Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 133.djvu/628

 European provinces of Turkey, whether under Ottoman suzerainty or otherwise. There is another question deeper and more vital. Rudeness and ferocity are rapidly vanishing; when their last trace disappears, will the simplicity, the truth, the purity, the high-strung devotion, the indomitable heroism, lose by degrees their native tone and their clear, sharp outline, and will a vision on the whole so glorious for them, so salutary and corrective for us,

To the student of human nature, forty years ago, Pitcairn's Island offered a picture of singular interest, no less remote morally than locally from common life, a paradise, not indeed of high intellect and culture, but of innocence and virtue. It became necessary to find for the growing numbers a larger site; and they were carried to Norfolk Island, when it had been purged of its population of convicts double-dyed. The spot was lovely, and the conditions favorable; but the organism would not bear transplanting, and the Pitcairners fast declined into the common mass of men. Is this to be the fate of the men of Montenegro when they substitute ease, and plenty, and power, and the pleasures and luxuries of life, for that stern but chivalrous wooing of adversity, the "relentless power," in which they have been reared to a maturity of such incomparable hardihood? I dare not say: they have a firmer fibre, a closer tissue than ever was woven in the soft air and habitudes of Pitcairn; may they prove too strong for the world, and remain what in substance they are, a select, a noble, an imperial race!

In another point of view, they offer a subject of great interest to the inquiries of the naturalist. Physically, they are men of exceptional power and stature. Three causes may perhaps be suggested. The habits of their life have been in an extraordinary degree hardy, healthy, simple; if they have felt the pressure of want at times, they have never known the standing curse of plethora,

Next, may not the severe physical conditions of the Black Mountain have acted as a test, and shut out from the adult community all who did not attain to a high standard of masculine vigor? Among other notable features, they are a people of great longevity. Sir G. Wilkinson (shade of Lewis, hear it not!) found among them, living together as a family, seven successive generations; the patriarch had attained the age of one hundred seventeen, with a son of one hundred. A youth at seventeen or eighteen very commonly marries a girl of thirteen or fourteen. But, thirdly, I conceive that moral causes may have co-operated powerfully with outward nature in this matter. Fortes creantur fortibus et bonis. The men who went up with Ivan were men of great souls; and this greatness, transmitted with blood and fortified by habit, may have assisted in supplying us with what seems to be a remarkable case of both natural and providential selection.

For the materials of this sketch I have been principally indebted to the two works named at its head. They are, I believe, the best on the subject; one is large and elaborate, the other, also full, coming down almost to this day. There is as yet no comprehensive book on Montenegro in our language. We have recently had articles on it in the Church Quarterly Review and in Macmillan, the latter guaranteed by the high name of Mr. Freeman. Sir Gardner Wilkinson led the way thirty years ago with some chapters on the mountain in his Dalmatian work. Dr. Neale has supplied some very brief but interesting notices. Lady Strangford's sketch is slight and thin, but with ample power of observation. Miss Mackenzie and Miss Irby were able to bestow far more of time and care on a subject well worthy of them, and have probably made by much the most valuable contribution extant in our language, under this as under other heads, to our knowledge of those south Slavonic provinces whose future will, we may humbly trust, redeem the miseries of their past. "Whereas thou hast been forsaken and hated, so that no man went through thee; I will make thee an eternal excellency, a joy of many generations." 