vices, added that of drunkenness, which (be it
known) is one of the besetting sins of Greeks.
Yes, Mr. Teetotaller, the glorious Hellenes
justify their claim to be true descendants of the
men who kept the Dionysia. They are, in more
senses than one, the Irish of Eastern Europe.
Think of that when next you are temperately
tempted to decry "the stolid English working
man as the most besotted member of the
European family." There may be some truth
after all in the good old notion that a people's
intellect and energy vary directly as the quantity
of strong drink they consume—the Scotch
being at one end, the Portuguese at the other
of the spirituous and spiritual scale. The
Greek would make a very good second to the
Scotchman; and the renegade Cretan, when he
swore by Allah, and set up a harem, left off
neither his strong Greek wine nor his stronger
brandy.

Many of the shocking outrages which led to
the war of independence were committed by
men maddened with drink. In this war the
Greeks at first got much the best of it. They
had quite driven the Turks out of the open
country, and had stormed half the fortified
places in the island, when Mehemet Ali (how
every Philhellene hates the name!) came to the
rescue of his suzerain, so sore bested; and
several Egyptian regiments, veteran troops,
accustomed to pitiless warfare in Upper Egypt,
were landed in Candia. They soon turned the
tide; but the "insurgents" were not by any
means put down; Crete is a difficult island to
conquer thoroughly; the valleys where the
Sfakiotes and other tribes live are so lost
among a confused mountain system, that a few
resolute men who know the country can keep
armies at bay. However, it was no use fighting
without backers, and the protocol of London in
1830, which gave independence to the mainland
of Greece, handed over Crete to its old
slavery.

The cruelty on both sides in the war of
independence, was what we call Asiatic; such,
at any rate, as we have no modern examples
of in Western Europe. One day a Turk,
sole survivor of some band that had been cut
off in the mountains, came rushing, hot and
weary, into a Christian village. All the men
were out, some on the war trail, others tilling
the ground; and so he ventured to look into a
house and beg a little water. He got what he
asked for; but the news had gone abroad that
an enemy was in the place, and the women (like
a set of Jaels) fell upon him while he slept, and
hacked him to pieces with wood-cleavers. So
terrified, indeed, were the Turks at the idea of
falling into Christian hands, that they preferred
dying in heaps, of famine and disease, in their
strong places, to surrendering to their ruthless
enemies. They deserved to be hated: their rule
in the isle had been utterly lawless. Property,
wives, daughters, all the Candiotes, had held
subject to the caprice of the Turkish beys. When we
find the modern Greek deficient in certain
commercial or social virtues, let us reflect on the
training he has had. The wonder is, that the
nation should have preserved any vestige of national
life; but for their religion, the Greeks must
have ceased to exist long ago. Fancy work
like this going on unchecked.—A certain baker
at Khanea has a very pretty wife, of whom
he takes special care, never letting her set foot
outside his own premises. The Turks hear of
her, and are piqued at never being able to catch
sight of her. At last one of the wildest of the
beys forms his plan. He calls at the baker's
shop, and says, "I'm going to bring a lot of
friends to-night to supper; have one of your
famous cakes ready, and let there be no stint of
wine and brandy." "Your excellency shall be
obeyed," says the man, bowing to the ground.
He suspects nothing, for it was usual with those
Turks who still had a little regard for appearances,
to keep their wine out of the way of
wives and households, and to come to an inn or
to a Christian's shop for a periodical debauch.
They all come, and, sitting down on the floor,
begin drinking. The man is going off to give
his cake a last turn, when they roar, "Bring up
your wife to wait on us." In vain he protests,
and vows she is not in the house. "If you don't
do as you're told, we'll kill you, and then search
the place." The wretch brings in his poor wife,
and rushes off to answer a loud knock at the
door. He opens it, and instantly falls pierced
with the daggers of some dozen renegades, who,
leaving him dead in the street, go in, bar the
door, and join their comrades. What befel the
miserable wife, left helpless amid these infuriated
monsters, is something too shocking even to
think of. No inquiry whatsoever was made
about the outrage; none of the guilty were
brought to punishment. It is some consolation
to think that the Candiotes did not forget them.
Such ruffians (and there were many like them)
were always marked men, and, when the war of
independence began, they stood the very smallest
chance of escaping. Not the beys only, but the
men in authority, set all justice and humanity
at defiance. The headman of a village, a Turk
who was nearly always mad drunk, heard that the
belle of the place was going to be married to a
fine handsome young neighbour. In a sudden
freak he sends for the girl and her father, "to
congratulate them on the approaching wedding."
They come to the aga's house. While they are
talking, six strong Turks fall on the father, and,
carrying him out, leave him, well bastinadoed,
by the wayside.

By-and-by, the Turk leaves the dishonoured girl,
and, mounting his horse, rides
with half a dozen of his spahis furiously along
the highway, to work off the fumes of drink.
He meets the girl's betrothed coming up from
the next town, loaded with presents for the
wedding, and deliberately shoots him through
the head. He is never brought to trial. Truly
we cannot wonder at cruelties on the side of
the Greeks! The only wonder is that Crete,
which made so heroic a stand, should have been
once more given up to Turkish misrule, and that
we, who let Poland go, who suffered Denmark to