Yes, glory be his reward, indeed! Glory, and the enthusiastic affection of all who know him! I never could look upon Austria's Bayard without a feeling of sadness, and without saying to myself, with a sigh, "Who will be the Jellacic of France?"

CHAPTER XIII.

SERVIA-STRATIMIROWITCH AND KNITCHANIN.

Of all the Slavonic nations, the first to rise in arms against Hungary, and repel tyranny by force, was Servia. This country, the most eastern of the South Slavonian territory, is divided between Austria and Turkey; the former owning the Dukedom, the latter holding, as tributary to it, the independent Principality of Servia. The river Save marks the separation between the two. To the south-west, the Dukedom extends as far as Slavonia; to the northeast, it reaches as far as Transylvania; forming, as it were, a chain from the borders of the Danube to the foot of the Carpathian mountains, and constituting the principal opposition to any encroachment from

the Turkish side.

The number of the Servian population is somewhere about the following:-In Syrmia, 190,000;

in the Bâtchka, 100,000; in the Czaikist battalions, 26,000; in the Banat, 200,000; in Dalmatia, 222,000; in Slavonia, 405,000; in Croatia, 425,000. Besides this, there are spread over Hungary, in the districts of Ofen and Arad, some 60,000, making, in all, upwards of a million and a half. Out of these, it is generally counted that about 900,000 belong to the Greek persuasion, and 700,000 to the Catholic Church.

That these populations are as civilized as might be desired, I am far from wishing to affirm; on the contrary, they are amongst the most barbarous of the Slavonic races; but they possess, in common with all the latter, an attachment to their national traditions, a loyal fidelity nothing can shake for the House of Austria, a native instinct for all that is great, generous, or heroic, and an extremely strong veneration for religion. If these populations, moreover, (be they Servians, Croatians, or what not,) are not more advanced in civilization, whose fault is it but that of the Magyars, who have governed them for the last two hundred years? Upon whom does it cast shame, that the benefits of education have been so little spread amongst these nations, and that the system of public instruction has, in common with every other

branch of administration, been so totally and entirely neglected? These Servians are wild, untutored, barbarous; but I repeat what I said before of the South Slavonians generally, they are primitive, which the Magyar is not; and they have, in their wildness and want of education, principles and fixed instinctive notions of right and wrong far more approaching those of our civilized world than any to which the latter can lay claim.

The Servians have historical recollections to which they are powerfully attached; they have even more, they have evidences of a literary past, sufficiently remarkable to render their present state doubly shameful to their rulers. You may find so early as in the twelfth century monuments of Servian literature; and in the thirteenth, Stefan, first crowned King of the Servians, occupies a prominent place. This sovereign, and his brother, the Archbishop, canonized under the name of Saint Sabbas, Dometian a Benedictine monk, and Archbishop Daniel enriched the Servian archives in the twelfth century with several excellent biographical, historical, and legal works. Under Duschân the Powerful, first Emperor of the Servians (who reigned from 1336 to 1396), the progress of civilization was considerable, and this is amply proved by a work written by himself, ostensibly a collection of laws (1349), but which contains much precious information upon the moral and intel

lectual development of the country over which he reigned.* After the destruction of the Empire of Servia at the close of the fourteenth century, the progress of civilization in these lands was hemmed and in the end ceased. In 1493 George Crnojewitsch, and in 1519 Botschidar Vukowitsch, however, printed in Venice, in Belgrade, and in various other towns, theological works, which enjoy a well-recognized reputation. The last Despot† of the Servians, the celebrated George Brankowitch, has left between the years 1645 and 1711 (the period of his reign), a History of Servia from the earliest ages up to the times of the Emperor Leopold I. which lies still in the manuscript, but the value of which is nevertheless well known.

The last century even (between 1772 and 1811) produced a writer of considerable renown, Dosithey Obradowitch, whose voluminous literary labours might be remarked in any nation. This author was one of the first who tried to introduce and perfect the national Servian tongue in literature. From the

* None of these works have yet been printed, but extracts from them, translated, fully suffice to show their value. To print all the works of really first-rate merit which are accumulated at Ragusa and written in the Slavonic tongue, would require years and immense sums of money, but would, in the end, quite justify both time and expense.

+ The Despot was the Greek name for a ruler, and is preserved in these countries.