1822.] 
harkened with attention to the oracies 
of Athens, to the precepts of Socrates 
and Plato. Sometimes they were af- 
fected by the scenes of Sophocles and 
Euripides; at others were they press- 
ing round the tribune where Demos- 
thenes thundered. Then Corinth was 
the centre of the universe, while thou 
wast seated in the zenith of thy 
power. 
But vide mi fili quam leve discrimi- 
nem palibulum inter et statuum. Alas! 
when thou wast slumbering in the 
peaceful security of all thy acquired 
glory, the deceitful King of Macedon, 
availing himself of an unwary hour, 
bewildered thee in the windings of his 
politics. Sword and sceptre in hand, 
he dared break down thy ramparts, 
under the specious pretence of subdu- 
ing the Persian empire; as Russia 
might cross France to make the con- 
quest of Spain, while the arts are 
spared to the professors: so were thy 
children flattered by the respect 
shown for the tomb of Pindar, and 
thereby consoled for thy lost liberty. 
Then set the sun of thy glory,—as it 
would be with France; the splendor of 
thy power could not establish itself, 
after the mortal wounds which the 
hand of Alexander of that day soon 
found pretexts to inflict upon thee in 
the ungarded hour of repose. 
Can it be believed that Italy, be- 
come so powerful a state, authorised 
Rome to rank thee in the number of 
its provinces; the catalogue of which 
presented nearly all the cities in the 
known world. And as she had sub- 
mitted herself to pro-consuls, by 
whose tyranny she was enchained, so 
were the Greeks, in their turn, the 
slaves of her will; and it was her seve- 
rity and. extortion that accustomed 
them, in the end, to humiiiating con- 
eessions of every kind; and, above all, 
to those fulsome adulations they were 
soon forced to lavish at the feet of 
the successors of Constantine, and 
which afterwards even the ferocious 
children of Mahomet bad prepared 
for them. 
. Thus under the Crescent, as under 
the Cross, thy immediate destiny was 
irrevocably fixed. To weep,—to bleed, 
—and to tremble for the consequences 
of thy disgrace. The immortal spirit 
of Greece being broken, her porticoes 
were deserted and her cloisters open- 
ed,—those narrow avenues where in 
every niche superstition and igno- 
Grecee in its Relations with Europe. 
309 
rance are enthroned. The public 
mind, deprived of those strong emo- 
tions which the love of liberty in- 
spires, faiis in those nobie objects of 
pursuit which keeps aiive watchful- 
ness, and presages the true interest of 
the public weal. A thousand vain 
disputes lost thee thy pre-eminence, 
and widened the passage to the op- 
pressors of mankind. 
Oh! religion, we invoke thy sacred 
character to an open avowal of thy 
priuciples ; thou who hast reddened 
the earth and the seas wiih the blood 
of humanity: still more tears have 
been shed on thy account. How many 
hearts hast thou broken? How many 
foilowers hast thou blinded, and tarn- 
ed out of the road of their duty? 
While all the nerves of public spirit 
have been enfeebled by a long inter- 
val, without glory or grandeur for its 
object, it fails io every good purpose ; 
becomes a victim to the sabre, anda 
fearful and ignominious bigotry cedes 
very soon to an audacious and fero- 
cious fanaticism. 
Unhappily, it is through all these 
afllicting stages that Greece has been 
gradually sinking, for so many ages, 
at the feet of monuments, which, un- 
der a better state of feeling, wou! 
have reminded her of her lost happi- 
ness; and, trodden under the stupid 
feet of their ignorant oppressors,—it 
has borne five hundred years the domi- 
nion of Turkey over it; a situation 
very much resembling what Spain 
was as to its power in America, and 
what England’s is in India: however, 
with this difference as to the former, 
—Spain, to its eternal disgrace, obliged 
the vanquished to renounce the reli- 
gion of their fathers; while Turkey 
left Greece to foliow its own, as Eng- 
land has done in India., Thus we 
have attempted briefly to describe all 
that has happened to Greece. 
in the nature of things, the humi- 
liating condition to which she had 
fallen could not continue; and as to 
the germs of improvement, the present 
propitious period may have brought 
them to light. Confined they were in 
a multitude of molecules, which the 
often slow, but infallible hand of time 
could not fail to develope ; and it is of 
the highest importance to acknow- 
ledge, that it may serve essentially to 
direct us in approaching the new scene 
which opens itself on the side of the 
East; the influence of which on the 
destinies 
