their cause, partly as a relief from the misery of forced idleness,
partly with the view of developing a plan which he had been devising
for extending the use of steamships in naval warfare,--to which last
excellent improvement he greatly contributed. He arrived at Hydra in
April, 1822, just in time to take part in the fighting off Chios.
One of his ingenious suggestions, made to Andreas Miaoulis, and its
reception, have been described by himself. "I proposed to direct a
fireship and three other vessels upon the frigate, and, when near the
enemy, to set fire to certain combustibles which should throw out
a great flame. The enemy would naturally conclude they were all
fireships. The vessels were then to attach themselves to the frigate,
fire broadsides, double-shotted, throwing on board the enemy at the
same time combustible balls which gave a great smoke without flame.
This would doubtless induce him to believe he was on fire, and give
a most favourable opportunity for boarding him. However, the admiral
returned my plan, saying only [Greek: kalo], without asking a single
question, or wishing me to explain its details; and I observed a kind
of insolent contempt in his manner. This interview with the admiral
disgusted me. They place you in a position in which it is impossible
to render any service, and then they boast of their own superiority,
and of the uselessness of the Franks, as they call us, in Turkish
warfare." Miaoulis, however, soon gained wisdom and made good use of
Captain Hastings, who spent more than 7000_l._--all his patrimony--in
serving the Greeks. He was almost the only officer in their employ
who, during the earlier years of the Revolution, succeeded in
establishing any sort of discipline or good management.

Lord Byron, the most illustrious of all the early Philhellenes, used
to say, shortly before his death, that with Napier at the head of the
army and Hastings in command of a fleet the triumph of Greece might
be insured. Byron was then at Missolonghi, whither he had gone in
January, 1824, to die in April. Long before, while stirring up the
sympathy of all lovers of liberty for the cause of regeneration in
Greece, he had shown that regeneration could be by no means a short or
easy work, and now he had to report that the real work was hardly
yet begun--nay, that it seemed almost further off than ever. "Of the
Greeks," he wrote, "I can't say much good hitherto, and I do not like
to speak ill of them, th