But I should be guilty of passing a very shallow judgment on the sometimes too obtrusive familiarity of these people if I did not point out that it is but an unpleasant phase of what is really one of the most valuable qualities preserved by the Bosnian people in the days of bondage. It is part and parcel of a democratic habit of mind common to the whole Serbian, and indeed the whole South-Sclavonic race. It is the representative in conversation of those primitive social relations which hold throughout all these lands within the common yard of the house-community, and have survived alike the imported feudalism of the Middle Ages, and the Turkish conquest. In these Illyrian lands I have often been addressed as ‘_brat_,’ or brother, and the Bosniacs are known to call the stranger ‘_shija_’—neighbour. I, who write this, happen individually not to appreciate this ‘_égalitaire_’ spirit. I don’t choose to be told by every barbarian I meet that he is a man and a brother. I believe in the existence of inferior races, and would like to see them exterminated. But these are personal mislikings, and it is easy to see how valuable such a spirit of democracy may be amongst a people whose self-respect has been degraded by centuries of oppression, and who in many respects are only too prone to cower beneath the despot’s rod: for one need not be enamoured of liberty coupled with equality and fraternity not to perceive that, when the choice lies between it and tyranny, freedom, even in such companionship, is to be infinitely preferred; and a man must be either blind or a diplomatist not to perceive that in the Sclavonic provinces of Turkey the choice ultimately lies between despotism and a democracy almost socialistic.