mushroom same size all the way down, that is the
Wallachian idea of architectural beauty. A
traveller requires to come pretty close to a village
before he can reasonably indulge the thought
that he is near any human habitation. When
there he looks around, and is bound upon the
testimony of his senses to suppose that he has
suddenly arrived among a colony of Lilliputians.
The inhabitants, of whom he does not see a
single one, have all run into their holes and
concealed themselves at his approach, for fear
that he should be some Government official of
despotic proclivities on a taxo-flogging
expedition. Experience has rendered them tolerably
subtle in such cases. They scent the
tax-gatherer from afar. The first field labourer
who sees him from a distance, hastens homeward,
and the whole village hides. Everything
the peasants possess, disappears at once in holes
of the earth. They hide their com, their cheeses,
such few spangles and ornaments as serve to
array them on weddings and festival days, and
they conceal their young women most jealously
of all. Then they prepare to abide the event,
whatever it may be. They are a timid race;
a race of so timid and yielding a character as
never to stand up against oppression and front
it boldly. When they are beaten, they howl
and cry for mercy; they do not kick, but it is
absolutely astonishing how much beating they
will consent to take, before anything is to be
got out of them. They are shrewd calculators,
and weigh thumps against ducats with a calmness
which would astonish a hot-blooded Briton
not a little. The scourge has been too familiar
an object to the Wallachian peasant for centuries,
to have any shame whatever attached to its
smart. He is not bold, indeed, in the sense of
offering any resolute resistance to tyranny; but
if a tyrant wants to kill him he can die in a soft,
yielding, lumpish sort of way, with howls.

His mind is a queer puzzle; his views of education
are strictly limited. The village priest, who
is his sole instructor, does not possess scientific
or literary information of a much more extensive
character than he himself does; but now and
then they hold a hazy sort of discourse together
upon spiritual affairs, which are rather of a
distasteful character to him, the peasant. He
observes, not without certain sly commentaries
of his own upon the subject, that the priest
invariably gets the better of him on these
occasions. He finds that promises of future
rewards and blessings appear to depend on his
being ready, on the shortest notice, to do
the priest's work instead of his own. He
notices that such promises may be bought
with commodities of any nature useful to the
priest; and he fancies that he remembers a
blessing having been administered to him by the
reverend gentleman on one occasion when his
wife deemed it highly expedient, from some
unknown reason, to box his reverence's ears. On
the whole, he has not much respect for the
priest—who is a peasant, like himself, as his
father was before him, the priesthood being more
or less an hereditary calling—but though he
has not much awe or love for ecclesiastics,
he has a mighty great esteem for his church.
In the first place, it is probably the only
decent weather-tight house he has ever seen;
and it is usually decorated with an imposing
splendour calculated to enlist his sympathies and
to startle his imagination. Its internal
decorations would be remarkable for their
magnificence in any country. Its walls are covered
with pictures, and the pictures are all ablaze
with gold and jewels. Even the martyrdoms
of the saints are represented in the most agreeable
able manner, and if it be necessary to depict a
holy personage as undergoing the process of
broiling, after the manner of St. Lawrence,
it is satisfactory to observe that his sufferings
do not appear to be in any way unpleasant
to him, and that, on the whole, he appears
rather to enjoy them. The church is to the
Wallachian peasant everything which is
represented by the church and the theatre
combined, in other countries. When a poor,
half-starved, miserable man, with no human joy in
this world but now and then a drink of corn
spirit, leaves his earth hole for a gorgeous
edifice, of which the air is laden with incense, no
wonder that he is powerfully affected. Thus
he delights in saints' days and religious
ceremonies. While heartily despising and suspecting
the priesthood, he eagerly welcomes every
opportunity of visiting the church; and
although he would not be averse to a battle of
wits, or even a bout of fisticuffs with the
parson, every thread in his gorgeous robe of
office is hallowed in the peasant's eyes. The
ceremonies of his religion are as sacred to him
as its ministers are indifferent, or even despicable;
and, once past the porch of his temple, he
casts himself upon the ground and kisses the
stones in fervent worship

Intelligent, argumentative faith he has none.
Any person, clerical or otherwise, who
presumed to differ with received opinions would
experience little consideration or mercy.
Religious heresy is the only thing that would
rouse active resistance in the soft apathetic
nature of the Wallachian. Of course he has
not the faintest idea of the tenets of his
faith. He would fight and die for them, but he
does not know what they are. In so far as he
has any thought at all about other worlds, his
imagination runs riot in vague poetic dreams.
He believes in the devil as a personage who has
a very intimate acquaintance with human affairs
and takes an active part in the ordinary business
of everyday life. He believes in all manner
of secondary spirits and aerial unseen
influences. Above all, he believes in the existence
of spirits who keep watch and ward over hidden
treasure, and wander about mountains and
pathless moors in search of travellers to
befriend or punish in accordance with their
caprice. His songs and his legends all dwell
reverentially upon such themes. The favourite
personages of a Roumanian story are a beautiful
maiden, forlorn and benighted in a forest,
pursued by some persecuting demon, and