agitators in hopeless isolation. Servia and Montenegro had failed them, and no hope was held out. Diplomacy, if it ever did any good might have been expected to do so here. But it failed, as it always fails, because it finds in humanity only a kind of chessmen, and thinks that it can control them as though there were no flesh and blood-no passion or ambition, but that they must move by order like automata. It regards the fictions of its own creation as realities, and expects a treaty to control those whom not even their own interest will always control, like children who draw a line in the sand, and agree not to pass it, and if a bold one defies the fiction, the game is broken up, and nobody knows what to do next. It is only when the diplomat has the sword girt on, that he has any vital existence for irrational organizations like the Porte.

The Popovo affair showed not only a new opportunity lost, but a radical incapacity in the organization of the Ottoman Government to employ an opportunity for retrieving the blunders which its local administrators might make. The return of the people of Popovo was an important event, and one which the Porte felt the full importance of, as was shown by the congratulatory despatches exchanged on the subject. The Turks had only to keep away from the district to secure the full effect of the new adhesion to their promised reforms, but even this they were incapable of. Shefket Pasha must in some way show the solicitude of the Porte over its returning children, and his military promenade showed that neither reform nor justice was possible. The elements on which his authority and that of his government rested were utterly uncontrollable, and opportunity was irresistible-violence was the natural state.

What was particularly instructive in this affair was that.

the Popovo villages, though long time deserted by the majority of their proper inhabitants, had not been pillaged or otherwise molested, with the exception of one which was burned by Ljubibratics after Utovu, as described. The Christian insurgents had passed by them, and left them undisturbed, and the Bashi-bazooks of Trebinje or Stolatz had never dared come so far without the protection of the regulars. As soon, therefore, as a regular force went, the Bashi-bazooks made their opportunity, and, unchecked by the disciplined forces, or their officers, did what pleased them. And flagrant as was the case, and strong as were the reclamations, no notice was ever taken of the authors of the outrage, or punishment inflicted on the responsible individuals. Some time after, Shefket was sent away in disgrace for being defeated, and went to Bulgaria to repeat on a larger scale the experiment of Popovo. The massacre took place October 14th, and on the strength of my representations to Mr. Holmes at Mostar, the consul-general of the Porte at Ragusa was ordered to make an inquiry, which he did, and he reported confirming my statements, when his report was rejected by the government at Constantinople, and Constant Pasha was ordered to make a new inquiry, which he did in the most convenient manner, and with the most satisfactory results. He paid no attention to the evidence, and reported that the outrage had never occurred. From such seed what could be expected but the harvest of Batok and Phillipopolis? A reference to the blue book will show the efficacy of diplomatic interference.1 Shefket is

1 SIR H. ELLIOT TO THE EARL OF DERBY.

My Lord, Therapia, November, 23, 1875. I directed Mr. Sandison to remark to the Porte that, although a considerable time had elapsed since the report had been received of the massacre at Popovopolje of a number of the Christian refugees who had

always equal to the opportunity, and when Constant is not at hand Edib Effendi will do quite as well. The system is,

has been, and will be while it exists, the same; for its. foundation is a democracy of ignorance, fanaticism, sensuality, and brutality.

returned to their homes, we had not heard of any one having been punished for the outrage.

Mr. Sandison having to-day spoken in this sense to the Grand Vizier, His Highness at once telegraphed to the Governor-General of Bosnia to inquire what had been done to insure the punishment of those concerned in the murders.

CHAPTER V.

HERE being a complete lull in military operations, I determined to see what was passing at

the Turkish head-quarters, and in company with the correspondent of "Le Temps" and a Belgian engineer returning to his road-making between Mostar and Seraievo, I went to Mostar.

The journey by diligence from Ragusa to Metkovich is one which has a twofold interest. The tourist finds a succession of enchanting views, passages of rare picturesque material, little nooks of sea-coast, with fringes of plain, where the olive and vine flourish, and the palm puts forward a claim to naturalization, if not to utility; jutting crags of rock, headlands of massive limestone, where, with a good south-west wind blowing, the marine painter would find his best themes before him; an alternation of garden and desert and sea; the Adriatic, with its many islands on the one side, and the grey, bare range of mountains which forms the boundary between Dalmatia and European Turkey, full of exquisite hues and tints, on the other, and the road following all the sinuosities of the coast, making a whole of an attractiveness I have never seen surpassed.

But the economist can only be reminded that this range of barren mountain is merely the fringe of a great fertile

country inland, and that these bays and ports, with which the coast is favoured, are the natural outlets of that country; that along the crest of that ridge runs the boundary between two empires, and that in this division, the result of mere political chances, lies the secret of the poverty of both countries: Dalmatia, with all its marvellous maritime facilities on one side, without a country to open into or give egress to; and Bosnia and Herzegovina, with all their interests, shut out of the world of commerce for want of the commercial enterprise which languishes on the other side of the line. I have often thought of the economical absurdity of this situation, but never realized it so well as when winding in and out from early dawn till evening on this postroad, and thinking that if the Austrians could only make the post-road on the other side of the mountains, we should have made the distance on it in less than half the time, and that it would become a great highway of commerce and travel. These two artificially separated provinces are languishing, impoverished, for want of union under one Government, which can make roads and develop in tranquillity the resources which are now idle in the earth, as well as lift into comparative comfort and prosperity a people ground down in a misery and poverty which has no adequate comparison in our English experience.

The knowledge of this necessity is one of the most vivid impressions in the minds of the Slav population on both sides of the frontier, and supplies one of the most powerful elements in that tendency to agitation for the freedom of Bosnia, &c., in the Dalmatian population.

We had to pass the strip of Turkish country at Klek, and here had another occasion to see the administrative incompetence of Turkish officials. The road is a good one on