ands were in nearly all cases
led by Montenegrins, a fact which indicates the decline of that spirit
of military adventure to which the Haiduks of old (robbers) could at
least lay some claim. Discreditable as these proceedings were, worse
ensued.

On the 5th of August a murderous attack was made upon a party of
Mussulmans in the close vicinity of Belgrade, upon which occasion eight
were killed and seventeen wounded. No fire-arms were used, probably to
avoid alarming the garrison. The absence on that night from the capital
of both Prince Milosch and his son, furnishes just grounds for
suspecting them of complicity in the affair, while the presence of
Sleftcha (notoriously a creature of Russia), and Tenko, among the
murderers, clearly shows where and with what views the crime was
devised. On the same night, five Mussulmans who were sleeping in a
vineyard at Kladova, on the Bulgarian frontier, were murdered by
Servians, while an attack was made upon a third party. The prospects of
a country whose princes connive at, and whose ministers commit murder,
cannot be very brilliant. Whether other atrocities might have met with
the sanction of Milosch it is impossible to say, for death cut him off
in the latter part of September, 1860, full of years and crimes. Not the
least of these was the death of Kara George, who was treacherously
murdered at his instigation. But let us pass from so unattractive a
retrospect to a consideration of the character and policy of the living
prince who now holds the reins of government.

CHAPTER III.

The appointment of Prince Michael to the vacant throne of Servia was the
first step towards the substitution of hereditary for elective
succession. One of the first measures of the new prince was to induce
the Skuptschina, or National Assembly, to legalise for the future that
which had been an infraction of the law. The sixteen years which
intervened between 1842, when Michael was ejected, and 1858, when Prince
Milosch was reinstated, were passed by the former in the various
capitals of Europe. The high Vienna notions which he imbibed during that
period have deprived him of the sympathy and affection of his
semi-civilised subjects, as much as the uncultivated mind of his father
deprived him of their respect. Nor does the lack of sympathy appear to
be one-sided. And, in truth, that mind must be possessed of no ordinary
amount of philanthropy which can apply itself to the improvement of a
peop