Chifflet wrote a treatise to prove that it was a bee. Joannes | it being indigenous, its root very fragrant, and used in Ferrandus Aniciensis composed an Epinicion pro liliis. flavouring wine. We call it orris, corruptly. It is wonderful that painters of such courage left any doubt, whether what they had drawn so accurately were a flower, a spear-head, or a bee. Before this controversy the Florentines used the iris as the symbol of their city,

THE EMPEROR ALEXANDER AND CAPO D'ISTRIA.

Capo d'Istria. Sire, not only England, but the potentates of France, Spain, Portugal, Germany, and Italy, should in sound policy desire the formation of republics in Greece; considering that country (of which they know nothing better) as a mere drain, whereby the ill humours of their subjects may be carried off. It should serve them as a warehouse of exportation for all those whose opinions are dangerous; just as America is to England. It is nearer at hand, may be reached at less expense, and there is this further advantage, that if they should publish their opinions, neither the princes nor their subjects can read them: the former then cannot be offended, nor the latter led astray. Alexander. How will France, England, Sweden, other Bellerophon, from unexpected and undesired act upon this occasion?

Alexander. All at once!

Capo d'Istria. Her spirit must rise and fall | you take possession, as you propose to do, of with her condition. She has thrown her enemy California, and the coasts to the north of that upon the ground, but he will rise up first. In a province, by consent of the Spanish King, then time of the greatest plenty, England removes a indeed may she have reason to tremble all the tax upon malt, to the advantage of the brewer present century for her dominions in Hindostan. only. She will proceed in conciliating first one The conquest of them you will always find impractrade, then another, until she sacrifices her sink- ticable from the side of Tartary, through which ing fund, which ought to be sacred as the debt Bonaparte, in the crassitude of his ignorance, itself. It should never have been diminished: on fancied a road was to be opened. If the Americans the contrary it should have been augmented, and English permit your Majesty to occupy as with whatever could have been curtailed from much of the American shore as you, by your imunnecessary and ostentatious offices. Yet I con- perial ukase, lay claim to, you become the arbitrator fess I do indeed entertain some fears on the part of in the first dispute between them, and possess the England. commerce that should belong to both. I am afraid that, instead of this, another kind of Holy Alliance may be formed against you; and that America, Sweden, England, Austria, Prussia, may discover the necessity of putting a stop to your career : nor would it be surprising if, after some future and not distant war, Odessa should be the capital of an independent and rich kingdom, standing up erect between you and Turkey, and bounded by the Danube and the Sea of Azof. Take while you can, and what you can. England may not always be the dupe of a Minister whom the lustre of a diamond brings down from his highest flight, and a snuff-box shuts up for your pocket. Make haste, Sire! acknowledge the liberty of Greece. . and crush it.

Capo d'Istria. Yes, Sire! I am afraid that even a short delay may give her time to turn herself and open her eyes. It is her interest that we do not interfere in the affairs of Greece: it is her interest to watch over them, brood over them, and foster them secretly into full maturity. If she thinks wisely, or thinks at all, she will consider the minor constitutional governments and the secondary maritime powers not merely as members, but as vital parts of herself. By the provisions of the Holy Alliance, Russia has obtained the same power and the same right of interfering in the political affairs of Europe, as she obtained by her victories over the Turks in those of Servia, Moldavia, and Wallachia. Your Majesty has wiped away with the soft part of the pen what the British Minister thought he had written indelibly in the treaty of Vienna.

Alexander. I shall certainly make some demonstrations, on the side both of Greece and of Spain. The English, I hope, may be intimidated. If they should assist South America, my views of commerce in that quarter will be clouded, and those of conquest utterly shut out.

Capo d'Istria. England looks so long at an object that her eyes grow dim upon it. What she most should deprecate she must at last expect; a violent and long conflict with her liberated provinces. The best, the only allies she could conciliate are the rising states of the south: she should be the first to help them in their distress, the most assiduous to strengthen them in their growth.

Alexander. I must prevent this.

Capo d'Istria. Alas! Sire, you could as easily prevent it from another planet. At present you are among the least formidable of her enemies: you never can touch her but on the Mediterranean or Adriatic. No nation seems yet to have divined the importance of California. The Russians, I hope, are destined to teach it. Possession of this country was taken by Drake, who called it New Albion. It is wonderful that the English should never have thought it worth occupation; the more especially since their intercourse with China. Once possessing it, they could hardly by any possible effort be driven out; certainly not by the Mexicans, who never have attempted to conciliate the natives.

If indeed England sits down quietly, and sees

Alexander. I had begun to doubt of your sincerity, my faithful friend, and almost to question the soundness of your politics. In our menacing the Turkish empire, the interference of France is much to be apprehended; do not you think so, Capo d'Istria?

Capo d'Istria. The good King of France is occupied in rocking to sleep the martial spirit of his children, as he calls them. The better part of his army is favourable to the cause of Greece; and the Spartan fife is pitched to the carmagnole. France wants colonies; England has too many. To England the most successful war is, on this account, more disastrous than to her defeated adversary: her conquests are the worst of evils to her colonies, and the destruction of another's commerce is a violent shock to hers. Cyprus, or Egypt preferably, would abundantly compensate France: either would accelerate the decadence of her rival, or at least increase her distresses. France will be persuaded by England to make some feeble remonstrances, but your Majesty will be informed of their import. Supposing (for nothing is impossible) that England should confide in her sincerity, it could produce no more than an intemperance of language, the echoes of which boisterousness would sound but feebly on the shores of the Bosphorus.

Alexander. The spirit of your countrymen is not a spirit which I am disposed to encourage. I abhor republicanism.

Capo d'Istria. So your Majesty should. I feel no such abhorrence; but your Majesty shall find that my speculations are lowered down to policy and duty. Leave the Greeks, my countrymen, to their own efforts for a time: every day will produce

some new atrocity: mutual hatred will increase: armies excites to ambition, and every officer exmutual efforts will be made incessantly: both pects promotion under a new dynasty. The King parties will exhaust themselves: the Turkish will avoid this by the preservation of peace, which cavalry, the strength of the empire, will perish is as necessary to him as war ever was to his where it cannot act; and among the mountains predecessor. and defiles it will want both exercise and provender. The Greeks, on becoming your subjects, under whatever form of government, whether absolute, mixed (permit me an absurdity), or free, will be heartily glad to repose; and granting that their fibre still quivers, their strength will be unable to trouble or molest you. Propose to the King of Persia the invasion and possession of the best Turkish provinces, such as Bagdad and Damascus; offer him either a great or a small force, whichever he chooses, of the infantry now quartered on his borders. This will prove your sincerity and ensure his success: and you may mediate and recover the whole when the sons contend for the kingdom. Beside, there is an obseure and ancient prophecy, that, as the empire of Persia was conquered by one Alexander, the empire of Turkey will be conquered by another.

Alexander. I never heard of this before. It hath some weight with me. Nothing can resist a good old prophecy.

Let us now take another view of the subject, and look beyond the King toward the army. Three hundred thousand French bodies lie exposed and stiff along your territory. Place the French army between a Russian and a Turkish, and say to it, "Frenchmen, here are those who slew your companions in arms, unprovoked aggressors; and here, on the other side, are those with whom hitherto you have lived in amity, the slaughterers and oppressors of the Greeks, those children of Leonidas and Epaminondas, the nation which founded Marseilles, Ajaccio and Aleria, and left imprinted its finest features on your character:" they would consult their glory rather than their revenge, and their only hesitation would be, whether it allowed them to attack the weaker enemy. A single spark fires and explodes them.

I must remark to your Majesty that Russia is the sole country in the world whose policy is immutable. Russia, like the star that shines above her, must remain for ever a guide to steer by. The policy of England has varied more frequently than that of any other nation on record, because

Capo d'Istria. The Turks have also another: that Constantinople will be entered by the northern gate. Their bones will crack between these pro-in general a new administration deems it necessary phecies if we clap them together vigorously and to change the system of the former. The persons opportunely. who now administer the affairs of that country, are Alexander. But Austria will not assist, and may persons of humble birth and humbler genius, and oppose me.

Capo d'Istria. God grant it! Her assistance, at the best, would only be in cutting up the prey; but her opposition would end in being cut up herself. The united kingdoms of Poland and Hungary! We must be fashionable, may it please your Majesty: united is the word of the day... unless we talk of marriages. The next year may produce that which must happen within the next twenty. The Adriatic is the boundary of the Eastern empire. No Runic spell was ever so powerful as the three words, Italy is free. They would disband every army on the continent, and carry you as in a whirlwind to the British Channel. You do not want so much; but what you want you may have. Power says as softly and as invitingly to your Majesty, as love said to an emperor in former times, Imperatori quod libet licet: a principle which forms the basis of the Holy Alliance.

Alexander. I again acknowledge my apprehension of France, both from her perpetual favour toward Turkey since the reign of Francis the First, and from her jealousy of any continental superior.

Capo d'Istria. Apparently there is reason from these motives; but others operate in a contrary direction. France will be cautious of raising up a military chief. She remembers how much has been effected by one unworthy of her confidence, one great only by the littleness of his competitors; and she remembers that her King was imposed upon her by the conqueror. The command of

are maintained in their places by the timidity of the aristocracy, and by the contempt of all classes for the leaders of opposition. They will hazard nothing: they are far more prudent (weak as they are) than any past Ministry for half a century. As we have entered into the French national feeling, so will we now into the English; and I am confident of discovering that no hostility is to be apprehended by your Majesty, from the system of either Cabinet or the spirit of either people.

The Englishman, in all respects the contrary of his neighbour, is too great and too fierce a creature to be gregarious. He has little public honour, much private his own heart makes large demands upon him, national glory none. The innermost regions of Hindostan, the wildest shores of the American Lakes, should have repeated the language of England. This is power; this is glory. Rome acquired it, and civilised the world by it; with how much scantier stores of intellect, how much less leisure, how much less intercourse, how much less philanthropy, how much less wealth! England would not assist the Greeks from any regard to their past glory, or with any prospective view to her own, but because they have suffered much and fought bravely. When the populace has pelted the King amid his guards (a ceremony not uncommon) and some have been dismounted in the performance of their duty, they have always been hailed with loud cheers. Let a foreigner be attacked and defend himself in London, he raises up an army in his favour by the

first effort of courage, and the brother of his, sees the necessity of peace: for, although her antagonist clears the ground and demands fair soldiers have been at all times the best that ever play for him such is the characteristic expression of this brave unbloody people. All in other countries crowd about the strong: he alone who prevails is in the right; he alone who wants no assistance is assisted. The Englishman is the friend of the desolate and the defender of the oppressed. Hence his hatred and contempt of those who presume to an equality with him in other states, and the suddenness with which he breaks off intercourse from the few whom he has admitted to his society. On these principles your Majesty will prepossess a most powerful and generous people: and although in the opinion of a few the national interest is concerned in maintaining the Turkish empire, the popular mind will aid you in its overthrow. On no other resolution than the conquest of Turkey was it prudent in your Majesty to grant the dominion of Italy to Austria. The occupation of Naples does not require an army: four regiments and four hangmen could keep the whole peninsula in subjection. We wanted from governments an acknowledgment of the dogma that every ebullition of the public sentiment should be compressed. We obtained it; we saw it acted on. The first regiment of Austria that marched to Naples paved a road for your guards to Constantinople. Why should we break it up again? why abandon a line of policy both ends of which are in our hands? England in the former city did not stand merely neutral. The whole correspondence, perfidious and traitorous as Englishmen must denominate it, between the King, then at Vienna, and his son, ostensibly at the head of the government, was carried on through the hands and under the cover of a British envoy. Supposing, which is impossible, that any continental power dares to oppose you, is there any that would be so powerful in hostility as the Greeks in amity? Every male of that nation, from puberty to decrepitude, would take up arms; even her women, her bishops, her sacristans, her singers.

Alexander. But France, England, Austria, might confederate.

Capo d'Istria. Their confederation would act more feebly than the efforts of one singly, and would ruin the finances of the only state among them which hereafter might injure you materially. They could not hold together three months; the very first would serve for the seed-time of discord. France has a long account to settle with several on her confines: they know it, and will keep themselves shut closely up at home.

Sweden and Prussia have one only warranty for their integrity. Prussia may expect and obtain much if England moves a foot. Whatever your Majesty could take away from Sweden, is of no value to you, and would be taken only as a punishment for defection. She will therefore seek to cultivate the friendship of a potentate, interested more in preserving than in ruining her, alone capable of either, and alike capable of both. She

marched upon the earth, they never marched without some great object; and none such is now before them. The Swedes are the most orderly and the most civilised people on the continent. Lovers as they are of their country, if they felt an unnecessary weight of taxes, they would change their habitations, well knowing that Swedes make Sweden, in whichever hemisphere. The finest countries in the world are unoccupied. Avarice hath seized a few bays, a few river-banks, a few savannahs, a few mines, of America: the better and greater part remains unpeopled. Emigration has only begun the colonists at present there are merely explorers. What rational creature would live where the earth itself is taken away from him by nature one-half of the year, where he sees nothing but snow and sky one-half of his lifetime, if the produce of his labour and the exercise of his will were not perfectly his own? Are light and warmth worth nothing? They cost much in every cold climate. There must also be a great expenditure in more costly clothing, in more copious food, in more spiritous beverage, in more profuse and wasteful hospitality. For solitude is intolerable, even to the morose and contemplative, without warmth or light. Every man then is severely taxed by the north itself: rewards, comforts, enjoyments, privileges, should be proposed and invented to detain him: not impositions, not hardships. Sweden, whoever be her King, whatever her constitution, must avoid them, and must employ all imaginable means of procuring from her own soil, her food, her raiment, and her luxuries. She should interdict every unnecessary importation: and her worst land should be proved to be capable of producing fruits from which may be extracted strong and delicious and salutary liquors. Such is the beneficence of Providence, rarely well seconded, and often thwarted and intercepted, that the least fertile countries and the least genial climates would mature vinous fruits, and administer a beverage more wholesome and more grateful, than fifty parts in sixty of the grape-wines brewed in Italy and Spain. This is perhaps the first time, since the reign of Cyrus, that a minister of state ever talked on such matters. When I was twenty years younger I should have come forward with fear and blushes, if I had a word to say to my emperor on plums, cherries, currants, and raspberries. But a labourer may forget his weariness amid the murmur of his hives, and a citizen be attached to his native soil by an apple-tree or a gooseberry-bush. Gardeners are never bad subjects. Sweden will encourage agriculture, plantation, and fishery. The latter is the most fertile of her possessions, and wants no garrisons or encampments. These occupations will deaden excitability to war, without injuring the moral and physical force by which, whenever it is necessary, it may be supported. But she appears to me farther removed from such a necessity than any other nation in the world; and your