y-five members. In the Senate, out of seventy-six members
only about sixteen or eighteen are in opposition. This is not altogether
to be regretted; such disparities do not last long, and whilst on the
one hand criticism of the mistakes or misconduct of Government officials
(and more particularly against sub-officials, who are often charged with
grave offences) is now confined chiefly to the press, on the other hand
a little constitutional despotism is very much needed, not only to
correct such abuses promptly, but also to hasten the necessary reforms
and to ameliorate the condition of the country. This is the result of
personal observation and contact with official life, and not a mere
speculative opinion.]

II.

Let us now consider the circumstances which lately enabled Roumania to
throw off the last traces of her vassalage, and to take her place in the
comity of European nations; and with a brief narrative of those events
we must bring this imperfect outline of her past history to a close. The
story of the last Russo-Turkish war must be within the memory of all our
readers who take the slightest interest in Oriental politics. How
Russia, chafing under the restrictions which had been put upon her by
the Treaty of Paris, had succeeded in obtaining a modification of that
treaty, which gave her once more the right of entrance into the Black
Sea; how, resuming her favourite _role_ of protectress of the Christian
inhabitants of Turkey, she intervened in the affairs of those nations
who stood between her and Constantinople; how the Servians and
Montenegrins, incited by her, rose in revolt, and the Bulgarians
followed suit; how the European Powers, sympathising with Turkey on the
one hand, in consequence of the renewed machinations and transparent
designs of her powerful northern enemy, and on the other despairing of
her on account of the barbarities with which she endeavoured to quell
the rising in her vassal provinces, the inherent weakness of her rule,
and the bankrupt condition of her finances, they were compelled at
length to leave her at the mercy of her foe. To repeat the narrative of
these would be telling an oft-told tale. But when, after the final
break-up of the Conference of Constantinople in January 1877, the Cross
and the Crescent were once more opposed to each other, and when the
Russian forces were massed on the eastern bank of the Pruth, then came
the moment at which it behoved the newly-liberated nation,