ent State, it must sooner or later fall to Russia or Austria,
more probably to the former.'[193] So, in all probability, thought the
Russian diplomatists when they created a number of weak principalities
south of the Danube to serve them as stepping-stones to Constantinople.
And so, too, thought the Roumanians themselves. They knew that a name is
'neither hand, nor foot, nor arm, nor face, nor any other part belonging
to a man,' and so they 'doffed the name,' and on May 23, 1881, with the
concurrence of the great Powers of Europe, they invested their prince
and princess with the royal dignity, placing upon their sovereign's head
a crown made from the very guns which he had captured whilst he was
fighting for their liberties.

The poetic sentiment which attaches to this last act of the people of
Roumania brings vividly before our mind's eye the dramatic character of
her whole national career. Twice have we found the course of her history
lost in darkness--first in the clouds of antiquity by which the early
life of every nation is obscured; then in the still impenetrable gloom
of the so-called dark ages, which continued to hang over the Danubian
plains long after it was lifted from every other part of Europe.
Conquered first, and civilised by one who ranks amongst the greatest
heroes of the Roman Empire, she has inherited a high antiquity of which
she may be justly proud, remembering, however, that honourable ancestry
alone is not the measure of a nation's greatness. But then, for ages we
might almost say, the blast which swept across her plains with all the
fury of a tempest, but, as it travelled westward, broke and moderated
under the influence of the older civilisation, caused a second blank in
her existence; and when she once more rose from her prostration, she
found herself whole centuries behind the western peoples. But hardly had
she time to breathe again, and ere the wounds inflicted on her by the
Goths, and Huns, and Avars were yet fully healed, another ruthless
conqueror had laid hands upon her; and spite of all her efforts to
regain her liberty he held her fast, and sent her taskmasters as cruel
and exacting as the leaders of barbarian hordes had been before. And yet
her spirit was indomitable; bowed but not broken she continued to live
on, and ever strove for freedom. Mircea, Stephen, Michael, those are the
names which vindicate her claim to courage, and which shield her from
the charge of cowardly submission.