trust their hopes of bettering their condition to the orthodox mercies of the Czar. The Mussulmans are still a comparatively docile body. There is certainly no other country in Europe in which the government has so many auxiliaries for effecting great changes as in Turkey. Compare the internal organisation and the political burdens of the various races of the population of the Austrian empire with those of the Sultan's subjects, and we see immediately that the danger of insurrection and independent political action are much less. Turn to examine the fiscal burdens and commercial system of France, and we find that the very imperfections of the Turkish system increase the facilities of reform, and insure to the greatest changes a freedom from opposition which private interests offer to many useful reforms elsewhere.

Some of the warmest friends of Turkey assert that the condition of the Christian subjects of the Porte is already so favourable that Turkish oppression has no existence, and no further reforms are required. The Greeks and their friends, nevertheless, declare that the insupportable tyranny of the Sultan's administration is the sole cause of the revolutionary spirit which prevails among the Greek population, and generally among the orthodox clergy. Both assertions are incorrect. The well-attested diminution of the productions of the soil and of the population, both in European and Asiatic Turkey, for the last six generations, proves that the oppression of the central government has destroyed the capital vested in land by a slow but sure process of consumption. We hope we have made the primary causes of the evil evident to our readers, and demonstrated by what general measures these causes may be soon removed. The Othoman Empire presents us with a living example of the governmental policy by which imperial Rome depopulated and impoverished her provinces, and rendered them thinly peopled and heavily taxed countries before they were invaded by the Goths and Vandals. Even the small armies of Alaric and Genseric found few to oppose their progress, while fiscal oppression and social stagnation

had so entirely annihilated the feelings of patriotism in the breasts of the few Roman citizens who still inhabited the provinces, that they welcomed the arrival of the northern barbarians as a deliverance, and, like Boethius and Cassiodorus, sought honour in their service. Now, at this moment there is a considerable similarity between the Greeks of the nineteenth century and the Italians of the fifth. The Roman provincials often invited the Goths, the Greek rayahs are eager to hail the Russians, and we have seen the senators of the Hellenic kingdom as eager to become the tools of the Emperor Nicholas as the old Italian senators were to become the servants of Theodoric. Nor will this feeling be removed as long as the Christian who tills a few acres in the plains of Macedonia and Thrace sees square miles of the richest land uncultivated around him; and while he listens to the insinuations of his Greek priest, that all this land would be cultivated, and that he would be a rich landlord, exporting cargoes of wheat, if the Czar was the ruler of the country. What argument can political science offer that is likely to counteract the effect of such orthodox doctrine on the minds of the Bulgarian and Sclavonian peasants?

With regard to the assertion of the Greeks that the tyranny of the Sultan's government is the sole cause of their discontent, their conduct in the Ionian Islands and in the kingdom of Greece proves it to be false. In the Ionian Islands the greatest improvements in the administration of justice, and the establishment of a degree of protection for life and property previously unknown to the Greek race, appear to have done nothing to allay discontent, nor diminish the inherent love of calumny which seems to be a Hellenic idiosyncracy. The late events in the Greek kingdom have shown that no sense of justice and no treaties can bind them, when they believe they can gratify their passions by an appeal to force. Their political sagacity, it is true, was on this occasion sadly at fault. The rashness and presumption which for two thousand years have characterised the Romaiko-Hellenic people, combining with individual selfishness, royal am

bition, national incapacity, and Russian guidance, misled them to appeal their destinies to the sword, which they were unable to use with any effect, even when they took their enemy by surprise. Of the Greeks, therefore, we may assert that no measures of equity can secure their cordial support to any institutions. They have now had the government of liberated Greece entirely in their own hands for ten years, with the exercise of universal suffrage, and the fullest liberty of the press, and yet they have made no progress in their internal improvements. They cultivate their lands like medieval serfs; they manufacture wine with a mixture of resin into a composition that would make Bacchus himself abjure paganism; they grow bad fruit, make bad oil, and drive commerce from their coasts by preposterous restrictions on their own coasting-trade, and by their piracies and acts of barratry. The friends of Greece had expected that she would have served as a beacon for the nations of the East to steer towards political liberty and Christian civilisation; but they have been most grievously disappointed. Even the native merchants of Greece, who have conducted their commercial affairs on a liberal scale, have found themselves compelled, by the meanness of the court and government at Athens, to transport their domicile to other lands; and, accordingly, the merchants who do honour to the national character are all settled abroad, and very many are nationalised in France, Italy, and Austriasome few even in England-while political intriguers form the leaders of the nation in the Ionian Islands and in Greece.

We have now given a faithful picture of some features which have generally been neglected, in judging of the final destinies of the Othoman Empire. We have endeavoured to weigh candidly all the evidence in favour of the regeneration of the Sultan's government, and we have not concealed either its defects or its difficulties. It is for our own Government to decide how far it would be prudent for the allies of Turkey to urge the immediate adoption of those measures which are neces

sary to secure the support of the whole agricultural population of the Sultan's dominions, whether Christian or Mohammedan, in opposing every foreign enemy. At all events, we may assume that we have convinced all impartial readers that the project of maintaining the integrity of Turkey is far more practicable than that of reestablishing a Greek or new Byzantine empire at Constantinople. The Bulgarians of Macedonia have lately given a proof of the impossibility of forming a Greek empire by closing the Hellenic schools in several cities, and opposing by every means in their power the appointment of Greeks to high ecclesiastical offices. The progress of knowledge is daily rendering the Albanians and Vallachians more proud of their national distinctions. They boast of being descended from the Macedonians and Romans who conquered the descendants of Pericles. A Greek government would certainly require a much larger military force to keep the Christian population in European Turkey in subjection than the Othoman. The petulant Greek is at present a worse master to the Albanian peasantry of Attica and Argolis, than the phlegmatic Turk is to the Sclavonian in Macedonia and Thrace. To create a Greek or Byzantine empire would be to deliver Constantinople to the Czar of Russia, with guarantees for his maintaining permanent possession of it which he could never acquire by the sword.

It is, however, in the nature of things that defeat in the present attempt to strangle Turkey should only excite the Russian government to redouble its eagerness to discover new means for renewing her struggle for supremacy in the south-eastern part of Europe. For the contest with the Sultan is in Russia regarded as a national and religious warfare. As far as the mere separate interests of Great Britain are concerned, the present war has shown that we have nothing to fear from the power of the Czar. Instead of Russia being in a condition to attempt the invasion of our possessions in India, it is evident that it is in our power not only to conquer, but also to colonise Kamtschatka and Ochotsk, to endow these countries with local governments, nay,

even to make them independent states, and thus put an end to the authority of the Czar in all the countries east of Siberia, and exclude the Russians for ever from the Pacific and the Chinese seas. The ambition of the Emperor Nicholas to extend his power and influence in Eastern Europe may cause the loss of his dominions in Eastern Asia.

A hatti-sherif of the Sultan, and a law of the Greek kingdom, would be sufficient to change the social condition and future prospects of more than twenty millions of mankind engaged in agricultural pursuits, to enable this mass of human beings to better their condition and augment their numbers. These measures would raise up a bar

rier against the further progress of Russia, which no power of the Czar could break through; and these measures, unlike most theoretical reforms, may be commenced to-morrow morning, when the Divan meets at Constantinople, and the council of ministers is held at Athens. Both the Sultan and the Greek chambers have only to withdraw the weight of oppression that now prevents their subjects from replenishing the face of the earth. This being the case, we do not think that our own Government has embarked in a desperate undertaking, when it engaged in alliance with France to uphold the integrity of the Othoman Empire.

DID my last letter, dear Eusebius, open to your intellectual sight a glimpse of the real nature of Civilisation? Not that I would presume to imagine I could unfold so great a mystery, or to have reached the kernel of the nut which had broken the teeth of philosophers. Truth is as a ball of thread which, cast upon the ground, as it rolls unfolds itself, it is a lucky catch to have your fingers upon the outer thread: a careful following may unravel the whole, and the inner substance become clear and visible, however obscured in its involutions. Paint your phantasmagoria; let it represent a universal tournament, with queens of beauty the prizes, and every action be of honour, generosity, and love. Imagine a romance that shall embrace a nation, wise and reverenced age, heroic and lovely youth! Why, you are laughing doubtless at the rhapsody-the dream. Well, is it not a dream of civilisation? Honest hands were they of the trades in their several guilds that glorified the general grace with their proud handiwork, emulous of mastership and fair renown. Maiden-embroidery and horsemillinery were of the true materials; no shams, no adulterated and knavish substitutes. All work was honest; there was an additional worth in it of the labour of love. Fast asleep and dreaming again will you deem me? So much the worse, if it be so very

VOL. LXXVI.-NO. CCCCLXIX.

unlike the world we wake into, where both romance and honesty are faded like old tapestry, and equally derided for their out-of-time and seeming unnatural quaintnesses. Yet who knows, Eusebius, what "the ever-whirling wheel" of mutability may throw off for our allotment. Old things may come round again, tricked anew, and bright as all the virtues!

"Redeant Saturnia regna.'

Is this but a peevish humour? Are we not, after all, "better than we seem?" Have we not greatness in us and among us? Truly we have. We are on the stage of a serious drama, of which the low underplots and the interludes are somewhat ridiculous; but it is a grand piece that is being acted that may justify a "plaudite," ere the curtain drops. Who shall dare to say that heroism is dead - that honesty is dead? because knavery happens to be just now thriving, and miscalculating economists are troublesome with their false weights when the higher virtues are in the scale.

I emblematised civilisation, in the Chinese lady in japan-gilt frame, like a rose in garden enclosure,—the feminine excellence, that even you might not, with an Anglo-Saxon conceit that occasionally and for a moment predominates in us all, arrogate to this your England all that is good. Queen, Empress, or Ladye-they are all one and the same-was she once, in the

2 L

empire of Porcelain. Her picture is proof of her once existence, as a discovered coin of a reign; and who knows if, in the wonders that mutability is working, she may not again rise a revivified civilisation in that strange land a new Aphrodite out of the sea of its turbulence, when the Tartar dynasty shall have quietly withdrawn itself; for it is better he should escape than she should "catch a Tartar." My letter concluded with the best of conclusions, that civilisation is, was, and ever will be, Feminine Influence. You may not like my Chinese model; but you, who would rather fight for the honour and reputation of your great-grandmother, than like a Bounderby deny a mother, will scan the mystery, and see its perfection.

I was vexed to find nothing of this in Census No. 1. There all was of the penmanship of Big Busybody, prime secretary of Prince Humbug, and I felt some pleasure in rolling about my tub in contempt. But whether it was that the Prince Humbug and his secretary were weary or hungry, and retired, or were shoved for a while from their seats of authority by a more masterly hand, I find quite another spirit in about the middle of Report No. 2, wherein, in coincidence with our —that is, your and my view-the feminine element is justly brought out and duly weighed its value and importance established. The writer of this portion of the Census, wisely dissatisfied with the assumed causes of our progressive population-namely, the mechanical inventions, which have apparently found employment for the people ascribes it to the influence of the changes in the conjugal state of the people. He passes in review the period of our history extending from 1651 to 1751. "The population increased very slowly; and we find that, after the restoration of Charles II., such a general dissoluteness of manners was inaugurated as can now be scarcely understood; while shortly after 1751 the law of marriage-which, like the institution itself, had grown inconceivably loose, and had at the same time been greatly abused-was reformed." Puritanism had drawn the social bow with too strong a hand; the string had broken, and it had hastily flown back

in the opposite direction. Profligacy was a fashion. The writer is here unsparing, yet justifies his severity by authorities given in the notes.

"The light poets, the players, and the gay men and women on town, led crowds of votaries into the extreme opposite to Puritanism. Young people of both sexes were brought from the country to Whitehall, where, instead of hard lessons of elevated thought and patriotism-such as Lady Jane Grey and her contemporaries learnt from Plato-they masqued, they 'ogled,' sang, and danced, under the eye of the Mother of the Maids,' and the higher auspices of the Queen, the Queen-Dowager, and the Duchess of York, until, wounded or terrified, they flew into concealment, or as it was everywhere deemed, ridiculously married, and ingloriously discharged the duties of English wives and mothers. The sisters, daughters, and wives of the loyalest subjects, the greatest generals, the wisest statesmen, and the gravest judges, figured in the Paphian train, glittering and smiling as the troop of Boccaccio in the pages of Grammont, and on the walls of Hampton Court; but with advancing years shattered, patched, degraded, fading

as they are seen in the authentic memoirs of the age, and life-like portraits of Hogarth."

As Hogarth was not born till 1698, the tenth year of the reign of William and Mary, it is surely straining a point for the picturesque effect of portraiture, to introduce him as depicting, in the dramatis personæ of his scenic works, the profligacies of the reign or the Beauties of the Court of Charles II. In the frigid Court of William and Mary, "vice lost its graces and charms; but profligacy is not at once eradicated; and it would be strange indeed if there was not enough of it in practice of the then world of fashion to justify the satire of the moral painter. The "homely but not shining qualities which regulated the court of the "devout, chaste, and formal" Queen Anne, so designated by Lord Chesterfield, a writer very tolerant of old vices, were not suffered to have a permanent effect upon the manners of the people, by the succession of the two first Georges. Among all classes

"the institution of marriage was unsettled to its foundations."

The effect of this state of things upon families was most pernicious. The due ratio of increase of population was stayed. A gradual improvement in the morals of the people commenced after 1751. Lord Hardwicke's bill, in 1753, was "one of the first evident reforms in the law of marriage." Historians do not express the same sentiments upon the operation of this bill-some viewing it as a means to secure to the aristocracy fortunes by marriages, others as giving a greater respectability to marriage itself. It was at the time considered by its opponents as likely to affect the population of the country. The writer in the Report observes: "Experience soon showed, that instead of stopping marriage, and the growth of population, the Act had the contrary effect, by depriving the marriage ceremony of disgraceful associations by making it not a mere verbal promise, but a life contract to be recorded, to be entered into with deliberation by persons in the enjoyment of their faculties, and to be kept inviolate till death." And here it is fair to remark, that probably no small share of the disrespect in which marriages were held, and the consequent dissoluteness, may be ascribed to the Puritans, who, before Charles's arrival, in 1653, had passed a bill for solemnising marriages by justices of peace. The removal of any part of the sanctity of marriage has a tendency to bring it into disrepute; it is better that it should be held even as some would say with a superstition, than merely as a civil contract, which, like most other civil contracts, may be broken ad libitum by those who are willing to incur the penalties. Modern legislation has, however, in this respect, brought the ceremony of marriage down still lower than the Act of the Puritans, by reducing even the official dignity of performance, and authorising marriages at the public Register Offices. Where there is little distinct religious feeling or principle, there is a superstition akin to it. And there are few who do not receive or remember, with a sense of awe, the solemn words, "Whom God hath joined together, let no man put

asunder;" and the evil suggestion, in the contrary case, is ready enoughWhom man joins man may put asunder, and if man only, it little matters what man. Parties may assume that privilege to themselves. It is hard to see how the Church of England can, at any after time, by their other official acts, recognise such marriages. What is to be said of the monition or warning, that "so many as are coupled together otherwise than God's word doth allow, are not joined together by God, neither is their matrimony lawful?"

"Since the Act (of 1753) came into operation, the registers of marriage have been preserved in England, and show an increase from 50,972 in the year 1756 to 63,310 in 1764 "The rage of marrying is very prevalent," writes Lord Chesterfield in the latter year; and again in 1767, "in short, the matrimonial frenzy seems to rage at present, and is epidemical." After many fluctuations, the marriages rose to seventy, eighty, ninety, and a hundred thousand annually; and in the Census year (1851) to a hundred and fifty-four thousand two hundred and six.

Fourteen millions were added to the population. The matrimonial "frenzy " which amused Lord Chesterfield was rife in the reign of our Third George. You will not be surprised, Eusebius, to learn, that to George III., his queen, and the example of his court, is ascribed by this writer in the Census the change for the better in the morals and manners of the people. Family sanctities were established. The home influence of the virtuous mother was felt throughout the land. That purity was restored which had been nearly lost in the moral degradation of women of previous licentious times. It is with a grateful pleasure, Eusebius, as one born during that moral_reign, and thankful for that love of a mother which was its law and rule, and my individual happiness, that I make the following extract:

"Of the political course of George III. and Queen Charlotte opinions necessarily still differ; but the truth of the testimony to the Queen's private virtues will be universally admitted." (Here follows extract from Lord Mahon's History of Eng