sarily be considerably influenced by the German press.* It is probable, indeed, that Austria will exercise a gradually increasing influence over all the border provinces of Turkey; and it is for her interest, and perhaps for the interest of those countries themselves, that she should. It has been thought indeed that the whole of the South Slavonic family may eventually, notwithstanding the conflict of religious denominations and interests, grow into two principal divisions-the one under Italian, the other under German or Austro-Hungarian influences.† It requires but a slight knowledge of the events which have occurred in European Turkey within the last twenty years to recognise the fact that a great change has taken place in the attitude of the Turkish Government towards its Christian subjects. In Bulgaria and in Bosnia this change has been especially marked. In Bulgaria, an insurrection promoted by Russian intrigues was easily suppressed in 1849 by Omer Pasha; but its people were treated on the whole with marked lenity; the desires of the Christian population numbering four millions were generally complied with; taxes were more equitably distributed; the wearing of arms was legalised, and other important modifications were introduced in the administration of the province. In Bosnia the feudal tyrants, renegades from Christianity, who had from time immemorial plundered and oppressed their Christian fellow-subjects, were tracked like wild beasts to their lairs, hunted even from the snow summits of the Balkan, sent in chains to Constantinople and transported to Syria or to Egypt. The Christian rayahs were placed on an equality with the Turkish landholders; and the whole population, without respect to faith, was made liable to the military conscription. Russia had speculated on a successful revolt, but the result of her intrigues was a pacified and contented population. In Servia the Bulgarian and Bosnian rebellions excited little sympathy. The Servian Government was well informed of their origin, and so great was the confidence of the Sultan, at that time, in the loyalty of the Principality, that, in the height of the insurrection of the neighbouring provinces, he did not hesitate on the death of the Turkish Governor to commit to the reigning Prince Alexander the provisional command of the citadel of Belgrade. It is, moreover, a conclusive proof of the good feeling which long subsisted between the Servian people and the Turks, * Eighty-four German newspapers are circulated to twenty-one French, and sixteen of other countries. See the last chapter of Viscountess Strangford's work on the Eastern Shores of the Adriatic,' contributed by Lord Strangford. that, that, before the unfortunate event at Belgrade, only two insignificant quarrels had occurred in twenty years, although the city contained a Mahomedan population of more than three thousand souls. The Government of Servia has now abandoned, we trust, that attitude of defiance if not of hostility which, instigated by foreign intrigues, it was recently induced to assume. That there exists the remotest desire on the part of the Porte to encroach on the rights and liberties of the Servian people no one in Servia can seriously believe. Servia has now much more to fear from the weakness of Turkey-than from its strength; and there can be no justification for those vast military levies and preparations which must weaken rather than increase the real strength and influence of the country. There is an ample field for the energies of the whole Servian population in the arts of peace; and the attention of the Government will be best directed to the education of the people, and to those material improvements which may enable the country to participate in that prosperity the advancing tide of which must sooner or later set in upon all the Danubian countries in consequence of the influx of capital and the extension of railway communication. Intelligent travellers, too, will doubtless in time be attracted to this remarkable country, where a state of society exists in the rural districts which has scarcely a parallel in Europe, and a people not without high qualities; and while meditating on their eventful history, listening to their national songs, and contemplating their antique dances, the stranger may enjoy scenery equally remarkable for its peculiarity and for its beauty. The general want of inns is compensated by an abundant hospitality, and the few Englishmen who have visited Servia describe their reception as almost partaking of the character of an ovation. For one the inhabitants of a village were drawn up to show their respect for his country; for another, tables covered with fruit were spread by the wayside; for another the inhabitants had prepared bouquets of flowers, and the schoolchildren of the village were assembled to sing a hymn of welcome. This simplicity of manners may not continue long, but the Servian people will long remain very different from any other in Europe. Whether Servia will prove the nucleus of a wide-spread renewed Slavonian nationality time alone can show; but Servia, independent of Turkey, would necessarily be dependent on some other Power, and it assuredly would neither accord with its avowed aspirations nor with its interests to be absorbed in the vast dominions of the Czar, or to have its political existence extinguished extinguished in some great republic of the Danube which Slavonian democracy hopes some day to construct out of the ruins of surrounding nations. There certainly exists a party in England which desires the downfall of the Ottoman empire, and if the future should in any degree resemble the past, the total collapse of Turkey in Europe would seem to be only a question of time. From the day when the Osmanlis sustained their first great defeat on the plains of Hungary, the area of their empire has been gradually contracting. Hungary, Transylvania, Bukovina, Croatia, Bessarabia, the Crimea, and Greece have been successively wrested from their dominion; while Moldavia, Wallachia, and Servia have assumed the position of quasi-independent states, and there certainly has been manifested in some quarters a disposition to encourage these dependencies in their attitude of insubordination to their Suzerain, and to demand a formal independence. But since the Peace of Paris in 1856, the political position and prospects of Turkey must be admitted to have materially changed. Its Government has shown an anxious wish to rely once more upon the loyalty and support of all its Christian subjects, for even their military education has become an object of attention. Abuses of power in the provinces are becoming every year more rare, and in all the official reports of British Consuls residing in the interior of the empire there is a remarkable concurrence of testimony that the real oppressors of the Christian population have been their co-religionists, farmers of the taxes, and too often the bishops and pastors of their own Church, who, under the form of ecclesiastical discipline have practised the most grinding extortion. The Government of Turkey is assuredly not wanting in some of those high moral attributes which are the true conservative element of States. An increasing commerce and an improving revenue are also steadily adding to its strength and consolidating its power. An intimate union of her dependent states with Turkey is called for by a community of interests and the necessities of mutual defence. It is manifestly the true policy of Servia to maintain its present connection with the Porte, and to contribute, when required, to the general defence of the empire. A true allegiance to their legitimate Sovereign is neither derogatory to the faith nor inconsistent with the historical antecedents of the Christian subjects of the Porte. Servia, as a vassal State, was certainly associated with the Ottoman arms at the period of their greatest renown; and the Sultan may again find in its vigorous dependency an auxiliary ready to bring to the assistance of its Suzerain in some hour of need all the traditional hardihood of its race. ART. ART. VIII.-1. Anthologia Græca, ex Recensione Brunckii. Ed. Fried. Jacobs. Lipsia, 1794. 2. Bland's Collections. By Merivale. London, 1833. 3. Anthologia Polyglotta. Ed. Henry Wellesley, D.D. London, 1849. 4. Epitaphs from the Greek Anthology. By Major R. G. Macgregor. London, 1857. 5. The Greek Anthology. Translated by G. Burges, M.A. London, 1854. 6. Martialis Epigrammata. Schneidewin. Leipsic, 1853. 7. Martial and the Moderns. By Andrew Amos, Esq. Cambridge, 1858. 8. Delitia Delitiarum, sive Epigrammatum ex Optimis quibusque hujus et Novissimi Sæculi Poetis . . . avboλoyía in unam corollam connexa. Op. Abr. Wright, A.B. 1637. Oxford, 9. Bernardi Bauhusii Epigrammatum Libri V. Antverpiæ, 1620. 10. Joannis Owen, Oxoniensis, Cambro Britanni, Epigrammatum Liber Singularis. London, 1622. 11. Epigrammata Thoma Mori, Angli. Londini, 1638. 12. Patersoni Niniani Glascuensis Epigrammatum Libri Octo. Edinburgi, 1678. 13. Georgii Buchanani Scoti Poemata. Amsteladami, 1687. 14. The Festoon; a Collection of Epigrams, Ancient and Modern. London and Bath, 1766. 15. The Poetical Farrago; being a Miscellaneous Assemblage of Epigrams and other Jeux d'Esprit. 2 Vols. London, 1794. 16. The Panorama of Wit, exhibiting at one view the Choicest Epigrams in the English Language. London, 1809. Edited by the Rev. J. 17. Epigrams, Ancient and Modern. Booth, B.A. London, 1863. 18. Greek Anthology. Translated by Major R. G. Macgregor. London, 1864, I seems patent T may seem a truism to set out with the statement that Greece was the mother-country of the epigram. Yet truths are not seldom overlooked and lost sight of; and it is, indeed, owing to forgetfulness of the fact that the model of an epigram must be sought in the literature of its birthland, that so much latitude and discrepancy have marked the attempts of other countries to naturalize this species of poetry. In its home the epigram is distinguished by its sweet, direct, and frank simplicity. It is lively, without guile; and pointed, without intent to to vex or offend. But in its sojourns in foreign parts it will be found to have contracted more or less the prevailing vices of the atmosphere it has learned to breathe; and thus have arisen various types of 'epigram' so called, each approaching uncritical readers with plausible claims to acceptance, each contributing to confuse the superficial student as to the distinction between the epigram proper, and its inexact and irregular foreign imitations. For simplicity coarseness is too often substituted; liveliness degenerates into personality; the point,' which is the prime ingredient of the genuine article, becomes, through a literal and narrow interpretation of the scanty recipes of antiquity, an unmistakeable and unmasked 'sting' in the counterfeit. Not, indeed, that there are no cases of happy transplantation—not that it is to be supposed that among the Latins, Italians, French, Spanish, or ourselves, there have lacked epigrammatists who could catch up the refined spirit of the Greek muse; but it is only necessary to wade through a dozen pages of any collection of Epigrams, ancient and modern,' in order to be convinced that what was in Greece a graceful sprightly nymph, ‘a simple maiden in her flower,' is transformed, for the most part, through change of soil and climate, into a coarse and scurrilous harridan. Hence it is that we find distinguished writers, such as Dryden and Addison, holding the epigram in low esteem; hence, in the judgment of a not incompetent critic, the dignity of a great poet is thought to be lowered by the writing of epigrams.'* Now, is there anything in the remains of Simonides, Callimachus, Leonidas of Tarentum, Meleager and others, which can justify a disparaging estimate of this class of poetry in its original growth? Is it not rather-when it has assumed the form which it wears in the sometimes fulsome, sometimes foul-mouthed epigrams of Martial; when it has put on the loose robes which our neighbours across the Channel have willed that it shail wear among themselves, because, forsooth, the Epigram à la Grecque' does not come up to the demand for piquancy, which is made with them upon every class of literature, and not this only; or when, again, it has chanced, as in our own land, upon coarser days, social and literary-that the epigram deserves to be esteemed lightly, as a composition in which bitterness and spleen play as large a part as wit or ingenuity? This is surely an interesting question, and, doubtless, it is one on which much may be urged on both sides. It will, perhaps, not be labour lost to search a little into the history of the epigram, with a view to ascertaining what is its original character, and * W. S. Landor, Collected Works, i. 15. what |