diminished its extent; amongst them that of Czerni-Georges, which raised
Servia to the position of a free state; of Mahomet Ali, who made his
pachalik of Egypt into a kingdom; and finally that of the man whose
history we are about to narrate, Ali Tepeleni, Pacha of Janina, whose
long resistance to the suzerain power preceded and brought about the
regeneration of Greece.

Ali's own will counted for nothing in this important movement. He
foresaw it, but without ever seeking to aid it, and was powerless
to arrest it. He was not one of those men who place their lives and
services at the disposal of any cause indiscriminately; and his sole
aim was to acquire and increase a power of which he was both the guiding
influence, and the end and object. His nature contained the seeds
of every human passion, and he devoted all his long life to their
development and gratification. This explains his whole temperament; his
actions were merely the natural outcome of his character confronted
with circumstances. Few men have understood themselves better or been on
better terms with the orbit of their existence, and as the personality
of an individual is all the more striking, in proportion as it reflects
the manners and ideas of the time and country in which he has lived, so
the figure of Ali Pacha stands out, if not one of the most brilliant, at
least one of the most singular in contemporary history.

From the middle of the eighteenth century Turkey had been a prey to the
political gangrene of which she is vainly trying to cure herself to-day,
and which, before long, will dismember her in the sight of all Europe.
Anarchy and disorder reigned from one end of the empire to the other.
The Osmanli race, bred on conquest alone, proved good for nothing when
conquest failed. It naturally therefore came to pass when Sobieski, who
saved Christianity under the walls of Vienna, as before his time Charles