ers of the Hungarian legislature are all paid by
their constituents, who again consist of the eidelmen of the several
counties. Of these very many are, in point of fact, mere peasants, whom
the misfortunes or imprudence of their ancestors have reduced to
poverty; but all must have noble blood in their veins,--for it is an
honourable descent, and not the possession of lands or houses, which
entitles a man to exercise the elective franchise in Hungary. Such
poor nobles are, of course, controlled and managed by their wealthier
neighbours, who, when the season of an election comes round, deal with
them pretty much as our own candidates and their committees deal with
the poor voters in boroughs. There is prodigious feasting at the
castle,--there is no end of magnanimous declarations,--no lack of
brilliant and spirit-stirring speeches; under the influence of which,
and of the wine and strong drinks that accompany them, the pauper
eidelman becomes a hero in his own eyes. But, alas! political gratitude
is not more enduring in Hungary than elsewhere. The crisis has its
course, and the scion of a glorious race,--the representative of a
family which followed Almus to the Theiss and gave the coronet to
Arpad,--goes back to his hovel, and his daily toil, and his filth, and
his wretchedness, there to chew the cud of bitter fancy, till the
return of an electioneering season shall call him forth once more to
act a part upon the stage of life.

My reader will be good enough to believe that while I thus speak of a
country,--very much under-peopled by ten millions of souls,--I am
referring to the condition of a minute fraction of that population,--of
something less than two hundred thousand persons, in whom alone the
existence of rights and privileges is by the law recognised. The
people,--properly so called,--the peasants who cultivate the soil, the
mechanics who construct the dwellings, the artisans who fabricate your
household utensils, your wearing apparel, your carriages, your ships,
your machinery; these are precisely in the condition of Gurth and Wamba
in Sir Walter Scott's romance of _Ivanhoe_. In the rural districts
every man whom you meet, provided he be neither a noble nor a soldier,
belongs to somebody. He has no rights of his own. He is a portion of
another man's chattels; he is bought and sold with the land, as if he
were a horse or an ox. On him, too, all the common burdens of the state
are thrown. If the parliament vote an