promise, than that we shall be able to give effect to our own views in their integrity. It may be well, then, to state briefly the chief reasons on which our individual objection to a union is grounded. And first, it should be borne in mind that this experiment, although it may not be generally known, has virtually been already tried. By a provision of the Treaty of Kainardji, in 1774, the whole district intervening between these Principalities and the Crimea -which was then relinquished by Turkey-was erected into an independent Tartar State. That State stood virtually in the same position towards Turkey that the Principalities, if united, would now occupy. It was solemnly declared that the liberties of that State should never be infringed by Russia; yet within nine years after the date of this treaty-in 1783-they were suppressed, and the whole State was coolly incorporated into the Russian empire. Now a union of the two Principalities would, in our view, present just such a strength as should render the people so united as independent of the Turkish Government, in practice, as was this Tartar State, and, at the same time, equally unable to sustain themselves against the Russian power. The Moldo-Wallachians have no more aptitude for war than the Tartars. The mass of that people is essentially a pacific, pastoral, yielding race, attached enough to Christian customs and Christian rule, to render the Turkish authority still obnoxious; but not sufficiently sensible of the dangers of subjugation to induce them to turn their attention vigorously to military art. The once dominant race of this district, which, in the middle ages, rivalled the martial prowess of Western Christendom in its resistance to Mahometan power, is now virtually extinct. The pure Daco-Roman race, at length overcome upon the plains of the Danube, retreated to the mountains; and in the high ground its representatives no doubt still exist in the hardy shepherds and wood-cutters of that district. But they are few, and now nearly powerless; and wherever else relics of the same people may exist, they are both mixed in origin and proportionately degenerated in character. It can hardly be questioned, therefore, that the independence of these Principalities is only to be continued by maintaining their present subordination, by preserving their relations, and by identifying their interests with the Ottoman Porte. The social constitution of Moldavia and Wallachia presents ample elements for the formation of what is commonly termed a conservative form of government. It is to be feared, however, from the terms of the new, as well as from those of the original firman, that the Turkish Government has not in itself been dis Classes of Society in the Principalities. 397 posed to develop the popular elements of the commonwealth in the degree which is necessary for the renovation of these provinces. The original Firman-drawn up by the Ottoman Porte, conjointly with a committee of the most illiberal diplomatists that ever designed a political constitution-was singularly defective. The conviction of its utter inadequacy to satisfy the policy of the European Powers led to its withdrawal, and to its substitution by another document which, though by no means without its faults, has rectified the more glaring errors of the original Firman. Both these documents, however, recognise the existence of six divisions among the community. These are, the spiritual orders; the Grand Boyards, the small landholders, the artisans and other industrials,' the corporations, and the peasants. Each of these cardinal divisions of the two provinces is to send its representatives to form the two Divans. The representatives of each class are to form committees for deliberation on their special interests, and to meet in Divan to consolidate and incorporate their proposals. With the single exception that a seventh committee ought in fairness to have been instituted for a representation of the intellectual class, no exception could be offered to this division of the people. But the relative influence accorded to these several sections, was a very different question. This scale of influence was created, not according to what a policy of progress and development would dictate, but according to the existing predominance of the higher classes. So far, therefore, as the future constitution would depend upon the declarations of the Divans, it could involve no changes of a social character. All the existing absurdities of the Moldo-Wallachian Constitution were religiously preserved by the terms of the first Firman. Thus, the Grand Boyards, whose nobility was not at least of the third generation, were to be excluded from the right of voting for representatives of their own order. Imagine a race of ferocious and half-civilised nobles, inferior in every intrinsic respect to the middle classes of France and Germany, thus finding for their pride a refuge from the conviction of their intrinsic demerits in the remembrance that their grandfathers and great-grandfathers were the same fierce lordly boors as themselves! The first Firman, then, addressed itself to an opposition to every measure that could tend to popularize the Moldo-Wallachian aristocracy. The election of representatives from the spiritual orders was, however, liable to less exception. The small proprietors were justly represented. Each of these three sections were required to send seventeen members, conformably to the seventeen districts of each province. The grant of a similar representation to the corporations was excessive, and illustrates the desire to maintain existing privileges in their full force which consistently animated this Firman. It was also a mockery of free representation that the peasants should not have been allowed to elect representatives from their own order, but only from the class of landed proprietors. If this original arrangement had been carried out, the cry of the mass of the Moldo-Wallachian people would have been-'Save us from our friends,' &c. for they have not yet forgotten the liberal Constitution which the Russians propounded for them during their occupation of the Principalities in 1828, although it has been long since cancelled. Being, then, desirous of conciliating the mass of the people, Russia offered them this polity; and in order to regain the support of the nobles whom she had thus alienated, she instigated revolts on the part of the peasantry, which compelled them to resort to her for the restoration of their political rights. The condition of recognising her protectorate was then demanded by Russia as the equivalent for this support; and thus she obtained a ground of future interference, through a duplicity so successful, that the grant of the liberal Constitution of 1828 has preponderated in the mind of the peasantry over a sense of subsequent injustice, which, in fact, she has contrived usually to throw upon the Boyards. It remains to show that, if not the people, at least the territory itself, is worthy of a system calculated to develop its capabilities. It has been proved that the physical area of these two provinces is equal to what in Central Europe sustains, upon an average, a population fourfold in number. The fertility of the soil is well known. These plains were in the Roman age the granaries of Europe. Here, then, is a soil inhabited by from four to five millions, which even, if only equal to the average of European fertility, would be adapted to from sixteen to twenty millions, and which, in fact, far exceeds that average. This consideration must induce us at once to secure the necessary conditions of colonization. The first of these is a secure and just Government, stable in its administration, fair in its laws, and free in its commercial policy. When this postulate is attained, we may fairly look to the emigration of a large proportion of our surplus population, at a cost of one-third of the usual expense and distance, with a certainty of finding a European market for their agricultural produce, such as scarcely any other colony has possessed. The market, in fact, is already existing, and the labourers alone remain to be found. Facilities for Colonization. 399 The purchase of land by English capitalists must be the first step in such a scheme of colonization. It has been the aim of the liberal party to secularize the ecclesiastical estates during the last nine years; and there can be no doubt that the agitation of this question would lead the monasteries to sell cheap, while arrangements might without difficulty be made with the new Government for a legitimizing of titles thus transferred. Without the infusion of new blood, Moldo-Wallachia can advance but little. The people are neither energetic nor enterprizing. The villages are an aggregation of barns; and the towns are worse than any in European Turkey itself. The roads hardly admit of traffic for heavy waggons: and it will be remembered that the Austrian army, during every thaw, has been compelled to suspend their evacuation of the Principalities because the inequalities of the roads only permitted them to move their artillery over a frozen surface! A thousand other such indications of the character of the population might be mentioned. MoldoWallachia has her wants not less than her facilities. What we desire to see now established, is the reciprocal alliance of Turkey and the Principalities by means of a separate polity for each province and a Government so stable, so just, and so liberal, as to give effect to foreign enterprize. Private energies will then do the rest. We shall then have laid the base of a future civilization, as the result of the recent war. To accomplish this eventual object, it must now be our aim, by a union of foresight and temper, to neutralize as far as possible the conflicts and jealousies of existing interests, by giving existence to a constitution as practically good as the circumstances of the case will admit. ART. V.-Two Years Ago. By C. KINGSLEY. Three Vols. HOMEWARD HO! We welcome Mr. Kingsley as an old friend, on his return to England and the nineteenth century. It is some years since he left us, and left his opinions of us also, in Alton Locke and Yeast, which were no pleasant keepsakes. Our readers will recollect that he then gave no flattering testimony to our social condition. We suspect it was his ill-concealed disgust of the French novel sentimentalism, which brooded like a malaria over our drawing-room society, and the stubborn finality spirit, which fixed our practical counting-house men in a catalepsy, so that they would neither be coaxed nor spurred into his novel plans for the cure of our social malaise, which drove him upon his long and adventurous tour. What wonders he has seen, what experience he has gained, in his wild aërial travels, are they not contained in Hypatia and Westward Ho? With an easy flight he passed to the shore of the Nile, and into the dim antiquity of the fifth century. Opening there the dazzling lights of his imagination, he dispersed the thick mists which shrouded that awful scene, and we see before us, as though we were bodily present, the tremendous spectacle of the empire's decay, and the gigantic towering growth of the Christian Church, which bursts from the rotting folds of the huge imperial system, as the awakened Lazarus from his grave-clothes. The broad, fat, yellowish Nile, swells and flashes down from fabulous deserts, haunted with frightful ogres and monsters of every goblin shape, through the plains of Egypt to the Delta and the city of Alexandria. Along its banks, and in that city, Mr. Kingsley pictures the death of the Old World, with its Paganism and Philosophy, and the birth of the New. And he could have chosen no site on which the relics of the fading past, and the germs of the dawning future, are brought into more startling contrast-in which the hubbub and seething turmoil of that transition epoch are more fearfully exhibited. We look up a quiet valley, and see there cells of monks scooped out in rows from the rock on either side, and the dull hermits are hoeing in the fields between; while on the hill above, against the purple haze of the setting sun, there stands the spectral wreck of a mighty Temple, old as the time of Noah's sons, on whose rents 'the red light rests, like dying fire on defiled altars.' In Alexandria, Mr. Kingsley has heard Hypatia, the beautiful Pythoness, the last and most glorious teacher of the proud stoicism and Elysian dreams, which were woven together like a rich flowery damask in Neo-Platonism. He has conversed with Orestes, the polished effete sensual governor of Alexandria; has watched his scheme of revolt against the Roman Emperor; has seen him lure Hypatia from the tranquil heights of philosophy by the too tempting promise of making her Empress of Africa, and crushing for ever this frenzied faith in a crucified Jesus. He has stood in the presence-chamber of Cyril, the stern prelate, who laughs at the writhing impotency of Orestes, and explodes, by a touch, his hollow schemes of revolt and empire. He has looked from a balcony upon the legions of Nitrian monks rushing at midnight through the streets of Alexandria (like a lava torrent), under the ruddy glare of torchlight, till Cyril's message hushed the storm, and recalled them to their grated dormitories. And all the other mirabilia of that eventful age, surely he has |