Chronicle and the Morning Post would be attained, and King Otho would be driven from the throne of Greece. At all events, the Greek kingdom has little chance of enjoying internal tranquillity as long as any one of the three powers can disturb the government and derange the finances of the country, according to party views. The conduct of Great Britain, coming in aid of the errors of Mr. Colletti, has produced no less than three dangerous insurrections, and a considerable loss of life and property in the present year [1847].

If the three powers, or even Great Britain alone, would determine to enforce payment of the interest of the loan, for the purpose of preventing the peculation and corruption of the Greek government, no matter whether Colletti, Mavrocordato, or Metaxas should be prime minister, and if they would apply the sums extorted from the government, in improving the condition of the people, and in doing those things essential to the independent existence of the nation which have been neglected by the regency, by the king, and by the English, French, and Russian parties, while in power; then, indeed, the three powers might lay claim to be really benefactors to Greece. Let this sum be employed in forming roads, building bridges, establishing steamers and ferry-boats, repairing ports, and facilitating communications; for, strange to say, the only roads at present existing in Greece, are those round the capital, which lead to nothing, and serve principally as drives for the carriages of the court, and of the members of the corps diplomatique; and the only steamers are royal yachts, kept to transport foreign princes who happen to visit Greece, from one port to another.

The three powers are certainly the parties most to blame for the actual state of Greece. Who on earth, though bred in the corrupted regions of a court, except Talleyrand, Palmerston, and Lieven, could, in the nineteenth century, have entertained the project of founding a monarchy, before creating the means of enabling the central government to act with celerity, or enabling the people to feel the necessity of national unity? The Greek monarchy, from its geographical configuration, presents singular difficulties to internal communication, and as these difficulties caused the division of the country into a number of independent states, in ancient times, it cannot have been overlooked by such profound classical scholars as the English ministers. The monarchy they established is, moreover, divided into four distinct divisions on the map,-con

tinental Greece, the Peloponnesus, Euboea, and the islands of the Archipelago. The continential portion is pierced by gulfs, and intersected by bare and rugged limestone mountains, twelve separate chains of which rise to an elevation of upwards of six thousand feet above the valleys at their base. There are thirty inhabited islands. A journey by land, from one end of the kingdom to another, occupies more time than one from the Penobscot to Pensacola; and a voyage from Scopelo to Santarin generally consumes more time than one from Boston to New Orleans. It cannot be wondered at, therefore, if there exists a constant striving on the part of the population of Greece to destroy the work of the three powers, and break up the monarchy into a number of independent states. The control of the central government is only manifested in compelling the people of the provinces to remit their taxes to Athens; the internal trade is so insignificant, that each village thinks it would be a gainer by refusing to pay its quota of taxation, and by assuming complete independence. The operation of this feeling is not without effect in producing the constant insurrections which disturb the government of Greece.

In order to perpetuate the existence of the monarchy, it is necessary for the three powers to make a new protocol on the affairs of Greece. They must compel King Otho to reduce his civil list to one quarter of its present amount; they must prevent their own ministers from defrauding the Greek custom-house, and sacrificing the honor of European chivalry, by availing themselves of their diplomatic privilege; they must prohibit their consuls from carrying on the trade of usurers. In place of calumniating the Greek court in European newspapers, and exciting the Greek people to rebellion, they must indicate to the government the steps necessary to reform the municipalities and guarantee the impartial administration of justice. If some such line of conduct be not speedily adopted, we fear that the state of Greece will very soon begin to trouble the repose of Europe.

The Turks tell a story not quite inapplicable to present circumstances. They say that a restless English voluptuary once visited the East, whose name may be translated, Lord Cupid Fractious. He purchased a beautiful Circassian slave, named Fatmah, and presented her with a pair of brilliant slippers, richly embroidered with diamonds. The lady walked up and down the room in raptures, surveying both the slippers

and her own pretty feet. Lord Cupid sate on his divan looking at the beauty, but admiring his own present. Fatmah was at last tired, and wished to sit down, but her master exclaimed, " Another turn, Fatmah! another turn!" For a while, female vanity sustained poor Fatmah, who believed Cupid was moved by admiration of her beauty; but Cupid's constant exclamation of "another turn, Fatmah; how beautiful the slippers are!" revealed the sad truth, that his lordship was thinking of nothing but his own magnanimity. The indignant Fatmah could bear the fatigue no longer; so taking off the diamond slippers, she threw them in the face of Lord Cupid Fractious, with such vigor, that he could see neither lady nor slippers for the next fortnight, and exclaimed, as she rushed weeping out of the room: "Keep your gifts, I neither want your generosity nor your tyranny!

Great Britain ought to meditate on the conduct of her ministers to Greece, and pause for a moment, ere she takes upon herself the responsibility of their acts. Let her not put implicit faith in their talk about the liberty of the Greeks, when she hears that they are accused by foreigners of rank and honor of acting the part of incendiaries at Athens, and of oppressors at Corfu. The conduct of the British government towards Greece has now fixed the attention of the civilized world, and will be recorded in the page of history, whatever may be the regret felt by the friends of England in registering the truth.

The claims of Greece to enter the commonwealth of independent states are undeniable, and depend no longer on the enthusiasm of scholars, or the dreams of poets. Homer, Sophocles, Thucydides, Demosthenes, Plato, Aristotle, Basil, and Chrysostom, are, indeed, names which in future ages will be reverenced, in regions now unpeopled; but such names, as they cast no spell over the minds of trading politicians, do not constitute any claim to national independence. Yet, even European statesmen admit that the constancy of the palikari in war, and the activity of the citizen in peace; that the existence of a free press; of the trial by jury; of municipal institutions; of a representative chamber, and of a national system of education, give Greece the fullest right to complete political independence. Though the state of the country be disturbed, the morality of the public men lax, and though both life and property demand additional security, still let the impartial student of political history compare the moral, political, and intellectual condition of Athens under the administra

tion of Mr. Colletti, with that of Corfu under the more absolute government of the British peer, Lord Seaton, and the comparison will almost persuade him that Greece is an enlightened monarchy and Colletti a great minister. That our opinion is not quite so favorable, the readers of this paper must be fully convinced. We have endeavoured in the preceding pages to give an accurate and impartial sketch of the present miserable position of the Greek kingdom. Greece now stands on the threshold of the assembly of nations. Great Britain threatens to close the gates of that assembly against her,-perhaps for ever. The deed, if accomplished, would go down to the latest posterity as a crime of the blackest dye. Against the perpetration of this crime we attempt to raise a warning voice, moved by feelings of affection and veneration for both parties. If our judgment on the facts we have recorded be correct, (and we can answer that our industry in the search after truth has been persevering,) it seems to us not impossible that even this incomplete statement of a nation's wrongs may awaken some sympathy across the Atlantic, and render Greece some service at the very crisis of her fate.

ART. IV. THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF AGASSIZ.

THE best news for American scholars, lately, is the definitive acceptance by Mr. Agassiz of the Professorship of Zoology and Geology, at Cambridge. This must give additional interest to any particulars concerning his life and labors hitherto, and we have accordingly applied ourselves, with what books and documents were at hand, and, above all, with the assistance of friends specially informed on the subject, to compile a sketch of his private history and scientific career.

The Agassiz family is of French origin, and were among those Protestants whom the revocation of the edict of Nantes obliged to leave France.

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The immediate ancestors of Mr. Agassiz fled to the Pays de Vaud, which at that time made part of the Canton of Bern. From the time of their establishment in their new residence, their prosperity has been uninterrupted. The branch to which our naturalist belongs has been especially devoted to the min

istry; the whole line for five generations having been clergymen. The father of Agassiz was pastor at St. Imier (one of the protestant parishes of the ancient bishopric of Basle, which had been just incorporated into the French empire,) when he married the younger daughter of a physician of the Canton de Vaud, Mademoiselle Rose Mayor, a young lady as remarkable for the vivacity of her mind as for her beauty. They had the misfortune to see their first four children die one after the other, and the family seemed in danger of becoming extinct, when there was born a fifth son, who has become the eminent man of whose life and labors we propose to give some account.

LOUIS AGASSIZ was born on the 28th of May, 1807; exactly a century after the birth of Linnæus. From his birth he was the object of an unbounded tenderness, and surrounded by all the care which the most watchful solicitude could sug gest to parents alarmed by the loss of four children. Fearing the influence of the severe climate of St. Imier, the pastor Agassiz had just left this parish to take charge of one in a village in the canton of Friburg, called Mottier, situated on the peninsula of Vully, between the Lake of Neufchatel and the Lake of Morat. It was here that Agassiz was born. Here, on the borders of the beautiful lake, at the foot of a hill covered with rich vineyards, in full view of the chain of the Alps, he passed his first years, under the vigilant eye of a mother who divined from the first the future that was enfolded in the young and ardent nature of her child.

After having received his first education in his father's house, Agassiz was placed with his younger brother at the gymnasium of Bienne, a small town in the neighbourhood. This establishment was at that time very celebrated throughout the canton. The two brothers passed here several years, devoted almost exclusively to the study of the ancient languages. Their father in the meantime had left the parish of Mottier, and accepted a situation in his own canton, in the little town of Orbe, situated at the foot of the Jura. It was during the vacations which he passed with his parents, that the attention of the young student was turned for the first time toward the Natural Sciences. Those who knew him at that time remember the ardor with which he made his first collections, and the delight he showed when on his return from an excursion he had some new butterfly, or some curious insect, to show to his mother. This taste for Natural History re