dead in every corner; English, French, and Portuguese lying wounded on each other; with such resolution did one side attack and the other defend. The town is not plundered; it is sacked. Rapine has done her work, nothing is left. I had occasion, in going to General Hay, to go into several houses, some had been elegantly furnished. All was ruin; rich hangings, women's apparel, children's clothes, all scattered in utter confusion. The very few inhabitants I saw said nothing. They were fixed in stupid horror, and seemed to gaze with indifference at all around them, hardly moving when the crash of a fallen house made our men run away. The hospitals present a shocking sight: friends and enemies lying together, all equally neglected."

Napier says that "the place was won by accident"the "accident" being the explosion of the powder-barrels and grenades along the high curtain. But that accident was due to Graham's happy use of the British artillery in the very crisis of the assault. Jones in his "Journal,” says that "on inspecting the defences it was found that the tremendous enfilade fire on the high curtain, though it lasted only twenty minutes, had dismounted every gun but two. Many of these pieces had their muzzles shot away, and the artillerymen lay mutilated at their stations. The parapet was thickly strewed with headless bodies." But the terrible effects of that cannonade only suggest how gross was the blunder of not making this use of the batteries earlier. It belongs to the alphabet of the engineer's art that the fire which guards a breach should be mastered before the breach itself is assailed. A great siege, however, like a great battle, is usually a catalogue of blunders. In the story of San Sebastian

these blunders are thrown into even blacker relief by the dazzling splendour of the courage shown by both men and officers in that great struggle on the bloodstained breach, and through the blackened streets of the city the French had defended with so much skill and courage.

SIR EDWARD CODRINGTON

AT NAVARINO

OCTOBER 20, 1827

"Navarino was as honest a victory as was ever gained by the arms of any power from the beginning of the world."-Lord John Russell (Speech in the House of Commons).

"Fast as the flaming beacon which conveyed the news of the fall of Troy to Argos, the joyous tidings were transmitted from mountain to mountain, from crag to crag, from isle to isle, and one throb of exultation and thankfulness was felt in every bosom. Never since the defeat of Hasdrubal by the Consul Nero, on the banks of the Metaurus, had such a sensation pervaded the heart of a nation. Every one felt as if he himself were delivered from captivity or death. ... Christendom had come to the rescue; again, as in the days of the Crusades, the Cross had been triumphant over the Crescent."-ALISON'S "History of Europe."

MR

[EMORY has a very limited office in politics. The typical politician is essentially an opportunist, much exercised about to-day, but with no memory of yesterday, and not much thought of to-morrow. Yet it is curious how completely all the editors who have written, and all the orators who have discoursed about the recent struggle betwixt Greece and Turkey, forgot how exactly, as far as the Eastern question is concerned, 1897 was a reproduction of 1827. The Greek struggle for Crete which we have just watched is, in all its essential features, the drama of the Greek War of Independence acted over again, on the same stage, and by the same performers, and with the same passions and

ambitions. There are differences, of course, in the two situations. The Turkey of 1897, considered as a fighting power, was immeasurably stronger than the Turkey of 1827. France, too, that to-day bears to Russia the relation that the tail bore to the dog in Lord Dundreary's famous apologue, was seventy years ago hostile to Russia by the whole trend of its policy. The differences betwixt the two periods, in a word, are almost as significant as their agreements. But the most tragical difference is that to-day we have no Navarino. English, French, and Russian admirals in the present struggle have been firing on the wrong side. side. We have Canea instead of Navarino!

The Greek revolt against Turkey broke out in 1821, and all righteousness was on its side. The land of Homer and of Plato, of Marathon and of Salamis, was the prey of Turkish pashas. The governing methods of the pashas are described with great plainness in a Greek manifesto of the period. "Any virgin that pleased them they took by force. Any merchant who was making money they beheaded, and seized his goods. Any proprietor of a good estate they slew, and occupied his property. And every drunken vagabond in the streets could murder respectable Greeks and was not punished for it." Armenia makes that statement credible. The Turk of 1897 is the replica of the Turk of 1827. But the national life of Greece was beginning to revive. The trade of the Greek islands brought prosperity; with prosperity came education, and education made slavery intolerable. When the Greeks revolted, their chances seemed as desperate as those of Holland against Spain under Philip II. A population of less than 2,000,000

plunged into battle against one of 30,000,000! The hopes of the Greeks rested at first on the Russian Emperor Alexander. Thrice already Russia had incited the Greeks to revolt; and the immemorial policy of Russia seemed a sufficient pledge of help to a movement which would rob Turkey of one of her provinces. But there was a revolutionary movement throughout Europe; in Spain, and Naples, and Piedmont, there were risings against despotic government. And much as the Czar hated Turkey, he hated popular movements still more. "I discerned in the troubles of the Peloponnesus," he said, "the revolutionary mark. From that moment I kept aloof from them." The Emperor William might have written that sentence to-day. The League of the Three Emperors in 1897, in a word, is but the reproduction, in another form, of the Holy Alliance which governed Europe in 1821.

Left to themselves, the Greeks fought with magnificent courage. Nothing can well be more striking, indeed, than the contrast betwixt the resisting power of Greece to-day, and that of seventy years ago. The struggle was a true Seven Years' War. On the part of the Greeks, it was a guerilla war, a war of sudden surprises, of wild onfalls and ambuscades; while on sea they fought and destroyed Turkish fleets with fire-ships. This style of warfare suited both Greek geography and Greek genius, and army after army, despatched by the exasperated Sultan, perished in the contest.

That the war was marked by terrific savagery goes without saying. The Turk, when his wrath, or his religious fanaticism, is aroused, is the most cruel of human beings; and the Sultan Mahmud, during the