down the length of Italy, everywhere watching and noting as he goes. In July he reaches Corfu. As Inspecting Field Officer he has nothing to do, but the governor, Maitland, quickly finding out that he has no ordinary officer to deal with, sends him on a mission to Ali Pacha at Yannina, who has already sounded the keynote of rebellion against the Porte, so soon to be followed by the general rising of Greece. In reading the notes and reports made by Napier on this mission one is struck by the rapidity with which he grasps the heart of a very complicated question--a question which is still a vital one to Europe. He sees that the keynote of resistance to Russian dominion on the Mediterranean must lie in fostering the rise and growth of a strong Greek kingdom, and he urges this view upon Maitland as early as 1820, summing up his advice in very remarkable words, which later events fully justified. "The Greeks look to England for their emancipation; but if ever England engages in war with Russia to support the Turks, the Greeks will consider her as trying to rivet their chains, and will support the Russians." Again, in 1821, Napier went to Greece and travelled extensively through the country. As he wanders by the battle-fields whose names will never die he is busy fighting them again with modern armies. On the plain of Chæronea he thinks the marsh in front impassable for guns, and sees how Pindus and Parnassus secure a flank; and at Thermopylæ he notes how the sea has receded from the mountain, but thinks three thousand men instead of three hundred might still hold the position against an army. He visits Corinth, Athens, Argos, sees Thebes, Platea, and Delphos, and on March 20th, 1821, reaches the coast at Lepanto. For two months he has been feeding upon the memories of bygone battle and dreaming dreams of fights to come. A few days after he leaves Greece the insurrection breaks out. Then he gets a short leave of absence to England, and returning to Corfu early in 1822 is appointed Military President in Cephalonia--an island where it is hoped that "the impetuosity and violence of Colonel Napier's character and politics" might find room for action without danger to the State. The island of Cephalonia was at this period a terrible puzzle to the orthodox British official. Violence and robbery reigned unchecked; factions, when not preying upon each other, spoiled the neutral husbandman. Everything was neglected. There were no roads through the island, and the steep mountain ranges cut off the inhabitants of one portion from the other. It was an earthly paradise turned by misgovernment into a hell. How Napier took to the work of regenerating this garden of Eden run to weeds can best be told in his own words. "Do not," he writes to his mother, "expect long letters from one who has scarcely time to eat or take exercise. My predecessor is going home, half dead from the labour, but to me it is health, spirit, everything. I live for some use now."