Glorvina

“ You know but little of the sentiment which now pervades my whole being, and blends with every atom of my frame, if you suppose I have formally told Glorvina I loved her, or that I appear even to suspect that I am (rapturous thought!) beloved in return. On the contrary, the same mysterious delicacy, the same delicious reserve still exist. It is a sigh, a glance, a broken sentence, an imperceptible motion, (imperceptible to all eyes but our own) that betrays us to each other. ”

“ I walked as though I scarcely touched the earth, and my spirit seemed to ascend like the lark which soared over my head to hail the splendour of the dewy dawn. There is a fairy vale in the little territories of Inismore, which is almost a miniature Tempe, and which is indeed the only spot on the peninsula where the luxuriant charms of the most bounteous nature are evidently improved by taste and cultivation. In a word, it is a spot sacred to the wanderings of Glorvina. ”

“ I observe he goes more frequently to the post than usual; and one morning I perceived Glorvina eagerly watching his return from the summit of a rock. Whence can this solicitude arise? Her father may have some correspondence on business—she can have none.
LETTER XXII. TO J. D. ESQ., M. P. This creature is deep in the metaphysics of love. She is perpetually awakening ardour by restraint, and stealing enjoyment from privation. She still persists in bringing the priest with her to the drawing-desk; but it is evident she does not the less enjoy that casual absence which leaves us sometimes alone ”

“ The rest of this province to the east and the north of the Cormons-Gradišca-Monfalcone line, which comprises the mountainous region, is inhabited by 148,500 Slovenes and 17,000 Italians, of whom 14,000 are in the town of Gorica, where they constitute half the population.... The Slovenes are an advanced and civilized people, acutely conscious of their racial solidarity with the other Yugoslav peoples. We therefore ask that this district should be reunited to our State.... Istria is inhabited by Slavs and Italians. ”

“ Some years later his remains were transferred to his home town, New Lexington, Ohio, and in its modest little cemetery is seen above his last resting-place a plain block of granite which bears beneath the deathless hero’s name the simple but well-earned tribute—Liberator of Bulgaria.
On the left bank of the Danube, slightly northeast of Plevna, is the little town of Giurgevo, which was founded centuries ago by that wonderful commercial metropolis, Genoa. Like its great rival, Venice, it was long celebrated for its commercial and military activities in the Levant and in the Crimea. ”

“ I mused an instant on this great landmark of European history, and following the finger of an old peasant who accompanied us, I looked eastwards, and saw Deligrad, the scene of one of the bloodiest fights that preceded the resurrection of Servia as a principality. The Morava glistened in its wide valley like a silver thread in a carpet of green, beyond which the dark mountains of Rudnik rose to the north; while the frontiers of Bosnia, Albania, Macedonia, and Bulgaria, walled in the prospect. ”

“ Glenarvan found no difficulty in procuring two fleet horses, and he and Paganel were soon within the walls of the great city, due to the enterprising genius of Valdivia, the valiant comrade of the Pizarros.
How it was shorn of its ancient splendor! Often pillaged by the natives, burned in 1819, it lay in desolation and ruins, its walls still blackened by the flames, scarcely numbering 8,000 inhabitants, and already eclipsed by Talcahuano. The grass was growing in the streets, beneath the lazy feet of the citizens, and all trade and business, indeed any description of activity, was impossible. ”

“ The roofs of Morgenthal were plain to their gaze, and the tinkling of goats' bells broke the silence.
"Austria!" cried Gloria.
"Austria, Vienna, Paris, London," he said, "Southampton, and then the very first boat bound for little old New York. But in our hearts Grimland—always Grimland." ”

“ It came to pass in those times that the inhabitants of the city of Modena, Guelfs and Ghibellines, came to dissension and civic strife among themselves, as it is the custom of the cities of Lombardy to assemble and fight on the piazza of the commonwealth; and many days they were opposed the one to the other without either side being able to win the victory. It came to pass that the Guelfs sent for succour to Bologna, and especially to the Guelf refugees from Florence, which straightway, as needy folk, and making war for their own behoof, went thither on horse and on foot, as each best could. ”

“ The whole Southern Slav provinces of Austria-Hungary were carried off their feet by a wave of enthusiasm for the allies, and an impossibly strained situation was reached when the Government of Vienna placed itself in violent conflict with Serbia, vetoed her expansion to the sea, insisted upon creating a phantom Albanian State, egged on Bulgaria against her allies, and finally mobilised in order to impose its will upon the Serbs. Every peasant in the Slavonic South naturally contrasted Magyar misrule in Croatia with the splendid achievements of his Serb kinsmen across the frontier. ”

“ I only don’t know whether I can come myself. I am old, and fear the crossing of the Volga.”
“Without you, Granny, Vera and I will not go. We, too, are afraid of crossing the Volga.”
“Be ashamed of yourself, Marfa Vassilievna. What are you afraid of? I will fetch you myself with our boat. Our rowers are singers.”
“Under no circumstances will I cross with you. You never sit quiet in the boat for a minute. What have you got alive in that handkerchief? See, Granny, I am sure it’s a snake.”
“I have brought you a carp, Tatiana Markovna, which I have caught myself. ”

“ It was a melancholy spectacle to see a man of Giglioli's reputation saying that Dubrovnik, the refuge of Slav culture in the age of darkness and the place in which Slav literature so gloriously arose, was, forsooth, throughout its history always Italian in culture and in literature. "Among thinking people in Italy," proclaims the Professor, "there are indeed but few who will abandon to the Balkan processes a region and a people which have always been possessed by Italian culture and which constitute the necessary wall of Italy and Western Europe against the inroads of the half-barbaric East." ”

“ The truth was that in making the atrocious doings in Bulgaria the main object of his appeal, Mr. Gladstone had both displayed a sure instinct as to the most effective method of popular approach, and at the same time did justice to his own burning and innate hatred of all cruelty and oppression, whether in Bourbon or Bashi-Bazouk. Humanity was at the root of the whole matter; and the keynote of this great crusade was the association of humanity with a high policy worthy of the British name. ”

“ Now, at a turn of the road, opens our first glimpse of the ancient duchy of St. Sava—or, as it is now more generally known, the Herzegovina—a magnificent vista of rocky mountains rising beyond the yet unseen valley of the Narenta, their dark blue shadows golden-fringed by the setting sun. The trees become more southern in their character; here and there are fine Spanish chestnuts; on a height to the right are the pines of an Italian landscape; wild vine becomes plentiful once more; we pass a Herzegovinian peasant in a peaked cap of Dalmatian character ”

“ Yet the climate of the modern Bulgaria, in its widest sense, does not differ in any considerable degree from that of the Croats, except that parts of the Bulgarian area are hotter. Both are lands of vines and fig trees. Yet the language is almost the same. The modern Bulgar can talk with the Croat without an interpreter. Whence, then, this startling divergence of attire? The reason is to be sought far away in the dim twilight of history. Originally the Bulgars were not a Sclavonic people. Their kinship lies with mysterious Huns and Tartars. ”

“ And when the French met with the Guelf refugees from Florence and from Tuscany, they seemed to them such fine men, and so rich in horses and in arms, that they marvelled greatly, that being in banishment from their cities they could be so nobly accoutred, and their company highly esteemed our exiles. And afterwards they took them round by Lombardy to Bologna, and by Romagna and by the March, and by the Duchy, for they could not pass through Tuscany, forasmuch as it all pertained to the Ghibelline party, and was under the lordship of Manfred ”

“ We must not spare ourselves the realisation of the bitter truth that the greater part of Styria and Carinthia, and the whole of Carniola, Gorizia, Gradisca, and Istria, with the avenue to the Adriatic, are lost to us. ”

“ Yawning, throwing of dice, gestures in speaking, and swearing, served as pretexts for distinguishing the one half of Italy from the other. So late as the middle of the fifteenth century, the Ghibellines of Milan pulled down the figure of Christ from the high altar of Crema, and burnt it, because the face was turned towards the Guelf shoulder. [2] The Grimaldi were strong Guelfs; the county of Nice was so as well, but the town was Ghibelline. The Lascaris of Tende and Ventimiglia, the Dorias of Dolceacqua and Oneglia were Ghibelline. ”

“ Italian is the tongue of the citizens of Gorizia whose shops are sheltered by its street arcades. Slavonic, we conceive, will some day be the tongue of the little children who, in all the joy of a state of nature, as naked as any other mammals, creep, as merrily though more slowly than the lizards, over the grass and stones of the castle-hill of Gorici. Anyhow Gorizia is, like Palermo of old, the city of the threefold tongue. But the place itself is, considering its history, a little disappointing. Nothing indeed is lacking in the way of position. ”

“ The Lombard or Guelph league consisted, after the accession of Florence, essentially of the three great cities—Milan, Bologna, and Florence; the Imperial or Ghibelline league, of Verona, Pisa, and Siena. Venice and Genoa, both nominally Guelph, are in furious contention always for sea empire; while Pisa and Genoa are in contention, not so much for empire, as honour. Whether the trade of the East was to go up the Adriatic, or round by the Gulf of Genoa, was essentially a mercantile question ”

“ Servia was styled by the Romans Suedia, the district peopled by the Suevi before they were driven northwards to their final settlement in the territory now called Sweden. Montenegro literally indicates “black mountain.” Bosnia is the country traversed by the river Bosna; Moldavia, that traversed by the Moldau; and Moravia, that traversed by the Morava. Bulgaria is a modern corruption of Volgaria, meaning the country peopled by the Volsci; while Roumania was anciently a Roman province. Turkey is more correctly written Turkia, the country of the Turks. ”

“ One meets many partisans of Bulgaria. English people naturally like the Bulgars at first sight. The Bulgar is a good fighting man, and that makes a strong appeal to the man of the world. He is simple, not bumptious, gives himself no airs of traditional culture or modern education, and therefore recommends himself. The cynical and false opinion of 1914-15 regarding Bulgaria—that she would come in to the war on the side that bid most money—is forgotten. And the disloyalties of Bulgaria, disloyalty to the Russia who set her free and to her erstwhile ally Serbia, are overlooked. ”

“ The leading families would even intermarry; Signor Gelletich, Lovrana's Italian potentate, gave his sister to the Croat chieftain. But, as we have said, idylls had to end when in November 1918 the Italian army came upon the scene. Abbazia and Volosca and Lovrana were painted thoroughly in the Italian colours. Public buildings, private houses—irrespective of their inmates—had patches of green, white and red bestowed upon them. Everything was painted—some occupation had to be found for the military, who appeared to be more numerous than the inhabitants. ”

“ The eastern boundary of Bulgaria is the Black Sea; on the west is the Kingdom of Servia, and on the south the Rhodope chain of mountains divides it from the Turkish province of Eastern Rumelia, or Macedonia, as that portion situated south of Bulgaria is commonly called. The Balkan Mountains, like the Alleghanies in Pennsylvania, bisect the country and divide it into two provinces. In some parts we find beautiful undulating landscapes and at intervals long expanses of elevated plateaus varying from twelve hundred to two thousand feet above the sea, which lie between the mountain ranges. ”

“ Here, among lofty rocky mountains, we are in a centre of romance and of legend. To a craggy rock, standing about twenty feet above the water that eddies round its base, attaches a story of love and revenge; the ruins of Galambócz (Golubacz) on the left, and of Lászlóvár on the right, remind us of the days when these were rival fortresses, guarding what was recognized to be “the key of the Danube” ”

“ Another famous saying of his was in speaking of Montenegro, its past and present rulers. "This land," Gugga would say in all seriousness, "was first accursed by God, its maker; then by Diocletian, then by the Sultan, then by our Gospodar (Prince) , and lastly by Gospodin Milovan." Gospodin (Mr.) Milovan was the last Governor of Podgorica, a man always endeavouring to introduce modern improvements into the town, much to the disgust of its inhabitants who are nothing if not conservative, and amongst other sufferers was our friend Gugga. ”