find the luxuriant court, the sumptuous palace of the King, with its splendid array of lords and ladies of the bed-chamber, marshals, generals, aides-de-camp, and hosts of military officers on half pay, and civil employés, who have no more important duty to perform than to receive their quarter's salary, and add their names to lengthen the civil list. Then there is the state, the forms, the etiquette so natural to a Prince from a petty German court, but entirely misplaced here, where simplicity would be far more appropriate. Again, the administration of the laws, also imported from Germany, is most expensive and harassing to the people, and entails a long train of intriguing lawyers and briefless barristers. How is it possible then that Greece, with so many evils to contend against, can advance in prosperity? How can the government satisfy the demands of the foreign creditor, when all this extravagant state machinery must be supported?—a nest of drones which, nourished by the industry of the people, has the effect of driving them to tumultuous outbreaks, and too often highway robbery, and which might be endured in a great country, rich and prosperous; but here it is worse than useless, and until a radical change takes place there can be no hope for Greece.

It must be confessed those powers were most to blame who entirely lost sight of economy when they planned the institutions of the infant state, and placed at its head a Prince educated to regard ceremony and etiquette as virtues, and unfortunately also, not

only an alien in race, but professing a different religion -the Roman Catholic-from that of the people over whom he had been called to reign.

With respect to Servia, I can with truth affirm that the entire people are becoming more and more attached to the rule of their Sovereign Prince, Alexander, the son of Tzerni George, and that he deserves their affectionate regard, is evident from his active endeavours to ameliorate the laws of his predecessors, and to advance them in the path of civilization. Schools are established in the towns and villages, lyceums and gymnasiums in the capital, provided with talented and well-qualified professors. The constitution has also been remodelled, in compliance with the wishes of Austria, Russia and the Ottoman Porte, and the Courts of Justice simple and effective in their proceedings have been so modified as to accord with the habits and manners of the people.

The military department has undergone considerable changes since the advent of Prince Alexander to power. A small army, of a few thousand men, is kept up, and intended to serve as a nucleus for arming the people en masse, in case circumstances should render it necessary, when every able-bodied man, from the age of eighteen to fifty, is liable to military duty. If approved by the Minister of War, the governors of provinces and capitans of districts take the rank of commander when called out, and the pandours (gensd'armes) that of non-commissioned officers. By this regulation, the Prince can summon to the field at a

moment's notice, an army of between sixty and seventy thousand men, and in times of peril, this force might be increased to a hundred and fifty thousand men, which may easily be credited when we remember the warlike habits of the people, and that every man is trained to the use of weapons from his infancy. An admirable expedient this to avoid the expenses of a large standing army, but would be ill adapted for our industrious countries of Western Europe, since the occasional military service could only tend to engender habits of idleness and dissipation; besides, when the mass of the people have arms in their hands, they are too apt to assume an attitude of menace, when stimulated by some real or fancied grievance, dangerous to the peace of the country and the stability of a government, add to which an army of citizen soldiers, however brave they might be, and devoted to their cause, never could contend with success against an army of veterans, military by profession.

The finance department is very inartificial in its arrangements; the taxes are collected without creating any discontent among the people, and without affecting the indigent, and at the same time with little or no expense to the state. Every Starachin, or elder of a tribe, is obliged to contribute, in the shape of a capitation tax, a hundred piastres, about a pound sterling, annually; this he collects among his own tribe, and is only demanded of those who can afford to pay it. The money is then paid into the hands of the Kapitan of the nahia, or district, who transmits it

to the Ispravnik, or governor of the department, and he transfers it to the bureau of the Minister of Finance. This, with a trifling custom-house duty, transit and excise, together with a trade tax, suffices to pay the tribute to the Porte, and to meet all the exigencies of the state.

In Turkey, the taxes are collected in the same manner. In this, as in various other instances, the Servians have preserved the usages established by the patriarchal government of their former masters; and where power is not abused by some rapacious Pacha, the people yield a ready and cheerful obedience. Hence, instead of renouncing all the ancient forms of their Oriental rulers, and establishing a government purely European, at once complicated and expensive-a perfected administration, as in Greece-these prudent people have had the wisdom to adopt what was worthy of imitation, and to reject what was faulty and tended to evil. Everything is conducted with simplicity and economy; the object required is sought by the most direct method, and without incurring unnecessary labour or expense, or maintaining a host of employés, to increase the patronage and influence of the government.

When we reflect upon the present condition of Servia, and its patriarchal inhabitants, strangers alike to the extremes of wealth and poverty, exempt from all the heart-burnings of an artificial state of society, without a temptation to commit crime, since all are certain of the means of existence; how happy might be their fate, if they were to abandon the delusive hope of winning

VOL. I.

I

fresh laurels, fresh territories, from their hereditary foeman, the Turk! Let them assume the character of peaceable citizens, commence with earnest endeavours to develop the vast resources nature has lavished on their country, which only requires inhabitants, and the fostering care of an enlightened ruler, to become influential and important, and yield a large revenue. They are but little acquainted with the dangers and difficulties that in the present day threaten the tranquillity of so many of the powerful States in Western Europe— their superabundant population-millions of paupers— overwhelming debts, the effect of long and ruinous wars the necessity of maintaining large standing armies, not to repel invasion, but to curb the rebellious movements of their own discontented subjects;-all these evils, with the dread of national bankruptcy and ruin constantly haunting them like a spectre, the goading necessity of finding expedients by which to avert the catastrophe, increase their revenue, and diminish the expenditure, the Servians are happily ignorant.

A benign Providence, ever mindful of His creatures, although His decrees may be sometimes inscrutable to our clouded vision, never created man without placing in his power the means of subsistence; and may not the high civilization-the extraordinary increase in the population of Western Europe, and its exemption for so many years from devastating war, be permitted by a higher Power, for the purpose of rearing and educating a race of men destined to spread civilization over the world; and what a beneficent, what a happy change,