There can be no permanent sympathy where truth is wanting, but the public does not attend to the correct translation of _Graecia mendax_; it ought to convey the fact, that foreigners tell more lies about Greece than the natives themselves. Old Juvenal calls the Greeks a mendacious set of fabulists, for recording that Xerxes made a canal through the isthmus to the north of Mount Athos. Colonel Leake declares that the traces of the canal are visible to all men at this day, who ride across that desert plain. The moral we wish to inculcate is, that modern politicians should learn, from the error of the old Roman satirist, to look before they leap. We shall now endeavour to supply our readers with an impartial account of the present condition of the Greeks, without meddling with politics or political speculation. Our opinion is, that the country ought not to be put in the _Gazette_,--nor ought the king to be sent to the hospital. Greece is not quite bankrupt, and King Otho is not quite an idiot. Funds are scarce every where with borrowers in this unlucky year 1843, and wit scarcer still with most men. Our readers are aware, that Great Britain, France, and Russia, having constituted themselves into an alliance for protecting Greece, concocted together a long series of protocols, and selected Prince Otho of Bavaria to be King of Greece.[A] The prince was then a promising youth of seventeen years of age, destined by his royal father to be a priest, and--his holiness the Pope willing--in due time a cardinal. At the time of King Otho's election, a national assembly was sitting in Greece, and a military revolution was raging in the country, in consequence of the assassination of Capo d'Istria. The recognition of King Otho was obtained from this national assembly by the ministers of the three protecting powers, amidst scenes of promising, threatening, and stabbing, which will long form a deep stain on the Greek revolution, and on European diplomacy. Mr Parish, who was subsequently secretary of the British Legation in Greece, has described the drama, and the share which the ministers of the allied powers took in arranging its acts. [Footnote A: Three large volumes of papers relative to the affairs of Greece have been laid before Parliament in 1830, 1832, 1833, and 1836.]