ut the arrival of Wucics
and Petronievitch procured me the opportunity of witnessing an
entertainment of this description. The principal apartment in the new
Konak, built by prince Michael, was the ball-room, which, by eight
o'clock, was filled, as the phrase goes, by all "the rank and fashion"
of Belgrade. Senators of the old school, in their benishes and
shalwars, and senators of the new school in pantaloons and stiff
cravats. As Servia has become, morally speaking, Europe's youngest
daughter, this is all very well: but I must ever think that in the
article of dress this innovation is not an improvement. I hope that
the ladies of Servia will never reject their graceful national
costume for the shifting modes and compressed waists of European
capitals.

No head-dress, that I have seen in the Levant, is better calculated to
set off beauty than that of the ladies of Servia. From a small Greek
fez they suspend a gold tassel, which contrasts with the black and
glossy hair, which is laid smooth and flat down the temple. Even now,
while I write, memory piques me with the graceful toss of the head,
and the rustle of the yellow satin gown of the sister of the princess,
who was admitted to be the handsomest woman in the room, and with her
tunic of crimson velvet embroidered in gold, and faced with sable,
would have been, in her strictly indigenous costume, the queen of any
fancy ball in old Europe.

Wucics and Petronievitch were of course received with shouts and
clapping of hands, and took the seats prepared for them at the upper
end of the hall. The Servian national dance was then performed, being
a species of cotillion in alternate quick and slow movements.

I need not repeat the other events of the evening; how forms and
features were passed in review; how the jewelled, smooth-skinned,
doll-like beauties usurped the admiration of the minute, and how the
indefinably sympathetic air of less pretentious belles prolonged their
magnetic sway to the close of the night.

CHAPTER VIII.

Holman, the Blind Traveller.--Milutinovich, the Poet.--Bulgarian
Legend.--Tableau de genre.--Departure for the Interior.

Belgrade, unlike other towns on the Danube, is much less visited by
Europeans, since the introduction of steam navigation, than it was
previously. Servia used to be the _porte cochere_ of the East; and
most travellers, both before and since the lively Lady Mary Wortley
Montague, took the high road to Constantinopl