"So farewell, you dear souls! This sudden parting falls heavily, and your expectations and my wishes are probably disappointed; yet may this have prepared us, and therefore now be our comfort--that what the necessity of the Fatherland demands, is the first of all things to be desired by us, and has always lived in me as the most inviolable principle. You may hereafter say and think among yourselves--'Yet had he through our sacrifices learnt to know the whole of life on this earth, the joy there is in this human society; and he appeared to love this land, and his chosen profession heartily.' Yes, so was it; so did I under your affectionate guardianship. Through your countless sacrifices and cares for me, are my land and life become so thoroughly dear to me; you caused me to be introduced into the world of knowledge; I have lived in the active pursuits of a free spirit; I have glanced into history, and then turned back into my own mind in order to twine myself up by the tendril of the spirit firmly to the pillar of faith in the Eternal, and through the free inquiries of my understanding, to acquire a clearer perception of myself and of the greatness of surrounding things. I have cultivated the sciences in the usual course with all my power, and reached thereby the position and capacity to oversee the district of human knowledge, and have thereupon spoken out my convictions with friends and other persons; have travelled the country, to learn, to know men and their doings. As a preacher of the gospel would I joyfully have spent this life, and in any possible overthrow of our social customs and of knowledge, by the help of God, would have discharged faithfully the duties of my office. "But should all this have withheld me from warding off more imminent danger from my country? Must not your unspeakable love for me directly spur me on to set death at defiance for the common good and the object of all our endeavours? What numbers of the modern Greeks have already fallen, to liberate their people from the scourge of the Turks, and are yet dead without having effected any visible consequence, without any prospect of it; and hundreds of them also amongst us, preparing themselves by education, suffer not their courage to sink, but are immediately ready again to offer _their_ lives for the good of their country, and would I not die for mine? And will not we, to whom the salvation and the working out of the highest blessings are so near and dear, will we do nothing to that end? And do I mistake your love, or would I wantonly sport with it? Believe it not. What should arm me for death, if not alone the love to you and the Fatherland, which impels me thus to testify it to you.