hands of some future historian, Mr.
Miller has performed a most useful service in affording a guide by the
aid of which the historical student can find his way through the
labyrinthine maze of Balkan politics. He begins his story about the time
when Napoleon had appeared like a comet in the political firmament, and
by his erratic movements had caused all the statesmen of Europe to
diverge temporarily from their normal and conventional orbits, one
result being that the British Admiral Duckworth wandered in a somewhat
aimless fashion through the Dardanelles to Constantinople, and had very
little idea of what to do when he got there. Mr. Miller reminds us of
events of great importance in their day, but now almost wholly
forgotten: of how the ancient Republic of Ragusa, which had existed for
eleven centuries and which had earned the title of the "South Slavonic
Athens," was crushed out of existence under the iron heel of Marmont,
who forthwith proceeded to make some good roads and to vaccinate the
Dalmatians; of how Napoleon tried to partition the Balkans, but found,
with all his political and administrative genius, that he was face to
face with an "insoluble problem"; of how that rough man of genius,
Mahmoud II., hanged the Greek Patriarch from the gate of his palace, but
between the interludes of massacres and executions, brought his "energy
and indomitable force of will" to bear on the introduction of reforms;
of how the Venetian Count Capo d'Istria, who was eventually
assassinated, produced a local revolt by a well-intentioned attempt to
amend the primitive ethics of the Mainote Greeks--a tale which is not
without its warning if ever the time comes for dealing with a cognate
question amongst the wild tribes of Albania; and of how, amidst the
ever-shifting vicissitudes of Eastern politics, the Tsar of Russia, who
had heretofore posed as the "protector" of Roumans and Serbs against
their sovereign, sent his fleet to the Bosphorus in 1833 in order to
"protect" the sovereign against his rebellious vassal, Mehemet Ali, and
exacted a reward for his services in the shape of the leonine
arrangement signed at Hunkiar-Iskelesi. And so Mr. Miller carries us on
from massacre to massacre, from murder to murder, and from one
bewildering treaty to another, all of which, however, present this
feature of uniformity, that the Turk, signing of his own free will, but
with an unwilling mind--[Greek: hekon aekonti ge thymo]--made on each
occa