Pasha's attempts to repress their outrages. "Pillaging alike friends and foes, they carried their imprudence so far as to embroil themselves with the chiefs of the armatolis, and even with the Turks of Thesprotia. All commercial intercourse was interrupted in Lower Albania. The defiles were no longer passable without numerous escorts, which were often defeated by these audacious mountaineers." This statement explains the active assistance afforded by the Greek armatolis (or selfconstituted militia), in the expedition against these Greek outlaws, and makes it clear that the identification of the cause of Suli with that of Greek liberty is abundantly fanciful, at the same time that it shows the necessity for compulsory measures. Treachery, the diplomacy of such men as Alì, was first tried to effect the submission of the republic, and when this was met by equal cunning and inflexible courage and utter scorn, we cannot be surprised at the determination of the tyrant to avenge his insulted pride at any cost of life, treasure, or crime. "In this contest," says Lord Byron, "there were several acts performed not unworthy of the better days of Greece." The first attack was repelled with an enthusiasm, against which superiority of physical force was nothing-worth, which unsexed the weakness of womanhood, and, aided by rare advantages of position, gave the child who could roll down a stone upon the climbing or flying foe the power of a warrior. The nine years' peace, the fruit of this marvellous victory, was followed by a three years' war, conducted on the one side with all the exertion of the most vigorous mind in the history of the modern Mahommedan world, supported by a wide and absolute authority, and on the other by an unflinching struggle almost against hope in the mass of the people, which would possibly have vanquished, in the end, a force whose very excess of numbers was a confusion and embarrassment, had not individual perfidy opened the otherwise impenetrable passes.

YOUR phrases are good and your promises fair,
Your heart may respond to the meaning they bear,
Such things may seem just to your nature and name,
To us they are baseness, and folly, and shame.

I ask you would Nature have planted us there,
Where Earth's farthest region is bounded by air,
Where the great Eagle pauses in wonder to see
That the race he contemns as exalted as He,—

Where corn never waves, and the diligent flock Tracks out the scant grass that is sprent on the rock, Where the clouds fold about us in darkness and dew, Had she meant us to live and have feelings, like

you

She gave you your cities, your pleasures, and arts, Your fairly-built homes, and your populous marts, Your paths o'er the ocean, your science, and lore,— She gave us our Freedom and gave us no more !

But not the half-freedom, that makes the half-slave,
The guard of the timid, the curb of the brave,
A freedom of charter, and rights, and decree,-
But the Freedom with which our fathers were free.

To be free to exist,-for evil or good,

Like the wolf in the brake, or the hawk in the wood, To follow our instincts, and bend not in awe

To a chance-begot king, or the phantom of law;

?

To be free to fall down on the wealthier land,
With musket at back and dagger in hand,
And use the sole right that we own or we know,
The right of the strongest, wherever we go ;

Here take our creed, we are Klephts if you will,
There are worse names than that in the chapter of ill,
For we give what we take,-let the resolute man
Resist us, and kill us, and well,—if he can.

Behold our Women! their forms are as fair,
As love ever guarded with delicate care,

They have all woman's beauty, but yet Nature wills,
No weak woman-hearts should be born on our hills.

They know not the distaff, they know not the loom, Such tasks, to their hands, would be dull as the tomb; And why should they toil without pleasure or gain ? They are clothed with the spoils that we bring from the plain.

They clean our muskets, they sharpen our swords,
They speed us to battle with kisses and words,
And when to our homes the hot enemy 's nigh,
They show us our children, and bid us go die.-

This Will to resist, whoever the foe,

Is part of our being,—the thing must be so,—
As the Faith we adore, as the Hills where we range,
As the blood of our Fathers, that never can change.

Ali Pasha knows that the hate we have vowed
Can never be broken, can never be bowed,
We hate him as Turk, as tyrant, as man,—
We hate as he hates, that is all that we can.

Ali Pasha knows with what mercy he'd meet
Were he laid by the chances of war at our feet;
He has smiled at each pang of a Suliot's frame,
How loud would we laugh, when he suffered the same.

Neither dazzled with hope nor blinded with pride, Do we look on the tempest our hearts have defied, Let them conquer at last, we are ready for all, What on earth has not fallen, and shall not we fall?

Yet still we have faith, that their number and nerve
Will not force the strong spirit within us to swerve,—
When the breath of a traitor shall poison our air,
It is then, only then, we shall dare to despair.

But then, even then, though the blood-sated foe
Shall ravage our homes till each stone be laid low,
Though the manifold voice of our nation be still
In the winding defile, on the fort-headed hill,

Though the stranger shall

pause

in the desolate scene,

To ask some lone herdsman of things that have been,

And the water undrawn in the weed-clotted wells*
Be a visible sign of the tale that he tells;

One memory brightly shall start from the shade,
Where we, and our passions, and errors are laid,
One thought, that there only through all this wide land,
The Cross was upright in the Christian hand.†

In the valleys beneath us, degraded, forlorn,
It's being the boon of the Infidel's scorn,
In shame and in darkness it lingers, but there
It is waving as free as the ambient air.

The time may be near when the Mussulman sword
Shall rend in its fury the sign of the Lord,
Shall defile it with dust and pollute it with gore,
But the last of our race will have fallen before.

* At the site of the hamlet of "Samoriva" two lean asses, at "Kako (xάr?) Suli" the capital village, a scanty herd of goats and their solitary keeper, were the only living things I saw among the scorched and broken frame-works of houses: the number of wells or rather cisterns at the latter place, nearly close together, is extraordinary; our guide, himself a Suliot, said that there was a separate one for each house; this, however, may be well discredited.

†There is no doubt that religious passion strongly assisted the Suliots in bearing up against their enemy; in their latter and most desperate struggles, they were generally led on by a priest, and the red cross was their banner.

D