figs, six-fold; of currants, fifteen-fold; of vines, twenty-eight-fold. The progress of the currant trade has been tolerably steady since 1858. M. Moraitinis puts the area occupied by currant-vines at nearly 40,000 acres; M. Mansolas, at even a higher figure. The average yearly pro duction of currants, before the Greek War of Independence, was about ten million pounds weight. It has lately risen to upwards of a hundredand-fifty million pounds weight. The produce from arable land is stated to have increased fifty per cent. in the last fifteen years. Creditable progress has been made, then, by Greece in all the chief branches of her agriculture; in some branches, even great progress. And yet competent observers are generally agreed that Greek agriculture is still very far from doing justice to the natural resources of the country. The causes of this defect deserve the earnest attention of all who wish to see the prosperity of Greece set on a firm basis. Mr. Sergeant touches on every one of the separate causes: but he does not present them, perhaps, quite in the connection or in the proportions best fitted to make the general state of the matter clcar. Want of capital is unquestionably the great want of all for Greek agriculture. But, if abundant capital were forthcoming to-morrow, it would still have to contend with a special set of difficulties created by the want of capital at the critical moment nearly fifty years ago. After the War of Inde pendence the Greck lands which the Turks had left-on receiving a large compensation at the instance of the Powers-became the property of the Greek State. Few wealthy purchasers were found. Part of the land was granted by the Government in small lots to peasant holders, subject to taxes on the produce. A great part was left on the hands of the Government and remained unproductive. The system of small holdings, the petite culture, has lasted to this day,-the partition of land being especially minute in the mountainous districts and in the Egean islands. This system has been a constant bar to the introduction of scientific farming. The average agriculturist has been too poor and too ignorant to attempt it. The mode of taxation-a modification of the old rayah system-is such that, as Mr. Tuckerman says, "the husbandman suffers delay in bringing his crop to market,-loses by deprecia tion while awaiting the tax-gatherer's arrival,-and finally in the tax to which it is subjected." The importance of encouraging better methods of farming has been recognised from the earliest days of Greece. Capo distria, when President of the Republic, founded in 1831 an Agricultural School at Tirynth. This was, on the whole, a failure, and was closed in 1865. "It was replaced," Mr. Sergeant says, "by a more technical school, which seems to have had no better fortune than its predecessor." II. Mansolas, however, gives a somewhat more encouraging account of the new institution, and it may be hoped that it will yet do good work. But the case of Greece is widely different from that of a country in which the land is occupied chiefly by an educated class of large or considerable land-holders. In Greece each several holder of one or two acres has to be converted to scientific farming before agricultural re form can make way. And the natural conservatism of an agricultural population is intensified by the fact that in these matters every man has hitherto been his own master, with no obligation beyond the payment of his taxes to the State. It is not even the ambition of the peasant farmer to get as much out of the land as he can. The difficulties of communication limit his market, and he is usually content if he can satisfy the wants of his household, with perhaps a narrow margin of profit. Tradition and the influence of climate combine to make thes wants few and simple, and so to restrict the amount of energy employed. In Greece, as elsewhere, it is in one sense a misfortune that the peasantry are contented with so little. Again, the population of Greece is thin-excluding the Ionian Islands, it has been computed at fifty-eight to the square mile-and the system of small holdings increases the dearth of agricultural labour. The destruction of the forests in Greece has been due mainly to the long unrestrained recklessness of the peasants and to the depredations of the wandering shepherds with their flocks of goats. The destruction of the forests has in turn injured the climate and helped to dry up the rivers. The Greek government has not been insensible to these evils, but it has had to contend against deeplyrooted prejudices and traditions-those, namely, which were engendered by Turkish rule. Good results may be anticipated from a law lately passed, which permits the tax-paying tenant of public land to buy it from the State, and to pay the purchase-money by instalments spread over eighteen years. This should tend to bring in a better class of agriculturists, and also by degrees to enlarge the cultivated area. The want of roads in Greece has been an obstacle to agricultural industry, as to enterprise of every kind. Seaboard towns sometimes import their wheat when there is an ample supply at a distance perhaps of a day's journey inland, simply because the transport by mules or horses would be too expensive. Mr. Tuckerman computes that there are about two hundred miles of "good highway" in Greece Proper; and if by "good" is meant "thoroughly practicable for carriages," this is perhaps not far from the mark.* The fact is that there has been no great demand for roads on the part of the unambitious agricultural class, and the country, with its already heavy burdens, has felt no sufficiently strong incentive to proceed vigorously with a work of such heavy cost. Roadmaking is expensive in a country so full of rocky tracts and intersected by frequent chains of hills: the average cost for Greece has been estimated at 600l. a mile. The pressure which must ultimately compel Greece to complete her road-system will come, not from the agriculturists, but from commerce. Already the exigencies of the currant trade and the silk trade are beginning to open up the Morea. Last summer, in going from Laconia into Messenia, I came on the still unfinished road Mr. Sergeant states, on official authority, that "the roads of the mainland have an aggregate length of 889,933 kilometres." Read 889 kilometres, 933 metres: i.e, about 550 miles. which is being made from Kalamata to Tripolitza, and followed it for some way. A few more such first-rate highways would be the greatest of boons to the country. There is still no continuous road between Kalamata and Patras; there is nothing worthy to be called a road between Tripolitza and Sparta. The poet tells us that, when Apollo passed from Delos to Delphi, The children of Hephaestus were his guides, and every modern tourist will echo the wish that the rising Polytechnic School of Athens may produce some more "road making sons of Hephaestus." But it would be a mistake to infer, from the deficiency of roads which is still felt, that Greece has been inactive in public works. Some dozen harbours have been constructed or restored, lighthouses have been erected at all the dangerous points in the Greek seas, drainage works have been executed in several places, eleven new cities have arisen on ancient sites, more than forty towns and more than six hundred villages have been rebuilt since the war. At The manufacturing industries of Greece have made rapid progress within the last few years. According to M. Moraitinis, the Peiræus* did not contain a single steam manufactory in 1868. It has now more than thirty such establishments; and the kingdom contains in all no less than 112 steam factories. Most of these have been established within the last ten years. There are, besides, about 700 factories which do not use steam. The number of artisans employed is about 25.000, and the annual products represent a value of about six millions sterling. At the Great Exhibition of 1851 Greece was represented by thirty-six exhibitors. Paris last year it was represented, according to the list of M. Mansolas, by 533. He notes the progress of cotton-spinning, which since 1870 has diminished the importation of that article by nearly two-thirds. The export of Greek wines has also increased very largely. The first building that the traveller sees as he enters modern Sparta is a silk manufactory, and the large mulberry plantations in the valley of the Eurotas attest the growing importance of this industry. Though Government patronage has never been wanting, the rapid progress of recent years has been due, M. Mansolas thinks, chiefly to private enterprise and to the power of association. This power is gradually overcoming the obstacles long presented by a thin population, by the want of capital, by the absence of machinery, and by the slender demand for luxuries. It is a good sign that whereas in 1845 Greece was importing twice the value of her exports, the ratio of imports to exports has lately been less than three to two. Forty-seven years ago Lord Palmerston predicted a *Sixty years ago the Peiræus-Porto Leone, under the Turks-had well-nigh ceased to be even a port. The traces of its ancient dignity were few and modest. There was a piece of deal boarding, projecting a few feet into the sea, to serve as a landing stage for small boats; and there was a wooden hut for a guard. bright future for Greek commerce, and already the prediction has been in some measure fulfilled. Next to agriculture, the mainstay of Greece is her merchant marine trading with Turkey and the ports of the Levant. In 1821 Greece had only about 450 vessels; the number in 1874 was 5,202, representing an aggregate burden of 250,077 tons; and the merchant marine of Greece ranks in the scale of importance as the seventh of the world. The question of national education has from the first days of recovered freedom engaged the most earnest attention of the Greek people. Education is for the Greeks of to-day, not merely what it is for every civilised nation, the necessary basis of all worthy hope; it is, further, the surest pledge of their unity as a people both within and without the boundaries of the present Kingdom; it is the practical vindication of their oldest birthright; it is the symbol of the agencies which wrought their partial deliverance; it is the living witness of those qualities and those traditions on which they found their legitimate aspirations for the future. During three centuries and a half of Turkish rule the Greek nationality was preserved from effacement by the studies which fostered its language and its religion; and, when the earliest hopes of freedom began to be felt, the first sure promise of its approach was the fact that those studies had been enlarged and had received a new impulse. Koraes struck the true note in the preface to his translation of Beccaria "On Crimes and Punishments," which he dedicated in 1802 to the young republic of the Ionians. "You are now," he said, addressing the studious youth of Greece, the instructors and teachers of your country, but the time is fast approaching when you will be called upon to become her lawgivers. Unite, then, your wealth and your exertions in her behalf, since in her destitution she can boast no public treasury for the instruction of her children; and forget not that in her brighter days their education was a public duty entrusted to her rulers." If ever there was a case in which the deliverance of a people was directly traceable to the awakening of the national intelligence, that case was the Greek War of Independence. No people could have a more cogent practical reason than the Greeks have for believing that knowledge is power; but they do not value it only or chiefly because it is power. The love of knowledge is an essential part of the Greek character,—an instinct which their historical traditions strengthen, indeed, but have not created. After the war, when the troubled period of Capodistria's Presidency had given place to settled institutions, one of the first great tasks taken in hand was that of thoroughly organizing public instruction. M. Burnouf's remark, quoted by Mr. Sergeant, that public instruction was "almost non-existent" in Greece in 1833, is true in a sense, but needs qualification. It is true that there was no complete or uniform system of public instruction; in the political situation of the Greeks before the war such a thing had not been possible. On the other hand, many elements of such a system had been supplied by the strenuous efforts made at many particular centres of Greek life during a long series of years. In fact the tradition of Greek culture had, under the heaviest discouragements, been preserved unbroken from the conquest of Constantinople, though it was only in the latter part of the seventeenth century that a few of the schools began to be prosperous or famous. Among these were the lyceums of Bucharest in Wallachia and Yassi in Moldavia, which had been protected by a series of Phanariot Hospodars; the schools of Janina in Epirus, which had owed much to the beneficence of the brothers Zosima, "the Medicis of Modern Greece; " the gymnasium of Symrna, the College of Scio, the Greek College at Odessa, and many more of nearly equal repute. By 1815 almost every Greek community had its school. Ten years of war and confusion interrupted the work. But, in 1833 there were still the materials, however scattered or imperfect, with which to begin; and there was a spontaneous public sympathy with the object-a sympathy which the successful struggle for freedom had helped not a little to quicken. Under the system of public instruction adopted in modern Greece,* three successive grades of schools lead up to the university: (1), the Demotic or Primary National Schools; (2), the Hellenic Schools, secondary grammar-schools; (3), the Gymnasia, higher schools of scholarship and science, in which the range and the level of teaching are much the same as in the German gymnasium, or in the upper parts of our public schools. From the Gymnasium the next step is to the University of Athens. In all three grades of schools, and also at the University, instruction is gratuitous. With regard to the Primary Schools, Mr. Sergeant writes: "Elementary education in Greece, in addition to being gratuitous, is compulsory-at least in theory. Children are compelled by law to attend the primary schools between the ages of seven and twelve years" (p. 53). M. Mansolas says (p. 36), "between the ages of five and twelve;" and, after adding that there is a small fine for each day of the child's absence, adds the important remarks, "but this principle has been hardly ever applied." It would be interesting to know whether compulsion has been thus absent because it has been found unnecessary, or because it has been thought undesirable. So far as personal observation enables me to judge, I should be disposed to doubt whether these words of Mr. Tuckerman's can be accepted without reservation:-"It may safely be asserted that no man, woman or child born in the kingdom since the organization of free institutions [i. e. say since 1833] is so deficient in elementary knowledge as not to be able to read or write." However that may be, there can be no doubt that primary education in Greece has made extraordinary progress since 1833--such progress as could The chief organizer of this system was George Gennadius, the father of the present Minister of Greece in England, and a descendant of Gennadius Scholarius, the first Patriarch of Constantinople after the Turkish conquest. George Gennadius was studying in Germany when the Greek Revolution broke out. He served in the war; he was a prominent speaker in the assemblies; and on the settlement of the State he devoted his life to public education. Many of the B'shops and Scholars of Greece have been his pupils; and the memory of his unselfish energy is still held in deserved honour. |