vide for their health, add to their physical comforts, increase their intelligence, improve their morals, and diffuse among them the blessings of religious truth and guidance, it would have been more economically, as well as wisely, appropriated, than even if absorbed by the repeal of the duty on the advertisement by which this publication is announced, the excise on the paper on which we are writing, or the stamp on those useful journals, in which we reviewers often profit by finding ourselves reviewed. We believe also, without undervaluing or being culpably indifferent to political progress, that after the stability conferred upon the State by the Reform Bill, and the impulse given to our industry by what we may now term the complete freedom of trade, no questions of domestic economy or of finance are so important as such reforms, and, we must add, such a wise expenditure as will tend to improve the physical, the moral, and religious condition of our noble, enduring, and industrious population.

ART. VII.-1. The Village Notary. A Romance of Hungarian Life. Translated from the Hungarian of BARON EÖTVÖS, by OTTO WENCKSTERN. With Introductory Remarks by FRANCIS PULSZKY. 3 vols. post 8vo. London: 1850. 2. Memoirs of a Hungarian Lady. By THERESA PULSZKY. With an Historical Introduction by FRANCIS PULSZKY. 2 vols. post 8vo. London: 1850.

3. Genesis der Revolution in Oesterreich, im Jahre 1848. 8vo. pp. 418. Leipzig: 1848.

4. Ungarns Verfassung. Beurtheilt von Dr. J. WILDNER, Edlen von Maithstein, Indigena von Ungarn. 8vo. pp. 130. Leipzig: 1849.

Von

5. Ludwig Kossuth und Ungarns neueste Geschichte. ARTHUR FREY. 3 vols. med. 8vo. Mannheim 1849. 6. Enthüllungen aus Oesterreich's jüngster Vergangenheit. Von einem Mitgliede der linken des aufgelösten Oesterreichischen Reichstages. 8vo. pp. 282. Hamburg: 1849.

7. Ungarn und der Ungarische Unabhängigkeits Krieg, nach den besten Quellen und zahlreichen Mittheilungen Ungarischer Notabilitäten dargestellt. Von Dr. A. SCHÜTTE. 2 vols. 8vo. Dresden: 1850.

8. Die letzten Tage der Magyarischen Revolution. Enthüllungen der Ereignisse in Ungarn und Siebenbürgen, seit dem 1sten July, 1849. Von ALEXANDER SZILAGYI. Leipzig: 1850.

497

9. Letters from the Danube. By the Author of Gisella.' 2 vols. post 8vo.

London: 1847.

10. A Voice from the Danube; or the True State of the Case between Austria and Hungary. By an Impartial Observer. pp. 212. 8vo. London: 1850.

THE

HE German books on Hungary, whose titles we have prefixed, are to be had in London. They will direct the reader to new sources of information, and to various points of view. We propose at present to introduce him only to the Village Notary and the Hungarian Lady, in their English dress. The nationality of its people, their martial prowess, and present unhappy fate, have invested Hungary with the interest of a second Poland: and Western Europe must be naturally desirous to learn something of their civil and social life. We wish the picture were a pleasanter one.

As compositions, neither of the works which we have selected stands on the level of high art.' Their authors are not inspired by that abstraction, which metaphysicians are pleased to call the beautiful.' Baron Eötvös was a member of the Hungarian Opposition; and, in the eventful summer of 1848, he filled a post in the Batthyany Cabinet. Madame Pulszky is the wife of a gentleman who was at all times a zealous supporter of Kossuth's measures. It were, indeed, an anomaly, if the productions of persons who played a conspicuous part in the late Hungarian troubles were without a strong leaven of politics. Of such works we could not, even if we would, separate the spirit from the form. They were written for political purposes. The intention which pervades their every line, the maxims which they inculcate, the opinions which they profess, and the tendencies which they encourage, necessarily exclude that absolute indifference, that neutral objectivity,' which the votaries of high art persist in demanding. Neither of our authors can boast of possessing the dry repose and imperturbable equanimity which some of our German neighbours extol as the acmè of literary perfection; although Göthe, their prototype, marks those qualities strongly enough by making them the characteristics of his spectral Sphinxes. Nor do either Baron Eötvös nor Madame Pulszky take a panoramic view of the scenes which they attempt to portray. On the contrary, we find them, in the very midst of the contending factions, treating of the subjects nearest to their hearts with all the enthusiasm which belongs to noble minds, yet with more moderation than we, in reason, could have expected.

We shall best learn the special moral of The Village Notary,'

and the circumstances in which it originated, from M. Pulszky's Preface. The Opposition to the Paternal Absolutism' of the Austrian Camarilla was divided for some time, it seems, into three parties. One, the party of agricultural and material improvements, was led by Count Szechenyi; another, that of legal and parliamentary reforms, was led by Kossuth; Joseph, Baron Eötvös, headed the third. The object of this third party was a new political fabric, founded on natural rights and on the principle of centralisation under a free parliamentary government, in the place of the ancient county institutions. But, the popular instincts of their countrymen ran counter to these innovations. Quitting parliament, therefore, for a season, the Baron amused himself in his retirement by writing a sketch of life in a Hungarian province: in which he put together a variety of small sketches and studies from Nature, and formed them into one grand picture; for the express purpose' (continues M. Pulzsky) of caricaturing the political doings in our country. 'But, fortunately for the public, Baron Eötvös was a better 6 poet than a politician; and his political pamphlet ripened, very 'much against his will, into one of the most interesting works of fiction that the Hungarian literature can boast of. His 'book was eagerly read, and enthusiastically admired.'

A novel written under these circumstances, and for such a purpose, and-notwithstanding any over-colouring of the defects of their provincial institutions,-enthusiastically admired upon the spot, and now translated, we understand, at the suggestion of M. Pulszky, must have enough of local truth in it, to entitle it to a higher place than that of a mere literary novelty in the eyes of English readers.

Travelling in Hungary in 1806, Bishop Heber observes in a letter to his mother, that there are few countries, where an Englishman could obtain so much important information as in Hungary, the constitution of the government of which is a complete comment on the ancient principles of our own, as low down as Edward the Third. . . . Like England (he adds) Hungary everywhere shows the deep scars of her former civil 'disturbances. Every county town has its ruined walls.' Yet, however curious it may be to go back with the good Bishop for resemblances between the present Hungary and the former England, the spectacle of the contrast which the two kingdoms are now exhibiting, is only made by it the more painful. It will not lessen our sympathy, to think that, as it is with the people of Hungary, it might have been with us. Let us only imagine our country ever since the fourteenth century to have been the battle-field, on which Turks, Czechs, and Styrians contended for

1850.

The Hungarian Landscape.

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499

supremacy,-that our princes had been able to lean upon the sword of a neighbouring monarch, that we had imprudently put a King of France upon the throne of England, — that our armies had been sacrificed on a foreign soil, to establish there a power which was to be turned against us in our own,—that improvements had been checked, justice perverted, abuses fostered, -that public virtue had been discountenanced and selfseeking servility loaded with wealth and honour,-is it certain that the fortunes of the two countries would at this day have been so utterly opposite as they now are, and their histories alike only in the records of their early constitution, their common patriotism, and their common valour?

The cloud, which is hanging over that ill-starred country, is felt by its inhabitants to have settled on the very face of Nature. The weary journey of the Jenny Deans of Walter Scott was almost on as sad an errand as that of our author's Susi, the outlaw's wife. But what opposite feelings are summoned up along the boundless plains of melancholy Hungary, to those which were recalled by the rural landscape of merry England!

"The Hungarian's joy is in tears," says the old proverb: And why not? Since the features of the parent tribe are handed down from one generation to another, there is nothing more natural, than that we should retain the historical features of our ancestors, viz. the stamp of gravity which the events of their time impressed upon their faces. The Hungarians of old had good cause for weeping. Other nations have recovered from the wounds of their past; and however sad their popular melodies may be, (for they spring from a time of sorrow and sadness,) the lamentations of the old text have given way to merry words. But the lower classes in our country have very little to laugh at, even in these days of universal prosperity. Their songs are sad, as they were in the days when the crescent shone from the battlements of Buda. For there are people who are ignorant of all history, but that of their own village; and who, consequently, have no idea that there has been any change in our country ever since the expulsion of the Turks. The peculiar gravity which characterises the Magyars is partly an historical reminiscence, and partly the result of that gloomy tract of our country which is chiefly inhabited by the Magyar population. What traveller can traverse our vast plains, and keep his temper? The virgin forest, which at one time covered that plain, is gone: the impenetrable foliage which overshadowed this fertile soil, has fallen under the axe. The manyvoiced carol of birds, the merry spirits of the greenwood, where are they? The forest land has become a heath; but we have little cause at rejoicing at our victory over Nature. The inhabitants of other countries see many things to gladden their hearts. Houses, trees, hedges, corn-fields, reminding them of the thrift of their ancestors, spur them on to increased activity, and inspire them with a desire to

fashion the land into a monument of their existence. Our Puztas have nothing of the kind. All is silent and desolate, filling the mind with sad thoughts. Many generations passed over them without leaving a trace of their existence; and the traveller, as he pursues his solitary way across the heath, feels the mournful conviction, that he, too, steps onward to his grave,—that the plain will cover him as a boundless ocean.'

The scene of the story is laid in the county of Takshony; and county politics in their most violent and sordid form occupy as prominent a place in it, as M. Pulszky's preface would lead us to expect. We are taken successively by the natural course of events to that great theatre of provincial excitement and intrigue, the triennial election of the county magistrates; to the ignorant and partial administration of justice, in the proceedings before the statarium or special commission, under which the Palatine could at any time proclaim a county for a twelvemonth; to the blind and brutal indifference of the executive, as shown in the filth and misery and recklessness of their gaols. The two figures, round whom the principal interest revolvesTengelyi the notary of Tissaret, and Viola an outlaw—are intended to personify, in the notary, the broad distinction which separates the nobleman, or, in other words, the freeman, from the population at large; and in the outlaw, the daily and intolerable oppressions to which the population at large is subjected, and by which some of them, and those very far from the worst, are infuriated into crime. Tengelyi is a man of far too virtuous and stoical a cast not to be hated by officials, such as popular or class election is here described to have returned. Together with his own papers-the evidences of his free descent-he had unfortunately charge of papers belonging to his friend Vandory the curate, which would show that Vandory was in truth elder brother to Rety, the squire and sheriff, and, as such, entitled to the family estate. The possession of these papers is the pivot on which the incidents, necessary to set the characters in action, are made to turn. They are first stolen at the instigation of Lady Rety, the sheriff's wife, a kind of Lady Macbeth in her way, and one Catspaw, her attorney. They are rescued by Viola at the very moment of their being stolen: retaken from Viola when he is captured in his forest fastness: recovered again by him on his escape, upon which occasion Catspaw is murdered. On this, Viola flees with them to a distance; and they are only brought to light again at the critical moment, when their re-appearance and that of Viola, who had been for some time hiding as a herdsman, have become necessary to save Tengelyi's life from the charge of having been concerned in Catspaw's murder.