in small islands near, and who were encouraged
by the Venetians to make piratical descents
on Candia. One of these, when taken prisoner,
offered a bag of gold if he might choose some
other form of death: the stern pasha impaled
him with his bag of money about his neck. The
idea of an independent Greece was not matured
a hundred and fifty years ago. Tournefort never
mentions the subject, though he excuses the
drunkenness of the Candiotes, "because they
drink to forget their misery."

Things are better now; the war of independence
did a great deal of good to the island: it
taught the Greeks their strength, and made the
Turks respect them. The Candiote does not
now cower before his Mussulman ruler, as does
the rayah of Roumelia. The medjilis, or mixed
councils, now universally established through
Turkey, are not a mere farce in Crete, as they
are in many places; the Christian assessors
venture to assert their opinion, though it be
contrary to that of the Turks. All this looks
better. Yet there is of course a great deal to
be done to repair the evils which the slow
action of a detestable government (far more
fatal than the ravages of war) has caused. The
people have too often become unthrifty and idle;
what was the use of looking forward to
tomorrow, or of repairing anything, when the
Turk might come any day and take it all?
Hence the grand forests, the old glory of Crete,
are sadly diminished; no one planted to supply
the waste of reckless usage; we hear of a
great fire which went on burning for three years,
no one having energy to put it out. Hence
the villages, of white marble, are whitewashed by
the very men who have the ruins of Gortyn and
Cnidos before them, and who are children of
those who built those famous cities. Under
Turkish rule, man ceases to master nature, and
becomes her slave. Crete of the hundred cities,
with its teeming population, its aqueducts,
roads, temples, is sadly changed now. Talk
not of progress, so long as you are in the
Ægean. But the people showed in those
five years after 1820 that there is some of
the old heroic blood in them still. They are
worthy of freedom; how can they get it?
That is what everybody asks who looks at a
map of Turkey in Europe, or reads in the newspaper
some fresh instance of Turkish barbarism
and imbecility. Crete, above all places, should
be free; for Crete is the land of legends, the
cradle of the myth, the nursery of Zeus.
Can nothing be done for it? Must it always
remain bound to the Mezentian carcase of
Islam? They tell us that the Ottoman Empire
will soon be shorn of its European provinces;
does that mean that the islands will go too?
Or will the Candiotes begin to agitate more or
less peacefully, like the Ionian Islanders, until it
is found expedient to give them their freedom?
M. Perrot (in the Revue) strongly advises a
peaceful change. He says: "Buy up land as
fast as you can. Oust the Turks by superior
wealth and intelligence. Till properly what
you buy; your soil does not produce the tithe of
what it might. Then, when you are masters of
every acre in the isle, it won't matter much
whether you pay your taxes to Stamboul, or to
Athens. Under the Porte you may get to be
as independent by-and-by as the Samians are." *
* They are governed by their own prince, and
even have a flag of their own.

This is a low view to take of the case: there is
no allowance here for Greek pride and Greek
feeling, or for the love of nationality. Historically,
M. Perrot is right though. Greek nationality
was always very weak; it just held the majority of
the states together against the Persians, and
that was all. Greece went down before Rome,
because it had nothing but a rope of sand to
oppose to that ever-growing mass which sucked
into itself all the powers it conquered. If modern
Greeks feel as their forefathers felt, there is no fear
of their breaking their hearts about nationality.
Anyhow, they must keep quiet now, and not fight
till there is a general mêlée in Europe. It did
very well in 1820, when all Greece was in
commotion, and when all Europe was looking on
approvingly. But modern politics run in a new
channel; we in England, above all, favour the
Turk. Crete could not stand alone; and bravely
as the Sfakiotes and other mountaineers would
fight, hardy and enduring as they are, they would
have to give in at last, for the Turks have a steam
fleet, and could throw any number of troops
on a given point in a few hours. Yet, despite
their fondness for that glorious Malvoisie which
the Venetians prized so much, and against which
the Turks found the precepts of the Koran
of little avail, the Cretans are hardy and
abstemious—capable (like Greeks in general) of
living on very little. Tournefort remarks this.
Speaking of their mutton, which is all skin and
bone in the winter, because, being bad farmers,
they have no hay, and have to keep their beasts
alive on the sedges by the sea-side, he says:
"There is a proverb that a Greek will grow fat
where even a donkey would starve; and verily
I, M.D., Conseiller du Roy, and Reader in
Medicine at the Royal College, am astonished
to see how well many of them look, who, I know,
live almost wholly on roots."

HAND OR BUSH?

WHICH is the better—the bird in the hand
or the two in the bush?—to be content with
the inadequacy we have secure, or the
sufficiency we may never attain?—to make a
minnikin roast of the one small bird in our
hand, or to try for a pie with the two in the
bush? Who can say? It is a question which,
like most other questions, has two sides to it
and a head and a tail; it is not to be settled
off-hand, as one would square out a crooked
line, arbitrarily and without appeal, by a
perfectly adjusted T. Indeed, it involves the whole
coil of chance and daring, and when loosing sail
to brave the wide sea is wise, and when holding
on to the narrow harbour is wiser still. The
wide sea has the chance of a cargo of oil in it,