But, notwithstanding the long and trying ordeal through which the peoples of the Balkans have passed, a new era seems to be dawning for them at last. Education is receiving more attention and law and order are gradually assuring to the masses the blessings of civilized life. When, however, we think or speak of the Balkans and their inhabitants there are, as the distinguished British writer D. G. Hogarth reminds us, certain salutary things to bear in mind, among which is that “less than two hundred years ago England had its highwaymen on all roads and its smuggler dens and caravans, Scotland its caterans and Ireland its moonlighters.”[15] As I viewed from the citadel the magnificent panorama that unfolded itself before me in the broad valleys of the Save and the Danube, I recalled certain alliterative verses which I was wont to recite in my youth, beginning with _An Austrian army awfully arrayed,_ _Boldly by battery besieged Belgrade,_ _Cossack, commander, cannonading come,_ _Deal devastation; dire destructive doom._[16] While gazing at the sun-bathed vineyards, ruin-crowned heights and broad, verdant plains which followed one another in rapid succession as our steamer bore us seawards, I was especially impressed by the multiplicity of languages I heard spoken by the passengers. For among my fellow travelers were Germans, French, Turks, Serbs, Croats, Russians, Bulgarians, Roumanians, Greeks, Albanians, Italians, Poles, Slovaks, English, and Americans, and probably several others whom I did not recognize. There was, indeed, a Babel of tongues such as one would scarcely find elsewhere. How the famous polyglot, Mezzofanti, would have reveled in such a gathering where he could have held converse with all of them, as he was wont to do with the students of the Propaganda, in Rome, who came from all parts of the world and with the languages of all whom the illustrious Cardinal was perfectly familiar.[17] And variety of garb of this motley crowd was almost as manifold as was that of their languages and dialects. From the sedate Englishman in tweed to the animated Roumanian in his Phrygian cap of liberty, the tarbooshed Ottoman dreamily fingering his tespis (string of beads), the sad-faced Serb with his conical Astrakan cap, and the voluble Albanian in a snow-white fustanella, there was every conceivable variety of wearing apparel. And the styles and colors of the dresses worn by the women exhibited even greater diversity. They could be compared only with those of the infinitude of shades and adornments of the feathered songsters of a large aviary or of the multitudinous flowers of a botanical garden. From Belgrade eastwards Oriental color becomes rapidly more pronounced. This results from the long occupation by the Ottomans of the country through which we are now passing and constant communication between Turkey and the Balkans.