priest brought in the mudir to see me, and said: 'Do not give us any money; the governor is our father; we have never had an angry word between us.' I have seen the people working in the same shyack factories, a group of Bulgarian women and girls, and then a group of veiled Moslem women, and so with the men. I have seen scores of Bulgarian servants in Turkish harems kindly treated, fat, and happy. Nor were all Bulgarian girls averse to the caresses of the Turkish Effendi or of the zaptieh, as many can bear witness. And so it would have continued had they been let alone, and not encouraged in every kind of brutal malevolence on both sides. I am writing about the Bulgarians, and therefore I will not stop to relate how constantly the Turks helped me in relieving the needs of the Bulgars in 1876; not in more than two or at most three instances did a Turk refuse a request of mine. And in the two worst places I knew, where there were in each a clique of truculent scoundrels who oppressed and maltreated the Bulgars, the governor did his best to get rid of them, and only failed because there was not local force enough to do it. The zaptiehs were not always to be depended on. So it will always be in an ill-governed country. Nor was the fault on one side only. It has been shown again and again that the oppression of the Bulgar was more than occasionally his own doing; the Turkish taxes were not unfrequently sold to Bulgarian tax-gatherers, who invariably ground down the wretched peasant more cruelly than the Turk would have done. If he did not get what he wanted, he complained to the mudir, and then there was violence. All these things were done in the dark, and cannot now happen again. Nor will the country be kept in fear and trembling by the accursed Circassians; perhaps this is the only result of the war which is an unmixed advantage. It is too late now to try to separate the deeds of the Circassians from those of the Turks; they are all jumbled alike in the minds of many, while in other minds there are many things which people do not choose to believe, whether they are told them or not.* It is more profitable now for thoughtful people to look on instead of looking back. The calamities of the Past are past, and no good can be done by repeating and dwelling on them ad nauseam; our object is to

• Efforts are frequently made by a certain party to deny the horrors perpetrated in 1876 by the Turks; but these facts are too thoroughly known by many. They were indeed immensely exaggerated in quantity, but they were indescribably dreadful. Nor does it in any way excuse or mitigate their atrocity to say that they would have been no milder in quality had it been Bulgar against Turk. Repression of meditated insurrection was ordered from Constantinople, and was in one way just; the misfortune was that it was executed chiefly by irresponsible irregulars, who seized the opportunity for paying off old scores. And wherever there was any torture, it was invariably done by Mohammedan Bulgarians (Pomaks), as at Batak. Here, however, the affair was wholly and entirely a local agrarian quarrel; the tribunal at Constantinople having given a verdict in favour of the Bulgarians concerning certain pastures, the Pomaks at once resolved to exterminate the villager rather than submit to the decision.

see what we can do to shape the new nation into honest form with conscientious work; we want to take it away from the hands of those who are now building it up with trickery and baseness. We talked a great deal at one time about helping them; let us now do it.

And firstly, let us steadily insist upon their seeing that those who wish to enter the circle of national life must accept its responsibilities and duties as well as its privileges. To become an European nation, they must agree to accept the dictum of Europe. They are young and ignorant, but they are teachable; let Europe show them the truth, and they will follow it. The Treaty of San Stefano made them Russian slaves, only they had not intelligence enough to see it : the Treaty of Berlin gave them national life. Let them look to it, to preserve and develope that life. Russia pretended to assist at the birth of the nation: she keeps her finger on the throat of the newborn infant, and does not always conceal her intention of strangling it when the favourable moment shall arrive. And the Bulgarian nation will unquestionably succumb under that fatal act, if they are blind now, and if Europe does not watch over them to prevent it. The Treaty of Berlin, however good (or bad), stultified itself by leaving the Russians in Roumelia for a year. The Russians avowed, in the suggestion of the joint occupation, that they did not intend to leave the Bulgarians to themselves. We have got these pigs, and we mean to drive them,' is the constantly repeated saying in the mouth of every Russian. The Bulgarians, with their young enthusiasm and new troops-proud as a schoolboy of his new clothesbelieve they can rid themselves of the Russians when they please. They cannot. Only Europe can free the Bulgarians of the newer, heavier, more oppressive yoke of their big brothers.' The Bulgarian nation is no match for Russia, but Europe is; and by the help of Europe alone can she free herself from the despotic oppression of her church and her people that is already beginning. They may present bouquets to their deliverers on anniversaries-every Bulgar is willing to add another festal day to his already long calendar; but some of them are beginning to know that their brethren are silently despatched to Siberia, there to meditate on their over-lofty national aspirations.

The one lesson for the Bulgarians to learn is simply this: let them abide by the law of Europe; let them show themselves capable of self-respect, self-control, and dignity; let them calmly accept the protection of Turkey, which will certainly do them no harm, while it purchases for them their entrance into the circle of European nations, and preserves them from Russia. Their independence, thus protected and guaranteed by the word of Europe, will develope into a healthy and goodly tree. Sorely they need a few years of protection and fostering care. These years would enable them to attain unity, wisdom, and strength: without these they cannot gain the respect of

Europe, nor secure any lasting national life. The crests of the Balkans have little enough to do with the plains below; and does any one in his senses believe that the essentially unaggressive Turkish soldier, carefully watched over, as he will be, by officers responsible to the European Commission, would be guilty of violence to the armed and drilled Bulgar? The ever favourite game of Russia is the waiting-game; let the Bulgarians follow her example, and prove that they too can wait; so sure as they do, they will win the day in the end. Gradually, slowly I hope, for therefore surely, they will arrive at complete and matured independence. Solidified, tried, refined, and self-collected, they will be a real true Nation : then, then they will be able to say to Russian Bulgaria, Throw off the yoke of the Czar: join with us, and let us be one, united, free Bulgaria !'

6

EMILY, VISCOUNTESS STRANGFORD.

ROCKS AHEAD AND HARBOURS OF
REFUGE.

SOME five or six years ago I ventured under the allusive, but not inappropriate pseudonym of Cassandra to call attention to a few of the dangers which appeared to me to threaten our social well-being in some very material points. My representations excited considerable notice, and produced several replies. The country, however, had then been revelling in a long period of almost unexampled prosperity, and was little inclined to listen to gloomy forebodings or to criticisms of a disparaging character, or to take cognisance of the small clouds on the horizon scarcely bigger than a man's hand,' which appeared to me ominous of coming storm and darkness. Indications of mischief, which could not be altogether denied, I was held to have exaggerated; I was generally regarded as a prophet of evil, constitutionally disposed to look at everything en noir; and on the whole my warnings met with little more belief or practical recognition than did those of my namesake in the days of Troy. Since the publication of my first note of caution a marked 'change has come over the spirit of our dream;' the small cloud has overspread a very considerable part of the sky, the prevalent prosperity of 1872 has been replaced by heavy losses and by distress at once wide-spread and severe; commercial activity has been succeeded by commercial stagnation, disaster, and alarm; and, speaking generally, the spirit of sanguine selfconfidence and self-satisfaction characteristic of Englishmen in their periods of sunshine is giving way to a tone of depression and uneasiness not perhaps more dignified, but at least of more hopeful augury for the future, and indicative of a mood of mind in which warnings are more likely to be listened to. 'Sweet-not are but may be the uses of adversity;' and assuredly the lessons of the last two or three years, harsh enough, no doubt, have neither been few, nor trivial, nor conveyed in language difficult to read. On the deplorable and unsuspected unsoundness in certain circles of the mercantile and monetary world, revealed by the disasters of 1878, I am not going to dwell, nor do I wish to enter on the unprofitable and irritating field of mere party politics, though both might furnish texts for sermons more than ordinarily impressive. But I think I am justified, by the

bearing of late facts upon two of my former warnings, in reminding my readers, first, that we have been under the management of Ministers, who, rightfully or wrongfully, wisely or unwisely, have changed the spirit of British policy; who, in doing this, and by their mode of doing it, have given great offence and, as far as can be yet discovered, have achieved no beneficent aims, but have created or exasperated bitter enmities in three quarters of the globe; who, in the pursuit of this course of action, have increased expenditure heavily and enhanced taxation somewhat, though how much no one can predict and few have the courage honestly to calculate, but enough at least to change a surplus into a deficit;—and who (which is to our more immediate purpose), in acting thus and entailing these consequences on the country, have been supported, cheered, hounded on, and glorified, not only by the 'residuum,' but by a majority of those electors whose ignorance, thoughtlessness, and excitable temperament I ventured to point out as valid reasons against too hastily endowing them with that electoral franchise which in the judgment of all Liberals they have so sadly misused.

The second point relates to the various dangers which I enumerated as threatening the economic and productive supremacy of Great Britain, unless our artisan classes could be warned and moralised in time. These warnings were unhappily disregarded for the most part by those classes themselves, and made light of or absolutely denied by too many not only of their professional leaders, but of their more sanguine advocates and advisers among philanthropic natures. The probability of foreign rivalry was not believed in, or was treated as at least distant and problematic; the alleged deterioration of British labour was stoutly contested; in the undeniably unfortunate disputes between the workmen and their employers it was maintained that the former were generally right or that the objects they aimed at were at all events desirable and probably attainable; while it was confidently urged that the artisans might be trusted to understand and manage their own interests better than their masters could do for them. experience of the last two years, and more especially the disastrous proceedings of 1878, have lowered the confident tone of the soberer among the workmen's friends, and brought about, more speedily than I had hoped and far more painfully than I could wish, a recognition of many facts once noisily denied, and justified assuredly nearly all the neglected warnings of Cassandra. The state of trade has been stagnant, gloomy, and disastrous in the extreme, and it cannot be denied that much of its deplorable condition has been immediately traceable to the specific causes which I pointed out as so ominous in the approaching times. But still less can it be controverted—indeed it is almost universally admitted-that this condition has been enormously aggravated by the almost incredible blunders and perversity of the working classes themselves, all the more disheartening because

The