reeks, and everything short of unequivocal folly he was
bound to have done with and for them.

His two emissaries or envoys proceeded to Tripolizza, where they
found Colocotroni seated in the palace of the late vizier, Velhi
Pasha, in great power; the court-yard and galleries filled with armed
men in garrison, while there was no enemy at that time in the Morea
able to come against them! The Greek chieftains, like their classic
predecessors, though embarked in the same adventure, were personal
adversaries to each other. Colocotroni spoke of his compeer
Mavrocordato in the very language of Agamemnon, when he said that he
had declared to him, unless he desisted from his intrigues, he would
mount him on an ass and whip him out of the Morea; and that he had
only been restrained from doing so by the representation of his
friends, who thought it would injure their common cause. Such was
the spirit of the chiefs of the factions which Lord Byron thought it
not impossible to reconcile!

At this time Missolonghi was in a critical state, being blockaded
both by land and sea; and the report of Trelawney to Lord Byron
concerning it, was calculated to rouse his Lordship to activity.
"There have been," says he, "thirty battles fought and won by the
late Marco Botzaris, and his gallant tribe of Suliotes, who are shut
up in Missolonghi. If it fall, Athens will be in danger, and
thousands of throats cut: a few thousand dollars would provide ships
to relieve it; a portion of this sum is raised, and I would coin my
heart to save this key of Greece." Bravely said! but deserving of
little attention. The fate of Missolonghi could have had no visible
effect on that of Athens.

The distance between these two places is more than a hundred miles,
and Lord Byron was well acquainted with the local difficulties of the
intervening country; still it was a point to which the eyes of the
Greeks were all at that time directed; and Mavrocordato, then in
correspondence with Lord Byron, and who was endeavouring to collect a
fleet for the relief of the place, induced his Lordship to undertake
to provide the money necessary for the equipment of the fleet, to the
extent of twelve thousand pounds. It was on this occasion his
Lordship addressed a letter to the Greek chiefs, that deserves to be
quoted, for the sagacity with which it suggests what may be the
conduct of the great powers of Christendom.

"I must frankly confess," says he, "that unless un