remarkable for the oriental character of their times, and this is almost the sole trace of Moslem influence. In spite of the vigilance of the Turks, the religious associations served as centres to keep alive the national feeling. A conquered people which was allowed to keep up its religious institutions (with "a certain amount of autonomy"), and later to found national schools ("to keep alive the national feeling"), was not exactly ground to the dust. And truth compels the admission that Bulgaria under Turkish rule enjoyed a certain amount of material prosperity. When the Russian liberators of the nineteenth century came to Bulgaria they found the peasants far more comfortable than were the Russian peasants of the day. The atrocities in Bulgaria which shocked Europe in 1875 were not the continuance of a settled policy of cruelty and rapine. They were the ferocious reprisals chiefly of Turkish Bashi-Bazouks (irregulars) following upon a Bulgarian rising. The Turks felt that they had been making an honest effort to promote the interests of the Bulgarian province. They had just satisfied a Bulgarian aspiration by allowing of the formation of an independent Bulgarian church, though this meant giving grave offence to the Greeks. Probably they felt that they had a real grievance against the Bulgars. After the Bulgarian atrocities of 1875 there ended the Turkish domination of the country. _Serbia._--In December 1356 the great Serbian king, Stephen Dushan, soldier, administrator, and economist, died before the walls of Constantinople, and the one hope of the Balkan Peninsula making a stand against the Turks was ended. Shortly after, the Turks had occupied Adrianople, their first capital in Europe, defeating heavily a combined Serbian and Greek army. Later the Serbian forces were again defeated by the great Turkish sultan Amurath I., and the Serbian king was killed on the battle-field. King Lazar, who succeeded to the Serbian throne, made some headway against the invaders, but in 1389, at the Battle of Kossovo, the Serbian Empire came tumbling to ruins. The Turkish leader, Amurath, was killed in the fight, but his son Bajayet proved another Amurath and pressed home the victory. Serbia became a vassal state of Turkey.