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aggrandisement. The orthodox ritual is the prelude to conquest, and the mission which the Emperor of Russia believes to have received from Heaven is its propagation, without respect to any other creed or sect. Lutheranism, Calvinism, Catholicism, are equally the objects of that mission; and, unless now arrested, he will follow on in his career, until the Russian cross is planted on the dome of every Cathedral in Europe, and the entire West acknowledge his temporal and spiritual supremacy. Panslavism with its double device, the tiara and the sceptre, is the banner unfurled to the Slavonic nations and tribes of Europe, who are summoned to rally round it, and beneath its folds is a policy the most faithless, and an ambition the most unbounded and unscrupulous, that the world has ever known. The orthodox Church of Russia, of whose powers, rights, purity of doctrine, and infallibility, the Czar is the personification, claims to be considered as the sole depository of the religious and moral truth from which all other churches have strayed, and which must one day be absorbed by her. She alone is orthodox; all others are heretical. Rome she considers as preserving the Christian principle, among those who acknowledge her spiritual supremacy, merely for the ultimate triumph of orthodoxy; and she believes that the time is fast approaching when the last of the Pontiffs shall hand over his longusurped authority to the Czar, shall avow his errors, and ask to be received into the faith from which the Latin Church has deviated. "The orthodox Church has never despaired of such a result," writes a Russian of high diplomatic rank, in a Mémoire which appeared in the Revue de Deux Mondes of January 1850. "That church waits and counts upon it, not merely with confidence, but with certainty. And why should not that which is one in principle, which is one in eternity, triumph over the disunion that has crept in by time? In spite of the separation of many ages, and in spite of human prejudices, she has not ceased to recognise that the Christian principle has not died in the Church of Rome, that it

has always been stronger in it than the errors and the passions of men; and she has the intimate conviction that it will be stronger than all its enemies. She knows, moreover, that at this moment, as for ages past, the Christian destinies of the West are still in the hands of Rome; and she confidently hopes that, in the day of the grand reconciliation, Rome will restore to her the sacred deposit intact."

Towards the close of the year 1845, the cities of Naples and Palermo were visited by the Empress of Russia, who sought in the soft and genial climate of the south the restoration of her health, which had been seriously affected at St Petersburg. Such at least was the reason assigned for the presence of the Czarina. It afforded a favourable pretext to the Emperor himself to visit Italy, and soon Europe was surprised at learning that the Emperor Nicholas, the head of the Orthodox Church, had gone to salute the Prince who claimed to be Christ's vicar on earth, and the head of the Latin Church. The event occurred not long after the story of the tortured nuns of Poland had rung all over Europe. The cause at first assigned for the journey was not credited. Compensation for past misdeeds, pardon implored at the tombs of the saints, reconciliation and union between the Eastern and Western Churches, which had been separated for centuries, were the explanations that accorded better with the popular feeling, and were more readily believed. Great were the hopes, and high the exultation, in the Eternal City. Rome put on her festal robes. The Cupola of St Peter's, encircled with its illuminated diadem, rose in light and glory to the heavens. The old castle of St Angelo, that had witnessed many high festivities, spoke out its welcome in thunder, and the bells of every tower and church in that proud city hailed the imperial stranger. Such visits had not often occurred before. When, in 452, Attila, the "Scourge of God," appeared before the walls of Rome, the Pontiff Leo presented himself alone, unprotected, and bearing aloft, as his only weapon, the cross, and summoned

matic West;-the holiness of Eastern tradition, uncorrupted and unaltered. His mission was to close the schism of centuries, and to bestow, out of the plenitude of his bounty, pardon and protection to the West. When the Czar prostrated himself on the cold marble before the shrines of the Apostles, in presence of a silent and astonished multitude, he was not alone in that act of humiliation; all Russia bent with him. After centuries of absence, Russia, represented by the Czar, the future head of universal Christianity, took possession of the Papacy, as the prelude of what was to follow.

the savage cohorts to retire. Six centuries later, the Emperor of the West bowed before the anger of Gregory, and expiated, in the court of the Pontifical Palace, the oppression of his Saxon subjects. But it was for no expiation, it was to make no confession of past crimes, nor was it to demand forgiveness or reconciliation, that the Emperor Nicholas now knelt beneath the dome of St Peter's. The head of the Orthodox Faith had no idea of asking pardon from any one on earth, for he deemed all on earth beneath him. He did not visit Rome to seek the spiritual or moral consecration of his power; his mission was rather to consecrate, and to receive the repentance of the Papacy. Charlemagne had been the servant and the protector of the Papacy; he bestowed much upon it, but he received more. But the orthodox Emperor of our day, who entered Rome in 1845, brought all to the Pope, without asking anything in return. He was ready to restore to him all the force which the Papacy had lost since its unhappy connection with the schis

The total absorption in his own person of spiritual and temporal authority all over Europe, is the fixed idea of the Czar, and for that object the fanaticism of his people has been roused to frenzy. It is for those States who value religion and political independence, and who are not prepared to see civilisation and liberty recede before the barbarians of the North, to make a united and determined stand against the enemy of all.

Printed by William Blackwood & Sons, Edinburgh.

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WE certainly owe an apology to our Greek ambassador. The nine hundred and ninety-ninth edition of a declamatory old play of Euripides, cut and slashed into the most newfangled propriety by some J. A. Hartung, or other critical German, with a tomahawk, is a phenomenon in the literary world that can excite no attention; but when a regularly built living Greek comes forward in the middle of this nineteenth century, exactly four hundred years after the last Byzantine chronicler had been blown into the air by our brave allies the Turks-and within the precincts of the Red Lion Court, Londonτῇ ἀυλῇ του ἐρυθρου λέοντος—puts forth a regularly built history of the Greek Revolution of 1821, thereby claiming -not without impudence, as some think-a place on our classical shelves alongside of Herodotus, Thucydides, and Xenophon, and a great way above Diodorus Siculus, and other such retailers of venerable hearsay: this truly is an event in the Greek world that claims notice from the general reviewer even more than from the professed classical scholar. At the present mo

ment, particularly, one likes to see what a living Greek, with a pen in his hand, has to say for himself; his language and his power of utterance is an element in the great Turko-Russian question that cannot be lost sight of. Doubly welcome, therefore, is this first instalment of Mr Tricoupi's long-expected history; and as it happens opportunely that the most interesting portion of Sir A. Alison's third volume is occupied with the same theme, we eagerly seize the present opportunity at once to acquit ourselves of an old debt to our Hellenic ambassador, and to thank Sir A. Alison for the spirited, graphic, and thoroughly sympathetic style in which he has presented to the general English reader the history of a bright period of Greek history, which recent events have somewhat tended to becloud. It is not our intention on the present occasion to attempt a sketch of the strategetical movements of the Greek war, 1821-6. A criticism of these will be more opportune when Mr Tricoupi shall have finished his great work. We shall rather confine ourselves to bringing out a few salient

(1.) Σπυριδωνος Τρικουπη ἱστορία τῆς Ἑλληνικῆς ἐπαναστάσεως. Τόμος Α. London, 1853. (History of the Greek Revolution. By Spiridion Tricoupi, Greek Minister, London. Vol. i.)

(2.) History of Europe from the Fall of Napoleon in 1815, to the Accession of Louis Napoleon in 1852. By Sir ARCHIBALD ALISON, Bart. Vol. iii.

* The work, when completed, will, we understand, consist of four volumes octavo ; the second volume is expected to appear in a few weeks.

VOL. LXXVI.-NO. CCCCLXVI.

I

points of that great movement, which may serve, by way of contrast or similitude, to throw light on the very significant struggle in which we are now engaged. A single word, however, in the first place, with regard to the dialect in which Mr Tricoupi's work is written; as that is a point on which all persons are not well informed, and a point also by no means unimportant in the decision of the question,- What are the hopes, prospects, and capabilities of the living race of Greeks?

Now, with regard to this point, Mr Tricoupi's book furnishes the most decided and convincing evidence that the language of Aristotle and Plato yet survives in a state of the most perfect purity, the materials of which it is composed being genuine Greek, and the main difference between the style of Tricoupi and that of Xenophon consisting in the loss of a few superfluous verbal flexions, and the adoption of one or two new syntactical forms to compensate for the loss-the merest points of grammar, indeed, which to a schoolmaster great in Attic forms may appear mighty, but to the general scholar, and the practical linguist, are of no moment. A few such words of Turkish extraction, as Čáμov, a mosque; pipμávov, a firman; Belipŋs, a vizier; γενίτσαρος, a janizary; ραγιάδης, α rajah, so far from being any blot on the purity of Mr Tricoupi's Greek, do in fact only prove his good sense; for even the ancient Greeks, ultra-national as they were in all their habits, never scrupled to adopt a foreign word-such ας γάζα, παράδεισος, ἄγγαρος—when it came in their way, just as we have κοδράντης, κήνσος, σουδάριον, and a few other Latinisms in the New Testament. The fact is, that the modern Greeks are rather to be blamed for the affectation of extreme purity in their style, than for any undue admixture of foreign words, such as we find by scores in every German newspaper. But this is their affair. It is a vice that leans to virtue's side, and springs manifestly from that strong and obstinate vitality of race which has survived the political revolutions of nearly two thousand years; and a vice, moreover, that may prove of the utmost use to our young scholars, who may have the sense and the enterprise

to turn it to practical account. For, as the pure Greek of Mr Tricoupi's book is no private invention of his own, but the very same dialect which is at present used as an organ of intellectual utterance by a large phalanx of talented professors in the University of Athens, and is in fact the language of polite intercourse over the whole of Greece, it follows that Greek, which is at present almost universally studied as a dead language, and that by a most laborious and tedious process of grammatical indoctrination, may be more readily picked up, like German or French, in the course of the living practice of a few months. It is worthy of serious consideration, indeed, how far the progress of our young men in an available knowledge of the finest language of the world may have been impeded by the perverse methods of teachers who could not speak, and who gave themselves no concern to speak, the language which they were teaching; who invented, also, an arbitrary system of pronouncing the language, which completely separated them from the nation who speak it. But this is a philological matter on which we have no vocation to enter here: we only drop a hint for the wise, who are able to inquire and to conclude for themselves.

We now proceed to business. There are five points connected with the late Greek Revolution which stand out with a prominent interest at the present moment.

First,-The character, conduct, and position of RUSSIA at the outbreak of the Revolution.

Second,-The character and conduct of the Turks and the Turkish government, as displayed by the manner in which the revolt was met.

Third,-The character, conduct, and political significance of the GREEK PEOPLE, as exhibited during the five years' struggle.

Fourth, The character, conduct, and position of RUSSIA, as more fully developed at the conclusion of the struggle.

Fifth,-The character, conduct, and political significance of the GREEK PEOPLE, as exhibited since the battle of Navarino and the establishment of the existing Bavarian dynasty.

On all these points we shall offer a

few remarks in the order in which they are set down.

First,-As to the conduct of RUSSIA. It is a remarkable fact, and very significant of the nature of Russian influence in Turkey, that the Greek Revolution did not commence where one might have expected it to commence, in Greece proper-i.e., the mountainous strongholds of Acarnania and the Peloponnesus-but in those very Principalities where we are now fighting, and where the Muscovites are always intriguing. How was this? Plainly because all those Greeks who had for years been brewing revolt in their éraipiai, or secret conspiracies, took it for granted that on that nominally Turkish but really Russian ground, Russia would at once come forward and help them to kill -we use the Imperial simile—the sick old Infidel, who had been so long lying with his diseased lumpish body on the back of the Christian population; and accordingly the man whom they set up to raise the flag of Christian insurrection on the banks of the Pruth and the Sereth, was an officer in the Russian service, Alexander Ypsilanti by name; and the first thing he did when he came forward as military head of the revolt in the Principalities, was to put forth a proclamation, in which the Christian tribes of Turkey were told that "a great European power" might be depended on as "patronising the insurrection"—or μια μεγάλη δύναμις τους προστατεύει. Now, here was a lie to begin with, to which perhaps the old Græcia mendax may seem not inapplicable: but in fact it was a most probable lie; and if lies were at all justifiable, either on principle or policy, at the opening scene of a great war, certainly this was the lie which at that time and place looked most like the truth. But it is a dangerous thing to raise warlike enthusiasm at any time, especially when an emperor is concerned, by sounding statements not founded on truth. Had the Czar been ever so willing to assist the movement of the Wallachian Greeks, and to lead his victorious Cossacks, scarcely returned from fair Paris, to magnificent Stamboul, he could not but feel offended at the unceremonious manner in which his decision had been taken out of his

own mouth, and the absolute spontaneity of an imperial ukase been forestalled by a vagabond Greek captain. But the Greeks were, from the beginning, out of their reckoning in supposing that the then Czar would, as a matter of course, patronise their insurrectionary movement against the Turks. Alexander, though not naturally a very bellicose person, had already done as much for the territorial aggrandisement of Russia as would have contented the most warlike of his predecessors. He had rounded off the north-west corner of his vast domain in the most neat and dexterous way by the appropriation of Finland in 1808; and he had profited alike in the upshot by the friendship of Napoleon at Tilsit in 1807, and by his enmity at Moscow in 1812. That he should enter upon a new, and in all probability a severe contest with another enemy, and put himself at the head of a great insurrectionary movement, disturbing all the peaceful relations so recently established, and in such friendly amity with the great conservative powers at Paris and Vienna, was a proceeding not to be looked for from a moderate and a prudent man. This the Greeks might have known, had they not been befooled by patriotic passion. A "holy alliance" no doubt it was which, in 1815, the pious soul of the good Czar had made with his brother kings; but this "holiness" was either a mere fraternisation of sentiment, too vague to be of any practical force, or at best a religious stamp placed upon a document, the contents of which were essentially political, and did not at all warrant the expectation that the most Christian crowned Allies should be called upon to interfere in supporting every revolt which Christian subjects in any land might feel themselves called upon to make against their traditional lords. Then as to politics: Though Alexander was a most kind-hearted, truly popular, and very liberal_sovereign, and had made speeches at Paris, Warsaw, and elsewhere, equal to anything ever spouted by the present Majesty of Prussia in his most liberal fits, yet he was very little of a constitutionalist, and not at all a democrat. From Laybach, therefore, where he was when the revolution broke out in March

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