DR, ECKARDT'S LIVONIA..*

.....[SECOND NOTICE.) How many of our readers are there who know what really consti- tutes Galicia? In these days of indefatigable travel unto the uttermost parts of the globe, how many Englishmen have visited the region eastward of Cracow which makes up the Austrian Crown-laud that goes by the title of the Kingdom of Galicia ? And yet this unknown land is well worthy of observation, for in it lies whatever is typical of the Past, the Present, and the Future of Polish life,—of the Past, in the monumental city of Cracow, the true capital of Polish nationality, for since 1307 here was the seat of Polish royalty, whence it did those warlike deeds which made a Power of the oligarchical commonwealth,—of the Present, in the fact that within the limits of this province alone have the surviving elements of Polish nature an opportunity of asserting themselves with some degree of efficacy,—and of the Future, be- cause on this ground is alone to be observed the force residing in an element not of foreign origin, but indigenous and Slave growth, that is, rising up against the pretensions of' the Poles to be lords in their own homes, the element of the sons of the soil, the Ruthenian boors, men of the same blood and the same Church as the Russian subjects of the Czar of Moscow, and who now are employing the weapons of freedom to rebel with effective bitter- ness of heart against the continued ascendancy of the haughty and Catholic aristocracy that for so many centuries ruled over them with fatal recklessness. This curious region Dr. Eckardt made it his busieess to traverse, and he has given an account of his observa- tions, which is as lively in description as it is full of interest. The term "Galicia" is a modern denomination, invented in 1815, for districts that had nothing else in coinmon than the fact of having been within the compass of the territory subject to the Crown of * foofo.onaca mad Alliiotandisch ; Poligische uncl quitargaselitchtliche Aufailzo. Von J. Bekordt. Leipzig: Duneker land Hunzlnot. 1871.

Poland. These never formed in Polish times an administra- tive unit, and at present Galicia presents three divisions, each with a distinct character. The westernmost consists of the old Oracovian territory, about twenty-two geographical square miles, eith a purely Polish population, and a body of magnates of the most thoroughly Polish type, free from foreign mixture and ani- mated with a peculiar sense of self-importance. To the east up to the San extends a region of already mixed elements, where the pea- sant is no longer of purely Polish blood, and where the lord of the soil no longer feels as secure of his hold on his retainers as his Cracovian neighbour. In this region already Ruthenian colonists are to be found amongst the peasantry, and here it already occurs

that the countryman will turn away from the well-to.do Roman Catholic father, who is the cherished inmate of the seignorial mansion, to seek religious ministration at the hands of the plebeian pope, who, though the priest of a Church in outward communion with outlandish Reims is, nevertheless for the Ruthenian peasant

the true representative of orthodoxy and national sentiment. Here, then, already do we meet fermenting elements which on the further side of the San become preponderant—elements that are compounded of religious and of social fibres, for the Ruthenian peasant smarts with a sense of wrong done him in what he con- siders the busy rights of life, and the redressing measures of the great Czar over the frontier in behalf of his forlorn children

have reached the ears not only of the Ruthenian boor but also those of his Catholic and Polish fellow-peasant. The river San constitutes, then, the ,boundary of a Polish popu- lation. To the east of it there is a state of things represented by a Polish ascendancy, and a Ruthenian mass silently but.

stubbornly stiffening itself against its pressure. In this out-of- the-way corner is being waged the grim struggle which probably will decide the laat chance of Polish autonomy.

Dr. Eckardt's description of Cracow is too graphic to be passed over. No one who has visited that historical city can fail to recog-

nize the vividness of his account, but there are many who have not been there, and we shall not be rendering a lead service if an extract should induce them on the next occasion to turn their steps towards a spot which concentrates in one focus the illustra- tion of a nation's history. In the great Cathedral—its West- minster Abbey—the stranger can gaze on the monumental record of all the glories, the vicissitudes, and the misfortunes of Poland It is Sunday, and the "throng of pale-faced and black-robed men

and women that is ever getting denser invites to a visit of the Cathedral," which, dedicated to St. Stanislas, " flanks the stately castle," once the palace of proud warrior-kings :—

" A hoary beggar with flowing beard opens the portal leading into the national shrine, into which we enter slowly, and some time elapses before we are able to find ourselves in that impressive obscurity into whieh daylight penetrates but by gleams. Many are the churches I have seen, but none has made so deep an impression OIL me as this Cathedral of Old Poland. This church is more than the product of one particular epoch in which religious and national consciousness had become inter- laced,—the Catholicism which speaks out of these stones is a living one, and has made with Polish national feeling a covenant, that is as in- dissoluble to-day as it was in the time of Caeimir Clio Great. . As yet mass is not over, and still the chant sounds from the high altar, on the stops of which six bearded men kneel with huge tapers in their hands._ . . . No trace exists of the laced beadles who keep order in German churches, yet the silence of devotion prevails throughout. . . Mon in braided coats and men in the peasant's fur cloak, ladies in the elegant toilet of Parisian mourning suits, and female beggars whose rags are covered with filth kneel aide by side, and on all countenances the same melancholy, abstracted expression, the same immersion in an inner world that is wholly indifferent to all outside. Hero are ecclesiastical and political traditions fused together so inextricably that no one can say where the one °eminences and the others cease, and the martyrdom which the Catholic clergy has to suffer in the neighbouring Russian provinces necessarily has tended to intensify inordinately this Catholic zeal of the living generation."

At last the ministration is concluded, and the stranger is allowrd to survey the wondrous series of monuments that stand thick in, this grand pile. Two deserve especial notice,—one is the memorial of Queen Jadwiga, whose marriage with the Jagellon, Duke of Lithuauia, brought that Russian province into the permanent union with Poland which has had the result of subjecting it in our days. to the lash of Muraivieff's ruthless rule ; the other is the subter- ranean chapel which preserves the mortal remains, dearest to all true Poles, of Sobieski and of Koscuisko. "Full fifteen minutes. did the Poles in whose company I visited the crypt kneel in prayer before' the hero's granite sarcophagus, before we returned to the pale light of the winter's day which lay over Cracow."

Cracow is indeed a shrine, and the grave severity of a monu- mental aspect is stamped on the whole city. The life of Poland, such as still survives, is not here ; it is to be found in localities less. rich in striking scenes, in the unpicturesque plains beyond the San,

inasmuch as it was confined to the conquest of only a class,—that The inexorable limitations of space here oblige us to part corn- of the aristocracy and its immediate attendants. In miserable pany from our author, who pushed his travels into that Ultima neglect did the peasantry then continue to vegetate during the Thule, the Bukowina, a province inhabited by a Rottman popula- {lays of Polish independence, under the spiritual guidance of a tion of anything but elevated character, and yet infected with no priesthood and a hierarchy of the same flesh and blood with it in little degree of political pretentiousness. What Dr. Eckardt tells race, in estate, and also in education. The country was us of this nondescript region does not fall behind the rest of his thoroughly Petonized as regards intellectual movement, and journey in interest, and with muck regret we are prevented from the mass of the population, though retaining its own dialect extracting what he says about the singular monastery of Frontine and its distinctive ritual, had lost all sense of national indi- Alba, the rustic timber-built residence, close on the Russian con- viduality when the country came to be subjected to Austrian fines, of the boorish Metropolitan of the Russian Old Dissenters, sway. It was only then that the Ruthenians began to awaken who, during many years, was the prime instrument of active revo- to a national sentiment. This was elicited mainly by the action lutionary machinations in the bands of political exiles, but whose of an energetic prelate, John Suegurski, United Metropolitan of influence of late has much decreased, with the growth of an in- Galicia, who found such general ignorance amongst his clergy that tensified Muscovite patriotism consequent on the outburst of the few were the popes who could read the Cyrillian alphabet. lie Polish insurrection in 1863, which made Russian public opinion vigorously strove to kindle national aspirations in his flocks ; he re- inexorably hostile to the order of promptings sought to be instilled formed the practices which had crept into the churches ; proscribed by the emissaries who, under the disguise of monastic robes, the Roman usages which had been largely introduced, and strictly sallied from the gates of this seeming sanctuary, to steal across insisted on the observance of the old Greek ritual, as sanctioned by the boundaries of the Czar's empire on missions of sedition.

the terms of the Act of Union of 1596. To the movement in- augurated by this Churchman is it due that in the political turmoil

of 1848 the Rutheniaus suddenly stepped forward with a pre- CURRENT LITERATURE. fcrarame which at once recommended itself to the Governor, Count Stadion, as an element that might keep in check the revolutionary London. By Gustave Dori. (Grfuit and 0o.)—Gustave Dorsi is force of Polish tendencies. From that moment the Ruthenians have wandering about London, and sketching tho scenes which strike him, become a recognized political factor of the Austrian Empire, mine- aud,Mossrs. Gre sand Co. are publishing the sketches in parts. We times made much of and at others frowned upon by the powers havo the first unmoor before us, and hardly know what to say. There in being at Vienna, but always one that lost no opportunity lasa sketch of a hay-boat on the Thames, with ligurea on it asleep, which 8001OS to us full of the artiot's highoat power, and worth the price of the of pushing claims hostile to the pretensions of the purely Polish

classes. The centre of this movement has hitherto remained an ecclesiastical one, and its seat is in Lemberg—Lwow, in Polish— the town which is the capital of Galician autonomy, the residence of the Govornor,—the meeting-place of the Estates, that one

drawine of Whittington at Highgate which is °absolutely feeble, 4Surviviug vestige of a Polish Diet,—and the see of two Metropoli- that comm,reial young person being pictured as a sort of poetic Swiss ens, a Catholic and an United Greek one,—not to speak of the Boy or angel of the cheap song-books, but with some clothes on, in- Jews, who constitute, characteristically for a Polish city, about stead of a shrewd, hungry, Scotch-looking little lad, who meant to get One-third of the inhabitants. It is interesting to note in passing on somehow. As, however, M. Dord is sketching things aetuallybeforo him, that Dr. Eckardt affirms, what we ourselves have heard affirmed in and as London has endless suggestions of the grotesque or horrible, or faintly regard to other and especially Russian districts, that of late years the visible beautiful, we ought in this undertaking to have the best of Gustave Jews have become, what formerly they were not, decidedly polish in Dord, and his publishers are doing him justice. Better printing on creamier feeling. There are two establishments in Lemberg which deserve Paper we have not seen, or, we must add, worse literary deseriptioto. attention, if one cares to gauge the force of Ruthenian patriotism. Mr. Jerrold intends, we dare say by and by, to describe M. Dare's In 1848 the Government presented to its faithful Ruthenians a drawings ; but at present his enthusiasm has carried him away, public building, and he is singing prose carols about London, the Thames, and the jolly in which, besides a school and an incipient museum,

there has been established by private contributions a casino,

proudly denominated the Russian Club. Into it Dr. Eckardt high-flown rubbish,—all the worse because Mr. Jerrold now and again obtained an introduction, on the occasion of a theatrical perform-

once of the humblest kind, but of strictly Russian character. We a picture.

graphic description of the evening's amuse- not space for his Daily News. (Maemillan.)—Wo remember that we thought but meanly ments, but there are two points too characteristic not to be of those papers when we saw them, for one can hardly say read them, in mentioned. In the reading-room he found a collection of all the the Daily News, In fact, they seemed out of place there, in company journals of violent Panslavist sentiment that appear in various lan- with the Nonconformists and School Boards and Mr. Gladstone and guages, and all the Russian periodicals of a proselytizing temper. Prinee Bismark and Citizen Dilke, and other things, great and small. One Then on the walls of this sanctuary figured two full-length portraits, is generally in a combative frame of mind, whether friendly or otherwise, the one of the Czar Alexander, the other of Miljutin, the thorough- while one roads the Daily News. But they make an exceedingly going agrarian leveller, who in Poland decreed confiscation of pro. pleasant volume to read, and we repent ourselves of our derogatory perty with cynical disregard of all prescriptive right,—the man judgment. Dr. Horace Bushnell says that we assimilate in winter the who gloried in co-operating with Muravieff, and whose name is impressions of scenery that we take in summer. What impressions we Wee synonymous in the dictionary of Russian Democracy with, ,6 have not got in our own stock we must be content to take from that ,to fnansions and peace to the serf's hut ?" " Molotlez I" (a fine fellow) of another ; and here is a book to supply thom,—ft book which was the involuntary ejaculation before this portrait of the

it is certainly a good thing to read by a fire, till one forgets Ruthenian patriot who did the honours to our author. The frosts and fogs and days of six hours long, to dream of blue

loch and heather-clad hill, and those glorious twenty-hour days other establishment worthy of careful observation is the church of the northern summer. Mr. Piaistratus Brown is M.P. for Bourton- and chapter Of St. George, the metropolitan sanctuary of the in-the-Marsh, and a Liberal, who, taking a holiday, happens to fall in Ruthenian G-reek united communion,—the centre from which with Mr. Wayland, Conservative representative of Slow, then orals- emanates the impulse of national propagandism, and from the lug on the western coast of Scotland in hie yacht the Kittiownke. How presses attached to which comes the literature intended to stimu- the two spend certain weeks in the midst of the inexhaustible beauty of ante patriotic action. This holy and in towns of little historical note, like Przernysl and Lemberg. spot for the true Ruthenian, for in it that which he looks to as his An immediate change indeed meets the traveller on crossing the distinctive faith manifests itself in the amplest display. Here the above-named river. The peasantry speak a Russian dialect, and for importations from Rome are entirely rejected, and here amidst the a head-dress wear the characteristic low-crowned, broad-brimmed studied pageantry of strictest Byzantine Ritualism the Ruthenian hat, instead of the Polish fur cap ; while the curious buIV patriot listens to the same peculiar intonation of the liturgy that shaped cupola, universally typical of the Greek ritual, caps in resounds in the churches of cherished Holy Russia. It was a silvery village the humble elevation which figures as the steeple of Churchman who gave the first start to the Ruthenian revival, and the people's place of worship, in place of the slim spire that it is still from within the precincts of an ecclesiastical establish- marks the Roman Catholic edifice, frequented only by the ment that it draws the animation which constitutes its force, and upper classes. It is a singular instance of the absence of true threatens to make the Ruthenian element of effective weight in the statesmanship in the Jesuits, how by one-sided and fanatically great and far-reaching struggle for political supremacy between sectarian execution of the religious Convention of 1596 they lost rival families of the Slave race which is going on grimly in these hold on the bulk of the population for sake of a barren triumph, old Polish regions.

inasmuch as it was confined to the conquest of only a class,—that The inexorable limitations of space here oblige us to part corn- of the aristocracy and its immediate attendants. In miserable pany from our author, who pushed his travels into that Ultima neglect did the peasantry then continue to vegetate during the Thule, the Bukowina, a province inhabited by a Rottman popula- {lays of Polish independence, under the spiritual guidance of a tion of anything but elevated character, and yet infected with no priesthood and a hierarchy of the same flesh and blood with it in little degree of political pretentiousness. What Dr. Eckardt tells race, in estate, and also in education. The country was us of this nondescript region does not fall behind the rest of his thoroughly Petonized as regards intellectual movement, and journey in interest, and with muck regret we are prevented from the mass of the population, though retaining its own dialect extracting what he says about the singular monastery of Frontine and its distinctive ritual, had lost all sense of national indi- Alba, the rustic timber-built residence, close on the Russian con- viduality when the country came to be subjected to Austrian fines, of the boorish Metropolitan of the Russian Old Dissenters, sway. It was only then that the Ruthenians began to awaken who, during many years, was the prime instrument of active revo- to a national sentiment. This was elicited mainly by the action lutionary machinations in the bands of political exiles, but whose of an energetic prelate, John Suegurski, United Metropolitan of influence of late has much decreased, with the growth of an in- Galicia, who found such general ignorance amongst his clergy that tensified Muscovite patriotism consequent on the outburst of the few were the popes who could read the Cyrillian alphabet. lie Polish insurrection in 1863, which made Russian public opinion vigorously strove to kindle national aspirations in his flocks ; he re- inexorably hostile to the order of promptings sought to be instilled formed the practices which had crept into the churches ; proscribed by the emissaries who, under the disguise of monastic robes, the Roman usages which had been largely introduced, and strictly sallied from the gates of this seeming sanctuary, to steal across insisted on the observance of the old Greek ritual, as sanctioned by the boundaries of the Czar's empire on missions of sedition.