ive to it, when
first beheld, its civic character; and it was, I believe, made use of,
so recently as 1683, as a line of defence against the Turks. Moreover
Deutsch Altenburg has its objects of interest also;--a tumulus, or
mound, sixty feet in altitude, but of a date to which tradition goes
not back; while the church of St. John, which crowns an eminence near,
is accounted one of the most perfect Gothic edifices in the Austrian
dominions. And, last of all, there is Hainburg, with its old castle,
and gateways equally old; both exhibiting manifest traces of war on
their exterior defences, even to the cannon-balls, which, since the
last invasion of the Turks, have been left sticking where they fell.
These, meeting you, as it were, one after the other, and forming points
of rest to the eye when it has grown weary of ranging over the plain,
produce a powerful effect upon your imagination; which is certainly not
lessened by the aspect of the living creatures, whether of the human or
some inferior species, which begin to gather round you.

I had been prepared by all that fell from those, who, having themselves
penetrated into Hungary, were obliging enough, both in Dresden and at
Vienna, to give me hints as to my own proceedings, for a state of
things, both animate and inanimate, very different from that which had
met me in Germany. I knew that the people were much less civilized than
the Germans; and that for one, who proposed to wander as I did, alone,
and, wherever it might be possible to do so, on foot, arms might be
found convenient, perhaps necessary. Yet I did not expect to see a
change so complete, in every point of view, as that which became
perceptible even before we passed the frontier. There began to meet us,
a little way in advance of Deutsch Altenburg, troops of those
Torpindas, whom, in the ignorance of our hearts, we had, in Bohemia,
mistaken for gipseys. There they were, with their hosen and coarse
cloaks, their broad sombrero hats, and matted locks, trudging along, in
bands of twelve or fourteen, and looking up with a glance of half
cunning, half curiosity, from beneath their shaggy eyebrows. By-and-by
came herds of cattle, quite different, both in colour and form, from
any which we had previously encountered; and then pigs,--monsters of
the first class,--whom men, evidently but one degree removed from
barbarism, were driving before them. My young companion and I looked
first at one another, and then at the p