The stubborn persistence of the Greeks, however, dashed Metternich's hope that the question would soon settle itself, and produced a state of affairs in the Levant which necessitated some action.
Extravagant expenditure on railways and public works, loose administration of finance, the cost of colonial enterprise, the growing demands for the army and navy, the impending tariff war with France, and the overspeculation in building and in industrial ventures, which had absorbed all the floating capital of the country, had combined to produce a state of affairs calling for firm and radical treatment.
Syria must have resumed warfare with redoubled energy, and a state of affairs is presupposed which can be pictured with the help of narratives that deal with similar historical situations.
This state of affairs has no antecedent improbability about it, since in the Vertebrata the coelom is unquestionably confluent with the haemal system through the lymphatic vessels.
The scientific study of practical problems and difficulties is (generally speaking, and with honourable exceptions) far more advanced in almost every civilized country than it is in England, where the limited scale upon which such work is carried on, the indifference of statesmen, officials and business men, and the incapacity of the public to understand the close relation between scientific study and practical success, contrast very unfavourably with the state of affairs in Germany or the United States.
