in 1883, and in 1885 "Ferishtah's Fancies," parables in Eastern garb, least attractive in thought and expression of the shorter poems. "Parleyings with Certain People of Importance in their Day; to wit, Bernard de Mandeville, Daniel Bartolis, Christopher Smart, George Bubb Dodington, Francis Furini, Gerard de Lairesse, and Charles Avison, introduced by a Dialogue between Apollo and the Fates; concluded by another between John Fust and His Friends" (1887), was said on its advent to be darker than the darkest of his works; but by students it is now acknowledged to be worthy to rank with his best works, dealing with most curiously interesting problems and made vivid by some of his most eloquent passages. 66 A last volume, "Asolando; Facts and Fancies," was announced for publication on the day of his death. It is named from Asolo, the place of residence of the lady to whom it is dedicated, with some reference to the meaning of the word asolando, roving about in the open air. It contains songs and stories in various keys. Browning was always fond of odd stories about the popes, and here he has two, "The Pope and the Net" and "The Bean Feast." Muckle-Mouth Meg" is a new version of an old Scottish story, the heroine of which was the daughter of Sir Gideon Murray, of Elibank. The little poem "Arcades Ambo," like "Donald "in "Jocoseria," may be commended to the attention of Bergh societies. Some of the poems seem specially significant, now that we know they were written so close to the coming of the great silence. Such are the Prologue, written Sept. 6, describing how the charm has faded out of nature for the poet in his age, but suggesting the consolation that lies in the significance of nature, In the same strain is "Reverie," where he expresses his confidence in the supreme love and the higher life: 66 Somewhere, below, above, Shall a day dawn-this I knowWhen Power, which vainly strove My weakness to o'erthrow, Shall triumph. I breathe, I move, I truly am, at last! For a veil is rent between Me and the truth which passed Fitful, half guessed, half seen, Grasped at, not gained, held fast. I for my race and me, Shall apprehend life's law; In the legend of man shall see Writ large what small I saw In my life's tale; both agree. When see? When there dawns a day, Where the strange and new have birth, The Epilogue closes with stanzas recalling Prospice," quoted above-a song of triumph at approaching death, where he writes of himself as One who never turned his back, but marched breast forward, Never doubted clouds would break, Never dreamed, though right were worsted, wrong would triumph, Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better, No, at noonday in the bustle of man's work-time Greet the unseen with a cheer! Bid him forward, breast and back as either should be, "Strive and thrive!" cry 66 Speedfight on, fare ever There as here! After the death of his wife, Mr. Browning never returned to Florence. He divided his time between Italy and England, usually passing the season in London, and going much into society, where his bright and genial manners made him a general favorite. The following description of his personal appearance was given by Bayard Taylor years ago: "In his lively, cheerful manner, quick voice, and perfect selfpossession, he made the impression of an American, rather than an Englishman. His hair was already streaked with gray about the temples. His complexion was fair, with perhaps the faintest olive tinge; eyes large, clear, and gray; nose strong and well cut; mouth full and rather broad, and chin pointed, though not prominent. His forehead broadened rapidly upward from the outer angle of the eyes, slightly retreating. The strong individuality which marks his poetry was expressed not only in his face and head but in his whole demeanor. He was about the medium height, strong in the shoulders, but slender at the waist, and his movements expressed a combination of vigor and elasticity." Serv His home in Venice was with his son at the Palazzo Rezzonico, on the Grand Canal, where he was taken ill Nov. 27. His illness proved to be a serious attack of bronchitis, and in a few days an affection of the heart was developed ; but Mr. Browning refused to believe that he was not growing better, and his friends were not prepared for the end that came so soon. ices were held at the Palazzo Rezzonico on Sunday, Dec. 15, in the presence of a large company of English and American residents, and foreign diplomats and officials. The coffin was carried on a barge to the central chapel of St. Michael's cemetery, whence it was taken to England. It was at first intended to bury the poet beside his wife at Florence, but the offer of a grave in Westminster Abbey from the Dean of Westminster, was accepted and Browning's resting-place in the Poet's Corner is not far from Chaucer's. recalling the lines of Landor: Since Chaucer was alive and hale, Browning made it a rule never to speak in public; but Edmund Yates tells an amusing story of an occasion when he allowed himself to break this rule: "One Saturday afternoon, about twelve years ago, he was crossing Hyde Park, walking homeward, and stood a few minutes listening to an address from one of the pestilent atheistic lecturers in those parts. He waited till the fellow had finished, and then sprang on the vacated chair: Now, my friends, you have heard him, listen to me.' He held the attention of his strange audience for some ten minutes, a rapt oration flowing free with such extraordinary effect that the populace turned upon orator number one, and literally chased him from the neighborhood of his exploits." Toward America and Americans Mr. Brown-. ing always displayed the warmest friendship. In an article entitled "English Opinion on the American War," in the Atlantic Monthly," for February, 1866, William Michael Rossetti wrote: "Within my own personal circle of observation, I could name but one, or at the utmost two, besides myself, who in the main, with some variations, according to the changing current of events, clung to the cause of the North in its entirety. The first of these two persons is a painter of great distinction, and a man in other respects of very thinking and serious mind, well known by name, and partially by his works, to such Americans as take an interest in fine art. The second of the two is one of our very greatest living poets." Being recently asked if he were willing to tell, after this lapse of time, who these two persons were, Mr. Rossetti replies: "It was written so long ago that I have had to search my memory somewhat, in order to say who were the great artist and the great author of whom I spoke as having been stanch to the good cause of the Northern States. On reflection, I have little doubt that the artist was Holman Hunt (unless possibly it was Ford Madox Brown). The author (I am practically certain) was Robert Browning-a name I have always pronounced with reverence and love, and most especially so now that the world has to mourn his death.' By a great number of critics and readers, Browning is regarded as the greatest English poet since Shakespeare; but it is the opinion of others that, while the keenness of his insight, the profundity of his thought, his wideness of range, and his variety of subject, would entitle him to very high rank-perhaps the highest-yet his obscurity of expression, the carelessness and awkward mannerisms of his constructions, and the general inelegance of his style, forbid his assignment to so high a place. To still others, whose definitions of poetry make it an art appealing directly to the feelings and excluding all subtleties of thought and metaphysical inquiry, he seems scarcely to deserve the name of poet, but to be a subtle thinker throwing the results of his study, which are essentially prose, into a form more or less rhythmical, and thereby making them needlessly obscure. This may be said to have been the prevailing view of his work until within twenty-five years. He was deemed rather a poet for poets than for the generality of readers; and indeed a new school of poetic taste had to grow up before he could be regarded otherwise. Appreciation of his work has shown most striking progress during the past ten years; and he has probably more readers and admirers in the United States than in his own country. Publishers report a regular and steady call for his works, which have entered the list of" standards" on their records, whereas ten years ago a new book of his met with a very moderate demand, and the sale soon dropped to an insignificant figure. The current criticisms on Browning's work are that it is obscure, rough, unmusical, digressive, redundant; that he lacked the faculty of rejection, thereby missing the artistic symmetry that was possible to him; that he dealt with themes too abstruse for poetry: all of which, except the last, are doubtless true in some measure; the last, of course, being matter of opinion, and depending upon the critic's point of view. Much of the obscurity is due to little mannerisms of expression, inversions, and ellipses, to which the reader soon grows accustomed; but much also is due to condensation, and much to the unfamiliarity of his thought and the unusual themes with which he deals. A great thinker must have his own vocabulary and his own style. and one can not deal with metaphysical questions in the language of the wayfaring man. His careless versification is due in great part to the rapidity of his work in his later years, which is, perhaps, in part responsible for the frequent ugly and prosaic phraseology that is such a rock of offense to the lovers of smooth and elegant verse; but much of it seems due to a preference for the homely and the forcible in language. Yet while those who love his work best could well spare the obscurity and the roughness of phrase and word, they would not be willing to spare the digressiveness and the redundancy; for it is not the unmeaning wandering of mere diffuseness. Every digression throws, some sidelight on the theme, or has some independent suggestion in it that adds to the wealth of ideas in the page. His thoughts are not like figures seen dimly because the light over them is dim; but rather like the figures in a vast, live, surging crowd, hard to see, not because every one does not stand full of life and action, but because it is hustled and jostled by the many other forms that crowd around it and disturb its hold on our sight. The theory that true poetry appeals to the untutored sensibilities of men, that it is at its best among simple people and in primitive times, that it must decay among the refinements of a cultivated society and disappears with the advent of a spirit of metaphysical investigation and psychologic subtlety-such a theory has a place in the philosophy that regards the human race as fallen from a once high degree of perfection and ever lapsing farther away in its natural state from its original susceptibility to purity and truth. But it is out of place in that view of the plan of creation which regards the race as progressing by constant development to more complex adaptations of body and mind, and thence constantly more susceptible to the subtleties of a literature that deals with ever more delicate problems of human thought and experience. The influence of Browning has advanced as this philosophy has advanced in the thought of men and changed their point of view of the problems of life. That it was open to Robert Browning to become a master of poetic expression and to deal with ordinary themes of poetry in a style both original and popular, is shown by his acted dramas and his best-known lyrics. While they speak to the immediate apprehension of an audience and appeal by action and incident to the general intelligence, it is never in a conventional way or by sacrifice of individuality. There are always unusual phases of character and complexities of motive that make the work peculiarly his own. But he chose rather to be a student of the strange and grotesque in character and conduct, to trace the intricate windings of purpose and go deeper into the moving forces of a man's strange acts than the man's own consciousness could carry himself. He likes the inconsistent, to exhibit the triumph of the notions, the prejudices, the small vanities, the obliquities of moral sense over the plain, straightforward commonsensible forces of right and custom and interest. He takes us often to the point of view of the squinting vision, and shows us how the squint modifies the view. Yet this is not his chief characteristic. There is no writer who has approached the human soul on so many sides, portraying the influences of its environment while recognizing its essential kinship. Few have ranged through a greater variety of experience and emotion and united with so wide and close a sympathy such intense moral earnestness. He seemed to grow impatient of the work of the dramatist so far as it consists in evolving character by varied situations and the influence of minor actors. He preferred to take some one man in some moment when the forces that have been gaining strength in the unnoticed workings of the thoughts and passions suddenly break out in the stress of some crisis and assert their irresistible power; and so the dramatic monologue became more and more his favorite form, because here he need concern himself only with the intricacies of the thought, the method of the spirit's dealing with itself. It is perhaps the soul of all great drama that it gives intellectual expression to the passional and moral emotions of which the real man is as unconscious as of the circuits of his blood. Not dramatic or lifelike in the low sense of the word, because men do not analyze themselves in moments of supreme passion, it is in the higher sense most truly dramatic. It shows us the man not so much as he conceives himself, but in some degree as he might appear to his Maker, whose perfect knowledge of his heart includes perfect knowledge and sympathy with all the paths by which he has come to his present pass and all the obscure windings of his intellect and conscience. BULGARIA, a principality in southeastern Europe, tributary to Turkey. It was liberated from Turkish rule as the result of the RussoTurkish War of 1877, and constituted an autonomous principality by the operation of the Treaty of Berlin. The Prince is elected by the people and confirmed by the Sublime Porte with the consent of the powers. The office is hereditary. No member of a reigning European dynasty is eligible. The legislative power is vested by the Constitution of 1879 in a single chamber, the Sobranje or National Assembly, the members of which are elected by universal suffrage. Eastern Roumelia, now known as Southern Bulgaria, which was constituted an autonomous province of Turkey by the Treaty of Berlin, was united to Bulgaria by the act of the people, who deposed their governor in September. 1885, and proclaimed the union. Prince Alexander assumed the administration, and since then the Eastern Roumelians have sent representatives to the Sobranje, and the province has been governed as a part of Bulgaria, although the union has not been recognized by the powers, except that the executive authority was confided to the Prince of Bulgaria by a firman of the Sultan dated April 6, 1886, as the result of a conference of the signatory powers. Prince Alexander of Battenberg abdicated on Sept. 7, 1886, and after an interregnum, during which a regency administered the government, Ferdinand, the youngest son of Prince Augustus, Duke of Saxony, and Princess Clémentine of Bourbon-Orleans, daughter of Louis Philippe, King of the French, was elected Prince by the unanimous vote of the National Assembly on July 7, 1887, and assumed the government on Aug. 14, without waiting for the consent of the powers, which was withheld on account of the objections of Russia. Prince Ferdinand has not yet been confirmed by the Porte and the signatory powers. He was born Feb. 26, 1861, and is unmarried. The executive power is administered, under the Prince, by a council of six ministers, which was composed at the close of 1888 as follows: Prime Minister and Minister of the Interior, Stambuloff; Minister of Foreign Affairs and of Public Worship, Dr. Stransky: Minister of Finance, Natchevich; Minister of War, Col. Mutkuroff; Minister of Justice, Stoiloff; Minister of Public Instruction, Zivkoff. It was a composite ministry containing representatives of both political parties. The Conservative members, Stoiloff and Natchevich, in consequence of disagreements with the chief of the Cabinet, resigned and were succeeded about Jan. 1, 1889, by Tontcheff, late President of the Sobranje, as Minister of Justice and Sallbasheff, another adherent of Stambuloff, as Minister of Finance. Area and Population.-The area of Bulgaria is estimated at 24,360 square miles, not including that of Eastern Roumelia, which is 13,500 square miles, making the area of the whole principality 37,860 square miles. According to the census of 1887, the two Bulgarias have a population of 3,154,375 persons, divided as to sex into 1,605,389 males and 1,548,986 females. Of the total population, 2,326,250 are Bulgars, 607,319 Turks, 58,338 Greeks, 23,546 Jews, 50,291 gypsies, 4,699 Servians and other Slavs, 2,245 Germans, 1,069 Russians, 544 French, and 80,074 of other nationalities. The population was divided in respect to religion into 2,432,154 Orthodox Greeks, 668,173 Mohammedans, 24,352 Jews, 18,539 Roman Catholics, 5,839 Armenian Gregorians, 1,568 Protestants, and 3.750 of other faiths. Sofia, the capital of the principality, had 30,428 inhabitants in 1887; Philippopolis, the former capital of Eastern Roumelia, 33,442; Rustchuk, 27,194; Varna, 25,256; Shumla, 23,161; Slivno, 20,893. There are 41 towns in North and South Bulgaria having more than 5,000 inhabitants. More than two thirds of the army recruits are unable to read or write; but now all children are compelled by law to spend four years in the state schools, of which there are 2,000, supported by a subvention of 2,000,000 lei, or francs per annum. Finances. The revised budget for 1888 makes the receipts 53,676,046 lei, and the total expenditures 61,707,944 lei. Of the expenditure, 23,225,424 lei were assigned to the Ministry of War, 7,940,443 lei to the Ministry of the Interior, 6,397,618 lei to the service of the public debt, and 10,903,596 to administration of the finances. The budget estimates for 1889 are 63,000,000 lei of revenue and 75,000,000 lei of expenditure. In December, 1887, the Sobranje authorized a loan of 50,000,000 lei, of which 19,000,000 lei were to be applied to the construction of the Zaribrod-Vakarel Railroad, the same amount to the purchase of the Varna line, 2,000,000 lei to discharging debts contracted by Prince Alexander in supporting his office, and other sums to equipping the army. Bulgaria has undertaken to pay 140,000 Turkish pounds per annum to the Porte as the revised amount of the Eastern Roumelian contribution to the Turkish debt and 21,000 Turkish pounds in settlement of arrears. In the autumn of 1889 a loan of 25,000,000 lei was raised through Austrian and German bankers. The loan is guaranteed by a mortgage on the receipts and rolling stock of the railroads. The interest is 6 per cent. An American syndicate had previously contracted to lend the money on like terms, but the Bulgarian Government, as soon as the Austrian Länder Bank offered to take the loan, inserted new and inacceptable conditions in the contract, causing the Americans to withdraw just when they had made arrangements to pay down the first installment of 5,000,000 lei. The Army.-Military service is compulsory. The forces consist of 12 infantry regiments, 3 of cavalry, 3 of artillery, having 6 batteries of 4 guns each, and 7 companies of pioneers. The army is organized as 3 divisions of 2 brigades. The peace strength of about 32,000 officers and men can be trebled in time of war. There is a small naval force, consisting of 3 ships of war, 10 gunboats, and 2 torpedo boats. The Bulgarian Government determined to arm its troops with the Mannlicher repeating rifle. The factory in Steyr could not, however, supply its orders till the next year or later, and, consequently, when Servia began to increase her army it obtained 30,000 Berdan rifles from Russia and ordered 10,000,000 cartridges. At the same time it strengthened the fortifications at Slivnitza and elsewhere on the Servian frontier. Commerce. The imports in 1887 had a total value of 64,587,185 lei, and the exports were valued at 44,801,060 lei. Wheat and corn are the principal articles of export. Wool is exported to Austria and France. Other commercial products are tallow, butter, cheese, timber, and flax. Excellent wine is produced on the slopes of the Balkans. In the valley of Kezanlik, in South Bulgaria, a famous essence of roses is produced. Goat and buffalo skins from Bulgaria are in request among the tanners of Genoa and Marseilles. Iron and coal are mined in small quantities. The imports from Great Britain in 1887 were 21,832,638 lei in value; from Austria, 15,266,053 lei; from Turkey, 9,543,791 lei; from France, 4,113,121 lei. The chief port is Varna, on the Black Sea, where 563 vessels, of 359,645 tons, were entered, and 559 vessels, of 360,095 tons, were cleared in 1885. Railroads. The entire principality had 432 miles of railroads on Jan. 1, 1889. In December, 1888, the National Assembly authorized the construction of the Jamboli-Bourgas line and of a road from Kaspitchan on the Rustchuk-Varna line, through Tirnova and Sofia to Kustendil. The two railroads were estimated to cost 92,000,000 lei, and harbor improvements at Varna and Bourgas were expected to cost 6,000,000 lei more. The Jamboli-Bourgas line, which will be of great importance to the southeastern part of Bulgaria, was begun May 13, 1889, and was finished before the end of the year. Like the other Bulgarian railroads, it was built entirely by native labor. There were foreign engineers in the begin ning, but they were dismissed to make way for Bulgarians. The excavations and embankments were conducted by a regiment of pioneers, and wood and cartage was provided by the inhabitants of the districts traversed. The line has a length of forty-two miles. Bourgas the Bulgarians expect in time to make a naval harbor as well as an important commercial port. The harbor is being enlarged according to the plans of Sir Charles Hartley, an English engineer. The exports of South Bulgarian cereals, which have heretofore gone to Dedeagatch, will be carried much more cheaply and safely by the new route. Manufactures of western Europe, which have been brought till now from Constantinople, paying a double duty, can be imported direct. Near Bourgas, at Anchialo, are salt mines capable of supplying the entire country. Posts and Telegraphs.-The state telegraph lines in 1887 had a total length of 2,710 miles. The number of messages in 1887 was 628,525. The number of letters, newspapers, etc., forwarded by the post-office in 1887 was 5,506,822. In 1888 there passed through the mails 861,650 letters, 173,830 postal cards, 83,950 registered letters, 1,720,450 newspapers and other printed matter, and 660,925 official letters and packages. Treaty Negotiations with Servia. - The Bregovo question was settled by the cession of a piece of land in exchange for the tract of meadow at Bregovo claimed by Bulgaria. The ratifications of this agreement were exchanged at Sofia on Jan. 4, 1889. Negotiations for a commercial treaty between the two countries were entered upon by invitation of the Servian Government in the autumn of 1888. The Bulgarian Government sent delegates to Belgrade, but did not act upon the project of a treaty prepared by the Servian Government until January, when the Servian Minister of Foreign Affairs threatened to withdraw it unless he soon received a reply. The draft treaty proposed by Servia was accepted in principle by Bulgaria, but at the moment when it was to be signed the Servian delegates brought up a fresh question, which led to a rupture of the negotiations. They objected to the admission of Bulgarian cattle into Servia before the conclusion of a veterinary convention. The Bulgarian representatives proposed that, for the sake of reciprocity, Servian cattle should be excluded in like manner from Bulgaria; yet to this proposal the Servians would not listen. In April the Bulgarian Government proposed to resume the negotiations and simultaneously to conduct negotiations for a veterinary convention in such manner that both arrangements might be concluded at the same sitting, thus insuring reciprocal treatment. But this solution was not acceptable to the Servians. Politics and Legislation.-The Sobranje, in the last days of the session, which closed on Dec. 30, 1888, passed an act granting complete amnesty for all political crimes committed since Aug. 21, 1886, the day of Prince Alexander's dethronement. Excepted from the benefits of the act were Bendereff, Grueff, and Radko Dimitroff, the originators of that Prince's expulsion, and the instigators of the insurrections in Rustchuk, Silistria, Slivno, and Bourgas. At the same time that hundreds of hostile politicians were liberated from jail and as many more returned from Turkey, Russia, Roumania, and Servia to agitate against the Government and that the overthrow of the Austrophile party in Servia_furnished an incentive for Zankoffist activity, Prince Ferdinand and his headstrong Prime Minister provided their enemies with material grounds for complaint. The Bulgarian bishops, who are nearly all friends of Russia, accused the Prince of favoring a Roman Catholic propaganda. The Princess Clémentine, who had lately come into the country, brought with her, they said, Jesuits from Rome. The Prince offended the hierarchy by ordering the orthodox clergy to celebrate the festivals of his and his mother's patron saints, although they are not recognized by the Greek Church, and by lodging in the convent at Kalofer, contrary to the religious law, and having Roman Catholic masses said in the convent. When the Holy Synod met in Sofia early in January, the members refused to call on Prince Ferdinand or M. Stambuloff, and voted a set of resolutions embodying their grievances. The Government, offended at this attitude, refused to admit that the assembly was legally constituted, on the ground that two of the members were not qualified to act as bishops under the ecclesiastical law, and accordingly declined to hold official relations with the synod, and directed the bishops to return to their dioceses. The prelates paid no attention to this order, communicated to them by the Minister of Public Worship, whereupon, on Jan. 11, they were conducted by a military guard to their homes. The bishops acted under instructions from the Bulgarian exarch at Constantinople, who is an instrument of the Russian ambassador. Sixty prominent laymen, not all of them Zankoffists, signed a memorial addressed to the head of the Bulgarian Church, entreating him to intervene and demand reparation or exact penalties for the attack upon ecclesiastical liberties. For this forty of the signers were arrested on the night of Feb. 5 and placed under heavy bail, while warrants were issued against the others. Among those arrested were the banker Geshoff and four other ex-ministers-Burinoff, Balabanoff, Molloff, and Pomeroff-Groseff, President of the Zaribrod-Vakarel Railroad, Slaveikoff, ex-Mayor of Sofia, and other distinguished men. Stambuloff petitioned the Greek Patriarch to restrain the exarch, although the independence of the Bulgarian exarchate is one of the dearly prized national rights, and when the Phanar refused to interfere, he threatened to depose the exarch, and transfer the exarchate to Sofia. The bishops decided to suppress the regular prayer for the Prince in the churches, but the inferior clergy generally obeyed the contrary order of the Government. The ecclesiastical conflict was not formally terminated till April, when, at the desire of the exarch, some of the bishops issued circulars enjoining the clergy to offer up prayers for Prince Ferdinand. In January, the Prime Minister became involved also in a quarrel with the general staff of the army. The officers objected to the control exercised over them by Stambuloff and his brother-in-law Col. Mutkuroff, the Minister of War, and requested that their duties should be better defined and that they might have more direct relations with the Prince, their comVOL. XXIX.-7 A mander-in-chief. They were informed that if they did not like their position they might resign their appointments and go back to their regiments, which all except the chief of staff, Major Petroff, accordingly did. About the same time the Prince raised over his Konak a flag that was not the national standard-a golden lion on a red shield--but a combination of the Bulgarian symbols and the Coburg colors. The sight of this new emblem caused such indignation that the ministers persuaded the Prince to restore the tricolor. For nearly three months after the return of the refugees, the Russophiles refrained from openly attacking the Government. On the last day of March a newspaper called the "Rhodope" made its appearance in Philippopolis, promising victory to the people with the help of Russia in their fight with the Government. The friends of the Government in the town seized and publicly burned the copies of the newspaper that they could find. The rest of the edition was confiscated by the authorities, and the editor was escorted across the frontier. Zankoff, from St. Petersburg, published an interview that he had with the Czar, who said that he was painfully moved by Prince Ferdinand's persecutions of the Orthodox Church, and that he hoped that the Bulgarians would drive out that unlawful Prince. Subsequently Zankoff established himself in Belgrade, where he gathered about him a knot of Bulgarian revolutionists who encouraged the Panslavist party that was organized in Eastern Roumelia, and, in conjunction with Servian associates, hatched plots against Prince Alexander. The Servian press poured out a torrent of abuse upon Prince Ferdinand and the Bulgarians, and the Servian Regents, acting under Russian influence, broke off the treaty negotiations abruptly, assumed an aggressive tone, inspired the press to threaten a war of revenge, recalled the Servian minister at Belgrade, who had been instructed by King Milan to attend Prince Ferdinand's receptions, sending a new agent who was directed to hold no intercourse with the Prince, and finally armed the third ban or Landwehr under the hollow pretext of putting down brigandage. Stambuloff replied to these menaces with counterarmaments, and in communiqués to the press hinted that in the event of another war the Bulgarians would not stop at Pirot. Through Zankoff, and afterward through the Russian ambassador at Constantinople, the Russian Government made overtures to Prince Ferdinand, promising that if he would retire Russia would cause no difficulties and refrain from all interference in the internal affairs of Bulgaria. The Bulgarian Prince and his minister both condemned the proposal, reminding its authors that similar assurances given as the price of Prince Alexander's abdication had not been carried out in the event. The morganatic marriage of Prince Alexander at Mentone, on Feb. 6, to Johanna Loisinger, a singer in the Darmstadt theatre (she died in childbirth, Nov. 7), seemed to clear the way for the Russians, who had no more fear of the return of the former Prince. In August, the Czar took the extraordinary step of conferring a commander's cross of the order of St. Stanislas on Capt. Grueff, the chief ab |