you have heard a good deal
lately about the Hungarians, when they were fighting against the
Austrians and Russians. The Hungarian peasants are very hard-working;
indeed, they cannot help being so, for as the nobility and gentry are
not taxed, the poor people are forced to pay all the taxes, besides
being obliged to give money and provisions to their masters, the Lords
of the Manor, who, I am sorry to say, are excessively tyrannical. They
are also compelled to pay tithes to the clergy, the magistrates, and
the soldiers, and to work for nothing on the public works; against
which bad laws they fought. Agriculture, and the breeding of cattle,
are carried on to a considerable extent.

Hungary is occupied by a variety of people, with entirely different
habits; it contains Frenchmen, Sclavonians, Turks, Jews, Spaniards,
Gipsies, Germans, and Greeks. The Magyar language, the original
Hungarian tongue, is spoken by the peasants; but in the cities the
people mostly use German and French.

The Poles live in a cold, flat, marshy country, in the north of
Europe. The peasantry are in a miserable state, very dirty and
frequently drunken; and their land is in a wretched condition.

The Swedish and Danish people have made many things to be exhibited in
the World's Fair. Sweden is in the north of Europe, and the climate is
very disagreeable, for it is extremely cold in winter, and intolerably
hot in summer. The people do not live very luxuriantly; their bread is
not only black and coarse, but so hard that they are sometimes obliged
to break it with a hatchet; and this, with dried fish, and salt meat,
forms the chief part of their food. Yet they are very hardy and
contented. At Michaelmas, they kill their cattle and salt them, for
the winter and spring. Their favourite drink is beer, and they delight
in malt spirits; some of them have tea and coffee. Their houses are
generally built of wood, and their cottages are made of rough logs;
the roofs are covered with turf, on which the goats browse. The
Swedish women do everything that men are employed to do in other
countries; they plough, sow, and thresh, and work with the
bricklayers; the country women, as well as the ladies, wear veils to
shade their faces from the glare of the snow in winter, and from the
scorching rays of the sun reflected from the barren rocks in summer.

[Illustration]

The iron mines of Sweden are exceedingly useful; they furnish great
quantities of metal, to be e