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BOATMEN, PORTERS, &c.

in Oude in India; another by a Jew, which is frequented by the children of Israel, and is very dirty. I once went in to smoke a narghilé, and see the place, but made my escape forthwith. Several Jews, who spoke Spanish to each other, were playing backgammon on a raised bench, and seemed to have in their furs and dresses that "malpropreté profonde et huileuse" which M. de Custine tells us characterizes the dirt of the north as contrasted with that of the southern nations. The café of the Indian, on the contrary, was perfectly clean and new.

Moslem boatmen, porters, barbers, &c. serve Christians and all and sundry. But in addition to these, there is a sort of bazaar in the Turkish quarter, occupied by tradespeople, who subsist almost exclusively by the wants of their co-religionists living in the quarter, as well as of the Turkish garrison in the fortress. The only one of this class who frequented me, was the public writer, who had several assistants; he was not a native of Belgrade, but a Bulgarian Turk from Ternovo. He drew up petitions to the Pasha in due form, and, moreover, engraved seals very

SERVIAN PROVERBS.

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neatly. His assistants, when not engaged in either of these occupations, copied Korans for sale. His own handwriting was excellent, and he knew all the styles, Arab, Deewanee, Persian, Reka, &c. What keeps him mostly in my mind, was the delight with which he entered into, and illustrated, the proverbs at the end of M. Joubert's grammar, which the secretary of the Russian Consulgeneral had lent him. Some of the proverbs are so applicable to Oriental manners, that I hope the reader will excuse the digression.

"Kiss the hand thou hast not been able to cut." "Hide thy friend's name from thine enemy." "Eat and drink with thy friend; never buy and sell with him."

"This is a fast day, said the cat, seeing the liver she could not get at."

"Of three things one-Power, gold, or quit the town."

"The candle does not light its base."

"The orphan cuts his own navel-string," &c. The rural population of Servia must necessarily advance slowly, but each five years, for a genera

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PROSPECTS OF SERVIA.

the aspect of the town population, as much relatively as the five that are by-gone. Let the lines of railway now in progress from Belgium to Hungary be completed, and Belgrade may again become a stage in the high road to the East. A line by the valleys of the Morava and the Maritsa, with its large towns, Philippopoli and Adrianople, is certainly not more chimerical and absurd than many that are now projected. Who can doubt of its ultimate accomplishment, in spite of the alternate precipitancy and prostration of enterprise? Meanwhile imagination loses itself in attempting to picture the altered face of affairs in these secluded regions, when subjected to the operation of a revolution, which posterity will pronounce to be greater than those which made the fifteenth century the morning of the just terminated period of civilization.

CHAPTER XXVII.

Poetry. Journalism.-The Fine Arts. - The Lyceum.— Mineralogical cabinet.-Museum.-Servian Education.

In the whole range of the Slaavic family there is no nation possessing so extensive a collection of excellent popular poetry. The romantic beauty of the region which they inhabit, the relics of a wild mythology, which, in its general features, has some resemblance to that of Greece and Scandinavia,—the adventurous character of the population, the vicissitudes of guerilla warfare, and a hundred picturesque incidents which are lost to the muses when war is carried on on a large scale by standing armies, are all given in a dialect,

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tongues what the Italian is to the languages of Western Europe'.

The journalism of Servia began at Vienna; and a certain M. Davidovitch was for many years the interpreter of Europe to his less enlightened countrymen. The journal which he edited is now published at Pesth, and printed in Cyrillian letters. There were in 1843 two newspapers at Belgrade, the State Gazette and the Courier; but the latter has since been dropped, the editor having vainly attempted to get its circulation allowed in the Servian districts of Hungary. Many copies were smuggled over in boats, but it was an unremunerating speculation; and the editor, M. Simonovitch, who was bred a Hungarian advocate, is now professor of law in the Lyceum. Yankee hyperbole was nothing to the high flying of this gentleman. In one number, I recollect the passage, "These are the reasons why all the people of

1 To those who take an interest in this subject, I have great pleasure in recommending a perusal of "Servian Popular Poetry," (London, 1827,) translated by Dr. Bowring; but the introductory matter, having been written nearly twenty years ago, is, of course, far from being abreast of the present state of information on the subjects of which it treats.

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