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firm by your royal word and oath, the foundation of a new constitution, established on the still broader foundation of a perfectly independent government.

"It is for this reason that the Hungarian nation, deeply grateful to your Majesty, accustomed also to receive from her king nothing but proofs of goodness really paternal, when he listens only to the dictates of his own heart, refuses to believe, and we her chief pastors also refuse to believe, that your Majesty either knows, or sees with indifference, still less approves the infamous manner in which the enemies of our country, and of our liberties, compromise the kingly majesty, arming the populations against each other, shaking the very foundations of the constitution, frustrating legally established powers, seeking even to destroy in the hearts of all the love of subjects for their sovereign, by saying that your Majesty wishes to withdraw from your faithful Hungarians the concessions solemnly sworn to and sanctioned in the diet; and, finally, to wrest from the country her character of a free and independent kingdom.

"Already, Sire! have these new laws and liberties, giving the surest guarantees for the freedom of the people, struck root so deeply in the hearts of the nation, that public opinion makes it our duty to represent to your Majesty, that the Hungarian people could not but lose that devotion and veneration, consecrated and proved on so many occasions, up to the present time, if it was attempted to make them believe that the violation of the laws, and of the government sanctioned and established by your majesty, is committed with the consent of the king.

"But if, on the one hand, we are strongly convinced that your majesty has taken no part in the intrigues so basely woven against the Hungarian people, we are not the less persuaded, that that people, taking arms to defend their liberty, have stood on legal ground, and that in obeying instinctively the supreme law of nations, which demands the safety of all, they have at the same time saved the dignity of the throne and the monarchy, greatly compromised by advisers as dangerous as they are rash.

Sire! We, the chief pastors of the greatest part of the Hungarian people, know better than any others their noble sentiments; and we venture to assert, in accordance with history, that there does not exist a people more faithful to their monarchs than the Hungarians, when they are governed according to their

laws.

"We guarantee to your majesty, that

this people, such faithful observers of order and of the civil laws in the midst of the present turmoils, desire nothing but the peaceable enjoyment of the liberties granted and sanctioned by the throne.

"In this deep conviction, moved also by the sacred interests of the country and the good of the church, which sees in your majesty her first and principal defender, we, the bishops of Hungary, humbly entreat your majesty patiently to look upon our country now in danger. Let your majesty deign to think a moment upon the lamentable situation in which this wretched country is at present, where thousands of your innocent subjects, who formerly all lived together in peace and brotherhood on all sides, notwithstanding difference of races, now find themselves plunged into the most frightful misery by their civil wars.

"The blood of the people is flowing in torrents-thousands of your majesty's faithful subjects are, some massacred, others wandering about without shelter, and reduced to beggary-our towns, our villages, are nothing but heaps of ashesthe clash of arms has driven the faithful people from our temples, which have become deserted - the mourning church weeps over the fall of religion, and the education of the people is interrupted and abandoned.

"The frightful spectre of wretchedness increases, and develops itself every day under a thousand hideous forms. The morality, and with it the happiness of the people, disappear in the gulf of civil war.

"But let your majesty also deign to reflect upon the terrible consequences of these civil wars; not only as regards their influence on the moral and substantial interests of the people, but also as regards their influence upon the security and stability of the monarchy. Let your majesty hasten to speak one of those powerful words which calm tempests !— the flood rises, the waves are gathering, and threaten to engulf the throne !

"Let a barrier be speedily raised against those passions excited and let loose with infernal art amongst populations hitherto so peaceable. How is it possible to make people who have been inspired with the most frightful thirstthat of blood-return within the limits of order, justice, and moderation?

"Who will restore to the regal majesty the original purity of its brilliancy, of its splendour, after having dragged that majesty in the mire of the most evil passions? Who will restore faith and confidence in the royal word and oath? Who will render an account to the tribunal of

the living God, of the thousands of individuals who have fallen, and fall every day, innocent victims to the fury of civil war?

"Sire! our duty as faithful subjects, the good of the country, and the honour of our religion, have inspired us to make these humble but sincere remonstrances,

and have bid us raise our voices! So, let us hope, that your majesty will not merely receive our sentiments, but that, mindful of the solemn oath that you took on the day of your coronation, in the face of heaven, not only to defend the liberties of the people, but to extend them still further that, mindful of this oath, to which you appeal so often and so solemnly, you will remove from your royal person the terrible responsibility that these impious and bloody wars heap upon the throne, and that you will tear off the tissue of vile falsehoods with which pernicious advisers beset you, by hastening, with prompt and strong resolution, to recall peace and order to our country, which was always the firmest prop of your throne, in order that, with Divine assistance, that country, so severely tried, may again see prosperous days; in order that, in the midst of profound peace, she may raise a monument of eternal gratitude to the justice and paternal benevolence of her king.

"Signed at Pesth, the 28th Oct. 1848, "THE BISHOPS OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH

OF HUNGARY."

The Roman Catholic hierarchy of Hungary, it must be kept in mind, have at all times been in close connexion with the Roman Catholic court of Austria, and have almost uniformly supported its views. The Archbishop of Gran, Primate of Hungary, possesses greater wealth and higher privileges than perhaps any magnate in Hungary.

In this unhappy quarrel Hungary has never demanded more than was

voluntarily conceded to her by the Emperor-King on the 11th of April 1848. All she has required has been that faith should be kept with her; that the laws passed by her diet, and sanctioned by her king, should be observed. On the other hand, she is required by Austria to renounce the concessions then made to her by her sovereign-to relinquish the independence she has enjoyed for nine centuries, and to exchange the constitution she has cherished, fought for, loved, and defended, during seven hundred years, for the experimental constitution which is to be tried in Austria, and which has already been rejected by several of the provinces.

This contest is but another form of of the old quarrel-an attempt on the part of Austria to enforce, at any price, uniformity of system; and a determination on the part of Hungary, at any cost, to resist it.

We hope next month to resume the consideration of this subject, to which, in the midst of so many stirtries nearer home and better known, ring and important events in counit appears to us that too little attention has been directed. We believe that a speedy adjustment of the differences between Austria and Hungary, on terms which shall cordially reunite them, is of the utmost importance to the peace of Europe-and that the complications arising out of those differences will, increase the difficulty of arriving at such a solution, the longer it is delayed. We believe that Austria, distracted by a multiplicity of counsels, has committed a great error, which is dangerous to the stability of her position as a first-rate power; and we should consider her descent from that position a calamity to Europe.

Printed by William Blackwood and Sons, Edinburgh.

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THE ROMANCE OF RUSSIAN HISTORY,

LETTERS TO THE REV. CHARLES FUSTIAN, AN ANGLO-CATHOLIC,

664

679

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DIES BOREALES. No. I. CHRISTOPHER UNDER CANVASS,
INDEX,

742

768

EDINBURGH:

WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS, 45, GEORGE STREET; AND 37, PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON.

To whom all Communications (post paid) must be addressed.

SOLD BY ALL THE BOOKSELLERS IN THE UNITED KINGDOM.

PRINTED BY WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS, EDINBURGH.

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ST CHRYSOSTOM, in his work on The Priesthood, defends deceit, if for a good purpose, by many Scriptural examples; ends his first book by asserting that it is often necessary, and that much benefit may arise from it; and begins his second book by saying that it ought not to be called deceit, but "good management."

Good management, then, let me call the innocent arts by which I now sought to insinuate my project into favour and assent with my unsuspecting family. And first I began with Roland. I easily induced him to read some of the books, full of the charm of Australian life, which Trevanion had sent me; and so happily did those descriptions suit his own erratic tastes, and the free, halfsavage man that lay rough and large within that soldierly nature, that he himself, as it were, seemed to suggest my own ardent desire-sighed, as the careworn Trevanion had done, that "he was not my age," and blew the flame that consumed me with his own willing breath. So that when at last-wandering one day over the wild moors-I said, knowing his hatred of law and lawyers

"Alas, uncle, that nothing should be left for me but the bar!-"

Captain Roland struck his cane into the peat, and exclaimed, "Zounds, sir, the bar and lying, with truth and a world fresh from God before you!" "Your hand, uncle-we understand each other. Now help me with those two quiet hearts at home!"

VOL. LXV.-NO. CCCCIV.

"Plague on my tongue! what have I done?" said the Captain, looking aghast. Then, after musing a little time, he turned his dark eye on me and growled out, "I suspect, young sir, you have been laying a trap for me; and I have fallen into it, like an old fool as I am."

"Oh, sir, if you prefer the bar!—" "Rogue!"

"Or, indeed, I might perhaps get a clerkship in a merchant's office?"

"If you do, I will scratch you out of the pedigree !"

"Huzza then for Australasia ! " "Well, well, well," said my uncle, "With a smile on his lip and a tear in his eye;" "the old sea-king's blood will force its way-a soldier or a rover, there is no other choice for you. We shall mourn and miss you; but who can chain the young eagles to the eyrie?"

I had a harder task with my father, who at first seemed to listen to me as if I had been talking of an excursion to the moon. But I threw in a dexterous dose of the old Greek Cleruchiæ cited by Trevanion which set him off full trot on his hobby, till, after a short excursion to Euboea and the Chersonese, he was fairly lost amidst the Ionian colonies of Asia Minor. I then gradually and artfully decoyed him into his favourite science of Ethnology; and while he was speculating on the origin of the American savages, and considering the rival claims of Cimmerians, Israelites, and Scandi

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