Already, since the creation of the new kingdom, the West, regretting in some sort what it had just done, had shown itself very severe towards Greece. After the phil-Hellenic enthusiasm a singular change supervened in the sentiments of Europe. A calculating and scornful spirit had succeeded that fever of generosity which produced the day of Navarino. It was thought that a Liliputian could play the part of a giant. Impossibilities were asked of a new State, without means, without resources, scarcely risen from the tomb of oblivion and ruin. If clear-sighted men of this period had been listened to--Leopold of Belgium, Palmerston, Metternich even--Greece would have had limits more natural in order that she might breathe and act more freely. This youngest child of the European States would to-day be a strong Power, capable of struggling against the Panslavist spectre in the East, and of realizing the projects of the West in this country of the Balkans which appears to be menaced by Muscovite conquest. However, if in a military point of view Greece cannot to-day be the chief actor, she yet remains the most important factor of civilization in the East in intellectual, political, and ethnological respects. It is the indomitable genius of this nation which in the darkest moments of its historical life has been able to throw some brilliant flashes over the history of the human race. It is Greek industry which to-day plays _par excellence_ the most active part in the propagation of culture in the East. Intermediate between the West and the East, the Greeks assimilate with an astonishing rapidity the results of progress; and the ancient East, that unfortunate mummy of history, begins to be born again, to revive, to breathe, to speak, like the legendary statue of Memnon, under the breath and at the approach of the new spirit casting its vivifying rays on the motionless and silent body of the _alma mater_ of human civilization.