y to return almost at the moment of our arrival. It is
not for me to speak, except when I am attacked, of the services I have
rendered both in my professional capacity and otherwise. Those who were
in Greece knew my exertions to reconcile the National Assemblies in
April, 1827, to suppress the animosity amongst the chiefs and save the
country from civil discord. They know that I doubled the national marine
by captures from the enemy. They know that by desultory operations I
paralysed the efforts of fleets we could not oppose. They know that the
attack on Vasiladi and Lepanto, in September last, induced the Turkish
and Egyptian fleets to follow to that quarter, in violation of the
armistice, and that this act produced their rencontre and dispute with
the British admiral, and ultimately led to the destruction of those
fleets in the port of Navarino."

A few days after writing that letter, Lord Cochrane returned to London
from Paris, where he had been staying for nearly two months, in frequent
communication with the members of the Philhellenic Committees of that
city and of other parts of the Continent. The growing dissatisfaction
which the bad conduct of the Greeks had awakened in many of their best
friends, and still more the silence of Capodistrias, prevented his doing
all that he had hoped to do. He succeeded, however, in exciting some
fresh interest, and found that one of the steamboats, at any rate, the
_Mercury_, was at length in a fair way of completion, though this and
its subsequent equipment were only effected by an advance of two
thousand pounds, which he himself made. This was the business which took
him to London, where he was busily employed during May and the first few
days of June. He then went back to Paris for nearly three months more,
and made further efforts, though in vain, to procure the substantial
assistance for Greece on which his heart was set. As soon as the
_Mercury_ was ready for sea, he directed that she should proceed to
Marseilles, where she arrived on the 13th of September: on the 18th,
determined to make the best use of her in his power, he again set sail
for Greece.

He reached Poros on or near the last day of September. He found that the
internal arrangements of Greece had wonderfully improved. Capodistrias
during the last eight months had been ruling with an iron hand over all
those districts which the previous conquests of the Turks and Egyptians
had not taken out of his control, and