The Hungarian Nation

Brownson's Quarterly Review, October, 1851

Art. III.  1. Hungary and Transylvania. With Remarks on their Condition, Social, Political, and Economical. By John Paget, Esq. From the new London Edition. Philadelphia : Lea & Blanchard. 1850.  12mo. 2 vols.
2.   The City of the Magyar. Or, Hungary and her Institutions in 1839-40. By Miss Pardoe. London : George Virtue.    1840.    3 vols.    8vo.
3.   Souvenirs et Scenes de la Guerre d'ltalie, sous le Marechal Radetsky. Souvenirs de la Guerre de Hongrie, sous le Prince Windischgratz et le Ban Jellachich. Par le Comte George de Pimodan.    Paris.    1851.
4.   Hungarian Military Sketches. London: Williams &. Norgate.
5.   War in Hungary. By Max Schlesinger. Translated by J. E. Taylor. Edited by Francis Pulszky. London : Bentley.    12mo.    2 vols.

One more chapter on Hungary remains to be written, in order that our readers may thoroughly understand our judgment concerning the affairs of that unhappy kingdom. We have shown that the cause of the Magyars was not a republican cause, and that it was not a good cause. The popular errors with reference to Hungary may be summed up in those two points. We have now another question before us, and it is, How came the people to be so grossly mistaken about the Hungarians ? We will briefly answer this question, and it will lead us into a discussion more grateful to our feelings than our former thesis was, inasmuch as it is always more pleasant to praise than to blame, where the subject-matter allows us to bestow honest praise. In our previous articles, we accepted as guides, either Magyar authors, or writers who are intensely Ma-gyarized, because we were aware that direct evidence, given by them, that the Magyar cause was not republican, and that it was not good, could scarcely be rejected, even by the most earnest patrons of Magyardom. For the views now presented by us, we lean upon the authority of almost every person who has ever written a line concerning Hungary. As we have to say something in favor of the Magyars, however, it is as well to quote, not only Magyar testimony, but also the evidence of authors who are not Hungarian. The English works whose titles we have given at the head of this article, although they are not new to the public, are sufficiently trustworthy, and they will answer our purpose as well as the others, written before the sound of Russian cannon had ceased to reverberate among the Carpathian Mountains.

The public error with reference to Hungary was not, as every one knows, merely a speculative error.    It was reduced to practice, and not always of the most creditable nature.    The  mistaken notion  which prevailed here, in America, led to an intensely partisan stand in favor of the Magyars.    Two honorable Senators, both shrewd statesmen, both candidates for the Presidency, debased themselves so far as to pander directly to the popular frenzy. One called for a suspension of diplomatic intercourse with Austria; the other made complimentary speeches to Magyar refugees, and wrote radical letters to the Austrian ambassador.    Both thought, or seemed to think, that the pro-Magyar feeling was so strong  in this country, that no candidate   for  the   Presidency  could  safely  disregard it. And the wind that blew to Austria Senatorial threats, and letters on  the "manifest destiny"  of the United States, reached Massachusetts, and was strong enough to frighten Old Harvard out of her propriety, and to sweep a professor who had endeavored to resist the popular feeling from his chair.    And the consequences of the radical mistake made by most Anglo-Americans, unpleasant as they were, did not confine themselves within American limits.   American travellers in Austria were closely watched; obstacles to their entrance  into the empire were multiplied ; one, a spy employed by our government, came near being hanged ; and quite  recently another, who, if not a spy, was  certainly a very imprudent person, passed several days in an Austrian prison. A popular error which leads to consequences like these is a grave matter. It is time that it should cease, and, if we mistake not, it is rapidly going its own way.

The causes which led to a firm persuasion, on the part of so many, this side of the Atlantic, that the Magyar war was a just war, and that it was waged on democratic grounds,  and led, also, to the earnest sympathy for the Magyars which was so freely manifested amongst us, may be summed up under three heads. Radicalism is gaining ground, in truth, it may be said to possess the ground, in the United States. The public mind, and the public institutions, which are supposed to represent that mind, are becoming exclusively democratic, with a rapidity which, however grateful it may be to democratic propagandists, is sure to please the enemies of genuine republicanism, and the men who never tire of saying that the great American experiment will fail. It pleases them, as it pleases the prophet to see the fulfilment of his predictions hastening with a rapidity greater than he had reason to expect. In the last number of our Review, the attention of our readers was directed to the cheerless fact, that, while our Constitution presents a balance of monarchical, aristocratic, and democratic elements, the democratic element is fast eliminating the others. Exponents of this elimination may be seen almost as often as our legislators meet, our courts sit, or a popular movement is made. One effect of the radical principles which alone we seem willing to recognize as American principles is, to bring about a total change in our theory of government. Power is no longer from God ; magistrates no longer rule by his grace. The Vigilance Committee at San Francisco are not many years in advance of their Eastern brethren, if they are an hour in advance of them, in basing public action upon the assumption that the process of elimination is completed by the democratic element of our institutions;  upon the doctrine that in the mob, whether well or badly dressed, resides the power which creates legislatures and courts of justice, and which holds suspended over the guilty, and, it may be, over the innocent, that sword which only God unsheathed, and placed in the hands of the lawful magistrate, for the terror of evil-doers.    The spirit which establishes at San Francisco the Vigilance Committee, and proclaims the absolute sovereignty of an irresponsible mob, is also strong, fearfully strong, in our midst, and our apathy is the apathy, our blindness is the blindness, which goes before death when it comes like a thief in the night.

This change in our notion of government leads to a result which may place us, as it once placed France, in the attitude of a natural enemy of every civilized government on earth. The question whether a perfect form of government should be monarchical, aristocratic, or republican in its principal elements, is a question which cannot well be settled in the abstract, that is, from a comparison of mere ideas. In the concrete, no one of the three is absolutely superior to the others. Rulers and people can save their souls, can obtain the first and final end of society, under any one of the three forms. Each is in harmony with the natural law, and, of course, with the positive law of God. Wherever any one of them is established, is in possession with its historical rights, is the legitimate order, it will be found to be the best form for the people who live under it; it exists under the Divine sanction, and it is to be respected as the just expression of the right of that people to government, order, and law. A republican form of government is the exponent of 'American right to an organized society, a monarchical form is the expression of Austrian right. That government is the best for a people which best enables them to fulfil the end for which society exists.

These are elementary truths; but the American mind has made such vast progress that it is beginning to regard plain, elementary truths as recondite axioms, quite unintelligible to good democrats, and only to be granted, or perhaps comprehended, after an elaborate argument. Hence it is necessary that grave writers, eveh, dwell upon them at every fitting season. It may be said of Protestants, that one can safely give them the credit of knowing every thing excepting the plainest principles of religion. It may, judging from present appearances, soon be truly said of most Anglo-Americans, that they are excellent judges of every thing excepting the science of government.

The notion which at this time prevails among our people is, that no other than the democratic form of government is legitimate.    All other forms are inadmissible, or at best mere preparatory institutions, designed to conduct the affairs of society until the people become able to govern themselves. As all power resides in the people, or is derived from them, it follows that government is only an agent whose business it is to execute the popular will, or, at farthest, a corporation holding certain powers in trust for the people, until these can resume the management of their own concerns. It follows that any movement, which tends to make the people sovereign in fact, as well as in theory, is a just, a legitimate movement. Governments, as such, have no rights, they have only duties. The people, as such, have no duties, they have rights. It cannot be asked of a revolutionary movement in the direction of democracy whether it be just; the only question is, Is it prudent ?    Is it time ?

It is easy, therefore, to conceive why so many amongst us favored 'the Magyar cause. That cause was supposed to be a democratic cause. It was certain that the Hungarians were in arms against Austria, and that the government of Austria was monarchical. These simple considerations settled the whole matter. The people, in similar cases, have forgotten to ask what are the character, motives, and number of the rebels, whether their grievances be real and their statements true*. These and the like topics are unnoticed. The case for the government is not allowed a bare hearing, far less a fair trial. The whole matter is settled by an a priori argument, according to which government must always be in the wrong. Why, then, waste time in listening to its defence.

Of the American sympathizers with Hungary, probably nineteen twentieths have arrived at a conclusion by the foregoing a priori argument against Austria. Unfortunate men! They do not see, or seeing, they rejoice, that the same argument is urged against our own government by Free-Soilers and radicals of every hue, and that it is urged with a fearful efficacy. The steam-engine is the exponent of our type of civilization. Steam and fire, if good servants, are bad masters. The ascendancy of steam is terrible on earth, as the ascendancy of fire is terrible in hell.

Had the American people thoroughly understood the character of the Hungarian rebellion, had they known that it involved a war of races, that it was an intensely aristocratic movement, and that the great mass of the inhabitants
of Hungary were likely to fare no better, and perhaps worse, under independent Ma«ryardom than under Austria, they would not, possibly, have wasted so much time, breath, and sympathy upon the Magyars. But they knew not these things ; neither are many "quite willing to believe them now.
The press, of course, is, in a great measure, responsible for this curious specimen of national ignorance.    To a certain extent, the newspapers may be excused.    Hungary is a distant kingdom; it lies on the frontier of civilized Europe, and in 1847 Americans knew as much about it as they knew about the southern slope of the Caucasus.    No American traveller, and but two or three English tourists, had written about Hungary.   Paget, Miss Pardoe, and one or two   French  travellers who  had visited  that romantic land, testify strongly and repeatedly, not only to the fact that Western Europe knew nothing of Hungary, but also that even  the tourist  might spend a year in the country without learning much about it, so strange, so anomalous, according to our notions, is the state of society in  Hungary.    To get any information worth having, the traveller was obliged to avoid the common error  of visiting only the places and persons named in his letters of introduction.    We can appreciate the magnitude of this difficulty, when we  remember  how  hard it seems for Englishmen, whose institutions do not differ generically from ours, to gather  and  to   convey to  their   countrymen   a tolerably accurate  notion of  the state of  our society.    To  understand that it is difficult to obtain the most common information concerning interesting events transpiring in other countries, it is enough to point to the fact, that a popular commotion of some sort has disturbed the island of Cuba for  nearly two  months, and, notwithstanding the  letters, despatches, and other documents which have tilled the columns of the papers for the last few weeks, it is not easy for the closest observer to know, at the time we are writing, whether the revolution has taken place in Cuba, or within the limits of the United States.    It will probably turn out that there have been a few petty fights on Cuban ground, but that the war of independence was fought and won in American printing-offices, and in the New York and New Orleans Cuban club-rooms.  Why, any good Whig or Democrat, who reads only his own partisan journal, is a living
and it is a comical circumstancean unconscious witness of the difficulty of obtaining correct information concerning political events which happened in his own btate. Each man gets, from his favorite paper, the most distorted accounts of things done and said by the other party. Ine foreign journalist, who reads both papers, and who sometimes believes both, is, perhaps, less in the dark than our free and enlightened voter is concerning events which transpired almost in his very presence.

All this does not precisely demonstrate that the conductors of American newspapers are dishonest, it only leaves room for a surmise of that nature; but it proves that editorial honesty and editorial dishonesty are terms which are rapidly losing their meaning, on account of the objective absence of the thing signified, and they are words which may be soon too antiquated even for the best dictionaries. The old system of publishing newspapers, which was based upon the idea of personal, moral responsibility, has almost disappeared.    Modem progress has left it far behind.    1 he management of a newspaper has become, strictly, a thing amenable to the laws or customs of trade.    It is as marketable, as subject to quotations, to the prices current, as cotton and indigo are.    Immense sums oi money must be invested in its establishment.    In the estimate of its worth, no considerations touching its honesty or truthfulness are allowed to enter, and if they were, they would not be intelligible.   Its value is estimated from the number oi copies sold Snd advertisements inserted, from the amount ol dividends paid, and from the par value of its shares.    Hence the successful editor must be a speculator, a gambler.    He must watch the current of popular feeling, popular passion, as closely, and for the same reasons, as the merchant watches and calculates the receptivity of the market for his cottons and sugars.    It is clear enough that the editor who does not obey the laws which now govern the newspaper trade, is a fool according to current notions.    He is poor, he always will be poor, and he deserves no better fortune.     I he editor must bow and bend, not only his knee, but his whole body, before the mob, which exacts a homage, a sycophancy, compared to which the habits of courtiers in the presence of absolute European monarchs are manly habits.    It he refuses to pay this tribute, he is likely to perish lor want of bread.    Why should he hesitate to pay it, when he can
make it build for him palaces, win for him fame, and open to him the doors of legislative assemblies? Why should he not pay it, when others, in every walk of life, yield it without hesitation, or die of hunger when they refuse to pay it? The politician who scorns to flatter the popular passions need not look for office; the merchant, need not expect to sell his goods; and both are fortunate if they experience no other effect of their imprudence in neglecting to pay servile court to the idol which, by a strange confusion of terms, is sometimes called the public will.

Now if we bear in mind the fact to which we have already referred, that our notions, our national tendencies, and the changes in our institutions all indicate the advent of unmixed democracy, and therefore of the worst tyranny, in America, we shall be prepared with an apology for the course pursued with reference to Hungary by the American press.    When a Webster thinks that it is necessary to conciliate the  spirit of  democratic propagandism,  under pain of losing votes, what can the poor editor do ?    The truth about Hungary could not be told in his columns ; the people would not believe it, they would not like it, they would not buy his papers, and he would go to bed supper-less.    Truth is powerful, no doubt, but so is an  empty stomach.    And the motives which led him to tell the people news which pleased them about Mexico, California, and Cuba, which urged him to say nothing about the guiltiness of our dealings with our neighbors, and which induced him to talk about the manifest destiny which is to extend the blessings of freedom to every inhabitant of the northern continent by exterminating the natives, and planting the hickory flag-staff in the soil made fat by their bodies, led him  also to tell the American  people that the  Magyar cause was  a just, a republican, and even a democratic
cause.

The poor soul, notwithstanding the enormous amount of money invested in his paper, labored under singular disadvantages when he came to talk with his patrons about European politics. Being a tradesman, a merchant in news, a speculator in fancy intelligence stock, he had to sell only the wares which were sent to him by his European agents or correspondents, and, as happens often enough with other European goods sent hither for sale, his wares were of an inferior quality, made expressly, for the American market.     This is literally true.     The foreign  news manufactory is  as real an  entity as the Birmingham or Brummagem depot of imitation wares.    Let any person observe, in the column of foreign news, the names of the papers to which American  editors are indebted for their latest  European   intelligence.     These  are certain   Paris, London, and Liverpool journals.    It is now a notorious fact, that in these offices the manufacture or adaptation of news for particular markets is reduced to a most elaborate system.    The reader of an American paper gets, in reality, his news from a fellow comfortably seated in a printing-office at Paris, with a pile of newspapers, in all languages and of every political shade, before him.    When he knows who his customers are, he can send them just the news they wish to hear.    He tells the American that the Magyars are entitled to American sympathy, because they are democrats.    He tells the Englishman that the Magyars are entitled to English sympathy, because they are aristocrats. And the establishment of weekly steamers and of telegraph lines has only increased the difficulty.    There was a time when correct news could be  obtained from  Europe; but that was forty years ago, when American institutions were not quite democratic, when American readers of newspapers were comparatively few, and when it was of no use to arouse in them a false sympathy in behalf of European vagabonds, because long voyages made the sympathy of too old a date to be of any use.     But now the Atlantic has become narrow, and America a great nation.    Hence, American ideas about European affairs are of some importance, and, that those ideas may be of the required sort, the   foreign   news-manufacturer   sends,   and   the   steamer and telegraph carry, such intelligence as may appear to the democratic supreme committee suitable for the American market.

Besides, our journalists do not understand the Magyar language, and few are able to read German or Latin, and hence the papers published in Hungary are, to them, sealed documents. It was not safe, or expedient, to copy from the few English or French journals which professed either to be neutral or to oppose the Magyar pretensions, because, in the first place, no one would read their extracts ; then it was, a priori, certain that such extracts would contain false, because anti-radical statements ; and finally, because readers would buy their papers at another office.
In France and in Italy the true character of the Magyar struggle was pretty accurately understood. In England the press succeeded in making the people believe that the movement was precisely similar to the English struggle which resulted in the accession of William III. We all know what stories the American press poured into our willing or unwilling ears. It is certain that an honest attempt, on the part of an American, to get a true notion of the real state of things in Hungary, involved more trouble than most men were willing to undergo.

All this forms a curious illustration of our boasted American freedom. We fear that, in some other important respects, our freedom is a chimera, or at best an ens rationis; but let that pass. We are far more dependent upon Europe than we were in 1770, and our dependence has assumed a form which, if it be not slavery, is wonderfully like it.

There is yet another cause which can be assigned for the popular errors with reference to Hungary, and this is more creditable to Americans, as well as to the Magyars, than the others are. We referred to this branch of our inquiry when we observed that our present discussion is more grateful to our feelings than our former essays were, inasmuch as it permits us to bestow praise without the sacrifice of truth.

The Magyars are, in many respects, a most interesting people, and their many noble qualities may well challenge for them the good-will, and, to a certain extent, the admiration, of Americans. Our countrymen were not wrong in praising the Magyars; they erred in their approval of the cause in which the Magyars were engaged. In one point of view, something may be said in favor even of that cause, as we shall presently see. If it had been undertaken at another time, in another spirit, by other leaders, with a different scope, it would not, in our opinion, have been opposed even by an Austrian statesman.

The Magyar is either a soldier or a shepherd, we mean the true Magyar. When he is compelled by his poverty to wear the livery of a servant, the "Nemes ember vagyak," " I am a nobleman," is ever at the end of his tongue, and as he says it he twirls his mustachios, strikes his spurs, and very plainly intimates that he is a soldier, only for the moment relieved from duty.    Now the shepherd and the warrior are characters whom the poets, from Homer to Tasso, have delighted to celebrate.

Miss Pardoe characterizes the Magyar country gentleman as hospitable, haughty, ostentatious, fond of luxury and splendor, sincere and frank, with a high feeling of honor and courage. The Magyar peasant is warlike, bold, and courteous; of melancholy temperament, and greatly inclined to indolence, preferring a rifle to a plough, and a gallop to labor iu the fields. He is proud of his nation and of the antiquity of his descent. When brought into the presence of a superior, unlike the Sclave, he takes oft' his hat and stands erect.

In truth the Magyars are a primitive people. With the vices, they have all the virtues of chivalrous times. Feudal institutions have long since disappeared from Western Europe; but the Magyars have in Christendom no brethren in blood, and this circumstance, together with their intense national pride, may account for the fact that a state of society which is now historical for the old nations of the Continent should be still cherished in Hungary.

What has become historical is already good material for romance. Most of the best romances in our language, and, indeed, in all languages except the Magyar, describe times, scenes, and men which have long since passed away. It is curious, it is pleasant, to read about men and things now existing, existing too in Christian Europe, which are like the things and men whom we are accustomed to look upon as belonging to bygone, romantic ages. The Magyar is at once a living being, and the creature of a pleasing dream. This, we take it, is one of the causes which have won, somehow, our sympathies in behalf of the children of Arpad. Heroes of romance and of song know the way to the heart, and the heart is not always that of a woman either. Americans cannot spare time to be ideal, or to live in any other than an atmosphere of facts and dollars, but they like to hear of other people living higher tip in an ideal world, and to see them there. It is true that a close inspection of the Magyar destroys much of the illusion which distance creates; but enough of antiquity, of romance, and of positively good, solid material remains to make him an interesting character. No man wins the love of those with whom he is thrown into friendly contact as the Magyar wins it. So say all travellers, and our own limited experience inclines us to believe that it is so.

The primitive manners of the Magyars belong to a type of civilization which we are accustomed to regard as less advanced than ours.    They, care little for commerce, and; all the efforts of   Count Szechenyi, and of other Magyar noblemen who have studied English customs, cannot suffice to make them understand that, in order to be better. able to cope with Austria, and to be regarded as a nation in Europe, they must be merchants   as well as soldiers. The internal resources of Hungary are vast, almost beyond description.    Americans would   make   the   country, if it were theirs, the mistress of Europe,    But it would be as profitable to talk of commerce to the knights of the Round Table as to the true Magyar.   He despises the Germans as much for their commercial habits as for any other habit of theirs.    He allows others to trade for him, and is satisfied with such internal improvements as God has vouchsafed to the country.     The German, we mean the Hungarian German, whose  paradise is  a counting-house, while   he profits by the indifference of the Magyar to commercial affairs, cannot understand it.   He regards him as only half-civilized, and calls him a bctyar, a groom.

Property is most unequally divided, of course, as it was in all countries in the feudal ages.    We have in a preceding article explained the  land  tenure, so that here it is only necessary to repeat that land can be held only by a nobleman, that is to say, by a Magyar, or a Magyarized Sclave, or alien.    Prince Esterhazy is the  greatest landholder in  Hungary, and his title-deeds date  as far back as   the   year  1300.    His  lands cover an area of  twelve hundred "square miles, or about a thirteenth part of the whole kingdom.    His peasants number three hundred and sixty thousand.    He possesses the jus gladii,  the power of life and death;   and therefore is entitled to keep soldiers in his pay.    His armory contains weapons for two regiments, one of cavalry and one of infantry, each twelve hundred strong.     At the time of   Miss Pardoe's visit, in 1840, his dungeons contained twenty prisoners.   His estates equal the kingdom of Wurtemburg in size, and they contain one hundred and thirty villages, forty towns, and thirty-four castles.     His   acres, however, bring   him   a revenue averaging only about twelve cents each, in all, $ 700,000 a year. ° His sheep are   numerous enough to employ 2,500 Shepherds.    The mere recital of these facts throws more liffht upon the state of Hungary than chains of argument.

Out of the ninety-seven towns and villages in the county of Arva, the family of Phurzo possessed eighty-two. The last Count left these to his daughters and their descendants. The property has never been divided, and it is administered by one for the benefit of the rest of the heirs, numbering upwards of sixty. Yet the revenue is not more than $60,000 yearly. These revenue returns prove that the peasant is not very profitable to his lord.
A few of the great estates, belonging to magnates who have visited England, are in comparatively good condition, and several agricultural societies have been established of late years, which promise well. But the greater portion of the land is treated according to rules which were old even three centuries ago. The Magyar leaves the land nearly as God made it.

Every nobleman, that is, every Magyar, should, according to the Hungarian theory, hold land. Yet every Magyar does not. Some have sunk into the peasant condition. Many follow mechanical employments. Still the Magyar will divide the land until further division becomes impossible. Whole villages are sometimes seen, inhabited chiefly by poor nobles, the descendants, probably, of an old Magyar who possessed the entire property. Now it is subdivided to an almost absurd degree of attenuation. Each poor noble holds a piece of land a few hundred feet in length, and just wide enough to give room for a small cottage.

According to the Hungarian law the holders of land are supposed to be descendants of the Magyars who conquered the country. The land belongs to the king, and it is held on the tenure of military service. Hence, land cannot be sold, legally, although the law is sometimes evaded; but the purchaser cannot secure his title. On the failure of male heirs, the land reverts to the king, only two or three exceptions existing to this rule in the case of female fiefs. The king is bound to bestow this land thus returned upon an Hungarian subject. This person may not be noble, in which case the gift ennobles him. In this way, some Slovacs have become Magyarized. These laws concerning land will show why the Magyar clings to even his tiny spot, scarcely large enough for a cottage ground, with such an enduring embrace. Punch ne inker eat onus,  No burden can be attached to the land,  was a law of Hungary.

It secured the owner from the burden of paying taxes, and it made land in Hungary a more important possession than in any other European country. At the same time, the law rendering the sale of land illegal, and making the land itself free from burden, brings its disadvantages to the magnates. They are prodigal, and the least in the world of a mercantile spirit. They are often in want of money, and the Jews are not always willing to lend it, as only personal security can legally be given. Still, this law is evaded, and it is probable that Jews hold the title-deeds of many impoverished magnates, although with an uncertain grasp. There are upwards of a hundred and sixty thousand Jews in Hungary, and in the late war they were liberals, of course. This arose partly because of their hereditary disposition to make mischief in Christian nations, and partly, doubtless, in order that they might possess land once owned by the magnates of the kingdom.

In a country where the land is held in this primitive or feudal way, feudal concomitants are sure to obtain ;   and among them, the primitive virtue of hospitality.    Accordingly,'the   Magyars   are   the   most   hospitable   people   in Europe.    Almost   every page of  our  English authorities bears strong testimony to this point.    The stranger is always welcome to a Magyar house.   Excepting in the great cities, there are no taverns in Hungary where a traveller can possibly stay an hour.    There would be no earthly use in building them, for no one would, or rather could, patronize them.    The nearest Magyar noble would not permit it, and a refusal of his hearty invitation would make of him an enemy for life.    The traveller, after a few hours, feels as though*he had   known   his kind entertainers for years.    There is no dash of worldliness in their hospitality ; it comes from the warm Magyar heart.    Two or three anecdotes will illustrate this matter better than  encomiums can.

Paget, with a friend, was travelling in Transylvania, and they came near the house of a Magyar as the snow began to fall. There was no public house in the village. They hesitated not, however, to throw themselves upon the hospitality of the Magyar; but when they reached the house, they found that lie was not at home. Nevertheless, the servants   opened   the   dining-room, oilered   the   travellers every thing in the house, and all this as a matter of course. The horses fared as well as their masters. The coachmen gave them double feed.

At Thoroczko, Paget found a miserable inn. His servant was a Magyar, and Miklos knew that a countess lived not far distant, at whose house he thought that better fare could be had than at the inn. So he endeavored to persuade his master to visit the countess; but Paget, this time, refused. A servant of the countess passing through the village, and hearing that a stranger was at the inn, stopped to ask who had arrived. Miklos scrupled not to tell the servant, that his master would visit the countess on the following day. Then Miklos informed his master that the countess had sent her servant to invite him to her palace. Paget discovered the lie that evening ; nevertheless, he went the next day to the chateau, where he found that the lady expected, not only him, but all travellers, to visit her on their way. Miklos, being an Hungarian, could not understand why his master was at times unwilling to ask admittance into houses where he would be received as if his family and that of his entertainers had been allied for twenty generations.

Mrs. Pulszky tells an amusing story in point.

The Baron Palocsay, grandfather of the present magnate, notwithstanding his generous hospitality, often found himself without visitors, particularly in winter, as his castle was situated on a lofty and bleak eminence. This lack of visitors annoyed the Baron, so he was in the habit of sending out in search of guests, when there were none at his table. His servants went to the high road, and when they saw a travelling-carriage, they forced the travellers to turn to the castle, where the Baron, without listening to their protestations, entertained them for three days in the most princely manner, because, as he said, the Hungarian has a right to keep his guests for three days; if they are willing to remain longer, it is a great honor to the host.

Mrs. Pulszky testifies that many Magyars retain this notion, and, when practicable, they enforce it. She mentions the case of a friend of hers, who went to the house of a Magyar with the intention of making an ordinary visit. His visit lasted seven years.

She observes, also, that visits for several months are by no means unusual, and that persons who come with three or four children frequently apologize, not for their visit,'but for not having brought with them their whole family.

And this primitive spirit is by no means confined to the wealthy Magyars. Paget (Vol. I. p. 105) says, that one of his friends was benighted near Fared. A poor carpenter offered him shelter. A bed was prepared, and the traveller groped his way to it, through the dark, for the people were too poor to buy candles. He found that he was not alone. A coughing on one side, cries on the other, a cackling and rustling of feathers above, and a butting of horns below, continued at intervals through the night. When daylight came, he found that he had been sleeping with two women, half a dozen children, a hen and chickens, and a huge goat, In fact, the carpenter had given his own place to the stranger. A bit of black bread and a little goat's milk was all the poor man could offer him for breakfast; but the sturdy Magyar firmly, though respectfully, refused compensation of any sort,
It  is  scarcely necessary to add, that there will be no taverns in Hungary while the Magyars are masters of the land, and that the roads are, and always were, bad.    Miss Pardoe remarks, that the traveller in Hungary must make up his mind resolutely to fling from him every feeling of hyper-fastidiousness, both as regards roads, horses, drivers, and   accommodations;   to  brave  delay,  disappointment, and even danger; and to prepare himself to do battle with inconvenience of every description.    The roads are made by the compulsory labor of the peasant, and he deposits there whatever rubbish he can the most readily collect.   The stone bridges are in ruins; the wooden bridges are no better, being made of planks thrown carelessly together along beams resting on wooden piles, and unsecured by a single nail.    There are four ways of travelling.    The first is the government post, on the high roads.    This is seldom used, because of its slowness.    The second is the peasant's post, running between Pesth and Vienna.    The method commonly adopted is, to bring out the Norspann.    This is a compulsory f)ost,   furnished   by   the   peasants.      By  law they are compelled to furnish horses to the Magyar nobles, and to travellers who have obtained a written order from a nobleman.    A certain sum is paid to the peasant, and he must forward   the  traveller  to  the   next station, where another peasant must  provide horses, if required.

The fourth method of progress is by the open peasant cart. A fifth must be added, for travellers are sometimes forced to resort to it; we mean, to trudge on foot. But there is not in the world a more beautiful country than Hungary, and the traveller who overcomes all these obstacles will be amply repaid for any amount of toil.

Persons who desire to make primitive manners their study will find abundance of food for meditation in Hungary. The manners peculiar to every age, from the last century back to the time of Noah, may be seen in that country. Paget speaks of a place, a little beyond Stuhl-weissenburg and not above forty miles from Pesth. It is a cluster of villages, at least one of which is inhabited entirely by noblemen, untitled of course. Every one of the houses is subterranean, only the roof being visible. They are mere holes cut in the ground, and covered with straw.

Although few noblemen have now the historical right to flog their peasants, yet the peasants do not escape. The sentence of a county or town officer is rccpiired, to make the punishment legal. The peasant is bound to the flogging-block, and the Haiduk gives the blows with a hazel stick, about the thickness of the finger. Great skill is required to inflict the greatest pain with the least bodily injury. Some of these hardy fellows, says Paget (Vol. I. p. 230), laugh at the punishment, and it is a point of honor among them to bear it without flinching. Nothing renders the young peasant so irresistible to his mistress as his heroic support of the five-and-twenty blows.

The cholera broke out in Hungary in 1831. The Slovac peasants, believing that the nobles had poisoned them, rose, and brutally murdered every Magyar they could catch. Paget saw one gentleman who had been beaten for several hours, and then had hot ploughshares applied to his feet. The lord lieutenant of the county, while attempting to quiet the crowd at another village, was dragged from his horse, and, but for the interference of a Slovac peasant, would have been savagely butchered. When order was restored, about fifty SloVac peasants were hung in chains. Their bodies remained exposed for several years, but each body received a new dress annually, from surviving friends. This story is an epitome of the state of affairs between the Magyars and Sclaves. On one side, unutterable contempt; on the other,a hatred that defies description. And travellers are generally found to pity the Selave, but to uphold the Magyar withal. 1 aget, even, testifies that he could not but feci some contempt for the Slovac peasants of Hungary. There is something in them which, notwithstanding the hardship ol their position, inclines the stranger to say that the proud Magyar, although he may err in opposing Austrian measures lor the benefit of the peasants, is right in refusing them equality with himself.

Bathing in society seems to be the established mode at most watering-places,  and   Paget was  horrified when   a young lady invited him to bathe in company with a score ol noble females.    Yet this practice is condemned by many Magyars, and with reason.    In  the churches, there is a compete separation of  the  sexes.    The men  sit on one side, the married women on  the other, and the maidens crowd around the steps of the altar.    So in ball-rooms in the interior.    The gentlemen stand in the middle of the room, the ladies sit in a row all around.    There is no mixture except for the purposes of dancing.    Paget mentions, that,  when he  offered  to  accompany ladies with whom he   danced  to  promenade  the  rooms,   his   conduct  was reoarded as sadly heterodox.    At another party, where he found the company in two distinct circles, the women at one end of the room and the men at the other, he, supposing that it was a national custom, was about to join the men, when the lady of the manor told him that the gentlemen congregated together only because they found their own society more agreeable than that of   the ladies.   ^ Ol course, this state of things cannot be universal, but it is a significant index of the state of society when it is so frequently noticed in the interior.    In the large cities such things have long since been changed, whether for the better we cannot tell.    Paget and' others mention, that, at tentatiously used, even when ladies were quite near. At one of these parties, a countess observed to 1 aget that women in Hungarian society must submit to such scenes. Men, she continued, prefer their pipes to our drawing-rooms. The woman who should attempt to civilize them would be exposed to neglect and insult.    The capital is worse than anywhere else. Paget, however, observes that he did not find these scenes universal. The misbehaving men were mostly country squires. The ladies were highborn absentees.

The pious salutation, " Praised be God!" " Praised be Jesus Christ! " takes the place, among the simple Hungarians, of our " Good morning! "   " How do you do ? "

Paget observes that in no country is the behavior of the child to the parent more respectful than in Hungary. From infancy the child is taught to kiss the parent's hand as its ordinary salutation, and the morning and evening greetings are considered matters of duty,"and scrupulously observed. The married daughter places her mother at the head of her table, and receives her blessing as she leaves for the night. It is common to see grown-up sons preserve absolute silence in the presence of their fathers, and even sacrifice their political principles at the parent's bidding.

The condition of the Hungarian women merits a passing remark. Paget (Vol. I. p. 210) remarks that at Schemnitz an exhibition of public flogging takes place every Sunday morning, and that it rarely happens that some women are not among the sufferers. The conduct of the men at ball-rooms may already have induced the surmise that Hungarian notions about women are as conservative, as old-fashioned, as their notions are about most other things. The Magyar country-women are worse clothed than the men; where they can afford it, however, they wear knee * boots, and sheepskin jackets. The covering for the head is a handkerchief. Unmarried country girls wear their hair in a plait hanging down the back. Married women tie it up. Peasant women, throughout Hungary, are very unwilling to change the costume of their ancestors. A sentiment of shame, says Paget, is attached to any change, and especially to an imitation of the higher classes. The saying with them is common, that an honest Hungarian ' peasant girl should wear the same clothes as her grandmother wore before her. Paget (Vol. I. p. 297) quotes several Magyar love-songs, which indicate some of the duties of an Hungarian wife. The lover says that he should like to drive six oxen in the plough, if his dove would hold it, and four horses in a sledge, if his rose would hold it up. This last duty must be performed by some one, as the roads are so bad that the sledge would empty its load into the ditch if it were not occasionally held up at one side. The girl, far from resenting this exposition of the services expected from her, answers that her dove shall have a clean shirt, if she be obliged to soak it on Saturday and wash it on Sunday. He shall have a cake, if she have to beg the flour and manoeuvre for the butter.

Miss Pardoe (Vol. IT. p. 103) mentions a visit made to the county jail of Buda. There were many women con-lined there, and two thirds of them for the crime of child-murder. She observes that this crime is very prevalent in Hungary, and on one occasion she asked a friend of hers, a judge, to explain the matter. He answered, that the cause was twofold, poverty and shame. There is no law to enforce the support of an illegitimate infant by its father, and the mother is frequently unable to maintain it. Divorces, says Paget, are far from uncommon among the Protestants, and they are seldom regarded as disgraceful occurrences. Most divorced women marry again quite as well as before. Inveterate dislike, ill-treatment, impossibility of living together, or the employment of threats or force to bring about the marriage, is, in law, a sufficient reason. The woman retains her property and her rights unimpaired.

Women have rights in Hungary. The widows of magnates can send a deputy to sit, though not to vote, in the lower house of the Diet, In the county meetings, the widow of a noble can send a deputy to act in her name. An Hungarian lady never loses her maiden name. During the life of her husband all actions at law, in which she is interested, arc conducted in her name. Her husband has no control whatever over her property, and, if she chooses, she can retain the management of it in her own hands. A maid, however, remains a minor, and a ward of her nearest male relation, no matter how old she may be. Women, as one may suppose, after hearing all this, are as interested in political discussions as the men.

It is the fashion, says Paget, for two ladies to walk and sit together, and this custom is not confined to young ladies ; so that, go where you will, there is a third person in the conversation. This is a praiseworthy regulation of fashion.

The administration of justice is as old-fashioned as every thing else.    Paget (Vol. II. p. 272) observes, that it is the custom for both plaintiffs and defendants to make private visits to the judges before trial, in order to instruct them about the causes. An Hungarian boasted that the courts were better than in old times, for, said he, the judges do not like to take bribes openly now! The delays of justice in Hungary are proverbial, even in criminal cases. Paget saw at St. Benedek a number of old men in chains. They had been confined only a few months, and their offence was, that they had stirred an insurrection, fifty years before. The process against them had lasted half a century. No doubt this is an extreme case. The fault is not in the law, but in the executive. Corvinus and Joseph decreed that trials of right of possession should end within a year from the opening of the case. Yet trials often last in Hungary longer than a lifetime. Almost the only persons who obtain justice, precisely because suits may last so long, are the Jews. They will buy up all the products of the land of a magnate, paying in advance a ruinously low price. It frequently happens"that suits are moved to recover the goods, so that the Jew, after robbing the indolent noble of two thirds of his property, is compelled to disgorge the remaining third.
Manorial courts existed by law until the Diet of 1836 ; and, although illegal, there is no question but that they exist to this day. The Magyars are the most odd conservatives the world ever saw. It is no new thing with them to disregard a law providing even for a change which they themselves regard as beneficial, because it is a change;. This remark will apply to several customs noticed in this article, which have been declared illegal since 1836. Where the law providing for an alteration can be evaded, it is most religiously done.

The jurisdiction of the manorial courts extended, in civil matters, to all cases under the value of thirty dollars, and, in criminal cases, to the infliction of twenty-five blows. The lord sat in judgment, either in person or by his representative. The manorial court settled differences between the peasants, and between peasant and lord. In the latter case, the lord judged a case to which he was a party. Where the dispute was between peasants, the system might have been a tolerable method of administering justice. There was a right of appeal to the county court, but only after the infliction of the twenty-five blows, or the payment of the money.    This court was a patriarchal hall of justice;  the  peasants  did   not  like  it;  the Magyars

Paget saw, at the castle of Thurzo, the flogging-board, and the Haiduks preparing to punish some peasants by order of the bailiff.    Here was the great defect of this court. Bailiffs were too often the judges.    Where the question was between peasants, the parties were commonly satisfied when  their lord sat in  person.    The  jurisdiction oi   his court, under the revised law, does not extend to the infliction of corporal punishment, nor to disputes between peasant and lord.    These were to be decided by a court ot live disinterested persons, of whom the lord nominated three. It is difficult to say what has become of these courts, as well as of some other peculiarly Magyar institutions, since 1849, but the probability is that, at least m the interior, they remain unchanged.    With a people like the Magyars, much time is required before innovations can become settled practice.    The Urbarium of Maria Theresa, the greatest innovation ever introduced into Hungary in behalf o the peasants, required a probation of nearly a hundred years.

With regard to the prisons, Miss Pardoe, who (Vol. II. p. 78 el sea.) gives a satisfactory account of them, observes that a culprit must be thoroughly hardened who allows himself to be incarcerated for the second time, lhe only care taken of the prisoners is, that they shall not escape. This last observation tells the whole story of Hungarian prisons. Accused persons are treated with less consideration than condemned criminals are. The Magyar is old-fashioned in every thing, his prisoners were treated precisely so five hundred years ago ; in what are they better than their fathers ?
Miss Pardoe says, that when Pesth was nearly destroyed, in 1838, by an inundation of the Danube, scarcely a theit was committed. Paget (p. 293), speaking of the shepherds of Hungary, says that robbery is a part ot the shepherd's duty, and according to his dexterity in preventing others from robbing him, or in robbing others in return when robbed, is he valued by his master and respected by his companions.                                                           

It is scarcely necessary to say, that, among this primitive people, trade, internal improvements, science, art, and education are in a primitive state. A few men like Count Szechenyi, however, have already introduced important changes in each of these particulars. Gold, silver, iron, copper, sulphur, salt, soda, alum, potash, saltpetre, coal, wood, hemp, tobacco, hides, tallow, horse-hair, bristles, gall-nuts, rags, spirits of wine, wool, corn, and exquisite wines, are found, manufactured, or produced in great abundance, and yet Hungary has scarcely any commerce. This is partly owing to Austrian restrictive laws, but chiefly to the peculiar non-commercial character of the Magyars, and to the stationary nature of their customs, laws, and institutions. No merchant, says Paget (p. 318), can go into the Hungarian market with the same confidence he would in other countries. He can neither enforce the fulfilment of a contract, nor recover a debt without great difficulty and expense. A modern merchant might as well go into the English market as it was in the time of King John.

The water-mills on the Danube are made each of two deck-boats, containing the mill-works, with the water-wheel between them. Until 1836, the only means of transit by the river, from Linz to Vienna, was the Kehl-ham-mer. This is a flat-bottomed boat, a hundred and twenty feet long, and roofed in. It is immaterial which end goes first. Six oars, four at the sides, and one at either end, propel the craft. Passengers carry their own provisions, or starve. Now there are steamboats on the Danube, thanks to the Count Szechenyi. Still, the river arrangements are primitive enough. The Hungarian never uses the sail.

The agricultural societies, established by Szechenyi and other Angloinanists, have effected some change in farming operations, but not much. The ground, when poor, is left fallow every other year, and crops are never changed. The plough is one-handled, the fork being the branch of a tree. The corn is trodden, precisely in the Mosaic fashion, as soon as it is cut. Green crops are neglected ; barley is rarely found.    Irrigation is almost unheard of.

Since the violent attack of the Emperor Joseph, the Magyar language has been cultivated with some care, and. Szechenyi has established an academy for its development. There are several famous poets and novelists in Hungary. There is little good music.    Painting and sculpture have been neglected; specimens are rare in the best palaces,but the ubiquitous hand of Szechenyi has brought two or three native artists into notice.    Hungary possesses iew scientific works, or men of high scientific attainments. The exceptions are men who were educated abroad.    There are a few good museums, created by the Szechenyi family, ot course.    Paget complains of the University, that it is too national.    He thinks that there are questions of greater importance than whether Adam was a Magyar, or Homer a Slovac.    Perhaps he is right.    There were published in 1838 works to the number of 433.    Of these, 221 were of the Magyar tongue, 99 in German, and 84 in Latin; 29 were Gazettes, of these one in Latin.     Upwards ol two hundred were religious and scientific  works.    Oi   these, more than one half were sermons and academical dissertations in medicine.    About 150 were works of fancy.    1 a-get says that almost every work of  merit, published  in London or Paris, is to be found in the bookstores of Pres-buro".    This gives a good idea of the state of education in Presburg, but not in the whole country, as Paget supposes. He believes that nine tenths of the Magyars can read and write, which is also an exaggeration.    The Empress Maria Theresa did much  for the cause of education in Hungary. Joseph introduced mixed or godless schools, but after his death they were closed.    At present, nearly every village has its school.    The schools are supported by the peasants. The Catholic schools are encouraged by the government, Others are formed, if the Protestants be numerous enough. If not, their children attend the Catholic school, without the obligation, however, of learning the Catechism.    The branches  taught  are  the  same as in all good  common schools, with the addition of moral maxims, history, and Latin grammar.    The Catholics, besides their ecclesiastical seminaries, have about eighty academies and colleges. The Protestants have several Latin schools, a few academies, and three colleges.    Notwithstanding all this, education  is primitive in Hungary.    The reason is, the Catechism is taught, or, as Paget expresses it, the higher mental faculties are not developed.    God save Hungary from the development of the higher faculties!    That development brought forth the Europe of 1848.    The Hungarian rebels were  Protestant  Magyars,  Poles, and Jews.    The magnates and the Sclaves of Hungary proper are Catholics, generally. Some of the latter are schismatic Greeks, and a few are Lutherans. The untitled Magyar nobles are Calvinists. Paget (p. 106) observes that the Protestant clergy are liberal, because oppressed.
These untitled nobles are a sturdy race of men, and when they become Catholics once more they will form an important element in the future greatness of Hungary. Paget mentions (p. 106) that they are chiefly Protestants, zealous, but not too enlightened, and capable of selling their votes. That is because their higher faculties are developed. We have described, in former articles, the privileges of these nobles. They can hold land, they can vote, and they were exempted from taxation. There are grades among them, of course, but they are chiefly " one house nobles," men possessing the hereditary rights of nobility, but in every other respect little above the peasant. (Paget, p. 244.) They are supposed, by law, to be the descendants of the common soldiers who followed Arpad. They are sometimes called half-spurs. They are, says Paget (p. 247), generally a proud, unruly, hard-drinking set of fellows, with higher notions of privilege and power than of right and justice, but they are brave, patriotic, and hospitable in the highest degree. Miss Pardoe, when at Pesth, witnessing a county election, expressed her surprise that the troops of coarsely clad, red-handed, and rude-looking agriculturists were among the nobles of the land. A Magyar friend described the half-spurs to her as a congeries of small landholders, herdsmen, vine-growers, wagoners, and pig-drivers. It is true that the term untitled nobleman means, in Hungary, only a freeman, but the half-spur considers himself quite equal to the proudest magnate of the land. The poorest would scorn an alliance with the richest Sclave, and, if a coachman, no sum of money would tempt him to drive a Wallach into a Magyar town. His (Paget, p. 302) is the only language understood in heaven, and therefore the only one to be used in prayer. " Ah! my lady," said a Magyar nurse who heard her mistress pray in German, " how can you expect God to listen to you, if you speak a language he does not understand ? "

The theory of the constitution is, that every Hungarian is born a soldier. His nobility and all his cherished privileges derive from this fact. He always appears at his assemblies armed.    He enlists with the understanding that he is to be a hussar, that he shall have a horse, wear spurs, and blue pantaloons.    All, except the clergy, cherish with great affection a hairy upper lip.    The moon, it is said, is compelled to rise in the theatres with a fierce Magyar mus-tachio.    Paget saw men whose mustachios were a loot long, from tip to tip.    He also mentions that he saw the very cattle formed like regiments, three or four deep, and in this order they fed.    So one morning, near Debreczin, he saw a troop of several hundred horses, headed by the parish bull as drum major, gallop by, and file off each to his quarters as regularly as soldiers to their billets.    When the Magyar officer enters a ball-room, he marches to the centre, draws up to attention, strikes his spurs together, bobs his head forward, faces to the left and bobs again, then to the right and bobs again.    When the untitled noble serves as master at the table of a magnate, he is, says Paget,  bewhiskered  and   bespurred as  fiercely  as it   he were handling a sabre instead of presenting a knife and fork.    The Magyar uniform is the finest in Europe.     We need not say that in Europe there is not a better soldier. Some portions of Hungary have not enjoyed ten years ot peace since the times of Arpad.
Paget says that there are more than two hundred English officers in the Austro-Hungarian army. It would be worth while to know how many of these, during the last war, remained faithful to their military oath.
Now what is to become of this noble Magyar nation ? It descended, a thousand years ago, upon the plains ot Huncrarv ; it conquered the country; it was the terror ot Europe for a space; it defended Southeastern Europe once from the Turkish scourge of God; it has passed under the dominion of three foreign houses, and it has not lost its liberties ; it has successfully resisted the elsewhere omnipotent arm of Austrian centralization; numbering only four millions, it has for a thousand years defied, beaten or enslaved the nations around or within its borders, and there it is, with its nationality as intense as it was in the days of Arpad. Does this glorious past seem likely to-be lost in an inglorious future? Is the sun of the great Magyar nation to set in blood? Is the crown of St. Stephen to be laid, as a mere relic, upon the altar of a ruined Hungarian cathedral ?

The Magyars are not republicans, in the modern acceptation of that term. We have accumulated evidence enough, on this point, in previous articles, and almost every peculiarity of the nation which we have noted in this paper brings new proof of the fact. The Magyars are a nation, an encamped army, of soldiers, and a well-ordered army cannot form a republic. There are among the Magyars many reformers, or liberals. But liberalism, as Paget (p. 20) well observes, is one thing in Hungary, and quite another thing in England. The greater number of the young nobles are liberals. Their liberalism is mainly a creed of one article, which is, that Austria is the root of all Hungarian evils. " I am sure," says Paget, "that they are anxious for the freedom and education of the peasantry, and yet it often appeared to us that they spoke of them, and to them, as though they belonged to a different class of creation with themselves : in short, all of them are reformers, but many of them seem eminently impractical in their ideas of reform."

Republicanism is well in its place ; it is well in America ;  God save it from American demagogues! But it is not well in a country where the manners, ideas, institutions, and the whole genius of the people are conceived in aristocracy and born in monarchy. Even in 1849, when the quarrel with Austria was at its height, when republicanism was in the ascendant at Paris, Vienna, Milan, and Rome, the revolutionary Diet, yea, even the Kossuth Diet, spurned, hissed the name of republicanism out of the sight and hearing of Magyardom. Only a few Gallomanists were found to speak in its favor. The deputies wanted an independent Magyar kingdom. Magyar republicans would cease to be Magyars. Republicanism has no more place in Hungary than monarchy in America.

So when we demonstrate that they are not republicans, we bring no accusation against them; we prove only that our countrymen are sadly ignorant of the true nature of the Hungarian struggle for independence.

In one sense  not in the modern sense, however  Magyardom is a republic. Every member of the nation is noble. The half-spur and the magnate are equal before the constitution, in the presence of the king. English writers contend that England is a republic in the same sense, and they love to compare the late Magyar struggle with the English revolution of 1688.

Our case against the Magyars, as well as against our own demagogues, was, that the cause of 1849 w.is a bad cause.    It had some elements of justice,  the object may-have been good, but the end and the circumstances were bad, and this vitiated the whole cause.    We have not space to repeat the heads of our argument, neither is it necessary. It is quite possible to yield a hearty admiration of the Magyar character, taken as a whole, without undertaking to defend it in each of its peculiarities.    There is no question that the Magyar wins the love of those who meet him oft the battle-field, and the respect of those who encounter him thereon ; but that does not prove  him a faultless being. With very great national virtues, the Magyar exhibits great national vices, and all of them were fully exhibited in 1849, as they always have been when a great question is before the nation.    They had allowed their jealousy of Austria to place them in a highly impolitic position with reference to the Sclaves around and beneath them.   Nearly all the plans for the amelioration of the peasant condition originated, as we have seen, from the court of Vienna.    That court had as little desire to emancipate the peasants, to make them equal with the Magyars, as the Magyars themselves had. Yet the suspicious sons of Arpad thought differently ; they looked upon every act in behalf of the Sclaves, emanating from Austria, as a covert attack upon Magyar liberties. This suspicion led them to oppose all such acts, where opposition was practicable, and so they committed the great error of exhibiting themselves as enemies, and the Austrian s as friends, of the unfortunate Sclaves.    Independently of this circumstance, they were as willing as the court of Vienna to legislate for the benefit of the peasants.    They cared as much for them as Austria did.    But their intense nationality threw another difficulty in-the way.    They did not wish to be unjust to the peasants, but, regarding them as things of another creation, they did not precisely know how to be just to them.    This led to another fatal error. The reforms proposed by Austria were practicable and safe. The reforms proposed by them were impracticable.    Whenever they really did any thing, it was done after the plan emanating from Vienna, as was seen in the Diet of 1836-48, when the practicable reforms proposed, and partly carried, were based  on the Urbarium, the  peasant   Magna Charta forced upon Hungary by Maria Theresa, nearly a hundred years before. This led to another misconception. They appeared to the peasants as men who were compelled, by the force of circumstances, to adopt Austrian schemes of reform, after having resisted them for a hundred years. And so 1849 came and found the Sclaves as evilly as ever disposed towards their Magyar superiors.

The same year found the Magyars in quite as impolitic a situation with reference to their dependencies. The Wal-lachs of Transylvania were, in the eyes of a Magyar, less than dogs. It was possible to conciliate them or at least to keep them quiet during the war, but the policy of Kossuth in their regard was stern and cruel. Three evil consequences followed this capital error. The insurrection of the Wallachs was quelled at the cost of seas of blood. General Bern, a man who might have checkmated Gorgey, was detached from the main army, and sent, with a separate command, to Transylvania.    The Russian invasion ensued.

The Magyar policy with reference to the Sclaves of Croatia was equally blind. There is no doubt that Jel-lachich was an ambitious soldier; perhaps he was also an unfaithful subject. It is very possible, moreover, that some of the pretensions advanced by the Croats were wild and extravagant. It is certain that the Magyars were a superior people, and that the Magyars knew it. But, just at that time, when Sclavic nationality was as furiously asserted as ever Magyarism was, when even Pansclavism was openly talked of, and, what was worse for that imaginative people, sung about and prayed for, when the northern congress of Prague and the southern congress of Agram had been held, the Magyars held the torch to the magazine of Sclavic gunpowder. Besides giving them worse than no representation in the Diet, besides asserting their undoubted superiority in every offensive way, they seriously tried to force their Magyar language and customs upon the Croats. The result was inevitable. Croatia flew to arms. The Magyars, in truth, did not know what a storm they were raising. They do not hate the Sclaves, they do not despise them as one despises a man,  they regarded the Croat schemes as matter for contemptuous laughter, as pranks played by inferior beings ; they looked upon them with feelings very like those with which a devout slaveholder regards the antics enacted by the black imperial court of Solouque.

There was never a great question before the nation, but the Magyars seemed to be struck with judicial blindness.    In the face of Radetzky's victories, they demanded and obtained from an imbecile and frightened emperor things which he could not in honor  grant, nor they demand.    The   Hungarian nation was always free.    Magyardom may be exterminated, but it cannot be enslaved.    Yet freedom and independence are two very different things.    Massachusetts is free ; independent of the Union it is not, ought not to be.    Now if the Magyars, besides their singularly free institutions, also held the purse and sword of the nation, it would be independent, its connection with the empire would be a farce.    It would do them little or no good, perhaps some harm, and it would certainly be almost fatal to  the  empire.    The monarch, therefore, both as  emperor of  Austria and as king of Hungary, could not in honor grant the required privileges.    If the Magyars were determined to be entirely mi juris, they could in honor, as  honor now goes, have asked for what they did ask, and what they obtained.    But then, in common  honesty, they should have issued their declaration of independence in 1.848, and not in 1849.    As it was, they asked for things which would make the nation absolutely independent, and at the same time they swore that they did not want independence.    This was not honest. It was as  discreditable to the nation as the treacherous march of Kossuth to Vienna, and his infamous league with the democrats of that city, while he acknowledged Ferdi-'     nand as his emperor and king.    Such dishonesty deserved the punishment which it received.    The Magyars, honest, impulsive, and confiding as they commonly are, never failed, in their great national struggles, to submit their fate to the conduct of dishonest men, or of impracticable visionaries. It was always so, from Zapolya to Kossuth.    And the consequence always was, that the nation divided, the magnates following one banner, the half-spurs rallying beneath the other.   The pars sanior et potior never failed to win the day. In our previous articles, we dwelt at some length upon the relations which subsisted between the Magyars and the Sclaves.    We demonstrated that the war was a war of races ; that the Hungarian nation means the Magyar nation; that the Magyars as a body were free, and that the Sclaves as a whole were serfs.    We wish not, however, to be misunderstood.   We did not, and do not, censure the Magyars for this state of things, any further than to point out that the Magyar policy with reference to the Sclaves was frequently unreasonable and oppressive. Our main object was to meet our own radicals, and to furnish well-meaning persons, who had been misled by the newspapers, with a full demonstration that such a state of things did exist in Hungary, even so late as 1848. We certainly did not say, and do not now, that the distinction of races and the peasant system should be entirely abolished in Hungary. These may, in honesty and in policy, be allowed to remain, with such amendments as Austria has always desired to introduce, and such as the Magyars perhaps would have adopted long since, were it not for their almost insane jealousy of Vienna. To them nothing good comes out of Nazareth.
The Sclaves, in purely Sclavic provinces, have among themselves the peasant system, as well as the Magyars. The difference is, that, with them, master and peasant are of the same race. This difference is of no great practical benefit to the peasant for the moment; it induces changes beneficial to him only after the lapse of centuries. We are not sure that the Sclavic noble treats his dependents better than the Magyar does. There is less chance for a peasant to become a noble in Sclavic countries, than there is in England for a common laborer to become a peer of the realm. Hence the transfer of the Sclavic peasantry from Magyar to Sclave masters, would be of little if any benefit to them. Their treatment would be little better ; they would be little nearer to the enjoyment of the rights of freemen. The patriarchal system is as indigenous to Sclavedom as it is to Magyardom. We are not sure, even, that a Russian serf may not, with reason, envy the Hungarian peasant.
By Austrian laws the Hungarian peasant is now free, but it is very possible that the court of Vienna will find the difficulties attending the execution of the law in Magyar territory so serious, that a partial return to the old system may turn out to be inevitable. The Hungarian peasants, after centuries of bondage, are less fitted for freedom than our Southern negroes are. This difficulty has perplexed Magyardom as well as Austria.
The peasants of Hungary are serfs, but not slaves. We speak of their condition previous to 1848, as we have done throughout this article, using the present tense for reasons elsewhere given.    They are not bound to the soil, hence they cannot be transferred with it.    Their serfage is, there-fore, of a mitigated form.    They can and do acquire tenant right, precisely what tenants in Ireland are struggling lor. Many of them are very wealthy.    The account we have given, on another page, of the revenues of some magnates, proves that the lord realizes little from his peasants in the form of  rent.    The burdens to which they were subject have been elsewhere described.    The Magyars were always sensible of the duty of treating them well, even when their own pride, jealousy, their Magyarism, in a word, stood in the way of relief to the poor serf, as it too frequently did. If the Magyars had resolutely enforced even their own laws, not their local customs, in behalf of the Sclaves, the Hungarian peasantry would compare favorably with that of any Continental  nation.    Probably one  reason why the court of Vienna so often and so resolutely interfered was, that so many laws in favor of the serf lay idle on the statute-book, so inveterate were local customs.    The preamble of an old act declares that it was passed for the lord's interest, ne omnis rusticitas, sine qua nobilitas parum valet, deleatnr.    And another act declares that nulla res magis florenti quondam Hungaricc statui nocuisse videtur oppressi-'one colonorum, quorum clamor ascendit jugiter ante conspec-turn Dei.    The Ruler of  nations answered  their cry in 1849.    If Magyars interpret that answer correctly, it will be well for the Hungarian nation.

Now Austria, Europe, cannot  sustain the loss ot this Magyar nation.    As mere soldiers, the Hungarians are invaluable to the Old World.    They were always brave, but their bravery in 1849 became almost  sublime.    Puiszky, Schlesingcr,   Pragay, Madame   Beck, and  other  Magyar authorities, tell wondrous stories of the martial deeds done in that eventful war, and their stories are scarcely exaggerated, since they are confirmed, in all essential particulars, by Pimodan, the Austrian witness cited at the head of this article.    He cannot understand why the Austrian troops were beaten, but, somehow, beaten they were, in defiance of all rule.    Or, as an Austrian non-com missioned officer expressed it, they were not beaten, they only retreated.    Pimodan tells the truth with great reluctance, but he tells it, because he is an honest, high-minded soldier. Austria, Europe, cannot suffer the Magyar nation to die, because it is almost the only conservative nation left to the Old World. No two things can be more opposed to one another than Magyardom is to European radicalism. This latest product of the fires of hell curses almost every square inch of Continental ground outside of Hungary. There it was known by name, and known only to be ignomini-ously thrust out. Even Kossuth could not, or pretended that he could not, abide its presence. The conservatism of Hungary, as we have seen, is carried, in some things, to an unreasonable extent. But its existence, in the present state of Europe, challenges admiration and respect. It is the olive-branch found by the dove in the deluge of many waters. It is the symbol of the state to which Europe must and will return. Magyardom, then, may be made, if not the right arm, at least the sword wielded by the right arm of Europe, in the coming struggle between civilization and barbarism.

There is no probability that Austria will enslave the Magyar nation. It cannot if it would, and there are no signs of its desire to do it; there never were, unless in the days of the Emperor Joseph. The singular freedom of Magyar institutions renders such a thing almost impossible. The little democracies of our towns are supposed to be our best security that a central despotism will never be established in America. But the towns of Hungary are freer than even our little free democracies, as they are called. Every Hungarian has the right to be present, in person, at the Diet. But, as numbers prevent, deputies are chosen at the county meetings. These deputies are bound to vote as their constituents instruct them, or to resign, and this right is carefully guarded. Deputies have been known to deliver speeches, setting forth their own sentiments, and then to vote on the other side, in accordance with instructions received. The towns and counties elect their own officers, with the exception of the highest, who, as lord lieutenant, represents the crown, but who is powerless in local questions, while the elected county officers are omnipotent. Decrees, even of the king, approved by the Diet, can be, and have been, set aside by the county meetings, when they appear to clash with the county privileges or rights. Cum honore seponuntur, is the law term for the sturdy operation. It would be curious to see the constituents of Webster instructing him to vote for a certain measure, or resign, as it would to see a town in Massachusetts set aside a law passed by Congress, and approved by the President. Yet such things were done in Hungary.

There is no probability, either, that Magyardom will ever be absorbed in any other nationality.    It has successfully battled for existence a thousand years, it has withstood rude shocks, it has overcome difficulties which proved too great for other nationalities to surmount, and there it is, as living as ever.    Indeed, Magyardom  has a peculiarity which is thought to be the prerogative of Anglo-Norman-dom.    It absorbs all other national elements.    The Hungarians may rest assured, says Paget (p. 68), that it will not be the fault of a newly made nobleman,  be he of what origin he may,-if he does not very soon persuade himself that his ancestors were of the purest Magyar blood, and if he himself does not become the warmest supporter of Magyarism in ull its forms.

The last war affords examples in support of this remark of Paget, if support be needed. Kossuth, a Slovac, became a Magyar of the Magyars. Damianics, one of Kossuth's best generals, was a Serb. He had punished his own countrymen severely for rising against the Magyars. When he left them he said: " If you rise again, I shall return, and burn down your houses, and put to death yourselves and your parents and children ; and on the grave of my nation I shall shoot myself, that not one of the cursed race shall survive that breads its allegiance !"

Yet there is not the remotest probability that this singularly free nation will soon be  an independent kingdom. We have assigned reasons in a previous paper, and we will not dwell upon them now.    They may be summed up in one, a deplorable want of unity..  Hungary, in this respect, is wonderfully like two of the finest nations of Europe, Ireland  and  Italy.    This   notable disunion   arises partly from the fact, that the local freedom enjoyed by the counties is so great, that no central power which is Magyar can be established.    It would be the mockery of a power, more so than that of the last Polish kings.    The counties are independent, one of the other, and almost independent of the king, while the diet of counties only presents a concentrated image of the discordant interests of the kingdom. Moreover, the power of the king, while it was weak in the counties taken separately, was generally direct and efficient in the diet of the nation. He governed the whole, but only as a whole, not, as in his hereditary dominions, in each constituent part of the whole. The power of a county to reject, cum honore seponere, a royal decree, is a whimsical illustration of this strange state of things.

In fact, only a woman, or a very good soldier, could keep the nation quiet. Nearly all the kings of the house of Ar-pad wore a crown of thorns. Men like Louis I., Matthias Corvin, and Leopold I. were equal to the task of governing Hungary, because the Magyars were afraid of them. Whenever the government was not remarkably strong, anarchy ensued in the land. The peculiar structure of Hungarian society, involving, as it does, the political equality and the civil and social inequality of the magnates and the untitled nobility, always rendered it impossible for Hungary to enjoy quiet, unless there were a strong central power to preserve peace, a power for which Magyar institutions do not provide. Their constitution secures the freedom of the subject, and the insignificance of the king. Their quarrels with Austria hence receive an explanation. Austria could not exercise the most common prerogatives of royalty without finding that, with every intention to do good, she had trampled upon some historical right or other.
Hungary, as we have seen in a preceding article, is a country won from the Turks by Austrian arms. While her counties govern themselves almost as independent establishments, she cannot govern herself as an independent kingdom, for the want of provision in her constitution for a sufficiently strong central power. Moreover, her geographical position, in the midst of so many Sclave nations, would put the valor of her children to continual proof, in the struggle for national existence. Hungary belongs to Austria, to Europe. Her nationality will be preserved by the court of Vienna, for, considering the conservatism of the Magyars, their bravery, and their many noble qualities, that nationality will be a powerful barrier to Russian pretensions. Hungary, left to herself, would spill, in the contest with domestic and foreign enemies, blood which might be poured out to better purpose in the defence of Western Europe. Already the Sclaves in Hungary and its dependencies, who are of the Greek schism, offer daily prayers for their Emperor Nicholas. The Magyar nation is one great security to Europe that such prayers will not be heard.