to conciliate rival clamants for pension or place, and carefully watching the tide of war.  Numerous anecdotes of the period relate to acts of public or private benevolence, which endeared him to the population of the island; but he was on the alert against being fleeced or robbed.  “The bulk of the English,” writes Colonel Napier, “came expecting to find the Peloponnesus filled with Plutarch’s men, and returned thinking the inhabitants of Newgate more moral.  Lord Byron judged the Greeks fairly, and knew that allowance must be made for emancipated slaves.”  Among other incidents we hear of his passing a group, who were “shrieking and howling as in Ireland” over some men buried in the fall of a bank; he snatched a spade, began to dig, and threatened to horsewhip the peasants unless they followed his example.  On November 30th he despatched to the central government a remarkable state paper, in which he dwells on the fatal calamity of a civil war, and says that unless union and order are established all hopes of a loan—­which being every day more urgent, he was in letters to England constantly pressing—­are at an end.  “I desire,” he concluded, “the well being of Greece, and nothing else.  I will do all I can to secure it; but I will never consent that the English public be deceived as to the real state of affairs.  You have fought gloriously; act honourably towards your fellow-citizens and the world, and it will then no more be said, as has been repeated for two thousand years, with the Roman historians, that Philopoemen was the last of the Grecians.”

Prince Alexander Mavrocordatos—­the most prominent of the practical patriotic leaders—­having been deposed from the presidency, was sent to regulate the affairs of Western Greece, and was now on his way with a fleet to relieve Mesolonghi, in attempting which the brave Marco Bozzaris had previously fallen.  In a letter, opening communication with a man for whom he always entertained a high esteem, Byron writes, “Colonel Stanhope has arrived from London, charged by our committee to act in concert with me....  Greece is at present placed between three measures—­either to reconquer her liberty, to become a dependence of the sovereigns of Europe, or to return to a Turkish province.  She has the choice only of these three alternatives.  Civil war is but a road that leads to the two latter.”

At length the long looked-for fleet arrived, and the Turkish squadron, with the loss of a treasure-ship, retired up the Gulf of Lepanto.  Mavrocordatos on entering Mesolonghi lost no time in inviting the poet to join him, and placed a brig at his disposal, adding, “I need not tell you to what a pitch your presence is desired by everybody, or what a prosperous direction it will give to all our affairs.  Your counsels will be listened to like oracles.”