lles. For eighteen months he lives in France--it is not known
where--and is imbued with democratic doctrine. Passing through
Constantinople in 1843 he accepts a post as schoolmaster at Trnovo,
but is immediately at loggerheads with the Greek bishop and departs.
Returning to his birthplace he is irritated by the pride and harshness
of the upper class, and he attempts to make the people rise against
them. They charge him with being a disturber of the peace. "He has
travelled through Europe," says their complaint to the Government,
"and now in this town he bestrides a horse, brandishes his sword and
overwhelms the Turks with insults, both their race and their
religion." In consequence Rakovski and his father are arrested and
dispatched to Constantinople, where they both of them remain in prison
until 1847. After being liberated, he forms a secret society which is
to take advantage of the approaching Russo-Turkish conflict. Its
members are to have themselves enrolled among the Turks, with the
double object of protecting the Bulgarian population from excesses on
the part of the soldiery and also, at the propitious moment, to stir
them up and so assist the Russians. He himself is appointed to the
Turkish staff at Shumen, as first dragoman. His plot being discovered,
he is arrested and sent to Constantinople; on the way he escapes, but
he proceeds to Constantinople and organizes there a company of
heiduks. Turkey's entrance into the European concert fills him with
pessimism. The Bulgars at Constantinople believe that the civilizing
influence of the West will not be in vain. He foresees a more evil
despotism masked by the pseudo-liberal manoeuvres of the Powers, and
henceforward he joins those Bulgars who agitate from Roumania or from
Serbia. He goes to the Banat, where he is not only made most welcome
but is enabled to publish _The Bulgarian News_, which is political,
and a literary supplement, _The Swan of the Danube_. The Turks are
uneasy; they ask the Austrians to suppress these papers. The Austrians
comply and expel the editor. He is persecuted by the Porte in Moldavia
and flies to Russia, where he devotes himself seriously to a long poem
in honour of the heiduks. The first part of this very long work, the
_Gorski Patnik_, had appeared at Novi Sad. It brought him considerable
fame--he was compared with Virgil--but modern readers find this poem
tedious. He likewise wrote a dissertation which established, by
comparative philo