ary Society," for the
formation of a complete dictionary of the language, and the
encouragement of popular literature. I could not help smiling at the
thirteenth statute of the society, which determines that the seal
should represent an uncultivated field, with the rising sun shining on
a monument, on which the arms of Servia are carved.

The fine arts are necessarily at a very low ebb in Servia. The useful
being so imperfect, the ornamental scarcely exists at all. The
pictures in the churches are mostly in the Byzantine manner, in which
deep browns and dark reds are relieved with gilding, while the
subjects are characterized by such extravagancies as one sees in the
pictures of the early German painters, a school which undoubtedly took
its rise from the importations of Byzantine pictures at Venice, and
their expedition thence across the Alps. At present everything
artistic in Servia bears a coarse German impress, such as for instance
the pictures in the cathedral of Belgrade.

Thus has civilization performed one of her great evolutions. The light
that set on the Thracian Bosphorus rose in the opposite direction from
the land of the once barbarous Hermans, and now feebly re-illumines
the modern Servia.

One of the most hopeful institutions of Belgrade is the Lyceum, or
germ of a university, as they are proud to call it. One day I went to
see it, along with Professor Shafarik, and looked over the
mineralogical collection made in Servia, by Baron Herder, which
included rich specimens of silver, copper, and lead ore, as well as
marble, white as that of Carrara. The Studenitza marble is slightly
grey, but takes a good polish. The coal specimens were imperfectly
petrified, and of bad quality, the progress of ignition being very
slow. Servia is otherwise rich in minerals; but it is lamentable to
see such vast wealth dormant, since none of the mines are worked.

We then went to an apartment decorated like a little ball-room, which
is what is called the cabinet of antiquities. A noble bronze head,
tying on the German stove, in the corner of the room, a handsome Roman
lamp and some antique coins, were all that could be shown of the
ancient Moesia; but there is a fair collection of Byzantine and Servian
coins, the latter struck in the Venetian manner, and resembling old
sequins.

A parchment document, which extended to twice the length of a man,
was now unrolled, and proved to be a patent of Stephan Urosh, the
father of St