personal danger. Finally, the tsar proceeded to concentrate an army of 100,000 men on the borders of the principalities.
Meanwhile the conflagration of insurrection was spreading. When the monks of Mount Athos discovered that Russia was not going to support it they were reluctant to give it their sanction. Their predecessors had been wise in coming to terms with Mohammed ii., the conqueror of Constantinople. Although for a time they favoured the Hetairists, ultimately they too came to terms, believing that the privileges of the Holy Mountain would be better protected by the Turks than by the Greek revolutionists. The situation was very complicated; because in its origin the revolution was mixed up with demands for religious liberty. The orthodox Church, under the patriarch of Constantinople and the bishops who were responsible to the Porte, was in a way an appanage of the Ottoman government. Besides, it was hide-bound in conservative officialism. On the other hand, men who had tasted the sweets of liberty thirsted for it in Church as well as in State. But no Greek Churchmen were more conservative than the monks of Mount Athos. While as Christians they were opposed to the Mussulmans, and would naturally have sided with their fellow-Christians in endeavouring to free the Church from the yoke of Islam, they had the greatest antipathy to the spirit represented by the French Revolution, the infection of which had been caught by the Greek insurgents. A modern free-thinking revolutionist was more alarming to them than a stolid, old-fashioned Turk. So they finally decided that on the whole it would be best for them to go on as they were These monks have always enjoyed large privileges of selfgovernment, but little molested by the Turkish government. Their peculiar situation on their isolated isthmus has enabled them to live to themselves without interference from the great world beyond. But the judgment of the monks of Mount Athos was not without confirmation in other quarters. The primates and bishops discovered that
