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A RADICAL-S BLUE BLOOD 145 arrogant vanity ? Of this Cypriote patriotism afforded me a very pleasant illustration, and that is the reason why I have thus paused to moralise. During the first years of the British occupation one of the persons whom the Government found most troublesome, was a' certain individual who rejoiced in the name of Palasologus. He was consumed with a passion for the people and for popular freedom. Every demos, he held, should manage its own affairs, nor submit its majestic self to any oppression but its own. The Turks, according to him, were indeed vile usurpers, but the English were viler still. Cyprus was a Greek island ; it ought to belong to Greece. As for him-self, he declared with the eloquence of a Demosthenes he had in his own veins the blood of the Greek emperors, and he appealed to his compatriots to side with him as their natural leader ; and under his name as a banner to protest against the oppres-sions of England. As often happens to agitators, his agitation landed him in a libel, making him amenable to the law, which the oppressors now ad-ministered. No sooner had this happened than lie triumphantly established the fact that he was not a Cypriote subject, that he was not even a Greek, but that his domicile was at Smyrna, and that his father was a Turkish tailor at Constantinople. This story suggested to me a very natural ques-tion. I asked what the oppressions were of which the English were alleged to be guilty. What a Eadical calls oppression is generally some necessary act mis- L

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