ervia, although the government would probably endeavor to
keep them out. Should the movement which Lord Beaconsfield is pleased to
call the "Panslavic conspiracy" assume alarming proportions within a
short time, the Servians would be in great danger of losing, for years
at least, their autonomy.

The arrival by night at Belgrade, coming from below, is interesting, and
one has a vivid recollection ever afterward of swarms of barefooted
coal-heavers, clad in coarse sacking, rushing tumultuously up and down a
gang-plank, as negroes do when wooding up on a Southern river; of
shouting and swaggering Austrian customs officials, clad in gorgeous
raiment, but smoking cheap cigars; of Servian gendarmes emulating the
bluster and surpassing the rudeness of the Austrians; of Turks in
transit from the Constantinople boat to the craft plying to Bosnian
river-ports; of Hungarian peasants in white felt jackets embroidered
with scarlet thread, or mayhap even with yellow; and of various Bohemian
beggars, whose swart faces remind one that he is still in the
neighborhood of the East. I had on one occasion, while a steamer was
lying at Belgrade, time to observe the manners of the humbler sort of
folk in a species of cabaret near the river-side and hard by the erratic
structure known as the custom-house. There was a serious air upon the
faces of the men which spoke well for their characters. Each one seemed
independent, and to a certain extent careless, of his neighbor's
opinion. It would have been impossible, without some knowledge of the
history of the country, to have supposed that these people, or even
their ancestors, had ever been oppressed. Gayety did not prevail, nor is
there anywhere among the Danubian Slavs a tendency to the innocent and
spontaneous jollity so common in some sections of Europe. The Servian
takes life seriously. I was amused to see that each one of this numerous
company of swineherds or farmers, who had evidently come in to Belgrade
to market, drank his wine as if it were a duty, and on leaving saluted
as seriously as if he were greeting a distinguished company gathered to
do him honor. That such men are cowards, as the English would have us
believe, is impossible; and in 1877 they showed that the slander was
destitute of even the slightest foundation in fact.

Morals in Belgrade among certain classes perhaps leave something to
desire in the way of strictness; but the Danubian provinces are not
supposed to be the a