repose of the Turkish ministers, who, in default of ordinary measures of relief, never ceased to pray for their safety and success." Unhappily, the English Government were not in a position to throw the first stone: otherwise there is little doubt of the justice of the sarcasm. After Omer had been fairly shipped, the Porte seems to have considered itself absolved from any future effort. Indeed, if the Seraskier is to be believed-and we hope that his allegations will be investigated they were debarred from exertion by the neglect of the English Government, in not giving them immediate advantage of the loan. They were therefore obliged to content themselves with persevering exhortations to the new Governor, Selim Pasha, that he would attempt something for the relief of the garrison. But Selim Pasha, like almost every servant the Porte had in Asia, was indolent and corrupt, and obstinately refused to move. Meanwhile time flew on the blockade continued-the Russians, foiled in arms, relied on the surer victory of famine. Nor did they rely in vain. The sufferings of the garrison and townspeople were awful. From the 29th of September to the 25th of November, they tasted no animal food. The men died by thousands in the ranks; the hospitals were crowded with invalids, whom no medicine could preserve. Women laid their children at the door of General Williams-that he, whose dogged courage was looked on as the cause of their starvation, might be harrowed by the sight of their dying agonies. Meanwhile he would steal by night into the stable and kill a horse sccretly, that the wretched inmates of the hospital might have a few more hours' life. At last, when he received intelligence that neither Omer nor Selim Pasha had the slightest notion of risking any thing in his defence, he saw that he had reached that point where resistance was no longer gallantry, but suicide; and on the 26th of November he capitulated-more glorious in his defeat, than any other throughout this war has been in victory. The culprits are innumerable: who shall apportion the blame? Turkish corruption easily bears the palm; but something is due to official tardiness, and to the narrow shortsightedness of the small men who in these days are too often found in great places, military and civil. Any how, England went to war-if for any political object, mainly for this, that India might be saved from the dangers of Russian aggrandizement in the East. She has spent eighty millions of money; she has wasted more than 50,000 lives; and yet the event of November 27 has given to Russia, as far as the East is concerned, a greater name and a more dreaded prestige than ever she had before. M. ABOUT's name is already sufficiently well known, and his talents highly enough appreciated by the public, to secure a favourable reception for any work of which he is the author; and though it be less easy to maintain a reputation than to gain one, he has certainly not belied, in his Gréce Contemporaine*, the expectations which his story of Tolla had not failed to excite. Le Gréce Contemporaine is not a mere sample of book-making, manufactured partly from hasty notes taken by the traveller during a month's scamper through the length and breadth of the land, and partly from materials gleaned from guide-books, but a work which is the result of personal observations, extending over a considerable period of residence in the country, of researches conducted with patience and discrimination, and of knowledge gained from daily intercourse with persons of all ranks and conditions in life. The spirit of organization, which is one of the most striking characteristics of the French nation, manifests itself in the arrangements M. About has adopted throughout his book, the subjects not being jumbled together, as is generally the case in works of this description, but treated separately and under distinct heads; thus enabling those who only turn to these pages for amusement, and those who have recourse to them for purposes of instruction, to gratify their several tastes, and to read or skip, as suits their pleasure. The opening chapters contain an account of the author's voyage to Greece, and the expectations he had formed with regard to the beauty of the country he was on his way to visit. But his illusions were • Le Gréce Contemporaine. Par Edmomd About. Paris: Hachette et Cie. 1855. C C destined to receive a rather severe shock from two young midshipmen whom he fell in with on board the steamer : "Is it possible," they exclaimed, "that you are going to Greece from anything but necessity? You must certainly have strange notions about pleasure! Picture to yourself mountains without trees, plains without grass, rivers without water, a scorching sun, fine weather which is a thousand times more tiresome than rain, a country in which vegetables grow ready cooked, where fowls lay hardboiled eggs, where there are no leaves in the gardens, and where your eyes, tired out with the universal glare, seek in vain for verdure without being able to find even a salad on which to repose. Such is Greece !" The first view of the coast did not certainly tend to reassure M. About; nothing, in fact, can be a more sterile, or a more apparently God-and-man abandoned country than the peninsula of the Morea. However, the traveller's hopes were once more raised when he beheld the plain of Athens, its surface enamelled with the loveliest spring flowers bathed in a dazzling light, lying beneath a cloudless sky, shut in on one side by Mount Hymettus, on the other side by Parnassus, while rising in the middle of the plain were some rocks, which surround and protect the city, foremost and highest of which towered the Acropolis. The traveller who approaches Athens from the Piræus does not at first perceive Modern Athens, it is the Acropolis, with its gigantic ruins, which attracts his delighted gaze; and in Greece the past always injures the present. After having travelled all over the country, M. About came to the conclusion that it is neither so naked nor so sterile as it had been described to him, and that it contains fine trees and verdant landscapes, if you give yourself the trouble to seek for them. Moreover, barrenness itself has a beauty of its own, and Greece needs verdure no more than the Roman Čampagna needs forests. But, after all, the greatest charm of Greece, strange to say, consists, M. About considers, in its mountain streams shimmering in the sunlight. "And do not imagine," he continues, "that it is necessary to have the soul of Rousseau, in order to feel beauties like these; the Turks, who have no sentimentality in their composition, still sigh at the very name of Greece, and in the insipid plains of Thessaly they cried out, shedding tears the while, Ah! the fresh streams on the mountains.' As regards the climate, it is changeable and unhealthy, the fertile plains, the rugged cliffs, the smiling valleys, all exhale fever; it is as though in a land where everything is falling into ruins, the very atmosphere is in a state of decomposition. From the land, M. About passes on to the inhabitants, and the estimate he forms of them is, as might be expected, anything but favourable. Love of money, in their case most certainly the root of all evil, lies at the bottom of their character, and renders them the greatest thieves, liars, and cheats in existence. Amongst their few virtues, sobriety ranks the highest; but even if it were not inherent in their nature, it would be imposed upon them by a climate in which, under a burning sun, a few drops of ardent spirits are enough to render a man intoxicated. The Greeks are, it is true, capable of love and hatred, but they are never carried away by either passion; they never kill an enemy without having previously ascertained that they can do so with impunity; they never seduce a young girl without having first made themselves acquainted with the amount of her dowry. With respect to intellect they rank very high, and there is no mental exertion of which they are incapable. They understand quickly and well, and learn with marvellous facility all they care to learn; in other words, all which it is their interest to know; and the love of gain is a master which will some day or other teach them all the arts. One of the most salient traits of the Greek character is its hatred of slavery, and its love of equality; to this a third quality must be added, namely, patriotism; but, unfortunately, love of liberty is associated in them with contempt of the laws and of all constituted authority, whilst the love of equality shows itself frequently by an envenomed jealousy of all who elevate themselves above the common herd, and, in their case, narrow patriotism becomes egotism, and the mercantile spirit, which is so general amongst them, is very closely connected with roguery. The mass of the people does not consider itself under any obligation towards a feeble Government, and the Government does not know how to secure respect; religion has no hold on their minds, for their church imposes upon them little excepting superstitious observances, and omits to insist on the practice of morality; in short, everything contributes to render the Greek nation one of the most unprincipled and unruly people on the face of the earth. In addition to this, the conformation of the country is singularly favourable to the development of individualism. Greece is cut up into an infinity of fractions by the mountains and the sea. In goneby times, these geographical features greatly facilitated the divisions of the Greek people into small states, independent of one another, and in which the citizen, instead of being absorbed into the mass, defended his personal rights and his own individuality with jealous care; while, if he found himself menaced by the community, he could always take refuge, either on the sea, amongst the mountains, or in a neighbouring state. In the virtues of hospitality and courtesy, the Greeks are wretchedly deficient; fancying, M. About says, that they have treated a stranger very well when they have fired but two or three pistol shots at his horse, or thrown but a single handful of stones at the windows of his carriage. 66 Callous, save to crime, Stained with each evil that pollutes Mankind, where least above the brutes, Such the Greeks were nearly half a century ago, and such they are likely to remain, for aught we can see to the contrary, to the end of the chapter. The third section of M. About's work contains the result of his observations on the state of agriculture, trade, and commerce. For more than twenty years past, Greece has depended entirely on agriculture and commerce. As regards trade, it is the least industrial country in the world; consequently it is obliged to import all manufactured goods, and up to the present moment its imports are double the amount of its exports. The principal resource of the country is agriculture, and, without being fertile, it is capable of feeding two millions of inhabitants; it has, however, only nine hundred and fifty thousand, yet the supply is not equal to the demand. From 1837 to 1849, agriculture has not made a single step in advance, and this because the Greeks prefer lounging about in the market-place to working in the field. They take no pains in the cultivation of their land; the grain and fruit is gathered before it is ripe, in order to bring in a little ready money to the proprietors, who are always in debt; the olives and wines are so badly prepared, that it is impossible to find a market for them; there are no roads along which to convey agricultural produce from one part of the country to another. The forests bring in nothing to the State; first, because the means of transport are wanting; and secondly, because it is an axiom in Greece, that to injure the State is to injure no one; consequently, the peasantry have no more respect for the national property than if it belonged to the Turks; and, on account of the number of trees burnt down by shepherds in order to secure grass for their flocks, the State is obliged to import timber in large quantities for building purposes. In short, the country is badly cultivated, for want of labourers, capital, and roads; for though the Greeks, as a nation, are poor, their country is far from being so. But, if they are wanting in the necessaries of life, they console themselves by enjoy |