Note 143 — HISTORICAL REVIEW OF BOSNIA. (continued 2)

Ami Boué. In corroboration of this I may cite the testimony of an English traveller, Edmund Spencer:—‘While attending the Parliamentary debates of the Skuptchina, I was much struck with the self-possessed, dignified air of the almost unlettered orators, who were earnest without violence, impassioned without intemperance, depending rather on the force of their arguments than the strength of their lungs and theatrical gesticulations, to win the attention of their auditors. The Serbs resemble us in more than one particular: they have the same dogged resolution, the same love of fair play, the same detestation of the use of the knife, together with no inconsiderable portion of that mixture of the aristocratic and democratic in their character which so especially distinguishes the Anglo-Saxon race.’ The last remark is now peculiarly applicable to the Bosnian branch of the Serbs.