Besides the never-failing encouragement which the incapacity of their enemies afforded them, the Greeks derived also from the geographical conformation of their country those same advantages with which nature had blessed their great ancestors, and which had contributed mainly perhaps to the formation, as well as maintenance, of their high national character. Islanders and mountaineers, they were, by their very position, heirs to the blessings of freedom and commerce; nor had the spirit of either, through all their long slavery and sufferings, ever wholly died away. They had also, luckily, in a political as well as religious point of view, preserved that sacred line of distinction between themselves and their conquerors which a fond fidelity to an ancient church could alone have maintained for them;--keeping thus holily in reserve, against the hour of struggle, that most stirring of all the excitements to which Freedom can appeal when she points to her flame rising out of the censer of Religion. In addition to these, and all the other moral advantages included in them, for which the Greeks were indebted to their own nature and position, is to be taken also into account the aid and sympathy they had every right to expect from others, as soon as their exertions in their own cause should justify the confidence that it would be something more than the mere chivalry of generosity to assist them.[1] [Footnote 1: For a clear and concise sketch of the state of Greece at this crisis, executed with all that command of the subject which a long residence in the country alone could give, see Colonel Leake's "Historical Outline of the Greek Revolution."]