SERVIAN COLLECTOR.

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roundly-built, serious, burgomaster-looking personage, who appeared as if one of Vander Helst's

portraits had stepped out of the canvass, so closely does the present Servian dress resemble that of Holland, in the seventeenth century, in all but the hat.

Having read the letter, he cleared his throat with a loud hem, and then said with great deliberation, "Gospody Ilia Garashanin informs me that having seen many countries, you also wish to see Servia, and that I am to show you whatever you desire to see, and obey whatever you choose to command; and now you are my guest while you remain here. Go you, Simo, to the khan," continued the collector, addressing a tall momk or pandour, who, armed to the teeth, stood with his hands crossed at the door, "and get the gentleman's baggage taken to my house. I hope," added he, "you will be pleased with Shabatz; but you must not be critical, for we are still a rude people."

Author. "Childhood must precede manhood;

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SERVIAN COLLECTOR.

Collector. "Ay, ay, our birth was slow, and painful; Servia, as you say, is yet a child."

Author. "Yes, but a stout, chubby, healthy child."

A gleam of satisfaction produced a thaw of the collector's ice-bound visage, and, descending to the street, I accompanied him until we arrived at a house two stories high, which we entered by a wide new wooden gate, and then mounting a staircase, scrupulously clean, were shown into his principal room, which was surrounded by a divan à la Turque; but it had no carpet, so we went straight in with our boots on. A German chest of drawers was in one corner; the walls were plain white-washed, and so was a stove about six feet high; the only ornament of the room was a small snake moulding in the centre of the roof. Some oak chairs were ranged along the lower end of the room, and a table stood in the middle, covered with a German linen cloth, representing Pesth and Ofen; the Bloxberg being thrice as lofty as the reality, the genius of the artist having set it in the clouds. The steamer had a prow

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like a Roman galley, a stern like a royal yacht, and even the steam from the chimney described graceful volutes, with academic observance of the line of beauty.

"We are still somewhat rude and un-European in Shabatz," said Gospody Ninitch, for such was the name in which the collector rejoiced.

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The

Indeed," quoth I, sitting at my ease on the divan, "there is no room for criticism. Turks now-a-days take some things from Europe; but Europe might do worse than adopt the divan more extensively; for, believe me, to an arriving traveller it is the greatest of all luxuries.”

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Here the servants entered with chibouques.

I certainly think," said he, " that no one would smoke a cigar who could smoke a chibouque.”

"And no man would sit on an oak chair who could sit on a divan:" so the Gospody smiled and transferred his ample person to the still ampler divan.

The barber now entered; for in the hurry of departure I had forgotten part of my toilette apparatus: but it was evident that I was the first

F

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SERVIAN BARBER.

Frank who had ever been under his razor; for when his operations were finished, he seized my comb, and began to comb my whiskers backwards, as if they had formed part of a Mussulman's beard. When I thought I was done with him, I resumed the conversation, but was speedily interrupted by something like a loud box on the ear, and, turning round my head, perceived that the cause of this sensation was the barber having, in his finishing touch, stuck an ivory ear-pick against my tympanum; but, calling for a wash-hand basin, I begged to be relieved from all further ministrations; so putting half a zwanziger on the face of the round pocket mirror which he proffered to me, he departed with a "S'Bogom," or, "God be with you."

The collector now accompanied me on a walk through the Servian town, and emerging on a wide space, we discovered the fortress of Shabatz, which is the quarter in which the remaining Turks live, presenting a line of irregular trenches, of battered appearance, scarcely raised above the level of the surrounding country. The space be

tween the town and the fortress is called the Shabatzko Polje, and in the time of the civil war was the scene of fierce combats. When the Save overflows in spring, it is generally under

water.

Crossing a ruinous wooden bridge over a wet ditch, we saw a rusty unserviceable brass cannon, which vain-gloriously assumed the prerogative of commanding the entrance. To the left, a citadel of four bastions, connected by a curtain, was all but a ruin.

As we entered, a café, with bare walls and a few shabby Turks smoking in it, completed, along with the dirty street, a picture characteristic of the fallen fortunes of Islam in Servia.

"There comes the cadi," said the collector, and I looked out for at least one individual with turban of fine texture, decent robes, and venerable appearance; but a man of gigantic stature, and rude aspect, wearing a grey peasant's turban, welcomed us with undignified cordiality. We followed him down the street, and sometimes crossing the mud on pieces of wood, sometimes