miserable failure of the plans for his enterprise, had not been known
to M. Eynard and his friends a week, before they set themselves to
remedy the mischief as far as lay in their power. As a first and
chief movement they proposed to buy a French corvette, then lying
in Marseilles Harbour, and fit her out as a stout auxiliary to Lord
Cochrane's little force expected from London and New York. Lord
Cochrane, being consulted on the scheme, eagerly acceded to it in a
letter written on the 25th of October. "As I have yet no certainty,"
he said, "that the person employed to fit the machinery of the
steam-vessels will now perform his task better than he has heretofore
done, I recommend purchasing the corvette, provided that she can be
purchased for the sum of 200,000 francs, and, if funds are wanting, I
personally am willing to advance enough to provision the corvette,
and am ready to proceed in that or any fit vessel. But I am quite
resolved, without a moral certainty of something following me, not
to ruin and disgrace the cause by presenting myself in Greece in a
schooner of two carronades of the smallest calibre."

The corvette was bought and equipped; but in this several weeks
were employed. In the interval, for a week or two after the 8th of
December, Lord Cochrane went to Geneva, there to be the guest of
Chevalier Eynard, to be introduced to Dr. Gosse, and to become
personally acquainted with many other Philhellenes.

Neither Lord Cochrane nor his friends could quite abandon hope of the
ultimate completion of the London steam-vessels. They felt, too,
that with nothing but the new vessel, the American frigate, and the
_Perseverance_, Lord Cochrane would have very poor provision for his
undertaking. "I have this moment received a letter from his lordship,"
wrote M. Eynard to Mr. Hobhouse on the 12th of January, 1827, "wherein