During its life of 244 years the Levant Company had had a most exemplary and noble career, beneficial not only to its members, but to the English nation, building up for her her commerce, and making her name respected in the East. It would take a volume to enumerate the deeds of their great men, and how they have not only contributed to our commercial success, but have embellished our literature with admirable studies both of the past and of the present. Sir Paul Ricaut and Sir James Porter wrote admirable works on the policy and government of the Turkish people. Montague, Covel, and Pococke gave some of the earliest accounts of the people of the East in our tongue.
Under the influence of the Company, considerable attention was paid to archæology: Spon and Wheeler, Chishull, Shaw, and last, but not least, Lord Elgin, who rescued the marbles of the Parthenon from being damaged in the bombardment of 1827. The Company’s doctors used to make a special study of the plague. Russell on the Plague was quite the standard work of its time, and Dr. Maclean also made a special study of that dread disease; and to the efforts of these men we may almost say that we owe the gradual diminution and eventual eradication of the malady.
The rescuing of slaves from corsairs, the liberation of oppressed Christians, whether they happened to be English, Greeks, or Armenians, will be for ever one of the noblest and proudest of our actions. Without the influence of the Levant Company, Greece would probably have never succeeded in establishing her independence, and the Mussulmans would have effectually eradicated the Christian populations of the East; and it is a question for grave thought, as to whether our free and enlightened Government, during the half-century that it has had control over our actions in the East, has been as active and as influential as the Company of Turkey Merchants, who could draw the sword as well as the purse-strings, and were not hampered by the parsimonious feelings of those who have to draw up an economical budget to present to the people whose goodwill they wish to retain.
LIST OF ENGLISH AMBASSADORS TO THE PORTE
IN THE 16th AND 17th CENTURIES.
| Mr. William Harborne | 1588. |
| Mr. Edward Barton | 1588-1597. |
| Mr. Henry Lello | 1597-1607. |
| Sir Thomas Glover | 1607-1611. |
| Mr. Paul Pindar | 1611-1619. |
| Sir John Eyre[5] | 1619-1621. |
| Sir Thomas Roe[6] | 1622-1628. |
| Sir Peter Wych | 1628-1639. |
| Sir Sackville Crowe[7] | 1639-1647. |
| Sir Thomas Bendysh[8] | 1647-1661. |
| The Earl of Winchilsea | 1661-1668. |
| Sir Daniel Harvey | 1668-1672. |
| Sir John Finch[9] | 1672-1681. |
| Lord Chandos | 1681-1687. |
| Sir William Trumbull | 1687-1691. |
| Sir William Hussey | 1691 (June-Sept.) |
| Lord William Paget | 1693-1702. |