we need only refer to recent circumstances to prove its utter fallacy.

We have now arrived at the most difficult and painful portion of our task-that of palliating, if possible, the cruelties exercised by the triumphant Greeks on some occasions; and here we must protest against the manner in which this part of the subject has been treated by some of their defenders, and the invidious comparisons that have been resorted to. Such actions ought never to be justified, nor can we see why the statements of credible witnesses should be impugned, merely because they tend to prove that the Greeks are capable of deeds as cruel as their ancestors, under less provocation, perpetrated long ago; that the scenes of Platæa, and Melos, and Corcyra, have been acted over again at Tripolitza and Navarino. We must, however, take leave to say, in reply to those other writers, who seem almost to exult in the crimes of the Greeks, as affording them a handle for invective against revo lutionists (to whom we might well say, in the words of the philosopher, "Quid habet ista res aut lætabile aut gloriosum?" that the minds of the victors had been exacerbated by long and fearful oppression; that these were, after all, but isolated instances, and exceptions to the common conduct of the Greeks; that, in one case, they were provoked by gross, and (if all the accounts be true) by reiterated treachery; that the Turks set the first example; and that the subsequent outrage of Scio quite eclipses, by its enormity of guilt, the earlier barbarities of the insurgents.

We have no room, however, to dilate further on this subject; and we must likewise be content with a brief notice of the remaining objection-that the Greeks are not fitted for liberty. We allow that in ordinary cases this would have great weight; but, allowing it to be true in its full extent, what greater evils could flow from the establishment of independence, than those which despotism inflicts on them? But there is a fallacy in the statement. That the Greeks are not prepared for the highest degree of liberty, we fear must be allowed; but it is no less true, that they are in that state of civil and intellectual progression which is incompatible with despotism; that they are in the course of being enlightened, and that the progress of knowledge will not be arrested. Schools and colleges have been erected, and are flourishing in many parts of Greece; an extensive intercourse with the learned of Europe has been opened; a spirit of religious reformation has partially developed itself; the talent and genius of the nation is awaking to an emulation of the glories of their forefathers, and of the literary nations of modern times; Greece is begin

ning, in short, to form an integral part of civilized and lettered Europe. It has been justly observed by a late writer, in reference to this very subject, that "Truth, in the search for it, in the possession of it, and in all its tendencies, presents, under so many forms, the idea of liberty, that, to an oppressed but intelligent race, every augmentation of learning touches a string that vibrates strongly in their hearts.*" Such a race cannot, nor ought they to remain as they are. The present is not the first attempt which has been made to cast off the brutal yoke, which has so long crushed and perverted the energies of the national mind. We trust it will be the last that history has to record. We trust, and we all but believe, that we shall live to see the emancipated intellect of Greece once more developing its powers, in the vigour of renovated youth, strong in the consciousness of liberty, gradually disengaging itself from the tangle of prejudice and superstition, and soaring higher and higher, and shedding down from its altitude, like the sun of its own land, beauty at once and blessings on the region it illuminates.

But we are compelled to conclude; and we shall do it in the words of a great modern writer-words not indeed immediately bearing on our subject, but which may well be introduced here. "Reflect a little," says he, "on the history of this wonderful people. What were they while they remained free and independent? while Greece resembled a collection of mirrors set in a single frame, each having its own focus of patriotism, yet all capable, as at Marathon and Platea, of converging to one centre and of consuming one common foe? What were they then? the fountains of light and civilization, of truth and of beauty to all mankind; they were the thinking head, the beating heart, of the whole world. They lost their independence, and with their independence their patriotism. It has been well observed, that, after the first acts of severity, the Romans treated the Greeks not only more mildly than their other slaves and dependants; they behaved to them even affectionately and with munificence." After quoting Pliny's well-known letter to his friend the Proconsul of Achaia, he proceeds: "What came out of these men, who were eminently free' (Pliny's expression) without patriotism, because without national independence? While they were intense patriots, they were the benefactors of all mankind, legislators for the very nation that afterwards subdued and enslaved them. When, there

6

* "Christian Researches in the Mediterranean, by the Rev. W. Jowett,” a work containing much curious as well as interesting information, and written in a spirit of unaffected liberality and Christian benevolence.

fore, they became pure cosmopolites, and no partial affections interrupted their philanthropy, and when yet they retained their country, their language, and their arts, what noble works, what mighty discoveries, might we not expect from them? If the applause of a little city, a first-rate town, a small province, and the encouragement of a Pericles, produced a Phidias, a Sophocles, and a constellation of other stars scarcely inferior in glory, what will not the applause of the world effect, and the boundless munificence of the world's imperial masters? Alas! no Sophocles appeared, no Phidias was born; individual genius fled with national independence, and the best products were cold and laborious copies of what their fathers had thought, and invented in grandeur and majesty. At length nothing remained, but dastardly and cunning slaves, who avenged their own degradation and ruin by assisting to degrade and ruin their conquerors; and the golden harp of their divine language remained only as the frame on which priests and monks spun their dirty cobwebs of sophistry and superstition!"

Such were the Greeks-such, thank Heaven! they are no longer."

E. H.

SONNET.

So, froward maiden, thou wilt quit for ever
Thy country and her many-weather'd skies,
All old home-thoughts and early sympathies
Abjuring, and wilt strive with vain endeavour
To quench thine English spirit:-never, never,
Though herding with our natural enemies,

May'st thou do this; for thou art bound by ties
Which neither thou, nor time, nor fate can sever.
Therefore, although thy children must not claim

Freedom, the Briton's birth-right; though the song
Of Milton be to them an idle name,

And English wisdom vain, thou wilt not wrong
Thy country with cold scorn, nor think it shame

To weep when thoughts of home into thy bosom throng.

G. M.

WHAT YOU WILL.

NO. II.

EDITED BY PETER ELLIS.

BREAKFAST was just over; my aunt had retired to the nursery, and Charles to his brother's office; William stood at the window, watching the progress of an approaching stage amidst its retinue of dust; John lay reclined on the sofa, his attention divided between the unpromising aspect of the heavens and an old volume of the "Lady's Magazine," from which he was in vain endeavouring to extract something like amusement, with the air of a hungry silkworm prowling among a heap of withered mulberry-leaves; my sister was ostensibly engaged in re-perusing the thrice-conned county paper, but, in reality, deliberating on the expediency of her uncle's presenting her with a new and improved edition of her cousin's silk gown; my own meditations were of a graver cast, passing alternately from hexameters to diameters, from Thucydides to Euclid, according as the tripos or the medal presented itself to my mind's eye, with the feelings so well known to those who have the work of three years to do, with hardly three months to do it in.

It was at this conjuncture of affairs that my friend, Heaviside, entered the breakfast-parlour, with dismay in his face, and an open letter in his hand. All stood aghast.

"I told you how it would be, Ellis," said he, marching up directly to me, and making an unceremonious lodgment in my button-hole: "the press is at a stand; the editor is at his wits' end, and wonders at having received no answers to the five letters he has sent you, requesting contributions. I told you what would come of your racketting, and riding, and sporting, and idling-talking metaphysics with Haselfoot, and eating oysters with Murray-sketching tragedies and organizing chess-clubs-quadrilling with your fair neighbours, and drinking radical toasts with your male ones! I told you, all along, how it would be; I knew from the first."

As I have a natural and inveterate dislike to the species of personage called Job's comforters, I interrupted my monitor with "This is quite in your way, Martin-laying the blame of every thing that happens upon my unfortunate head. Did not a fever nail me fast for three weeks, and Mrs. Crump and her family for a month? Did not Demosthenes make a deep

incision into July, and Marriott's troublesome affair occupy half August? Have I not had to translate the Impudentiæ Encomium for Blackwood, besides reviewing Tomkins's work for the Monthly Censor?-a whole mortal week did that man's book take me, and he not satisfied after all. Then you talk as if I was the only culprit. Prate not to me of my particular delinquencies, as if I were the master-wheel in the machine, and every thing must needs go wrong without me. Another thing, you know that I"

"Come, come," said Heaviside, cutting short my self-defence, "'tis no use arguing; all you can now do is to make the best of a bad matter, and sit down manfully to work. have nothing else to do, and the rain".

You

"To work!" exclaimed I, "why the magazine will be out on the first of October, and to-day is the twenty-third of September."

"Pooh!" replied he, "surely you can manage half a sheet before dinner, prose or verse-Pemberton is going to town by the mail this afternoon, and he will take it."

"But the carpenter has been at work in my study, and it is in a state of complete confusion."

"Then write here."

"Here! what, in the midst of tape, bobbins, and China crape my sister chattering to my cousin, and John whispering to my sister-William beating the Devil's tattoo with variations-women popping in and popping out-and yourself, Martin, peeping over my shoulder ever and anon, 'just to see how I get on,' a practice I detest mortally ?"

"To cut a long matter short, it is determined that you shall not rise from the chair on which you are sitting, till you have manufactured eight statute pages of readable English, errors excepted. I beg leave to take the sense of the public on this matter."

The question was accordingly put, and carried by the unanimous voice of the whole synod, with the exception of John, who had just left the room to countermand his orders for the morning's ride. Resistance was useless. My escritoire was ordered down from the study; Mary placed before me a quire of her own fragrant unsunned wire-wove, spotless as the ivory fingers which presented it; a pen was planted in my passive hand, and there I sat, the picture of sullen resolution, condemned to try, against my will, my friend Trismegistus's paradoxical experiment of "social silence and undisturbing voices."

"Well then," said I, "since it is decreed that write I must, though my brain be as dry as a lemon-chip, and my fancy as barren as a Scotch metaphysician's, the next ques