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THE EXAMINER. 5

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spirit of the people is generally adventurous, and the! dance. As yet litte encouragement has been given in| him, when the soft sighs of summer winds went mi r ocean may truly be called the home ofa large portion of) any shape to internal industry. Restriction and inter-)muring by, and mingling with the low sounds of ri ling the Greek community. Its fisheries employ great num-|ference are the groundwork of her fiscal and commer-| waters made mystic harmony. And when suteitit with bers of hands, who are trained on the shores to a wider cial legislation, ‘The whole theory of the government) its gorgeous hues hath chased the fresh verdure foam field of maritime exertion, Rivers ure not wanting, is erroneous. It seeks not to emancipate, but to fetter|the forest trees, and replaced the many tinted flowrets

though better known to the muse than the merchant. But|the merchant. It meddles with everything.

the soil is fertile and various, adapted to the production

of many of the articles most in demand inthe great;

markets of Europe. Of some, Greece and the Ionian islands haye an absolute monopoly ; currants, for exam- ple, which take their name from the city of Corinth, and which, encouraged by the lowering of duties in England and the security of property in Greece, have been cul- tivated of late to an enormously increasing extent. Generally the fruits of Greece are excellent. She could furnish a large supply of figs, oranges, grapes, and olives, and, of course, of oil and wine. The last espe- cially claims the attention of her inhabitants. That of Tenedos is excellent, and is the wine most commonly us- edin the Levant. The price is low; and hence, perhaps, too little care has been given to its improvement; but in these days of free communication, a better price. Olive oil is very largely produced, especially in the - island of Crete, which provides very consideerable sup- plies for the soap manufactories of Marseilles. Sugar, cotton, indigo, rice, and opium, are among the import- tant articles to which the soil and climate of Greece are well adapted ; almost every species of corn and maize can be produced abundantly ; but the aptitudes dnd re-

sources of the country remain to be developed: 1ittle,

has been done for the cultivation ofthe soil. The active genius of the Greeks has naturally enough been divert- ed to pursuits where they found themselves half eman- cipated from Ottoman tyranny. The herdsman on the hills, the sailor on the ocean, were the representatives of the two classes who had shaken offa portion of the ‘etters imposed upon them by the Mussulmans.

When the independence of Greece was recognized, and “the Great Powers,” as they called themselves, presented a king to the Greeks, they made a most un- happy choice. Deformed in body, Otho was sent to go- vern a land, in which, more than any other, the influence of personal comeliness is universally felt and recognised ——a most natural state of things among a people distin- siished for physical beauty. There stood the sovereign, singularly ill-featured, in the midst of a nobly fashioned race. A man of intellectual sagacity was wanting, to exercise a becoming authority in a nation of wonderful quickness ; but Otho came endowed with a mean capa- city, and wholly unable to secure the esteem of the thoughtful, or the respect of the observant. A sove- reign was required,who, if trained by early education toa religion other than that of Greece, should have had the wisdom to mould his prejudices to the opinions, or even the prejudices, that were to surround him; but Otho, destined to an ecclesiastical career, and filled with the

narrow views of an utmost monastic education, was es- | the credit of England that we exhibit so much back-

pecially unfitted for the task he was called on to fulfil, and for the discharge ofthe duties imposed upon him. But, last and worst of all, Otho was nota Greek, but a

Bavarian. ‘The place of his birth matters little, could,

he have identified himself with the interests, and the feelings, and the liberties of Greece—had he consent- ed that Greece should be for the Greeks, and his govern- ment a truly Greek government.

To accomplish this was his first, his paramount, his’

peremptory obligation. Such an obligation never seems to have presented itself to his mind. Into Greece he sought to transplant Bavaria. Bavarian purposes, Ba- varian projects, Bavarian prejudices, ruled despotically in Athens. 43 ¢ aroused him from his strange hallucinations. It failed to do so. The Bavarian incubus was indeed got rid of; but nothing to represent the true policy of Greece was substituted inits stead. A Constitution was proclaimed, bat the old hankering after despotic and irresponsible authority has made that Constitution little better than a « delusion, a mockery and a snare.” It may, perhaps have been the intention of the protecting powers to hand over Greece toa weak-minded prince, obstinate to all that is progressive, jealous of popular control, and sme ing back by habit and affection upon those ae arbitrary government 890 acceptable to the powers that be. Happily, however, the dynasty is likely to a the person of pat its first and last representive. 11e scendant na ye lamar Are the Greeks to be meddied with - choice of a governor, or 4 form of government: Is the wretched experiment which has so signally hie again to be repeated ? Are Russians and Frenchmen, : i Je and Englishmen, to decide whom the Greeks shai hee for their king? It is abhorrent to every sense of nght,

,o every claim of freedom. ; But notwithstanding the incapacity of the oe whom foreign sovereingns Impose upon the ree people _notwithstanding the absence of every quatity 9

that could a newly acqired” —that hankert

terised the rule of King Otho,— Saal : Her trade has brought with it much prospe

rity; and the advancement of that prosperity, yo i aaaeiietl 30 unfavorable, shows ee coma e Lai i Ise of liberal institutions, a bright futur \ sill omit her. Many of her ped seg ; pa i yelieve tha ed; there is no reason to be eu the ricest metals are exhausted. Lead, copper,

juanganese, sulphur, Aaphalte, may be found in abun-

ipati x d to her, emancipation from Turkey opened : ng het every thing despotic which has

The Revolution of 1643 cught to have’

nor is it probable he will ever have |

fford to Greece the bare chances with her:

Otho,—Greece has pro-.

; Be ei. |of summer with its own deeper and more richly painted; When not strong enough to be oppressive, it is busy|when every passing zephyr breathes a low dirge, and enough to be mischievous and vexatious. Macgregor|scatters faded leaves as flowers are strewn in the funeral says, and with much truth, that the, customs law of|path, then it hath borne a strain to his ear, which, if sad- Greece is founded on the principle, that “ /raude is the! der, had not less of melody in its deep tone, Yes, the basis of all trade!”—a somewhat natural prejudice for| Spirit of Poetry is in all these :— Khlepthai, whom circumstances had brought into power, —but certainly not exhibiting much knowledge of either the history or the philosophy of commerce. ‘The mon- archy of Otho has undone much that was sound and liberal, which had been effected by the provisional! In very truth it seemeth a universal spirit, man’s government of Greece. ‘The officers, too, of the admin-| happy genius; ever present to shed a brighter radiance istration have been as bad as the system they admin-' over his sunniest hours, and to illumine the gloom of ister. They have helped to strengthen the natural an-|his darkest. tipathies against the tax-gatherer, and the custom-house| With the beautiful is its home; where from the gar- officer. ‘They have associated the public treasury with| nered treasures of ages, it scattereth with a lavish hand ideas of exaction, oppression, and corruption. It isthus}light and lustre to gild our pathway; and from imagi- that governments came to be regarded not as the protec-! nation’s rich casket, gems the shadowy past, the fleeting tors, but the despoilers of nations,—not the friends but} present, and the hidden future, Oh! would that my the foes of the common weal. nen were a magic key to unlock this precious casket, But the Greek is of a buoyant and elastic nature ;!and’ reveal its jewelled contents; or, that being dipped and whether in the activity and craftiness by which he’ in fancy’s own hues, it might paint in lasting colors a made the Mahommedan yoke almost tolerable, —or in picture conveying a real, though faint, impression of that enterprising and adventurous spirit which charac-/ poetry’s glorious mission and offices. terises her present history,—the same distinguishing! I have been musing long, half earnestly, on the world traits may be observed. Eager, and apt to learn, espe- of thoughts which its very name calls up. Borne on cially in the field of trading rivalry, the Greeks are now/| their swift pinions, 1 have been back to the time, when, ‘outdoing the Hollanders, and taking rank emong the/on this little planet, poetry commenced her heavenly foremost of commercial nations. There were four Greek | ministration. |houses in London previous to the Greek revolution.f Was it thatthe vast lapse ofages hung as a mist over In the provinces not one. Every year has added to their,;my spirit, obscuring the brightness of those pristine number, and there are, at this moment, thirty Greck|scenes; or that a fallen mind had too little in common ‘commercial establishments in London,—nearly as many! with primeval purity to see clearly the beautifying at Manchester,—they have spread to Liverpool andiglow which then her magic influence shed on nature's Glascow, to say nothing of their natural positions onjunsullied domains! I knownot, yet, a something ithe Levant,—they have crossed the Atlantic,—they|strangely undetined came over me as I strove to trace have fixed themselves in the Baltic,— and far from con-' the first workings of this potent charmer. But when man, ‘cealing that little pittance which they possessed during} no longer an inhabitant of Eden’s fair bowers, was con- ‘the rapacious rule of Mussulman Pachas, they are injdemned with his offspring to dwell in a world, whose ‘many parts of the world, profuse and even ostentatious first glories were dimmed with the blight of decay ; in their opulence,—occupying the highest ranks in com-| when the present, before so radiantly bright, was ob- 'mercial and civil society. I heard an intelligent Greek/scared by the dark clouds of the Almighty’s anger, and ‘merchant respond to the inquiry of an Englisiman who, | ere the bitterness of that stern mandate, “In the sweat the feared, might look with some jealously on the suc-jof thy brow shalt thou eat thy bread,” had lost cess of the Greek capitalists in this country. its fisrt terrible poignancy; then it was that the Spirit | Do not grudge us our prosperity. Jf we have been) of Poetry, silently hovering over him, and calling Hope iwell taught, you have been the teachers; and complain|to her aid, wove that golden spell of the future, which, ‘not if we have turned to good account the excellent) though so many ceturies have since passed, has lost not i\lessons you have given.” a shade of its original Justre. | ‘The Greeks hove adopted a decimal coinage. They} Oh! it was a potent charm, which nought in the wide ‘have followed the example of the French, It is not to| world had power to break, a holy gift, touching all things with its own beauteous hues, the best boon wardnessin the monetary reform. The absurd and sin-| poetry might bestow on the children of eaith, for it was cular division of the pound sterling into twenty shillings, /a boon to all. of the shilling into twelve pence, and the penny into} Yet a thousand other precious gifts are hers, for those four farthings, represents rude combinations and a bar-jamongst mortals on whom she chooses to lavish her ibarous age. “he drachma is the unit, representing 8|bounties. To some she gives that unspeakable felicity 1-12d. sterling, and is divided into 100 lip tas. In these! of mind which, being the medium through which all ex- two moneys, all accounts are kept. ternal objects are viewed, imparts to them its own ma- One connot despair of Greece. High aptitudes are} gic tints; and such a mind, even deprived of these out- there. There are the materials out of which great men} ward realities, may still, with their symbols treasured and great nations are moulded. True, Misrule has but) in memory’s hidden depths, and‘in the exercise of that altered its name, not its nature, in Greece. The Turk-| imagination with which it is never wholly unendowed, ish extortioner is departed, but a Greek functionary oc-|create within itself a world beautiful as the fabled cupies his place. Instead of a few oppressing Pachas,|bowers of Elysium. To one she gives a painters’s Cadis and Agas,a swarm of employes live upon the public} pencil, and lending her inspifation, forms, combining revenue. ‘The representative government, which was) the bezuties of the real and visionary, glow upon canvags. looked to as some security for order, prosperity, andiGo! gaze on the living sketches of a Raphael ora jliberty, is little better than the mockery, instead of the|Michae! Angelo, and see in tld4m the unfading memo- organ of public opinion. If a deputy be distasteful to rials of poetry’s creative powers, ‘I’o another she gave the executive, that is a sufficient reason for denying,a sculptor’s chisel ; and guiding his hand, the cold him a seat in the national assembly. Elections are con-| marble, benenth his touch, became an image, a living trolled, vitiated, or superseded, as may please the mon-|image in every lineament. The pages of history glitter arch or his ministers. Stil] the leaven of reform is mov-! with wealth from her inexhaustible resources; and the ‘ing the whole mass—the germ of good is fructifying—| characters, there traced by the author's hand, may charm ‘the national mind is improving—schools are spreading | only as poetry breathes into them a living fire. The |—books are read—men talk about public affairs, and,} world, too, unillumined by her brightrays, were a dark, by talking, begin to influence them. cold waste, a planet without a sun. The poorest and “The montains look on Marathon, weakest of morta’s feel its potency ; for to them it is the And Marathon looks on the sta.” glory touching their every familiar scene. Yes, all Athens slept for ages at the foot ‘ol the Parthenon—/owe to this kindly spirit a debt of happiness ; yet pass- at the foot of the Parthenonshe wakes. ing strange! few think of her as the charmer of their youth, os in Soregh eager | phi, or ss the . , brightener of life’s fading years. If to them she as- SPIRIT OF POETRY. ai any definite form, it is as that , which. Man may not question whence cometh the glad spirit'having its dwelling in the p t’s heart, breathes only which steals softly into his heart, whispering bright|in the measured numbers w ich flow from his pen. In thoughts, and weaving shadowy visions of life’s coming truth, narrow limits within which to circumscribe so hours. Yet he hath felt its witchery full oft, and its/mighty a power! iateven here, as we gaze, what scope magic spell hath bound his soul in the rosy blush of for its exercise. The themes it hath sung, of the seit many a twilight hour, when the starlight falls through/and pensive, the boldly sublime, the tragic, or the wirth- ‘the blue stillness of the summer air. On his midnight! ful and laughter causing, which, not unfrequest!y, have ‘couch, when heavy slumber sealeth his weary lids, it! been tried on the same lyre. To what heights, inspired hath sought bim in dreams, where thoughts and images’ by his guardian genins, hath not the soared—the of his waking hours were so blended with fancy’s bright,| bards of past ages—Ossian, H warm colorings, that he hath dwelth for a tme in an —til] he, the greatest, and the enchanted world, to whose fairy scenes memory loves times, essayed on that thi i _ to cling ;and whose zephyr tones and murmuring waters Regained, hitherto unattempted save in the saet fall oft on his spirit like music’s sweetest, loveliest! of divine revelation. ve mused, - strains. It hath come to him with the spring's scented/and half awed, of the vast trea. res of lossoms, with its sunny skies and blue waters, sending) ing which must lie in the deep recesses ‘through his heart a thrill of wild happiness, such as its|—of the stores of elitterme weal It hath been with! chambers ; and of the mysteries h,

“Tt is where billows foam,

lt is Where music melts upon the ear;

it is around us in our peaceful home ;

And the world calls us forth, and it is there.”

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