n productive of good:
decent roads from that point to Sophia are already in process of
construction, and the innumerable brigands who swarmed along the
country-side have been banished or killed. Sophia still lies basking in
the mellow sunlight, lazily refusing to be cleansed or improved. Nowhere
else on the border-line of the Orient is there a town which so admirably
illustrates the reckless and stupid negligence of the Turk. Sophia looks
enchanting from a distance, but when one enters its narrow streets,
choked with rubbish and filled with fetid smells, one is only too glad
to retire hastily. It would take a quarter of a century to make Sophia
clean. All round the city are scattered ancient tumuli filled with the
remains of the former lords of the soil, and they are almost as
attractive as the hovels in which live the people of to-day. What a
desolate waste the Turk has been allowed to make of one of the finest
countries in Europe! He must be thrust out before improvement can come
in. Lamartine, who was one of the keenest observers that ever set foot
in Turkey, truly said "that civilization, which is so fine in its proper
place, would prove a mortal poison to Islamism. Civilization cannot live
where the Turks are: it will wither away and perish more quickly
whenever it is brought near them. With it, if you could acclimate it in
Turkey, you could not make Europeans, you could not make Christians: you
would simply unmake Turks."

[Illustration: BANKS OF THE DANUBE NEAR SEMLIN.]

The enemies of progress and of the "Christian dogs" are receding, and
railways and sanitary improvements will come when they are gone.
Belgrade was a wretched town when the Turks had it: now it is civilized.
Its history is romantic and picturesque, although its buildings are not.
Servia's legends and the actual recitals of the adventurous wars which
have occurred within her limits would fill volumes. The White City has
been famous ever since the Ottoman conquest. Its dominant position at
the junction of two great rivers, at the frontier of Christian Europe,
at a time when turbans were now and then seen in front of the walls of
Vienna, gave it a supreme importance. The Turks exultingly named it "the
Gate of the Holy War." Thence it was that they sallied forth on
incursions through the fertile plains where now the Hungarian shepherd
leads his flock and plays upon his wooden pipe, undisturbed by the
bearded infidel. The citadel was fought over unti