Shoumen is Preslav

19 km south of Shoumen is Preslav (pop. 14,000) and a further 2 km south are the ruins of Veliki Preslav. During the reign of Tsar Simeon (893-927) the town was for a short time an important cultural and trade centre. It fell under Byzantine domination from 971-976 and from 1001-1187, In 1388 it was seized by Ottoman invaders and destroyed. It was rebuilt in the 16th-19th century north of the ruins and was called Eski Stamboul (the old capital). So far some 2 000 metres of fortress walls have been discovered.

Most of the remains have been uncovered including north and south gates, towers, palace compound, monasteries, workshops as well as two monasteries, several churches, cottages and other buildings from the 9th-10th century. In 1978 near the ruins of the palace compound, gold treasure was discovered comprising a necklace, rings, etc., the work of local masters.

Ten kilometres east of Shoumen, near the village of Mut- nitsa is the Madara National Historical and Archaeological Reserve with its magnificent bas-relief, cut into the rock of the ancient Madara fortress of a horseman followed by a dog and a lion pierced by a spear. The inscription beneath dates from the reign of Khan Omourtag (816-831). The Madara Horseman is one of four sites in Bulgaria (the Kazanluk Thracian Tomb, Boyana Church and Ivanovo rock churches near Rousse) to be included in UNESCO’s World List.

On the terrace below the relief are ruins of buildings from different eras — palaces, a Proto-Bulgarian heathen shrine (9th century), churches and monasteries from the late Middle Ages. Stairs cut into the rock lead to the Madara plateau and fortress, used until the Ottoman invasions. To the southwest, at the foot of the plateau, are remains of Roman houses and farm buildings.

10 km along the main E-70 road is Kaspichan and 6 km from there the ruins of the first Bulgarian capital of Pliska. The town was founded after the establishment of the Bulgarian state. In 811 it was plundered and burnt by troops of the Byzantine Emperor Nicephorus I. It was restored during the reign of the Bulgarian Khan Omourtag. After Pres lav was declared capital of Bulgaria in 893, Pliska retained its role as a major centre. In 1001 it was again seized by the Byzantines. The town fell into decay after the invasions of the Pechenegs and other tribes.

Pliska

Pliska covered an area of 23 sq km and was planned with a concentric fortification system. The town had two belts of fortifications: a rampart with moat and fortress walls with mo-numental gates and guard towers. Between the two fortification systems were the dwellings of the common people and many churches, while the houses of the boyars, temples and palaces were in the inner town sofia guided tours.

Some 1.5 km from the Eastern gate in the outer town are the ruins of the Great Hasilica. A tomb was discovered here in 1978 containing gold jewellery, probably the work of local masters.

4 km away along E-7Q is the town of Novi Pazar (pop. 17,0) which has glass, porcelain and glazed earthenWare in-dustries. A mediaeval necropolis was unearthed near the town.

Hanski Stan Motel, one star, petrol station.

40 km further on is the Iaige industrial centre ofDevnya (pop. 15,500). Here, during the reign of Emperor Trajanus (98-117) the Roman town of Martianopolis was founded near the Karst springs.

KALOTINA DRAGOMAN SOFIA

ITINERARY

TOURS

KALOTINA-DRAGOMAN-SOFIA

The Kalotina border crossing point lies on the E-80 motorway on the Bulgarian-Yugoslav frontier some 55 kilometres from Sofia. Tourists entering Bulgaria can exchange money and shop at the Corecom hard-currency shop there.

The Cheshma service area is three kilometres from Kalotina along the motorway to Sofia. There is a 100 seater snack bar, a 60 seater restaurant, and a large Corecom shop daily tours istanbul. There is an exchange bureau and a kiosk for soft drinks, fruit and vegetables.

Dragoman

Dragoman (population: 3,700) is 18 kilometres from Kalotina. The town was built on a site which in Roman times was a stop-over for changing the Meldia horses and it was called Meldia up to the Middle Ages. There is a motel of the same name. It is a frontier-check-point for entry by train.

The Slivnitsa camping site near the town of Slivnitsa (population 8,000) is open from May 1 to September 30. Both Slivnitsa and Dragoman are famous for the bitter battles waged during the Serbo-Bulgarian war of 1885 In defence of the reunification and independence of Bulgaria. The two-star Krasnogorsk hotel here offers two suites and 58 double rooms, a restaurant, night club, a Corecom shop, an information desk and an exchange bureau.

Some 37 kilometres from Kalotina and 18 kilometres south-west of the centre of Sofia is the Sofia-West roadside motel with 170 beds. It has a restaurant, snack-bar, coffee- shop, petrol station, car service station and tourist office.

Bankya (population: 8,500), is situated 17 kilometres south of Sofia at an altitude of 650 metres. Bankya is one of Bulgaria’s best known spas and resort centres. The climate here is extremely mild and the thermal mineral waters have a temperature from 34° to 38° C. It is recommended for people suffering from cardio-vascular diseases, high blood pressure and neuroses with neurasthenic syndrome.

In June 1971 the World Health Organization declared Bankya a centre for post-medical specialization in cardio-vascular diseases. There are over 40 sanatoriums and preventive treatment establishments, as well as many rest houses. There are very favourable conditions for rest and recreation. In 1978 Bankya was incorporated into the metropolitan area. Shortly after leaving Bankya on the right-hand side of the road is the BANKYA camping site which has first class facilities and is open from May 15 to September 30.

Sofia (population: 1,200,000), capital of Bulgaria, is situated in the southern part of the picturesque Sofia Plain. Its suburbs spread along the alluvial terraces of the river Iskur and its tributaries — the Vladaya, Perlovets and Souhodol Rivers, and have reached the foot of Mount Vitosha and the Lyulin Mountains. Sofia is surrounded by a garland of mountains. Mount Vitosha, closest to the city, rises to the North, and has become the invariable backdrop of Sofia’s panorama. Back in the 19th century the Viennese geologist, Ferdinand Hochstetter said that Sofia and Mount Vitosha were as inseparable as Naples and Vesuvius. On the north side of the plain rise the rounded elevations of the Balkan Range; the Lozen Mountains are to the southwest and the gently sloping contours of the Lyulin Mountains to the southeast.

BULGARIA HISTORICAL MONUMETS AND NATURAL SIGHTS

RILA MONASTERY

It is the most impressive architectural and historical monument in Bulgaria from the Bulgarian National Revival period, founded by the hermit Ivan of Rila in the 10th century after the adoption of the Christian religion by the Bulgarians. Far from the major roads, the monastery preserved the rights granted to it by the Bulgarian kings and repeatedly reaffirmed by the sultans. At the end of the 18th century, however, began the onslaughts of the Kurdjalis. The monastery was destroyed to be restored later, in the first half of the 19th century. Situated at an altitude of 1,147 m above sea level, it occupies an areaof 32,000 sq m and is surrounded with stone walls up to 2 m thick and up to 24 m high.

One of the best preserved architectural monuments of the monastery complex is Hrelyo’s Tower, which was built in 1335. It is 23 m high. On the fourth floor there was a small church, in which valuable mural paintings have been preserved, dating from the 14th century. The monastery church rises in the centre of the yard, the inner and outer decoration of which is the work of wood-carvers from the Samokov, Debur and Razlog schools, and the mural paintings were created by the talented Bulgarian icon-painter ZahariZograph.

Interesting are the guest rooms of the monastery, furnished by different towns and villages in the country and bearing their respective names: that of Koprivshtitsa, that of Pazardjik, etc. The Refectory is a rare piece of architecture with its hearths, arcades and vaults. In the monastery library there are more than 16,0 books, including many unique ones, scores of old printed books, gospels and lives of saints in beautiful bindings. In the museum there are old parchments private tour guide ephesus, icons, Hrelyo’s throne and the old door of Hrelyo’s Church – the work of talented wood- carvers of the 14th century. Of equally great interest is a cross – a crucifiction — which was made by Monk Raphael. The monk devoted 12 years of his life to making the cross, in the course of which he lost his sight, but the 140 biblical scenes incorporating more than 1,500 human figures arouse the admiration of visitors even today. On show in the ethnographic section of the museum are various objects and costumes, given as gifts by pilgrims from all parts of the peninsula.

Near the monastery there is an attractive restaurant run by Balkantourist (3rd class), which is open day and night. The Rila Monastery Camp Site and the Bor Camp Site can accommodate a total of 270 people.

Interesting excursions can be made from the monastery to the Partisan Meadow locality at the foot of the peaks Dvouglav and Iglata. A two hours’ walk leads to Brichebor Peak, a five hours’ walk – to the Dry Lake, and a six hours’ walk – to the Ribni Ezera (Fish Lakes).

The Rila Monastery is 123 km from Sofia. It is reached via the international highway leading to Athens; at Kocherinovo village a turning leads through the valley of the Rilska River to the monastery.

BACHKOVO MONASTERY

The second largest monastery in Bulgaria after the Rila Monastery. It was founded in 1083 by the Georgian Grigoriy Bacuriani and has been reconstructed several times. The only building which has come down to us from the time of its foundation is the two-storeyed church and ossuary.The murals of the church are a unique monument of Byzantine art from the period of the Comnenus dynasty.

The central church was erected in, the 17th century, during the Ottoman rule. At the beginning of the 19th century the monastery was extended and one more church was built, the murals of which were painted by Zahari Zograph.

The monastery lies south of Plovdiv and can be reached by a modern, partly paved and partly asphalted road (some 30 km). The road goes on further south as far as Pamprovo.

Old English school

In passing from the literary iconoclasm of the ‘Old- English ’ school I would venture to add that no man is a more humble admirer than I am of the vast learning and the marvellous powers of research belonging to the author of the Norman Conquest. Nor can any man more deeply deplore another disaster which our literature has sustained in the premature loss of the author of A Short History of England: one who in his brief time has shown such historical imagination and such literary power, that it is impossible to mention him without a pang of regret. Si, qua fata aspera rump as, Tu Marcellus eris.

We may add a few words about various names which under the influence of a most mistaken literalism are being wantonly transformed. Persons who are anxious to appear well informed seem almost ashamed to spell familiar names as their grandfathers did. What is the meaning of ‘Vergil’? As every one knows, the best MSS. in the last lines of the fourth Georgic spell Vergilium; and accordingly some scholars think fit so to alter the poet’s name. Be it so. But ‘ Vergil’ is not Latin, any more than ‘Homer’ is Greek. Virgil is a familiar word, rooted deep in English literature and thought. To uproot it, and the like of it, would be to turn the English language into a quagmire. We shall be asked next to write ‘ Omer.’ If all our familiar names are to be recast, as new manuscripts or autographs turn up, none of these venerable names will remain to us.

Omeros and Durante

We shall have to talk of the epic poets, Omeros and Durante. Again, if autographs are conclusive, we shall have to write of Marie, Quean of Scots, and Lady Jane Duddley; of the statesmen, Cecyll and Walsyngham; of ‘Lord Nelson and Bronte,’ of the great Maryborough, of the poet Noel-Byron, of Sir Kenelme Digby, Sir Philip Sidnei, and Arbella Seymaure; of Bloody ‘ Marye,’ and Robert Duddley turkey sightseeing, Earl of Leycester. All of these queer forms are the actual names signed by these personages in extant autographs. The next step will be to write about these personages in the contemporary style; and archaic orthography will pass from proper names to the entire text.

The objection to insisting on strict contemporary orthography is this: the spelling of the family name was continu-ally changing, and to write it in a dozen ways is to break the tradition of the family. If we call Burleigh ‘ Cecyll,’ as he wrote it himself, we lose the tradition of the family of the late Prime Minister. If we call the author of the Arcadia Sidnei, as he wrote it himself, we detach him from the Sidneys. The Percys, Howards, Harcourts, Douglas, Wyatts, Lindsays, and Montgomerys of our feudal history will appear as the Perses, Hawards, Harecourts, Dowglas, Wiats, Lyndesays, and Monggomberrys. If we read Chevy Chase in the pure palaeography, we shall find how the ‘ Doughete dogglas’ spoke to the ‘ lord perse ’/ and how there died in the fray, Wetharryngton, ser hewe the monggomberry, ser dauy Iwdale, and ser charts a murre.

And then how the purists do drag us up and down with their orthographic edicts ! Just as the Old-English school is restoring the diphthong on every side, the classical reformers are purging it out like an unclean thing. We need not care much whether we write of Caesar ox ‘Caesar.’ But just as we have learned to write Caesar and Vergil’s Aeneid, in place of our old friends, we are taught to write Bceda and selfred for ‘Bede’ and ‘Alfred.’ The ‘Old- English ’ school revel in diphthongs, even in the Latin names; your classical purist would expire if he were called upon to write ‘Caesar’ or ‘Pompey.’ Farewell to the delightful gossipy style of the last century about ‘Tully,’ and ‘ Maro,’ and ‘ Livy ’! They knew quite as much about them at heart as we do to-day with all our Medicean manuscripts and our ‘sic. Cod. Vat.’

The annual increase of London

There are tens of thousands who prefer to loaf or starve in the streets rather than to work in comfort in the fields. Nearly one-third of the annual increase of London is due to immigration; and the immigrants are in great measure both destitute and incapable. Is it that our agricultural system is sorely at fault; that labour in the country is become so flat, stale, and unprofitable, with opportunities so wretched, hopes so few, and life so weary and sordid, that the countryman at all risks will crave the crowd, the glare, the excitement of the city, even though it offers an almost certain wretchedness and squalor? If this be so, if our civilisation has come to this, that the labourer finds the country intolerable, a complete resettlement of rural life is at hand.

Democratic governments

But we cannot attribute too much to this; for this vast and rapid increase of great cities is a feature of modern civilization. It is equally marked under despotic or democratic governments, in monarchies and republics, with a peasant proprietary or a system of great domains, on both sides of the Atlantic, in every race, in both hemispheres, in Asia, Africa, and America, as well as in Europe. Paris, St. Petersburg, Berlin, Vienna, Rome, Brussels, New York, Lyons, Marseilles, Milan, Munich sightseeing turkey, Moscow, Turin, Bombay, and New Orleans have increased in fifty years more than London; and Glasgow, Hamburg, Philadelphia, and Chicago increase at a far higher ratio. So the increase of London, tremendous as it is, has nothing exceptional about it but its enormous positive volume. The increase itself, and even the rate of increase, is at bottom the result of modern industrial life and modern mechanical resources.

Of this vast problem, or wilderness of problems, it is enough to touch on one or two; and those rather of the simpler and material sort. Take the single one of water supply, a necessity of life, and the condition of health of inconvenient in supply, very various in quality, and exposed to one or two immense risks of pollution. We are at times drinking water that is minutely but sensibly infected with deposit. Though the recuperative energy of moving water usually restores it to a fairly wholesome condition, we all know that London is not quite safe from a catastrophe. A single epidemic might any summer make the water of London as deadly as the climate of Vera Cruz. Now, the death-rate of Vera Cruz in London would mean an extra mortality of nearly 200,000.

From Justinian to Isaac Comnenus

The fact is that, for the five centuries from Justinian to Isaac Comnenus, the attacks on the empire, from the European side, at any rate, were the attacks of nomad, unorganised, and uncivilised races on a civilised and highly- organised empire. And in spite of anarchy, corruption, and effeminacy at the Byzantine court, civilisation and wealth told in every contest. Greek fire, military science, enormous resources, and the prestige of empire always bore down wild valour and predatory enthusiasm. Just as Russia dominates the Turkoman tribes of Central Asia, as Turkey holds back the valiant Arabs of her eastern frontier, as Egyptian natives with British officers easily master the heroic Ghazis of the Soudan — so the Roman Empire on the Bosphorus beat back Huns, Avars, Persians, Slaves, Bulgarians, Patzinaks, and Russians. We need only to study the history of Russia and of Turkey to learn how the organising ability, the resources, and material arts of great empires outweigh folly, vice, and corruption in the palace.

4. Of course a succession of victorious campaigns implies a succession of valiant armies; and there is nothing on which we need more light than on the exact organisation and national constituents of those Roman armies which crushed Chosroes, Muaviah, Crumn, Samuel, and Hamdanids. They are called conventionally ‘Greeks’; but during the Heraclian, Isaurian ephesus daily tour, and Basilian dynasties there seem to have been no Greeks at all in the land forces. The armies were always composed of a strange collection of races, with different languages, arms, methods of fighting, and types of civilisation. They were often magnificent and courageous barbarians, conspicuous amongst whom were Scandinavians and English, and with them some of the most warlike braves of Asia and of Europe.

National characteristics

The empire made no attempt to destroy their national characteristics, to discourage their native language, religion, or habits. Each force was told off to the service which suited it best, and was trained in the use of its proper weapons. They remained distinct from each other, and wholly distinct from the civil population. But as they could not unite, they seldom became so great a danger to the empire as the Praetorian guard of the Roman army. The organisation and management of such a heterogeneous body of mercenary braves required extraordinary skill; but it was just this skill which the rulers of Byzantium possessed. The bond of the whole was the tradition of discipline and the consciousness of serving the Roman Emperor.

The modern history of Russia and still more the native armies of the British Empire will enable us to understand how the work ©f consolidation was effected. The Queen’s dominions are at this hour defended by men of almost every race, colour, language, religion, costume, and habits. And we may imagine the composite character of the Byzantine armies, if we reflect how distant wars are carried on in the name of Victoria by Hindoos, Musulmans, Pa- thans, Ghoorkas, Afghans, Egyptians, Soudanese, Zanzibaris, Negroes, Nubians, Zulus, Kaffirs, and West Indians, using their native languages, retaining their national habits, and, to a great extent, their native costume.

The Roman Empire was maintained from its centre on the Bosphorus, somewhat as the British Empire is maintained from its centre on the Thames, by wealth, maritime ascendency, the traditions of empire, and organising capacity — always with the great difference that there was no purely Roman nucleus as there is a purely British nucleus, and also that the soldiery of the Roman Empire had no common armament, and was not officered by men of the dominant race, but by capable leaders indifferently picked from any race, except the Latin or the Greek. Dominant race there was none; nation there was none. Roman meant subject of the Emperor; Emperor meant the chief in the vermilion buskins, installed in the Palace on the Bosphorus, and duly crowned by the Orthodox Patriarch in the Church of the Holy Wisdom.

Sails up the Gulf of Aigina

As the traveller for the first time in his life sails up the Gulf of Aigina, and his straining eyes at last behold Attica and Athens, the impression is always the same. How magnificent is the amphitheatre in the centre of which stands the Acropolis; how majestic and upsoaring is the grandest of all ruins on its immortal steep; how incredibly near together are placed these mighty memorials and historic sites; how marvellously small is the stage on which these undying dramas were played! How sublime is ancient Athens in its loneliness: how infinitesimally small is the space it occupied on the earth!

The situation of Athens is far grander than that of Rome, or Florence, perhaps even that of Naples, and of any city in Europe except Constantinople, which is a wholly different thing.

The nearness and the continuity of the mountain amphitheatre round Athens, the great height and grand form of the mountains, the splendid mass and elevation of the Acropolis in the centre, produce an im-pression more strange, simple, and imposing than any city of the West. From the distance at sea, what we behold is a vast ruin on a noble cliff. If we do not so much consider beauty and picturesque charm such as that of Naples, Palermo, Verona, and Venice, but mass, unity, and weight of stroke in the impression, we may well feel that in simple, and it may be almost painful, majesty, nothing in Western Europe can equal the first sight of Athens. And what a mere shelf of rock it looks, buttressed round by mountains on all sides but towards the sea! Like the rock of Gibraltar, Athens stands an imposing mass towering out of the sea, lonely, unapproachable by landward, and hardly habitable apart from the sea; suggesting at first sight far off empire across the sea, useless and unintelligible, except as the impregnable fastness of a sea-born race bulgaria trips.

Attica itself

Attica itself is a mere rocky shelf opening down to the sea, but with nothing around it or behind it landwards, except jagged mountain peaks, defiles, and citadels- held by her enemies and rivals. As we stand on the Propylaea and survey the magnificent panorama of rock, promontory, crags, gorges, and mountain ranges one beyond the other, rising into the sky, 5000, 6000, even 8000 feet, we are looking on soil trodden by the fiercest enemies of Athens in the days of her greatest strength, by Boeotians, Argives, Corinthians, Achaeans, and Arcadians.

An Athenian thus lived ever in full ‘view of the home of his enemies, and could behold some of the most memorable scenes in his own history, and also the birthplace and the tombs of some of his most famous chiefs. The history of Athens, its triumphs and its weakness, had for its cradle one single rocky amphitheatre. And yet, as Comte has finely put it, it was easier for her to conquer a wide empire on the seas, than it was to subdue a neighbouring state within a day’s march of her citadel. She could plant her trophies, her colonies, and her subject cities all over the Mediterranean, from Sicily in the West, to the Propontis on the North, and to Crete and Rhodes in the East; but she never could subdue many a petty republic, whose territory could be seen as the citizens climbed the great staircase to the shrine of Athene.

All citizens were free

Within the city, there were now no slaves, no serfs, no abject and outlaw caste of any kind, except the Jews who formed a separate city of their own. All citizens were free: all without exception had rights of some kind. The churches, monasteries, hospitals, and schools existed, in original design, mainly for the poor, the wretched, and the diseased. Christ loved the weak and the suffering.

And the doors of His house stood ever open to the .weak, the suffering, the halt, the blind, and the lame. The church of the Middle Ages suffered little children to come unto Him. The poorest, the weakest, the most abject, were welcome there. The Priest, the Monk, the Nun taught, clothed, and nursed the children of the poor, and the suffering poor. The leper was tended in lazar-houses, even it might be by kings and princesses, with the devotion of Christian self-sacrifice. For the first time in history there were schools, hospitals, poor-houses, for the most lowly, compassion for the most miserable, and consolation in Heaven for those who had found earth a Hell city tours istanbul.

The old Greek and Roman religion

The old Greek and Roman religion of external cleanness was turned into a sin. The outward and visible sign of sanctity now was to be unclean. No one was clean: but’ the devout Christian was unutterably foul. The tone of the Middle Ages in the matter of dirt was a form of mental disease.

Cooped up in castles and walled cities, with narrow courts and sunless alleys, they would pass day and night in the same clothes, within the same airless, gloomy, windowless, and pestiferous chambers; they would go to bed without night clothes, and sleep under uncleansed sheepskins and frieze rugs; they would wear the same leather, fur, and woollen garments for a lifetime, and even for successive generations; they ate their meals without forks, and covered up the orts with rushes; they flung their refuse out of the window into the street or piled it up in the back-yard; the streets were narrow, unpaved, crooked lanes through which, under the very palace turrets, men and beasts tramped knee-deep in noisome mire.

This was at intervals varied with fetid rivulets and open cesspools; every church was crammed with rotting corpses and surrounded with graveyards, sodden with cadaveric liquids, and strewn with disinterred bones. Round these charnel houses and pestiferous churches were piled old decaying wooden houses, their sole air being these deadly exhalations, and their sole water supply being these polluted streams or wells dug in this reeking soil. Even in the palaces and castles of the rich the same bestial habits prevailed. Prisoners rotted in noisome dungeons under the banqueting hall; corpses were buried under the floor of the private chapel; scores of soldiers and attendants slept in gangs for months together in the same hall or guard-room where they ate and drank, played and fought.

It is one of those problems which still remain for .historians to solve — how the race ever survived the insanitary conditions of the Middle Ages, and still more how it was ever continued — what was the normal death-rate and the ‘ normal birth-rate of cities? The towns were no doubt maintained by immigration, and the rural labourer had the best chance of life, if he could manage to escape death by violence or famine.

The year 1789

The year 1789, more definitely than any other date marks any other transition, marks the close of a society which had existed for some thousands of years as a consistent whole, a society more or less based upon military force, intensely imbued with the spirit of hereditary right, bound up with ideas of theological sanction, sustained by a scheme of supramundane authority; a society based upon caste, on class, on local distinctions and personal privilege, rooted in inequality, political, social, material, and moral; a society of which the hope of salvation was the maintenance of the status quo, and of which the Ten Commandments were Privilege.

And the same year, 1789, saw the official installation of a society which was essentially based on peace, the creed of which was industry, equality, progress; a society where change was the evidence of life, the end of which was social welfare, and the means social co-operation and human equity. Union, communion, equality, equity, merit, labour, justice, consolidation, fraternity — such were the devices and symbols of the new era. It is therefore with justice that modern Europe regards the date 1789 as a date that marks a greater evolution in human history more distinctly than, perhaps, any other single date which could be named between the reign of the first Pharaoh and the reign of Victoria sofia sightseeing.

One of the cardinal pivots in human history we call this epoch, and not at all a French local crisis. The proof of this is complete. All the nations of Europe, and indeed the people of America, contributed their share to the movement, and more or less partook in the movement themselves.

It was hailed as a new dispensation by men of various race; and each nation in turn more or less added to the movement and adopted some element of the movement. The intellectual and social upheaval, which for generations had been preparing the movement, was common to the enlightened spirits of Europe and also to the Transatlantic Continent. The effects of the movement have been shared by all Europe, and the distant consequences of its action are visible in Europe to the third and the fourth generations. And lastly, all the cardinal features of the movement of 1789 are in no sense locally French, or of special national value. They are equally applicable to Europe, and indeed to advanced human societies everywhere. They appeal to men primarily, and to Frenchmen secondarily. They relate to the general society of Europe, and not to specific national institutions.

Common Weal

They concern the transformation of a feudal, hereditary, privileged, authoritative society, based on antique right into a republican, industrial, equalised, humanised society, based on a scientific view of the Common Weal. But this is not a national idea, a French conception of local application. It is European, or rather human. And thus, however disastrous to France may have been the travail of the movement officially proclaimed in 1789, from a European and a human point of view it has abiding and pregnant issues. May we profit by its good whilst we are spared its evil.

Obviously, the salient form of the revolution was French, ultra-French; entirely unique and of inimitable peculiarity in some of its worst as well as its best sides. The delirium, the extravagances, the hysterics, and the brutalities which succeeded one another in a series of strange tragicomic tableaux from 1789 till 1795, were most intensely French, though even they, from Caps of Liberty to Festival of Pikes, have had a singular fascination for the revolutionists of every race. But the picturesque and melodramatic accessories of the revolution have been so copiously over-coloured by the scene-painters and stage- carpenters of history, that we are too often apt to forget how essentially European the revolution was in all its deeper meanings.

A dozen kings and statesmen throughout Europe were, in a way, endeavouring to enter on the same path as Louis xvi. with Turgot and Necker. In spite of the contrast between the government of England and the government of France, between the condition of English industry and that of France, Walpole and Pitt offer many striking points of analogy with Turgot and Necker.

Michelet’s History of France

Michelet’s History of France down to Francis I., although it is a collection of brilliant pensies, caractHes, and aperqus rather than a continuous history, is a fine and stirring work of special value to the English reader. It is now sixty years old; but a century will not destroy its living inspiration. Hallam, the very antithesis of Michelet, one who was never once betrayed into an epigram or fired into poetry, has acknowledged in fit language the beauty and vigour of his French competitor.

There are magnificent chapters on the eleventh, twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries; and his picture of physical France, his story of Charles the Great, of Louis the Fat, Philip Augustus, St. Louis, Philip the Fair, of the Crusades, the Albigenses, the Communes, his chapters on Gothic architecture, on the English wars, and especially on Jeanne Dare, are unsurpassed in the pages of modern historical literature. Michelet has some of the moral passion and insight into character of Tacitus, no little of the picturesque colour of Carlyle, and more than the patriotic glow of Livy. Alas! had he only something of the patient reserve of Thucydides, the simplicity and precision of Caesar, the learning and harmonious completeness of Gibbon! He is a poet, a moralist, a preacher, rather than a historian in the modern sense of the word. Yet with all his shortcomings (and his later work has but flashes of his old force), Michelet’s picture of mediaeval France will long remain an indispensable book private turkey tours.

Dean Milman’s Latin Christianity

Dean Milman’s Latin Christianity, which appeared forty years ago, just misses, it may be, being one of ‘ the great books of history ’ —but will long hold its own as an almost necessary complement to Gibbon’s Decline and Fall. It was avowedly designed as its counterpart, its rival, and in one sense its antidote. And we cannot deny that this aim has been, to a great extent, attained. It covers almost exactly the same epoch; it tells the same story; its chief characters are the same as in the work of Gibbon. But they are all viewed from another point of view and are judged by a different standard.

Although the period is the same, the personages the same, and even the incidents are usually common to both histories, the subject is different, and the plot of the drama is abruptly contrasted. Gibbon recounts the dissolution of a vast system: Milman recounts the development of another vast system: first the victim, then the rival, and ultimately the successor of the first. Gibbon tells us of the decline and fall of the Roman empire: Milman narrates the rise and constitution of the Catholic Church — the religious and ecclesiastical, the moral and intellectual movements which sprang into full maturity as the political empire of Rome passed through its long transformation of a thousand years.

The scheme and ground-plan of Milman are almost perfect. Had he the prodigious learning, the superhuman accuracy of. Gibbon, that infallible good sense, that perennial humour, that sense of artistic proportion, the Dean might have rivalled the portly ex-captain of yeomanry, the erudite recluse in his Swiss retreat. He may not be quite strong enough for his giant’s task. But no one else has even essayed to bend the bow which the Ulysses of Lausanne hung up on one memorable night in June 1787 in his garden study; none has attempted to recount the marvellous tale of the consolidation of the Christianity of Rome over the whole face of Western Europe during a clear period of a thousand years.