manufactories of muskets, percussion-caps, and saltpetre, sprang up on the instant; and as the Croatian sulphur-mines were in the enemy's hands, their sulphur was prepared from mundic, or' sulphurate of iron. Within four months, the Austrians were driven from Hungary; so diminished in number and disorganised by cold, hunger, and defeat, that, but for Russian intervention, the war would already be at an end. The defensive strength of a country depends upon its physical conformation, its artificial means of communication and resistance, and the numbers, the temper, and organisation of its inhabitants. A glance at the map shows that Hungary, by the arrangement of its mountains, plains, and rivers, is adapted to every species of warfare, from the guerilla to the dense battalion. Its northern bulwark, the Carpathian Mountains, extends from Presburg and the Danube to Transylvania, a space of four hundred English miles, broken by only three considerable passes, Nádas, Jablonka, and Dukla, while the continuation of this lofty barrier is crossed by only four narrow defiles to the east and south-the approaches to Bukovina, Moldavia, and Wallachia. On the south the Carnian Alps, and the rivers Saave and Danube, afford a frontier almost equally impracticable to an invader. The plains and hills on the west towards the Styrian Mountains are less capable of defence, being more adapted to the action of large masses. Between Presburg and Pesth the rivers sometimes hurry in rapid torrents, and sometimes stagnate in lakes and morasses. The internal communication by roads is very irregular. Some Hungarian counties have highways, which rival English turnpikes, while others are advanced little beyond driftways and tracks, bad in all seasons, and nearly impervious in autumn and winter. An invading army, unacquainted with the country and incumbered with baggage and artillery, will meet, therefore, with no ordinary difficulties. Even Austrian officers, whom previous command of Hungarian regiments had in some degree familiarised with the line of march, were baffled, in the late spring campaign, by the natural or accidental impediments they encountered. Hungary contains an area of 110,000 English square miles, and a population of at least fourteen millions. This extensive area is not more remarkable for the productiveness of its soil, its fa vourable climate, and mineral wealth, than for the various and generally promising character of its inhabitants. All the races of Hungary have, indeed, their several capabilities. The Slovacks are intelligent, for the most part, and inclined to commerce; the Croats good soldiers, and, in the upper classes, able employés; the Servian officers, in the Military Frontier, are many of them expert mathematicians; while the ordinary characteristics of the Wallach are, an aptitude for growth and cultivation and of the Germans, steadiness and industry. But the Majjar- or Hungarian Proper who has given his name to the country, is also the most prominent feature in the group of races. The genuine Majjar, like the Roman patrician, is an agriculturist, a fearless, we had almost said a born rider, fond of field sports and pastoral occupations. His figure is tall and well proportioned; his demeanour grave, and almost melancholy; his attachment to home and to his municipal and political rights ardent; his disposition peaceful, and even indolent, until he is wronged or oppressed-and then indomitably firm, patient, and enterprising. Since our attention has been turned by recent events to Hungary, we have been impressed by the resemblance be-tween the Hungarian country gentleman and yeoman of the present day, and the English gentleman and yeoman of Clarendon and Lucy Hutchinson, of Walker and Vandyke. But the character of the Hungarian, like the resources of his native land, is not yet fully developed. His occasional indolence or haughtiness have to be purged away by the fiery baptism of war; and his warm affections, his firm principles, his active intellect, and native energy will come out the purer from this ordeal. - The customary avocations of the Hungarians in time of peace have tended to organise and discipline them for a crisis like the present. Their law proceedings for like all free people they are habitually litigious-their magisterial duties, and their municipal and county elections have given them habits of business, and taught them to act in concert. Their powers of adaptation, decision, and arrangement have not been palsied by bureaucratic maxims and official routine. Hence, while the Austrian cabinet vacillates between violence and concession, and is at a loss when it cannot be formal, Hungary has already produced. in the various departments of war, internal administration and finance, men of the stamp of Kossuth, and Görgey, Csányi, Szemere, and Duschek. During the last twenty years, indeed, the kingdom generally has made great progress in material improvement. Without the aid or even the countenance of government, the Hungarians have constructed roads, and called into a new existence the Danube by means of steamboats, built a suspension-bridge-the wonder of Europe,'- from Buda over to Pesth; have opened railways, and, by the embankment of the Theiss and by regulating the streams of the Maros and the Sárviz, acquired millions of acres for pasture or tillage. Within the same period the productions of agriculture have been greatly multiplied, the culture of tobacco and oleaginous crops (rape, linseed, &c.) encouraged, the breed of sheep and the quality of wool improved; while the settlements accorded to German and English artisans have introduced into the towns a fresh class of thriving and ingenious citizens. And all these improvements have been accomplished under the discouragements and drawbacks of Austrian rule, by a people possessing rather the substance than the symbol of wealth. For although raw materials of every kind abound in Hungary, there is great scarcity of money. An inlet into the commercial world, by a railroad from the Danube to Fiume, would relieve Hungary of its teeming and superfluous produce, supply capital for public works or private enterprise, and open new and eager markets for English manufactures. The Hungarian is naturally enterprising; and the recent abolition of feudal restrictions, accompanied by a Bill of Rights, both civil and religious, as comprehensive as their Charter of 1848, will not only infuse new vigour into the Majjar race, but develope and direct the energies of every other Hungarian nationality. The That Charter has already invigorated the Hungarian people. With the exception of a few magnates, who preferred the attractions of a capital to their local duties and the development of their country, all classes were zealous for the constitutional party from the very commencement of the war. invasion of Russia is not likely to win them over to the Austrian cause. The Haiduk towns sent one out of every five of their whole population-more than 40,000 in number-to join the national army. It was the characteristic speech of a grey-headed old yeoman of that district to an Hungarian officer: I have sent my three sons, but I have kept back my best horse. I am now going to take him and join myself.' Meantime the duties of peace are fulfilled as steadily as those of war. The plough is not idle, even in the Banat; and since the Military Frontier was recovered by the constitutionalists, cultivation has been actively resumed. In the intervals of war, old men, women, and children are seen labouring in the maize and wheat-fields, that the cruise may not fail, nor the staff of life be shortened' to their defenders. Of such a people it is impossible to despair; and hope is strengthened by the characters of their present leaders. We have already contrasted the barrenness of Austria in men and measures with the abundance and activity of Hungary. Our limits will not permit even a brief sketch of the administrative talents of Csányi or the financial powers of Duschek. But Louis Kossuth too remarkably embodies the genius of the people and the cause, to be passed over in silence. The warriors who, in the ninth century, crossed the Carpathians with Duke Arpad, bequeathed to their descendants an oriental tinge of character. The Hungarian of the nineteenth century accordingly combines a fervid imagination with a strong understanding; and is peculiarly alive to glowing, apophthegmatic, and even mystic eloquence. The speeches of Kossuth have partly an Arabian fervour, and partly a religious earnestness-which remind us of Mahommed and Cromwell. His words, even more than his deeds, mark him as the 'man of the hour.' His health has been broken in the solitude of an Austrian dungeon, but his genius was matured there too; and the union of the statesman with the enthusiast imparts a personal as well as historic interest to his career. Kossuth is justly the idol of the people whose councils he directs. To the firmest faith in his mission he adds unwearied energy, a genius for organisation, and a keen perception of the character of others. His wise choice of instruments and his skilful concealment of his own plans until the moment of execution, enabled him to reconquer the whole length of Hungary, from Debreczin to the frontier, at the very moment when the Austrian generals and statesmen believed him to be a fugitive, and had set a price upon his head. Throughout Galicia and Austria, the police were furnished with the most minute instructions to look for him under every disguise. His presence with the army was discredited, and his capture at Eperies was reported at Vienna, at the very time. that he was advancing upon Pesth, and putting down the Servian insurrection with an improvised force of 120,000 men. We have shown that the physical character of Hungary is seconded by the genius of its people, and the genius of its people guided by men, both civil and military, equal to the present crisis. Whatever may be the issue of the present struggle, the names of Kossuth, Szemere, Csányi, and Duschek, and of the generals Bem, Görgey, Klapka, and Damianich, are entitled to rank among the foremost of their age. Should the result be favourable, and Hungary either maintain the independence of its crown, or resume, but with stronger guarantees, its relations with Austria, a new career is open for its people. A port on the Adriatic, an abundant and increasing produce, institutions now unfettered, comprehensive, and tolerant, aided by the manly and practical temper of its inhabitants and their generous aspirations, must, in that case, raise the Hungarians ere long to a level with the great nations of Europe. Among those nations Hungary looks to England for its sympathy at the present moment, and as its example for the future. Perhaps we cannot close this portion of our subject better than by the following anecdote, for the authenticity of which we can answer. In the year 1839, an English gentleman was invited to the 1849. Russian Invasion invited by the Austrian Government. 247 Vintage of the Lower House of Representatives at Presburg. On his health being given, a popular orator of the Diet, who now fills one of the highest and most important offices under the present government, observed that, all really constitutional nations, when in their struggles for freedom they feel inclined 'to despair,-when they feel inclined to doubt for a moment whether the goddess they worship be not a phantom, seeing the excesses committed in her name, have only to turn to England, their pole-star. The sight of national liberty exem'plified by England, comforts and strengthens them in their < struggle.' But we must contemplate the reverse of this prospect. If through Russian aid Austria be victorious, the last barrier is swept away from the road to Constantinople. Austria herself will, from that time forward, need the bayonets of the Czar to keep down her discontented subjects, and must sink to the level of a secondary power. Its policy will be the policy of St. Petersburg; and the dream of a Pansclavic empire will not end in the suppression of the proud Majjars,' but in the reduction of Eastern Europe into a Russian province. If history has meaning in it as well as words, we are not predicting without sufficient warrant. Russian protection and Russian intervention have for a century past been equally fatal. The poor ally non equitem dorso, non frænum depulit ore. "Where is Hamath and Arphad, Sepharvaim and Ivah?' was the question of the Babylonian envoy. What, with equal pertinence we may ask, have been the fruits of Russian aid to Turkey and Persia, to Warsaw and Finland, in Asterabad and Bessarabia, and now in Moldavia and Wallachia? To all these lands its hatred has been dangerous, but its embrace deadly. Nor is Russian policy the work of a single man or a single generation. Four sovereigns of the House of Romanoff have consistently walked in the same track. Yet it is not the policy of Catherine, of Paul, of Alexander, or of Nicholas, but of Russia. It bides its time; and the purpose of the fathers is accomplished by the third or fourth generation of the children. It employs with equal readiness fraud or force. Muscovite Panslavism and the Greek Church are as much its instruments as the gold of the Ural and the Cossack's lance. It proscribes at Warsaw, it bullies at Constantinople, it flatters France, and is coldly courteous to England. It has at once the versatility and fixedness which the ancients attributed to destiny — πολλῶν ὀνομάτων μορφὴ μία. Its journals and proclamations boast of its paternal sway and vigilance; while it peoples Siberia with the children of its victims, and fills their cities and homes with spies. It has a vulture's scent for the tainted portion of nations, and holds out every |