2

tling vexed questions; and that other and perhaps radical failure in not yet having learned how to take care of and rear our children, not to have learned the great secrets of education.

It may be, it probably is, reserved for a higher period of our development, a possible Utopia which we may expect several years• say centuries-hence, this knowledge of how to keep the peace among nations, and how to educate our young, so that there shall be no failures.

you.

which should tempt an appetite which need- | you can breathe and sleep well, and on no
ed an impetus. The hungry Goth could eat | account have any thing to annoy or trouble
raw meat, or at least endure it after smoking
it over his camp-fire, with his spear for a
spit. The softer Italian or Frenchman whom
he conquered needed the refinements of the
pâté de foie gras, or the filet de bœuf aux cham-
pignons, or the choux-fleurs au parmesan, to
tempt his less Gothic digestion.

Those gods of the north, Thor with his hammer, or even the Norse maiden, would have failed to appreciate these nicer distinctions. Cookery improves as it gets nearer the sun.

You must be surrounded with cheerful companions, and, above all, must have a good cook. You must, it is presumable, be a very agreeable person yourself, else these wits, and good cooks, and thoughtful, considerate people, will not seek your company; and, having achieved all this, may you enjoy a long life in your possible Utopia.

M. E. W. S.

A SHORT STUDY OF THE
MYSTERIES.

R

UNNING over the July numbers of ArPLETONS' JOURNAL recently, I fell upon certain editorial comments on an article of mine entitled "The Strangest Things in Life," and then turned back and read the article itself, by way of coming to some conclusion as to their justice. Through an error of my own, overlooked in reading and cor

Finally and lastly, a Utopia remains to be dreamed of in which there will not be too much thumping on piano-fortes by inexperienced hands, not too much tooting on trombones or blowing of flutes by those who are achieving those instruments. Oh, the sufferings of the slave Fine Ear in this world of discord! What a ceaseless vigil he keeps up! He never rests, even in sleep. The eye is closed, the busy brain sleeps, but this warder on the watch-tower is always awake. He hears the stealthy step of the burglar, he hears the hand trifling with the key, he hears | recting the manuscript, and again overlooked the watch tick. He never rests; and, in a crowded city, what a suffering martyrdom his! Every hand-organ, every rattling cart, every dismal church-bell, adds to his trouble. The nose is as great a tyrant as Heliogabalus, and will only sniff when it pleases, but the delicate ear works all the time. Even | about nervous centres," and going on to urge in the country the birds begin at four o'clock to twitter for his edification, and there, too, he must attend to that practising upon unknown horns and pipes which forms the recreation of rustic Strephons and Philanders. The bagpipe, dreadful creation of Scotch soli

is

That would be a desirable Utopia where good cookery prevailed. Imagine a journey through America, and a possibility of stopping always at a Massasoit House! A lovely Utopian beefsteak, with all its natural juices preserved by being broiled over a wood-fire, pitchers of genuine cream, bread which has the lightness and whiteness of a summer cloud, and coffee of the clearness of winesuch should be your inevitable good fortune. The frying-pan, that dreadful underminer of our national good temper, should be sent to Nuremberg to be hung up with the instruments of torture used in the dark ages; and we should afterward travel through a landscape in which there were no rough spots, on railroad-cars which never met with an accident or admitted any dust, to reach one of these hotels in Utopia, where there were never any indifferent beds or any bad cookery. Such, and really better than all this imagination, are the hotels in Switzerland; beautifully ornamented with flowers in the court-yards, well conducted, and with admirable service, they are as well worth going to visit for a longsuffering American as are the picturesque views-the dashing water-falls, the snowy mountains, and the silent glaciers. Such hotels are to be found in England; and the ☐ tudes, miserable successor of Pan's pipes, beautiful Lake Derwentwater, in the lake district, where Wordsworth, and Southey, and De Quincey, made Nature doubly famous, is blessed with such a one. It is at Keswick, and has, besides good cookery, a pretty and well-mannered landlady, who helps you out of your carriage with her own neat hand.

France is the land of good cookery. It is astonishing why the dark-eyed Celts should be such good cooks, and the blue-eyed Saxons not. The Italians, too, are admirable cooks. In all the world there is not such a nest of gifted mortals who can cook as those peasants about the little lake of Orta, near Maggiore, in Northern Italy. They go all over Europe, and are highly prized even in the cafés of Paris. The successful family of the Delmonicos come from some place near Orta, on the Italian side of the Alps. They have contributed not a little to our possible Utopia by their faultless cooking and the admirably-managed restaurants which bear their name.

Nor must the colored race be forgotten. They are great natural cooks. A sense of flavor seems to exist in them which is like a talent for music. Perhaps it exists with color. While the blue-eyed Goths were engaged in conquering the world, and by their feats of arms gaining an appetite, the softer and darker children of the sun (that great cooking-stove for the fruits and grains) were calm

in reading the proof-sheets, I find that the final sentence of the article is a little misleading as to the actual position I intended to take, and as to my real opinions on the important question discussed. The sentence, commencing, "The day has come to stop babbling

a more thorough study of the internal culture and forces of nervous tissue, is defective in this: that the word exclusively should have followed the word babbling. What I intended to urge was that study of the nervous centres was only competent to the explanation of the modes under which nervous influence op

imprisoned zephyrs protesting against their ❘erates, and constitutes merely the analytic
homely dungeon-this is added to the suffer-
ing of Fine Ear in the country.

Only in Venice, sweetest daughter of
quiet and silence, can he rest. There, on
soft waters, does the noiseless gondola con-
vey you to your destination without a sound
save the musical dip of an oar. There can
Fine Ear take a short and delightful rest.
This practising on musical instruments in
colleges and boarding-houses, and in hotels,
should be put a stop to. The sufferings of a
patient student in a close college-room, with
a trombone over his head, are fearful. He is
tempted to paraphrase Madame Roland and
say:

"O Music, what crimes are committed in thy
name!"

One can almost imagine that Collins thought
of this side of human misery when he wrote
his "Ode to the Passions."

The possible Utopia, then, is a place in-
habited by people of infinite wit, good tem-
per, and a disposition to agree with the last
speaker, supposing that person to be your-
self. The Utopian House must be large and
well ventilated, furnished with simplicity and
excellent taste; your income must be just a
little more than you can spend, and no one
must, on any account, practise on musical in-
struments in your hearing. You must travel

part of psychology; while, on the other hand, for a rational explanation of the phenomena called spiritual the laws and constitution of the nervous life must be carefully investigated. With this correction I will let the article stand as it is. But I should be very sorry to put myself on the record as depreciating the value of studies in nervous anatomy and structure, within their legitimate province. This one remark, however, I must be permitted, and I think most anatomists will concede its justice - namely, that, the more thorough one's mastery of nervous anatomy and function, the less the inclination to materialistic views of mental action, and the more absolute the conviction that life is associated with a series of unknown and possibly unknowable forces, and that in its rela❘tion to these forces it presents a series of problems that physiological formularies are incompetent to solve. The phenomena of spiritualism, so far from dipping into this higher series of relations, seem to me to be purely morbid nervous phenomena, always as sociated with the epileptic predisposition, and having no value whatever except as curious facts appertaining to that department of psy chology designated as medical.

How strikingly this view is illustrated in the biographies of acting spiritual mediums, and how minutely and invariably the facts

ly getting dinner and were creating dishes | until you find a perfect climate, one where I verify it, are points that can only be appre

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hended in their full force by those who have
patently and thoroughly investigated the
nervous traits and hereditary tendencies of
persons of this class. A case which I have
recently investigated will exhibit the whole
group of facts in such a manner as to indi-
cate their relation to each other. Sophia
H, twenty-one years of age, has been
subject to paroxysms of clairvoyance for five
years. She is a native of Boston, of cerebro-
vital temperament, the sensuous predominat-
ing over the intellectual, and in apparently
good health. "Your theory, Fairfield," said
a medical man, who is a little inclined to the
doctrines of spiritualism, " breaks down in the
case of Miss H. She is in perfect physical

mental impressions that had previously passed
through my own mind, but was perfectly in-
capable of going beyond them.

Now for the sequel. On careful inquiry,
Miss H- confessed that her attacks of
clairvoyance were at first heralded by almost
unendurable neuralgia, with pains shooting
from the back of the neck upward and for-
ward, and that these paroxysms still occa-
|sionally occurred. Her brother, Charles H,
eighteen years of age, and of vital tempera-
ment, has been for several years under treat-
ment for spinal epilepsy, and her father was
a pronounced epileptic. An elder brother,
thirty-seven years of age, is subject to parox-
ysms of neuralgia very similar to those in

health." Having been introduced, Miss H which the career of Miss H commenced.
was so kind as to submit to any tests I might
select, and to answer any questions I wished
to ask. I accordingly provided myself with an
assortment of drugs of various tastes, rang-
ing from the intolerably bitter and acid to the
exceedingly sweet and aromatic, taking the
precaution to procure them in the form of su-

In a word, not to amplify tediously, the epi-
leptic predisposition is strongly marked in
every member of the family-an inherited
nervous taint, showing itself in the younger
son in its most pronounced form, and in the
instance of the medium herself in a lar-
vated form, without perceptible convulsions.

ject to attacks of somnambulism; and yet,
judging from superficial data, they are of ro-
bust constitution and in full health.

gar-coated pellets. The induced clairvoyance | All three have, at different periods, been sub-
having supervened with the slight shiver usual
in such cases, I requested that the eyes of
Miss H should be bandaged with a heavy
black-silk scarf, personally supervising the
operation. I then requested the attendant to
sit in an adjoining room, where he could see
me, but not Miss H-; and, seating my-
self about six feet from the medium, I com-
menced the experiments by putting a pellet
of quinine in my mouth. For half a minute
the expression on the face of Miss H
was one of exceeding satisfaction; but the
instant the sugar was dissolved, and the qui-
nine commenced to affect the taste-buds, the
satisfaction vanished, and, although I did not
move a muscle in indication of the disagree-
able sensation, she began to expectorate spas-
modically and violently, as if trying to expel
something from her mouth. I continued the
experiments with pellets of asafetida and
other sugar-coated preparations, with the re-
sult of convincing myself that the series of
sensations experienced by me was actually
reproduced seriatim on the tongue of the pa-
tient.. I then directed my mind to the table
in my own room, and asked the medium to
describe it in detail, which she did, specify-
ing one jar of alcohol as containing the brain
and spinal column of a cat; another as filled
with yellow liquid, and containing the brain
of a mouse and that of a fish; and a third as
being half-full of bugs and flies. She then

krov mahogany box in which it was kept: went on

that nts & formal

pping

em to ment

dispos cept

artme J. sin

to tell me about my dissecting-lens and how
it was arranged (the instrument is one of
very peculiar pattern, especially adapted to

The case of the Eddy brothers, whose séances were noticed in my recent article, furnishes another illustration of the same state of facts. The father was a Methodist exhorter of the most emotional type. The mother was a compound of religious enthusiast and fortune-teller. The maternal ancestry was actively concerned in the ancient manifestations at Salem. The two younger brothers, mediums, have always been subject to what the neighbors style "queer spells," and the father had fits. The elder brother is a Swedenborgian minister-that is to say, holds tenets peculiarly akin to the doctrines of spiritualism. I investigated the case in October last, some weeks after the work on spiritualism had been submitted, and consequently was not able to include the data in the forthcoming work-a thing to be the more regretted because the facts are typically illustrative of the correlation that subsists between epilepsy and the paroxysms of the spiritual medium. Into the laws that govern this correlation I will not now inquire, as I have had my opportunity on that question. Physiologists cannot tell why it is that a tomcat with blue eyes is always deaf, nor why gout is correlated with psoriasis. The facts are matters of observation, for

in some of their aspects, but to be viewed with apprehension and corrected by medical treatment, if possible, not exhibited to gratify the morbid curiosity of such as are always hunting for miracles and mysteries.

One or two points in reference to both these cases should be noted, in order that their bearing may be fairly appreciated. In each family the elder brother, who may be fairly presumed to have been the product of the highest physical vigor of the parents, partially escapes the taint, which appears in the elder Eddy only as intellectual predisposition, and in the elder H- as a tendency to vertigo. Again, of the two Eddy boys, who are mediums, the elder and stronger, a man of vital temperament, and about thirty years of age, produces the materializing phenomena, while the younger and punier of them is a trance-medium. I speak conventionally when I talk of the phenomena produced by these mediums; for, having made it a rule not to trouble myself with investigating public séances where the probabilities are that all the necessary facilities for optical deception have been prearranged, I did not apply any tests whatever, and limited my inquiries to the detection and description of the epileptic predisposition. And if any reader should say that it is impossible for a

* What is styled credulity has its physiological basis, in the majority of instances, so far as I have observed, either in the existence of peculiar nervous experiences or in a predisposition that renders them possible. In the course of my intimacies with students, and with highly-cultivated persons, who were incapable of credulity in the ordinary acceptation of the term, I have frequently observed the phenomenon of an inherited predisposition battling for existence with the rational intellect, on occasions when the nervous system was laboring under excessive exhaustion. At such times, or in periods of great nervous tension, inherited superstitions very frequently assert themselves spontaneously, with something of their original force, even with persons of the highest intellectual culture. A man who has had trance-experiences at a period of nervous debility, or under the influence of an anesthetic agent, knows experientially that such experiences are real, and that they bring with them a train of very singular and inexplicable peychical impressions. In good health he may have no interest in such things, except to say truthfully that they may occur, and to concede their existence as strange psychological facts-morbid but real products. On the other hand, in a very large class of persons, who, owing to favorable conditions in life, know nothing of these phenomena experientially, the predisposition exists, and shows itself in what is generally termed credulity-that is to say, in a tendency to accept and dwell lovingly upon marvelous. In is

which, in the present state of physiological the thelonte in resolving this problem, it i

science, no rational explanation can be as-
signed; but they are none the less facts of
frequent occurrence, and of unquestionable
validity. Again, in the phenomena of spirit-

insect-dissection); enumerated the titles of ualism, whoever will take the tena of spirit

books lying on the table, among them a work
on comparative anatomy and one of Huxley's
recent publications; and, after specifying
various glasses and minor instruments lying
in a green box (which I had forgotten about),
finally concluded by describing a condensing-
lens, and telling me what it was for, adding
that I often used it in dissecting mice, which
was the fact. The séance occupied half an
hour, perhaps. At subsequent séances she

vestigate the nervous states and hereditary
predisposition of one medium after another,
until he has exhausted the list of available
candidates, will find that the phenomena are
so constantly associated with the epileptic
neurosis as to be justly classifiable with the
symptoms of that special type of nervous de-
generation. Such being the case, clairvoy-
ance and trance must be considered simply
as the psychical exponents of certain morbid

exhibited the same singular accuracy as to I states of the tissues of the brain-very strange

cal possibilities are potential in the nervous system, and that, comparatively speaking, these possibilities vary exceedingly in different individuals, are partly hereditary, partly acquired, and result in that variety of intellectual biases that contact with men continually illustrates. The point I wish to impress particularly, however, is that the tendency to believe in strange psychic phenomena is generally the intellectual representative of an inherent but often latent possibility of experiencing them. Dr. Maudsley styles this latent neurosis. For example: the possibility of experiencing a premonitory dream must exist in the nervous organism before a person can concede the reality of such a phenomenon. In other words, strange beliefs are the exponents of exceptional nervous susceptibilities. Good physical conditions, not rational analysis, have been mainly instrumental in diminishing the popular interest in exceptional psychic facts.

such, psychological science cannot properly { hair growing on the frontal part of the head.

person to be indifferent as to the question
whether the phenomena produced by the
elder Eddy are genuine or spurious, I have
This one warning let me give to amateur
simply to answer that I had previously wit- | investigators: unless you are thoroughly

not possibly have occurred to give point to
what physiology has to say on the subject.
The result is, however, by no means an iso-
lated or even an uncommon one. The last
days of many a medium have been passed in
the insane hospital or in slowly-progressive
idiocy.

voyance is thus one of the results of morbid function of the perceptive centres of the human brain, while hallucination and illusion accompany morbid function of the sensory centres, and are by no means symptoms of - such weighty import as their more quiet correlative. The latter often coexist with un- impaired intellectual faculties; the former, particularly in its settled stages, engenders an intellectual bias (aura), which is fatal to mental soundness, and invariably predisposes its victim to accept such tenets as the literature of spiritualism illustrates. In all my conversations with avowed spiritualists, during the last ten years, I have never committed the blunder of imagining that argument could be of any avail. To the few who were drifting in that direction, and who have expressed the fear that they should become spiritualists unless certain phenomena they had witnessed could be resolved, I have latterly ventured to suggest that the predisposition to accept these doctrines is in itself something that calls for medical treatment rather than for argument, and to the eradication of which tonics are better adapted than talking. In the sad case of Robert Dale Owen, for example, an inherited predisposition existed in the first instance. The intel-ena-that is, to tell how they are produced,

lectual bias that rendered him a life-long spiritualist, and partly vitiated the work of a brilliant mind, was but the natural result of this predisposition; and the insanity that has at last overtaken him can be justly viewed in no other light than as the final stage of the disorder. I had an hour's interview with Mr. Owen in the winter of 1873-74, intending to discuss his case in connection with that of the late Judge Edmonds, and shall never forget the vivid impression I then had that the shadow of madness was already over him. It suffices to say that the impression led me to omit his name in the list of cases, and merely to allude to it elsewhere, lest some word of mine might hasten the impending destiny, and that the sad finale has justified that omission. A more terrible warning to enthusiastic spiritualists than the fate of this apostle of their doctrines could

* Two days after the above was written, the following note, on Mr. Owen's case, from the Superintendent of the Indiana State Hospital for the Insane, was placed in my hands. The practised alienist says: "Referring to an article in which, inferentially, the insanity of Robert Dale Owen, now in my care, is connected with the celebrated Katie King impostures, I beg leave to state, for the benefit of the many persons interested, that, while I believe the merest assumption of personal sensuous communication with spirit beings is evidence of insanity, Mr. Owen's present condition is clearly attributable to other predisposing or exciting causes than spiritualism, in any of its phases, theoretical or experimental. The whole subject of spiritualism seems, indeed, to have dropped out of Mr. Owen's thought." I have put in italics a statement of opinion as to the symptomatic value of the vision of spirits, which is almost word for word coincident with the view I have expressed in the work on spiritualism. The mere fact that spiritualism is not even alluded to in his ravings, however, by no means demonstrates the doctor's view that his speculations and investigations have had no influence in inducing them. The predisposing cause of the break-down of the nervous ystem was very certainly hereditary taint, and pronounced spiritualism was simply one of the stages of the disorder, but assisted to bring on the

ums, these facts are fatal to the system; for, if spiritualism means any thing to the great problems that trouble human life, it means that the persons who produce these phenomena and have this faculty of clairvoyance are persons of higher organization than their fellows, and that, in the course of progressive ages, the century will come when the development of this faculty will be general. If, then, it is a morbid product, and if mediums are persons of inferior rather than of superior organization, the system has no real basis, and its phenomena are of no interest except as data in scientific psychology. It is not incumbent on physiologists to construct a clock-work theory as to the manner in which nervous influence acts on environing objects. That will come by-and-by, perhaps, when the laws and properties of nervous in

What, then, is the last word that physiology has to say as to the phenomena and literature of spiritualism? Simply this: that the phenomena are invariably associated with the epileptic neurosis, either hereditary or acquired; that the apparently occult forces and the strange sources of intelligence often illustrated at séances are the exponents of an environing nervous influence, consequent upon degeneration of the nervous centres, and engendered in a manner analogous to the production of electricity by the decomposition of zinc in solution of nitric acid; that, ❘ fluence have been more thoroughly investifinally, the predisposition to accept the doc-gated. At present it would be premature, altrines and tenets of spiritualism is one of the consequences of such nervous disturbance, and should be treated as a symptom of nervous disorder, not argued with after the manner that one man argues with another on scientific questions.* These are not statements of a theory intended to explain the phenom

as one explains the swinging of a pendulum.
They are facts of observation that lay bare
the causes, not of the phenomena only, but
of the mental predisposition also, that has
eventuated in giving spiritualism a distinc-
tive and peculiar literature. However genu-
ine the phenomena, and however real the
superhuman intelligence exhibited by medi-

* The citation from Mr. Lecky, page 20 of Ar-
PLETONS' JOURNAL, July 3d, illustrates the defects
of the so-called philosophical (generalizing) man-
ner of treating these questions. It is very true,
perhaps, that the phenomena of sorcery have nev-
er been disproved, but it is quite untrue that they
have ceased to exist as the rationalizing process
has made progress, or by specific rational action.
As respects name, these phenomena have suffered
many transformations from age to age, appearing
now under the desiguation of magic, now as sor-
cery, now in the practices of the mystics and illu-
minati, now as mesmerism, finally as spiritualism.
But they have been substantially the same under
all their designations. The fakirs (mystics) of
Hindostan and Arabia have depended upon them
for ages for their influence with their respective
races, and there is ground to believe that they
formed the basis of the very ancient Egyptian mys-
teries. Salverte's history of the occult sciences
shows this, I think, beyond a doubt, although he
holds a different theory. The apparent death of
the fakirs of the Orient has, indeed, never been
equaled in the phenomena of modern spiritualism.
The truth is, when the history of the Aryan races
is carefully examined, it is clear that this series of
phenomena has descended from the remotest ages,
and that among the Greeks the mysteries unques-
tionably consisted mainly in their practice. It was
thus, on account of the singular phenomena asso-
ciated with it, that the ancients styled epilepsy the
sacred madness, and it is now quite well authen-
ticated that candidates for priests were accepted
or rejected on this basis alone. That is to say, the
epileptic predisposition was essential to the office,
and no candidate was admitted to the study of the
mysteries who was not susceptible of the parox-
ysm. As the conditions of living have become
improved, the percentage of epileptics has dimin-
ished. This is the manner in which the progress
of rationalism affects the issue and extirpates the
tendency to accept marvels. Men believe in their
own experiences, whether morbid or healthy, and
cease to believe when the experiences cease to oc-

though it might be ingenious, to attempt such an explanation in detail, and physiology has more premature theorizing to answer for already than is consistent with scientific exactness.

A

FRANCIS GERRY FAIRFIELD.

FLIRTATION.

ROSE-BUD in its first green coat,

You wrapped your shawl about your
throat,

And crossed the lawn, when we went boating;
I touched the fragrance of your hand;
The fog came down and hid the land,

As white as snow, and we were floating.

Its dew envelope shut us in

A brand-new world, where never sin
Had laid on man the curse of labor;
We saw, across its purple rim,
The swords of the fiery cherubim

Flash four ways, like the angel's sabro.

And as my dreamy fancy sketched
A life on rainbow plumage stretched,

Far drifting on the clouds of even,
I touched the shy, reluctant glove;
What is it but to whisper love,

And be between the earth and heaven?

Soft fiction of the fickle mist!
The serpent, on your jeweled wrist,

Flashed venom at my disappointment;
For, like a pomegranate full of musk,
Our world brake ope its misty husk,

And spilled the spice and precious ointment.

But ever in this world of ours
Our sweetest wishes are like flowers

That lose their petal-bloom in labor;
Nor Eden's self were half so sweet
Did she not leave them incomplete,

Coquetting with the four-winged sabre.

WILL WALLACE HARNEY.

S

EDITOR'S TABLE.

addition to the Black Mountain of the pres-
ent day, some level districts near the Adri-
atic. The victory of Kossovopolje, in 1889,
having made the heirs of the last Servian
king the vassals of Sultan Bajazet I., the
Montenegrins, led by their Prince Ivo the
Black, a relative of the Servian royal family,
retreated into their mountain-fastnesses, and

HOULD the present insurrection in Herzegovina prove to be an organized resistance to the Turkish tax-collectors, Montenegro would, in all probability, swiftly join in the fray. Late visitors to the latter community unite in declaring that the whole | declared themselves independent. But they

have never been recognized as a free state
by the nations of Europe, and the Turks
have never relinquished their claim to au-
thority over them. Yet, although the sul
tans quickly began trying to enforce this
claim, it was long before even a semblance
of control could be obtained by them in the

population is burning with impatience for
war with the Turk. Indeed, it is not at all
unlikely that the Montenegrins have excited
this new rebellion in Herzegovina in the
same way that they fomented and brought
about the one which took place in 1860; ex-
pecting to take part, as they did then, in the
conflict, and hoping to be more successful | Black Mountain. In 1516, the ruling prince

than they were at that time. And, as Montenegro is the especial protégée of Russia, it would not be very strange if this little confederation of mountain-villages should, in this way, precipitate that great war between the European powers which the most skillful diplomacy has of late been barely able to prevent.

Montenegro-or, as its inhabitants call it, Tzernagora, that is, "Black Mountain"-has | rather more than eighteen hundred square miles of territory, and a population of about one hundred and thirty thousand souls. It is a mere cluster of mountains, covered in most places by thick, dark forests. There are no towns really worthy the name: Cettigne, or Zettinje, the capital; Rjeka, a port on Lake Scutari, and the other most important places, being actually nothing more than large villages. The dwellings of the poorer people are miserable huts, and there is no truly wealthy class in the country. Cut off from the Adriatic by the Austrian province of Dalmatia, they have very little commerce; their densely - wooded or bare and rocky mountains are not suitable for grazing, and the system of agriculture they pursue in the little plateaus and valleys interspersed through their land is, even to-day, too primitive in character to afford them much more

intense. They had then just gotten news of the outrage at Podgoritza, in Albania, where two Montenegrins, flying from the rabble of the town, had sought refuge in the barracks, but had been thrust out by the soldiers, and butchered before the eyes of the Turkish officers. Their countrymen were nearly wild with excitement at this report. Every man was armed to the teeth, and the strenuous efforts of their rulers were hardly competent to prevent their instantly seeking revenge at the scene of the outrage. But the influence of Russia helped to preserve peace, and satisfaction was afforded by the Turkish Gov❘ernment. It was evident, however, that the Montenegrins were greatly disappointed at losing this opportunity for war, and it is not probable that they will allow another one to escape them.

of Montenegro resigned the secular power
into the hands of the vladika, or Greek-
Catholic archbishop, making the government
That these hardy mountaineers are good
purely theocratic. Russia became the pro- { fighters is proved by their almost uniformly
tector of the country in 1710, agreeing to
pay it an annual subsidy of eight thousand
ducats, the consideration being that it should
keep a portion of the Turkish forces engaged

successful resistance for nearly five centuries to the armies which were for a great part of that time the terror of Christendom. Something is due, of course, to the natural

by frequent incursions. Four years after-defenses of their country, through which

ward the Turks invaded Montenegro in great
force, and succeeded in conquering it; but
they were obliged to retreat soon afterward, ❘
and the little mountain state again pro-
claimed its independence. In 1796, the
Pasha of Scutari attacked it with a large
army, but suffered a disastrous defeat, losing
no less than thirty thousand men. No more
attempts. to carry the war into their country
were made until 1832, and the great expedi-
tion against them in that year also signally
failed. Since 1851, the secular and religious
governments have been separate, as of old;
the vladika being the canonical, and the
gospodar the temporal ruler. Yet, it has
been noticed by travelers that many of the
people still use the former title when speak-
ing of their actual sovereign, the gospodar.
During the war between Russia and the al-
lied powers of Europe, Turkey sent a strong
army under the renowned Omar Pasha to

than a subsistence. Game does not abound; ❘ bring Montenegro into subjection; but this

attempt, like so many others of the same
kind, was without success. In 1860, how-
ever, when the Turks had suppressed the in-
surrection excited by the Montenegrins in
Herzegovina, they pushed on into the coun-
try of the latter, and, after a hard struggle
lasting two years, finally forced them to ac-
knowledge the authority of the Porte.

and only one stream, flowing into Lake Scu-
tari (or Skadar, as they call it), offers any
advantages for fishing. Being thus restrict-
ed in the most usual modes of supporting ex-
istence, and, in a measure, besieged in their
mountain refuge, they long ago fell into the
habit of acquiring the good things of this
life by taking them away from their neigh-
bors, especially the Turks. In fact, they
may be said to have lived for a number of ❘sible Tzernagorzes are now on the point of

centuries mainly by war, and their history consists chiefly of one long struggle against the armies of the Ottoman Empire.

When the great Slavonic kingdom of Servia was at the height of its power, Montenegro formed part of it, and then comprised, in

they have not, until very lately, allowed any roads to be made. But the people themselves have been its main defense. The German traveler before mentioned describes a band he saw in Rjeka during the Podgoritza excitement, which may be taken as a good specimen of their best fighting material. They were splendidly-formed young men, apparently as strong and active as wild mountain-stags. None were less than six feet in height, and their leader was a giant of at least seven. Each man carried a breechloading rifle, and had two revolvers and a yataghan in the red scarf around his waist. All were full of impatience to be over the border, and away into Albania.

But these people are really fit for better things than war and plunder. They are intelligent, hospitable, ardent lovers of freedom, and, like the Slavonic race generally, devoted to music and lyric poetry. Their piesmas, or war-ballads, are often full of true poetic fervor, and the Vladika Pietro II., who succeeded to the sovereignty in 1880, was a poet of no mean capacity. He was also the originator of many of those improvements in the state which have very lately been carried to a much greater degree of per fection. These are the formation of a senate, the introduction of schools, the discourage

But it is very evident that these irrepres- | ment of vendettas and forays into neighbor
ing districts, and the encouragement of home
enterprise and peaceful industry. The im
provements in these respects that have taker
place within the last few years are now ver
marked. The capital has some respectable
public buildings, and is the seat of a good fo

another warlike movement. A German trav-
eler, who has more than once sojourned
among them and recently published an ac-
count of his last visit to their country, in the
summer of 1874, states that the war-feeling
was at that time universal, deep-seated, and I male seminary, in which the two daughters

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