to power many men, like M. Simitch, of good natural
talents, and defective education. The rising generation has more
instruction, and has entered the career of material improvements; but
I doubt if the present red tape routine will produce a race having
the shrewdness of their fathers. If these forms--the unavoidable
accompaniments of a more advanced stage of society,--circumscribe the
sphere of individual exertion, they possess, on the other hand, the
advantage of rendering the recurrence of military dictatorship
impossible.

M. Petronievitch, the present minister for foreign affairs, and
director of the private chancery of the Prince, is unquestionably the
most remarkable public character now in Servia. He passed some time in
a commercial house at Trieste, which gave him a knowledge of Italian;
and the bustle of a sea-port first enlarged his views. Nine years of
his life were passed at Constantinople as a hostage for the Servian
nation, guaranteeing the non-renewal of the revolt; no slight act of
devotion, when one considers that the obligations of the contracting
parties reposed rather on expediency than on moral principles. Here he
made the acquaintance of all the leading personages at the Ottoman
Porte, and learned colloquial Turkish in perfection. Petronievitch is
astute by education and position, but he has a good heart and a
capacious intellect, and his defects belong not to the man, but to
the man's education and circumstances. Although placable in his
resentments, he is without the usual baser counterpart of such pliant
characters, and has never shown himself deficient in moral courage.
Most travellers trace in his countenance a resemblance to the busts
and portraits of Fox. His moral character bears a miniature
resemblance to that which history has ascribed to Macchiavelli.

In the course of a very tortuous political career, he has kept the
advancement and civilization of Servia steadily in view, and has
always shown himself regardless of sordid gain. He is one of the very
few public men in Servia, in whom the Christian and Western love of
_community_ has triumphed over the Oriental allegiance to _self_, and
this disinterestedness is, in spite of his defects, the secret of his
popularity.

The commander of the military force is M. Wucics, who is also minister
of the interior, a man of great personal courage; and although
unacquainted with the tactics of European warfare, said to possess
high capacity for