offensive, Vienna might have been in his hands. Yet, notwithstanding these suspicious proceedings, this wilfulness and indecision, he fought bravely and desperately to the last; and when the order arrived that finally superseded him in the command, he had just achieved a brilliant victory, and left the field with a wound in his head. That order was, undoubtedly, imperative. The salvation of the country depended on it; and the wonder and the blame is that it was not issued long before. When it did come it was too late.

Görgey's character and motives are still involved in mystery. Some of the Hungarian patriots openly denounce him as a traitor. Others hesitate. Nobody can clear up the obscurity. Klapka conjectures that he meditated a dictatorship all along; Kossuth believed him to be a traitor. Time alone will determine how he is to extricate himself from these conflicting accusations. All that is known of him at present is that he is enjoying the luxury of repose and independence at Klagenfurt, while the flower of his brave compatriots have been shot, hung, or expatriated.

The position of the Parliament of Hungary during this period resembled, in some points of view-but with an important difference-the position of the English Parliament in the time of the Civil War. In the comparison the former shows at a great disadvantage. It never acquired a complete control of the army. All went well so long as the administration acted in the name of the Imperial government; but from the moment it assumed the functions of a national administration it was perpetually thwarted and embarrassed by men who should have implicitly obeyed its commands. Kossuth, a great orator and an able politician, was deficient in the boldness and decision demanded by the occasion, and being ignorant of military tactics, his plans were not always judicious. How the campaign was carried on so successfully as it was, in spite of the cabals, confusion, and perplexities that impeded the operations of everybody concerned, is marvellous.

Our next contribution to the history of the war is a work published in Germany, where it excited a deep sensation, and now translated into English, and edited by M. Pulsky. The author, Max Schlesinger, we are informed, is an Hungarian by birth, who long ago quitted his native country, first residing at Prague, and afterwards at Berlin. This remarkable work, in which he relates numerous episodes not hitherto made known, unites to the charm of a singularly free and picturesque style, a close familiarity with the modes and customs, the domestic life and institutions of the different races engaged in the struggle, that imparts a living reality to the narrative of facts. Of all the Hungarian memoirs hitherto given to the world, this is likely to be the most popular. It possesses the enchaining interest of a romance; its pictures of the country and the people are full of colour and animation; and the action passes before us with the impressive effect and life-like movement of a highly-wrought drama. In General Klapka's book the military incidents of the war are related with the precision of a soldier;* in Max Schlesinger's work the artist and the historian light up the scene of battle, and show us the costume and gathering of the levies, the midnight bivouacs, and all the other strange and startling features that

It is a curious fact that this thoroughly military production, describing sieges, battles, skirmishes, and executions, should issue from the house of a Publisher who is a prominent member of the Peace Society.

especially marked the short and sanguinary campaign. The personal adventures and sketches of character scattered through its pages give it a permanent illustrative value, and being written all throughout in a spirit of earnest responsibility, the particulars it contains, endorsed by the hand of M. Pulsky, may be received with implicit credit.

The reader of any of these books-but especially of this by Max Schlesinger-must be struck by one very remarkable fact which shines out steadily and conspicuously throughout the whole course of the war, from its origin to its close. We allude to the loyalty of the Magyars to their Sovereign. They were arrayed in arms against the Austrian armyyet they avowed, asserted, and fell, the sentiment of loyalty to the throne as strongly as the most devoted of its adherents. This looks excessively like a contradiction in terms. It is not so in reality. The Hungarians have always had before them the image of that constitutional liberty which is the tradition of their political faith, and which can exist only in the monarchial form. It was not change they demanded, but restoration. It was not that they wanted to destroy, but to reconstruct. They did not demand any novelties-they were not carried away by any new-fangled theories of liberty, equality, and fraternity-there was nothing vague, illusive, or destructive in their views; what they wanted was simply the re-establishment of their own constitutional form of government to which the Sovereign head was an essential condition. They did not want to drive the Emperor of Austria out of the country, to curtail his authority, or to sap his influence they only wanted to make him King of Hungary. They did not require him to surrender any of his privileges, but simply to fulfil his duties. They did not ask him to do violence to his Austrian conscience, they only asked him to discharge the obligation of his Hungarian oath. The language held by Kossuth in the Diet, when the news of the Paris Revolution reached Presburg, and when the country was thrown into a state of excitement by that event, is conclusive of the fact, even if we had not abundant confirmations of it in the entire character of the subsequent proceedings. After urging, to quote his exact words, "in a spirit of warm and faithful attachment to the reigning Dynasty" the necessity of seeking in constitutional liberty the safety and security of the throne; he proposed an address to the Sovereign in which these sentiments were embodied. "In my proposition," he said, "I start from the Dynastic point of view, and, thank God, this is in close connexion with the interests of my country *. I will pass on to a motion which is suggested no less by my faithful attachment to the Dynasty, than by a sense of duty to my country." The opening words of the address were these: "Your Majesty! Events which have recently transpired impose on us the imperative duty of directing our attention to those exigencies which our fidelity toward the reigning House, the loyal relations of the monarchy at large, and our love for our country prescribe." The whole address was conceived in the same strain; and after pointing out the only means of consolidating the throne by extending justice to the people, it closed with these words: "On such a basis those intellectual powers would be awakened, and that material welfare be attained, in which your Majesty would find the firmest support of your august House under all imaginable accidents of the future."

Such was literally the spirit with which the Magyar patriots entered upon the discharge of their labours-and they never relinquished this

view of the question throughout. Two or three men of eccentric opinions, and fond of indulging in abstract crotchets, leaned towards a Republic; but no such doctrine was ever broached publicly, and the individuals who are said to have entertained that tendency fought for constitutional liberty as gallantly as all the rest, merging their peculiar doctrines in the general creed, just as some loose thinkers on the subject of religion conform, for the sake of society, to its ceremonials.

We regret that the limitation of our space precludes us from the pleasure of bringing some of the picturesque passages of this work under the notice of the reader; but he will derive a higher gratification from our abstinence if he goes to the work itself. It is a book not to be laid down till the last page is finished—a book of tearful interest, in which the personal sacrifices of the great tragedy are related with such profound feeling as to wring the heart of the most inveterate enemy of the Magyars. Out of the very manliness of the book speaks a voice of suffering that will reach the remotest corners of Europe, and awaken a response of sympathy to cheer the banished survivors of that unfortunate contest for freedom. Most painful and pathetic is the account which the writer gives us of the Austrian courts-martial, and the revolting executions at Arad. It appeals to the sorrow and indiguation of the whole civilized world; and in this, the nineteenth century, an age of rational progress and political enlightenment, reflects indelible shame upon the authorities that sanctioned, and the hands that performed these inhuman and most unnecessary atrocities. Even the Austrian soldiers who, says our author, had for a whole year faced the fire of the Hungarian artillery, when they were brought out to shoot General Kiss," trembled before their defenceless victim: three separate volleys were fired before he fell-his death struggles lasted full ten minutes." It is but slight comfort to know that the butcher Haynau, who was elevated to the governorship of Hungary for the sanguinary and demoniac rage he exhibited on these occasions, has been recently degraded from the service he so signally disgraced.

There is one volume more relating to these scenes, which will be read in England with different feelings, but which is deserving of being read, as it assists us to a curious view of the war and the actors in it from an opposite point of sight. It is an anthology of anecdotes, collected on the Austrian side by eye-witnesses, and contains, amongst other varieties, a series of Austrian estimates of the principal Hungarian leaders. Some of these outlines of character are as fair as could have been expected-others are merely extravagant misrepresentations. It is hardly necessary to say that the work is not to be relied upon as a statement of facts. It has not even the tone of authenticity. It is written with a flippancy and superciliousness that will at once put the reader on his guard against the wild and braggart assertions with which it abounds. But it is a curious specimen of the temper with which Austrian writers review these events, and of the false medium through which they examine Hungarian politics. Apart from considerations of a higher kind the volume is entertaining in its sparkling extravagance, and crowded with personal adventures and anecdotes of battle and intrigue which, whatever other effect they may have upon the reader, cannot fail to furnish him with abundant entertainment.

THE AMERICAN SEASONS.

BY ALFRED B. STREET.

THERE is nothing to which mankind are so prone as to overlook common objects. The startling, the wonderful have their charms, but usual things are almost entirely disregarded. We have from our earliest remembrance seen the sun "rejoicing like a strong man to run his course," the moon "walking in her brightness," and the stars spreading out their "poetry of heaven." We have so often looked upon the rainbow winging his flight from the west, and lighting with curved pinions upon the cloud, to tell us that the tempest is past; we have so constantly beheld the flower, that frail child of the light and dew looking up in our face with a smile, as if beseeching us not to trample upon it in our ramble, that we attach to these objects but little

interest.

Still let us dwell for a space upon the common occurrences of the seasons as we find them in America, and we may possibly find things which (if neither new nor original) yet possess some claim to interest and beauty.

We will suppose ourselves in the commencement of March. The earth is yet covered with the white mantle of Winter, but there is a softening in the air occasionally, which tells us that the chain of the cold monarch is broken. Still is he lingering with us, but with an ear bent as if listening for the footstep of the approaching Spring.

At length a mild grey overspreads the heavens, a light rain falls, and the snow commences to vanish. All around there is a sweet gurgling music from the rills that have started into being, and if the hearing be acute, you will be aware of tinklings as of fairy music beneath the pearly covering which is so rapidly dissolving. The hemlock shakes down its burthen, and the meadow shows its bosom of russet.

At last a warm wind peels off the grey veil from the sky at sunset, and morning brings in a south air so gentle and downy that you are surprised you do not hear the warble of a bird above you, or see the delicate shape of some blossom at your feet.

But again will the black clouds sweep over,-again will the snow stream down, and all the fairy beauty of blue sky and soft sunshine appear like a passing dream. Once more, however, will spring show her sweet face, until the sap which has coiled itself in the roots to sleep, like a bear during the winter, begins to awake and ascend into the tree to pay its compliments to the buds.

But whilst this struggle is progressing between Spring's vanguard month and Winter for the supremacy, April steps in and determines the conflict in favour of its mistress of the green robe and the flowery sandals. Still this month is a weeping, shrinking creature, appearing as if unwilling to undertake, because fearful of her ability to perform, her destined task. The sunshine and streaks of rain frequently make braids in the air, and the cloud does not more than show its black plume, e'er the rainbow comes flashing out, and kindles up the sky like the ladder in Jacob's vision. The grass begins to spread its green carpet, and the buds, unlike sappy heads in general, are displaying

great promise of something within them. At length, on some beautiful morning, we hear with a thrill of pleasure the sweet carol of the blue bird amongst the trees, as if commissioned to tell them that Spring is indeed here, and that the little violet has sprung up at their roots, to show it was high time for their buds to open. And the trees "take the hint." The birch hangs itself over with tassels, like the mantle of an Indian sachem,-the maple breaks out into a crimson glow, like a cloud at sunset, the beech shows at the tips of its sprays down as soft and glossy as the breast of the cygnet,-and the wild cherry displays its banner white as the coat of the ermine. The shadbush has been for sometime scattered along the sides of the dark glens and hollows, as if Winter in his retreat had dropped patches of snow there, and the wind flower has kept it company with its little wreath of silver in the paths of the forest, whilst a slight perfume upon the air tells you that the tender sprout of the Winter green has just pushed aside the dead leaf of the last Autumn that had fallen over the spot of its birth.

The clink of the farmer's hammer is now heard about his fences, his whistle sounds as he drives his flock and herd to feed upon the rising pastures, or his loud call echoes as he guides his plough through the greensward, leaving behind him rows of tawny furrows.

By and by the pleasant sound of the dropping seed is heard in the fields, like the fine patterings of a shower upon water, growing quicker, as great dun streaks on the distant horizon tell that April's tears are forthcoming. The grain is all this time rising higher and higher, and at length the strengthening sun brings us the last of the spring trio, delightful May.

The fringes of the maple by this time lie like live coals upon the forest earth, the birch has dropped its brown tassels upon its roots, and the fine down of the beech has floated through the air like the white stars of the thistle. In place of these, young leaves are spotted over the boughs, springing as it were out in a day, and expanding with the passing hours.

som,

The fruit trees now break out into a perfect glory of fragrant bloseach tree resounding like a harp with the low monotone of the honey-bees. There is a perfect jubilee of flowers also over the earth, as though a multitude of gems had been scattered around, all uttering their language of joy to man, and praise to God. The birds too have all made their appearance. The warble of the robin is heard from the apple tree, the wren chatters as busily as a village gossip from roof to roof, the tap of the woodpecker is constantly sounding like the housebuilder's hammer in a thriving village, whilst the drum of the partridge is heard as pertinaciously as that of the corporal and his file in search of recruits. At last the fruit trees manufacture mimic snow storms underneath their branches, and May stands forth in full growth with flowers at her feet, green boughs upon her head, and a mantle completely enveloping her bosom of the richest and brightest emerald. Human life hath also its infancy as have the seasons. It hath its scarce formed elements of mind and body; its promises, which merely show what will be; it is in the March of its existence.

Childhood, like April, then succeeds; the tear is chased away by the smile the voice has broken into language-the mind bears its first few flowers of intelligence, and everything indicates that the soul is wakening, whilst the heart is being rapidly developed. Then are the seeds of instruction dropped within the mind, to bear their fruits