to the history of its moral state at that early period, The philanthropist cannot but perceive, with satisfaction, the rare union that reigns in these laws of stern justice and true Christian benevolence, attempting to alleviate those evils which it was not in the power of an individual to abolish,—­thehardships of slavery, the insecurity of property peculiar to those barbarous times, and those rash and bloody acts of self-protection, which are preferred by the powerful all over the world to the slower steps of avenging justice.  It is indeed remarkable to observe, how these statutes not only counteracted the grosser vices and crimes, (which for the most part is the only object of laws,) but also favoured the characteristic virtues of the times, for instance hospitality.  One statute ordains, that when a traveller asked for night-quarters at the dwelling of a landed proprietor and was not admitted, he had the right to take lodgings in his village wherever he pleased; and did he lose any thing, not his host, but the proprietor who had refused to harbour him, was bound to remunerate the loss.[5]

The monks of this and the following centuries must have written a great deal; as is proved by the many manuscripts that still lie accumulated in the numerous Servian and Macedonian monasteries,—­the mere remnant of those which perished in the long tempests of bloody wars and desolating conflagrations.  About fifty years after the invention of printing, some of the church books from time to time were published in Servia and Syrmia.  The earliest Servian print extant is from the year 1493, viz. an Octateuch, published at Zenta in Herzegovina.  In Russia they did not begin to print until sixty years later.  In 1552 the Gospels were printed in Belgrade; in 1562 another edition in Negromont.  But these faint signs of life soon became extinct; and we hear no longer of the least trace of literature among the Servians of the Turkish empire.  Among the Austrian Servians also, literature seems to have been equally dead; with the exception of a History of Servia, written and left in manuscript by George Brankovitch, the last despot of that country, towards the close of the seventeenth century.  A genealogical work published by Dshefarovitch at Vienna in 1742, had to be engraved, for the want of proper types.  In the year 1755, under the reign of Maria Theresa, when some attention began to be paid to the schools of her Illyrian provinces, the archbishop of Carlovitz was compelled to have Smotrisky’s Grammar[6] printed in Walachia, because no Slavic types were to be found in the whole Austrian empire.  Some years afterwards, A.D. 1758, a private Slavic press was founded at Venice.  In Austria, Cyrillic-Slavonic books could not be printed earlier than A.D. 1771, when a printing office was established at Vienna; the monopoly of which for all Slavo-Servian scientific works throughout the empire, was given to the university of Buda.  From this one point, therefore, the whole literary cultivation of the Servians of the oriental church in the Austrian empire, could alone proceed.[7]