CHAPTER XV.

IMMORTAL Greece! it gives me joy that thou
Hast linked with thine existence, thy decree-
Whate'er betide-never again to bow

Beneath the yoke. For I prefer to see
From hill to plain-from shore to mountain brow,
A waste of ghastly ruin cover thee,

Than darkly wearing out thy joyless years

Bathed with thy subject children's blood and tears.

ATHENS MORAL INFLUENCE OF HER MEMORIALS -FEATURES OF THE

REVOLUTION

CONDUCT OF THE GREEKS THEIR FUTURE PROSPECTS CHARGES BROUGHT AGAINST THEM INTELLECTUAL AND MORAL CLAIMS OF THE TURKS AND GREEKS TWO NATIONS CONTRASTED SOURCES MISSIONARIES-THE MISSIONARY ENTERPRISE.

COMPARED GENIUS OF THE
OF RELIGIOUS INFLUENCE-

THE Greeks have preserved, through a long series of unexampled disasters, many of those daring intellectual traits which distinguished their remote ancestors. The engines of despotism have been unable to break down their mountains, obstruct their streams, or destroy the proud monuments of their genius. These unsubdued, spirit-stirring objects, with all their associations, lofty and tender, have been constantly before them, recalling the past, reproaching the present, and filling the future with the anticipated triumphs of rallied patriotism and courage. They have not, therefore, at any period of

their misfortunes, been utterly broken in pride, purpose, and hope: the chain has galled without subduing them; they have yielded to its weight, but, ever and anon, their indignation has flashed along its shaking links.

They could not but cherish some wild thoughts of freedom, by the waves of Salamis and the graves of Marathon; they could not but remember and mourn on the banks of the Peneus, and the ambrosial steeps of Parnassus; they could not but breathe their burning vows among the mangled relics of their storied cities, and over the insulted ashes of their ancestral dead! These memorials sustained, from age to age, that spirit, resolution, and self-respect, which finally burst forth with the avenging force of a dark and deeply cherished wrong.

They made up their minds to die, sooner than be the passive instruments of transmitting this continued inheritance of bondage and shame. They encountered their oppressors with a force that made their resistance, at first, more a subject of derision than alarm. But courage and decided patriotism seldom reckon nicely upon numbers; they had that within them which no superiority of strength could subdue -a spirit resolutely resolved on freedom!

They had no arms, ammunition, or system of operation; no disciplined legions to force the enemy from his strong positions; no fleet to prevent the access of hostile squadrons. They rose as each man's sense

of duty prompted, and seized such weapons as lay within their reach; it might be a bludgeon, but it was wielded by an arm true to its trust; it might be a boat, but it was armed with concealed fire; it might be a rock, but it went on its precipitous course with unerring aim; or it might be the fragment of a column, but, like the pillars of Gaza, it crushed the insulters with the insulted. Few men of any age or nation have achieved more with the same slender and distracted means of enforcing their purpose; and instead of the reproaches levelled against them by ignorance and animosity, they deserve the plaudits of mankind.

It is pain to accuse them of a want of that spirit which can assert and maintain its dignity at the highest sacrifice and peril; thousands espoused the cause who could have had no motive for their conduct except their national honor; they pledged their lives and fortunes to the issue of a conflict that could in no event confer any personal advantage. Their want of union and a harmonized system of operation was more their misfortune than their fault; it flowed more from the untowardness of their outward condition than any perverseness of spirit. They were like a mountain lake shaken convulsively against its yielding boundaries, and falling in many separate streams, instead of one deep overwhelming torrent.

If it had been their desire, it was not in their power to concentrate their forces; they had not the

means of subsisting them in that compact form; their only resource was in a desultory warfare, and the access it furnished to the scanty provisions which the country precariously afforded. They were, perhaps, premature in their first step; too hasty in raising the standard of Liberty; but that step, wise or fatal, had now been taken, the standard had been unfurled, the gauntlet had been cast in the face of the enemy, and they must abide the consequence! 1 It was no longer a debatable question, or an indul-' gent choice of evils; they had no mercy or forgiveness to expect even in a relenting submission; and they had provided no refuge in disaster.

They had been goaded to this fearful measure by a series of wrongs, that made endurance a deeper humiliation than defeat. Their fields had been plundered successively of their harvests; their flocks and herds driven off to the stalls of the stranger; their sons forced into foreign wars; their daughters made the victims of privileged lust; their temples and shrines rendered desolate; and their religion scouted with derision and scorn.

They pondered indignantly the history of their misfortunes; they saw the long road on which their fathers had travelled down in chains to the grave; they heard from the dungeon and rack the dying exclamations of their chiefs; and drawing their blades, swore never to sheath them again in the condition of bondsmen and slaves. We, who experi

enced none of their grievances, and can scarcely comprehend the nature and extent of their provocations, may, perhaps, question the policy of their conduct; talk coolly of their privileges; and dilate on the growing extent of their commerce.

But a nation that has bowed for ages to the yoke, never rises with a desperate inferiority of force against her oppressors, unless provoked to it by a most crushing accumulation of abuse. The very fact of her rising under such fearful disadvantages evinces the depth of her wrongs, and affords an earnest of her final triumph over the disastrous and degrading ef fects of her thraldom.

Her present ideas of liberty, though not sufficiently chastened and sober, are yet far from being the wild and reckless conceptions which many suppose. She has not yet become sufficiently tranquillized to discover, with impressive distinctness, all the delicate bearings of her true interests. We require too much of her, in expecting that she will settle at once into a calm and steady pursuit of those objects connected with the greatest amount of public and private good.

We should recollect the fierce and desperate nature of her revolution; it was not a change coming calmly over the surface of society, affecting only the sentiments of men; it was a great decisive conflict, involving principle, life, religion, property, every thing dear upon earth-waged with an unforgiving foe, and at perilous odds. The nation was convulsed to its