At various epochs of their history, the Greek women have evinced heroism worthy of the ancient Spartans. They have fought against the Turks with the resolute and persevering bravery of disciplined warriors, and sought death in its most horrid forms to save themselves from infamy. A woman of Cyprus, with the consent of her daughters, set fire to the powder-magazine in which they were concealed, because they preferred this fate to the sultan’s seraglio; and this was but one of many instances of similar resolution. The captain of a Greek gun-brig, famous for his bravery during the dreadful scene at Napoli di Romania, was treacherously murdered by order of the capitan pacha, at Constantinople. To avenge his death, his widow built three ships at her own expense, of which during the war she took the command, accompanied by her two sons. The Greeks are very ignorant; but both men and women generally evince a desire to receive books, and have schools established among them. Females of the lower class often labor hard in the fields, and thereby lose the beauty for which their country-women are distinguished. Madox speaks of seeing women in the Greek islands winnowing corn, who looked like the witches in Macbeth. In giving this brief outline of European manners, either in the middle ages or modern times, the poor have been nearly left out of the account. In the middle ages, nobles treated their vassals as slaves. They were scantily fed, miserably clothed, obliged to marry according to the dictates of a master, and seldom addressed in any better language than “villain,” or “base hound.” The condition of Polish and Russian serfs in modern times is about the same. The Polish peasant women have scarcely clothing enough for decency, and the hardships and privations to which they are subjected destroy every vestige of good looks. In Russia, women have been seen paving the streets, and performing other similar drudgery. In Finland, they work like beasts of burden, and may be seen for hours up to the middle in snow-water, tugging away at boats and sledges. In Flanders, girls carry heavy baskets of coal to market strapped on their shoulders. The old peasant women in France are said to be frightfully ugly, in consequence of continued toil and exposure to the weather. In England, it is not unusual to see poor women scraping up manure from the streets, with their hands, and gathering it into baskets. In a word, there is no part of Europe where an American would not see the novel sight of females laboring in the fields, or carrying burdens in the streets, without a bonnet to shield them from sun or rain.