It is then of primary necessity to conciliate the Mahometan caste of landlords and retainers, still hungering for abolished feudal privileges, and the Mahometan bourgeoisie of the towns, who in days of bureaucratic centralization sigh for their municipal privileges suppressed by the Osmanlì. And such a means of reconciling the Mahometan population of Bosnia to the new order of things can be found,—by sacrificing the Osmanlì. Turn out the sowers of Bosnian discord. Do not prevent the Mahometan gentry from taking that position in the country to which by their territorial possessions, according to English ideas, they are entitled. Let a native magistracy succeed the satellites of a foreign bureaucracy; revive the civic institutions of the towns, and the native Begs and Agas, as well as the descendants of the old municipal _Starescina_, will be only too glad to come to terms with the Great Powers. The dominant caste in this way compensated, European supervision, of whatever kind, would work with at least a possibility of success in introducing the necessary reforms; nor, the period of probation concluded, and European control removed, is there any need for taking the pessimist view that the government of Bosnia would lapse into the ‘autonomy of a cock-pit.’ In the very nature of things the present difficulties have brought the worst and most fanatical elements of Bosnia to the surface, and in face of the ferocious deeds of Bosnian Ahmed Agas and their feudal train of murderous Bashi Bazouks, the more sensible and kindly side of Bosnian Mahometanism is liable to be overlooked. I have already observed that it is wrong for Christians to build too great expectations on the fact that many of the Mahometan nobles of Bosnia still preserve some of their old Christian practices, and on occasion take Franciscan monks as their ghostly advisers. Still the fact remains, to show that from some points of view they are not irreconcilable, and that the gulf between Christianity and Islâm is not so wide among the more educated classes as it is no doubt among the town-rabble. The most influential Christian in the whole country, Bishop Strossmayer, whose liberalism commands European esteem, stands on a most friendly footing with many of the leading Mahometan families in Bosnia, and when he visits his Bosnian diocese has the satisfaction of seeing true-believers flock to hear his sermons.[141] The brutal contempt of the Mahometan lord for the rayah is by no means universal, and even in Herzegovina, he at times so far conforms to the kindly democratic usage of the race as to address his Christian serf as _brat_ or brother.[142] A few years ago the native aristocracy of Bosnia showed by its secret negotiations with the Serbian government that at a pinch it was not altogether averse to making common cause with the Giaour. In the rural districts of Bosnia and the Herzegovina religious animosity has never been so embittered as in the towns.