Whenever a part of Serbian territory became independent, or even for a short time found tolerable conditions, an intense creative culture grew up swiftly, even after the fall of the Empire and during the time of slavery. For generations the greater part of the Serbians have lived, and still live, in slavery. The Serbians under Turkish rule were liberated only two years ago, and the liberation of the Slavs of the Hapsburg Monarchy is only just beginning. In accordance with the changes in the political fate of the Southern Slavs, and as the material conditions of the people grew better or worse, the centres of Slav literature moved from place to place. This unfortunate disorganization and consequent impotence were the bane of Serbian or Southern Slav literature. Ragusan literature; the literature of the Dalmatian coast and its islands, with its original creations, and many fine translations of the Greek drama—Homer, Virgil and Horace, Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio, Tasso, Ariosto—none of these counted in the later development of literature in Croatia, Serbian Hungary, Bosnia or Serbia. As things now stand, Slovenian literature bears no recognized relation to Serbo-Croat literature, which has to a certain extent become unified. The great Croatian poets, Peter Preradović, Ivan Mažuranić, and Silvije Kranjčević are scarcely read in Serbia, owing to bitter political disagreements and the Austrian _divide-et-impera_ policy. For this reason, too, the Croatians scarcely know the greatest Southern Slav poets such as the Montenegrin Petar Petrović Njegoš, or the Serbian from Hungary, Lazar Kostić. The historian and philosopher Boža Knižević and the metaphysician Branislav Petronijević are scarcely known in Bosnia owing to their being Serbians from Serbia, that is to say, from anti-Austrian Serbia. Thus it is scarcely surprising that Southern Slav culture is unknown in Europe, when it is practically unknown even in Yougoslavia; when Meštrović, the immortal artist of Yougoslavia, the architect and sculptor of the Serbian Acropolis, is unknown to his own countrymen beyond the frontier. * * * * *