Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 132.djvu/384

378 that autumn Austria was playing the part of a good neighbor to Bosnia and Herzegovina; patriots were not yet "interned," nor was open sympathy anywhere expressed for the cause of the barbarian. The thought could not fail to arise that the lord of so many Slavonic lands, the king of Slavonia, Croatia, and Dalmatia, to say nothing of Bohemia, Galicia, and Lodomeria, might put himself at the head of the Slavonic movement, even that he might possibly exchange his sham Imperial crown for a real one. The wild outburst of Magyar fury has checked all this. Can it be that an ethnical kindred of the most remote and shadowy kind is really a practical element in the case? Can it be that the strange comedy which was lately played at Constantinople, the fraternization of Turk and Magyar, really had a serious meaning? Certain it is that Magyar hatred towards the Slave, the natural hatred of the oppressor towards the oppressed, a hatred which shows itself even to Slavonic refugees fleeing from their Turkish destroyers, is one great difficulty of the moment. But it cannot remain a difficulty forever. Millions of men of European blood will not endure that a handful of alien intruders, ostentatiously proclaiming themselves as alien intruders, shall forever hinder the natural settlement of south-eastern Europe. The reunion of Austria, Tyrol, and Salzburg with the German body may not suit the immediate German policy of the moment; there are obvious reasons why it does not. But it must come sooner or later. The separation of those lands from Germany, their union with Hungary, Dalmatia, Croatia, and the rest, is too unnatural to be abiding. The separation of the Slaves within the Austro-Hungarian monarchy from the Slaves to the south of them is also too unnatural to be abiding. A Byzantine empire, a Byzantine confederation, whenever it is fully and finally formed, must reach a good deal further to the north than the artificial limit of 1739. If the Turk stands in the way of a just settlement at one end, his agglutinative ally at Pesth stands in the way at the other. He is a great difficulty, but surely not a difficulty that can last forever. It is a strange thought that, if the Apostolic Stephen, well nigh nine hundred years back, had got his Christianity from the New Rome instead of from the Old, one great hindrance to a just settlement of south-eastern Europe would in all likelihood not have stood in our way.

 

 From The Examiner.

maybe sure there was a stir among our women-folk when they heard that a young man had come courting the earl's daughter. We have amongst us — or over us, rather — a miniature major-domo of a woman, a mere wisp of a thing, who has nevertheless an awful majesty of demeanor, and the large and innocent eyes of a child, and a wit as nimble and elusive as a minnow; and no sooner is this matter mentioned than she says, —

"O the poor child! And she has no mother."

"That," it is observed by a person who has learned wisdom, and does not talk above his breath in his own house, "that is a defect in her character which her future husband will no doubt condone."

She takes no heed. The large and tender eyes are distant and troubled. She has become a seer, a prophetess of evil things in the days to come.

"Think of the child!" she says to our gentle visitor — who was once being courted herself, but is now a brisk young matron blushing with the honors of a couple of bairns — "think of her being all alone there, with scarcely a woman friend in the world. She has no one to warn her — no one to guide her ——"

"But why," says our young matron, with mild wonder, "why should she want warning? Is it such a terrible thing to get married?"

Common sense does not touch the inspired.

"The getting married? No. It is the awakening after. How can she tell — how can she know — that this young man, if he really means to marry her, is at the present moment courting her deadliest rival? Whom has she to fear in the future so much as her old idealized self? He is building up a vision, a phantom, no more like that poor girl than I am like her; and then, when he finds out the real woman after marriage, his heart will go back to the old creation of his own fancy, and he will wonder how she could have changed so much, and grieve over his disappointment. Yes, you may laugh" — this is a sudden onslaught on another meek listener — "but every woman knows what I 