thirty years since we emerged from the middle ages, so to speak; and you
expect our civilisation to have the well-worn polish of Western States.
Think how recently we have emancipated our serfs, and reformed our
constitution and our laws. Take into account, too, that just as we were
setting our house in order, the enemy was at the gate--progress was
arrested, and our national life paralysed; but let that pass, we don't
want to look back, we want to look forward. We have still to build up
the structure that with you is finished; we are deficient in everything
that a state wants in these days, and in our haste to make railways,
roads, and bridges, to erect public buildings, and to promote industrial
enterprises, we make certain financial blunders. You must not forget
that we in Hungary are much in the same state that you were in England
in the thirteenth century, before tenant-holdings had become general. We
shall gradually learn to see the advantages to be derived from letting
land on your farm system. There is nothing we desire so much as the
creation of the tenant-farmer class, which hardly exists yet. Large
estates would be far better divided and let as farms on your system. We
are in a transition state as regards many things in agricultural
matters. English or Scotch farmers would be welcomed over here by the
great landowners. Your countryman, Professor Wrightson, convinced
himself of this when he was here in 1873. If they could command some
capital, the produce of the land in many instances could be doubled."

I asked my friend about labourers' wages, but he said it was difficult
to give any fixed rate. A mere agricultural day-labourer would get from
1s. 3d. to 1s. 6d.; sometimes the evil practice of paying wages in kind
obtained--viz., a man receives so much Indian corn (_kukoricz_). And not
unfrequently a peasant undertakes to plough the fields twice, to hoe
them three times, and to see the crop housed, for which he receives the
half of the yield provided he has furnished the seed. The peasants' own
lands, as a rule, are very badly managed; their ploughing is shallow,
and they do nothing or next to nothing in the way of drainage.

CHAPTER XIX.

Want of progress amongst the Saxons--The
Burzenland--Kronstadt--Mixed character of its
inhabitants--Szeklers--General Bem's campaign.

It was a glorious morning when I left the comfortable village of Zeiden.
Before me were the rich pastures of the Bu