“An Austrian army, awfully arrayed, Boldly by battery besieged Belgrade. Cossack, commander, cannonading come, Deal devastation! dire destructive doom; Every endeavour engineers essay, For fame, for freedom fight fierce furious fray; Gen’rals ’gainst gen’rals grapple--gracious God! How honours heav’n heroic hardihood; Infuriate, indiscriminate in ill, Just Jesus, instant innocence instill! Kinsmen kill kinsmen, kindred kindred kill. Labour low levels longest, loftiest, lines; Men march midst mounds, motes, mountains, murd’rous mines. Now noisy noxious numbers notice nought, Of outward obstacles o’ercoming ought; Poor patriots perish, persecutions pest! Quite quiet Quakers, ‘quarter! quarter!’ quest. Reason returns, religion, right redounds, Suwarrow stop such sanguinary sounds! Truce to thee, Turkey, terror to thy train! Unwise, unjust, unmerciful Ukraine! Vanish vile vengeance, vanish victory vain. Why wish we warfare? Wherefore welcome won Xerxes, Xantippus, Xavier, Xenophon? Yield ye, young Yaghier yeomen, yield your yell. Zimmermann’s, Zoroaster’s, Zeno’s zeal Again attracts; arts against arms appeal. All, all ambition’s aims, avaunt, away! Et cætera, et cætera, et cætera.” [Illustration: BELGRADE] The town which may thus be regarded as one of those which have been most often besieged--I cannot say if it holds a “record” in this respect!--has little to show of its varied past. Its important buildings are comparatively few and modern, and though the capital of a kingdom, it has something of a provincial air about even the broadest and busiest of its ill-made thoroughfares, with their many little shops, their small old houses close neighbouring less small new ones. The white baggy trousers, the white coat, and the conical black Astrakhan caps of many of the people, give something of a new character to the place, and the market with the women with their bright head kerchiefs, the men with their conical caps and sheepskin coats, the swarthy gipsies, and the abundance of colour supplied by fruit and vegetables, form one of the pleasantest memory pictures of the Servian capital. Yet somehow there seems a want of cheerfulness about Belgrade, as though the sense of tragedy yet remained from the murder of King Alexander and Queen Draga eight years ago. The palace in which that dynastic crime was perpetrated has been pulled down and a new residence for the present ruler erected near its site.