the service of Russia, and, as Russian agent, he
advocated, at the Vienna Conference of 1815, the reconstruction of the
Ionian republic. The partial concession of Great Britain towards that
project, by which the Ionian Islands were established as a sort of
commonwealth, dependent upon England, enabled him to live and work
in Corfu, awaiting the realization of his own patriotic schemes, and
watching the patriotic movement in Greece. Italian in his education,
and Russian in his sympathies, he was still an honest Greek, worthier
and abler than most other influential Greeks. "He had many virtues and
great abilities," says a competent critic. "His conduct was firm and
disinterested, his manners simple and dignified. His personal feelings
were warm, and, as a consequence of this virtue, they were sometimes
so strong as to warp his judgment. He wanted the equanimity and
impartiality of mind, and the elevation of soul necessary to make
a great man."[A] In spite of his defects, he might have done good
service to the Greek Revolution, had he accepted the offer of its
leadership, shrewdly tendered to him by the Friendly Society. But this
he declined, having no liking for the society, and no trust in its
methods and designs.

[Footnote A: Finlay, "History of the Greek Revolution" (1861), vol.
ii., p. 196. Mr. Finlay served as a volunteer in Greece under Captain
Abney Hastings. His work is certainly the best on the subject, though
we shall have in later pages to differ widely from its strictures on
Lord Cochrane's motives and action. But our complaints will be less
against his history than against the two other leading ones--General
Gordon's "History of the Greek Revolution" (1832), and M. Trikoupes's
"[Greek: Historia tes Hellenikes Epanastaseos]" (1853-6), which is not
very much more than a paraphrase of Gordon's work.]

The Friendly Society then sought and found a leader, far inferior
to Count Capodistrias, in Prince Alexander Hypsilantes, the son of a
Hospodar of Wallachia who had been deposed in 1806. Hypsilantes had
been educated in Russia, and had there risen to some rank, high enough
at any rate to quicken his ambition and vanity, both as a soldier and
as a courtier. He was not without virtues; but he was utterly unfit
for the duties imposed upon him as leader of the Greek Revolution.
Not a Greek himself, his purpose in accepting the office seems to have
been to make Greece an appendage of the despotic monarchy, which, by