fact, a totally unsuccessful scheme for those who fondly desired that the Protectorate of England should be everlasting, and that the islanders should be brought to submit themselves to it and reconcile themselves with it. It may be taken for granted that Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton was not one of those who believed in the possibility of prevailing on the Greek islands to hold themselves aloof from the Greek Kingdom. No doubt, when he selected a man like Mr. Gladstone for the mission to the Ionian Islands, he foresaw well enough that the occasion would be availed of by the islanders to make such a demonstration as would convince the dullest Philistine in Westminster Palace that the hearts of the Greek islanders were unconquerably set on a union with the Kingdom of Greece. The people of the islands received Gladstone with all the enthusiasm and devotion which they believed due to one who was at heart in favor of their national aspirations. They cheered him, and crowded round him, and cried "Zeto" for him, not as the Lord High Commissioner Extraordinary of an English Tory Government, but simply as Gladstone the Philkellene.

His tour through the islands and in the mainland was simply a triumphal progress. His path was strewed with flowers. Up to the last he maintained his assurances that the only object he was commissioned to attempt to accomplish was to make the Protectorate of England acceptable to the Ionian Islands, and not to release the islanders from the Protectorate which had been imposed on England as well as on the islands by the united counsels of the Great Powers of Europe. The islanders listened and applauded, but all the same they insisted on regarding Mr. Gladstone's mission as the foreshadowing of their national aspirations, of their union with their countrymen in the Kingdom of Greece. So indeed it proved to be before very long. The one material and practical result of Mr. Gladstone's mission to the Ionian Islands was to make it clear to even the dullest among us here at home that there was no way of satisfying the Ionian Islanders but by allowing them to unite themselves with Greece. We could easily, of course, crush them by superior strength, but until we had extinguished the life of the last Greek islander we could not extinguish

the just and natural passion for union with parent Greece. Mr. Gladstone, of course, got a great deal of abuse from the Tory press in England, and was accused of having stimulated and fomented the desire of the islanders for a release from the British Protectorate. The most hasty perusal of Mr. Gladstone's speeches must have shown that he was most cautious not to do anything of the kind. In no way whatever did he exceed the strict terms of his mission to the islands, but in any case some of the London newspapers wrote as if the Ionian Islands had been bound from all time to a grateful devotion to England. They wrote as if England had called the islands into being, and as if any wish to get free from English control were as ingrate and graceless an act as the conduct of Regan and Goneril, the daughters of King Lear.

There was an attempt made for a while to maintain the Protectorate, but events soon settled the question. The opportunity came a few years after. The Greeks of the Kingdom got sick of the stupid rule of their dull and heavy sovereign, King Otho. They simply bundled him out of Athens, bag and baggage. Then came the question what to do next. The Greeks themselves had probably had quite enough to do with kings for their time, although they had had only one sovereign. But the Great Powers of Europe, and perhaps more especially England, pressed upon them that they had really better have a king, for the mere look of the thing. There was at that time no republic in Europe but the Republic of Switzerland, and Greece did not feel strong enough to hold out against the pressure. The Greeks invited Prince Alfred of England, afterwards Duke of Edinburgh, and still more lately Duke of Saxe-CoburgGotha, and in fact they elected and proclaimed him King. But there was a clear understanding in European statesmanship that no prince of any of the great reigning families should be appointed as a sovereign over Greece. It was not in the least degree probable that an English prince would have accepted or would have been allowed to accept any such responsible and precarious position. The Government of the Emperor Napoleon the Third promptly managed to put in a practical objection to the proposal by delicately

GEORGE I. (GEORGIOS I.), KING OF GREECE

From a recent photograph. The King was formerly Prince Wilhelm of Denmark. He is the second son of Christian IX. In 1863 the National Assembly at Athens elected him King of the Hellenes. His wife, Queen Olga, is a niece of the late Alexander II. of Russia.

pointing out that if any of the Great Powers were to be allowed to appoint one of its princes to the throne of Greece, France had a prince of her own Imperial house quite disengaged, who might have a claim at least as good as another. The allusion was, of course, to the "unemployed Cæsar," as Monsieur Edmond About described him, the late Prince Napoleon, the Emperor's cousin, a man of extraordinary intellect, culture, and capacity, a statesman and a brilliant orator, by far the most gifted of the Napoleon family since the days of the family's great founder, but who with all his gifts came to nothing in the end. The English sovereign and government would not in any case have allowed Prince Alfred to accept the crown of Greece, even if the Prince himself had had the slightest ambition that way. But in any case the significant remark of the French Government would have settled the question. made a capital comic cartoon out of the offer made to the sailor lad Prince Alfred. Then some one started the suggestion that a prince of the House of Denmark

"Punch"

sovereign. A great deal of anger was expressed, of course, in some of the Tory newspapers, and Lord John Russell's action was denounced as though he had hauled down the flag of England from one of the Empire's most ancient and cherished. possessions in cowardly deference to the demand of some great foreign power. As I have already pointed out, England had never conquered the Ionian Islands, had never annexed them, had never set up any claim whatever to their ownership, and had merely accepted, out of motives of public policy, the uncomfortable and troublesome charge which had been imposed upon her by the other great States of Europe. Some years passed between Mr. Gladstone's visit and the cession of the Ionian Islands to the Greek Kingdom, but the one event was a direct consequence of the other. But for Mr. Gladstone's visit the Liberal Government and the English people generally would never have known how resolute, how passionate, how unconquerable was the desire of the Ionian Islanders to be in union with the people of the Kingdom of Greece. The objectlesson which, as I remarked before, is always needed in political affairs was supplied by the reports and descriptions of Mr. Gladstone's progress through the seven islands. Not one Englishman in fifty thousand cared before that visit three straws about the condition or the feelings of the Ionian Islands. The ordinary. Englishman hardly knew who the islanders were, or where they lived, or what was the matter with them. He saw now and then in his daily paper some brief announcement that the Lord High Commissioner had dissolved another Parliament at Corfu. The announcement did not affect him with any manner of interest. Very likely he did not know where Corfu was, and incase he did, would not have cared. But the condition of things became very different when one of the foremost English statesmen, perhaps the most picturesque state sman of his time, was sent out to inquire into the alleged grievances of the Ionian Islanders, and when the papers every day began to contain long descriptions of his movements and full reports of all the addresses delivered to him and all the replies which he returned. Then the minds of