The Sun.
London, England, 1865-11-17 00:00:00

LITERATURE,

Sir Thomas Wyse's Pelopomesus.

An Excursion in the Peloponnesus it. the Year 1858.
By the late Right Hon. Sir Thomas Wyse,
K.C.B. Edited by his Neice. Winifrede M.
Wyse. Two Volumes. Day and Son.
We have examined these pages with very mingled
feelings indeed—with feelings at once of the irost
profound regret and of the sincerest admiration.
To our thinking, they constitute, beyond all com-
parison, the best book of travels descriptive of
Greece as it actually is, contrasted with Greece as it
used to be in its halcyon days when a great and
heroic nation. It appears to us to be not only, as
we have here said, incomparably the best book
of travels upon the subject that has ever yet
appeared to our knowledge, but, in point of fact,
the only one intrinsically worthy of its theme
—the only book worthy of being the expositor
of Greece as it is, when viewed through the
remembrance of what Greece vas wont to be in
the golden age of classic antiquity, when so re-
garded by the intelligence, and afterwards described
by the hand of a lettered Englishman. Scholars of
eminence have no doubt visited Greece before now,
and written books about it after their return home-
ward, but their writings as compared with the
two volumes here submitted to our consideration have
been either frivolous and superficial—or dull with
the dullness of Peter Bell—" dull beyond all expres-
sion dull," tediously erudite and didactically dry.
To particularise amongst these predecessors of Sir
Thomas Wyse, might possibly be invidious, would
certainly be sheer waste of time. It could, in
no possible manner, serve our present purpose
—meaning a candid examination of these two
noble volumes, descriptive of modern Greece—
volumes shadowing forth through their vivid and
picturesque and thoroughly appreciative delinea-
tion of modern Greece, the far grander outlines of
the glorious Greece of antiquity. For—amongst
the ablest of his precursors, there is not one with
whom the author of the remarkable work now under
review can be brought seriously, even for one single
instant, into comparison. His scholarship was ripe
and ready. His eloquence was as captivating
and as persuasive when he took pen in hand,
as when, in his Parliameniary days, he was :wont to
address with his lips intelligent and delighted audi-
ences, now within, now without the walls of the
imperial Legislature. And hence—by means simply
of the judicious combination of his lore and of his
rhetoric, in his jotting down thus in the simple form
of a diary the varying impressions produced upon
his mind during his latest excursion among the
desolate ruins and thinly-peopled dwelling-places
of the Peloponnesus, Sir Thomas Wyse contrived
to write a book as instructive as a paper contributed
to the Philosophical Transactions, yet as sparklingly
vivacious and as entertaining as one of the happiest
hits in a Paris feuilleton. The work altogether—
that is, regarded as a whole, looked at in its
symmetrical completeness—is, so far as any one could
reasonably desire it, completely exhaustive of its
theme : namely, as a description of the country, of
the people, of the manners and customs, of the
institutions, both civil and political, of the material
condition and of the intellectual and moral status
of all that is signified, now-a-days, under the one
comprehensive term of the Peloponnesus. It is as
minutely detailed as well digested and as scrupu-
lously well-arranged in its accummulation of illus-

trative facts and statistics, as though it were a
blue book compiled by the labours of a commis-
sion, to be placed afterwards for the enlighten-
ment of our legislators on the tables of the Lords
and Commons by command of the Sovereign.
But—in this instance, unlike any blue book that
was ever printed, certainly quite unlike any that
ever yet came under our own observation--the
work, amply furnished though it is with statistics
and other such illustrative or elucidatory materials,
is, nevertheless, from the beginning of the opening
chapter in the first volume, down to the conclusion
of the final chapter in the second, not only thoroughly
readable, but often as exhilarating and refreshing,
in the mere sparkle and animation of its manner, as
the conversations of a wit or the correspondence of
a humorist. We read on—never once bored—always
entertained—very frequently delighted. Having
opened the book -with euriinstwe .havo clotted it
with admiration : but, as intimated at the outset of
these remarks, with an admiration that is mingled with
regret. And that regret?—who is there who knows
anything at all about Sir Thomas Wyse who will not
recognise the source of it upon the instant? A regret
arising simply, solely and wholely, from our con-
viction that that distinguished servant of the Crown
was unexpectedly prevented by his death not merely
from giving this effusion himself to the world, but

from giving to the world, together with it, very
speedily afterwards, other and yet ampler illustra-
tions of the rare and refined powers that were in
him. From whatever untoward or fortuitous cir-
cumstance it may have arisen, certain are we, from
all that we have been able to learn in regard to his
career and his writings, that Sir Thomas Wyse
never did himself full justice in the manifestation of
his gifts and capabilities, insomuch that those
gifts and capabilities of his are to this hour, we be-
lieve, in no way adequately appreciated. His Speeches
—and they alone would make a noble volume—have

yet, we believe, to be collected. His History of the
Catholic Association is the only substantial literary
production that was fully completed by him during
his lifetime. His great work upon Education--
which promised to become the text-book upon that
_ _ _ _ .

subject of vito,l import to every civilisedlommu-

nity—never advanced, at any rate in a published
form, beyond the limits of a First Volume. Never-
theless, judging that work through merely its one
opening volume—estimating its proportions thus
in a manner ex pede Herculem—its augury of the
work as a completed whole, was magnificent. As a
preliminary treatise upon Education, it was a master-
piece. Turning, however, from a consideration of his
career as a Parliamentary orator, as a champion, nay,
in his day, as the arch-champion of the great cause of
National Education, as a legislator, a debater, a man
of letters, an administrator, and a patriotic philan-
thropist—turning from an examination of those ear-
lier phases of his career to the latest epoch of that
career, to the latest manifestation of his powers, that
is to say, in his capacity as a diplomatist, we have, if
that be possible, a yet more striking illustration of
the singularly regrettable, the almost disheartening
fact we are now alluding to, in the history of the
memorable " Financial Commission to inquire into

the
_Resources of Greece"—the Commission for-
mally appointed after the occupation of Athens dur-
ing the progress of the Crimean War, and of which
Commission Sir Thomas Wyse was from first to
last the active and distinguished President. Here,
again—as finally and conclusively illustrative of those
vexatious casualties that somehow intervened be-

tween the application of the rare abilities of Sir
Thomas Wyse to any given theme intrinsically
worthy of them, and the conspicuous manifestation
of the skill with which those powers had been so ap-
plied—the light of this Commission was in a man-
ner, as one may say, placed under a bushel. It was
a Commission, it may be remembered, appointed, in
the first instance, for the solution of the long-
bewildering problem as to whether the resources of
Greece could really be regarded as sufficing
for the regular payment thenceforth of the interest
upon the loan guaranteed by the three protecting
Powers, that is to say, byEngl and, France, and Russia.
That those resources did not suffice, the Greek Go-
vernment had persistently maintained, from year to
year, their doing so being in truth their one only
excuse for the non-fulfilment of their solemnly
stipulated engagements. Consequently to inquire
for once and for all into the validity of this asser-
tion, the Financial Commission referred to was for-
mally constituted. It consisted of the English,
the French, and the Russian ambassadors then at the
Court of Athens, those three ministers having as-
sociated with them in the labours of the Commis-
sion two assistant-Commissioners. Sixty-two sit-
tings in all were held by those five members of the
Financial Commission. Sir Thomas Wyse, at each
of those sittings, presiding. Elaborate reports were
drawn up on the several departments of the Greek
Government. Those reports showed as clearly as
written words could do, the actual condition of
the administration. They suggested remedies and
improvements,
'Wherever such were deemed ' to be _