Page:American Historical Review, Volume 12.djvu/652

 642 Reviews of Books months he wrote and published his Sketch of the Greek Revolution, an offhand work whose vivid autopsy and keen judgments of men and measures give it permanent value ; and then went to the people with his cause. "His words kindled like a torijh, and wlu:rc^er his voice was heard, wherever the flash of his presence was seen, people's hearts sprang up in answer." With $60,000 thus raised he went back to Greece in November, 1828, and began to administer relief on new principles. He would " give it all to the poor, and yet have it remain to be given over and over again ". Doing the thing next his hand, he sets the poor Atljenian refugees — 250 men and 500 women — at work building a mole in the harbor of Aegina; and for four months over 700 beggars were turned into joyful laborers on a public work of real and lasting utility. It was an object-lesson which Greece sadly needed as she needs the like to-day ; but Howe looked farther. He asked and obtained a large land grant near Corinth on which he proposed to colonize these homeless exiles and set them in the way of living from the soil. This colony he actually established, and on his return to Greece in 1844 he found a joy- ful welcome from his proteges; but owing to a long and virulent siege of swamp-fever which interrupted his journal here we have no adequate account of it. Here ends the Greek story, though the editor has added to the volume the record of her father's adventures in the Polish cause and his consequent imprisonment in Berlin. These journals have waited eighty years to see the light, though full of facts and judgments of high historical value. There was hardly a keener eye on Greek affairs than Howe's ; hardly a man of any age who saw so much and interpreted it so well. His incisive judgments of men have in the main stood the test of time. Capodistrias and Kolokotrones, Mavrokordatos and Miaules, Cochrane and Church, Hamilton and Has- tings, stand in history much as he painted them for good or ill. Nor had any man a clearer insight into the strength and weakness of the Greek cause and character. His judgments of the Greek people are at times indeed too stern; for he was every inch a disciplinarian, and dis- cipline there was none in a people scattered and peeled by twenty-two centuries of subjection. But he always corrects these harsh judgments; and his lifelong devotion to their cause is his real tribute to their character. Apart from the historical value of this volume, it takes rank with the very best Greek travels of that day. No better pictures of humble Greek life have ever been drawn than Howe gives us — notably in his rainy days with Father Peter; and his journals at Naxos and Paros are as good as anything we have about those islands. J. Irving Man.tt.