Rakovski was born at the picturesque little town of Kotel in the eastern Balkans, and was educated at Constantinople, but his ebullient temperament did not allow him to pursue his studies to the end. He turned up at Braila in 1841 and, being hardly twenty years of age, was dreaming of a revolution of the Orient. With a group of insurgents he tried to cross the Danube and to rouse the Bulgars. A Roumanian patrol opens fire, on each side there are several killed and wounded. He is captured and condemned to death, but having a Greek passport he is rescued by the Greek Consul and put on board a boat which lands him at Marseilles. For eighteen months he lives in France--it is not known where--and is imbued with democratic doctrine. Passing through Constantinople in 1843 he accepts a post as schoolmaster at Trnovo, but is immediately at loggerheads with the Greek bishop and departs. Returning to his birthplace he is irritated by the pride and harshness of the upper class, and he attempts to make the people rise against them. They charge him with being a disturber of the peace. "He has travelled through Europe," says their complaint to the Government, "and now in this town he bestrides a horse, brandishes his sword and overwhelms the Turks with insults, both their race and their religion." In consequence Rakovski and his father are arrested and dispatched to Constantinople, where they both of them remain in prison until 1847. After being liberated, he forms a secret society which is to take advantage of the approaching Russo-Turkish conflict. Its members are to have themselves enrolled among the Turks, with the double object of protecting the Bulgarian population from excesses on the part of the soldiery and also, at the propitious moment, to stir them up and so assist the Russians. He himself is appointed to the Turkish staff at Shumen, as first dragoman. His plot being discovered, he is arrested and sent to Constantinople; on the way he escapes, but he proceeds to Constantinople and organizes there a company of heiduks. Turkey's entrance into the European concert fills him with pessimism. The Bulgars at Constantinople believe that the civilizing influence of the West will not be in vain. He foresees a more evil despotism masked by the pseudo-liberal manœuvres of the Powers, and henceforward he joins those Bulgars who agitate from Roumania or from Serbia. He goes to the Banat, where he is not only made most welcome but is enabled to publish _The Bulgarian News_, which is political, and a literary supplement, _The Swan of the Danube_. The Turks are uneasy; they ask the Austrians to suppress these papers. The Austrians comply and expel the editor. He is persecuted by the Porte in Moldavia and flies to Russia, where he devotes himself seriously to a long poem in honour of the heiduks. The first part of this very long work, the _Gorski Patnik_, had appeared at Novi Sad. It brought him considerable