BY
REV. W. DENTON, M.A.
In the Spring of the present year, just as it was necessary to get rest from a laborious occupation which had engrossed much of my time for the twelvemonth preceding, inducements, in the shape of promised introductions at Belgrade, were held out to me to visit Servia. Of these I gladly availed myself. As the country was entirely strange to me, and as it lies very far out of the track of ordinary travellers, I made notes of everything which I thought likely to interest my family, in order that my letters home might convey as much information as possible on the state of the country through which I was passing. When I began to make these notes I had no other object beyond the wish to please the small audience to whom my letters were written, It was not until great part of my journey was over, that a book, and a larger circle of readers, were suggested to me.
That part of my journey which led along the banks of the Danube was made in the company of some of my countrymen, who were on a visit to Servia in order to examine the commercial capabilities and the mineral wealth of that country. To this I was indebted for agreeable and well-informed companions, and for facilities in travelling which I should otherwise have wanted. For a great part of my time when journeying into the interior of the country I had the pleasure and advantage of the company of a Servian gentleman, who, to a fund of general information, a most extensive acquaintance with all and a connexion with many of the leading families in Servia, added very
great lingual attainments, The remembrance of those days are very grateful to me. In looking through the sheets which I am about to place before the public, I cannot therefore omit to express my great obligations to my friend and companion Athanasius Yelich. To M. Bouillon, a French merchant settled in Servia, and to his family, I am indebted for kind assistance in my travels, and for unbounded hospitality during the whole time of my stay in Belgrade; and I feel it would be unjust to send forth this volume without making an acknowledgment of their great kindness to one who was until then unknown to them.
In a strange country two matters specially interested me both as a Churchman and an Englishman, I found myself in the midst of the members of a Church, of which too little is known in England, and from whom—our insular conceit in our own perfection notwithstanding—we have much to learn. As a clergyman, therefore, my attention was naturally directed to the ecclesiastical condition of Servia. As an Englishman, living under a free constitution, I could not but feel sympathy for those whose independence is daily threatened and sometimes actually endangered. Nor am I sufficiently enamoured of political inconsistency to agree with those who rejoice at the overthrow of despotism in Naples, and yet assist in the bolstering-up of the far more terrible despotism of Turkey.
No one can know much of the people who inhabit the southern bank of the Danube without seeing in them all the elements which make up national greatness, No one can travel through the countries inhabited by the Servians, without respect and admiration for a people whose virtues have not been destroyed by four centuries of oppression, and without an assurance that for such a race a splendid future is in store.
Finsbury Circus,
October 18, 1862.
