On the 8th of October he presents himself before a popular assembly, clad in a simple Honved's costume, full of patient suffering, and bowing down, as it were, in mock humility to the insult levelled at him by the Imperial manifesto, wherein he was very justly styled traitor, at the same time, however, that he causes a hussar, who had not paid military honours to Madame Kossuth, to be gratified with twenty-five strokes of a cane! Once he tries the

effect of royalty, and appears at the balcony of the Rath Haus of Pesth, enveloped in the mantle of the Magyar kings; another time he has recourse to simplicity, and tries a touch of the unadorned sublime-merely saying to the Diet these words: "I ask two hundred thousand soldiers, and all the money required for their keep."

Illness, occasioned by overwrought enthusiasm, he often employs, and few things had more decided success than the sight of the sufferings caused to this inspired champion by the overwhelming force of his patriotism.

"In Vienna," cries he, "they are counting the days on which they cannot murder a Magyar. Oh! my dear fellow-citizens! this is the way in which free men are always looked upon by tyrants! You stand alone-will you struggle?" . . And then, he totters, turns pale, and sinks back, gracefully overcome, into the arms of two men who support him under the weight of his emotions! And all this succeeds!

Succeeds beyond even his hopes, and he is obliged to refuse the royal palace of Pesth, as a residence, and the Liste Civile of the Palatine! and he hesitates at accepting a hundred thousand florins a year, which his grateful public persists in forcing upon him!

"Que voulez vous ?" said a personage belonging to the corps diplomatique, with whom we were talking over this furore created by Kossuth. "C'est toujours le même peuple qui lorsqu'un pianiste réussit, lui donne un sabre !"*

* Some five or six years ago, the Magyars in Pesth, driven wild with enthusiasm for Liszt, presented him with a sabre!

CHAPTER XVI.

STYRIA AND THE ARCHDUKE JOHN.

ON the 27th September, of the year of grace 1673, His Majesty the Emperor Leopold I. set out from Vienna, in order to meet at Gratz his Imperial cousin, the Archduchess Claudia Felicia, of Tyrol, to whom he was betrothed, and who had left Innsbruck, on the 21st day of the same month, to join her august bridegroom at Gratz, where the nuptial ceremony was to take place.

Six whole days did the Imperial "progress endure, and six pages would be nothing to describe all the incidents of the journey: how, on the 1st of October, His Majesty sent Count Colloredo to SaintVeit, in Carinthia, to "compliment" the illustrious bride; how, on the 7th (four days after his arrival in

Gratz), his Majesty did exactly the same thing, despatching first Count Breuner, next Count Ettingen, then Count Dietrichstein, afterwards Prince Lobkowitz; and lastly, Count Lamberg; all "zum becomplimentiren:" how the illustrious "becomplimentirte" gave audience to the messengers of her Lord; and how, in Eggenberg, on the 14th October, the Land-Marshal, Count Saurau, delivered, in her presence, a passing pretty speech, eine Zierliche Rede: and how, on the 15th, the future Empress entered Gratz by the Mur Faubourg, having been exactly twenty-five days in coming from Innsbruck to Gratz, a distance of some three or four hundred miles.

It was five o'clock in the afternoon, when the Imperial Claudia Felicia made her entry into Gratz; and the evening shadows, just beginning to fall, were invaded by the light of unnumbered torches; and the evening stillness was broken by the ringing of bells, the firing of guns, the shouts of the crowd, and the din made by the trumpeters and kettledrummers. Such a lot of them as there were ! After the carriages, containing the big-wigs of the province, came the provincial trumpeters and kettledrummers; after the carriage of the Prince of Eggenberg, again the trumpeters of the Court, with their kettle-drums and drummers; and immediately preceding the unfortunate ladies of honour (how they must have been stunned!), the Imperial body-guard,

with its Trompetern und Paukern, the eternal trumpeters and kettle-drummers!

Well, with all that (which it absolutely deafens one only to read) I have but little to do, the part of this Imperial journey which interested me was the one entire week, required by the Emperor Leopold to accomplish in the seventeenth century that which we in the nineteenth, achieved in one night, notwithstanding the three feet of snow upon the ground,—a most tremendous Schnee Verwehung.

Heavens! if the Imperial Claudia Felicia could see us! thought I, as we dashed, fuming and blazing away, into the terminus at Gloggnitz ;-it was worse than the Trompetern und Paukern.

Of all the lovely "bits" of mountainous scenery I know, nothing is more perfect than the Pass of the Semmering. It is, as it were, enframed for the especial usage and delight of travellers; a pocket epitome of the Alpine world of rock, hill, torrent and wood; a sort of diamond edition of Switzerland to be "got through" in three hours. I have seen it at all times and in all weathers;-when the snow wraps its pines in spotless draperies, and its frozen waterfalls hang like white beards upon the face of the rocks, and when the warm breath of May lures back the Alpine Flora to her haunts; when the blue radiance of the moon fills its deep dark valleys with pale phantoms, and calls strange shadow-shapes from