oes not desire a large family; it would tax his energies
too much to provide for that. It is deeply to be lamented that a
superior race like the educated Saxons of Transylvania, who held their
own so bravely against Turk and Tartar, and, what was more difficult
still, preserved their religious liberty in spite of Austrian Jesuits,
should _now_ be losing their political ascendancy, owing mainly to their
displacement by the Wallacks. According to the last census, the German
immigrants in Hungary are estimated at 1,820,922. I have no means of
making an accurate comparison, but I hear on all hands that the numbers
are diminished. There are, besides, proofs of it in the case of villages
which were exclusively Saxon having now become partly, even wholly,
Wallachian.

There are wonderfully few chateaux in this picturesque land. In my
frequent rides over the Burzenland I rarely saw any dwellings above what
we should attribute to a yeoman farmer. As a matter of fact there are
fewer aristocrats in this part of Hungary, or perhaps I should say this
part of Transylvania, than in any other.

After my pleasant morning's ride I found myself at Kronstadt, and put up
at Hotel "No. 1"--an odd name for a fairly good inn. There is another
farther in town--the Hotel Bucharest--also a place of some pretension.
The charges for rooms generally in the country are out of all proportion
to the accommodation given. Travellers are rare, at least they used to
be before the present war; but Kronstadt is the terminus of the direct
railway from Buda-Pest, which, communicating with the Tomoescher Pass
over the Carpathians, is the shortest route to Bucharest.

As far as the buildings are concerned, Kronstadt has much the air of an
old-fashioned German town. As you pass along the streets you get a peep
now and then of picturesque interior courtyards, seen through the
wide-arched doorways. These courts are mostly surrounded by an open
arcade. Generally in the centre of each is set a large green tub holding
an oleander-tree. This gives rather an Oriental appearance to these
interiors. The East and West are here mixed up together most curiously.
Amongst the fair-haired, blue-eyed Saxons are dusky Armenians and
black-ringleted Jews, wearing strange garments. By the way, the
merchants of these two races have ousted the Saxon trader from the
field; commerce is almost completely in their hands.

The market-day at Kronstadt is a most curious and interesting si