The Magyars were not always safe in the towns, for at Nagy Enyed, a
rather considerable place, the Wallacks succeeded in setting fire to it,
and butchered all the inhabitants who were not fortunate enough to
escape their fury. In the neighbourhood of Reps the castles of the
nobility suffered very severely. Grim incidents were told me, things
that were too horrible not to be true--infants spiked and women
tortured. One cannot dwell upon the details! What struck me as very
remarkable was the fact that Magyars and Wallacks are now dwelling
together again in peace side by side. It reminds one of the people who
plant their vines again on Vesuvius directly an eruption is over. In the
last century, in 1784, there was a dreadful outbreak of the Wallacks.
Individually they are really not bad fellows--so it seemed to me--and
one hears of fewer murders among them than perhaps in Ireland. The
danger exists of leaders arising who may stir up the nationality
fever--the idea of the great _Roumain_ nation that looms big in their
imagination!
They love neither Croatians, Slavonians, nor Austrians, and they are no
longer a safe card to play off against the Magyars; but indeed I would
fain believe that better and wiser counsels now prevail. Austria is not
the Austria of '48, any more than the England of to-day is the same as
England before the Reform Bill.
The autumn evenings were getting long, and after supper, as I sat
smoking my pipe by the stove in the simple but scrupulously neat
apartment of my host, he, in his turn, asked me about England.
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