rst schools of
freedom.

With such sound and manly views of the true exigencies of the crisis,
it is not wonderful that he should view with impatience, and
something, perhaps, of contempt, all that premature apparatus of
printing-presses, pedagogues, &c. with which the Philhellenes of the
London Committee were, in their rage for "utilitarianism,"
encumbering him. Nor were some of the correspondents of this body
much more solid in their speculations than themselves; one
intelligent gentleman having suggested, as a means of conferring
signal advantages on the cause, an alteration of the Greek alphabet.

Though feeling, as strongly, perhaps, as Lord Byron, the importance
of the great object of their mission,--that of rousing and, what was
far more difficult, combining against the common foe the energies of
the country,--Colonel Stanhope was also one of those who thought that
the lights of their great master, Bentham, and the operations of a
press unrestrictedly free, were no less essential instruments towards
the advancement of the struggle; and in this opinion, as we have
seen, the poet and man of literature differed from the soldier. But
it was such a difference as, between men of frank and fair minds, may
arise without either reproach to themselves, or danger to their
cause,--a strife of opinion which; though maintained with heat, may
be remembered without bitterness, and which, in the present instance,
neither prevented Byron, at the close of one of their warmest
altercations, from exclaiming generously to his opponent, "Give me
that honest right hand," nor withheld the other from pouring forth,
at the grave of his colleague, a strain of eulogy[1] not the less
cordial for being discriminatingly shaded with censure, nor less
honourable to the illustrious dead for being the tribute of one who
had once manfully differed with him.

[Footnote 1: Sketch of Lord Byron.--See Colonel Stanhope's "Greece in
1823, 1824," &c.]

Towards the middle of February, the indefatigable activity of Mr.
Parry having brought the artillery brigade into such a state of
forwardness as to be almost ready for service, an inspection of the
Suliote corps took place, preparatory to the expedition; and after
much of the usual deception and unmanageableness on their part, every
obstacle appeared to be at length surmounted. It was agreed that they
should receive a month's pay in advance;--Count Gamba, with 300 of
their corps, as a vanguard, was to