.

the first Philippic of Demosthenes to be read in full assembly. The noble lord concluded by protesting, that unless they healed their divisions, he would thenceforward have nothing to do with the Greeks. The divided chiefs laid down their personal hostilities forthwith, and at least the semblance of unanimity was established amongst all parties. The Congress, which subsequently had to meet three times before they could carry on business with common decency, solemnly invested Lord Cochrane as commander of the fleet. His lordship, after apologizing, in a short speech, for the delays which had attended his expedition, took an oath of fidelity on his sword, and hoisted his flag at the main of the Hellas. À few days afterwards, Sir Richard Church was sworn into the office of generalissimo. The election of the governor of Greece seems to have been influenced altogether by the English party. They supported Capo D'Istrias, who was obnoxious to many in the Congress, but he was finally successful, and obtained the appointment for seven years. Before the Congress separated, they agreed to a resolution, by which ecclesiastics were declared incapable of sitting as legislators—a deed of base and black ingratitude, for the priests were the chief champions of the revolution, and they were the persons who did most from disinterested views.

In the mean time, the diplomatic negotiations which had been carrying on for so long a time, were nearly brought to a conclusion by the obstinacy displayed on the part of the Ottoman court, for when the answer of that government was received by Mr. Canning, to a representation made by him in company with France and Russia, he instantly caused the treaty to be signed, which will ever remain a remarkable record under the title of "The Treaty of the 6th of July." The death of Mr. Canning prevented England from acting with vigour in punishing Turkey for its sullen and obstinate silence.

Lord Cochrane and his colleague continued to act with redoubled zeal in the cause of Greece, as though they would make up in diligence what they had lost by previous delay. But it does not appear that their valour was always guided by discretion. In fact, little was done to stem the headlong fall of the Greeks, amongst whose chiefs a spirit of discord now reigned more despotically than

ever.

The author carries on his account of the affairs of Greece through the minute details of its various stages, as far as the epoch of the battle of Navarino. The announcement of that event, and its results, produced unbounded joy in Greece, where, however, it did not succeed in completely compensating the thinking classes for the misfortune, as upon experience they considered it, of Capo D'Istrias being at the head of their government. In the January succeeding the battle of Navarino, Lord Cochrane resolved on abandoning Greece. Tired, and now completely disgusted, at the various disappointments he had met with, finding it utterly out of his power

to do any thing which might be worthy of his high reputation, he waited for a month the return of Capo D'Istrias, who had made a journey to Russia; but becoming impatient at the delay of the former, his lordship ordered Miaulis to hoist his flag at the frigate's fore: he himself sailed for England, where he arrived just one week before the Count Capo D'Istrias reached the same shore.

Leaving the political condition of Greece for a moment, Mr. Gordon directs our attention to the peculiar destiny of a portion of the Archipelago, having been marked out from time immemorial as a chosen residence for corsairs. In 1827, the trade of the Mediterranean was greatly afflicted by the pirates, of whom Karabusa became the well known nursery. Admiral De Rigny, Captain Hamilton, and Captain Pechel, who were all on the Greek station in 1826, had frequently remonstrated, in the strongest manner, on the plunder of vessels by Greek pirates; and in that year regulated marts for the sale of the plundered property were set up in Syra and Smyrna. The following particulars connected with this subject are curious:

"After the insurgents surprised Karabusa (in August, 1825), a great number of Christian families, that had fled from Candia in the preceding year, when the island submitted to the Turks, settled on that rock, in hopes of being able to communicate with the remnant of their countrymen inhabiting the western provinces of Canea, Kissamos, and Selino, and thereby find means of alleviating their destitute condition. Six or seven thousand individuals, of every age and sex, flocking together there, elected an Epitropie or municipality to preside over the administration of their indigent colony. As, with the exception of about twenty half-ruined buildings within the castle, there were no habitations, and the Egyptian general, Mustafa Pasha, instantly stationed a considerable body of troops in and around a small fort on the opposite brink of the strait, famine and disease quickly thinned the miserable population: upwards of 3,000 persons died in the space of six months, and many of the survivors, seeing that they could not subsist on a barren islet, deprived of intercourse with the rest of the world, went back to the Morea or the Cyclades. If Karabusa had no allurement for peaceable residenters, as a military post, and above all a retreat for banditti, it could, nevertheless, boast special advantages. These were the impregnable position of its citadel on a perpendicular height; the nature of the anchorage, whose rocky bottom, affording no holding ground, makes it very dangerous for shipping of a moderate draught of water; the violence of the prevailing winds and currents, rendering a close blockade by sea impracticable. Two Cretans, well known for their intrigues and cunning, (Antoniades and Economos,) conceiving a plan of turning these circumstances to their own advantage, bought a schooner on speculation, and sending her out to cruise, she abstracted 7,000 dollars from a vessel of Marseilles, bound in ballast to Canea, in February, 1826. This was a fortunate debut, but its projectors apprehending disagreeable consequences, several of the remaining families, afraid of being involved in the scrape, departed forthwith, while Antoniades, to remove suspicion from himself, secretly drew up and signed a protest against his subordinate agents on board the schooner, transmitting copies to the French admiral and

Captain Hamilton. However, nothing unpleasant followed, Monsieur de Rigny imputing the crime to any but the really guilty parties.

66

The Karabusans lay quiet for a time, until all mention of it had blown over, and then recommenced their malpractices. Three Sfakiotes, living amongst them, fitted out another privateering schooner, and some exiles belonging to the first Greek houses in Candia expended the trifling sums they had saved in purchasing mistiks. A new Epitropie was installed of four members (one from each of the provinces of Canea, Apocorona, Kissamos, and Selino), with a native of Constantinople for their secretary; Basil Khalis received the title of president, his brother Yani being named general in chief of the Cretan army: Antoniades and Economos kept themselves out of sight, but privately directed every thing. At the outset, they limited their depredations to the flags of second rate powers, such as Rome, Sweden, Spain, or Naples, and many vessels of those countries were either plundered at sea, or carried into Karabusa, stripped of their lading, part of their rigging, the bedding and clothes of their crews, and then turned out, with bread and water enough barely to last for three days. In order to cloak their flagitious deeds, they pretended to be bent on the liberation of Crete, detachments of 150 or 200 men occasionally landing on its shores, killing a stray Turk here and there, and returning to the fort after a brief absence. They took good care to publish these achievements in the Gazette, and by pathetic tales of distress so cleverly imposed on Philhellenic credulity, that money and cargoes of provisions were sent them at various periods to save the garrison from starving, or being compelled to cede the place to the Moslems, who, tired of the annoyance it gave them, actually offered to buy it. In this way, the banditti for months ran their course unmolested, and had already shared 500,000 piastres, when, in March 1827, the French gabarre Lamproye chased one of their schooners, which she caught pillaging a trader under the batteries, and sunk her by a few broadsides. As the men escaped, and the gabarre immediately sailed away, that solitary and imperfect act of retribution had no effect upon the people of Karabusa, whose fame as bold and successful adventurers attracted fresh shoals of Cretans, as well as the most determined villains of Hydra and Spezzia. They then augmented the number and size of their shipping, and at the suggestion of Antoniades, organized a system of piracy on a grand scale, every inhabitant of the rock, how poor soever, and even widows, being forced to suhscribe to the general fund, out of which small sums were lent to those who had not a farthing of their own, that all might equally partake in delinquency. The Epitropie divided the spoil with strict impartiality, setting aside one-fifth for the communal chest, and distributing the rest among the multitude of partners, according to the amount of their respective shares. Twenty brigs and schooners, and fifty or sixty small craft, forming the capital of this joint-stock company, scoured the Egean, and paying no respect to flags, daily brought in prizes of all nations. When foreigners no longer traversed the adjacent seas without convoy, they went in search of booty to the coasts of Sicily or Syria, and meditated exploring the Atlantic Ocean. Karabusa attained the plenitude of her scandalous prosperity about the month of September, when the mistiks had gradually disappeared, and in their stead were substituted some of the best Greek men-of-war, transferred to the purposes of brigandage by deeds of sale, which were mostly thought to be fictitious, and intended to conceal the fact of their owners being concerned in such infamous transactions.

The community possessed eight well-armed brigs and forty fine schooners; a town of 200 dwellings suddenly sprung up at the port, where before there had been but one old Venetian magazine, and the castle contained 246 solid houses, built in the form of an amphitheatre. Coffee-shops and taverns in abundance, resounded day and night with the noise of drunken revelry, and spacious warehouses were erected for depositing goods, which, notwithstanding the perpetual affluence of chapmen, could not be removed fast enough. The speculators drove very advantageous bargains, few of the venders knowing the value of the articles allotted them; and sundry individuals, who had languished for years in abject penury, were now enabled, through this traffic, to wallow in luxury. A curious instance of the easy union of knavery with superstition, was exhibited in the devotion with which the pirates worshipped the Virgin under the appellation of Panaghia Kleftrina (or patroness of thieves), decorating her chapel, on the pinnacle of the rock, with silver shrines and chandeliers of crystal, as though they wished to bribe her into complicity. The whole fee-simple of Greece would not have compensated the damage inflicted on Western commerce, since we have been assured on good authority, that 487 merchant ships (93 of them English) were discharged of their lading in that den of iniquity, exclusive of others overhauled at sea, and not deemed worth the trouble of bringing into the harbour. Two of the crews of these last, under French and Sardinian colours, were massacred. During nine months the Karabusans lost only one privateer, sunk by the American corvette Warren, and then her men got away in boats. Whether they were glutted with plunder, or terrified by Admiral Codrington's menaces, certain it is, that after the end of September, their activity and rapacity sensibly diminished, and they applied themselves in earnest to the conquest of Candia, which hitherto had been an empty pretence."—Vol. ii. pp. 482—486.

chief

We need not wind up the tale of Greece's destinies. The event by which the tyrant Capo D'Istrias was disposed of, is already well known to the reader: it is equally within his knowledge, that the powers agreed upon finally separating Greece from the Ottoman jurisdiction, and that they have constituted that ancient country-the object of so many of the noblest recollections-an independent state, to be presided over as such by Otho, son of the present King of Bavaria: a seal may therefore be said to be placed on that interval of Greek history which is comprehended in her revolution; and those who are desirous of having a source of authentic reference to the annals of one of the most remarkable events in modern times, cannot do better than deposit the present volumes in their library.

ART. VII. Memorials of the Professional Life and Times of Sir William Penn, Knt. Admiral and General of the Fleet, during the Interregnum; Admiral and Commissioner of the Admiralty and Navy, after the Restoration; from 1644 to to 1670. By GRANVILLE PENN, Esq. In 2 Vols. large 8vo. London: Duncan. 1833.

THE hero to whose memory these volumes are dedicated, had the misfortune to be cast upon an evil time when there existed neither historian nor poet to give a perpetual record of his brilliant actions. How many a life of virtuous exploits has been consigned to eternal oblivion, from a similar accident! The present case, that of Sir William Penn, one of the men who laid the foundation of that great character which is still maintained by our navy, is not by any means a solitary instance of the untoward destiny which has been met with he, and many of his illustrious companions in arms, were deprived of the meed of reputation which should have been entailed upon them by the mere unthinking caprice of the man to whom blind fortune had first intrusted the commission of recording the history of the lives of naval officers. Charnock, the original ancestor of all naval biographers, in laying down the plan of his great work, The Biographia Navalis, expressly confines it to those officers who flourished after the restoration, not deeming those who preceded that epoch, entitled to the distinction which he so zealously conceded to the others. Succeeding historians, with that slavish spirit of acquiescence, which is the sure mark of the imitator, implicitly adopted the precedent of Charnock, and thus were some of the strongest claims to perpetual fame which genius and valour ever earned, most ungenerously neglected.

It was a great mistake in this old author, to have regarded the restoration as an era at which a fresh start was given to every department of human affairs. In general politics and government, no doubt, this was very much the case; but with respect to the navy, considered merely as a profession, it was subjected to no crisis, or to any important innovation. The navy, which in the days of Charles and his successors maintained so well the dominion of the sea, was in most respects the same navy whose earlier triumphs were passed over in comparative silence. The heroes of the former victories were uniform and consistent throughout the vicissitudes of the time, and therefore there could be no reason for applying the distinctions of the civil and political history of the country to the naval department.

The object of the present work is to destroy every vestige of that wall of exclusion, as it were, which Charnock in his folly had constructed, and whereby he shut out so many worthy candidates from the conspicuous scene which he had prepared for more modern characters. The effect of Charnock's arrangement, indeed, wa

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