d Ellice, eminent
alike as a merchant and as a statesman. Another, no less eminent, was
Joseph Hume. Another was Mr. (afterwards Sir) John Bowring, secretary
to the Greek Committee. By them and many others the progress of the
Greek Revolution was carefully watched and its best interests were
strenuously advocated, and by all the return of Lord Cochrane to
England and the prospect of his enlistment in the Philhellenic
enterprise afforded hearty satisfaction. To them the real liberty of
Greece was a cherished object; and one and all united in welcoming the
great promoter of Chilian and Brazilian independence as the liberator
of Greece.

Other honest friends of Greece were less sanguine, and more disposed
to urge caution upon Lord Cochrane. "My very dear friend," wrote one
of them, Dr. William Porter, from Bristol on the 25th of August, "I
will not suffer you to be longer in England without welcoming you; for
your health, happiness, and fame are all dear to me. I have followed
you in your Transatlantic career with deep feelings of anxiety for
your life, but none for your glory: I know you too well to entertain
a fear for that. I had hoped that you would repose on your laurels and
enjoy the evening of life in peace, but am told that you are about to
launch a thunderbolt against the Grand Seignior on behalf of Greece.
I wish to see Greece free; but could also wish you to rest from your
labours. For a sexagenarian to command a fleet in ordinary war is an
easy task, and even threescore and ten might do it; but fifty years
are too many to conduct a naval war for a people whose pretensions to
nautical skill you will find on a thousand occasions to give rise to
jealousies against you. You will also find that on some important day
they will withhold their co-operation, in order to rob you of your
glory. The cause of Greece is, nevertheless, a glorious cause. Our
remembrance of what their ancestors did at Salamis, at Marathon, at
Thermopylae, gives an additional interest to all that concerns them.
But, to say the truth of them, they are a race of tigers, and their
ancestors were the same. I shall be glad to see them fall upon their
aigretted keeper and his pashas; but, confound them! I would not
answer for their destroying the man that would break their fetters and
set them loose in all the power of recognised freedom."

There was much truth in those opinions, and Lord Cochrane was not
blind to it. That he, though now in his fift