All sailors have a spice of humour in them, and
the Admirals have been showing it in Crete. The Sultan has begged that his flag should fly somewhere in his lost dominion, and the Czar has granted his request; but the Christians object, seeing in it a menace of massacre if ever the Sultan should get the chance, say in a European war. The Admirals, therefore, have hoisted the flag on Sada, a little island inhabited only by Mussnlmans, and invisible to the Greek population. There it will float innocuously till the day when the house of Othman, true to the great law of history that a dominion ends as it began, goes down for ever amidst bloodshed and flame under some rush of soldiery. There is no argument for the atheist so seemingly powerful as the long continuance of Ottoman ascendency in the East.
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