lightest authority. They are
fellow-subjects with the Austrians and Bohemians only so far that the
imperial and the regal crowns happen to be worn by the same individual.
But there is this marked difference in their respective situations,
that whereas over Austria and Bohemia, the emperor exercises an
absolute sway, in Hungary he has his prerogatives, beyond the limits of
which he is not permitted to pass. He cannot, of his own will and
pleasure, enact a new law; he cannot interfere with the privileges of
his nobles; he cannot levy a tax, nor impose a new burden upon the
nation, till the parliament, or estates, have given him authority to do
so. It is because at Presburg the parliament meets, and that there also
the ceremony of the coronation is carried through, that I have selected
this stage in my narrative for the statement of matters which were not
rendered familiar to me till a protracted sojourn in the country gave
me opportunities of collecting information, both from its living
inhabitants, and from the treasured archives with which its libraries
abound.

The tract of territory which, on our maps, we describe as Hungary, is
peopled by two distinct races of men;--the Hungarians, who inhabit the
great plain of the Danube, of which Cormorn may be regarded as the
centre; and the Slavonians, by whom the mountain districts are
occupied, as well in Carpatia and Transylvania, as in Croatia and the
rugged districts that border upon Styria. Of these, the Hungarians are
not considered to amount to more than four millions of souls at the
utmost; whereas the numbers of the Slavonians fall not short of six
millions.

As is the case elsewhere, however, so has it happened here; the
political institutions of the few have been imposed with a strong hand
on the many; for the laws that prevail, as well as the machinery
created to enforce them, are alike Hungarian. Yet the Hungarians are,
so to speak, mere strangers in the land, who owe their original
settlement there to the edge of the sword, and by the edge of the sword
were long compelled to maintain it.

It seems now to be admitted, that the theory which once connected the
conquerors of Pannonia with the Huns, is entirely without foundation.
The Hungarians are the descendants of one of those eastern hordes whom
the Mongols, in their progress southward, drove from their homes; and
who, breaking through Russia, and traversing a large extent of Poland,
won a settlement for thems