proach to
European civilization. Everything seems to be lacking--good roads and
tolerable houses, kitchen and farming utensils, workshops of the most
rudimentary sort, clothing, popular education, the first conceptions
of science. Germany is the only source from which to expect assistance
in the spread of material comfort and spiritual enlightenment, for
Germany alone has population and education to spare. Yet that part
of Germany which is nearest at hand is not adequate of itself to
the task. The Austrians have not such a preponderancy of numbers
and influence within their own borders as would qualify them for
conducting successfully a great movement of colonization. Besides, it
must be admitted, with all due respect to the many good qualities of
the Austrians, that colonists should be of "sterner stuff"--should
have more self-denial, greater capacity for work and more talent
for self-government. In these particulars the North Germans are
unquestionably superior. The improved condition of Roumania (Moldavia
and Wallachia) under Prince Charles of Hohenzollern teaches us what
may be accomplished by an energetic administration. During the past
ten years the army has been drilled and equipped after the Prussian
fashion, the finances placed on a tolerable footing, and practical
independence of Turkey asserted. At the Vienna exhibition Roumania was
the only one of the nominally-vassal states that did not display
the star and crescent. Were the prince unrestrained by respect for
Austrian and Prussian diplomacy, and free to lead his well-disciplined
army of fifty thousand men into the field, he would give the signal
for a general uprising in Bosnia and Servia, and thus probably succeed
in severing all the Christian provinces from the Porte.

In one essential feature the Germanization of Prussia in the Middle
Ages differed necessarily from any like movement now possible along
the Danube. The Vends, Serbs and other Slaves were heathens, and their
overthrow and extermination was a crusade as well as a conquest. The
Church consecrated the sword, the monk labored side by side with the
knight. Such is not the case in the Danube Valley. Whatever value
we may set upon the Christianity of the Slovenes, Herzegovinians,
Bulgarians and Roumanians, we certainly cannot call them heathens.
They belong to the Roman Catholic, to the Greek, or to the Greek
United Church, although their worship and religious conceptions are
strongly tinged with