e five millions of dollars--raised from a tax
of one-tenth of all the agricultural products of the land (which tenth
the farmer had to bring to the royal granaries on pack-mules any
distance not exceeding six leagues) and from extravagant taxes on trade
and commerce. Out of that five millions the small tyrant tried to keep
an army of ten thousand men, pay all the hundreds of useless Grand
Equerries in Waiting, First Grooms of the Bedchamber, Lord High
Chancellors of the Exploded Exchequer, and all the other absurdities
which these puppy-kingdoms indulge in, in imitation of the great
monarchies; and in addition he set about building a white marble palace
to cost about five millions itself. The result was, simply: ten into
five goes no times and none over. All these things could not be done
with five millions, and Otho fell into trouble.

The Greek throne, with its unpromising adjuncts of a ragged population of
ingenious rascals who were out of employment eight months in the year
because there was little for them to borrow and less to confiscate, and a
waste of barren hills and weed-grown deserts, went begging for a good
while. It was offered to one of Victoria's sons, and afterwards to
various other younger sons of royalty who had no thrones and were out of
business, but they all had the charity to decline the dreary honor, and
veneration enough for Greece's ancient greatness to refuse to mock her
sorrowful rags and dirt with a tinsel throne in this day of her
humiliation--till they came to this young Danish George, and he took it.
He has finished the splendid palace I saw in the radiant moonlight the
other night, and is doing many other things for the salvation of Greece,
they say.

We sailed through the barren Archipelago, and into the narrow channel
they sometimes call the Dardanelles and sometimes the Hellespont. This
part of the country is rich in historic reminiscences, and poor as Sahara
in every thing else. For instance, as we approached the Dardanelles, we
coasted along the Plains of Troy and past the mouth of the Scamander; we
saw where Troy had stood (in the distance,) and where it does not stand
now--a city that perished when the world was young. The poor Trojans are
all dead, now. They were born too late to see Noah's ark, and died too
soon to see our menagerie. We saw where Agamemnon's fleets rendezvoused,
and away inland a mountain which the map said was Mount Ida. Within the
Hellespont we saw wh