[75] "Bundèhesh," xxxi. The serpent's form is also that given to different secondary personifications of the evil principle, different mythological beings created by Angromainyus to ravage the earth, and war with the good, and with the true faith--such as Azhi-Dahâka (the serpent that bites), conquered by Thraetaina, and the dragon Cruvara, slain by the hero Kereçaçpa. POLITICAL AND INTELLECTUAL LIFE IN GREECE. ATHENS, _August, 1879_. If during this latter period of our national existence, which from every point of view presents one of the most serious crises in our history, all Europe finds itself agitated by constant commotions, Greece, which more than any other European nation is interested in the various events of the Eastern crisis, is truly under the power of a national paroxysm. The serious modifications which have been accomplished in the state of affairs in the East were of a nature to exert a great influence on Greece, threatening each day to swallow up that country in the tempest. Doubtless, it was impossible for Greece to remain indifferent at a time when nations, but till lately unknown, were created by caprice or interest, without themselves having any sentiment of their national existence, and which now threaten her national and political future in the East. The armed protests of Crete, of Epirus, of Thessaly, and of Macedonia, were but the commencement of a general participation of Hellenism in the struggle between the Slavs and the Turks, and doubtless of a more serious complication of the Eastern Question, to the great dismay of European diplomacy, which can not or will not re-establish the equilibrium between the different national elements which struggle fiercely with each other in the Balkan Peninsula. It was only the demand made on Greece by united European diplomacy, at the commencement of the war in the East, that she should remain neutral, and the promises made to her that she should not be forgotten in a Congress of the Powers relative to the improvement of the state of things in the Ottoman Empire, which induced her to restrain her national aspirations, and to await that justice from a European Congress, which she was on the point of claiming by arms. However, the delay which has occurred up to the present time in the solution of the question of the delimitation of the Hellenic frontiers--which is still pending between the Greek Government and the Sublime Porte--is a sad sign of the blindness of the Turkish Government, and equally hurtful to both peoples, paralyzing their progress in civilization. For if this question were once settled, they would be able to turn their attention to another quarter--that, namely, where the common interests and dangers of the two peoples meet. For not only the Sublime Porte, but Europe also, should well understand that a predominance of the Hellenic element in the East has in nowise for its object to satisfy the ambitious tendencies of a race. Modern