hor and Tzernebock
together, and calls them gods of the heathen Saxons."

"Well," said I, "Thur or Thor was certainly a god of the heathen Saxons."

"True," said the Hungarian; "but why couple him with Tzernebock?
Tzernebock was a word which your Valter had picked up somewhere without
knowing the meaning. Tzernebock was no god of the Saxons, but one of the
gods of the Sclaves, on the southern side of the Baltic. The Sclaves had
two grand gods to whom they sacrificed, Tzernebock and Bielebock: that
is, the black and white gods, who represented the powers of dark and
light. They were overturned by Waldemar the Dane, the great enemy of the
Sclaves; the account of whose wars you will find in one fine old book,
written by Saxo Gramaticus, which I read in the library of the college of
Debreczen. The Sclaves at one time were masters of all the southern
shore of the Baltic, where their descendants are still to be found,
though they have lost their language, and call themselves Germans; but
the word Zernevitz, near Dantzic, still attests that the Sclavic language
was once common in those parts. Zernevitz means the thing of blackness,
as Tzernebock means the god of blackness. Prussia itself merely means,
in Sclavish, Lower Russia. There is scarcely a race or language in the
world more extended than the Sclavic. On the other side of the Donau you
will find the Sclaves and their language. Czernavoda is Sclavic, and
means black water; in Turkish, kara su; even as Tzernebock means black
god; and Belgrade, or Belograd, means the white town; even as Bielebock,
or Bielebog, means the white god. Oh! he is one great ignorant, that
Valter. He is going, they say, to write one history about Napoleon. I
do hope that in his history he will couple his Thor and Tzernebock
together. By my God! it would be good diversion that."

"Walter Scott appears to be no particular favourite of yours," said I.

"He is not," said the Hungarian; "I hate him for his slavish principles.
He wishes to see absolute power restored in this country, and Popery
also; and I hate him because . . . what do you think? In one of his
novels, published a few months ago, he has the insolence to insult
Hungary in the person of one of her sons. He makes his great braggart,
Coeur de Lion, fling a Magyar over his head. Ha! it was well for Richard
that he never felt the gripe of a Hungarian. I wish the braggart could
have felt the gripe of me, who am 'a' Magyarok