I got back just in time for All-Souls’ Day.  The Fete des Morts is observed with great ceremony throughout Hungary, especially at Buda-Pest.  In the afternoon of this day a friend and myself joined the throng, who were with one accord making their way eastward along the Radial Strasse, the great thoroughfare of Pest.  It appeared as if the whole population of the town had turned out; private carriages, tramways, droskies alike were all crammed, driving in the same direction with the ceaseless stream of pedestrians.  It was the day for the living to visit their dead!  Attired in black, almost every one carried a funeral wreath; even the poorest and the humblest were taking some floral offering to their beloved ones who sleep for evermore in the great cemetery.

There is a dynamic force in the sympathy of a crowd.  I had the sensation of being carried along with the moving masses, without the exercise of my own will, I hardly know how one could have turned back.  And on we went, the light of the short winter day meanwhile fading quickly into the gloom of night.  Once beyond the gaslighted streets, the sense of darkness in the midst of the surging multitude was oppressive and unnatural.  We were borne on towards the principal gate of the cemetery, and here the effect was most striking.  We left the outer darkness, and stepped into an area of light; beyond the belt of cypress and of yew there was so brilliant an illumination that it threw its glowing reflection on the clouds that hung pall-like over the whole city.

In all that crowded cemetery—­and it is crowded—­there was not a single grave without its lights.  The most ordinary had rows of candles marking the simple form of the gravestone; but there were costlier tombs, with an array of lamps in banks of flowers beautifully arranged; and in the mausoleum of Batthyanyi the illuminations were effected by gas in the form of architectural lines of light.  At this point the crowd was greatest.  To visit the tomb of the martyred statesman is deemed a patriotic duty.  The particulars relating to the disposal of Count Batthyanyi’s body after his judicial murder in 1849 are not very generally known; the facts are as follows.

At the close of hostilities in 1849, Haynau, commissioned by the Vienna Government, condemned people to death with unsparing barbarity—­it was a way the Austrians had of stamping out insurrections.  Amongst their victims was Count Louis Batthyanyi, some time President of the Hungarian Diet.  Haynau wanted to have him hung at the gallows, but he was mercifully shot, at Pest on the 6th October 1849.  It is said that the infamous Haynau was nearly mad with rage that his noble victim escaped the last indignity of hanging.  His remains were ordered to be buried in a nameless coffin in the burial-ground of the common criminals,.and for many years it was supposed that he had received no other sepulchre.  This was not so, however, for two priests who were greatly attached