The Edinburgh Review Volume 133 (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1871 Excerpt: ...and almost despair of the Greeks around him. The proclamation next decreed that the Easter festival should be suspended; that the shops should be closed for three days; that a general mourning for twenty days should be observed; and that at sunrise the next morning, the 20th of April, thirty-seven minute-guns should be fired from the batteries to indicate the age of the deceased. 'How much soever the Greeks of that day may have differed on other topics, there was no difference of opinion in regard to the loss they had sustained by the death of Byron. Those who have read Colonel Leicester Stanhope's interesting volume, " Greece in 1823 and "1824," and more particularly Colonel Stanhope's " Sketch," and Mr. Finlay's "Reminiscences" of Byron--will have seen him just as he appeared to me during our long intimacy. I liked him a great deal too well to be an impartial judge of his character; but I can confidently appeal to the impressions he made upon the two above-mentioned witnesses of his conduct, under very trying circumstances, for a justification of my strong affection for him--an affection not weakened by the forty years of a busy and chequered life that have passed over me since I saw him laid in his grave. 'The influence he had acquired in Greece was unbounded, and he had exerted it in a manner most useful to her cause. Lord Sidney Osborne, writing to Mrs. Leigh, said, that if Byron had never written a line in his life, he had done enough, during the last six months, in Greece, to immortalise his name. He added, that no one unacquainted with the circumstances of the case could have any idea of the difficulties he had overcome: he had reconciled the contending parties, and had given a character of humanity and civilisatio...