PREFACE.


There is no country in Europe which at the present time possesses
greater interest for Englishmen than does the Kingdom of Roumania, and
there is none with whose present state and past history, nay, with whose
very geographical position, they are less familiar.

Only about nine years since Consul-General Green, the British
representative there, reported to his Government as follows: 'Ignorance
seems to extend even to the geographical position of Bucharest. It is
not surprising that letters directed to the Roumanian capital should
sometimes travel to India in search of Bokhara, but there can be no
excuse for the issue of a writ of summons by one of the superior law
courts of the British metropolis, directed to Bucharest in the Kingdom
of Egypt, as I have known to happen.' The reader may perhaps attribute
such mistakes as these to our insular ignorance of geography, or to the
fact that the proverbial blindness of justice prevented her from
consulting the map before issuing her process; but the fact remains,
that notwithstanding the occurrence of a great war subsequent to the
date above specified, which completely changed the map of Europe,
wherein Roumania took a very prominent part and England assisted at the
settlement, there are few intelligent readers in this country who could
say off-hand where precisely Roumania is situated.

And yet, as already remarked, the country possesses an absorbing
interest for us as a nation. Placed, to a large extent through English