few of the extreme Left in the Italian Chamber made any pretensions to a comprehension of the nature of a gentleman, and the vulgarity of the outbreak which provoked his resignation—­it was on the occasion of the disaster of Dogali—­was of a nature which only a hardened politician could adapt himself to.  It was my first experience of the indecencies of Italian parliamentarism, and, when he left the Chamber under the unendurable insults poured on him in language adapted only to street broils, I said to a colleague that he would never appear again in the Chamber.  I was right, for, though the ministry obtained a vote of confidence, and he was urged to withdraw his resignation, he refused.  In his charge the foreign policy of Italy was at its best.

I found affairs at Athens in a critical condition.  Deliyanni was trying the game of bluff which had succeeded in the hands of Comoundouros, but with quite a different measure of competence.  With Deliyanni it was an evident sham.  He had promised war without the least intention of preparing for it, in the childish expectation that Europe would oblige the Sultan to make some concession which would save his credit in the country and enable him to continue in office.  But circumstances were different; Greece had on the former occasion a valid claim, admitted by the powers, while on this there was only the pretension that Greece should receive a compensation for betterments acquired by Bulgaria.  In the former, the Treaty of Berlin had sanctioned the cession; in the latter, there was only the bare impudence of Mr. Deliyanni to move the powers.  The ministry called out class after class of the reserves and sent them northward, but made no effective preparation for war; the men were ill-clad, worse provided, and everything was lacking to make them ready for a campaign.  The casual observer could see that war was not intended, and that Deliyanni was silly enough to believe that the agents of the powers did not see through his sham, and thought that he could frighten them.  The men on the frontier finally amounted to about 45,000 men, kept there as a scarecrow to the powers at an expense, ascertained from the safest authorities, of 1000 deaths per month.  The powers insisted on demobilization.  Deliyanni replied by waving his torch and threatening to set fire to Europe if they did not give him a province; and meanwhile the Turkish government was gathering a solid force of about 40,000 men on the menaced frontier, and preparing silently to march on Athens.

The common people of the city, ignorant of everything connected with war, and inflamed by the jingo official press, conceived that nothing was needed but to set the Greek army in motion to insure a triumphant march on Constantinople, and were shouting for the troops to cross the frontier.  Deliyanni had never had the least intention of making war, but he dared not withdraw for fear of his own people and the war fever he had inoculated them with.  The worst feature