wer were alike dreaded must not be admitted within the walls of
Janina. Ali, not choosing to risk his forces in an open battle with a
warlike population, and preferring a slower and safer way to a short and
dangerous one, began by pillaging the villages and farms belonging to
his most powerful opponents. His tactics succeeded, and the very persons
who had been foremost in vowing hatred to the son of Kamco and who had
sworn most loudly that they would die rather than submit to the tyrant,
seeing their property daily ravaged, and impending ruin if hostilities
continued, applied themselves to procure peace. Messengers were sent
secretly to Ali, offering to admit him into Janina if he would undertake
to respect the lives and property of his new allies. Ali promised
whatever they asked, and entered the town by night. His first proceeding
was to appear before the cadi, whom he compelled to register and
proclaim his firmans of investiture.

In the same year in which he arrived at this dignity, really the desire
and object of Ali's whole life, occurred also the death of the Sultan
Abdul Hamid, whose two sons, Mustapha and Mahmoud, were confined in the
Old Seraglio. This change of rulers, however, made no difference to Ali;
the peaceful Selim, exchanging the prison to which his nephews were now
relegated, for the throne of their father, confirmed the Pacha of Janina
in the titles, offices, and privileges which had been conferred on him.

Established in his position by this double investiture, Ali applied
himself to the definite settlement of his claims. He was now fifty
years of age, and was at the height of his intellectual development:
experience had been his teacher, and the lesson of no single event
had been lost upon him. An uncultivated but just and penetrating mind
enabled him to comprehend facts, analyse causes, and anticipate results;
and as his heart never interfered with the deductions of his rough
intelligence, he had by a sort of logical sequence formulated an
inflexible plan of action. This man, wholly ignorant, not only of the
ideas of history but also of the great names of Europe, had succeeded
in divining, and as a natural consequence of his active and practical
character, in also realising Macchiavelli, as is amply shown in the
expansion of his greatness and the exercise of his power. Without faith
in God, despising men, loving and thinking only of himself, distrusting
all around him, audacious in design, immov