Oh, never mind him, the next will do "began Tom. 66 "Your cousin is right," interposed an angry, interfering voice. Why should you wish to keep her from amusing herself? Miss La Sarte and I need no vis-àvis; we are quite willing to sit down again. In fact you would rather, would you not?" turning to her with an “I would rather" written in his face. She meekly acquiesced, and they retreated as spasmodically as they had advanced. "So you've hung fire, have you?" said Tom, coming back with a rosy-cheeked, straight-backed matron whom he had selected. "And Elsie's off too! Never mind, Mrs. M'Corquodale, we will take our places here, and some one else will be sure to come. Here you, Hector, there's no one here. That's right. Now we're ready." 66 Tom is in great force," said his friend, observing him narrowly. And indeed the gaiety and good-humor of the young leader of the revels won the hearts of all around him. Easy without being familiar, genial yet not jocose, his genuine and hearty abandonment to the pleasures of the evening placed him in a light so favorable that Lady Calverley was proud of her nephew, Pauline of her brother. Elsie, infected with a like spirit, flitted hither and thither, all smiles, sparkles, and animation. "Mr. Blundell does not help half so much as I thought he would,” whispered Elsie to her cousin. "Is there anything the matter with him?" "Not in the least. We were having rather a sober conversation just now, perhaps that is it." 66 Oh, is that it? But you might keep your sober conversations for another time; we want every one now to help in making it pass off well." "You and Tom are doing that." "Tom is a host in himself," said Elsie. "Tom, I am praising you. You are be having admirably. I don't know really what we should have done without you. only wish other people would do their parts equally well," she added, distinctly. "Miss Calverley thinks we are shirking our duties," said Blundell to his partner. "Not Pauline." Elsie looked up at him with fearless eyes. "But I do think you might exert yourself to be a little more generally agreeable." 66 Ought I? What must I do? You sent me away yourself, and told me I was not fit for dancing." "You might go about among the people, and talk to them." "But I am not to dance?" "No one would expect you to be very much inclined to jump about after a twenty-mile walk." 66 "Have you walked so far, to-day?" said Pauline. He had not told her. Blundell laughed. I am not quite such a poor creature as that comes to. My walk was only a good preparation. It is you who have stopped my evolutions," to El She and Tom by their united exertions left no one unattended to, and the good-sie. humor and admiration of the company rose to a climax when the pair of blithe young creatures hand in hand came gaily bounding down the middle, amidst two long lines of faces awaiting their turn in the oldfashioned country-dance. "Now then, up there, look alive! Begin a set, you people in the middle! That's right, Alister! Come along! Now, Elsie Polly, what are you about? Why don't you and Blundell have a turn? It's the best fun in the world!" Thus prompted, there was no escape for the recusant. Hitherto, although Miss La Sarte had danced, he had not been her partner; he had been leaning with folded arms against the wall, silently looking on. He had now to ask her inclinations, and as they were not antagonistic, places were found for them. "It was you who laid the embargo on me, which prevented my showing off this evening. I might have been twirling. and pirouetting in the midst of as admiring a circle as gathered round Hector just now, if you had not commanded me to forbear." "You are wonderfully plausible. Pray, when may we expect to see you begin? I shall be one of the admiring circle of spectators." "You still will not trust me?" "You will not dance with me?" of the foot in his voice, and hands After all, it had been rather pleasant nonsense, and of course he had had to make some excuse; it was absurd that he and Pauline should sit flirting together the whole evening; she hoped there would be an end to that for the present, at least. The country-dance was over, and the indefatigable performers were grouping for the last reel before supper. "Elsie, you had better dance with Blake. He is Blundell's skipper, rather a swell, and he is standing there with no one to speak to. Now, Mr. Blake, Miss Calverley is going to take you for her partner this time." "Me, sir? I'm, I'm -its pertickler kind of you, sir, and of the young lady" " with a bow to each. "But I ain't quite right on my legs borned that way. Very much obliged indeed, sir." And the flattered skipper retreated, thinking vastly higher of the entertainment than he had done previously. "You had better take one of them," counselled Tom. "They are all hanging together like a pack or sheep. Here you," said he, catching hold of our friend Jerry, and thrusting him forward "you stand up here; and mind you do your best, for you have got Miss Calverley for a partner." Jerry, fiery-red to the roots of his hair, and retreating inwardly from all his garments through very limpness, obeyed; and Tom, bidding his cousin keep the set open for him, turned away to match together and hustle to their places as many more of the company as had not already paired, and could give no good reason why they should not be joined together. "Am I to have the pleasure, at last?” Blundell had heard Tom gallantly soliciting the hand of the blooming village schoolmistress, and had found his way down to the lower end of the room forthwith. "No, indeed! I am dancing with one of your men." "With whom?" "One of your sailors. There!" indicating the unfortunate Jerry, confronting her with a face so drawn and withered, that the strongest solution of alum poured down his throat could alone have produced a like result. your "Jerry," said his master, quietly, "go and find some one else. And know place better another time," added he, in a voice that threw yet more alum into the already stiff potation. "As if it warn't bad enough already," muttered the poor lad, as he turned away. "An' I could ha' sworn it was the t'other one too." "How "How dared the fellow presume!" exclaimed Blundell, passionately. could your cousin allow it! Pray forgive "It was not his fault. He was told to do it." "Told! Who told him?" "Tom did from me." "From you? It was a great mistake. Tom should have known better- he should not have done it." "He should, if I told him." Her heart was swelling proudly, but she would not hear the absent condemned. At the moment, in her confusion of spirits she fully believed that the idea itself, not merely the acquiescence in it, had been hers. "It was a great mistake," repeated Blundell, dictatorially. You ought not to dance with men like these." 66 The hand he held was snatched from his. "Excuse me," said Miss Calverley of Calverley, with the air and frown of an empress; "it is for me to judge what I ought and what I ought not to do in matters like this." And without another word she left him. From The Nineteenth Century. MONTENEGRO.* A SKETCH. IT is sometimes said, in relation to individuals, that the world does not know its greatest men. It might at least as safely be averred, in speaking of large numbers, that Christendom does not know its most extraordinary people. The name of Montenegro, until within the last two years, was perhaps less familiar to the European public than that of Monaco, and little more than that of San Marino. And yet it would, long ere this, have risen to worldwide and immortal fame, had there been a Scott to learn and tell the marvels of its history, or a Byron to spend and be spent on its behalf. For want of the vates sacer, it has remained in the mute, inglorious condition of Agamemnon's predecessors.† I hope that an interpreter between Montenegro and the world has at length been found in the person of my friend Mr. Tennyson, and I gladly accept the honor of having been invited to supply a commen * 1. Le Monténégro Contemporain. Par G. FRIL LEY, Officier de la Légion d'Honneur, et JOVAN WLAHOVITI, Capitaine au Service de la Serbie. Paris: 1870. 2. Montenegro und die Montenegriner geschildert von SPIRIDION GOPTCHEVITCH. Leipzig: 1877. ↑ Hor., Od. IV. ix. 25. tary to his text. In attempting it I am sensible of this disadvantage - that it is impossible to set out the plain facts of the history of Montenegro (or Tsernagora in its own Slavonic tongue) without begetting in the mind of any reader strange, and nearly all are strange, to the subject, a resistless suspicion of exaggeration or of fable. The vast cyclone of Ottoman conquest, the most formidable that the world has ever seen, having crossed the narrow sea from Asia in the fourteenth century, made rapid advances westward, and blasted, by its successive acquisitions, the fortunes of countries the chief part of which were then among the most civilized, Italy alone being excepted, of all Europe. I shall not here deal with the Hellenic lands. It is enough to say that Bulgaria, Serbia (as now known), Bosnia, Herzegovina, Albania, gradually gave way. with a Slavonian population that the Austrian emperor fortified the north bank of the Save, in the formation of the famous military frontier. It was Slav resistance, unaided by the West, which abated the impetus of the Ottoman attack just to such a point, that its reserve force became capable of being checked by European combinations. Among the Serbian lands was the flourishing principality of Zeta. It took its name from the stream, which flows southward from the mountain citadel towards the Lake of Scutari. It comprised the territory now known as Montenegro or Tsernagora, together with the seaward frontier, of which a niggardly and unworthy jealousy had not then deprived it, and with the rich and fair plains encircling the irregular outline of the inhospitable mountain. Land after land had given way; but Zeta ever stood firm Before telling the strange tale of those under the Balchid family. At last in 1478 who, like some strong oak that the light- Scutari was taken on the south, and in ning fails to rive, breasted all the wrath of 1483 the ancestors of the still brave poputhe tempest, and never could be slaves, lation of Herzegovina on the north sublet me render a tribute to the fallen. For mitted to the Ottomans. Ivan Tcherthe most part, they did not succumb with- noievitch, the Montenegrin hero of the out gallant resistance. The Serbian sov- day, hard pressed on all sides, applied to ereigns of the fifteenth century were great the Venetians for the aid he had often and brave men, ruling a stout and brave given, and was refused. Thereupon he, people. They reached their zenith when, and his people with him, quitted, in 1484, in 1347, Stephen Dushan entitled himself the sunny tracts in which they had basked emperor of Serbs, Greeks, and Bulgarians. for some seven hundred years, and sought, In an evil hour, and to its own ruin, the on the rocks and amidst the precipices, Greek empire invoked against him the surety for the two gifts, by far the most preaid of the Ottoman Turks. In 1356, he cious to mankind, their faith and their freeclosed a prosperous career by a sudden dom. To them, as to the pomaks of Buldeath. On the fatal field of Kossovo, in garia, and the Bosnian begs, it was open to 1389, treachery allied itself with Ottoman purchase by conformity a debasing peace. prowess to bring about the defeat of the Before them, as before others, lay the triSerbian army; and again it was by treach- noda necessitas, the alternatives of death, erous advances that a qualified subjection slavery, or the Koran. They were not to was converted into an absolute servitude. die, for they had a work to do. To the The West, with all its chivalry, can cite no Koran or to slavery they preferred a life grander examples of martial heroism than of cold, want, hardship, and perpetual those of Marko Kraljevitch, so fondly peril. Such is their Magna Charta; and, cherished in the Serbian lands, and of without reproach to others, it is, as far as George Castriotes or Scanderbeg, known I know, the noblest in the world. far and wide, and still commemorated by the name of a vicolo of Rome. The indifference, or even contempt, with which we are apt to regard this field of history, ought to be displaced by a more rational, as well as more honorable, sentiment of gratitude. It was these races, principally Slavonian, who had to encounter in its unbroken strength, and to reduce, the mighty wave, of which only the residue, passing the Danube and the Save, all but overwhelmed not Hungary alone, but Austria and Poland. It was To become a centre for his mountain home, Ivan had built a monastery at Cettinjé, and declared the place to be the metropolis of Zeta. What is most of all remarkable in the whole transaction is, that he carried with him into the hills a printing-press.* This was in 1484, in a petty principality; they were men worsted in war, and flying for their lives. Again, it was only seven years after the earliest volume had been printed by Caxton in the * Frilley and Wlahoviti, p. 18. rich and populous metropolis of England; | made them so. They took back their and when there was no printing-press in renegade fellow-countrymen into MonteOxford, or in Cambridge, or in Edinburgh. negro, and allowed them the free exercise It was only sixteen years after the first of their religion.* printing-press had been established (1468) in Rome, the capital of Christendom; only twenty-eight years after the appearance (1456) of the earliest printed book, the first-born of the great discovery. Then and there, On the retirement of George, which seems only to have become final in 1516,† the departing prince made over the sovereign power to the metropolitan. And now began, and lasted for three hundred and thirty-six years, an ecclesiastical government in miniature over laymen, far more They few, they happy few, they band of noble than that of the popes in its origin brothers* voted unanimously their fundamental law, that, in time of war against the Turk, no son of Tsernagora could quit the field without the order of his chief; that a runaway should be forever disgraced, and banished from his people; that he should be dressed in woman's clothes, and presented with a distaff; and that the women, striking him with their distaffs, should hunt the coward away from the sanctuary of freedom. And, now for four centuries wanting only seven years, they have maintained in full force the covenant of that awful day, through an unbroken series of trials, of dangers, and of exploits, to which it is hard to find a parallel in the annals of Europe, perhaps even of mankind. It was not to be expected that the whole mass of any race or people should have the almost preterhuman energy, which their lot required. All along, from time to time, the weaker brethren have fallen away; and there were those who said to Ivan, as the Israelites said to Moses, "Wherefore have ye made us to come up out of Egypt, to bring us into this evil place?" The great Ivan died in 1490, and was succeeded by his eldest son George, who in 1499 was persuaded by his Venetian wife to go back into the habitable world; not of Islam, however, but at Venice. Worse than this, his younger brother Stephen had gone with a band of companions to Constantinople and proposed to Bajazet the Second the betrayal of his country. He, and those whom he took with him, were required to turn Mahometans, and they did it. None could be so fit, as traitors, to be renegades. They then set out with an Ottoman force for the work of conquest. They were met by George, and utterly defeated. But these victors, the men of the printing-press as well as of the sword, were no savages by nature, only afterwards when the Turks in time • Shakespeare, "Henry V." ↑ Numbers xx. 5. and purer in its exercise, as well as in some respects not less remarkable. The epithet I have last used may raise a smile. But the greatness of human action, and of human character, do not principally depend on the dimensions of the stage where they are exhibited. In the fifth century, and before the temporal power arose, there was a Leo as truly great as any of the famous mediaval pontiffs. The traveller may stand upon the rock of Corinth, and look, across and along the gulf, to the Acropolis of Athens; and may remember, with advantage no less than with wonder, that these little states of parochial extension, were they that shook the world of their own day, and that have instructed all posterity. But the basileus, whom Greece had to keep at arm's length, had his seat afar; and, even for those within his habitual reach, was no grinding tyrant. Montenegro fought with a valor that rivalled, if it did not surpass, that of Thermopyla and Marathon; with numbers and resources far inferior, against a foe braver and far more terrible. A long series of about twenty prelates, like Moses, or Joshua, or Barak, or the son of Jesse, taught in the sanctuary, presided in the council, and fought in the front of the battle. There were among them many, who were admirable statesmen. These were especially of the Nicgush family, which came in the year 1687 to the permanent possession of power: a power so little begirt with the conveniences of life, and so well weighted with responsibility and care, that in the free air of these mountains it was never coveted, and never abused. Under the fourteen vladikas, who had ruled for one hundred and seventy years before this epoch, the people of Montenegro not only lived sword in hand, for this they have since done and still do, but nourished in their bosom an enemy more deadly, say the historians, than the pashas and their armies. Not only were F. and W., p. 19. ↑ Goptchevitch, p. 6. F. and W., p. 21. they ever liable to the defection of such as had not the redundant manhood required in order to bear the strain of their hard and ever-threatened existence; but the renegades on the banks of the Rieka, whom they had generously taken back, maintained disloyally relations with the Porte, and were ever ready to bring its war-galleys by the river into the interior of the country. At last the measure of patience was exhausted. Danilo, the first vladika of the Nicgush dynasty, had been invited, under an oath of safe-conduct from the pasha of Scutari, to descend into the plain of Zeta, among the homes of his ancestors, for the purpose of consecrating a church. While engaged on this work, he was seized, imprisoned, and cruelly tortured.* At last he was released on a ransom of 3,000 ducats, a sum which the hillsmen were only enabled to make up by borrowing in Herzegovina. It was felt that the time had arrived for a decisive issue; and we come now to a deed of blood which shows that for those human beings with whom the Turk forced himself into contact, and who refused to betray their faith, there were no alternatives but two: if not savages they must be slaves, if not slaves they must come near to being savages. It was determined to slay by night every one of the renegades, except such as were willing to return to the faith of their fathers. The year was 1702, and the night chosen was that which divided Christmas eve from Christmas-day. The scale was not large, but the operation was terrible; and the narrative, contained in an old Volkslied, shows that it was done under that high religious exaltation which recalls the fiery gloom of the "Agamemnon," and the sanguinary episodes of the Old Testa ment. The hallowed eve draws onwards. The to it was alternately aggressor and defender. The Turk sought to establish his supremacy by exacting the payment of the haradsch, the poll or military-service tax, paid in kind, which sometimes, in the more open parts, as we inay suppose, of the territory, he succeeded in obtaining. Once the collector complained that the measure used was too small. The tax-payer smashed his skull with it, and said: "That is Tsernagora measure." But the Montenegrins were aggressive as well as the Turks. Of the fair plains they had been compelled to deliver to the barbarian, they still held themselves the rightful owners; and in carrying on against him a predatory warfare they did no more than take back, as they deemed, a portion of their own. This predatory warfare, which had a far better justification than any of the Highland or Border raids that we have learned to judge so leniently, has been effectually checked by the efforts of the admirable vladikas and princes of the last hundred years; for, as long as it subsisted, the people could not discharge effectually the taint of savagery. It even tended to generate habits of rapine. But the claim to the lands is another matter; there is no lapse of title by user here; the bloody suit has been prosecuted many times in the course of each of twelve generations of men. That claim to the lands they have never given up, and never will. brothers Martinovitch kindle their consecrated torches. They pray fervently to the new-born God. Each drains a cup of wine; and seizing the sacred torches, they rush forth into the darkness. Wherever there was a Turk, there came the five avengers. They that would not be baptized were hewn down every one. They that embraced the Cross were taken as brothers before the vladika. Gathered in Cettinje, the people hailed with songs of joy the red dening dawn of the Christmas morning; all Tsernagora now was free!† The war had been a standing rather than an intermittent war, and each party From 1710 onwards, at intervals, the sovereigns of Russia and Austria have used the Montenegrins for their own convenience when at war with Turkey, and during the war of the French Revolution the English did the like, and, by their co-operation and that of the inhabitants, effected the conquest of the Bocche di Cattaro. To England they owe no gratitude; to Austria, on the whole, less than none, for, to satisfy her, the district she did not win was handed over to her She has rigidly with our concurrence. excluded the little state from access to the sea, and has at times even prevented it from receiving any supplies of arms. Russia, however, from the time of Peter the Great, though using them for her own purposes, has not always forgotten their interests, and has commonly aided the vladikas with a small annual subvention, raised, through the liberality of the czar now reigning, to some 3,000l. a year; † the salary of one of our railway commissioners. Nor should it be forgotten that Louis . Ibid. ↑ Stated by Goptchevitch as high as 4,000l. a year. |