He was singularly like Depretis in manner and character; and of Depretis it was said that he would not steal himself, but he did not care how much his friends stole; but I think that the Greek was the abler man by much.

Comoundouros mitigated the rancors usual in the politics of Greece (as in those of Italy of to-day) by his unvarying good-nature, never permitting his antagonisms to degenerate to animosities.

In the years when I first knew him, during the Cretan insurrection of 1866, he was at his best in power and in patriotism; but during the years which followed, full of the base intrigues which had their birth in the influences surrounding the court, he got more or less demoralized, for patriotism and honesty were no passports to power, and he was ambitious before all things.

Not to be in office or near coming to office is in Greece to have no political standing whatever, and the King's defection and betrayal of the interests of Greece in 1868 convinced Comoundouros and many others that with the King there was nothing to be done for a purely Hellenic and consistent policy.

All my study of Levantine politics since that day convinces me that in sacrificing the interests of Greece to the demands of the Russian ministry in 1868, the King threw away the only opportunity which Greece has ever had of attaining the position her people and her friends believed her destined to,--that of the heir of the Ottoman empire.