Various

“ Are we to exhibit to Russia, as our leaders in the strife, a Government on sufferance notoriously incompetent, whether at home legislation or foreign negotiation? Is not Conservative reascendancy the only salvation of the country? Does not the nation at large pant for something like a Government—one which is followed by a united party—one which is at unison in itself—one of principle and not of expediency? ”

“ It will be a fatal policy, indeed, if that which has hitherto been an exception, and always an unfortunate exception in recent times, is hereafter to constitute the rule of Government. If every government may say, ‘We feel pressed by those behind us—we find ourselves unable, by steadily maintaining our own opinions, to command the majority and retain the confidence of our followers, our remedy is an easy one—let us make each question an open question, and thereby destroy every obstacle to every possible combination;’—what will be the consequence? ”

“ The old gentleman, as he approached, had his skirts pulled by some lisping little one, with chubby cheeks, and curls that had vainly been flattened, while her face peered from under the grey stuff of the mimic beggar’s cloak: the most simply dressed would hold the salver to the lady of quality; the most polite to the bourgeois; the plainest-featured to the widow, the spinster, or faded beauty; the tallest to the middle-aged gentleman, the prettiest to the gallant: and no rivalry, but how to get most, disturbed the co-operation of those young quêteuses. ”

“ Nay, it may be most certainly affirmed, that not a small part of that sudden growth of the capital of Greece is, with reference to the country at large, a positive evil, a brilliant excrescence, which owes its existence altogether to the artificial attraction of the nutritive fluids of the body politic to one prominent point, while the largest and most useful limbs are left without their natural supply. If there are shining white palaces, and green Venetian blinds, in one Greek city, there is desolation and dreariness, stagnation and every sort of barbarism, in the fields. ”

“ Is it not that the Ottoman empire is the only barrier which exists against the encroachments of Russia, and that if it is destroyed the independence of every European state is endangered by the extension of the Muscovite power from the Baltic to the Mediterranean? All see the necessity of this barrier, yet all are sensible of its weakness, and feel that it is one which is daily becoming more feeble, and must in the progress of time be swept away. ”

“ Will it be believed?—during the time that this heroic struggle was going on, by a people manifestly unable, even with their strongest combined exertions, to withstand their gigantic adversary—even in the mid-heat and the critical turning-point of this grapple for free existence, the Greek captains were quarrelling among themselves! There were actually at one time, as Gordon assures us, seven civil wars among a people who could only collect hundreds to plant against the thousands of their masters! Such a self-divided people, one might almost say, was unworthy of liberty. ”

“ Division is the weak point of Greece, and always was; and as for other vices which stank so strongly in the nostrils of some of our sentimental Philhellenes—cunning, falsehood, selfishness, rapacity, and blushless impudence of all kinds—such rank weeds grow from a neglected moral soil, not only in Greece, but in the streets of London and Edinburgh, and elsewhere; the only difference being that in our case a wicked or neglectful parent brings up corrupt individuals, while in the case of the modern Greeks, a wicked and neglectful government had brought up a corrupt people. ”

“ It is only by the reascendancy of the Conservative party that they can be surmounted, and by the advent to power of men who have confidence in each other, who have unity of sentiment amongst themselves, and who are backed by united followers; who have, each and all, the same objects in view—viz., a firm resistance to Russian aggression and the establishment of a durable peace, the maintenance of our Protestant religion, and justice to all parties in the State. Unity of sentiment amongst the members of a government is of the greatest importance to the happiness and welfare of the people. ”

“ They had scholars, and thinkers, and poets among them, who were fighting not merely for the rude privilege of freedom—which a brute can understand as well as a man—but for the vindication of an intellectual heritage of which they were proud. To these men the possession of the uncorrupted Greek tongue was not a mere pretty plaything, as it may be to many of our academical men; but it was the badge which publicly proclaimed their brotherhood with that great hierarchy of intellect which had conquered ancient Rome, and inspired modern Europe. ”

“ Sir Archibald Alison certainly does not belong to this class. Once possessed by a grand idea, he marches on fearlessly to its realisation, and lets difficulties shift for themselves. He gives you a project for a marble palace and a granite bridge; but seems to forget sometimes that there are only bricks to build with. We like this error, which leans to virtue’s side, and has a savour of something positive and productive; nevertheless the truth must be spoken—for in politics the best intentions are often the mother of the greatest blunders. ”

“ A man who has thus formed his political opinions, remains a staunch Conservative, but eschews all those more repulsive features of Toryism, which do but defeat their own end, and raise up against itself, in power too strong to be resisted, the very influences it wishes to control and counteract. But what shall we say of a young man who thinks fit, in the impetuous ardour of his ambition, to publish to the world his opinions as they are forming? ”

“ Passing from this strange and solemn spectacle of the death and utter extinction of human races, once living and enjoying themselves amidst those very scenes where we ourselves now pant and revel in the drama of existence,—let us look upon the face of Europe as it appears when first the light of history broke upon it. ”

“ The truth was, that they were unconsciously somewhat conspicuous; whether it was that the full, fair, lady-like features of Lady Willoughby, with her hair aristocratically enough drawn up, heaped high, and powdered, had yet an air of half-sleepy ease and comfort that offered the strongest contrast to French looks, or that the hood-like bonnet of black crape which surmounted them, drawn in folds together and hung with its short curtain-like veil of black lace, however according to matronly usage then in London, had already been left behind in Paris by a barer and more classical taste ”

“ It is when they still look to life from under protection, with no experience, nothing like the need of directing for themselves; but most of all from a simple household, used to temperate pleasures, and to the sort of kindness that rests more in purpose than upon indulgence; the city need only be Paris, with sights as foreign as the language, to crown that morning cup of enchantment to its brim. ”

“ The literature of Britain and all Europe, except Italy, was still for the most part scholastic, and still to a great degree shrouded in the scholastic dress of a dead language; and we must not wonder that the northern University exacted from her divines and philosophers, even from her historians and poets, that they should use the language of the learned. After all, we owe too much to classical learning to grudge that it should for a time have overshadowed and kept down its legitimate offspring of native literature. ”

“ There is much truth, however, at the foundation of the French sage’s audacious speculations, that intellect must achieve for herself her own conquests and take her own position. In the greatness of the acquirements of which they are the nursery, must we look hereafter to the greatness of our seminaries of learning. If the university is but a grammar school or a collection of popular lecture-rooms, no royal decrees or republican ordinances will give it rank—if it be a great centre of literary and scientific illumination, the pride or enmity of its rivals will not tarnish its lustre. ”

“ The fact is, that the modern Greeks are rather to be blamed for the affectation of extreme purity in their style, than for any undue admixture of foreign words, such as we find by scores in every German newspaper. But this is their affair. It is a vice that leans to virtue’s side, and springs manifestly from that strong and obstinate vitality of race which has survived the political revolutions of nearly two thousand years; and a vice, moreover, that may prove of the utmost use to our young scholars, who may have the sense and the enterprise to turn it to practical account. ”

“ Annually, at the competition for bursaries in Aberdeen, there assembles a varied group of intellectual gladiators—long red-haired Highlanders, who feel trousers and shoes an infringement of the liberty of the subject—square-built Lowland farmers—flaxen-haired Orcadians, and pale citizens’ sons, vibrating between scholarship and the tailor’s board or the shoemaker’s last. Grim and silent they sit for a day, rendering into Latin an English essay, and drop away one by one, depositing with the judges the evidence of success or failure as the case may be. ”

“ Nevertheless, in so slippery a science as politics, and with creatures so difficult to manage as human beings, it is always better to avoid the temptation of drawing panoramic pictures in rose colour; and with regard to Greece, a country to which humanity owes so much, our first duty, in the present very critical state of Europe, is to look soberly at a reality full of perilous problems, and to possess our souls in patience. ”

“ There is no hesitation in adopting any principle, however dangerous. Give them the opportunity—the advantageous opportunity, in the eyes of politicians—of putting their plans into execution, and immediately we behold irresolution, consequent upon dissension, and inactivity, the offspring of indecision. Only divert the populace from them, who, when roused, carry all before them, as it were, and force their leaders to bury their dissensions—only deprive them of that support, and then you see the intrinsic worth of your Whig statesman. ”

“ The stagnation of despotism is unknown among them; if the union of civilisation is unhappily equally unknown, that is a virtue of the manhood, and not to be looked for in the infancy of nations. The consciousness of deficiencies is the first step to their removal; the pride of barbarism, the self-sufficiency of ignorance, is the real bar to improvement; and a nation which is capable of making the efforts for improvement which the Greeks are doing, if not in possession of political greatness, is on the road to it. ”

“ Every act of administration was tainted by disunion in the Cabinet. Every party was jealous of the predominance of the other. Each party must be represented in the government of that very country which required, above all things, a united and resolute Government. There must be a lord-lieutenant of one class of opinions, a secretary of the opposite, beginning their administration in harmony, but in spite of themselves becoming each the nucleus of a party, gradually converting reciprocal confidence into jealousy and distrust. ”

“ In respect to the true Jewish complexion, it is fair; which is proved by the variety of the people I have seen, from Persia, Russia, Palestine, and Africa, not to mention those of Europe and America, the latter of whom are identical with the Europeans, like all other white inhabitants of this continent. All Jews that ever I have beheld are identical in features; though the colour of their skin and eyes differs materially, inasmuch as the Southern are nearly all black-eyed, and somewhat sallow, while the Northern are blue-eyed, in a great measure, and of a fair and clear complexion. ”

“ Every possible means have been taken by the authorities to throw discredit upon the insurgents and upon their leaders, by representing them as robbers and oppressors, paying for nothing, ill-treating the people, and exacting forced contributions at the bayonet’s point. “To lie like a bulletin,” is an old saying, but it would be at least as apt to say—“like the Madrid Gazette or the Heraldo newspaper.” I can well imagine how difficult it must be in other countries to get at the truth about Spanish affairs, when I see the systematic efforts made to suppress it here. ”

“ As we have already observed, the great ebb and flow of nations was over by the Christian era. The population had become comparatively dense, so that room could no more be made for tribes of new-comers—and settled in their habits and occupations, so as no longer to admit of their shifting or being driven to and fro like waves over the land, as was the case while they were in the nomadic state. And as the nations became consolidated, they began, however feebly at first, to live a national existence, and to put forth national efforts of self-defence against those who assailed them. ”