a Trelawny. No man ever excelled him in pru-byeword: utility is the phrase in vogue: dence or in courage. linsey-woolsy phrase, picked out from the pack of some Scotchman: some adept in that science which among them is called economy, among us starvation. Acrice. Ah son guest! hadst thou seen my husband, the father of Andritzo, but for the twinkling of an eye, thou wouldst never have said this. Odysseus is a dutiful child, and hath slain many Odysseus. Glory is utility to kings: it adorns circumcised dogs, and thrown many more off their the throne and establishes it. But in the sight scent when they thirsted for our blood and trea- | of politicians, reference to the virtuous and valiant sure he doth not want valour nor circumspec- of ancient days is pedantic, admiration of heroism tion: few have more: none in Greece, I uphold is puerile, an enthusiastic expression is an insurit none upon earth, I will be sworn for it..... mountable hindrance to preferment. Here he comes. Tush! These are the very things he can not bear to hear; the only ones that anger or offend him. Trelawny. Nevertheless I walk straight across the stubble-field, whatever may stick to me, burr or brier, keeping in view the distant scenery that always has captivated and delighted me. Odysseus. Well sayest thou, never was there wanting, in the worst and most barbarous ages, some generous warlike enthusiastic prince, to be excited by a love of fame and a spirit of enterprise: now for the first time on record such a character is nowhere in Europe. Odysseus. Well, Trelawny! whenever my fair grandmother shall have ceased to whisper soft sayings in thy ear, and the conversation shall have begun to grow a little less interesting, look above and athwart and along! This spacious and airy cavern, dry in all seasons, warm in winter, cool in summer, well supplied with water, well stored with provisions and munition, free from insects Trelawny, One well-sustained note of a public and reptiles, inaccessible to traitors, and easily singer is able to stir and scatter those accumulaand by few to be defended against aggressors, tions of exaction, which would lie motionless and hath been heretofore the refuge of half-extin-inert as in the mine, at the cries of all Greece, all guished nations. Here art thou my guest and Christendom, all Nature. The taskmasters for comrade, here art thou my only confidant and whom we labor, press forward and combine friend. I will treat thee now and evermore with together for no other object than the support of the confidence a brave man deserves. Be not lawless authority. offended! The gold of England hath corrupted no few among the most courageous of my countrymen: the gold of England enchases the daggerhilt that aims at my life. Trelawny. Incredible! Certainly this, however, is not among the crimes of our late minister. The only life he ever personally aimed at, was the vilest in existence, and none complains that he succeeded in his attempt. I forgot: he aimed at another so like it, that it is a pity it did not form a part of it. Odysseus. The present time is the first thou hast ever heard me complain of thy country: if this be complaint. I meant it only as a reason for my sojourn here, and for conducting thee so far away from amusements and from action. Those who direct your councils are themselves no longer free. I will not say they are slaves; but they are bound to such, and must follow them, straight or crookedly. On this condition they are allowed what they call freedom and what they call power; the liberty of seizing from others whatever suits their purposes, and the power of stopping inquiry and of punishing complaint. Tersitza. O stranger! is there no prince in Europe who holds it glorious to stand by the cross of his Redeemer ? Trelawny. In the darkest of former days never was there one such wanting. Nobody now, in the whole confederacy of despots, will trust his neighbour. They act toward one another as if they were mutually known to be the most dishonest men in the world. All of them have seized what is not theirs, and are resolved that none shall recover or retain what is. Liberality is a scoff, a Odysseus. All perhaps may not anathematize and persecute us alike: but all alike would crush us. Nations of free men and nations of slaves are equally friendly to us: the rulers of slaves and the rulers of free men are equally our adversaries. Tersitza. Then which are the free? which the slaves? Odysseus. Ask those who see better: my vision blends them. Trelawny. We can hope nothing from the desire of reputation in our princes, which they cared little for keeping while they had it any speculation to recover it, is the last idleness and folly they are likely to fall into. Odysseus. Alas! too true is it, my friend! and not only in princes, though in them chiefly, the desire of reputation, which ought to be the steadiest of desires, is the most erring. Beneficence is nowhere, as she should be and would be, the guide of Glory. In every part of Europe, the name slace hath ceased to be associated with pity or with ignominy; and yet the condition of one class of slaves is more pitiable than it ever was, and of the other more ignominious. The appellation is however too honorable for us: we are rebels! And England is as much our enemy as if we were rebels to her. First she brought about a peace between our murderers and Persia, that they might come against us undivided and unimpeded. She now is desirous of continuing one between them and the Emperor of Russia, bound by duties and treaties to protect the ministers of our religion. He hath suffered the ignominy of seeing the most exalted of them, of seeing a patriarch who approached his hundredth year, slaughtered on the most solemn Believe me, that country will become the most of our festivals, descending from the altar, attired in the vestments of the church. Eternal shame! | powerful which does the most extensive good. inexpiable treason to the cause of holiness and of humanity! Are we rebels? no. The conditions, hard as they were, that held us to the Ottoman, were violated, cast asunder, trampled on, by himself, for centuries. There is no rebellion against lust and rapine: it is our duty, the first of duties, the most sacred. After this great truth, need I remark that many districts never owned the legitimacy, or the existence, of Turkish authority; made no alliance or compact with the invader; nor did any such live within them! Need I remark that not only was the despot unable to protect us from an enemy, without which ability there neither is allegiance nor subjection, but that he was unable to defend us from his own people, the Albanians! The bond was cancelled before; and now his slave tore it and burned it. A certain force by sea is requisite to constitute the blockade of a single port: and surely a certain force, moral or physical, is requisite to constitute the possession of a whole country. If any nation claim an island in the South Sea, and never colonised it for many centuries, but only plundered it at longer or shorter intervals, would such an exercise of power be considered by jurists as a right over it? Trelawny. Probably: by those jurists who pointed cannon against you for defending your families from apostacy and violation: by those jurists who sold as slaves the first of you that resisted by those jurists who carried in their transports barbarians from the deserts of Arabia, of Libya, of Nubia, to exterminate the rest, to inhabit your country, to render it as happy, free, and fertile, as their own by those jurists who intimidated a weak wavering autocrat from aiding you, from driving off the vultures that devoured you by those jurists who pretended to the right of interference when your oppressor would have lost the means of oppression, and who disclaimed the right when you appealed to them to exercise it, in the cause of religion, of justice, of mercy, and when you would have rested from war under their flag. Great God! by what calamity, by what crimes, have we, who gained so much glory in war, lost so much more in peace! Why are we, who could render all Europe free and prosperous, at no expense, by no exertion, without lifting the arm, without raising the voice, why are we hated, scorned, insulted, universally? It is because we ought to do it, can do it, and will not. Odysseus. No, Trelawny! It is because you neither will remove the grievances you promised to remove, and openly and repeatedly, as Sicily and Italy bear witness, nor will permit others to abolish or diminish them, or even to provide against their future accumulation. We required only your neutrality: your national honour had other wants. Be comforted; be calm! The English by degrees are growing insensible to them. Nations live and remember, when princes have fallen asleep by the side of their fathers, and dynasties have past away. No princely house was ever grateful long together: a people has a capacious heart, a full one, a sound one, and one that may beat for ages. O! who would empoison and paralyze, who would contract and harden, who would estrange and alienate it! Tersitza. Sad perverseness! Why are not other men like you, my dear brother? Trelawny. We see nothing, O fair Tersitza! but traces of evil in the world. The sunshine! leaves no mark, the lightning leaves it. Yet, even the devastators of nations, not only among the ancients, but in all modern times until ours, have felt something of anxiety for fame and reputation. Catharine and Frederic sought the friendship and correspondence of every man in Europe who stood eminent in merit and remarkable for genius and attainments. They established societies for the encouragement and furtherance of arts, sciences, and literature in general; and if they made any distinction between the abettors of despotism and the opponents, the distinction was in favour of the latter. For what and to whom are the acknowledgments and rewards of England! She sends the Order of the Garter to the king of Portugal, on the subversion of the Constitution he had sworn to establish and defend: Russia, the Order of Saint Andrew to the king of France, on the violation of the Charter he had bestowed upon his people. Knighthood is now conferred for that very action (I am loth to name it) for which anciently it was taken away with every demonstration of ignominy and disgrace. I know not what term designates it among kings, who undoubt edly, like the Gods of Homer, have a language of their own; but, among us private men in England, a very coarse monosyllable serves the purpose. Reading such incredible stories, posterity will surely place our age in a second series of the fabulous: but neither sage nor schoolman will ever confound it with the heroic. Odysseus. Let us look to that. The only country in which anything is reported of the heroic ages, is ours. There may be heroes out of bullhides and brazen chariots: and there may also be heroes crushed by the inert. Trelawny. It was easy to foresee that, when republics were subverted, constitutions and the defenders of constitutions would be insulted and assailed: but who could ever have imagined that the body of Christian princes should conspire against Christianity! That England should mediate for Russia, and take on herself the whole negotiation, only that Turkey might have both hands at liberty, to rivet her chains on Greece! Every indignity that could be offered the patriots, has been wantonly and prodigally cast against them even commercial relations have been foregone and interdicted, even the course of money checked and interrupted. When the supplies | oppressed stand over the oppressor; we see happy, which you obtained by a loan in England had reached Corfu, it was discovered that to deposit them there was a violation of neutrality: a law never promulgated in Europe, never in Asia, and now enforced by a grave sagacious governor, aspiring (no doubt) to display in his diplomatic life the energy and lustre of his military. Odysseus. Let such men flourish; it is their season. Bad weather does not shake down the hip and haw, when every better fruit, and every leaf that protected it, has fallen. Trelawny. What those among us who are affected by a sense of national honour, most lament, is, that England, whose generosity would cost her nothing, and whose courage would be unexposed to fatality, stands aloof. What could the united power (suppose it can ever be united) of Austria, Turkey, Russia, do against England? What would they attempt? Have they not already imposed as many and as great restrictions on our trade as their own can suffer? and would not a war with us dethrone whichever of their emperors should proclaim it? The popular power is displayed the most vigorously where only one blow is requisite; and the guards of despots are oftentimes the tutelaries of justice. As the generous and domestic of the beasts avoid and fly from the anger of their master, while the ferocious are impelled to violence by the activity of fear, so the civilised and liberal of men elude the shock of royal discontent, while the barbarous rush against it, and strangle it at a grasp. not them who never were otherwise, not them who have made no effort, no movement of their own to earn their happiness, like the creatures of our imaginary new world, but those who were the most wretched, and the most undeservedly, and who now, arising as from the tomb, move the incumbrances of ages and of nations from before them, and, although at present but half erect, lower the stature of the greatest heroes. Trelawny. Two islets, neither of them greater than a gentleman's estate in England, defied the vengeance of the Turkish government and the malignity of the English, devoting the fortunes and lives of the inhabitants, raising troops, fitting out armaments, erecting fortresses, filling them with munition, fighting under and upon them, setting fire to them, and expiring with their enemy amid the ruins. Odysseus. In more than one place was this done. Do you carry provisions of patience enough for a long story? Trelawny. I am ready to start with you. Odysseus. Santa Veneranda is a fortified monastery, to which Ali Pasha, some years before, had penetrated with an army of fifteen thousand men, driving back the Suliots, in number one thousand three hundred. At the sight of their women, led thither by Mosko and Kaido, they again gave the shout of battle, and became in turn the assailants. Many of the females fought by their sides: whoever saw a sabre drop, or a musket, seized it. Others stayed upon the rocks, rolling down stones on the young ardent Mussulmans, who had fancied them an easier prey, and better worth conquering than their husbands and their brothers. Seven hundred and forty heads were piled up into a trophy by the Suliots; and Ali Pasha fled away in disguise.. and halted at Yannina. This battle was fought on the 20th of July, in the year 1791. Photo Zavellas and his sister Kaido, in the year 1802, were received into Santa Veneranda, when he had set fire to his house that no Turk should ever profane it, and when he had asked as the only reward of his obedience that the archons would watch over their country, and never let the name of their ancestors be dishonoured. An alliance, offensive and defensive, with Greece, would render us invulnerable in the only part of the world where we have lately shown our feebleness. We should unite to us a maritime power, which within half a century would of itself be equipollent on the sea with France; and we should attract to our merchants those advantages of commerce in the Levant which at present lean toward her. Chatham, if he had lived in our days, would have cast on every side around him the seeds of maritime and constitutional states. We may extend our dominions in many ways; we can extend our power in this only. None of our late ministers have had clear views or steady aims. We have been hovering on the shores of Greece until the season is going by for aiding her; and Samuel, who from the austerity of his life, from another power will soon have acquired the glory the confidence and awe he had inspired by anand the benefit of becoming her first protectress. nouncing the prodigies he would undertake, and Odysseus. If a new world were to burst forth by performing them to the hour, had obtained the suddenly in the midst of the heavens, and we were appellation of the Last Judgment, defended Santa instructed by angelic voices, or whatever kind of Veneranda with three hundred Suliots, rejecting revelation the Creator might appoint, that its in- the offers and retorting the threats of the Mahomehabitants were brave, generous, happy, and warm tans. He gave that reception to Photo and Kaido with all our sympathies, would not pious men which their courage, their perseverance, and their fall prostrate before him, for such a manifestation | virtue merited. Few covet the glory, eminent as of his power and goodness? What then! shall it is, of being the first to acknowledge in anyone these very people, these religious, be the first to stifle the expression of our praise and wonder, at a marvel far more astonishing, at a manifestation of power and goodness far more glorious and magnificent? The weak vanquish the strong; the true greatness. He added this large sum of it to what he had acquired by his prudence, his fortitude, his devotion, and his integrity. The Suliots now began to value him whom Samuel loved and cherished, expressed their repentance at exacting the sacrifice he had made, a sacrifice to him so costly and to them so profitless, implored him to return among them, and offered to rebuild his house, and to place in his hands the supreme authority. "If you hope," replied he, "that the enmity of Ali can be turned aside from you by negotiation, I will undertake it: if on the contrary you believe, as I do, that open war is better, let me bear that part in it, whatever it may be, of which you may deem me capable. Leave not, however, to me the invidious duty of punishing those who were my friends and fellow-soldiers, and now are traitors." armies equally numerous, took the field against the invader. While they encountered death for their country, Pilio Gusi, a Suliot, introduced the enemy into Suli. Photo Zavellas escaped. He and Kaido and Samuel were blockaded in Santa Veneranda by nine thousand Turks, of whom they slew seven hundred. Means of defence and of sustenance were failing: a favourable capitulation, with the honours of war, was proposed to them: none ventured to express the wish or the necessity of accepting it. Samuel now spoke. "My children" said he " the terms offered to us include the unfortunate of Suli, who wander on the mountains or hold out from insulated towers: we have no time to hesitate, no choice to make: accept them." This voice had always been heard The adherents of the men he thus designated and denounced, at last prevailed in the council; and it was resolved that he should go embassador as a father's, as a prophet's: the terms were ratito the court of Yannina. He soon discovered, what he never had doubted, the perfidy of Ali, no less evident on this occasion than on former ones, and was not sorry to carry back the conditions of peace proposed by him to the Suliots. Having then returned home, and having given his advice both to reject them and to resist the tyrant that would impose them, in vain did his friends and followers adjure him to remain in the city. 'Formerly" said he "when our arehons commanded me to assist him with seventy men against his enemies in Argyro-Castro, and he fell upon and disarmed us and led us off captives, I watched my opportunity of escaping, that Suli might not be taken by surprise, although my son was yet left with him, and grievous (I confess it) were my fears for a life so dear to me: I have now given my promise to return." There was silence: but, among those who knew Zavellas, there could no longer be suspense or expectation. He had spoken; and was soon in a dungeon of the fortress on the lake. fied. "And now" cried he aloud and solemnly "let us for the last time in this holy place render thanks to God for our preservation and deliverance." The service was performed: the soldiers went forth armed: the wounded were supported by the women. Samuel, who told them he should give up possession of the fortress when he saw them safe on the road, waited until six hundred Turks had entered. They rushed into the church, partly through fanaticism to pollute it, and partly through avarice to plunder it. He stood in the vault below: his hour was come: he threw a lighted torch on the powder, and left but his name on earth. Detachments had already set out to despoil and exterminate the last Suliots. It was impossible to protect the women in any other way than by defending their own lives against the multitudes that encompassed them. Sixty mothers, those who had become so the latest, too feeble to contend or to fly, and unable to join their husbands, or even to find them in the conflict, far as they had penetrated into the main body of the enemy, hurled their infants in de speration against their merciless pursuers, seized one another's hands and necks, raised the hymn of death, and rushed down a precipice together. Unfortunate! (for humanity must call them so even in their eternal glory) not to have lived to see how their elder sons now avenge their younger and them. Despo, widow of Bozzi, yet possessed a tower in the territory of Suli, into which she had carried her daughters, her little grandaughters, and their nearer relatives. Defence and escape with honour were alike impossible: surrender was unthought of. She exhorted them to die with her: they were passive and silent, placed themselves on some chests of cartouches at her side, and shared with her the death of Samuel. Samuel was not inactive: he and Photo had watched with no less curiosity than inquietude the construction of a redoubt at Vilia. It was flanked by four towers, mounted with twelve brass cannon, and manned with a hundred and eighteen chosen Arnauts. Against this post Samuel demanded two hundred men and a barrel of powder. A workman had brought him information of its weaker parts; and leading forth in the silence of night the troop entrusted to him, followed by several of the women and many of the stouter boys, he gave them his benediction, took up a pickaxe, ordered a few to follow and work beside him, fixed the barrel of powder in the cavity they had opened, laid the train, descended, and raised a loud shout, which his followers filled up cou- Noti and Kitzo Bozzaris had withdrawn in good rageously. The Turks rushed forward to the time from Suli to Vurgarelli, had opened to themtower, and disappeared with it. Ali, more indig-selves the pass of Athanasia, forced the gorge of nant at a loss than a disgrace, vowed vengeance; Theodosia, and, after fighting two days incessantly, marched through the plain of Yannina with four-pressed forward to the bridge of Coracos, the terteen thousand men, and nothing lived behind him. The Suliots, emboldened by success, and remembering that for ten whole years they had resisted the best soldiers of the Ottoman empire, and mination (as they imagined) of their march. It was however commanded by a Turkish battery. No hope was left to them, but of occupying the rock and monastery of Veternizza. This they accomplished; and many were the Turks who fell in striving to dislodge them from it. As, however, there were no provisions, nor means of obtaining any, another attack was made against the bridge. In the attempt to force the barricade, nearly the whole troop was slain. The women saw nothing now between them and the Turks: husbands and brothers were called upon in vain no voice of pity, none of encouragement, none of acknowledgment, was heard. Not all even of the children were surviving; for some had been slain while held up that the fathers might see them. Two hundred mothers ran with their infants and little boys to where the river was deeper, just above, and commanding their daughters to cling to them inseparably, if they ever loved them, and if that which distinguishes the Suliot women above all others, is dear and sacred. Never were they more obedient. The traveller who may see hereafter the whirlpools of the Achelous, will shudder they did not. Noti Bozzaris had fainted after his fifth wound, and was dragged into the dungeon of Yannina: Kitzo and ten more escaped: Photo Zavellas and Kaido, with Dimo Draco and Zima Zervas, forced their way through the defiles, retreated to Parga, and afterward were received with the compassion, and the honours due to them, in the Ionian Isles. But Parga and they were doomed to be no longer the refuge of the free or the unfortunate. The first time a whole Christian people was ever sold openly by another Christian people to the Mahometan, was by England, on the thirteenth of March, 1817. On the ninth of May, at sunset, the British flag was struck from the walls of Parga. Trelawny. The worst harm ever done to Greece, even more atrocious than that inflicted on Parga, was by prevailing on the king of Persia to suspend hostilities against the Turks, and finally to accept conditions of peace in the hour of victory. Had our ministry abstained from this interference, your freedom had been secured in the second year of the contest. The least we can do now is to save the remainder of your women and children from slavery; since, without our active co-operation against you, these would not, for the most part, have been fatherless and widows. If you had been our enemies for centuries, we could never have proved ourselves more persevering, more systematical, or more destructive, in our hostility. Among the innumerable acts of partiality shown by our ministers to the enemies of Greece, it was with grief and indignation that we saw the Zenobia guide the Ottoman fleet into the harbour of Galasendi, and the commander place a mortar against men fighting for the most sacred rights of humanity, fighting to escape from a slavery not endured in any other portion of Europe. On every ingenuous and well-educated mind antiquity lays a spell, of which they never after ward are dispossessed: yet, where judgment has grown up in its due proportions, there can exist no doubt that the Greeks in the last five years have equalled the glories of their ancestors at any like period, although the number that could come forward was formerly much greater. With all the advantages of education and example, Greece never saw at once so many disinterested patriots and devoted chieftains. Has the whole world, in two thousand years, beheld so many who effected so much with means so slender? Foremost of them are Miaoulis and Canaris, and Zavellas and Samuel, and he at whose side I stand. Odysseus. The politicians of England seem afraid that Russia may benefit by the separation of Greece from Turkey; and Russia is afraid of the principles which operate the separation. She wishes the exhaustion of both nations; and, with or without the absolute conquest of the Ottoman empire, she may threaten or endanger your dominions in Hindostan. Trelawny. She would not be able in half a century to send an army into India, even if she possessed the dominions of the Turk. Indeed, they would be far from affording her any great facility. In less than half a century it is probable we shall lose that empire; but we shall lose it, like every other we have lost and are about to lose, by alienating the affections of the people. God grant that Russia may invade and conquer Turkey! Not that the Russians, or any other people on the Continent, are a better, a braver, an honester race than the Turks, but because the policy of the government is adverse to the progress of civilisation, and bears with brutal heaviness on its cradle. God grant that Russia may possess her! Not because it will increase her strength, but because it will enable, and perhaps induce her, to liberate from bondage more than one brave nation. She cannot hold Turkey at the extremity of such a lever; and those who now run to help her, will slip from under her. It is only by a war on the Continent, a war however in which England has no business or right to take a part, that what ought to have been done long ago, can be at last effected. If our ministers should enter into hostilities, the nation will certainly refuse the succours, even though a majority in Parliament should vote them. Here another great question starts before us, not at present to be discussed. One thing is certain: if we cannot stand under our debt we can not fight under it. Orders to march may be given to him who has lost a leg; but what drum or what cane shall make him go? If ever we have another war within the next thirty years, it must be a war of speculation, a subscription-war, in which the holders of shares shall pay all the expenses and take all the profit. Do you suppose we could not, without a war, have kept the army of Louis out of Spain? An appeal to the French troops and the French people would have shaken that drowsy enslaver from his throne; a glance of approbation would have encouraged the Constitutionalists to fix the House of Braganza in Madrid, and to inflict on a perjurer the punishment of his crimes. It is idle to ask what was the object, for that was varying from the first day to the last: let us |