The Pageant at Pesth.

ABOUT the time of the birth of Constantine there rolled over the provinces watered by the Danube, which Tiberius reduced under the dominion of Rome nearly three centuries earlier, the first wave of the great barbaric ocean which inundated Europe and finally flooded the Imperial City. The Goths swarmed into Pannonia, and hustled out the toga'd warriors who, in face of these strange enemies, whose reign terminated with the life of Attila, held their swords with feeble grasp. In another century the Goths yielded in turn to the terrible Huns. Abares, Gepidae, and Lombards followed each wave that flowed westward and surged over its precursor like breakers on the sea shore. Dacia, Pannonia, and Servia owned an infinity of masters till Charlemagne included them within the limits of his Western Empire. But no power had prestige or force sufficient to avert the march of conquering hordes over the vast plains which offered such temptations to the pastoral Barbarians. The course of the Danube guided them westward, and from each great billow, as it rolled, a deposit took place, and gradually a compost of races was left, each as distinct as the strata in a geological formation. The last of these which was precipitated on the land, was the Magyar, a puzzle to ethnologists, a part of a great Arian mystery-Oriental no doubt, Turk or Scythian, a back current of the Hunic ocean which had been let loose from the now driedup reservoirs of the plains in Central Asia. Who they are and whence they came no one can decide. The theories are learned, ingenious, uncompromising, and unsatisfactory. What matters it? Mr. Vambery could not find a trace of Magyarism in his travels; but the Emperor of Austria knows where it can be discovered in intensest development at a moment's notice. The Magyars say that when their ancestors made up their minds to move, they did so in such a complete and sweeping fashion that not a soul was left behind, consequently all efforts to throw light on the nursery of this interesting self-asserting race are not likely to avail much. Arpad and his Magyars rushed into Hungary about the period when Alfred the Great was warring with the Danes. Notwithstanding the numbers and courage of the new comers, the nations of central and western Europe, having now settled down under some sort of Government, were better able to oppose invaders than their ancestors had been, and the Magyars were checked in their endeavours to overrun Germany, and were finally forced back to the Waag, the Theiss, and the Danube. In fact they received severe defeats. Germans, Poles, Tartars, Turks, and Bohemians, overcame them in turn. They were subject to constant aggression when they were not making war on their neighbours-a turbulent energetic race, full

of life, vital force, and fidgetiness. Their history is exceedingly picturesque and animated; but to the callous Briton, or the philosophic Gaul, it is only attractive because of recent events. Are we to be grateful because many thousands of Hungarians, century after century, fell in fighting Turks and made a living wall of men to protect us from the invasion of the Mahometan? How thankful France and England, aye, and Germany, have been to the Poles for similar services ! We will probably agree in the view that they could do no less, and that they fought very much on their own account. And besides, these Magyars were often provocative of battle. They would not let sleeping dogs lie. When the Turk was easy and somnolent they blew trumpets in his ears and walked on his slippered feet. At times when they had a fight of their own on hand they invited the Turk to take part in it, and there was a period in his history when poor "Bono Johnny" never refused any offer of the kind, but was as jubilant as an Irishman at any opportunity of stepping on the green for a friendly combat. These Magyars were often worsted, as has been said by their neighbours, and were scarred and bruised terribly, and their last "insurrectio," or rising en masse, was put into a cocked hat by one of Napoleon's lieutenants. But they have a long roll of victories to boast of over all sorts and conditions of nations. Nevertheless, in 1848 Europe was startled by the intelligence that Hungary in arms was putting to the rout the generals of Austria, and that the Kaiser was obliged to entreat the aid of the Czar to keep his crown on his head. In that resolution was sown the seeds of a hate which may be immortal, and a study of revenge which lasted nearly twenty years. The Emmetts, Wolfe Tones, and Fitzgeralds of Hungary did not represent the idea of a faction-they represented a nation, entire in its nobles, its bourgeoisie, and its people. Francis Joseph, in whose ears the echoes of cannon of the Vienna barricades rang for years after he had assumed the imperial purple, could not forget that the greatest enemies of his rule and dynasty were the Hungarians, who had deserted his standards, defeated his troops, and had declared a republic. He stiffened his back and hardened his heart and turned his ear to men who unfolded to him the project of fusing all the masses of his empire into an Austrian amalgam, in which the leaden, solid, useful German, the lively, political, unpractical Hungarian, the stolid yet subtle Croat, the vain, imaginative, intriguing Greek, should form one placid composite. The Hungarians too would not be fused. They were submitted to a government analogous to that of the Southern States by the military commanders of the North. Their taxes were collected by force or by free quarterings; good roads were made in spite of them by the Austrians. But the Austrians were fatigued by a tremendous passive resistance. The battle of Solferino showed the Emperor there was a weak spot in his harness, and that his armour and shield were alike vulnerable. And in 1861 a Diet was called, which was filled with the passions of 1848. It asked for what could not be granted, unless Hungary was to be cast off from the vessel of the state. The Diet was dissolved. The

interval between that dissolution and the assembling of the Diet which was sent about its business after the battle of Custozza, witnessed a repetition of the process of dragooning which had been resisted so long. Meantime Hungary had burst into hoots, menthes, and attilas, had abjured hats and buttons and bounded into ultra-Magyarism. The German tongue was renounced, an Austrian uniform was never seen in a decent house, and the nation asserted itself by the cut of its clothing, and a sartorial war against the oppressor. What the leaders wanted was their recognition as a separate power from Austria, the only connection between the two being that the Emperor of Austria should be accepted as the King of Hungary, with hereditary rights of succession. They demanded a separate and responsible ministry, a Hungarian army controlled by the Diet, a financia! budget, and right of self-taxation.

Some really meant what they said, others were induced to make these demands in the hope that their persistence would lead to separation from Austria, caring little what else became of them, or filled with the idea of a great Danubian State, which could bully its Croats, and Serbs, and Roumans, as it pleased. The arguments of the Imperial Government to show the unreasonableness of many of the assumptions of the Diet were forcible, and sometimes unanswerable, but little head was made either way till the Prussian invasion of Bohemia terrified and angered Austria by introducing in rear of its march a movement against Hungary conducted by Hungarian exiles. The world beheld the strange spectacle of a god-fearing king, who believes in divine right and in the sacredness of sovereign power, using the arms of men who had broken their oaths as citizens, subjects, and soldiers, to overturn the rule of their legitimate monarch, and allying himself with ultra-republicans and furious democrats against the most ancient and orthodox house in Europe. But now it was obvious that Hungary must be conciliated or Austria would be lost in any future contest. She was the Ireland on which every enemy counted, but unlike Ireland, Hungary was united almost as a man, and was a vigorous nation, capable, unaided, of making defensive war, and aided, of meeting any enemy in the field.

Other rulers might learn a lesson from Francis Joseph. He called to his presence men whose names and antecedents filled him with repugnance; he sacrificed his pride, his dislikes, his love of ease, to his kingly duties/; he studiously sought the means of a compromise with the popular leaders. Deak, with equal wisdom and patriotism, helped by many able men, met his royal master half way as soon as he perceived that there was a chance of securing the substance of what the Hungarians really desired. There were conferences and interviews under the inspiration of M. Von Beust, to whose sage counsels the change in Francis Joseph's policy must be chiefly ascribed. Much controversy about "continuitat" and "the laws of '48; " much heat concerning demands for exclusive military and financial establishments; and at last an arrangement for a mixed committee of Austrians and Hungarians, on what were called common affairs, was agreed upon. The Hungarians were to have their own Diet and their own Ministry,

and so it was agreed that the coronation diploma, which is a sort of formal announcement of the rights of the people, should be prepared, and that Francis Joseph might take the oaths before heaven as the King of Hungary, some parts of which, by-the-by, it is scarce possible for him to execute. In olden times the kings of England were supposed to accept as a settled obligation the duty of reconquering the lands across the Channel which had been taken from their ancestors by the French; and to-day the King of Hungary is pledged to make war against the Turks, and drive them Lord Redcliffe knows not where, and to do a number of things he has no more intention of doing than George I. had of annexing the Pas de Calais. Francis Joseph came to Buda; his lovely Queen had gone there earlier; but the Hungarians, though respectfully joyous, were not enthusiastic, and there was no "moriamur pro rege nostra" from their lips. The Emperor was delighted with Pesth and the Hungarians. Returned exiles, some of whom ought to have been hanged long ago, had the decrees of Austrian courts been carried out, thronged his palace halls, and the days were near at hand when he was to put on the crown and mantle of St. Stephen, and ride on a horse and swear an oath, and be indeed a king.

There were still difficulties to be tided over after it had been determined to hold the coronation, and there were wearisome delays before the day could be fixed. No doubt this uncertainty, as well as the attractions of the Great Exhibition, prevented the attendance of many strangers, but at no time could it have been expected that many Austrians would be present, as they detested the whole of the proceedings toto calo. The Croats were as obstinate in refusing to come to Pesth as the Hungarians had been in absenting themselves from the former Reichsraths at Vienna. They pinned their faith on Stratomirivitz, who was their new Jellachich, and there was a fluttering of wings among all the little eaglets in Bohemia, Gallicia, and Slavonia.

Now, we must all admit that if a king of England should appear at his coronation in a robe which was worn by William the Conqueror, and with a crown which belonged to the first Christian monarch of the isle, it would excite emotion even among the most unpoetical and unimaginative portion of his subjects. Perhaps it is too much to say "all of us" must admit the fact, for there are some people who won't admit anything, on principle; but at all events one is safe in presuming the adjuncts of such interesting objects would give the ceremony and the wearer additional attraction in the eyes of the multitude. As to the Hungarians, it is a revelation from Heaven to see such things as St. Stephen's mantle and crown. It can be but seldom they are revealed, for it is only at coronations that the guardians of these relics permit them to be looked upon, and then these high officers keep watch and ward for three days, whilst the stream of spectators rolls on, struggling through the room with eyes fixed on the helmet crown and the tattered mantle-a very tattered mantle indeed. Whether it is the same St. Stephen who repudiated the charges of the

Poole of his day, and covered him with offensive epithets on account of his little bill for a pair of breeches, we must leave to Notes and Queries; but if it were, the defects in a bad nether garment would have been visible through the royal mantle, had it been in its present condition. Queen Gisla was a cunning worker and neat-handed, and she covered this sacred cloak with a vast variety of holy images and symbols, on which time has done much mischief, so that the fingers of the royal ladies who have been repairing it since must have been as active with the scissors as with the needle. As to the crown, there is a tradition of even greater sanctity, for men will believe that though it was sent to St. Stephen by Boniface, it was made in heaven, and carried to the Pope by celestial mechanics, who must have worked very much in the style of human artificers of that period on the earth. In form it combines the morion and the coronet, and the stones which are set in it do not offer great attractions to the admirer of precious jewels. What simple days these were in which subjects believed in their king so thoroughly that whatever faith he adopted became theirs at once! When Stephen became a Christian he made all his people of the same faith at a coup-a wholesale, almost miraculous, conversion, if it were not that it might have been dangerous for any Magyar to profess a faith which his king had renounced. Much in the same way was it that nations became Catholic or Protestant subsequently. Bohemia, once so heretic, was converted at the battle of the White Mount, and the Protestantism of Hungary yielded to the influence of the great landowners who remained faithful to the Pope.

When it was announced over here that the Emperor of Austria would certainly be crowned at Pesth on the 8th of June, there were probably some dozens of diplomatically-minded persons who were affected by the intelligence. Why should not he be crowned there? Why had not he been crowned before? Why was he to be crowned at all? Any Hungarian could have expatiated for hours in reply to these questions; but to the average British man it was matter of as much inconsequence and indifference as if he were told that there was to be a new Lama of Thibet on such a day installed at Làssa. To many millions of people, however, the subject was of vital importance,-to millions more indeed than there are people in these isles,-for all the populations of the Austrian dominions and the conterminous races were deeply affected by the news that all difficulty between the pretensions of the Crown and the rights of the Hungarians had been arranged, and that Francis Joseph was to become not only Emperor of Austria, but King of Hungary. But it was only by an arrangement, and therefore by a compromise on both sides; and on both sides there were partizans who felt that wrong had been done, and who received the concession with dislike.

In all contests between right and power there is sure to arise a party which takes the extreme view on each side, and for which there is no possible end but the supremacy of their principles. They advance on the top of the waves and when the flood subsides are left stranded. As the