efore felt as to the
chances of ever connecting his name with any essential or permanent
benefit to Greece, gives to the sacrifice he now made of himself a
far more touching interest than had the consciousness of dying for
some great object been at once his incitement and reward. He but
looked upon himself,--to use a favourite illustration of his own,--as
one of the many waves that must break and die upon the shore, before
the tide they help to advance can reach its full mark. "What
signifies Self," was his generous thought, "if a single spark of that
which would be worthy of the past can be bequeathed unquenchedly to
the future?"[1] Such was the devoted feeling with which he embarked
in the cause of Italy; and these words, which, had they remained
_only_ words, the unjust world would have pronounced but an idle
boast, have now received from his whole course in Greece a practical
comment, which gives them all the right of truth to be engraved
solemnly on his tomb.

[Footnote 1: _Diary of_ 1821.--The same distrustful and, as it turned
out, just view of the chances of success were taken by him also on
that occasion:--"I shall not," he says, "fall back;--though I don't
think them in force or heart sufficient to make much of it."]

Though with so little hope of being able to serve signally the cause,
the task of at least lightening, by his interposition, some of the
manifold mischiefs that pressed upon it, might yet, he thought, be
within his reach. To convince the Government and the Chiefs of the
paralysing effect of their dissensions;--to inculcate that spirit of
union among themselves which alone could give strength against their
enemies;--to endeavour to humanise the feelings of the belligerents
on both sides, so as to take from the war that character of barbarism
which deterred the more civilised friends of freedom through Europe
from joining in it;--such were, in addition to the now essential aid
of his money, the great objects which he proposed to effect by his
interference; and to these he accordingly, with all the candour,
clear-sightedness, and courage which so pre-eminently distinguished
his great mind, applied himself.

Aware that, to judge deliberately of the state of parties, he must
keep out of their vortex, and warned, by the very impatience and
rivalry with which the different chiefs courted his presence, of the
risk he should run by connecting himself with any, he resolved to
remain, for some time long