To such a degree did the Austrian Government neglect its duties that,
ten years ago, Croatia and Slavonia were short of at least one
thousand school buildings and twelve hundred teachers. Bishop
Strossmayer, coming from a family[43] which had settled at the
sprawling town of Osiek, in Slavonia, did what he could. His Yugoslav
Academy at Zagreb, the Zagreb University and the Society for studying
the history of the Yugoslavs are but a few of the national
institutions to which he devoted the princely revenues of Djakovo.
From there this most remarkable man worked for the intellectual
advancement of all the Southern Slavs; he subsidized the brothers
Miladinoff who made the first collection of Bulgarian folk-songs (and
who, on account of this forbidden subject, were both subsequently
strangled at Constantinople); he paid for the education of young
students no matter from what Yugoslav country they came; when
Ra[vc]ki, the well-known Croat historian, was persecuted by the
Government and living in misery, Strossmayer begged him to come to
Djakovo, and Ra[vc]ki was his closest friend for many years; he built
a large gallery at Zagreb and filled it with pictures, sacred and
profane, and was as ready to assist a young artist in Istria as in
Macedonia. It may be that he caused a circular to be read in the
Croatian churches which referred to the Orthodox as "lost sheep," but
he never used a method other than by prayer and the example of his
life to cause them to forsake their fold; to him the forcible
conversions by the Turks were as abhorrent as a system that was used
in Ba[vc]ka, where a whole village near Sombor was ennobled--but not
those who afterwards came to live there--for having joined the Roman
Church. He was himself no blind follower of the Vatican; and when he
went with a very princely retinue--in part the weakness of his humble
origin--to Rome in order to explain why he was unable to subscribe to
the dogma of Papal Infallibility, he ravished his audience with a
marvellous Latin oration, for he spoke many modern languages but was
most thoroughly at home in Latin. Often in conversation he passed from
one language to another, in search of what would best express his
meaning, and frequently he would have recourse to Latin. He became
reconciled to the dogma and it was due to the hostility of Magyar
potentates that he remained for more than fifty years the Bishop of
Djakovo, was not promoted to Zagreb nor made a cardinal. His fervent
and statesmanlike views can be seen in his correspondence[44] with
Gladstone. His head, like Gladstone's, caused one not to notice that
the rest of the body was unimpressive; they had the same brilliance of
eye. This man who worked continuously for the Southern Slavs could not
be always a _persona grata_ to Francis Joseph. Two remarks of the
Emperor's are handed down, but that one may be a legend which, with
the preface that Strossmayer was the only man to whom the Emperor was
ever rude, says that Francis Joseph accounted for some proceedings of
the bishop, as head of the National party in Croatia, by telling him
that he must have been drunk--and, overtaken by remorse, making him an
"Excellency" on the following day. Yet that story is certainly true
which recounts how in 1881 the Emperor at Belovar said to him that he
would sooner be an unimportant German Duke than Emperor of all the
Slavs.