of so many thousand Greek women and children whose mildest lot has been that of being sold for slaves.

We have dwelt upon the proceedings at Tripolitza at some length because they give a good idea of the state of the people at the beginning of the insurrection, and shew how totally unprepared the Greeks were, both in a moral and military sense, for the great attempt upon which they had embarked, and the very rashness of which one cannot but admire.

If the savage customs engendered by long subjection to an Oriental yoke appear at this period of the contest in all their deformity, the subsequent history of the insurrection seems to indicate, that they are already giving way to the effects of a consciousness of the dignity of the new position which the people is assuming: it can hardly be doubted, that these sentiments, combined with a better knowledge of regular warfare, which the volunteers from civilized Europe will introduce among them, together with a longer practice of war, which cannot fail to call forth the nobler qualities of the people, will cause the selfishness and cruelty of the robber gradually to give place to a conduct more liberal, and to a more patriotic

and enlightened feeling for the general welfare of Greece.

By the loss of Tripolitza, the Turkish admiral was obliged to confine his operations to the destruction of Galaxidhi, a Greek town which had risen to considerable opulence by maritime commerce, upon the site of the ancient Eanthe, in the Crissæan bay of the gulf of Corinth; and the ships of which place were prevented from joining the insurgents in the Ægæan sea, by the enemy's position at the entrance of the gulf. The Turks burnt the town, captured thirty or forty Greek ships which were lying there, and by this operation became undisturbed masters of the Corinthian gulf, into which the Greeks, however strong, can not venture to pursue them, as long as they remain masters of Patræ, Naupactus, and of the two intermediate castles. These castles, called the castles of the Moréa and of Rumeli, stand upon the ancient promontories of Rhium and Antirrhium, on either side of a strait a mile in width, and thus command the entrance of the gulf.

Having left a squadron in possession of the gulf of Corinth and bay of Patræ, the captain pasha quitted the latter place in the beginning of October, on his return to the Dardanelles. Near Zante

he was met by a great number of Greek vessels, but without any result except the loss of one of his small ships of war, which was stranded and burnt in the port of Kierí in that island.

This year the Turks had been surprised: they began the campaign of 1822 better prepared, and with the advantage of having at length obtained possession of the last strong hold of Aly Pasha, whose cause had become almost identified with that of the Greeks. Khurshid Pasha was now charged with the entire conduct of the war in Greece, and Omér, a Toshke Albanian of Verghiondi, near Beráti, (and hence commonly called Omer Vrionis) who had distinguished himself in the service of the Viceroy of Egypt, particularly against the English at Rosetta, in 1807, received the pashalik of Ioannina and Arta, in the room Ismaïl, as a reward for having set the example of treachery towards his late master Aly, by opening the passes of Pindus to Ismaïl on his first advance to Ioannina, in 1820. The exhibition of Aly's head at the imperial gate, in February, 1822, and the triumphal conveyance into the capital of a part of his spoils, excited a degree of enthusiasm very useful to the cause of the sultan at an important moment: but a small part only of the pasha's gold

reached the imperial treasury, while the substitution of one Albanian for another in the government of Ioannina showed how completely the Greek insurrection had thwarted the design of the Porte for increasing its authority in Epirus; affairs having in fact become less favourable to the future influence of the Porte over Albania, than they had been under Aly, or than they would have been under the government of his sons.

Nevertheless the spring of 1822 was the crisis of Grecian liberty, and its cause appeared to many persons little better than desperate. On one side was a power larger in extent of territory than any in Europe; which had maintained its station for near four centuries, in one of the most commanding positions in the world; whose integrity was admitted by all the other great powers to be essential to the general peace; ready, by the nature of its government, to enter upon war at a short notice, and furnished with all the fiscal, military, and naval establishments of a monarchy of long standing. On the other, were the inhabitants of a small province of this extensive empire, without any central authority, without cavalry, artillery, magazines, hospitals, or military chest, whose whole military force, in short, consisted only of a

rude undisciplined infantry, armed with an awkward long musket, to which was added, according to the circumstances of the individual, pistols, a dagger, or a sword-ignorant of the use of the bayonet, acknowledging no discipline, and more uninstructed in war as an art than the Greeks of the heroic ages,-led, indeed, by men possessing courage and enterprize, and some of the essential qualifications of command, but who were scarcely less ignorant and unenlightened than their soldiers, and too selfish to lose any opportunity of enriching themselves, or to preserve that harmony with the other leading men, which was so necessary in the dangerous position of the country.

There were circumstances, however, which rendered the inequality between the two parties more apparent than real, and there were others which, although more distant perhaps in their effects, are so powerful, that they will probably have the effect of excluding the Turks from the Peloponnesus for ever, and may even ultimately expel them from Europe.

Among the former may be reckoned the degeneracy of the present race of Turks as soldiers; the ignorance and inexperience of their commanders, often raised from situations the least fitted