sition intermediate between the
seclusion of eastern manners and the graceful precedence which she
enjoys in the west. The next morning, they walked out to inspect the
town, which was the metropolis of the Servian kingdom immediately before
its overthrow by the Turks; and which, lying as it does in the midst of
the rich vale of the Morava, which here expands into a wide and fertile
plain, extending from the foot of the mountains by which it is flanked
to the river, occupies a site well adapted for all inland capital. The
author here introduces a dissertation on the history, laws, and customs
of the ancient monarchy; but as our own business is rather with Servia
as it is, than Servia as it was, we shall pass unnoticed the glories of
the house of Neman--the warlike trophies of Stephan Dushan the Powerful,
at whose approach the Greek Emperor trembled within the walls of
Constantinople--and the tragical fate of Knes Lasar, with whom Servian
independence fell on the fatal plain of Kossovo, June 15, 1389. Of the
palace of Lasar in Krushevatz, only the gateway and the ruined walls are
now remaining; but the chapel, having been converted by the Turks into
an arsenal, is still in perfect preservation. "It is a curious monument
of the period, in a Byzantine sort of style, but not for a moment to be
compared in beauty to the church of Studenitza. Above one of the doors
is carved the double eagle, the insigni_um_ (!!) of empire; but instead
of having body to body, and wings and beaks pointed outwards, as in the
arms of Austria and Russia, the bodies are separated, and beak looks
inward to beak. The late governor had the Vandalism to whitewash the
exterior; but the Natchalnik told me, that under the whitewash fine
bricks were disposed in diamond figures between the stones. This antique
principle of tessellation, applied by the Byzantines to perpendicular
walls, and occasionally adopted and varied _ad infinitum_ by the
Saracens, is magnificently illustrated in the upper exterior of the
ducal palace of Venice."

A grand field-day against the bears and boars in the forest, with a
couple of hundred peasants as beaters, had been arranged by the
Natchalnik for his guest's amusement; but their plans were frustrated by
the unpropitious state of the weather; and as soon as it became
favourable, we find Mr Paton again in motion, ascending the eastern
branch of the Morava to Alexinate, the quarantine station on the
Bulgarian frontier, where th