Viennese Reports of Hungary.-Presburg.-Castle.-Inhabitants. -Members of the Diet.-Dinner Party. Youth of Hungary. -Theben.-Theatre.-Promenade.-Booksellers.-Journals.

IT was about the middle of June, 1835, that we shook the dust of Vienna from our feet, and bent our steps towards the confines of Hungary. Full of the hope of adventure, with which the idea of entering a country familiar only in history or romance fills even older heads than ours, we had been for some days impatient at the dull delays of the Austrian police, and were commensurately rejoiced at their termination, and the actual commencement of our journey.

VOL. I.

B

2

VIENNESE REPORTS

The reader would certainly laugh, as I have often done since, did I tell him one half the foolish tales the good Viennese told us of the country we were about to visit. No roads! no inns! no police! we must sleep on the ground, eat where we could, and be ready to defend our purses and our lives at every moment! In full credence of these reports, we provided ourselves most plentifully with arms, which were carefully loaded, and placed ready for immediate use; for as we heard that nothing but fighting would carry us through, we determined to put the best face we could on the matter. It may however ease the reader's mind to know that no occasion to shoot anything more formidable than a partridge or a hare ever presented itself; and that we finished our journey with the full conviction, that travelling in Hungary was just as safe as travelling in England.

Why or wherefore, I know not, but nothing can exceed the horror with which a true Austrian regards both Hungary and its inhabitants. I have sometimes suspected that the bugbear with which a Vienna mother frightens her squaller to sleep, must be an Hungarian bugbear; for in no other way can I account for the inbred and absurd fear which they entertain for such near neighbours. It is true, the Hungarians do sometimes talk about liberty, constitutional rights, and other such terrible things, to which no well-disposed ears should ever be open, and to which the ears of the Viennese are

religiously closed. Worthy people! How satisfied must the old emperor, der gute Franzel, have been with you! When a certain professor once remonstrated with him on the censorship of the press, and represented it as the certain means of checking the genius of his people, he was answered: "I don't want learned subjects- I want good subjects." As regards the first part of his wish no man had more reason to be contented than the late Emperor of Austria; for a more unintellectual, eating and drinking, dancing and music-loving people do not exist, than the good people of Vienna. As long as they can eat gebackene Hendel at the Sperl, or dance in the Augarten, and listen to the immortal Strauss, as he stamps and fiddles before the best waltz band in Europe, so long will they willingly close their ears to all such wicked discourses; and, despite the speculations of philosophers or the harangues of patriots, nothing will ever induce them to desire a change.

Our party consisted, beside myself, of my friend Mr. S, and Mr. Hand Mr. H; the latter, a young artist, to whom the reader is indebted for the cuts with which this work is embellished. Of ourselves I need say nothing more, as our personality will have little place in our travels. We were provided with a good strong carriage from Brandmeyer's; a preliminary to a journey through Hungary, without which I should recommend no one to attempt it, at least for pleasure. An Italian ser