In modern times we must not forget the activity of the new Queen of the Adriatic, ‘la bella Trieste,’ the Austrian successor of the great republic, nor the Italian seaport of Hungary, Fiume, connected now with the interior by rail as well as by the magnificent Louisa-way; so that, with the old Venetian influences, we have plenty to account for the presence of a considerable Italian ingredient in the population of Agram and Croatia generally. For anyone here unacquainted with Croatian, Italian, not German, is the best means of communication. The Styrian mountains seem to form a shed between the areas of German and Italian influences, and besides, the Croats, like the Czechs, feel a certain jealousy of the German language which they do not experience of the Italian. Many of the high officials here show, by their names or features, an Italian descent. The military governor of Croatia is a Signor Mollinary; the director of telegraphs, whose acquaintance we were pleased to make, has an Italian, or rather a thoroughly Roman physiognomy, and speaks Tuscan by preference; the more civilized race seems to climb over the shoulders of the ruder Croats. However, it must be remembered that German is still the language in use among the officers and bureaucracy of the monarchy, and that many of them reside here in Agram, so that the result is that nearly everybody in the town can speak three languages—Croatian, Italian, and German—and many of them speak French as well, which is more learnt here than formerly, as jealousy of the Germans becomes stronger with rising national aspirations. Even the military speak less German than they used to do; and here, as in Slovene Styria, the national tongue has now supplanted German as the school speech, and even to a certain extent as the official language. Among the Likaner and western _regiments_ of the Granitza, as one approaches the Adriatic and Dalmatian frontier, Italian is known even by the peasants, and in the other parts of Croatia there is an itinerant Italian-speaking population, chiefly from Dalmatia, who gain their living as builders, and are esteemed better workers than the natives. It is natural that the Croats, lying between two more civilized nationalities, should be well practised in foreign tongues; but it must be allowed that they have a natural aptitude for learning them. They themselves are quite conscious of possessing this faculty, and there is nothing that a Croat prides himself on more than his gift of tongues.