A Southern Slav patriot has said that no greater misfortune has befallen the Southern Slavs, than to pass under the dominion of civilized Austria. Had they been obliged to share the fate of their brothers, the Serbs and Bulgarians, they would certainly have tasted all the misery of the Turkish yoke, but to-day they would be free, as an independent State with a right to their own national and intellectual development. The one thing Turkey has left untouched in the Serbs and Bulgars—_the heart of the people_—is the very thing that Austria has sought to destroy in her Southern Slav subjects. Turkish captivity has steeled the hearts of the Slavs she oppressed, but Austrian captivity has cankered them and made them effete. In many respects this pessimistic view is justified. The struggle of the Southern Slavs for national life has passed through many phases, and has exhausted itself in many more. For centuries the Southern Slav stood under the protection of “Heaven militant,” and his motto was “For Faith and Freedom,” for with him faith was always first. All his culture consisted in imaging the Christ as the “Otac i voyskovodya illyrskyh Kralyeva” (Father and leader of the armies of the Kings of Illyria). The Holy Cross was transformed into a standard of war, and his enthusiasm for this false ideal led him so far astray, that the _baptized_ arch-enemy was nearer to him than his own _unbaptized_ brother, and the Church dearer to him than his country. But these traits do not originate in the character of the Southern Slav. He was educated into them and impregnated with them from without, and always by his greatest enemies, the Germans or the Turks. The Germans made a national mission of the Crusades, and the Turks usually went to war on religious grounds and called their armies the Hosts of the Prophet. Following the example of the Turks, and imitating the Germans in their appropriation of the Deity, Slav Christianity was infected by the fanaticism of the Church of Rome, and became synonymous with militancy and the spirit of the _condottieri_. The heart of the nation grew vitiated, and the Illyrians callously neglected their lovely land, which ought to have been a Garden of Eden. And those who were so liberal with their promises of Heaven and constantly cried, “Thy Kingdom is not of this world!” were well pleased that these things should be so, for they coveted the lost Empire of the Southern Slavs for an earthly paradise of their own.