have been as full of gold, she was likely to fall as far short of her ideal as the maiden of Serbian poetry, who sings:— I wish the happy time were nigh, When youths are sold, that I might buy. But for an azure-eyed Milinar,[179] I would not give a single dinar, Though for a raven-black eyed youth, A thousand golden coins in truth. Alas! alas! and is it true? My own fair youth has eyes of blue![180] The women looked as a rule pleasanter than the men, whose general appearance, as may perhaps be gathered from the illustration, is anything but prepossessing. The whole crown is shorn of hair, Turkish fashion, but usually, instead of the single pig-tail of the faithful, two long elf-locks are left dangling from the back of the head, and the effect of the bare occiput with these two sickly appendages is little short of disgusting; add to which that the natural length of the neck is exaggerated by this tonsure. From the front the aspect is not more pleasing; the bald pate, combined with the bony attenuated face and round eyebrows, being often in a ghastly manner suggestive of a death’s-head. The long sunken eye-slits, whose outer corners curve down, so as to follow the lines of the brow-arches, give them an air of sleepy cunning, the eyebrows often overhanging as to form a den for the suspicious roving eyes. The lips are thick, broad, and pouting. The whole face seems dazed, and it is almost beyond mortal patience to see the heavy, slow, owlish way in which their head turns on its axis if anything attracts their attention. When you look at them they always seem as if they do not know what expression is expected of them, and their stolidity is enhanced by turbans which make them look top-heavy. It is easy to understand why the quick-witted Greeks of the lower Empire should have nick-named the Sclaves Chondrokephaloi, or ‘block-heads.’ Yet, after all, the hideous tonsure and what is vilest in their demeanour are but accidental badges of servitude and oppression—removable by a few generations of free government. The sluggishness of their deliberation may be quickened by culture; and, the causes of suspicion once removed, the hang-dog look of the Bosniac would disappear as surely as it has ceased among the free Serbians, and as it is disappearing at this day among the liberated Wallachian serfs. The slow, measured utterance of the race, so far from being a proof of inferiority, has been compared by Ami Boué to that of Englishmen, and this keen observer of the Serbs speaks of the people and language as born, if any ever were, for parliamentary government.