at Ragusa, and of a brave and good soldier, the Austrian commander, General Ivanovich, of whom and of whose excellent family I have the most delightful recollections, and whose society during all the time I remained in Ragusa was my sole social refuge from the wretched life of a special correspondent in half-civilized regions.  It was a poetic and attractive household, and the light of it, the beauty of Madame Ivanovich and her two daughters, and the serenity which fell on me when I entered it, remain in my memory as the sunny oasis in the life of that period.  Then, too, I made the acquaintance of an eminent scholar who was to be for many years after the stanchest of friends and allies, Professor Freeman, the great historian, but greater humanitarian, whose too early death I still feel to be my great personal loss.  He had two companions, of whom one was Lord Morley, who had come to Ragusa to see what there was in the affair of the Herzegovina; and to their impressions was no doubt due much of the weight given to the “Times” reports subsequently.

Between fruitless negotiations, attempts to delude the insurgents by insincere promises, and the greatest efforts on the part of my soi-disant friend, Danish Effendi, to win over the body of correspondents by this time collected at Ragusa (he told me in so many words that he had informed the Turkish government that my pen was worth 40,000 francs to it), the rest of the winter passed away quietly.  It was evident that war would be declared in the spring between the principalities and Turkey, and I went home thoroughly worn out and ill.  I went by the way of Venice, and had my first sight of the city coming in at early morning from Trieste by steamer.  Accustomed as I had been to the color of Turner as the aspect of the Grand Canal, it seemed to me that what I saw from the steamer was the ghost of Venice, pallid, wan, faded to tints which were only the suggestion of Turner’s, but still lovely in their fading, and the impression was more pathetic than it would have been with all the glow of the great Englishman’s palette.  My wife met me at the steamer, and we went home by short stages, for I was too weak to bear a long railway journey.

CHAPTER XXX

THE WAR OF 1876

I returned to Montenegro in the following June, after the diplomacy of Europe had vainly and discordantly discussed mediation all the winter.  An armistice had suspended hostilities, but the Turks continued the concentration of troops on the frontiers of the principality, north and south, and refused the conditions of the Prince for a peaceful solution.  Everything waited for the acceptance by Servia of the programme for the war which was to be declared by the principalities against Turkey.  The official declaration of war took place on the 2d of July, and on the 3d the Prince set out with flying banners for the conquest of the Herzegovina.  My orders being to remain in touch