The Project Gutenberg EBook of Roumania Past and Present, by James Samuelson

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Title: Roumania Past and Present

Author: James Samuelson

Release Date: April 24, 2006 [EBook #18240]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ROUMANIA PAST AND PRESENT ***

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[Illustration: THE CATHEDRAL OF CURTEA D'ARDGES.]

ROUMANIA
PAST AND PRESENT

BY

JAMES SAMUELSON

_Of the Middle Temple, Barrister-at-Law_

ILLUSTRATED WITH MAPS (BY E. WELLER), PORTRAITS, AUTOTYPE
AND OTHER FULL-PAGE PLATES, AND NUMEROUS PLANS
AND WOODCUTS (BY G. PEARSON), CHIEFLY FROM
PHOTOGRAPHS BY F. DUSCHEK, BUCAREST

_Post Tenebras Lux_

LONDON
LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.
1882

_All rights reserved_

PREFACE.

There is no country in Europe which at the present time possesses
greater interest for Englishmen than does the Kingdom of Roumania, and
there is none with whose present state and past history, nay, with whose
very geographical position, they are less familiar.

Only about nine years since Consul-General Green, the British
representative there, reported to his Government as follows: 'Ignorance
seems to extend even to the geographical position of Bucharest. It is
not surprising that letters directed to the Roumanian capital should
sometimes travel to India in search of Bokhara, but there can be no
excuse for the issue of a writ of summons by one of the superior law
courts of the British metropolis, directed to Bucharest in the Kingdom
of Egypt, as I have known to happen.' The reader may perhaps attribute
such mistakes as these to our insular ignorance of geography, or to the
fact that the proverbial blindness of justice prevented her from
consulting the map before issuing her process; but the fact remains,
that notwithstanding the occurrence of a great war subsequent to the
date above specified, which completely changed the map of Europe,
wherein Rou