The "Golubitza," or Dove, a miscellany in prose and verse, neatly got
up in imitation of the German Taschenbucher, and edited by M.
Hadschitch, is the only annual in Servia. In imitation of more
populous cities, Belgrade has also a "Literary Society," for the
formation of a complete dictionary of the language, and the
encouragement of popular literature. I could not help smiling at the
thirteenth statute of the society, which determines that the seal
should represent an uncultivated field, with the rising sun shining on
a monument, on which the arms of Servia are carved.
The fine arts are necessarily at a very low ebb in Servia. The useful
being so imperfect, the ornamental scarcely exists at all. The
pictures in the churches are mostly in the Byzantine manner, in which
deep browns and dark reds are relieved with gilding, while the
subjects are characterized by such extravagancies as one sees in the
pictures of the early German painters, a school which undoubtedly took
its rise from the importations of Byzantine pictures at Venice, and
their expedition thence across the Alps.
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