insurrectionary movement, disturbing all the peaceful relations so recently established, and in such friendly amity with the great conservative powers at Paris and Vienna, was a proceeding not to be looked for from a moderate and a prudent man. This the Greeks might have known, had they not been befooled by patriotic passion. A “_holy_ alliance” no doubt it was which, in 1815, the pious soul of the good Czar had made with his brother kings; but this “holiness” was either a mere fraternisation of sentiment, too vague to be of any practical force, or at best a religious stamp placed upon a document, the contents of which were essentially political, and did not at all warrant the expectation that the most Christian crowned Allies should be called upon to interfere in supporting every revolt which Christian subjects in any land might feel themselves called upon to make against their traditional lords. Then as to politics: Though Alexander was a most kind-hearted, truly popular, and very liberal sovereign, and had made speeches at Paris, Warsaw, and elsewhere, equal to anything ever spouted by the present Majesty of Prussia in his most liberal fits, yet he was very little of a constitutionalist, and not at all a democrat. From Laybach, therefore, where he was when the revolution broke out in March 1821, he gave his decision in the matter of the Greek insurrection in the following very remarkable words:— “The motives of the Emperor are now known, from the best of all sources, his own words, in confidential conversation with Mons. de Chateaubriand. ‘The time is past,’ said he, ‘when there can be a French, Russian, Prussian, or Austrian policy. One only policy for the safety of all can be admitted in common by all people and all kings. It devolves on me to show myself the first to be convinced of the principles on which the Holy Alliance is founded. An opportunity presented itself on occasion of the insurrection of the Greeks. Nothing certainly could have been more for my interests, those of my people, and the opinion of my country, than a religious war against the Turks; but I discerned in the _troubles of the Peloponnesus the revolutionary mark. From that moment I kept aloof from them._ Nothing has been spared to turn me aside from the Alliance; but in vain. My self-love has been assailed, my prejudices appealed to; but in vain. What need have I for an extension of my empire? Providence has not put under my orders 800,000 soldiers to satisfy my ambition, but to protect religion, morality, and justice, and to establish the principles of order on which human society reposes.’ In pursuance of these principles, Count Nesselrode declared officially that ‘his Imperial Majesty could not regard the enterprise of Ypsilanti as anything but the effect of the exaltation which characterises the present epoch, as well as of the inexperience and levity of that young