their native mountains of Epirus, the name of Suliote was now blotted from the books of life, and was heard no more in those wild sylvan haunts, where once it had filled every echo with the breath of panic to the quailing hearts of the Moslems. In the most "palmy" days of Suli, she had never counted more than 2,500 fighting-men; and of these no considerable body escaped, excepting the corps who hastily fought their way to Parga. From that city they gradually transported themselves to Corfu, then occupied by the Russians. Into the service of the Russian Czar, as the sole means left to a perishing corps of soldiers for earning daily bread, they naturally entered; and when Corfu afterwards passed from Russian to English masters, it was equally inevitable that for the same urgent purposes they should enter the military service of England. In that service they received the usual honorable treatment, and such attention as circumstances would allow to their national habits and prejudices. They were placed also, we believe, under the popular command of Sir R. Church, who, though unfortunate as a supreme leader, made himself beloved in a lower station by all the foreigners under his authority. These Suliotes have since then returned to Epirus and to Greece, the peace of 1815 having, perhaps, dissolved their connection with England, and they were even persuaded to enter the service of their arch-enemy, Ali Pacha. Since his death their diminished numbers, and the altered circumstances of their situation, should naturally have led to the extinction of their political importance. Yet we find them, in 1832, still attracting (or rather concentrating) the wrath of the Turkish Sultan, made the object of a separate war, and valued (as in all former cases) on the footing of a distinct and independent nation. On the winding up of this war, we find part of them at least an object of indulgent solicitude to the Brit

ish government, and under their protection transferred to Cephalonia. Yet again others of their scanty clan meet us at different points of the war in Greece, especially at the first decisive action with Ibrahim, when, in the rescue of Costa Botzaris, every Suliote of his blood perished on the spot; and again, in the fatal battle of Athens (May 6, 1827), Mr. Gordon assures us that "almost all the Suliotes were exterminated." We understand him to speak, not generally of the Suliotes, as of the total clan who bear that name, but of those only who happened to be present at that dire catastrophe. Still, even with this limitation, such a long succession of heavy losses descending upon a people who never numbered above 2,500 fighting-men, and who had passed through the furnace seven times heated of Ali Pacha's wrath, and suffered those many and dismal tragedies which we have just recorded, cannot but have brought them latterly to the brink of utter extinction.

23*

NOTES.

NOTE 1. Page 261.

On the same occasion the Pacha's son, and sixty officers of the rank of Aga, were also made prisoners by a truly rustic mode of assault. The Turks had shut themselves up in a church; into this, by night, the Suliotes threw a number of hives full of bees, whose insufferable stings soon brought the haughty Moslems into the proper surrendering mood. The whole body were afterwards ransomed for so trifling a sum as 1,000 sequins.

NOTE 2. Page 267.

The deposition of two Suliote sentinels at the door, and of a third person who escaped with a dreadful scorching, sufficiently established the facts; otherwise the whole would have been ascribed to the treachery of Ali or his son.

THE FATAL MARKSMAN.

66

I.

"LISTEN, dame," said Bertram, the old forester of Linden, to his wife; once for all, listen. It's not many things, thou well know'st, that I would deny to thy asking: but as for this notion, Anne, drive it clean out of thy head; root and branch lay the axe to it; the sooner the better; and never encourage the lass to think more about it. When she knows the worst, she 'll settle herself down to her crying; and when that's over, all 's over; she submits, and all goes right. I see no good that comes of standing shilly-shally, and letting the girl nurse herself with hopes of what must not be."

"But Bertram, dear Bertram," replied old Anne, "why not? could not our Kate live as happily with the bailiff's clerk as with the hunter Robert? Ah, you don't know what a fine lad William is; so good, so kind-hearted — ”

"May be, like enough," interrupted Bertram; "kindhearted, I dare say, but no hunter for all that. Now, look here, Anne: for better than two hundred years has this farm in the forest of Linden come down from father to child in my family. Hadst thou brought me a son, well and good: the farm would have gone to him; and the lass might have married whom she would. But, as the

case stands, no, I say. What the devil! have I had all this trouble and vexation of mind to get the duke's allowance for my son-in-law to stand his examination as soon as he is master of the huntsman's business; and just when all's settled, must I go and throw the girl away? A likely thing, indeed! No, no, mistress Anne, it's no use talking. It's not altogether Robert that I care about. I don't stand upon trifles; and, if the man is not to your taste or the girl's, why, look out any other active huntsman that may take my office betimes, and give us a comfortable fireside in our old age. Robert or not Robert, so that it be a lad of the forest, I'll never stand upon trifles: but for the clerk - dost hear, Anne? - this hero of a crow-quill, never hang about my neck or think to wheedle me again.”

For the clerk's sake old Anne would have ventured to wheedle her husband a little longer: but the forester, who knew by experience the pernicious efficacy of female eloquence, was resolved not to expose his own firmness of purpose to any further assaults or trials; and, taking down his gun from the wall, he walked out into the forest. Scarcely had he turned the corner of the rosy, light-haired face looked in at the door. It was Katharine smiling and blushing, she stopped for a moment in agitation, and said: "Is all right, mother? was it yes, dear mother?" Then, bounding into the room, she fell on her mother's neck for an answer.

house, when a

66 "Ah, Kate, be not too confident when thou shouldst be prepared for the worst: thy father is a good man, as good as ever stepped, but he has his fancies; and he is resolved to give thee to none but a hunter: he has set his heart upon it; and he'll not go from his word; I know him too well."

Katharine wept, and avowed her determination to die sooner than to part from her William. Her mother com