Critics who have little history and less war have been accustomed to attribute Byron's lingering at Cephalonia to indolence and indecision; they write as if he ought on landing on Greek soil to have put himself at the head of an army and stormed Constantinople. Those who know more, confess that the delay was deliberate, and that it was judicious. The Hellenic uprising was animated by the spirit of a "lion after slumber," but it had the heads of a Hydra hissing and tearing at one another. The chiefs who defended the country by their arms, compromised her by their arguments, and some of her best fighters were little better than pirates and bandits. Greece was a prey to factions--republican, monarchic, aristocratic--representing naval, military, and territorial interests, and each beset by the adventurers who flock round every movement, only representing their own. During the first two years of success they were held in embryo; during the later years of disaster, terminated by the allies at Navarino, they were buried; during the interlude of Byron's residence, when the foes were like hounds in the leash, waiting for a renewal of the struggle, they were rampant. Had he joined any one of them he would have degraded himself to the level of a mere condottiere, and helped to betray the common cause. Beset by solicitations to go to Athens, to the Morea, to Acarnania, he resolutely held apart, biding his time, collecting information, making himself known as a man of affairs, endeavouring to conciliate rival clamants for pension or place, and carefully watching the tide of war. Numerous anecdotes of the period relate to acts of public or private benevolence, which endeared him to the population of the island; but he was on the alert against being fleeced or robbed. "The bulk of the English," writes Colonel Napier, "came expecting to find the Peloponnesus filled with Plutarch's men, and returned thinking the inhabitants of Newgate more moral. Lord Byron judged the Greeks fairly, and knew that allowance must be made for emancipated slaves." Among other incidents we hear of his passing a group, who were "shrieking and howling as in Ireland" over some men buried in the fall of a bank; he snatched a spade, began to dig, and threatened to horsewhip the peasants unless they followed his example. On November 30th he despatched to the central government a remarkable state paper, in which he dwells on the fatal calamity of a civil war, and says that unless union and order are established all hopes of a loan--which being every day more urgent, he was in letters to England constantly pressing--are at an end. "I desire," he concluded, "the well being of Greece, and nothing else. I will do all I can to secure it; but I will never consent that the English public be deceived as to the real state of affairs. You have fought gloriously; act honourably towards your fellow-citizens and the world, and it will then no