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SUICIDE OF VILKIEVICH.

285

istan. To maintain a good understanding with the Court of St. Petersburg the British Government consented to overlook this discrepancy, and bartering lie for lie cemented the bond of union by disowning the proceedings and blackening the character of its own subordinate agents. As diplomatists the Russian and the English Minister rivalled each other, but the conduct of both may be best estimated, according to laws of honour and morality, by the act of him who was less scrupulous only because he was more powerful. We quote Mr. Kaye :

"When the Lieutenant of Cossacks returned to Persia in 1839, after giving a full report of his mission to M. Duhamel, the new Minister at Teheran, he was instructed to proceed direct to St. Petersburg. On his arrival there, full of hope, for he had discharged the duty entrusted to him with admirable address, he reported himself after the customary formality to Count Nesselrode, but the Minister refused to see him. Instead of a flattering welcome the unhappy envoy was received with a crushing message to the effect that Count Nesselrode 'knew no Captain Vilkievich, except an adventurer of that name who it was reported had been lately engaged in some unauthorised intrigues at Cabul and Candahar.' Vilkievich understood at once the portent of this message. He knew the character of his Government, he was aware of the recent expostulations of Great Britain, and he saw clearly that he was to be sacrificed. He went back to his hotel, wrote a few bitter reproachful lines, burnt all his other papers, and blew out his brains."

Such is the story of the Affghan war, mainly as

told in the work whose title is appended. We may say of a period of history unsurpassed in variety of action and inconstancy of fortune, that the language in which it is here related enhances the natural interest of the tale.

Sept. 253

“THE EASTERN QUESTION."

287

THE GREEK REVOLUTION.

MANY a one who has been a steady peruser of the "fourth estate" must be aware of a certain class of subjects which he has never understood himself or found any one else who could understand, but which have haunted the daily papers time out of mind like unlaid ghosts. Such are the Rajah of Sattara, the Baron de Bode, the affairs of the River Plate, the Ameers of Scinde-headings from which many of our readers recoil with horror. Those youthful members of the community who have during the last few months occasionally stolen an hour from Virgil and quadratic equations, to commence their first essay in newspaper reading, will probably, for years to come, look upon the "Eastern question as an awful spectre, which has from their earliest recollections intruded itself at their intellectual feast, asserting its right to a couple of columns, shortening the speeches of their favourite M.P., or totally suppressing the exciting details of a horrid murder. For, let not those who towards the close of August fled from politics to Germany or Scotland consider that on their return from the imbibing of chalybeates or the slaughter of grouse they will find The Times free from the details of its correspondent at Constantinople, or the translated speculations of the Viennese press. Though the Porte may withdraw its modifications, or

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the Czar his troops-though the success of diplɔmatists may be better than their French, and Cossacks and Kurds be kept for the present from each other's throats, yet Englishmen may be certain that they are in for the subject for many years to come; in short, until the matter is settled on a just foundation, either with their concurrence or without it. As it is well to understand what we shall have forced on our attention, any information less superficial than we have been accustomed to ought not to be neglected.

Opportunely comes M. Tricoupi, the distinguished Greek Minister in London, and, in a work addressed indeed only to his countrymen, but worthy the attention of all, relates the story of independent Greece and her dearly won freedom; nor does the narrative fail to show, that as the independence of King Otho's dominion was not the first wound inflicted on Turkish power, so, in his opinion, it will be by no means the last. We naturally receive with a due allowance for national prejudice the work of a writer who is old enough to remember and to have been concerned in the events which he relates; in whose recollection the slaughter of the Patriarch and the desolation of the Morea must yet be fresh: yet it must be admitted that, as the narratives of Thucydides and Xenophon, detailing their own actions or their own misfortunes, are models of impartiality, so in the present case the patriotic feelings of the author, and his hereditary hatred towards hereditary foes, have not led him into any distortion or suppression of the truth. In short, there is an evident imitation of the ancient models in the quiet impartiality with which he relates the excesses of either party, their outbreaks of ferocity, or

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their fits of cowardice, their supineness when action was necessary, their mad schemes when nothing was practicable. Those who are willing to form an idea of that Christian population of which a part has obtained, and a part still pants after freedom, will do well to consult the work before us. This, of course, leads us to speak of the language in which it is written, which is the modern Greek, as used by the most educated class; a language closely resembling the later Attic, differing from it only in its inflections, and entirely purged from the corruptions which had infected it during a slavery of four hundred years. There are many among us who consider the modern Greek as a tongue differing from the ancient as much as Italian from Latin, and even scholars are not aware that there is no real difference; that many of the forms considered new are as old as the most esteemed classics, or at least as the time of the Septuagint. There are, indeed, authors among the Greeks them. selves who have endeavoured to return, at least in writing, to the identical dialect of Demosthenes; but these find no favour with M. Tricoupi, who urges, with great truth, that the Doric forms of the modern Hellenic language are as worthy of respect as the Attic, which is the standard of the ancient tongue. "It would," he says, "be a great calamity if men of education, led away by a too ardent admiration for the past, were to desert the common forms of speech, and raise up a literature to which only a few scholars should possess the key, so that as in Egypt, there should be two modes of writing, the pedantic and the popular." This is most just-for it is certain that literature can only have strength and

VOL. II.

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