Even the mild and colourless régime of Lord Hardinge revived the military spirit in some degree. Then came our bitter lessons in the field, Varna's pestilential marshes, Balaclava's freezing heights. The nation was fairly wakened to a sense of what was due to the military service; and the work of reform began. Whether under a succession of good but worn-out warriors of the Peninsula we should have been able to show the proofs of progress which every arm now bears, is a question we will not attempt to determine here. In looking back on the late history of our Horse Guards it is plain that too many of those honoured veterans came of a school in which reform was held in odium and improvement deemed impossible. While such men held office or advised Ministers, the army fell behind the rest of the nation, and the safety of England's future was allowed to rest on the glories of the past.

Such is not the spirit that at present rules the British Army. It is not our purpose to eulogise the Prince who holds the highest commission in the service, or to pretend that his administration is faultless. But, on the whole, it is progressive, just, and active; and its care is felt to extend from the education of the staff officer to the teaching of the soldier's child. Under it the service is advancing to its proper place in the State, improving in the day of rest, and preparing to answer the call for action without unreadiness or mistakes. Long may it so advance, that the soldier may find his profession honoured by his countrymen in time of peace, and that in war the national courage which bore the Six Hundred to their death at Balaclava may be guided by the science from which their chiefs might have learnt how brave men's lives should be used!

ART. VI.-Transylvania; its Products and its People. By CHARLES BONER. London: 1865.

A DISTANT little commonwealth readily kindles the sympathy of the English public. Its historical traditions, its struggles for independence against foreign invaders, and for civil liberty against its own sovereigns, ensure it a place in the hearts of free nations. But this, which is true of most countries in the position of Transylvania, is peculiarly true of Transylvania itself. This petty state, now an outlying principality of the Austrian Empire, has been rarely visited and is very imperfectly known. Most travellers fancy it merely a continuation of Hungary; and they think they have seen

enough of Christian Europe in the East when they have gone from Vienna to Pesth. Transylvania has been shut out from the rest of Europe by nature, as well as by adventitious circumstances. It lies almost as much isolated from Hungary as Hungary is said to be isolated from the rest of Europe. Shut in on nearly all sides by the Carpathians, flanked by Wallachia on the south and by Moldavia on the east, it might be supposed to be nearly out of reach of the influences of Western civilisation. In point of fact, however, it has contributed many events to universal history: it has shared in resisting Turkish domination and invasion, and has aided in the decision of several contests between Austria and Hungary. These Transylvanians, a community of little more than two millions, consist of at least three distinct nationalities, of which the Wallachs or Roumains are the most numerous, while the Magyars and the Germans are foremost in position and intelligence. The sharp contrasts and jealousies that subsist between them do not prevent them from constituting a single people. The distinctions of race and manners continue, but the political unity remains indestructible.

Mr. Boner has written a work upon this country, which is entitled to attention as a laborious and apparently faithful description of it. He spares no pains to arrive at the truth. He does not profess to know everything that concerns his subject, and freely acknowledges where he is in doubt. He seems to have mingled with all classes and with each nation, though more especially with the Saxons. He went to Transylvania chiefly for its sports; but he does not seek to fill us with admiration for his exploits; nor does he return to his own country laden in triumph with the skins of bears that others may have shot.

We commend, therefore, this book to the public on the ground that the author shows himself so singularly devoid of the ordinary characteristics of a traveller. But of the composition of the book itself it is impossible to speak in terms of praise. What is told to us might have been told in half the number of pages. The style is equally feeble and verbose; observations and reflections are continually reproduced; and there is a great want of method and arrangement throughout those chapters which treat of the condition of the people. But it is hard to quarrel with a chamois-hunter from the Bavarian Alps. Good writers are less scarce among our own countrymen than good Alpine hunters; and Mr. Boner's work at any rate deserves notice for the information it contains.

At the present moment, Transylvania holds a prominent

place in the constitutional question that is impending over the Austrian Empire. Her Diet has just been consulted in reference to the hardest of all the problems of domestic statesmanship that are now before the world. A composite monarchy, formed of four cardinal varieties of race, with moral antipathies as sharp as the contrast of their physical origin, and with still more numerous distinctions of traditionary government, has just begun anew the task of reconciling prescription with centralisation, local constitutions with a uniform representative system, and the separate rights of each nation and state with the superiority of the German element. Transyl vania is to a certain extent a microcosm of the Austrian Empire. It has been seen that she is nearly as much divided in point of race and antipathy as Austria herself; and yet there is no question of a political dissolution in Transylvania, but only a question of further amalgamation with Hungary. Her example is at this moment instructive; and it affords perhaps an encouraging precedent to the advocates of some kind of parliamentary union for the whole Empire. It may be useful, therefore, to study Transylvania.*

The most valuable essay we have seen on this subject, which is the key to Austrian politics, is entitled Die Nationalität Frage,' by Baron Joseph Eötvös-the most cultivated and judicious member of the patriotic party in Hungary. The doctrine of nationalities-by which we understand, the right of a majority of persons belonging to a peculiar race and language to be governed by themselves only, and not by any extraneous authority-leads not only to the dissolution of so composite a fabric as the Austrian Empire, but to the dissolution of each separate kingdom in that Empire into separate districts, and of each district into separate villages, so various are the races of men in those regions held together solely by the imperial authority. This extravagant doctrine has found partisans in Hungary; but no argument can be used by the Magyars to justify their severance from the other dominions of the Empire, which may not be urged with equal force by the Wallachs, Sclavons, Szeklers, Saxons, and Croatians against Magyar ascendancy in Hungary and the adjacent principalities. Baron Eötvös has discussed this problem in a rational and comprehensive spirit, and although we have no desire to plunge our readers in the depths of Hungarian constitutional law, we can very confidently recommend those who are interested in the subject to read his pamphlet. At the moment we consign these lines to the press we cordially rejoice to learn that the Emperor-King has once more been received at Pesth with the enthusiastic loyalty of a gallant people, and we trust that he is about to enter upon that system of true constitutional government which can alone permanently attach these provinces to his crown.

T

Mr. Boner thus states, on the authority of Bielz, the population of this little country. The whole number is 2,062,000. Of these, 1,227,000, or a majority of the whole, are Roumains. There are 536,000 Magyars and Szeklers; 192,000 Germans; 78,000 Gipsies; 15,000 Jews; and a few thousand Armenians and Sclaves. It appears that the Roumains or Wallachs, in spite of their numbers, possess less influence in government than either of the two other civilised, nationalities; and that the Germans hold nearly an equal share of authority with the Hungarians, though little more than a third of their number. Meanwhile, they are content to carry on a political co-existence. The parallel between Transylvania and the Austrian Empire may in one sense be more specious than real; for the mutual resentments of the Transylvanians spring from an older date; and time has done much to wear them away. But nevertheless the example of Tran-, sylvania ought to save Austrian statesmen from despair.

Mr. Boner fills several of his chapters with a historical view of the migrations which have led to the present collocation of races in the land beyond the forest.' It may be worth while to follow him very briefly, in order to show how the present Transylvania has come to exist. He finds the Dacians, the first historical inhabitants, attracting the notice of the Romans by impolitic forays, and at length subdued and converted into a Roman province by the victories of Trajan. A hundred and fifty years of imperial rule, after which the province was flung away, fused this people with the Latins in point of race, language, and institutions. With these Dacians, or Daco-Romans, Sclaves and Germans mingled and intermarried in the ninth and tenth centuries. The present Wallachs of Transylvania appear to represent these successive fusions; and as descendants of the Dacians are to be held representatives of the original inhabitants. The successive invasions of the Goths and the Tartars seem to have left no stamp on the population. But the Huns, who entered in the fourth century, and the Magyars, in the ninth, still remain in the country. The former are apparently the ancestors of the present Szeklers, and the latter retain their name unchanged. Neither race has mixed with the other, nor with the Wallachs; but the Szeklers resemble the Magyars in spirit and character, and combine with them in public affairs, closely enough to be pardonably confused together.

The settlement of Transylvania, in much of its present form of government, dates from the year 1000. A Vayvode, or viceroy, ruled it in the name of the Magyar kings of Hungary.

The Saxon immigration then followed. There was a large territory stated to be a desert. The Magyar kings invited foreigners to colonise a region which the Crusaders had made known to Saxon and Flemish adventurers. While Conrad III. and Barbarossa wore the imperial purple, successive bands of colonists came from Germany and the Low Countries. They took the rank of freemen, acquired an exemption from the rule of the Magyar Vayvode, and chose their own judges. Thus it probably arises that the descendants of these colonists of Transylvania still preserve the essential impress of the German character. The seven burghs built by their ancestors for protection, of which Hermannstadt is the chief, are still called the Sieben Bürgen. Mr. Boner here offers a singular evidence of the identity of the race, after seven centuries of isolation. He finds in their vocabulary many German words, now generally obsolete, which are elsewhere in use only among the peasantry on the Lower Rhine. Hence he assumes that the immigrants largely came from that part of Germany. Had he given us a few examples of the coincidence, it would have been more interesting. Parallels, however, to this instance of lingering identity of language are not wanting in the migrations of other races.

One of the best and clearest chapters of this work is that in which the author traces the gradual reconciliation of the three races that thus divided Transylvania between them in the Middle Ages. He describes the Magyars as the nobles, the chief landowners, and the principal rulers of the country. They, though not the original inhabitants, were the Eupatrida. The Saxons were divided between yeomen in the country, and burghers in the towns of their own building. The former were animated by feelings of contempt and ambition; the latter by hatred and mistrust. The Wallachs, on the other hand, before they subsided into the recognised relation of serfs to the Magyar and Szekler landowners, were chiefly mountain bandits, living by forays on the lands of the other races.

'In the mountainous district of the Alt (says Mr. Boner), dwelt Wallach hordes, who, when peace reigned, roved down into the vales, settled there, and became serfs on the lands of the Hungarian nobles. They were a wild, uncultivated people, without a sense even of law or property. They drove their herds on the pastures of the Saxons; they pillaged, burnt, and murdered. The Saxons killed them where they could, as they would slay a wolf near a fold. This could not last, and peace was agreed on-the Wallachs promising no longer to commit their depredations, not to carry bow or arrow save in case of necessity, and to harbour no murderer, incendiary, or robber. He who did so was to be burnt with the culprit.