Pleasant impression of the Rouman Capital

Altogether, my brief sojourn m Boduiest gave me a very pleasant impression of the Rouman Capital If I were compelled to choose whether I would reside at Sofia or Bucharest, I might be distracted between my respect for moral qualities and my personal taste for material comfort. But, looking at the question from an altruistic point of view, I am convinced the social development of Bulgaria, as typified by Sofia, is sounder and more promising for the future than that of Romania, as personified by Bucharest.

The Romanians have succeeded in adding another to the Capitals of modem Europe, displaying all the luxury, all the extravagance, all the passion for enjoyment, all the inequalities of wealth, and all the consequent misery, discontent, and rice which form the necessary concomitants of our fin de stick civilization. As yet, the Bulgarians have only created at Sofia a city fitted to be the centre of a peasant State. For themselves— whatever they may have done for strangers—they have chosen the better part

How it came to pass that two States, situated so close to each other as Bulgaria and Romania, coming into existence under such analogous conditions, and having so much in common, should have developed up to now in such different directions, is a question concerning which I had not time or opportunity to arrive at any definite conclusion. Probably the main cause is the fundamental difference of race and character between the two nations.

Whether the Roumans are or arc not, as they boast, the lineal descendants of the old Romans, they are undoubtedly a race of Latin origin and Latin tongue, which, by some strange freak of history, has managed to survive in this No Man’s Land of Eastern Europe. For good or bad the Rouman is a Latin, just as the Magyar is a Tartar and the Serb is a Sclav.

Rouman speaking races

There are Rouman-speaking races, not only on the banks of the Danube, but in Austria, in Turkey, and in Russia; and the patriots of Bucharest do not conceal their ambition of some day or other uniting all the branches of the Rouman nationality into one State and then rendering that State the leading member of some confederation of South-Eastern Europe.