Servian districts of Hungary; but has been forbidden by
the priests.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 20: The most perfect confederacy of this description is that
of the Druses, which has stood the test of eight centuries, and in its
secret organization is complete beyond any thing attained by
freemasonry.]

CHAPTER XXVI.

Town life.--The public offices.--Manners half-Oriental
half-European.--Merchants and Tradesmen.--Turkish
population.--Porters.--Barbers.--Cafes.--Public Writer.

On passing from the country to the town the politician views with
interest the transitional state of society: but the student of manners
finds nothing salient, picturesque, or remarkable; everything is
verging to German routine. If you meet a young man in any department,
and ask what he does; he tells you that he is a Concepist or
Protocollist.

In the public offices, the paper is, as in Germany, atrociously
coarse, being something like that with which parcels are wrapped up in
England; and sand is used instead of blotting paper. They commence
business early in the morning, at eight o'clock, and go on till
twelve, at which hour everybody goes to the mid-day meal. They
commence again at four o'clock, and terminate at seven, which is the
hour of supper. The reason of this is, that almost everybody takes a
siesta.

The public offices throughout the interior of Servia are plain houses,
with white-washed walls, deal desks, shelves, and presses, but having
been recently built, have generally a respectable appearance. The
Chancery of State and Senate house are also quite new constructions,
close to the palace; but in the country, a Natchalnik transacts a
great deal of business in his own house.

Servia contains within itself the forms of the East and the West, as
separately and distinctly as possible. See a Natchalnik in the back
woods squatted on his divan, with his enormous trowsers, smoking his
pipe, and listening to the contents of a paper, which his secretary,
crouching and kneeling on the carpet, reads to him, and you have the
Bey, the Kaimacam, or the Mutsellim before you. See M. Petronievitch
scribbling in his cabinet, and you have the _Furstlicher
Haus-Hof-Staats-und Conferenz-Minister_ of the meridian of Saxe or
Hesse.

Servia being an agricultural country, and not possessing a sea-port,
there does not exist an influential, mercantile, or capitalist class
_per se_. Greeks, Jews, and Tsinsars, form a considerable proportion
of