I, Independence of Egypt under an hereditary sultan; 2, Emancipation of all the Greek-speaking islands, they then to elect between independence and annexation to Greece; 3, Annexation of Thessaly and Albania to Greece; 4, Independence of Montenegro and the Danubian Principalities; 5, Bosnia and Herzegovina to be made a duchy under an Austrian archduke; 6, Independence of Servia; 7, Bulgaria to be made a Russian dependency under a grand prince.

In the above plan, Russia only plants her flag a day's march from Constantinople, which would enable the czar to exact from the Sublime Porte toleration and protection for his co-religionists of the Greek Church, and at the same time avoid that which would be so odious to St. Petersburg and a great part of Russia-the transfer of the capital to Constantinople. I insist there are strong grounds for believing that the Russian policy does not necessarily include the addition of that great city directly to the empire, but only indirectly, through Greece, for the reconcilement and pacification of Europe. In 1867 the official Journal de St. Petersbourg thus declared, ex cathedra, the Russian Oriental policy: ". . . In relation to Russia's policy in the Orient, it has ever followed, and still follows, the same aim, viz.: the free and gradual development of all Christian peoples in the East, without distinction as to their creed or race." The semi-official Correspondenz, speaking with less authority but more explicitness, thus expounds that policy: "No concessions would suffice to attach the Christians to him [the sultan], and any concessions he might make would remain null, because unsatisfactory. . . The Christians must become masters of the land they inhabit."

Stamboul is too grand a prize in the world's lottery to be suffered by the jealous nations to fall to the lot of so vast an empire as Russia. And will it be asked, What power is able to prevent such a consummation, now that England has become indifferent and France a republic? Let nobody be deceived

as to the real effective strength of the Northern Bear. There is not a more egregious error prevalent in the average American mind respecting that "great country"—of which we really know so little than that of its supposed invincibility. Russia is vast, impenetrable, gloomy, mysterious, and omne ignotum pro magnifico. Russia is emphatically not a martial nation, but the contrary: it has an ever-present and fearful skeleton in its Polish cupboard; its civil administration, as well as its military, is the most corrupt in the world, save the American alone; it has not, at this time, more than three hundred thousand effectives at its disposal; and its navy could not cope with the puny flotilla of the North German Confederation. It is mighty for defence, because its natural horrors swallow up armies like the Serbonian bog, but for aggression it is nothing, except as against the wretched despotisms and the barbarous nomads of Asia. The incubus of the great horror which seized the minds of men after the fearful holocaust of 1812 is not yet lifted from the nations. Austria alone, if her Magyar and German troops had a good heart in the business, is fully competent to baffle any attempted Muscovite occupation of Stamboul.

And this brings us to a consideration of Austria's interest in the Oriental question, which is really far more vital than that of Russia or any other great power. When guided by a strong hand, like Metternich's, Austria has always had more influence with the Sublime Porte than either France or Russia, and Austrian official wax was more valuable not only to the traveler in the Balkan Peninsula, but also to the pilgrims in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, than any other Christian passport, though to-day Beust is hardly lifting it from a long contempt. If Metternich sometimes was guilty of the folly of sending ambassadors abroad who would tell him the things which he wanted to hear, in Constantinople he always kept a man who would tell him the truth. Metternich's skeleton would rattle in its grave to-day, if it did not positively stand on

its head, if his soul could know the | wretched paltering in the Orient to which Russian-sympathizing Slavonic premiers have led his kaiser. It was Austria that gave the coup de grace in the Crimea, lending herself as a cat'spaw to pull the chestnuts from the coals, though she only earned the devil's thanks thereby, and soon enough saw Napoleon ogling with the czar, and presently received the last installment | of her reward at Solferino and Magenta. The firm though moderate and quiet remonstrances of Beust—though he was a novus homo, and therefore snubbed at Paris in his proposal for a European Congress-had far more effect in procuring the autonomy of Servia than had the blustering dictation of France and England; and Prince Obrenovitch, understanding that full well, thanked him alone in a warm personal letter. Notwithstanding the dreadful defeat of Sadowa, and the fact that Prince Charles of the Danubian Principalities is a Prussian, this diplomatic triumph of Beust so convinced the prince of Austria's strength Orientward that he eagerly solicited an alliance, as against Russia on one side and the Sublime Porte on the other.

Austria's great mission is to carry German civilization and commerce down the Danube, and with it Magyar empire; and, though Bismarck has sought to dam it by interposing a Prussian prince, if the Austrian craft is only piloted always by a man as astute as Beust it will yet reach the Euxine. Austria can by no means tolerate either a Russian or a French occupation of the mouths of the Danube. Let the Danube be blockaded by either French or Russian batteries, and let Dalmatia and the Bosnian land in the interior, back of Triest, yield obedience to a Muscovite or Gaul, and then Triest is gone, and Austria is sealed up from the world as effectually as were the ancient Phæacians who had sinned against the gods. "They are walling us in!" cried Demosthenes as he contemplated the fatal activity of Philip on every hand. "They are walling us in!" loud

ly cry the few far-sighted Austrians who watch the progress of Græco-Italian intrigue in Dalmatia aiming at Triest, and French and Russian activity on the Lower Danube. Austria cannot, and dares not, permit the Russians to Occupy Stamboul, for with that would come a demand for right of way to Russia across the Danube, and then the fatal occupation of its mouths. And what is more, Austria is able to prevent it for ever with the assistance of the gallant Magyars and the Danubian Principalities, whose inhabitants, though Greek in religion, are hostile to the

czar.

This necessity (to Austria) for the maintenance of a power in Constantinople other than Russia, in order that her commerce and civilization may float tranquilly down the yellow Danube, has generated among Viennese publicists a most offensive Turkophily and an unreasonable hatred and disparagement of the unhappy Greeks. It is not within the limits or the intent of this article to point this out in particular instances; and it must suffice to say that, of the few German crimes against liberty, there is hardly one recorded in history so flagrant and so gratuitous as the Austro-Germanic persecution of little Greece. A Greek empire skirting the two shores of the Ægean, having its capital in Constantinople, and guaranteed for a few generations by the protecting powers, would answer Austria's purpose just as well as does the Turkish monstrosity; but in reply to such a suggestion straightway there issues forth from Vienna such an amazing volley of jibes and sneers upon hapless Greece as makes that city more odious to freemen than the Seraglio itself. Vienna has lived from the paps of despotism too long.

The policy of France in the Orient, if as a republic it continues to have one, will be simply and always a negation of the Russian, but less sincere. The great modern principle of nationality, of which France claims the discovery and the peculiar deputed championship, is very convenient to that nation

when its operations are perfectly harmless, and at the same time add to the glories of "the great nation," as in the unification of Italy; exceedingly incon venient and altogether absurd, if not positively "arrogant," when it threatens to create a great and invincible United Germany along its border; and an utter vacuity and meaningless thing when it would unite the oppressed Greek tribes and co-religionists, and possibly thus be of some remote and indirect advantage to the Muscovite. O consistency! thou art a jewel.

As for Italy, although the campaign in the Crimea first whetted her appetite, and showed her the possibility, hitherto unknown to herself, of playing an equal hand in the great games of Europe,Italy breaks a lance no more for the besotted heir of the Caliphs. The sweet atmosphere of perfected power and of restored nationality, which has now swept for the first time in fifteen centuries across her sunny plains, has purged the refuges of foreign lies, and swept her fair dominions for ever of the baneful traditions of the Napoleonic incubus. Italy is no more, as Garibaldi characterized it with bitter scorn, "a French province." In the face of a national debt of two thousand six hundred and thirteen million francs, the Italian Chambers cheerfully vote a naval budget of forty-six millions "to put the fleet in a condition to maintain in their integrity the new and great interests of Italy in the Orient." Significant language! Greek and Italian consuls began in common to preach a crusade against all the Turks in the Balkan Peninsula as soon as the sultan commenced withdrawing troops for Candia. "The heart of Italy is with you," wrote Garibaldi to the Cretans, and the government set its official seal upon the word by refusing to detain volunteers for Crete.

And now we arrive at last at a consideration of the interest of the Greeks in this matter, whose claim, however, European statesmen generally audit after every other. If, under the teachings of modern Chauvinism, we accept

the hateful doctrine proclaimed by Napoleon on New Year's Day, 1867, that the influence of a nation depends on the number of soldiers it can summon under arms," how stands the argument, then, between Greece and Turkey? Let no Austro-German or English sycophant flaunt in our eyes the idle boast that the sultan has ironclads, breech-loaders, Armstrong cannon and eight hundred thousand effectives. What boots it? If the newspaper correspondents did publish many Munchausen bulletins in the Athenian journals during the Cretan war, and narrate several circumstances which smacked strongly of the tremendous adventures of Major Gahagan, and if Crete itself does belong to the famous Kappa-triad of the liars of antiquity (Kreta, Kilikia, Kappadokia), nevertheless the Cretans can be content with the admissions of the Turks themselves. Innumerable months did they drag out their infamous campaign in that unhappy island, and accomplished — what? They gained one side of the island and lost the other, reduced the plains to a blackened and bloody desert, murdered seven hundred and fifty women and children, diminished their own army from forty-five thousand to fifteen thousand, consumed in advance the enormous tribute due from Egypt up to 1871 inclusive, and then went out into the hedges and byways and drummed together a crew of traitor fishmongers and snake-charmers, to whom they gave a free pass to Constantinople and back to make a "treaty of peace"! The Turks cannot complain of civil interference at home, for absolute power was in the hands of Mustapha Pasha, the best military head in the empire.

And then that daring little craft, the "Panhellenion" (Sheitan vapori, or Devil's ship, as the Turks well called it), running the blockade fifteen times within four months, with a new commander every time, that the Greek captains might get in practice; escaping scathless, though thirteen Turkish steamers were specially commissioned to run it down and sink it; bringing off

women and children, and carrying supplies to the glorious defenders of the little island!-what honest American does not feel a thrill of pride in contemplating it?

But the Greeks have a more noble interest in the Oriental question than any that founds itself on mere military success-more noble than any sickly Parisian sentimentalism of nationality or Viennese selfishness of commercemore sacred than Russian schemes of aggrandizement, Prussian dreams of power on land or Italian visions of empire at sea,-the interest of race, of religion, of justice, nay, of self-preser

vation.

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First, as to race. Göhlert, the best and latest authority, says the population of European Turkey is 15,242,000. Of these, only 700,000 are Turks, of whom only 200,000 are in Constantinople; and the entire race is constantly decreasing, from their abominable and unmentionable social crimes. On the score of nationality, then, the claims of the Turks to rule disappear at once. Göhlert distributes the remainder as follows: Bulgarians, 4,000,000; Wallachs, 4,450,000; Greeks, 1,200,000; Albanians, 1,500,000; Bosnians and Croats, 1,100,000; Servians, 1,500,000; Montenegrins, 92,000: Gypsies, Jews, Circassians, etc., compose the mainder. Greece itself has 1,330,000. Add Greeks and Albanians together (for Hahn and Camarda have proved them to be of the same origin, and they coalesce), and we have 4,030,000; so that, on the score of race, the sovereignty would still fall to the Wallachs. But add the Greeks of the Archipelago (2,500,000), and those along the shore of Asia Minor, who ardently desire to be united to Greece (2,000,000), and the Greeks would then have a right to the empire, for they would number 8,530,000. A Greek empire could be formed in the shape of a crescent along the two shores of the Ægean, with all the thousand island-stars included within its horns, and Stamboul for its capital, which would contain twice as many Greeks as people of any other national

ity, and more Greeks than of all others together. Albania is fierce and warlike, but Greek in its sympathies, and slowly becoming Greek in its language; Thessaly and Epirus are Greek; Macedonia is well affected toward the Greeks; Bulgaria is intensely stupid and sluggish, and would accept their government as readily as any; the Danubian Principalities, being in the great valley of that river, will naturally fall to the future Magyar empire; likewise Servia.

Second, as to religion. Among the fierce and fanatical, or besotted and priest-ridden, populations of European Turkey, community of religious belief is, if possible, a more potent and necessary bond of union than even nationality. The ancient creed, "He is a Greek who holds to the Anatolian Dogma," would erect European Turkey, the western coast of Asia Minor, Greece and the Archipelago into a Greek empire by a preponderance of worship. There are only 3,000,000 followers of Mohammed in European Turkey, and their number is constantly diminishing. Urquhart estimated them at 4,500,000 in 1830; Boué, at 3,500,000 in 1840; and Göhlert, at 3,000,000 in 1867. Aside from the Turks themselves, it is only the higher classes in Bosnia and Bulgaria, and the warlike mountaineers of Albania (called the Arnauts), who accept the Moslem religion. The Catholics have only three archbishoprics in Albania (Durazzo, Antivari, Skopia); and the lower classes of Bosnia are almost universally Greek, as the Catholics themselves know since Hilferding traveled there. The Catholics have only one bishopric and some Franciscan cloisters in that province. A vast majority of the Bulgarians are Greek, in their beastly and besotted way. In Constantinople itself the Greeks number nearly two-thirds as many as the followers of Islam, being so numerous and powerful that the sultan feels it necessary to provide for the splendid salary of their Patriarch from the public treasury, and receive him in solemn audience upon the occasion of his appointment. To sum up, then in Greece and Eu

ropean Turkey the Greeks number 12,030,000; the Mohammedans, 3,000,000; and the Catholics, only 1,142,000.

As to religious feuds in European Turkey, it is not true, as the Austrian Ultramontanes assert, that the Greeks are apostatizing to Popery, for the Greek Church is strong enough to wrench from the sultan better protection for its communicants than the Catholics enjoy. The upper classes of Bulgaria sometimes protest against the Greek Patriarch of Constantinople and his authority, but this is to please the Turks, not the Catholics; and the masses dedicate what little besotted energy they have to St. Demetrius and Old Mother March. Only let the hated Turks attack a Greek convent, as at Sistova, and the Bulgarian peasantry demonstrate quickly enough, with their lives even, who has their sympathies. The fierce Albanian mountaineers are nominally Mohammedan, but they are true to their blood and fraternize with the Greeks, while they rush with almost frenzied joy to battle with the Turks. There is an undying hostility between the Greek and Catholic Slavonians in Servia and Croatia, but that would fall to the inheritance of Austria, rather than to our proposed Greek empire. French Lazarist monks and Greek bishops leave much to be desired in urbanity of intercourse, and the relations between Miridites on the one hand and orthodox Papas on the other are not a model of brotherly love. The Shernagerzians sometimes quarrel with their neighbors because the latter do not see fit to snip off the ends of their noses; the Arnauts, because they have not a delicate perception of the right of meum et tuum; the Turkish peasants, because their Koran allows them four wives. But this is no worse than that the Germans of Geneva should beat out the brains of six men, and wound twenty | more, on election-day, because part of them lived on the left bank of the Rhone and part on the right. It is hardly worse than the superlative absurdity of the Frankforters, who refused to send to the North German Parliament a

man who had averted from them the twenty-five million "war-contribution," because, forsooth, he was born in Cologne and was a "foreigner!"

The Greeks in the days of Demosthenes, unhappily, were not harmonious; so was not the English Heptarchy once; but England is not solider to-day in fact than are eight million Greeks in wish. From the day when Agamemnon, anax andron, led the "long-haired Achæans" to battle under the walls of Troy, to the present hour, there has lingered in the thoughts of all Greeks the grand dream of a conquered Asia; and they could conquer all they want of it to-day if the protecting powers would hold aloof. As in the days of St. Paul, when the man of Macedonia stood and called across to him, so now the Greeks on either side of the Ægean, and on all its hundred isles, stretch out their hands to each other and cry, "Come over and help us." The researches of Reinhold, Hahn and Camarda have demonstrated a common origin for the Ionic, Doric and Æolic races on the one side (Greek), and the Illyrian, Macedonian and Epirotic on the other (Pelasgic). The best culture of ancient Greece did not begin till the Pelasgic branch overran and occupied the Peloponnesus. When united, these two branches have made an illustrious history, but when separated, as they are studiously kept by the Turk, they are powerless. Camarda, although an Albanian (Pelasgic), says: "It is a peculiar fate, and it appears like a special providence, that these two twin races in their separation from each other have not been able to effect anything of great significance in history; but perhaps it will be permitted them again, united, to exert a powerful influence on the history of mankind."

A very favorite sneer of the AustroGermans, as of other Europeans, at the capital of unhappy Greece, is "the bankrupt of the Ilissus." But people who walk on tight-ropes should not be too anxious to sell their neighbors chalk. According to the latest statistics I have, the debt of Austria is at the rate of