged by a Turkish army; and the name of Marco Boz-zar'is, the commander of the garrison, has ever since been classed with that of Leonidas and other heroes of ancient Greece who fell in the moment of victory. In his Crescent and the Cross; or, Romance and Realities of Eastern Travel, the English author WARBURTON thus tells the story of the well-known deed that saved Missolonghi to the Greeks and hastened the delivery of their country:

"When Missolonghi was beleaguered by the Turkish forces, Marco Bozzaris commanded a garrison of about twelve hundred men, who had barely fortifications enough to form breastworks. Intelligence reached him that an Egyptian army was about to form a junction with the formidable besieging host. A parade was ordered of the garrison, 'faint and few, but fearless still.' Bozzaris told them of the destruction that impended over Missolonghi, proposed a sortie, and announced that it should consist only of volunteers. Volunteers! The whole garrison stepped forward as one man, and demanded the post of honor and of death. 'I will only take the ThermopylÆ number,' said their leader; and he selected the three hundred from his true and trusty Suliotes. In the dead of night this devoted band marched out in six divisions, which were placed, in profound silence, around the Turkish camp. Their orders were simply, 'When you hear my bugle blow seek me in the pasha's tent.'

"Marco Bozzaris, disguised as an Albanian bearing dispatches to the pasha from the Egyptian army, passed unquestioned through the Turkish camp, and was only arrested by the sentinels around the pasha's tent, who informed him that he must wait till morning. Then wildly through the stillness of the night that bugle blew; faithfully it was echoed from without; and the war-cry of the avenging Greek broke upon the Moslem's ear. From every side that terrible storm seemed to break at once; shrieks of agony and terror swelled the tumult. The Turks fled in all directions, and the Grecian leader was soon surrounded by his comrades. Struck to the ground by a musket-ball, he had himself raised on the shoulders of two Greeks; and, thus supported, he pressed on the flying enemy. Another bullet pierced his brain in the hour of his triumph, and he was borne dead from the field of his glory." But Missolonghi was saved, and under Constantine and Noto Bozzaris, brothers of the dead hero, it withstood repeated assaults of the Turks, until, in 1826, after having been besieged for over a year by a very large naval and military force, it was finally taken. Those left of the small garrison who were able to fight, placing the women in the center, sallied forth at midnight of the 22d of April, and cut their way through the Turkish camp; while those who were too feeble to attempt an escape assembled in a large mill that was used as a powder-magazine, and blew themselves and many of the incoming Turks to atoms.

Some fifteen years after the death of Marco Bozzaris, the American traveller and author, Mr. John L. Stephens, visited Greece, and, at Missolonghi, was presented to Constantine Bozzaris and the widow and children of his deceased brother. In the account which the author gives of this interview, in his Incidents of Travel in Greece, he describes Constantine Bozzaris, then a colonel in the service of King Otho, as a man of about fifty years of age, of middle height and spare build, who, immediately after the formal introduction, expressed his gratitude as a Greek for the services rendered his country by America; and added, "with sparkling eye and flushed cheek, that when the Greek revolutionary flag sailed into the port of Napoli di Romania, among hundreds of vessels of all nations, an American captain was the first to recognize and salute it." Mr. Stephens thus describes the widow of the Greek hero: "She was under forty, tall and stately in person, and habited in deep black. She looked the widow of a hero; as one worthy of those Grecian mothers who gave their hair for bow-strings and their girdles for sword-belts, and, while their heartstrings were cracking, sent their husbands to fight and perish for their country. Perhaps it was she who led Marco Bozzaris from the wild guerilla warfare in which he had passed his early life, and fired him with the high and holy ambition of freeing his country. I am certain that no man could look her in the face without finding his wavering purposes fixed, and without treading more firmly in the path of high and honorable ambition."

Mr. Stephens closes the account of his interview with the widow and family as follows: "At parting I told them that the name of Marco Bozzaris was as familiar in America as that of a hero of our own Revolution, and that it had been hallowed by the inspiration of an American poet. I added that, if it would not be unacceptable, on my return to my native country I would send the tribute referred to, as an evidence of the feeling existing in America toward the memory of Marco Bozzaris." The promised tribute was the following Beautiful and stirring poem by FITZ-GREENE HALLECK:

About the time of the exploit of Bozzaris, Lord Byron arrived in Greece, to take an active part in aid of Greek independence, and proceeded to Missolonghi in January, 1824. No warmer friend of the Greeks than Byron ever lived; but while he sympathized with, and was anxious to aid in every way possible, those who, in his own words, "suffered all the moral and physical ills that could afflict humanity," it was evidently his honest belief that the only salvation for Greece lay in her becoming a British dependency. In his notes to Childe Harold, penned before the revolution broke out, but while all Greece was ablaze with the desire for liberty, he wrote as follows: "The Greeks will never be independent; they will never be sovereigns, as heretofore, and God forbid they ever should! but they may be subjects without being slaves. Our colonies are not independent, but they are free and industrious, and such may Greece be hereafter." These words show that he considered Greece incapable of self-government, should she ever regain her liberty; and he therefore deprecated a return to her ancient sovereignty. That this was his view, and that he subsequently designed to give it effect in his own person, we are assured from the well-founded belief, derived from his own declarations, that when he joined the Greek cause he had a mind to place himself at its head, hoping and perhaps believing that he might become King of Hellas, under the protection of Great Britain. But whatever his plans may have been, they were cut short by his death, at Missolonghi, on the 19th of April following his arrival there.

INTERFERENCE OF THE GREAT POWERS.

In the campaign of 1824, while the Greeks lost Candia and the strongly fortified rocky isle of Ip'sara, a Turkish fleet was repulsed off Samos, and a large Egyptian fleet, sent to attack the Morea, was frustrated in all its designs. The campaign of 1825, however, was opened by the landing, in the Morea, of a large Egyptian army, under Ibrahim PÄsha, son of the Viceroy of Egypt. NavarÏ'no soon fell into his power; and at the time of the fall of Missolonghi, in the following year, be was in possession of most of southern Greece, and many of the islands of the Archipelago. The foundation of an Egyptian military and slave-holding state now seemed to be laid in Europe; and this danger, combined with the noble defence and sufferings at Missolonghi and elsewhere, attracted the serious attention of the European governments and people; numerous philanthropic societies were formed to aid the Greeks, and finally three of the great European powers were moved to interfere in their behalf. On the 6th of July, 1827, a treaty was concluded at London between England, Russia, and France, stipulating that the Greeks should govern themselves, but that they should pay tribute to the Porte.

To enforce this treaty a combined English, French, and Russian squadron sailed to the Grecian Archipelago; but the Turkish Sultan haughtily rejected the intervention of the three powers, and the troops of Ibrahim Pasha continued their devastations in the Morea. On the 20th of October the allied squadron, under the command of the English admiral, Edward Codrington, entered the harbor of Navarino, where the Turkish-Egyptian fleet lay at anchor; and a sanguinary naval battle followed, in which the allies nearly destroyed the fleet of the enemy. Although this action was spoken of by the British government as an "untoward event," Admiral Codrington was rewarded both by England and Russia; and the poet CAMPBELL, in the following lines on the battle, naturally praises him for planning and striking this decisive blow for Grecian liberty:

The result of the conflict at Navarino so enraged the Turks that they stopped all communication with the allied powers, and prepared for war. In the following year (1828) France and England sent an army to the Morea: Russia declared war for violations of treaties, and depredations upon her commerce; and on the 7th of May a Russian army of one hundred and fifteen thousand men, under Count Witt'genstein, crossed the Pruth, and by the 2d of July had taken seven fortresses from the Turks. In August a convention was concluded with Ibrahim PÄsha, who agreed to evacuate the Morea, and set his Greek prisoners at liberty. In the mean time the Greeks continued the war, drove the Turks from the country north of the Corinthian Gulf, and fitted out numerous privateers to prey upon the commerce of their enemy. In January, 1829, the Sultan received a protocol from the three allied powers, declaring that they took the Morea and the Cyc'lades under their protection, and that the entry of any military force into Greece would be regarded as an attack upon themselves. The danger of open war with France and England, as well as the successes and alarming advances of the Russians, now commanded by Marshal Die'bitsch, who had meantime taken Adrianople, within one hundred and thirty miles of the Turkish capital, induced the Sultan to listen to overtures of peace; and on the 14th of September "the peace of Adrianople" was signed by Turkey and Russia, by which the former recognized the independence of Greece.

VI. GREECE UNDER A CONSTITUTIONAL MONARCHY.

Though freed from her Turkish oppressors, Greece was severely agitated by domestic discontents, jealousies, and even manifest turbulence. Count CÄ'po d'Is'tria, a Greek in the service of Russia, who had been chosen, in 1828, president of the provisional government, aroused suspicions that he designed to establish a despotism in his own person, and he was assassinated in 1831. A period of anarchy followed. The great powers had previously determined to erect Greece into a monarchy, and had first offered the crown to Prince Leopold, afterward King of Belgium, who, having accepted the offer, soon after declined it on account of the unwillingness of the Greeks to receive him, and their dissatisfaction with the territorial boundaries prescribed for them. Finally, the boundaries of the kingdom having been more satisfactorily determined by a treaty between Turkey and the powers in 1832, the crown was conferred on Otho, a Bavarian prince, who arrived at Nauplia, the then capital of Greece, in 1833. Athens became the seat of government in 1835. Says a writer in the British Quarterly, "The Greeks neither elected their own sovereign nor chose their national polity. In a spirit of generous confidence they allowed the three protecting powers to name a king for them, and the powers rewarded them by making the worst selection they could. They gave the Greeks a boy of seventeen, with neither a character to form nor an intellect to develop."

The treaty by which Otho was placed on the throne made no provision for a constitution, but one was expected; and, after ten years of oppressive subjection by the king and his Bavarian minions, both the people and a revolted soldiery surrounded the palace, and demanded a constitution. The king acquiesced, a national assembly was held, and a constitution was framed which received the king's approval in March, 1844. In this bloodless revolution we have an instance both of the determination, and peaceable, orderly, and well-disposed tendencies of the Greek people. An eye-witness of the scene has thus described it:

"I well recollect the uprising of 1843. Exasperated by the miserable rule of Otho, a plot was hatched to wrench a constitution from him, and when everything was ripe the Athenians arose. At midnight the hoofs of horses were heard clanging on the pavements, and the flash of torches gleamed in the streets, as the populace and military hurried toward the palace; and when the amber-colored dawn lighted the Acropolis and the plain of Athens, the king found himself surrounded by his happy subjects, and discovered two field-pieces pointing into the entrance of the royal residence. A constitution was demanded in firm but respectful terms--it being suggested at the same time that, if the request were not granted by four o'clock in the afternoon, fire would be opened on the palace. In the mean while all Athens was gathered in the open space around the palace, chatting, cracking jokes, taking snuff, and smoking, as if they had assembled to witness a show or hear the reading of a will. Not a shot was fired; no violence was offered or received; and precisely as the limiting hour arrived, the obstinate king succumbed to his besiegers, and the multitude quietly dispersed to their homes." [Footnote: B. G. W. Benjamin, in "The Turk and the Greek."]

The Constitution which the Greeks secured contained no real guarantee for the legislative rights of the people, and the minor benefits it gave them were ignored by the government. A continuance of the severe contests between the national party and foreign intriguers materially interfered with the prosperity of the country. Other events, also, now occurred to disturb it. In 1847 a diplomatic difficulty with Turkey, and, in 1848, a difference with England, that arose from various claims of English subjects, and that continued for several years, assumed threatening proportions, and were only terminated by the submission of Greece to the demands made upon her. When the Crimean war broke out, Greece took a decided stand in favor of Russia; but England and France soon compelled her to assume and maintain a strictly neutral position. In 1859 the residents of the Ionian Islands, which were under the protectorate of England, sought annexation to Greece, and manifested their intentions in great popular demonstrations, and even insurrections; but Greece, though sympathizing with them, was too feeble to aid them, and no change was then made in their relations.

THE DEPOSITION OF KING OTHO.

While these events were transpiring, the feeling of hostility toward King Otho and the royal family was taking deeper root with the Greek people, and open demonstrations of violence were frequently made. The king promised more liberal measures of government; but these fell short of the popular demand, and the Greeks resolved to dethrone the dynasty. In October, 1862, after several violent demonstrations elsewhere, matters culminated in a successful revolution at Athens. A provisional government was established by the leaders of the popular party, who decreed the deposition of the king. Otho, who was absent from Athens at the time, on a visit to Napoli, finding himself without a throne did not return to Athens, but issued a proclamation taking leave of Greece, and sailed for Germany in an English frigate. He had occupied the throne just thirty years. MR. TUCKERMAN thus describes him: "An honest-hearted man, but without intellectual strength, dressed in the Greek fustinella, he endeavored to be Greek in spirit; but under his braided jacket his heart beat to foreign measures, and his ear inclined to foreign counsels. But for the quicker-witted Amelia, the queen, his follies would have worn out the patience of the people sooner than they did." The condition of Greece under his government is thus described by the writer in the British Quarterly, who wrote immediately after the coup d'État:

"To outward appearance, the Greece which the Philhel'lenists of the days of Canning declared to be re-animated and restored, has presented, during thirty years of settled government, the aspect of a country corrupt, intriguing, venal, and poor. The government has kept faith neither with its subjects nor with its creditors; it has endeavored, by all means in its power, to crush the constitutional liberties of its subjects; and by refusing, throughout this period, to pay a single drachma of its public debt, it has stamped itself either hopelessly bankrupt or scandalously fraudulent. The people, meanwhile, crushed by the incubus of a dishonest and extravagant foreign rule, remain in nearly the situation they held on the first establishment of their kingdom. In a word, Greece was thirty years ago transferred from one despotism to another. The Bavarian rule was no appreciable mitigation of the Turkish rule. If the Christian monarch hated his Hellenic subjects less than the Mussulman monarch, he was still more ignorant of the conditions of prosperous government."

THE ACCESSION OF KING GEORGE.

If it has ever had an existence, Greek independence may be properly dated from the deposition of the Bavarian dynasty. In December, 1862, a committee appointed by the provisional government ordered the election of a new king. The national assembly shortly after met at Athens, and, having first confirmed the deposition of Otho, of those proposed as candidates for the vacant throne by the European powers, Prince Alfred of England was elected by an immense majority on the first ballot. This choice of a scion of the freest and most stable of the constitutional monarchies of Europe, was an expression of the desire and the resolve of the Greek people to secure as full political and civil liberties as was possible for them under a monarchical government. But Prince Alfred was held ineligible in consequence of a clause in the protocol of the protecting powers, which declared that the government of Greece should not be confided to a prince chosen from the reigning families of those states. Thereupon, in March, 1863, Prince George of Denmark, the present king, was unanimously elected by the assembly, and his election was confirmed by the great powers in the following July. There is every reason to suppose that England assumed the honor of choosing Prince George. On the withdrawal of Prince Alfred she expressed her willingness to abandon her protectorate of the Ionian Islands, and cede them to Greece, provided a king were chosen to whom the English government could not object. The Ionian Islands were ceded to Greece within two months after the accession of King George; and Mr. Tuckerman relates that, "when Prince Christian, King of Denmark, was in London, attending the marriage of his daughter to the Prince of Wales, Lord John Russell discovered the second son of Prince Christian in the uniform of a midshipman, and suggested his name as the successor of Otho."

King George took the constitutional oath in October, 1863. In 1866 the revolution in Crete, or Candia, broke out, and, owing to Greek sympathy with the insurrectionists, thousands of whom found an asylum in Greece, grave complications arose between Greece and Turkey, which were only settled by a conference of the great powers in 1869. By the treaty with the Porte in 1832 the boundary line of Greece had been settled in an arbitrary manner, by running it from the Gulf of Volo along the chain of the Othrys Mountains to the Gulf of Arta--by which Greece was deprived of the high fertile plains of Thessaly and Epirus, the largest and richest of classical Greece. At the close of the late Russian-Turkish war, however, the boundary line was changed by the powers so as to include within the kingdom a large portion of those ancient possessions; but this change occasioned serious conflicts between the government and the people of the annexed districts, and difficulties also arose with Turkey in consequence. But these were finally settled by an amendment to the treaty, passed in 1881."

With the exceptions just noted, no important events have disturbed the peace of Greece since the accession of King George. In him the country has a ruler of capacity, who is in great measure his own adviser, and who comprehends the chief wish of his subjects, "that Greece shall govern Greece." As MR. TUCKERMAN has said of him, "Unlike his predecessor, he is a Greek by sympathy of language and ideas. He feels the popular pulse and tries to keep time with it, not more as a matter of policy than from national sympathy; and his hands are comparatively free of the impediment of those foreign ministerial counselors who, each struggling for supremacy, united only in checking the political advancement of the kingdom." It was no fault of the Greek people that, under King Otho, Greece failed to make the internal advancement that was expected of her on her escape from Moslem tyranny. It was the fault of the government; for, when a better government came, there was a corresponding change in the inner life of the people; and at the present time, with the freest of constitutional monarchies, and under the guidance of a ruler so sympathetic, competent, and popular, redeemed Greece is making rapid strides in intellectual and material progress. Of this progress we have the following account by a prominent American divine, a recent visitor to that country:

Progress in Modern Greece.

[Footnote: Rev. Joseph Cook, in the New York Independent, February, 1883.]

"You lean over the parapet of the Acropolis, on the side toward the modern city, and look in vain for the print of that Venetian leprous scandal and that Turkish hoof which for six hundred years trod Greece into the slime. In the long bondage to the barbarian, the Hellenic spirit was weakened, but not broken. The Greek, with his fine texture, loathes the stolid, opaque temperament of the polygamistic Turk. Intermarriages between the races are very few. The Greek race is not extinct. In many rural populations in Greece the modern Hellenic blood is as pure as the ancient. Only Hellenic blood explains Hellenic countenances, yet easily found; the Hellenic language, yet wonderfully incorrupt; and the Hellenic spirit, omnipresent in liberated Greece. Fifty years ago not a book could be bought at Athens. To-day one in eighteen of the whole population of Greece is in school. In 1881 thirteen very tall factory chimney-stacks could be counted in the PirÆ'us, not one of which was there in 1873. It is pathetic to find Greece at last opening, on the Acropolis and in the heart of Athens, national museums for the sacred remnants of her own ancient art, which have been pillaged hitherto for the enrichment of the museums of all Western Europe. During sixty years of independence the Hellenic spirit has doubled the population of Greece, increased her revenues five hundred per cent., extended telegraphic communication over the kingdom, enlarged the fleet from four hundred and forty to five thousand vessels, opened eight ports, founded eleven new cities, restored forty ruined towns, changed Athens from a hamlet of hovels to a city of seventy thousand inhabitants, and planted there a royal palace, a legislative chamber, ten type-foundries, forty printing establishments, twenty newspapers, an astronomical observatory, and a university with eighty professors and fifteen hundred students. After little more than half a century of independence, the Hellenic spirit devotes a larger percentage of public revenue to purposes of instruction than France, Italy, England, Germany, or even the United States. Modern Greece, sixty years ago a slave and a beggar, to-day, by the confession of the most merciless statisticians, stands at the head of the list of self-educated nations."