elves late in the ninth century, near the
sources of the Theiss. Their legends say, that by lineage, they are
Magyars, and that they obtained the name which they now bear through an
accident. There stood, near the spot where they first permanently
encamped, a castle, called in the language of the country, Hung-var,
which the strangers won, and converted into a sort of capital. As often
as they sallied forth from that castle on predatory or other
expeditions, the Slavonians were accustomed to exclaim, "Here come the
Hung-varians," and the title thus given at first as a term of mere
derision or hostility, came, by-and-by, to be accepted as a national
distinction.

I am not prepared to avow either my own acceptance, or my own
rejection, of this mode of accounting for the origin of the Hungarian
name. There is no good reason to be assigned one way or the other; for
nations, like individuals, generally owe their designations to some
cause equally simple; but that the Magyars, or Myars, brought with them
the elements of that constitution under which it is the boast of their
descendants that they still live, is just as easily proved as that we
owe our most valuable institutions to the customs and usages of our
Saxon forefathers. The Myars, like the Saxons, appear to have lived,
during seasons of peace, in obedience to a whole host of petty and
independent chiefs. If war broke out, or a foreign expedition was
resolved upon, the heads of clans made choice of one of their order to
command the rest;--when the exigencies of the moment ceased to operate,
the commander fell back into his proper place among his equals. Seven
of these tribes are stated to have taken part in the earliest attack on
Pannonia. They were led by one Almus, a brave and successful warrior;
and soon spread themselves over the whole of the plain; but not for
many generations could they count on a permanent cessation from the
hostilities with which the mountaineers, driven back, yet unsubdued,
continued to harass them. The results were precisely such as occurred
in Normandy and England, and every where else, where tribes advanced to
a similar pitch of civilization, won settlements by the sword. Arpad,
the son of Almus, was chosen to succeed his father; and the foundations
were laid both of an hereditary monarchy, and of a power able and
willing to place limits to that of the crown.

The best historians inform us, that between Arpad and the heads of
tribes, a so