the Eastern and Western empires which he intended to form; but fate called him to pursue his destiny, and to be baffled by the "dauntless seaman," Sir Sidney Smith, on the spot where the Order he had plundered had once succumbed to the Saracen. A contemporary account of the proceedings of the French gives a strong idea of their appetite for spoil: not only were the more precious metals confiscated wherever they were found, but even statues of bronze were haled from their pedestals and taken on board the fleet. Some of these valuables were retaken by the English, and either restored to the island or disposed of to prize agents; but the chief part were sunk in Aboukir Bay. At length the patriotic irritation of the Maltese, who saw too late how grossly they had been deceived by intriguing agitators, came to a climax on an attempt to rifle the cathedral at Citta Vecchia, and an outbreak ensued, so general and formidable as to confine the French to the fortifications of Valetta, where the natives, with only intermittent assistance from England, reinforced by some Portuguese ships and Neapolitan regiments, blockaded them for more than two years, made several daring attempts to surprise the garrison, and finally compelled them to surrender. By the Treaty of Amiens it was proposed to revive the Order of St John as possessors of the island; but the natives strongly opposed such a project, and in 1814 they succeeded in the accomplishment of their wish to have their country handed over to Great Britain as one of her dependencies.
At that time the chief rival of Great Britain as a claimant of Malta was Russia. It is now Italy and France who cast longing eyes upon it as a post of vantage, and do their best to intrigue with every discontented party there. That there are such, is, unfortunately, not to be denied; although the natives in the main fully recognise the many advantages they possess under the rule of Great Britain, and appreciate the ample liberty they enjoy in religion and usages. But the labouring population are too numerous for the soil; and in spite of the most untiring industry, and of an enterprise which competes in the vegetable markets of Europe with much larger and more fertile lands, they are constantly hovering on the brink of famine, to which a season of drought, or an invasion of refugees from some scene of disturbance in the East, may at any moment unexpectedly consign them. Emigration has been suggested as a remedy, and is so far resorted to, that at every seaport on the adjacent coasts of Africa and Asia, a large Maltese population is engaged in those petty industries for which such places supply a field; but they all cherish an idea of returning to their beloved island; and too frequently their want of harmony with the Mussulman population around them is the cause at any political crisis of their suffering outrage or expulsion. Those who have ever visited that singular subterranean town, the Manderaggio in Valetta, originally scooped out to form a dry dock in the time of the knights, and now crammed with alleys to which the wynds of the Cowgate would be considered spacious, must wonder that the inhabitants are so healthy and contented. It was this phenomenon, by the by, which inspired one of Mr Plimsoll's most characteristic effusions – a pamphlet in which, in the spirit of the old popular dictum that Tenterden
