Natchalnik.  “The people in the interior are a simple and uncorrupted race; their only monitor is nature.”

Author.  “That is true:  the European who judges of the Servians by the intrigues of Belgrade, will form an unfavourable opinion of them; the mass of the nation, in spite of its faults, is sound.  Many of the men at the head of affairs, such as Simitch, Garashanin, &c., are men of integrity; but in the second class at Belgrade, there is a great mixture of rogues.”

Natchalnik.  “I know the common people well:  they are laborious, grateful, and obedient; they bear ill-usage for a time, but in the end get impatient, and are with difficulty appeased.  When I or any other governor say to one of the people, ’Brother, this or that must be done,’ he crosses his hands on his breast, and says, ’It shall be done;’ but he takes particular notice of what I do, and whether I perform what is due on my part.  If I fail, woe betide me.  The Obrenovitch party forgot this; hence their fall.”

Next day we went to look at the remains of Servian royalty.  A shattered gateway and ruined walls, are all that now remain of the once extensive palace of Knes Lasar Czar Serbski; but the chapel is as perfect as it was when it occupied the centre of the imperial quadrangle.  It is a curious monument of the period, in a Byzantine sort of style; but not for a moment to be compared in beauty to the church of Studenitza.  Above one of the doors is carved the double eagle, the insignium of empire.  The great solidity of this edifice recommended it to the Turks as an arsenal; hence its careful preservation.  The late Servian governor had the Vandalism to whitewash the exterior, so that at a distance it looks like a vulgar parish church.  Within is a great deal of gilding and bad painting; pity that the late governor did not whitewash the inside instead of the out.  The Natchalnik told me, that under the whitewash fine bricks were disposed in diamond figures between the stones.  This antique principle of tesselation applied by the Byzantines to perpendicular walls, and occasionally adopted and varied ad infinitum by the Saracens, is magnificently illustrated in the upper exterior of the ducal palace of Venice.

CHAPTER XX.

Formation of the Servian Monarchy.—­Contest between the Latin and
Greek Churches.—­Stephan Dushan.—­A Great Warrior.—­Results of his
Victories.—­Knes Lasar.—­Invasion of Amurath.—­Battle of
Kossovo.—­Death of Lasar and Amurath.—­Fall of the Servian
Monarchy.—­General Observations.

I cannot present what I have to say on the feudal monarchy of Servia more appropriately than in connexion with the architectural monuments of the period.

The Servians, known in Europe from the seventh century, at which period they migrated from the Carpathians to the Danube, were in the twelfth century divided into petty states.