MONTENEGRO. 



97 



MONTENEGRO. 



Br ALFRED TENNYSON. 



THEY rose to where their sovran eagle sails, 

 They kept their faith, their freedom, on the height, 

 Chaste, frugal, savage, armed by day and night 



Against the Turk ; whose inroad nowhere scales 



Their headlong passes, but his footstep fails, 



And red with blood the Crescent reels from fight 

 Before their dauntless hundreds, in prone flight 



By thousands down the crags and through the vales. 



O smallest among peoples ! rough rock-throne 

 Of Freedom ! warriors beating back the swarm 

 Of Turkish Islam for five hundred years, 



Great Tsernagora ! never since thine own 



Black ridges drew the cloud and brake the storm 

 Has breathed a race of mightier mountaineers. 



MONTENEGEO— A SKETCH. 



By WILLIAM E. GLADSTONE. 



1. "Le Montenegro Contemporain. 1 ' Par G. Frilley, Officier de la Legion d'llonneur, et Jovan Wlahoviti, Capitaine au 



Service de la Serbie. Paris, 1870. 



2. " Montenegro und die Montenegriner geschildert von Spiridion Goptchevitch." Leipzig, 1877. 



IT is sometimes said, in relation to individuals, 

 that the world does not know its greatest 

 men. It might, at least, as safely be averred, in 

 speaking of large numbers, that Christendom 

 does not know its most extraordinary people. 

 The name of Montenegro, until within the last 

 two years, was perhaps less familiar to the Euro- 

 pean public than that of Monaco, and little more 

 than that of San Marino. And yet it would, long 

 ere this, have risen to world-wide and immortal 

 fame, had there been a Scott to learn and tell the 

 marvels of its history, or a Byron to spend and 

 be spent on its behalf. For want of the vatcs 

 sacer, it has remained in the mute, inglorious con- 

 dition of Agamemnon's predecessors. 1 I hope 

 that an interpreter between Montenegro and the 

 world has at length been found in the person of 

 my friend Mr. Tennyson, and I gladly accept the 

 honor of having been invited to supply a com- 

 mentary to his text. In attempting it I am sen- 

 sible of this disadvantage — that it is impossible to 

 set out the plain facts of the history of Montene- 

 gro (or Tsernagora in its own Slavonic tongue) 

 without begetting, in the mind of any reader 

 1 Hor., "Od.,"iv., ix., 25. 

 1 



strange, and nearly all are strange, to the subject, 

 a resistless suspicion of exaggeration or of fable. 



The vast cyclone of Ottoman conquest, the 

 most formidable that the world has ever seen, 

 having crossed the narrow sea from Asia in the 

 fourteenth century, made rapid advances west- 

 ward, and blasted, by its successive acquisitions, 

 the fortunes of countries the chief part of which 

 were then among the most civilized, Italy alone 

 being excepted, of all Europe. I shall not here 

 deal with the Hellenic lands. It is enough to say 

 that Bulgaria, Servia (as now known), Bosnia, 

 Herzegovina, Albania, gradually gave way. 



Before telling the strange tale of those who, 

 like some strong oak that the lightning fails to 

 rive, breasted all the wrath of the tempest, and 

 never could be slaves, let me render a tribute to 

 the fallen. For the most part they did not suc- 

 cumb without gallant resistance. The Servian 

 sovereigns of the fifteenth century were great 

 and brave men, ruling a stout and brave people. 

 They reached their zenith when, in 134*7, Stephen 

 Dushan entitled himself Emperor of Serbs, Greeks, 

 and Bulgarians. In an evil hour, and to its own 

 ruin, the Greek Empire invoked against him the 



