The presidency of the senate is an imaginary dignity; the duties of vice-president being performed by M. Stojan Simitch, the herculean figure I have described on my first visit to Belgrade; and it is allowed that he performs his duties with great sagacity, tact, and impartiality. He is a Servian of the old school, speaks Servian and Turkish, but no European language. The revolutions of this country have brought to power many men, like M. Simitch, of good natural talents, and defective education. The rising generation has more instruction, and has entered the career of material improvements; but I doubt if the present red tape routine will produce a race having the shrewdness of their fathers. If these forms--the unavoidable accompaniments of a more advanced stage of society,--circumscribe the sphere of individual exertion, they possess, on the other hand, the advantage of rendering the recurrence of military dictatorship impossible. M. Petronievitch, the present minister for foreign affairs, and director of the private chancery of the Prince, is unquestionably the most remarkable public character now in Servia. He passed some time in a commercial house at Trieste, which gave him a knowledge of Italian; and the bustle of a sea-port first enlarged his views. Nine years of his life were passed at Constantinople as a hostage for the Servian nation, guaranteeing the non-renewal of the revolt; no slight act of devotion, when one considers that the obligations of the contracting parties reposed rather on expediency than on moral principles. Here he made the acquaintance of all the leading personages at the Ottoman Porte, and learned colloquial Turkish in perfection. Petronievitch is astute by education and position, but he has a good heart and a capacious intellect, and his defects belong not to the man, but to the man's education and circumstances. Although placable in his resentments, he is without the usual baser counterpart of such pliant characters, and has never shown himself deficient in moral courage. Most travellers trace in his countenance a resemblance to the busts and portraits of Fox. His moral character bears a miniature resemblance to that which history has ascribed to Macchiavelli. In the course of a very tortuous political career, he has kept the advancement and civilization of Servia steadily in view, and has always shown himself regardless of sordid gain. He is one of the very few public men in Servia, in whom the Christian and Western love of _community_ has triumphed over the Oriental allegiance to _self_, and this disinterestedness is, in spite of his defects, the secret of his popularity.