Klausenburg has not the picturesque situation of Kronstadt, but it is a pleasant clean-looking town, with wide streets diverging from the Platz, where stands the Cathedral, completed by Matthias Corvinus, son of Hunyadi.  This famous king, always called “the Just,” was born at Klausenburg in 1443.

As Herrmannstadt and Kronstadt are chiefly inhabited by Saxon immigrants, and Maros Vasarhely is the central place of the Szeklers, so may Klausenburg, or rather Kolozsvar, as it is rightly named, be considered the Magyar capital of Transylvania.

The gaieties of the winter season had not commenced when I was there, but I understand the world amuses itself immensely.  The nobles come in from their remote chateaux to their houses, or apartments, as it may be, in town, and then the ball is set going.

There is a good theatre in Klausenburg.  I found the acting decidedly above the average of the provincial stage generally.  I saw a piece of Moliere’s given, and though I could only understand the Hungarian very imperfectly, I was enabled to follow it well enough to judge of the acting.

Shakespeare is so great a favourite with the Hungarians that his plays are certainly more often represented on the stage at Buda-Pest than in London.  The Hungarian translation of our great poet, as I observed before, is most excellent.

It was a band of patriotic poets who first employed the language of the Magyars in their compositions.  Hitherto all literary utterance had been confined to Latin, or to the foreign tongues spoken at courts.  The rash attempt of Joseph II. to denationalise the Magyar and to Germanise Hungary by imperial edicts had a violent reactionary result.  The strongest and the most enduring expression is to be found in the popular literature which was inaugurated by such men as Csokonai and the two brothers Kisfaludy, who were all three born in the last century.  The songs of Csokonai have retained their hold on the people’s hearts because, and here is the keynote—­“because they breathe the true Hungarian feeling.”  The insistent themes of the Magyar poets were the love of country, the joys of home, the duty of patriotism.  Such was the soul-stirring ‘Appeal’ (’Szozat’) of Varosmazty, the chief of all the tuneful brethren, the Schiller of Hungary.  Born with the nineteenth century, and at once its child and its teacher, he died in 1855—­too soon, alas! to see the benefits accruing to his beloved country from the wise reconciliatory policy of his dear friend Deak.  His funeral was attended by more than 20,000 people, and the country provided for his family.