The Hospodars purposely neglect to repair these roads; the fear of creating suspicions at the Porte that they wish to facilitate the passage of foreign troops into the principalities, induces them to abstain from an undertaking, which in other respects has become so imperiously necessary: they do not even venture the slightest representation to the Porte on the subject. Few peasants inhabit this part of the country; during the summer they cut down wood, and supply with it the inhabitants of the plains, who burn nothing else. The most stationary are attached to the post-houses, situated here and there for the purpose of assisting the necessary communications between the Austrian and Ottoman states. Their long residence in this neighbourhood is generally marked by the glandular accretion, common to the inhabitants of the Alps. It grows sometimes to an immense size; its appearance is then most disgusting, and it absorbs almost all the faculties, moral and physical, of the unfortunate beings afflicted with it. The natives believe the cause of this evil to proceed from the qualities of the snow-water always drunk by those who inhabit the mountains. Every village throughout the country has a small church or chapel belonging to it, and one or more priests who act as curates. The ecclesiastics of this order are chosen amongst the ordinary peasants, from whom they are only distinguished in appearance by a long beard. They lead the same life, and follow the same avocations when not engaged in the exercise of their clerical functions; but they are exempted from the public imposts, and pay nothing more than their annual tribute of fifteen piasters to the metropolitan. The generality of them can neither read nor write; they learn the formule of the service by heart; and if a book is seen in their chapels, it is very seldom for use. The priests of this order are, in each district, dependent on the _Archimandrites_, or Vicars, of the parishes nearest to their abode. * * * * * That class of the human species comprehended under the general appellation of gypsies, seems to be, like the Jews, spread in most parts of Europe, and in many other parts of the world; like them having no admissible claims to any country as exclusively their own, and distinguished from the other races of men by physical and moral qualities peculiar to themselves. The different gradations of climate, and the state of civilisation of the countries in which they are born and brought up, do not seem to affect them in the same manner as the other classes of human nature, and in many respects they appear little superior to the brute creation.