FAIR

CHAPTER XLIX.

O'BUDA.

AIR-TIME is by no means the most pleasant at which to visit the capital, and we were right glad to learn one morning soon after our arrival that it was over. Oh, the dust and muddle and hurry-skurry of the whole business of packing up! But even that too is almost over now. The booths have disappeared; the pedlars have shouldered their wares, and the acrobats their bundles; the young ladies in pink tights have resumed their top-boots; the Mesdames Jarley have packed up their wax-works, and the decapitated bodies of Bem, Kossuth, Matthias Corvinus, and Joan of Arc, stripped of their finery and with their heads carefully stowed away elsewhere, are lying in boxes filled with straw, and jogging along the road in dreary fellowship. All are gone off to the next fair. Nor will they have long to rest on their laurels, for there are two thousand fairs in Hungary every year. Little is left to remind us of the existence of this one but sundry heaps of dust and straw mingled with scraps of paper of various colours which the wind has benevolently blown under doorways and into safe snug corners, and all things have shaken down and resumed their wonted complexion in bright, beautiful Pest. Persons come and go as

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usual. In the markets, vendors of Tisch-wein and hot macaroni soup assert their former sway, and Magyar women, once more left alone, shine forth in solitary glory, in all the convolutions of their short but voluminous petticoats.

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It is amusing to linger about the square and regard the common objects," sturdy Magyar matrons bargaining over their purchases, as they stand at the stalls on which repose whole yards of bread and miles of sausage, or see them turn

ing over the contents of the vegetable baskets guarded by female rustics, sitting under huge umbrellas. Equipped in their top-boots which extend above the knee, and which are well greased to resist the manifold vicissitudes of Hungarian roads, these Magyar females resemble groups of Amazons, rather than peaceful house-wives.

A propos of these Magyar sisters of ours I never could determine at all satisfactorily to my own mind whether the

enormous rotundity of hip is due to a peculiar type of human form, or to extraneous matter in the shape of pads or pillows. I incline to the latter theory, but I seldom saw a full-blown specimen of the genus without wishing to solve the mystery. As they go marching home with their purchases, one cannot help thinking what admirable weapons the long, narrow, crusty loaves would make which they carry under their arms; these and three quarters of a yard of sausagean edible made of raw meat, well flavoured with garlic, and so compressed as to assume almost the hardness and heaviness of iron-might furnish implements of warfare for an army; and appear to be exactly the kind of weapons with which the ancient inhabitants of Eastern Hungary defended themselves against the Romans in A.D. 103 as seen in the sculptures on Trajan's Column at Rome.

Steamers ply constantly throughout the day between Pest and Ofen, as well as Promontorium and other towns and villages in the neighbourhood of Pest, and few things are more interesting than to stand on the long steps of the quays and watch their arrival and departure. Here stand or sit groups of men and women waiting for the steamers to take them to their respective destinations, and I never grew tired of sketching them, for they occasionally formed themselves into groups that were perfectly statuesque. I never knew people— to make use of artistic phraseology—who "composed" so well.

Embarking on these boats may sometimes be seen not only Bosnians, Servians, and natives of the Sublime Porte; but occasionally an Albanian in gay and martial attire with a sabre at his side and pistol in his girdle, and now and then a Dervish. Indeed at no hour of the day are these splendid quays devoid of interest; whilst lying close into the shore

are gaily painted fishing-boats looking like exaggerated Dutch toys.

Sitting on one of the benches at the place of embarkation for Promontorium, enveloped from head to foot in his long black cloak, we often observed an exiled Pole-a refugee from that part of his hapless country upon which Russia has set her iron grasp. He never spoke, but sat moodily watching the river flowing by, his thoughts evidently far away, and was verily the saddest spectacle we saw the whole time we were at Pest. There are a number of Polish refugees in this charming little capital, and it is easy to recognise them, their downcast but resigned look, more eloquent far than any spoken demonstration of sorrow, plainly indicating who and what they were. Taciturn always, it was seldom we could engage them in conversation, but if fortunate enough to do so, their incessant themes were loss of nationality and love of country. "Unpaternal" as are most continental Governments in their treatment of political refugees, Austro-Hungary is a very favourite place of exile with the Poles; nor is this altogether strange, for the Hungarians naturally sympathise with the Poles as a people situated in some measure similarly to themselves, besides which it is said that the Austrian Government is far more indulgent to political refugees than the Prussian. Probably Austria is influenced in some degree

as well she may-by the remembrance of the assistance Poland once afforded her in the hour of her greatest need, when in 1683 she was almost overwhelmed by 300,000 Turks and Tartars who had already made a breach in her walls.

Every night as we retired to our room in Hôtel Dolovics we observed, resting on a door-mat on the same floor as that

never

on which our own room was situated, a solitary boot. What silent pathos was there in it! It was a small boot too, a woman's, and its loneliness haunted me somehow, and kept me awake thinking of it. I did not feel half so much for the wearer as for the lonely thing itself, which in the solitude of its sole seemed even more than human. We the wearer, though we watched long and patiently; at last, one night, we found it gone. It had moved off our stage, and was once more on its lonely walk through life. Upon inquiring of the manager of the hotel, who occupied a gloomy little office glazed in at the top of the stairs, he satisfied our curiosity by informing us that it belonged to a lady residing in the north of Hungary, whose leg had been amputated in childhood in consequence of injuries sustained from grape-shot, at the commencement of the bombardment of the city in 1849, during the war between the Imperial troops and the Revolutionists-a struggle which resulted in the gallant Magyars making themselves masters of the Citadel of Buda, on whose ramparts, after a three-weeks' heavily-sustained combat on both sides, the Hungarian flag floated over the city.

During the troublous annals of their history the Magyars have invariably displayed dashing heroism, noble selfsacrifice, and loving devotion to their country, but in no instance, perhaps, so notably as in the struggles of 1848-9, when, although numbering as a nation only six millions and a quarter, they fought for their independence against the combined forces of Russia and Austria, and notwithstanding the immense resources at their foes' command, succeeded for a while in not only asserting their national independence, but in quelling at the same time the insurrection of their