fixed at about 25,000 francs, that of a bishop at 15,000. In Hungary there are many chapters, the income of whose individual members exceeds that sum. The chapter of Vesprim is one of the richest.

One of these dignitaries of Vesprim, founded in the year 1811 an educational institution of a peculiar kind. It admits now but the children of mixed marriages "because," as my priest observed, "the education of such children is naturally much neglected," and brings them up in the Catholic faith of course. The founder gave a sum of 300,000 florins for this purpose; but the "Patent" edict having sunk the value of these 300,000 to 60,000, the plan could not be brought into operation till another wealthy dignitary of the church came to the assistance of the pious undertaking in 1827. Twenty girls, and as many boys are educated here. If the girls marry, they have 100 florins given them as a dowery. The director seemed to be a learned and well-informed man. It is said that the institution is indebted to him for many services which are little known, and for which he receives but little acknowledgment.

Christianity was brought to Hungary, as to Bohemia and Moravia, from Greece. Several Hungarian chiefs and dukes were baptized at Constantinople. In the time of Sarolta, the mother of King Stephen the Holy, there were yet several Greek convents in Hungary. The ruins of one are still to be seen in a narrow valley near Vesprim. Happily for Hungary, she allowed herself to be won over to the Latin church by Italy and Germany. This it was that decided that Hungary should belong to Western Europe; and this also affords us the best security, that through all the changes of destiny she will hold with us against the East.

It was already twilight when I set out to pursue my journey towards the Platten Lake, and it soon became pitch dark. The only objects I could recognise in the obscurity were a waggon drawn by four fine oxen, and laden with corn, flour, and hay, for the use of the bishop, and some carts, each drawn by four horses, and packed full of fowls, also for the bishop, and going to Vesprim.

Late in the evening we reached the famous bathing-place of Fured, and long and loud we had to knock and call at gate, wall, and window, before we could get admittance. We began to think the inhabitants had all given up the ghost, when a man made his appearance with a light, and having satisfied himself that we looked like harmless people, opened the doors. We asked the people of the house if they had not heard our noise before.

"Oh yes," was the answer; "but you must not take it amiss. By night all cats are grey, and it is impossible to know directly whom one has at the door. So late in the year no guests to the baths were to be expected, and the Bacony forest, antiqua silva, stabula alta ferarum, was Therefore it was they had hidden their lights; for sometimes foolish, drunken people would come and make an uproar, and quarrel, and the like, so he hoped we would not take it amiss.

near.

I tranquillized the worthy people thoroughly, and assured them they had done my valour too much honour in taking me for a bold captain of banditti; that I was by nature of a most peaceable disposition, and rejoiced from the bottom of my heart when others let me alone, instead of nourishing evil thoughts of attacking them. I was very glad to find myself among them, and begged them by all means to bar the door carefully again.

My hosts called me on all sides "gracious lord" (Gnädiger Herr)

wherein I begged once more to correct them, as it would puzzle me to say of what I was lord, and I was conscious of as little grace as might be. Hereupon the two pretty daughters of the house tuned up their guitars, and while I regaled myself with the culinary works of art set forth by their worthy old aunt of seventy-six, and with a glass of excellent Hungarian wine, they sang me a Hungarian song entitled "The Balaton," that is to say, the Platten Lake.

Unfortunately I did not perfectly understand this song, as it was sung in the Hungarian language; but its words were something to this effect: "God once sent two angels down upon the earth to see if his name was held everywhere in honour. The angels found it held in high honour among the burgers and peasants; everywhere as the messengers of God they were received with joy and veneration. At last they came to the palace of a great lord, and a wealthy lady. Here the servants drove them away, and would not hear of them or their sender. The lord and the lady refused the strangers an alms, although they were wearied by their journey. A poor shepherd, whom they met in the fields, gave them of his bread and his drink, so that they were refreshed and could fly back to Heaven. They related what they had found below, and complained of the hard-hearted lord of the castle. Then was God wrath, and again sent down messengers, who utterly destroyed the castle, and, that the place where his name was held in honour might vanish from the face of the earth, he caused waters to flow over that land, and thus was formed the Balaton or Platten Lake. Since that time, where once a lordly castle stood, is now the habitation of mute fish; but round about the Balaton, God-fearing men have increased and multiplied."

I requested my obliging young hostesses to sing me another song, which they immediately did. As I am not able to render this in a good metrical form, I translate it literally. The title is

MENET A KEDVESCHER.

(The Ride to the Beloved One by the Platten Lake.)

1. On the dry earth falls the hoar frost. Eat not, dear horse, it might give thee pain. Dearest, I will buy thee a silken bridle and a velvet saddle, so thou bear me to my delight.

2. Hard roll the clods under thy feet. Dear horse, heed well thy feet; fly with me to my heart's dear Rose, for away from her my soul pines in deep sorrow.

3. See the moon begins to shine brightly; so pure it never before appeared. O shed thy beams on me, that I may not lose myself in the darkness.

4. See the Balaton glances brightly before us. Thou sparkling lake, thou wilt not pour thy waters over the land, and bar my path. O beautiful Balaton, shed not thy waters o'er my path. See, I should bring my poor horse in danger.

5. Hold my good steed, we are at our goal. Look there, a light glimmers feebly through her window. See, there sits a young brown maiden slumbering. What ho! my sweet girl, slumber not, thy lover waits without.

"You must know," said my kind and song-loving Ingrin, "that the Platten See, in some places really overflows its banks, and makes the road often impassable; and moreover our Hungarian youths have the custom of modestly visiting their mistresses at their windows, and there conversing with them."

I told them that Shakspeare had chosen the same situation for his two lovers in "Romeo and Juliet." In the fourth verse, I added, there was a particular delicacy in the rider's petitioning the lake, not for himself, but for his horse; and I was pleased with the fancy of trying to make the

animal believe grazing would be hurtful to him, and with the flattering promise of a velvet saddle and silken bridle.

"Note also the dark maiden," said the singer, "the Hungarians love nothing but brown or black hair. Fair girls do not please, and the poor, pale, light hair seems downright ugly to them. You will never hear the charms of a blonde extolled in a Hungarian, as you do in so many a German song." "And still more in an Italian one," said I. "The modern as well as the ancient Italians hold light hair, and especially the golden locks, to be the most beautiful. The Roman ladies wore false locks of the favourite colour, and the painters of Italy, who have represented their ideal of beauty with fair hair are numberless. The portraits of Petrarca's charming Laura, one in particular in the Berlin gallery, have light, indeed almost white hair."

"Nay! that is too shocking!" said my horrified Ingrins. I tried to explain the matter, and represented to them that fair hair resembled silk ; that the play of colour in this tender material was generally softer and finer than in dark hair, and might, therefore, be more attractive to a painter; lastly that the soft and gentle tints of blond tresses had more analogy with the character of women than the abrupt contrasts of the dark hair which seemed more suitable to the man. Perhaps the Hungarians dislike the light colour because it approaches the grey of age; while the full raven black hair suggests the idea of youthful prime and freshness. The dislike of the Hungarians to the Germans will not explain their dislike of blond beauty, for the Italians admire it, though they have looked on the Germans time out of mind with hostile feelings.

My harangue was too long for the damsels; they tuned their guitars again to a song of mourning and lamentation, composed by Count Wesseleny in his captivity, no part of which, unhappily, I retain, and concluded with the song of an hussar, who is setting out for the wars, and entreats his mistress for a flower and a parting kiss. She answers she has no time now; she must give the flowers to her mother, but when he comes back from the wars she will give him both. The hussar answers that perhaps he never will come back, perhaps he shall be left dead upon the battle-field. "Then will I plant the flower upon thy grave, and bestow the kiss upon thy cross," she answered, and melting into tears, permits him to take as many kisses as he likes.

THE CONVENT OF TIHANY AND THE PLATTEN LAKE.

The next day, in company with some public officers, and the obliging father of my pretty vocalists, I visited the bathing establishments of Fured. They belong to different persons who possess land in the neighbourhood, and who have a claim upon the springs and their produce. One bathing-house was erected by the Benedictine monks of the neighbouring abbey, another by the Esterhazy family, and a third belongs to forty of the peasant-nobles in common. All these buildings, some of which are very large, together with some places of amusement, a theatre, public gardens, avenues of trees, &c., form a very pretty settlement close to the shores of the Platten See. In the background there is a beautiful oak-wood, and in front the expanse of the magnificent lake which forms a small bay in this part, with the peninsula of Tihany sweeping round.

As Trentschin in north western, and Mehadia in eastern, so Fured is now the most noted and best frequented bathing-place in South Western Hungary. Its "Säuerling" is excellent, and it is strange that its merits should have been acknowledged only so very lately. The Hungarian travellers of the seventeenth century have spoken of these springs, and lamented that none but the neighbouring shepherds should come to enjoy their delicious waters. It is only since the time of the Emperor Joseph II., that any thing of consequence has been done for the convenience of guests, of whom the yearly number now exceeds a thousand.† The wholesome taste for cold bathing has also taken root, and besides the arrangements for the drinkers of the Säuerling, there are baths on the Platten See, and they are to be greatly extended this year.

The little theatre is exclusively devoted to representations in the Hungarian language; the inscription in front is likewise in Hungarian. It is said to be very bombastic, and a gentleman who was about to translate it to me, declared that it was impossible to render it in German. The shorter sense of it was, "the fatherland to its sons." I should rather have supposed "the sons to the fatherland," but as the theatre is really a poor insignificant affair, either would be absurdly pompous and swelling. Every thing about Fured, however, is excessively patriotic. All the fences round court and garden are painted of the national colours, red, white, and green; the little garden bridges, and the pavilion over the springs, are emblazoned in the same hues. The previous year a company of Tyrolese who had descended from their Alps to Fured were not even allowed to sing there, out of pure patriotism. No one will think of blaming the Hungarians for loving their native land; but in the midst of our wonder, we can scarcely admire a zeal for nationality carried so far as to prohibit the innocent pleasure of listening to a few Tyrolese singers, because they happen to be foreigners. We Germans love our country too, but we can enjoy an Hungarian song for all that. Even as a matter of policy the Hungarians should not carry their patriotic feeling to too lofty a height, for a building raised to an unreasonable elevation is apt to topple over, and is, at all events, sure to impair its own durability.

I set out early after dinner that I might reach the famous abbey of Tihany in time, and deliver my credentials from a friend in Pesth to the abbot. The figure of the Platten Lake is a long parallelogram, and the shore is a tolerably straight line the whole way; the only exception occurs about the middle, where a considerable peninsula runs so far into the lake that between its point and the southern shore opposite there remains only a narrow channel, thereby dividing the lake into two, the eastern and western lakes. This remarkable peninsula is evidently of volcanic origin; it consists plainly of two deep basins, probably extinct craters, with a steep descent towards the water. In the bottom of one of these hollows lies a small lake, the other is moist meadow-land. These two basins are connected with the shore by a swampy level, which probably lay altogether under water when the lake was higher, and completely insulated the pe

*Those mineral waters are called in German Säuerlinge, which contain carbonic acid gas, or fixed air, as one of their chief component parts, throwing up bubbles when poured out, and mantling like Champagne when mixed with sugar and wine. Among the best known German mineral waters of this kind are those of Selters, Eger, and Salzbrunn.-Tr.

In 1840, there were above 1800.

ninsula. On the steep declivity of the second basin stands the mistress of the peninsula, and, indeed, of half the country round, the abbey of Tihany. I drove there in a little Hungarian carriage that made a music on the uneven road like the jingling of the brass-laden harness of our German drivers. What we hang about the horses, the Hungarians of the Platten See hang to the carriage itself. A number of small iron-plates, strung on an iron rod, fastened obliquely from the pole to the fore wheel, clattered and jingled backwards and forewards with every motion of the vehicle, as if it could not make noise enough by itself. Cheered by this agreeable harmony, we reached the isthmus that joins Tihany to the mainland, and there sunk deep into the mire; for, as before said, the ground is swampy, and as level as a table. The ascent begins as soon as the peninsula is reached, and here are to be found the remains of the defences ascribed to the Romans. It is certain that the Romans made use of this peninsula as a military post, although there may be no foundation for the tradition that the Empress Valeria, the consort of Galerius, in whose honour this part of Pannonia was called the Valerian province, retired hither, with her mother, Prisca, after the death of her lord, to lead a life of seclusion. The peninsula itself has rather a desolate appearance. The two volcanic basins are nothing but bare pasture-lands with a small portion of arable. The basaltic elevations on the southern and western sides are wooded; those to the east are bare. We drove through the first hollow, then ascended, and entered the second. Here the abbey comes in sight, situated on an elevation, at the foot of which, on the sides of the basin down to the small inner lake, lies an Hungarian village. The Benedictines have a pleasant lodging ready for guests who have any kind of recommendation to them, and here I passed a few very agreeable days.

The abbot who was busy when I arrived, made me over to a subordinate officer who was to show me the curiosities of the place, and whose talkative humour and very original German, amused me exceedingly. "How I envy you to be able to travel so much!" said he, as we set off to explore the peninsula. "How much experience and knowingness one must gather in travelling! It is true that it can only benefit clever people; ignorant people may travel as much as they will, they are none the better for it. As we say in Hungary, Send an ass to Vienna, and you will not make a horse of him;' and many stop at home and become wise people notwithstanding. There is our great poet, Kisfalndy, for example, who lives at Schumegh, not far from here. He is our Hungarian Orpheus, and something more perhaps, and he has never been out of Hungary. Do you know his writings? What noble thoughts! His last publication, and the best of all, was a collection of songs about the environs of the Balaton. Well, if I were to go on my travels I should know when to stop, for I was well instructed in religion by my father, and that's the principal thing. My father made all his children very religious; we were all obliged to learn by heart every point of Christ's genealogy, and of God's providence: and when one knows all that, and can keep it fast, one can go through life safely enough." "And where were you brought up?" I asked.

"In Debrezin, where they do not speak much German. I learnt it here. The Hungarian language also is differently spoken in Debrezin, coarsely and not at all flowingly; here they speak finer and more affectedly: and where do you come from?"