a marked superiority over Persia, and of the Mahommedans passing beyond the Caucasus, and by means of the Tartars threatening the independence of Russia itself. She therefore seized the opportunity of Turkey being engaged in the Persian war to attack the Tartars, and she thus renewed altogether that warlike policy of Peter the Great, directed towards the Black Sea rather than the Baltic.

Towards the end of May, 1736, the Russian army under the command of Marshal Munch, assembled to the number of 54,000 men, at Zaritsinka, near the course of the Dnieper. Munch followed the left bank of that river, until he reached the lines of Perecop, which were considered impregnable by the Crim Tartars. These famous lines consisted of a deep ditch, with wall and rampart, extending across the isthmus, and defending the Crimea, as a similar one across the isthmus of Corinth defended the Morea. Although 100,000 Tartars were said to have gathered to the defence of this entrenchment, Munch with his much smaller force did not hesitate to attack it; and he came up on the 28th of May, whilst the Turks were merely hoisting the standard of war at Constantinople. They never were in time for the first attacks in a spring campaign. Munch poured with his army into the Crimea, and signalized his presence by the most ruthless ravages. He destroyed everywhere life and habitation, destroyed the palace and garden of the Moslem king at Baydjeserai, and a magnificent library with it. His lieutenants took at the same time several important fortresses, of which Azoff was the principal; and then Munch evacuated the Crimea, which he was not yet in force to conquer or to keep. Towards the close of the year the Turks were allowed to take their revenge, the Tartar chief or Sultan of the Crimea being changed, the new chief led his army into the Ukraine, defeated a body of 5,000 Russians, which in vain attempted to defend it, and ravaged the province, bringing off 30,000 slaves. On this occasion the Turks and their viziers did everything in their power to conciliate and keep peace with the Emperor of Austria, Charles the Sixth. But that prince, won by the blandishments of Russia, and desirous of claiming for himself a share of Turkey to compensate his losses elsewhere, conIcluded the first serious alliance between Austria and Russia for the conquest of a portion of the Ottoman Empire. In vain did the Austrian ministers remonstrate with their sovereign. Prince Eugene, who could alone effectually do this, was no more. As, however, there was a place and persons appointed for negotiations, they continued. It was, however, a mere farce, for the Russians, supported by the Austrian envoys made such demands as caused the Turkish envoys to stare with stupor. They asked nothing less than the whole Crimea, and the Koubân, the entire land of the Tartars; moreover, the suzereignty of Moldavia and Wallachia, and free passage for fleets throughout the Bosphorus and Dardanelles. "What you ask," replied the simple Ottoman, "is so contrary to treaties and to oaths, that you offend the injunc

tions of your gospel, and the principle of Grotius, as well as of common justice.'

To so home a taunt the Austro-Russian had nothing to reply, save that the Turks went against their own Koran in not persisting to convert Christians by the sabre. "The text of the Koran," the Turks rejoined, "was applicable solely to the idolator, not to the followers of Christ and of the Jewish Scriptures, whose demands for peace, on the contrary, the Koran enjoins the Turks to receive and to accept." Such was the remarkable answer of the Ottomans, who had just as much right and reason on their side in 1637 against Russia and Austria, as they have in 1853.

The Austrians had afterwards deep reason to repent their having joined Russia in these ambitious attempts upon Turkey. For Europe had no longer Prince Eugene to command its armies, nor the courage nor experience of the officers formed by Eugene and Marlborough. The Court of Vienna, itself full of divisions and weaknesses, could not decide between different generals, but employed two or three, all jealous of each other, and all equally incapable. They commenced their campaigns with confidence and arrogance, one marching into Bosnia, another into Servia, a third overrunning Wallachia, without plan, or concert, or prudence. The army that entered Servia proceeded so far as to capture Nissa, but in so doing it left the fortress of Widdin behind it, on which it was obliged to turn; and it failed to take Widdin, whilst it re-lost Nissa. Whilst twenty years of peace had thus deteriorated the Austrian armies, the Turkish troops had gained considerably in skill and discipline under the instruction of the Count De Bonneval, who had been obliged to seek refuge in Turkey, and who instructed the Turkish generals in their first military tactics, which in Eugene's time they had wanted.

In Bosnia the Prince of Hildburghausen, commanding the Imperialists, laid siege to Banyalouka, but the Turkish general raised a levée en masse of the soldiers of the country, and with these completely defeated Hildburghausen. Ahmed Kapriuli recaptured Nissa about the same time. Gilani was beaten in Wallachia. And, in fact, the Turks recovered so much of their old superiority, that they refused all proposals of peace that did not include the restoration of Belgrade by the Austrians, and of Azoff by the Russians.

Whilst the war was carried on in this uncertainty, Field-Marshal Wallis, with about 60,000 men, thought that it was time to emulate some of the great feats of Eugene. He knew that the Grand Vizier was marching upon Semendra, and he resolved to attack him. This he managed to do with his cavalry alone, the infantry not having come up. And he committed the fault the very week after that he had declared in one of his despatches to Vienna, that it was quite useless to attack the Turks with cavalry alone, an arm in which they had become so superior. The battle took place at Kroska on the 23rd of July, 1739. The cuirassiers of Palfi had alone issued from a gorge, when they were attacked by the Ottomans, slaughtered, or driven back upon

their comrades, who, in a narrow defile, could not preserve order; the infantry came up afterwards, for the battle lasted from morning till sunset. The Austrians were driven back to the Danube, leaving 6000 dead and almost as many wounded. Five of the Imperial generals were slain. Thus on the field of Kroska, and in the preceding campaign, were thrown away all the advantages and superiority won for the Austrian arms by Prince Eugene twenty years previous. Peace was the consequence of this decisive victory. The Treaty of Belgrade was signed soon after between Austria and the Porte, the chief condition being the restoration to Turkey of that city, as well as all the territories south of the Danube, given up at the Treaty of Passarowitz.

Peace was at the same time concluded with Russia, the latter power not indeed restoring Azoff, but stipulating to destroy its fortifications, and leave its territory uncultured and depopulated. Such was the kind of resuscitation achieved by the arms of the Ottomans for their empire towards the year 1740.

ST. PETER'S TO ST. JANUARIUS'.

WHEN you want to get away from Rome, of course every bodyelse wants to get away too ; and as everybody else is more provident and decided in his plans than you are, he has taken the corner place of the coupée of the Naples diligence at least a fortnight, if not three weeks, before you think of enquiring.

When you find that everybody else has taken all the places in the diligence, you have to look about for somebody else in the same predicament with yourself, with whom you make a party, and hire a special carriage. My lot was cast with Reginald, the coffeeplanter, and his cousin, the future Lord-lieutenant of the county ofBut the carriages hold four, and the difficulty was to find a fourth man to lighten the expense of post-horses. A day or two before we had to start, two other college friends arrived from Florence, on their way to Ceylon; the excellent and stouthearted Joe C, celebrated for shooting Mexican highwaymen, right and left, and the lively and agreeable author of Rambles and Scrambles in North and South America. We were now five, and had to fill up two carriages. We entered into negotiations with a couple of Americans, but did not trade; partly, that we did not much like their looks, and partly that they had an impression we someway meant to take them in. Then we settled with an artist and his consumptive brother, who broke a blood-vessel the night before we had to start; so that finally we went five in our two carriages. There was less economy in this management than could have been wished, but then there was all the more room for our legs.

The evening before, I dined with a great lady, who had the art

of drawing agreeable society up a great many pair of stairs, which, not the stairs, but the agreeable society, is a rare article among the heterogeneous hole-and-corner lodging house scrambles of British hospitality in Rome. Unfortunately she had not one of her agreeable evening parties that evening, and she kindly took me to a disagreeable one, given by a would-be great lady, who had taken a palace, and was making an elaborate effort with two hopeless daughters. One of these was sleek and stupid; the other, skinny and wriggling, with anxious red eyes. Among the British youth of Rome, they went by the names of the ferret and guinea-pig. Mrs. Gynne Goggleford was the would-be great lady in name; and when we entered her spacious and splendid palace drawing-room, she was standing at her tea-tableI should rather say, she was ducking, and diving, and writhing at it in the agony of graceful tea-making. As we came in, she thought it necessary to inform us that she had followed her ladyship's example in making her own tea, instead of having it done by her servants, but she did not tell us why she had not sat down to do it, and drawn a comfortable circle round the table. I was introduced with an apology; "she was only too happy to receive any of her ladyship's guests. She had had the pleasure of meeting me too at Mr. Wattlechop's, had she not?"

The company stood and sat about uncomfortably, and seemed too few for the great drawing-room; very few of them knew each other; and it seemed as if Mrs. Gynne Goggleford had picked, and culled, and scraped up the waifs and strays of Rome, without any reference to how they might be amused by sitting and standing about in her drawing-room for two or three hours.

But the principal feature of the evening, was the culmination and wind-up of the elaborate effort this worthy lady had been making with her hopeless daughters, during the Roman season. The subject of this supernatural struggle was the ferret, whose anxious pink eyes looked still more pink and anxious on the now impending separation from the much cherished object, who was to depart from Rome on the morrow, and say farewell, in a more or less promising manner this very evening. The Honourable Mr. Softon is the object. He is the heir-apparent of an Irish peer-a slender, shangling, slack-backed, unhappy stripling of seventeen. He has a pink, blue-eyed, innocent countenance, a head of wavy flaxen hair, and his upper lip is adorned by a delicate fringe of milk-white down. He is in the period of male existence which corresponds with boarding-school misshood, and is travelling with his tutor, between school and college; or, what is more probable, perhaps, between apron-strings and college. Poor boy! the gaptoothed ogress, and her pink-eyed daughter have both been flattering him, and making love to him desperately for two months. The tutor is a dry man in spectacles, who has been wearing out his soul and body on churches and monuments; and in the innocence of his heart, he has permitted these two disinterested women to comfort the intervals of his penance. His male acquaintances have joked him about it, and now that he has to stand up before

the toothless affectionate smiles of the mother, and the languishing tenderness of her mournful ferret, as they bid him farewell and hope he may soon be back from Naples, he looks as if his back was going to break in several places, and his loosely hung legs and wings to drop about the drawing-room floor. However, we all got away safely at last, and good naturedly congratulated poor Softon on his conquest, as we walked along the lamp-lit Corso.

I now went home, dressed in my travelling costume, and transported my effects to the hotel from which our party were to start on the following dawn; for as I have an objection to getting up in the middle of the night, and as it only wanted four or five hours to the time of departure, I preferred not to go to bed at all. I disposed myself to sleep on a sofa of their drawing-room, but did not sleep; on the contrary, I wore away the hours with cigars and brandy and water, in the attempt to convert an intelligent but sceptical Irish major of Indian dragoons to Christianity. He was not to start on the morrow, but being a gentlemen of cosmopolitan hours, and as I did not go to sleep, and the brandy bottle held out to the end, he was good enough to cheer me with his society during the silent hours, and went to bed when we set off.

The

Of course we did not, nor could be expected to get away without a good deal of waiting, for unpunctual post-horses, and impatience, and British oaths, and Italian importunity. At length, however, we rumbled out of the moist gray labyrinth of rainy Rome, passed the Colosseum dim in showery dawn, and crossed the blank and desolate Campagna, scarred with ruin. weather cleared a little as the sun looked over the mountainshoulder, up which we crept to Alba Longa, which seems very long to this day, and has pretty peeps of the lower country, and the sea, through gaps in the straggling street. I saw the less of it as the companion who had fallen to my share, was the future Lord-lieutenant of who had pulled out a very small pack of cards and persuaded me to give him a lesson in whist, and we were dealing out the opposite seat, and losing our cards down among the straw, as we played double dummy with a commentary under great disadvantages.

We breakfasted in our carriages to lose no time; paid like Englishmen, and went at a furious pace up and down the undulating road among the hills-then down among the Pontine pools and canals skirting below the mountain-brows. At Terracina, we stopped on the borders of both the Papal and Mediterranean sea. There were some impudent and mendicant custom-house officers and police, and a picturesque leaning tower of rock standing forward out of the face of the cliff. But, above all, at Terracina there is an authoritatively self-recommending wheel-greaser, who assures travellers that there is some inherent quality in the atmosphere of Terracina which makes it necessary that all carriages passing through should have their wheels anointed, whether they otherwise seem to want it or not. On our declining his services, he almost threatened our lives; but we assured him that if he came