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Better come and see Mary before dinner. She will want to know all about your home-concerns, and your wife. The house is unchanged, you will perceive," the Squire continued, talking cheerfully as he led the way; and the sound of his voice, somewhat high-pitched and shrill with age, travelled far through the old passages. "I hope no sacrilegious hands will ever change the house. My heirs may add to it if they please, but it is a monument of antiquity, which ought never to be touched-except to mend it delicately as Mary mends her old lace. This way, Randolph; I believe you have forgotten the way."

They were standing in an angle of the fine oak staircase, where the Squire waited till his son came up to him; at this moment a rush of small footsteps, and a whispering voice-" Run Nello, Nello! he is coming," was audible above. Randolph looked up quickly, with a look of intelligence, into the old man's face. But the Squire did not move a muscle. His countenance was blank as that of a deaf man. If he had heard, he allowed no sign of hearing to be visible. "Come along," he said, "it seems to me that my wind is better than yours even at my time of life," with a halfsarcastic smile. Was he hard of hearing a hypothesis rather agreeable to think of; or what was the meaning of it? Were these obnoxious children the pets of the house? but why should they run because he was coming? The hostile visitor was perplexed and could not make it out. He followed into the drawing-room without a word, while the small footsteps were still audible. Mary was seated at a low table on which there was work, but she was not working. She rose to receive them with a certain formality; for except after dinner when the Squire would sometimes come for a cup of tea, or when there were visitors in the house, she was generally alone in the low quaint drawing-room, which trans

No. 211.-VOL. XXXVI.

ported even the unimaginative Randolph back to childhood. The panelled walls, the spindled-legged furniture, the inlaid cabinets and tables, were all exactly as he remembered them. This touched him a little, though he had all the robustness against impression which fortifies a slow intelligence. "It seems like yesterday that I was here," he said.

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This, in her turn, touched Mary, whose excitement made her subject to the lightest flutter of emotion. She smiled at him with greater kindness than she had yet felt. Yes," she said. "I feel so, sometimes, too, when I look round; but it tells less upon us who are here always. And so much has happened since then."

"Ah, I suppose so; though you seem to vegetate pretty much in the old ways. Those children though for instance," said Randolph, with a laugh, "scurrying off in such haste as we came within hearing, that is not like the old ways. Are you ashamed

of them, or afraid to have them here? I should not wonder for my part."

The tears sprang to Mary's eyes. She did not say anything in the sudden shock, but looked at Randolph piteously with a silent reproach. It was the first time since the day of their arrival that any public mention had been made of the children in her father's presence. And there was a pause which seemed to her full of fate.

"You must not look at me so," said her brother. "I gave you fair warning. My father is not to be given up to your plots without a remonstrance at least. I believe it is a conspiracy, sir, from beginning to end. Do you intend our old family with all the honours you are so proud of, to drop into disgrace? With the shadow of crime on it," cried Randolph, warming into excitement. Then, with a dull perception of something still more telling, his father's weak point, "and the bar sinister of vice," he said.

To be continued.

D

34

HUNGARY AND CROATIA.

BETWEEN the 25th of April, 1848, and the month of February, 1867, the provinces now included in the AustroHungarian empire enjoyed the experience of nearly eight different forms of government. The changes were rung on Centralism and Federalism, according as the notions of Bach and his followers, or those of Belcredi and his disciples were in the ascendant at Vienna, till finally, in February, 1867, under the pressure of the disasters of the previous year, the brain of Count Beust, ever fertile in resources, devised the dualistic system, and the ideas of Bach and of Belcredi were alike discarded in favour of the ingenious piece of mechanism. which now regulates the dominions subject to the House of Hapsburg. That the edifice erected by Count Beust was a masterpiece at the moment, that it afforded at least a temporary solution of existing difficulties, and gave the empire a fresh lease of life, will hardly be denied. Whether it has done more is at least a doubtful question, which the future can alone solve. The Sclavonic states in both halves of the empire demand the same immunities as against Austria and Hungary which the latter obtained under the Ausgleich of 1867-68 from the former. In the Cisleithan part of the Empire the dissentients are mainly represented by the Czechs of Bohemia, the champions of the historical rights of the crown of King Wenzel; in the Transleithan or Hungarian portion of the empire by the Croatians. A few years ago the Bohemian question was to the front; at present the outbreak of the Eastern question has thrown whatever passes on the upper course of the Elbe into obscurity compared with the events passing by the lower waters of the Danube. Nor have the

Czechs of Bohemia the same probabilities of success as their Sclavonic brethren further south. It is not only that in Bohemia the German population is in numbers nearly equal, and in wealth and education the superior of the Czechs; but the Czech cause itself has been weakened by a practical identification in many respects with the prejudices of the nobility and the passions of the priesthood, and by the divisions existing between the old and the new Czech party, the former looking only to the vindication of the historical rights of the country, and the latter extending their views to political and even social alterations as well. In Croatia the case is different. There the Sclaves are in a large and unquestioned majority, and the territorial nobility is ranged on the side of the government. The priesthood is indeed ranged against it; but the division of opinion between the Greek and Catholic communions has not allowed the priesthood of either to obtain an altogether preponderating authority, while the liberal opinions of the celebrated Bishop Strossmayer have not been without influence in preventing the opposition of the clergy being identified with selfish objects and retrograde opinions.

From a very early period of history Sclavonic races were settled in the district which, roughly speaking, lies between the Adriatic and the river Drave. Brought under subjection at various periods by the Avars and the Bulgarians, they got rid of their conquerors in the middle of the seventh century, and founded, amongst other principalities, the kingdom of Croatia. For a brief period the empire of Charles the Great comprised a large portion of the territories of this kingdom within

its limits, but in the time of his descendants they recovered independence. The two kingdoms of Sclavonia and Croatia, which included Dalmatia, then sprang into existence, the latter of which conquered the former in the eleventh century. Such was the position of things when the tide of Magyar invasion, which had crossed the Carpathians at the end of the ninth century, after rolling over the great plain between those mountains and the Danube, crossed that river and reached the Drave. The struggle was brief. Croatia submitted between 1088 and 1102 to Ladislas I., who gave his son Almus the title of duke of these countries, in much the same way that, two centuries later, an English king gave his eldest son the title of Prince of Wales. A few years later Koloman added Dalmatia to his dominions, and at the same time recognised certain historical rights as belonging to those Sclavonic provinces which he had acquired.

It is the recognition of these historical rights that the patriotic Sclave now claims, in much the same spirit in which the Englishman of the twelfth century asked for the laws of Edward the Confessor, and the Bohemian Czech claims the immemorial rights of the crown of King Wenzel. What the laws of King Edward were it would probably have puzzled many a worthy Englishman to say. The precise character of the conditions which were agreed upon between King Koloman and the twelve Sclavonic chiefs who treated with him is equally difficult to determine. One thing, however, is certain: that for many centuries Croatia and Sclavonia did enjoy a large amount of practical self-government. "Many kings of Hungary," says M. de Laveleye, in his well-known work on Austrian and German politics since 1866, "had themselves crowned at Agram; Croatia had her own coinage, the marturinas, and special laws placed on the statute book as such. Her Ban was invested with an independent authority almost sovereign in char

acter. The Pragmatic Sanction was accepted by the Landtag of Agram three years earlier than by the Diet of Pesth. From the fifteenth century, indeed, the Croatian deputies went and sat in the Hungarian Diet, but the laws voted at Presburg had to be ratified at Agram." Eventually Hungary succeeded in annexing the three Comitats of Syrmia, Vorocz, and Poszega, and reduced the Landtag to the rank of a mere "Congregatio," or County Parliament, with the right of sending two oratores regni to the Diet at Presburg. These oratores regni could be heard, but had no vote, while the three Comitats above mentioned, the district of Tirapola and the Chapters elected their members direct to the Diet, where they had regular votes. In the Upper House of the Diet sat the Ban, the Obergespäne or lord-lieutenants, the magnates, and the bishops.

In the days of Maria Theresa the separate Croatian Chancellery at Agram was abolished, and the administration of the country centralized at Pesth. Fiume and the adjacent Littoral were claimed as an integral portion of the dominions of the crown of St. Stephen; the territories adjacent to the Save were placed under a special government, known as that of the "military frontier," and intended as a barrier against the Turks, while the administration of Dalmatia was transferred to Vienna. Much was not accordingly left of the triune kingdoms of Croatia, Dalmatia, and Sclavonia. The memory, however, of earlier greatness and liberty did not perish. Distance rather lent enchantment to the view. To re-unite the Littoral, the Military Frontier and Dalmatia, and to have a real Diet sitting at Agram became the day-dream of Croatian patriots.

There was little time, however, while the ever-threatening invasions of the Turks were still at the gate, to quarrel seriously about constitutional questions. Foreign affairs were of greater interest than home questions when persons were still living who had seen the standard of the Prophet

stream from the citadel of Buda; and men cared more whether Belgrade was to remain a Mahomedan or a Christian city than whether the members of the Landtag at Agram were to have a veto on the legislation of the Diet at Pesth. Nor were Turkish invasions the only dangers which threatened the existence of the countries east of the Leitha. The yoke of the Austrian Emperors was even heavier than that of the Turk, the cruelties of the Jesuits more searching than those of any Achmet Aga or Shefket Pasha. Nothing in history is perhaps sadder than the contrast between the splendour of Hungary in the fourteenth century and her misery in the seventeenth. Constant revolts, in which Croat and Magyar stood side by side, revolts carried out with the valour of a Mansfeld and the perseverance of a Pym, alone taught the House of Hapsburg the inutility of crushing the love of civil and religious liberty which burned with as pure a flame on the banks of the Theiss and the Drave as on those of the Thames and Severn. After the failure of the centralizing efforts of Joseph II., the constitution of Hungary, as ascertained by the Bulla Aurea of Andrew II., the contemporary, and, in many respects, the counterpart of our own Magna Charta, remained unmolested, and the year 1848 found Hungary in possession of it. The question, however, still remained— what was to be the character of the relations uniting the countries southwest of the Drave to the Hungarian crown? Were the former to constitute a regnum socium or be a pars adnexa ?

It is possible that had the differences of opinion been confined to constitutional questions, the quarrel would never have assumed a deep-seated character; but the Hungarians by a succession of laws intended to force their own language on the Southern Sclaves, and to Magyarise them against their will-laws passed in opposition to the advice of some of the best men in the Diet-succeeded in awakening a national feeling which otherwise

might have slumbered and slept. It was as if the English Government had attempted in the eighteenth century to force the English language on the Irish throughout the length and breadth of the country, in order to allay the cravings of the sister island after independence. What followed is well known. The abortive Illyrian movement got up by Dr. Gai, with the connivance of the Vienna bureaucracy, was the first result. It soon died a natural death. In 1848 a more general movement began, when the Hungarian Diet showed no signs of repealing the existing laws or of extending those liberties to the Croats which they claimed for themselves. The Sclave hordes of the Ban Jellachich were let loose by the Vienna Government, and contributed as much to crushing the Hungarian insurrection as the Russian army itself. Only when it was too late did the Hungarian Diet, in the throes of dissolution, proclaim the principle of the equality of all languages before the law.

The Diet of Agram in 1848 had demanded that all matters, excepting those relating to the army, foreign affairs, and the finances, should belong to their own sphere of responsibility, and that on legislative and commercial measures the Landtag of Agram should have a veto upon the resolutions of that of Pesth, so far as the operation of those measures affected the Sclavonic Provinces. The Ban was to be elected by the Diet, and was to have a responsible ministry. The Croatian troops, like the Honveds of Hungary, were not to be sent out of the country. In its hour of necessity the Austrian Government proposed to listen to these demands with a favourable ear. But when the end immediately in view, viz: the suppression of the Hungarian insurrection, had been accomplished, the statesmen of Vienna gave as little attention to the views of the Landtag of Agram as to those of the Diet at Pesth, and according as the Centralist or Federalist parties gained the upper hand, it was proposed to subordinate

both administration and legislation to a body of bureaucrats, or to a Parliament stationed at Vienna.

Meanwhile the most violent attempts at Germanizing the population went on. Not only in all the government offices, but in the schools as well, was the German language introduced, and the City Theatre of Agram, which was in receipt of a government subvention, was handed over to a body of German actors. A reaction could not fail to produce itself. On the 20th of October, 1860, under the inspiration of Count Goluckowski, was issued the celebrated diploma announcing a return to Liberal or constitutional ideas, followed, on the 26th February, 1861, by the promulgation of a constitution, centralising, but Liberal in character. The Austrian eagles were everywhere pulled down, German disappeared from the schools, and the German actors were driven off the stage of the theatre. No great result, however, came of the October diploma and the February patent. Although the government established an independent Croatian Chancellery with the same rights and powers as the Hungarian, and appointed the popular Mazsuranitz to be the head of it, the Croatian Landtag absolutely refused to be represented in the Central Reichsrath. It drew up indeed a memorable Article, which declared that through the events of 1848 every connection between Croatia and Hungary was once and for all severed, and that the former would only enter into negotiations for a union with the latter on the basis of a formal recognition of the above fact; but it declined to exchange the Hungarian for the Austrian yoke, and after two Imperial rescripts had again in vain summoned the members to elect deputies to the Reichsrath, the Assembly was dissolved.

The attempts of the Vienna Government were renewed in 1865. In the Landtag which then met there appeared three well-defined parties, the Unionists, the National party, and the party of the Reichsrath. The first of

these was composed of the representatives of the landed aristocracy, mostly Hungarians in blood, and by those of some of the large towns, such as Warasdin and Eszek, who wished, owing to commercial reasons, for union with Hungary. The name of the second party speaks for itself. The third was chiefly composed of the official class and their following. The National party was the majority of the Assembly, and could outvote the other two even when combined, which they seldom were, as the Hungarian Unionists were naturally as much, if not more, opposed to the Reichsrath party as to the Nationalists. The Vienna Government hereupon had recourse to a remarkable device. They summoned the population of the Military Frontier to elect deputies to the Landtag, who, however, were only to have the right of voting on the question of the representation of the Diet in the Reichsrath. Thereupon there appeared in the Diet an array of soldiers in picturesque uniforms, who all voted "Ay" with one accord. But the device was useless, for the Unionists and the Nationalists combined, and the President had to declare that the "Noes had it." The Austrian Government now had to give up its centralising and federalising efforts.

At the commencement of 1866, and with the consent of the statesmen of Vienna, a deputation of the Croatian Landtag went to Pesth to meet a committee of the Hungarian Diet to discuss the basis of a settlement. Two celebrated men then met each other, Bishop Strossmayer and Deak Ferencz. The discussion was friendly, but agreement was difficult. The Hungarians wished to argue on the basis of the laws they had passed in 1848; the Croatians on that of their own article of 1861. After much discussion it was agreed that Croatia was a regnum socium, and not a pars adnexa; but when the attempt was made to define what was meant by regnum socium, agreement proved difficult. The

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