begs a thousand pardons for his absence. With the best will in the world, he cannot have the pleasure of dancing with you, for his leg has been shot away and amputated above the knee." This is the whole of the story-little enough, and owing everything to the manner of telling. The second tale, Claudia, by Szilagyi, is striking and powerful rather than agreeable. We pass on to The Chapel at Tarczal. All who have read Max Schlesinger's admirable narrative of the War in Hungary, will assuredly remember his account of the Hungarian hussar, "the embodiment of Magyarism, born and reared upon the heath," loving his country before all things, and, next to his country, his horse. "There are no soldiers in the Austrian army," says Schlesinger, "who can compare with him in chivalrous daring, dexterity, precision in manœuvres, strict subordination, cleanliness, and fidelity." Mr Sajó loves to exalt the virtues, and exemplify the eccentricities, of this fine race of cavalry soldiers. In several of his tales he introduces the heroic hussar, cheerfully suffering and sacrificing himself for Hungary's good and the honour of his corps. The opening scene of The Chapel at Tarczal is an amusing sketch of one of these veterans, thoroughly persuaded of the immeasurable superiority of the Magyar over all other men, and of the hussar over every other soldier.

"The Austrians had won the battle; the Hungarians had lost it. The Austrian general was taking his ease in his quarters, with his staff around him; an officer entered, and reported the capture of a hussar.

"Bring him in," said the General, who was in excellent humour. He himself wore the uniform of the hussar regiment he had formerly commanded, and had unbuckled his sabre and made himself comfortable; whilst his officers stood around buttoned to the chin, and strictly according to regulation.

The hussar entered-a bare-headed veteran with gray mustaches. His face was still black with the smoke of Schwechat's battle; his stiffly-waxed

mustaches stuck out fiercely right and left. He glanced gloomily around him, evidently ill-pleased with his company, until his eye fell upon the General. Then a gleam came over his features, like the sun breaking through a cloud, and he was near shouting for joy. The general laughed, and clapped his hands together. He recognised old Miska, his former orderly, who had served him for five years in Szobossló.

"Do you know me again, old man?" said he good-humouredly.

"At your service, Colonel," replied the hussar, raising his hand to his brow, as though his schako were still on his head.

"General, not Colonel," interposed one of the officers.

Silently and contemptuously the hussar measured the speaker with his eyes, wondering that an infantry-man, captain though he might be, dared intrude upon the conversation of hussars.

"So you have let yourself be taken prisoner, Miska?" said the General, willing to tease his old servant.

"What could I do, Colonel? There were so many against me. I got into a crowd of them."

“You knocked over a few, I d re say."

"I did not count them, but something remained upon the ground."

"Right, Miska. Let them give you a dram, and then go to my grooms; if anybody meddles with you, give him as good as he brings."

The hussar thanked his former colonel, but seemed in small haste to leave the room. The General noticed him no farther, but turned again to his officers and resumed the discussion of his plan of campaign. Suddenly he felt a pull at his pelisse, and turning, beheld Miska, who had stolen quietly behind him. With an unintelligible gesture, and a countenance of extraordinary mystery, the hussar pointed to something.

"Colonel! Colonel!" he whispered, redoubling the eagerness of his gesticulations. The General had no notion of his meaning. "Colonel, reach me yonder sabre from the corner."

"What the devil do you want with it?"

"Only give it here! In two minutes there shall not be a German in the room."

Miska thought his colonel was a prisoner.

The General burst into a hearty laugh, and told his officers of the hussar's kind intentions towards them. The laughter became general. The officers crowded round the old soldier, clapped him on the shoulder, and made much of him.

"Well, Miska, you will take service with us, eh?" said the General, curious to hear his answer.

"There are no hussar regiments here!" replied the old soldier, twisting his mustaches.

"What matter? You shall be a cuirassier. We'll make a serjeant of you."

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Many thanks. Can't stand it. Should have been serjeant long ago, if I could write."

"What do you think of doing then? Eat your ration in idleness?"

"Not so-by your honour's favour -but make a run for it."

The honest answer pleased the General. The hussar saw that it did. "A whole regiment of those gaiterlegged fellows could not keep me," he added.

One of the officers asked him angrily why he wished to go back. Those were mistaken, if any, who expected a rude answer from the hussar.

"Yonder is my regiment," he replied, again twirling his mustache. "A true soldier bides by his colours."

To this nothing could be objected. "Well, Miska, that you may not desert from us, I let you go free."

"Thanks, Colonel." Once more the hand was raised to the schako's place. "You can go."

The hussar lingered, rubbed his nose, and frowned.

“I crave your pardon, Colonel! I reared the horse myself from a colt. I have ridden it for ten years, and it comes at my whistle. By every right it belongs to me. I would rather a bullet hit me than lose the good brute."

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Well, take it."

Even now the hussar did not seem satisfied.

"Colonel! can I go back to my regiment in this scandalous manner? without my sabre? I shall have to run the gauntlet; they will think I have sold it for drink."

"It shall be restored to you." The General made sign to his orderly; the hussar saluted, and turned to depart. But at the door he once more paused, and gazed pathetically at his former chief.

"Colonel!" he said, in the most insinuating tone he could command. "Well?"

"Colonel-come over to us!"

And with a bound he was out of the room, feeling well enough that he had said something extraordinarily stupid, but which he could not help saying though it had cost him his head.

When horse and sabre were restored to him, one of the General's grooms, a mischievous fellow, trod on the hussar's spur, breaking the rowel, and then sprang aside laughing.

The old hussar shook his clenched fist menacingly.

"Wait a little, Italian!" he cried, "I will find you yet." Then saluting the General's window with his sabre, he galloped away.

It was thought that a tear glistened in the General's eye, as he turned to his staff, and said

"Such soldiers should we have!"

Such were the soldiers with whom Görgey drove before him the best generals of Austria; with whom he triumphed in that brilliant conflict, of fourteen days' duration, which terminated in the capture of Pesth, the relief of Komorn, and the complete retreat of the Imperialists.* These were the men who rode up to the very mouths of the Austrian cannon at Isazeg,† and who followed, in twenty conflicts, the well-known war-cry of the gigantic Serb, Dámjánics. Of this

+ Ibid. ii. 20.

last-named general (of whom Schlesinger has given many interesting details,) we find an interesting and authentic anecdote in Sajó's vigorous military sketch, entitled The Two Brides.

Dámjánics and his troops encamped in the night at two leagues from Szolnok. In order of battle, and without watch-fires, they there awaited the signal to advance. The signal was the sound of cannon, fired beyond the Theiss.

The Hungarian General had already fought many battles, won many victories, taken many standards. When he began a battle, he stationed himself in front of his army, looked where the foe was strongest, shouted "Mir nach!" and rushed forward, overthrowing and crushing all before him. It was his way.

There were persons who did not like this way, and who wearied him with assurances that, to be a renowned general, it is not enough to win battles; one must also leave permanent evidence of merit, to be handed down to future generations; one must make speeches, issue proclamations, and so forth.

So it came to pass, when he marched away from the Banat, that he addressed to the hostile party in the province a proclamation which has become celebrated. It was word for word as follows:

"Ye dogs!

"I depart. But I shall come back again.

"If in the interval you dare to stir, I will extirpate you from the face of the earth; and then, that the seed of the Serbs may be extinct, I, the last of them, will shoot myself."

The success of this first attempt so encouraged the General, that, after much persuasion, he gave a solemn promise to make a speech to his army when next they went into action.

On the eve of the battle, Dámjánics felt his spirits extraordinarily low.

Presently, however, one of his staffofficers came to remind him that, before the next day's battle, they expected to hear the speech he had promised them.

"Devil take it !" cried the General. That was what made me shake in my boots. But never fear, it shall be done I will venture it-the speech you shall have."

He had drawn out his plan_of battle in a quarter of an hour. But morning dawned whilst he was still hammering at his speech.

The troops stood in order of battle. Dámjánics rode along the front of the line. Everybody knew he was to make a speech, and what a cruel task it was to him.

Before the colours of the ninth battalion he halted, raised his hat and spoke :

"Comrades!"

At that instant the artillery beyond the Theiss boomed out its first discharge. The General's face glowed, he forgot phrases and oration, tore his sabre from the scabbard, pressed his schako down upon his brow, and—

"Yonder is the foe follow me!" he shouted in a voice of thunder. A tremendous hurrah was his army's reply, as they followed their leader, with the speed and impetuosity of a torrent, to the familiar encounter of the Austrian cannon.

"Why is it," said Dámjánics, as he limped up to the gallows, after seeing seven of his brave comrades executed before his eyes, on the morning of the fatal sixth of October 1849 -"why is it that I, who have ever been foremost in the fight, must here be the last? That was no empty boast in the dying man's mouth. “To Dámjánics," says Schlesinger, "after Görgey, belongs the glory of all the battles from Hatvan to Komorn. From the commencement of the movement, he was the boldest champion of the national cause." And whatever his staff and his Austrian executioners may have argued from his oratorical incapacity and his ignominous death, neither, assuredly, will prevent his name's preservation on posterity's list of patriot-heroes, even though he should never obtain the monument

which it has been predicted that Hungary will one day erect to him, upon the spot where he mounted the scaffold.

Before proceeding to the longest and most remarkable sketch in the volume, we will extract the beginning and end of a humorous paper, written in true soldier's style, entitled From the Memoirs of a Quartermaster.

"I never saw such a man as my lieutenant. It is not because he was my lieutenant that I say so, but a merrier fellow was not to be found in the army. Were I a poet or a scholar, I would make a fine romance out of his adventures; but as I unfortunately lack the learning, I must be content to set down a few odd incidents of our joyous camp-life, just as they occur to my memory. It gives me pleasure to recall these anecdotes of my late master, who was lieutenant in the volunteers. Those who knew him will not have forgotten how gay a wooer he was with women, and how brave a soldier in war.

"They transferred us to a battalion that lay in Siebenbürgen, and which was not yet completely equipped. Our principal wants were muskets and cartouch-boxes. Nobody had a greatcoat; and, in another respect, the battalion was quite uniform, for every one went barefoot. My lieutenant often complained to the captain, who had been a Bohemian forester, and afterwards a coffee-roaster in Pesth, but who, when his daughter's husband was promoted to be major of our battalion, was by him appointed captain -to him, I say, the lieutenant repeatedly complained that the poor soldiers were frozen, and should at least be supplied with greatcoats. But all in vain; the superior officers gambled the money sent them by Government for the equipment of the troops; and all my lieutenant could obtain from the ex-coffee-roaster was a bon-mot which Napoleon, he said, had addressed to his soldiers when they complained in Egypt of bad clothing: Avec du pain et du fer on peut aller à Chine.'

"The lieutenant made me write these words on one hundred and fifty small slips of paper, pinned these upon his men's shoulders, and said—"There, my lads, are your greatcoats.' Boots

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were all that was now wanting. One fine morning we received a hundred and fifty bran-new — blackingboxes!

"Engem ucse,' said the lieutenant : 'tis good; instead of boots they send us blacking.' And next day, when the little gray general passed a review, our company marched past with their bare feet blacked and polished, and with spurs drawn in chalk upon their heels. The general laughed at first, and then reprimanded the major. The major laughed too, and scolded the captain. Finally, the captain abused my lieutenant, who abused him in return; but, as the one understood no Hungarian, and the other no German, the dispute led to nothing.

"At last we got ourselves shod, by gloriously ransacking a Wallachian village, and thrusting our feet into the red boots the women had left behind them. Thenceforward our company was known everywhere as the regiment of Red Boots.'

"In our first engagement we had not much to do. The enemy fired at us from a distance, whilst we stood still and looked at them. Some of the recruits bobbed their heads aside when they saw the shot coming through the air. Don't shake your head, my man,' the lieutenant would say; 'you might chance to knock it against a cannon-ball.' In the second action we took a gun from the enemy. It came up very near us and unlimbered; but, before it had time to fire a shot, my lieutenant made the soldiers believe it was one of our own guns; that the enemy were about to capture it; and could we suffer this? We could not suffer it, and rushed on: a few shots met us; but before we well knew what we did, the gun was in our power. The whole was over in less time than I take to tell it.

"From that day forward nobody made fun of the Red Boots, and soon we were supplied with muskets. Many of these were hardly fit to fire with; but bayonet and butt were always there, wherewith to thrust and strike.

"It was in the dog-days. For three months we had received no pay. At last, to silence my lieutenant's terrible expostulations, they sent us

"The salaries of Government officials were paid in fifteen-kreuzer pieces; the money we soldiers wanted, for our daily bread, was sent in hundred-florin notes. Of course, nothing could be easier, in the Wallach hamlets in which we were cantoned, than to get small change for fifteen hundredflorin notes.

"Whilst my lieutenant was grumbling over this, and puzzling his head how to divide these few large notes into many small ones, a courier arrived and brought him a letter.

"The lieutenant read the letter, and laughed out loud. Then he ordered a parade. He was the only officer present. Two captains and a major were constantly rambling about, and seldom saw their battalion, but left everything to my lieutenant. So he ordered the drums to beat for muster; and when the men were assembled, he informed them that their pay had come just in the nick of time. Then he produced the fifteen hundred florins* and a pair of scissors, made the soldiers file past, and cut off a slip of the notes for each one of them. It was the only way to divide them.

"This done, he came singing and whistling into his quarters, laughed and cut jokes, played a thousand pranks, and at last called to me, and asked if I had a dry cloth at hand, to wipe up something.

"I answered that I had.

"Go and fetch it, then.' And he continued to laugh and jest, and seemed in most wonderful good humour. Make haste,' he shouted after me, as I hurried to fetch the cloth. I felt quite sure he was going to play me some famous trick, he looked so sly and comical when he gave me the order.

"Whilst I sought for a towel, I heard the report of a firearm in the next room. Towel in hand, I threw open the door. The room was full of smoke.

"What am I to wipe up ?' I asked. "This blood!' said the lieutenant,

heart's-blood flowed from a wound in his breast; in his hand he held a pistol and the letter he had that morning received.

"The letter announced the catastrophe of Vilagos. In two minutes he was dead. "Thus did my lieutenant make a fool of me at last.

"Such a merry fellow was my lieutenant."

The various memoirs of the Hungarian war record more than one instance of self-destruction and insanity, amongst the enthusiastic defenders of the Magyar cause, consequent upon Görgey's shameful surrender, and the final downfall of their cherished hopes. As far as the suicide goes, therefore, there is nothing improbable in the conduct of the eccentric lieutenant. Passing over several shorter papers, for the most part clever and spirited, we come to the striking tale, or rather series of scenes, entitled George of St Thomas, which, besides being the most carefully finished of these sketches, includes several of the most terrible and romantic historical incidents of that war. Its construction is favourable to extract, and we propose to translate such portions of it as our limits will allow, and therewith close our notice of the Schlachtfelderblüthen aus Ungarn. The first chapter is headed

THE FIEND'S FESTIVAL.

It was dark night in the town of St Thomas. Not a star was visible. Well was it that the heavens saw not what then occurred upon earth.

Men who had grown gray together in love and friendship, dwelling in the same street, under the very same roof, who were bound to each other by ties of blood and kindred, of gratitude and duty, who were wont to share each other's joys and griefs, began, upon a sudden, as if frantic with infernal inspirations, to plot each other's extermination, and to fill their souls with bloody hatred against those who had never wronged them.

It was St Eustace' day. The Rait