90 MONTENEGRO 



and pouts more impartially among her white-coated 

 suitors. I could not withhold a sigh as I thought how 

 brief was her hour of triumph, and how soon her 

 bloom was doomed to vanish after she entered the 

 holy state of matrimony. 



The distance from Dalmatia, that land of ornate 

 churches and towering campanili, to any part of 

 Montenegro is so short that one is puzzled, at first, 

 by the total absence of architectural remains within 

 the Prince's dominions. The reason for this is twofold. 

 In the first place, the Latin Church, which holds sway 

 in Dalmatia, has always exceeded the Greek Church 

 in the scale and splendour of its places of worship, 

 providing vast naves and spacious side-aisles for pro- 

 cessional purposes. Greek churches seem curiously 

 disproportioned to the number of worshippers, present- 

 ing no long-drawn perspective or soaring vaults. In 

 detail, they are often interesting, but the general effect 

 is disappointing to the amateur. In the second place, 

 such churches and convents as may have adorned the 

 scattered villages of Montenegro have suffered the 

 same fate as overtook the abbeys of our own Border- 

 land Dryburgh, Kelso, Jedburgh, and the rest. The 

 tide of war has rolled too often over these rugged 

 hillsides to permit the survival of any inflammable 

 structure or any portable treasure. The very capital, 

 Cettinje itself, can boast no monument of antiquity, 

 except the stump of the round tower whereon it was 

 the custom to expose the heads of Turks taken in that 

 ceaseless war in which neither side ever showed quarter 



