Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 129.djvu/406

398 The Turks came and devastated the country. Venice refused her aid, and paid the penalty of the loss of her provinces from Bosnia to the Isthmus of Corinth, and the struggle ended with a siege of seven years sustained by Montenegro. In the end of last century Russia and Austria began to intrigue against each other for the friendship of the little state, and their rivalry has ever since been a valuable tool in the hands of the rulers of Montenegro. In 1813 Cattaro, which had submitted to Venice, when Ivo retired to the mountains, on the bargain that it was never to be given to any other power, found that Napoleon, as conqueror, had ceded it to Austria. Resenting this, it strove to join the mountaineers, but failed. Prince Daniel had done all he could to help it; and, on seeing that Austria had tightened her grasp on what should have been his seaport, he retired to his little capital of Cetigné, and devoted himself to the improvement of his people. His successor, Peter II., obtained from European powers a frontier treaty, which was the first formal recognition of his country by diplomatists. Under him rapid advance was made in the essentials, though not in the external comforts, of civilization. It will not do to live a less rigorous life till the country is secure from Turkish inroads: but schools were multiplied, roads made, and some barbarous practices in war done away with. The custom of cutting off the heads of dead enemies has not yet been quite given up, because the Turks of the neighbouring lands would misconstrue such humanity as cowardice.

Danilo projected a code of laws, and disregarded all provocations to war with the sultan till an actual invasion compelled him to take up arms; and the victory of Grahovo, in 1858, secured for him a commission of the great powers to fix the boundaries between Montenegro and Turkey. Some fertile districts were awarded to him, but no seaport; and he was not required to acknowledge the suzerainty of the Porte. In 1859 he was murdered, when at Cattaro for his wife's health, and never was prince more deeply mourned. His people flocked down the precipitous zigzag road to Cattaro to demand vengeance when he lay dying; but his message was that they should go quietly home. It was a long time before gay dress or weapons or festive gatherings appeared in the mountains. His successor was the present reigning prince Nicholas, who was only eighteen years of age; but who has vindicated his fitness for the difficult post by great wisdom and prudence, and by a really ingenious tact in playing Russia, France, and the Porte off against each other when they try in turn to use him as a cat's-paw. He now appears to be waiting until some change in the political horizon shall show that it is time for him to help the rebelling provinces, whom as yet he dares only to help privately, and by receiving their refugees. His people, warriors every one of them, with wives and daughters ready and not unaccustomed to give warlike help at need, are eager for the fray, and it is not an undesirable thing that so simple, earnest, brave a people should extend their boundaries. Under Montenegrin skies education is fostered as in all other Servian communities, all forms of religion are free, and the knowledge of the truth is being spread as might be expected in a country the capital of which contains only a hundred houses, which found purchasers for thirty-two copies of the Bible at one visit thither of a colporteur.

Whether Montenegro or Servia take temporarily or finally the foremost place, or whether there be formed a federation of the Slavonic populations of Turkey, there is at least, in the struggles of the crushed but resolute people fighting for freedom from gross outrage and the intolerable maladministration of an imbecile government, and for liberty to worship the God of their fathers in public — there is in this struggle a fit subject for the warmest sympathy of English men and women, a sympathy which will find no lack of outlets for its practical expression.

 

 From Blackwood's Magazine.

" up, miss: look alive! First or third?"

"Third"

"All right; here you are!"

A shrill whistle, and the train on the Midland line steamed out of the station. Bertha Fitzherbert, a slender girl with large dark eyes, seated herself modestly in the corner, and settled her tidy little black bag beside her. The pace increased; and out of the dark station — for it was afternoon, and a November day — they emerged into bright light, and Bertha found time to reconnoitre her fellow-travellers. There were only two: a young 