row defile, repeated charges of cavalry threw the rear-guard into confusion. The disorder was soon communicated to the rest of an army composed partly of new levies; and, before reaching Vercelli, the whole was in a state of almost total dispersion. The catastrophe of the Piedmontese army was less dishonourable than that of the Neapolitan, but it was equally complete.

When these fatal tidings arrived at Turin, Santa Rosa gave up all hopes of maintaining that city, which contained numerous votaries of the old system. Hopes were, however, entertained of making a stand at Alexandria and at Genoa, both which places had displayed much revolutionary energy; but, all the royalists now declaring themselves, and the well affected shrinking from the support of a hopeless cause, and of sieges without the chance of relief, such plans were found to be abortive. All except the most marked chiefs hastened to make their submission; these, in their extremity, were hospitably sheltered by the Genoese, and provided with the means of retreat into Spain. Austrian troops occupied Alexandria, Voghera, Tortona, Casal, Vercelli, and Novara. Turin and Genoa, occupied by native royalist troops, were spared the humiliation of their presence.

Charles Felix had thus the throne open to him, but he declined to occupy it, still continuing to invite his brother to resume the reins of government. Victor Emmanuel, a mild and easy prince, shrunk from the idea of reascending the throne in such painful circumstances. On the 19th April he

confirmed, by a new deed, his act of abdication. Charles Felix then took up the reins of government, though he did not quit Modena till the month of October. From every feature of the Prince's conduct, the unfortunate Piedmontese had reason to expect whatever was most hostile to their liberties. This expectation was not disappointed. A commission was immediately named to prosecute, with the greatest rigour, all who had been concerned in leading or promoting the revolution. Santa Rosa, Ansaldi, St Marsan, &c. were executed in effigy, and all their effects sequestrated. The Universities of Turin and Genoa were shut up for the space of a year. Then, indeed, an act of amnesty was published; but there was appended a list of exceptions, which, as it included all who had written, done, or spoken, anything in favour of the revolution, it became a mysterious question what the class of citizens was to whom the amnesty could apply. After all, the main reliance was to be placed on the Austrian bayonet; and, on the 28th October, a treaty was concluded, by which the kingdom was to be occupied by 12,000 men, whose pay and equipment were to be provided for at 300,000 livres a-month; besides which, they were to be supplied with lodging, fire, light, food, and forage. The number of rations issued was to be for 13,000 men, and 4000 horses. The occupation was to continue till September, 1822, when the question of its prolongation was to be decided by a new congress.

WHILE despotism in the centre of Europe was riveting afresh her chains upon mankind, in the east, her long established seat sustained a shock, at once unexpected and terrible. Revolts, and even successful revolts, were nothing new to the Turkish empire; they were of perennial growth. No former one, however, had ever the interests of the people, or the rights of mankind, in any degree for its object. Pachas, who had acquired a footing in the districts intrusted to them, who, by their valour and largesses, had secured the attachment of the army, and inured the people to a habit of obedience, endeavoured to establish, not free and well ordered states, but despotisms more entire and uncontrolled than that exercised by the Sublime Porte itself. These ephemeral dominations, having no root in the popular feeling or interests, vanished whenever the Porte

could play off against them a more popular chieftain, or could bribe the nearest friends or humblest slaves to step in and draw the bow-string round the neck of the usurper. He was usually a fierce and bloody tyrant, from whom the people were happy to be freed; and their transference to a new master was viewed with pleasure, or at least with indifference.

There is scarcely, perhaps, an example of an empire so extensive, so powerful, and so wealthy, as the Turkish, which has admitted so little of any kind of improvement. The Mahometan religion, indeed, as compared at least with the Christian, has everywhere shewn itself hostile to the liberties and improvement of mankind. Yet every other Moslem throne and dynasty had its illumined period. The courts of Bagdad, of Ispahan, of Cordova, and even of Fez, could boast of their ages of classic glory,

and threw in their contributions to the great mass of human intelligence. But the most powerful and the ablest of the Ottoman princes never distinguished themselves as the patrons of any elegant art or pursuit. Their gratifications consisted solely in barbarous pomp and sensual indulgence. In continual intercourse with the most civilized states of Europe, Turkey remained impenetrably shut against their arts and knowledge. She remained still entirely Asia, not refined, polished, and effeminate Asia; but such as that continent presents itself among the predatory hordes who rove over the expanse of its high inland plains. They present still the aspect of a mere camp, covering up and burying all the brightest and most favoured seats of ancient greatness and refinement.

While we thus admit and proclaim the sins of the Ottoman system, our readers must not consider these observations as prefatory to sounding a crusade against it. It is not intended to join with those modern statesmen, who call upon the powers of Europe to arm for the purpose either of an nihilating the Turk, or even of driving him beyond the precincts of Europe. We do not think it either desirable or likely that Christianity or civilization should extend their empire by such means. The prevailing impression of the Turkish empire as an edifice which would fall to pieces at the first external shock, is founded perhaps upon very superficial views. Its councils, indeed, compared with those of European cabinets, are now blind and stupid. Its army, though brave, is undisciplined, and cannot cope in the field with that highly effective regular force which follows the Russian standard. Considered as a nation, however, the Turks still retain much of that fierce and warlike ener gy which distinguished them during

the ages of Mahomet and Solyman. Greece, Syria, and Egypt, were always rather appended conquests, than the main body of their empire. Its integral mass was always situated in Asia Minor and Rumelia, which remain entire portions of it. The whole of this region, comprising a population of ten or twelve millions, may be considered as a huge barbarous camp. All the people are armed, and ready on a call to fly to the field. The call is even welcome to many, particularly to those tribes, which, in the high interior plains of Asia Minor, unite the character of shepherds and robbers, and form a cavalry, which, though unable to stand the shock of regular battle, is equal as light horse to any in the world. These hordes may not hesitate, at the instigation of a favourite chief, to turn their arms against the Sultan, and to seek warlike occupation and plunder in the very bowels of the empire. But a war, which had for its object to impose upon them an European and Christian yoke, would be to them a more than national war. It would be inflamed by the fiercest religious an tipathy. Rather than submit to the execrated yoke of the Giaour, they would brave perils to which no nation was ever impelled by the mere sense of national independence. Russia, besides, has most powerful natu ral barriers to overcome, before she can execute this boasted scheme of seating herself on the throne of Constantinople. She must possess the line of the Danube, guarded by a chain of fortresses, which the Turks have always defended with obstinacy. She must transport not only her ar my, but her artillery and magazines, across the cliffs and eternal snows of Haemus and Rhodope. find it, we are convinced, a worse undertaking than the conquest of Spain was found by Buonaparte. In

She would

a frontier war, the Turkish army, destitute of discipline, is almost always beaten; destitute of commissariat and supplies, it cannot long keep the field. But, in the interior, the beaten troops would continually rally, and be reinforced by successive swarms; they would rise like a hydra beneath the sword of the invader. Even after their territory was regularly conquered, it would contain a fountain of perpetual insurrection, and would prove a source of weakness rather than of strength, to the power by whom it was occupied.

Having thus, in our apprehension, disposed of the question relative to overthrowing the Ottoman empire, and expelling the Turks from Europe, the inquiry is narrowed to the part which ought to be the policy of the powers of Europe in favouring or not the efforts made by the Greeks for their own emancipation. Have

the Greeks a right to shake off the yoke under which they have groaned for so many ages? Or must the shield of legitimacy protect the successors of Othman in the perpetual possession of the vast tracts which they have conquered and desolated? How ever little we are advocates for rash revolution, or for governments purely popular, we cannot be very vehement sticklers for the right divine of the Turk to govern so very wrong as he has hitherto done. If for the subjects of such an administration there exist ed any means or materials of placing themselves under a better rule, we should think them very fairly entitled to avail themselves of such. The Greeks, however, can advance other strong claims, quite peculiar to themselves. Subjected by mere brute force, to a race strange, foreign, and odious, they have never received the treatment of subjects, or even of men. They have been treated as rayas, an abject and degraded race, the slaves

of slaves; and this beneath a people much inferior even to what Greeks are now. We do think, then, that it would be a most unwarrantable extension of the laws of legitimacy to debar this high-sprung and long-suffering race from the benefit of any means by which they can extricate themselves from the oppression under which they have groaned. Admitting, however, this right to exist in the Greek people, it is a different question whether there is any right, much more any call, for the nations of Europe to interfere in their support. Nearly four centuries have now elapsed since the conquering Mahomet subverted the throne of Constantinople, and covered the Morea with his armies. Since that time, the Turks have been left in the uninterrupted dominion of Greece; for the occupation of the Morea by the Venetians at the end of the seventeenth century, could not be considered as more than a temporary inroad. They have been recognized as its sovereigns by repeated treaties. In short, though Greece, considered within itself, may have a full right to seek its own emancipation, it is, quoad the other powers of Europe, an integral part of the Turkish empire. For them, therefore, the fomenting and supporting a Greek insurrection would be an interference in the internal concerns of another state, only to be justified by actual hostility, or by some other very peculiar circumstance.

Many causes had at this time concurred to rouse the Greeks out of that overawed and benumbed state, into which they had been thrown by the first torrent of Ottoman conquest. Connected with the European nations by ties of religion and of ancient alliance, they imbibed some of those lights of science which were jealously excluded from the Mussulman world. Silently and cautiously,

schools and little colleges began to be founded. The first of the latter was formed at Scio, with the consent of Sultan Selim; it was followed by one at Kidonia, a large town of Asia Minor, composed almost entirely of Greeks; by one on a larger scale at Smyrna, and by others at Salonica, Mount Athos, several towns in the Morea, and even at Constantinople. Of late, schools on the Lancastrian system have been introduced into many of the villages. Not content with this, the more opulent Greeks sent their sons to the European universities, particularly those of Italy and Germany. Here, being initiated into all the branches of human knowledge, they attached themselves particularly to philosophical and political inquiries, which made them feel with peculiar force the evil condition of their country and race. Everywhere they heard the name of Greece pronounced with the profoundest veneration; and, contrasting that ancient glory with its lost state, when the Greeks were no longer accounted a people, they felt every day deeper regret and indignation at the fate of their country.

A new feature which, during this age, has marked the politics of the east of Europe, tended to raise the condition and hopes of Greece. The preponderance of Russia, and the success of her arms, humbled the Ottoman Porte, and stripped its name of the terrors which it had hitherto borne. This new power was united to the Greeks by the tie of a religion which, being exclusively professed by these two nations, and calculated, from its very defects, to exercise a powerful influence on superstitious minds, formed a closer tie than perhaps could have been produced by any other coincidence. The ambition of Catherine, wholly directed to the raising her own empire on the

ruins of that of Constantinople, led her anxiously to cultivate and strengthen the national attachment. The Greeks were encouraged and favoured in every possible manner; at St Petersburgh, a college was formed, and handsomely endowed, expressly for their education. As that people in general had more cultivated minds, and more aptitude for business than the Russians, they made their way at court; and many of the leading political characters in the Russian cabinet have been Greeks. The Greeks thus found in Russia a prop, and, as it were, a country; they established themselves in great numbers in her southern provinces, and carried on great part of the trade in her ports on the Black Sea. This leads us to another circumstance, which tended greatly to improve the condition of the Greek nation. Amid the great maritime war which shook the continent, the Porte was long the only neutral power; and, as the inhabitants of the Grecian coasts and isles were the only part of her subjects who cultivated marine affairs, they had the liberty of navigating seas in which no other flag could fly without danger. They soon engrossed the pilotage of the Levant; and, having accumulated some capital, began to employ it in greater enterprizes. In process of time, their transactions extended over all the Mediterranean. At Malta, in the ports of Italy, at Marseilles, and even at London, Greek houses were established. The three small islands of Hydra, Spezzia, and Ipsaria, were the centre of this trade; and these spots, before scarcely noticed by the geographer, had become possessed of an extensive navy, and contained a number of individual merchants of large fortune. Commercial wealth, especially when newly acquired, usually generates feelings of independence. It strengthened in the Greeks