who punish are ruthlessly denominated executioners, and exposed to the execration of that portion (by far the largest) of the public, who takes no trouble but to condemn, not caring one straw whether the condemnation be a just one or not. Though he might not perhaps foresee that a French poet, whose early labours were devoted to the task of rendering crime amiable in his works, would one day, in his infinite ignorance, associate his name with that of the exe, crable Marat,* Haynau yet expected no favour from his contemporaries, but submitted to accomplish his duty in contempt of popularity.†

I have never been quite able to understand why,so much pity having been poured forth upon the fate of Batthyanyi, and so much abuse upon him whose

* M. Victor Hugo, in one of his last Socialist speeches.

† There is hardly a possibility of conceiving anything more difficult than the position of the ministry of Austria in the face of these military commanders who have just saved the country, but who cannot, in a regular state of things, be regarded as adapted to the work of governing it. Here, in this arduous passage from military rule to civil authority, will be the test of Prince Schwarzenberg's political capacity; and I have not the least doubt that, backed by his extraordinary force of will, which alone can aid him at such a juncture, he will, at the cost of some momentary unpopularity, secure for himself in his way in this respect, the place of one of the most distinguished ministers a sovereign ever had. Still there is, in the manner of Haynau's dismissal, something that must shock, and, indeed, revolt every one who knows how immense the services rendered by Haynau have been.

lot it was to condemn him,-some portion of the former sentiment was not also accorded to Eugène Zichy, and why a little of the latter was not vented also upon Görgey. The cases were very nearly parallel, except that the execution of Count Zichy was a wholly arbitrary act, and that the consequences of Zichy's conduct (whether treasonable or not) were as nothing compared to the results of Batthyanyi's weak, culpable ambition. Zichy was seized by Görgey's orders, brought before a court-martial, presided over by the latter, accused of high treason against the nation, and of having secreted treasures wherewith to enable the Ban to defray the expenses of his army, thereupon sentenced to death, and forthwith hung.

The next day appeared at the street-corners of Pesth the following placard: "So suffer traitors! Count Zichy, late Administrator of the County of Stuhlweissenburg, was yesterday, as the associate and abettor of traitors against his country, hung with a cord in the Island of Csepel, at half-past eight o'clock!" When Schütte speaks of this event he says: "From this moment the name of Görgey was popular, and the eyes of Kossuth were now directed towards him."* And yet, fearful as this sudden execution seems, I have never heard the abuse that has been vented upon Haynau attach to the name of Görgey, whose pro

*“Ungarn und der Ungarische Unabhängigkeits Krieg," by Schütte, Vol. 11.

clamation, I must say resembles to my mind far too much, the few deadly words the mysterious judges of the Heilige Vehme used, in the middle ages, to affix to trees in dark forest-carrefours, announcing the execution of a sentence; or those by which the Spanish bandit of our days informs the traveller that at such a spot, beneath such a wooden cross sleeps a murdered man. It wants the solemnity of justice, the deep mournful gravity by which alone so dread an act as the taking of human life ought to be accompanied.

The death of Batthyanyi is fearful as is that of Zichy-all such deaths are horrible, and stand foremost amongst the desolations of civil war; but if ever death was merited for treason (I lay a peculiar stress upon the word if)-it was so in the case of Count Batthyanyi, for the consequences of his treason had been the ruin of a whole nation.* That treason is

*The circumstances put forth in the act of condemnation should not be forgotten: the letter of the 17th of September to Pulszky, in Vienna, sending him money "to create sympathies for the Hungarians;" the fact of his (Batthyanyi's) having come from Vienna to Edenburg in the night of the 5th or 6th of October, and having, in the latter place, observed to the witnesses, who deposed upon his trial, that

it had cost him considerable trouble to get the Viennese well peppered" (bis Sie aufgepfeffert worden). All this, coupled with the fact of his having, on the 7th of October, announced to a friend the death of Latour in these words: "The rascal, Latour, is already hung; now our affairs are looking up in

a crime harshly dealt with even in these countries, which evince the liveliest sympathies for the traitors of other lands, history will amply show, we in England need look no further than Lord Edward Fitzgerald but that treason, being a crime calling for the last rigours of the law, Batthyanyi should have been spared, is an impossible assumption,

Be it as it may, it is always horrible, and these are the dread necessities which constitute the peculiar awfulness of civil war; but that he who is forced by duty to condemn is much less to be pitied than he who is condemned is what I cannot admit. We should be guarded in denying a duty merely because it is a sterner one than we could ourselves fulfil.

Hungary!" should be borne in mind, and treason may scarcely seem to be the worst of Batthyanyi's crimes.

CHAPTER XV.

ANARCHY AND ABSOLUTISM-THE CZAR AND

KOSSUTH.

If there ever was a time in which it was necessary to understand clearly the meaning of each expression, it is the present; such a vast abuse has been made of words, speech has been so misused for the worst ends and vilest purposes that the sense of uncultivated, discourse-stunned populations, has been bewildered and perverted, and they have been made to obey dictates, the meaning of which they did not even comprehend. Progress," "Liberty," "Equality," and a hundred others, are words that have turned to flame; and with the cry of "fraternity," thousands have butchered one another.

66

One of the most renowned of European statesmen related to me the following anecdote: Being one day in company with an English Secretary of State, the latter asked him what his opinion was of Jellacic.