Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family | Page 2

of the East.--Prince
Alexander.--The palace.--Kara Georg.
CHAPTER XXIX.
A memoir of Kara Georg.
CHAPTER XXX.

Milosh Obrenovitch.
CHAPTER XXXI.
The prince.--The government.--The senate.--The minister for foreign
affairs.--The minister of the interior.--Courts of justice.--Finances.
CHAPTER XXXII.
Agriculture and commerce.
CHAPTER XXXIII.
The foreign agents.
CHAPTER XXXIV.
VIENNA IN 1844.
Improvements in Vienna.--Palladian style.--Music.--Theatres.--Sir
Robert Gordon.--Prince Metternich.--Armen
ball.--Dancing.--Strauss.--Austrian policy.
CHAPTER XXXV.
Concluding observations on Austria and her prospects.

SERVIA.
CHAPTER I.
Leave Beyrout.--Camp afloat.--Rhodes.--The shores of the
Mediterranean suitable for the cultivation of the arts.--A Moslem of the
new school.--American Presbyterian clergyman.--A Mexican
senator.--A sermon for sailors.--Smyrna.--Buyukdere.--Sir Stratford
Canning.--Embark for Bulgaria.

I have been four years in the East, and feel that I have had quite enough
of it for the present. Notwithstanding the azure skies, bubbling
fountains, Mosaic pavements, and fragrant narghiles, I begin to feel
symptoms of ennui, and a thirst for European life, sharp air, and a good
appetite, a blazing fire, well-lighted rooms, female society, good music,
and the piquant vaudevilles of my ancient friends, Scribe, Bayard, and
Melesville.
At length I stand on the pier of Beyrout, while my luggage is being
embarked for the Austrian steamer lying in the roads, which, in the
Levantine slang, has lighted her chibouque, and is polluting yon white
promontory, clear cut in the azure horizon, with a thick black cloud of
Wallsend.
I bade a hurried adieu to my friends, and went on board. The
quarter-deck, which retained its awning day and night, was divided into
two compartments, one of which was reserved for the promenade of the
cabin passengers, the other for the bivouac of the Turks, who retained
their camp habits with amusing minuteness, making the larboard
quarter a vast tent afloat, with its rolled up beds, quilts, counterpanes,
washing gear, and all sorts of water-cans, coffee-pots, and chibouques,
with stores of bread, cheese, fruit, and other provisions for the voyage.
In the East, a family cannot move without its household paraphernalia,
but then it requires a slight addition of furniture and utensils to settle
for years in a strange place. The settlement of a European family
requires a thousand et ceteras and months of installation, but then it is
set in motion for the new world with a few portmanteaus and travelling
bags.
Two days and a half of steaming brought us to Rhodes.
An enchanter has waved his wand! in reading of the wondrous world of
the ancients, one feels a desire to get a peep at Rome before its
destruction by barbarian hordes. A leap backwards of half this period is
what one seems to make at Rhodes, a perfectly preserved city and
fortress of the middle ages. Here has been none of the Vandalism of
Vauban, Cohorn, and those mechanical-pated fellows, who, with their
Dutch dyke-looking parapets, made such havoc of donjons and

picturesque turrets in Europe. Here is every variety of mediaeval
battlement; so perfect is the illusion, that one wonders the waiter's horn
should be mute, and the walls devoid of bowman, knight, and squire.
Two more delightful days of steaming among the Greek Islands now
followed. The heat was moderate, the motion gentle, the sea was liquid
lapis lazuli, and the hundred-tinted islets around us, wrought their
accustomed spell. Surely there is something in climate which creates
permanent abodes of art! The Mediterranean, with its hydrographical
configuration, excluding from its great peninsulas the extremes of heat
and cold, seems destined to nourish the most exquisite sentiment of the
Beautiful. Those brilliant or softly graduated tints invite the palette, and
the cultivation of the graces of the mind, shining with its aesthetic ray
through lineaments thorough-bred from generation to generation,
invites the sculptor to transfer to marble, grace of contour and elevation
of expression. But let us not envy the balmy South. The Germanic or
northern element, if less susceptible of the beautiful is more masculine,
better balanced, less in extremes. It was this element that struck down
the Roman empire, that peoples America and Australia, and rules India;
that exhausted worlds, and then created new.
The most prominent individual of the native division of passengers,
was Arif Effendi, a pious Moslem of the new school, who had a great
horror of brandy; first, because it was made from wine; and secondly,
because his own favourite beverage was Jamaica rum; for, as Peter
Parley says, "Of late years, many improvements have taken place
among the Mussulmans, who show a disposition to adopt the best
things of their more enlightened neighbours." We had a great deal of
conversation during the voyage, for he professed to have a great
admiration of England, and a great dislike of France; probably all
owing to the fact of rum coming from Jamaica, and brandy and wine
from Cognac and Bordeaux.
Another individual was a still richer character: an American