The Greeks, although they have not altogether fulfilled the expectations of Philhellenes, have nevertheless made great strides in advance since they have thrown off the yoke of the Turks. The deeds of valour performed during the war of independence recalled the days of Marathon and Platæa; but it was wrong to expect that a short time would suffice to raise modern Greece to the intellectual and artistic level of the generation which gave birth to an Aristotle and a Phidias. Nor can we expect that a nation should throw off, in a single generation, the evil habits engendered during an age of servitude, and digest at once the scientific conquests made in the course of twenty centuries. We should likewise bear in mind that the population of Greece is small, and that it is thinly scattered over a barren mountain region. The numerous ports, no doubt, offer great facilities for commerce, nor have their inhabitants failed to avail themselves of them; but there is hardly a country in Europe which offers equal obstacles to a development of its agricultural and industrial resources. The construction of roads, owing to the mountains, meets with difficulties everywhere, whilst the blue sea invites its beholders to distant climes and commercial expeditions. No immigration from the neighbouring Turkish provinces has consequently taken place, whilst many Hellenes, and more especially natives of the Ionian Islands and the Cyclades, annually seek their fortune in Constantinople, Cairo, and even distant India. Men of enterprise leave the country, and there remains behind only a horde of intriguers, who look upon politics as a lucrative business, and an army of government officials, who depend upon the favour of a minister for future promotion. This state of affairs explains the singular fact that the most prosperous Greek communities exist beyond the borders of the kingdom of Greece. These foreign communities are better and more liberally governed than those at home. In spite of the Pasha, who enjoys the right of supervision, the administration of the smallest Greek {81} community in Thracia or Macedonia might serve as a pattern to the independent and sovereign kingdom of Greece. Every one there takes an interest in the prosperity of the commonwealth; but in Greece a rapacious bureaucracy takes care only of its own advancement, the electors are bribed, and the expenses thus illegally incurred are recovered by illegal exactions and robbery, such as have prevailed for many years.