Leopold I. granted the Servian refugees very considerable privileges and immunities, causing thereby great jealousy among the Hungarians.  Always favoured by the Government of Vienna, these people have invariably shown themselves pro-Austrian; and in 1848 they were destined to be a thorn in the side of the proud Magyars, who despised them, and took no pains to disguise the feeling, even at a moment so singularly unpropitious as the eve of their own rupture with Austria.  It seems that in the month of May in that eventful year the Rascians sent a deputation to Pesth, to the Diet, setting forth certain grievances and demanding redress.  The Magyars rejected their petition with haughty contempt, “a grievous fault,” says General Klapka in his history.  The result was that the Rascian deputies returned home in a state of great disgust at their reception, and immediately took up arms against the Hungarians.  This was before the Government of Vienna had thrown off the mask.  These facts are not without significance at the present time.  The Rascians are strongly imbued with ideas of Panslavism, and now disdain any other name than that of Servians; it would be a great offence to call the humblest individual of the race by the old appellation of Rascian or Ratzen.  These so-called Servian subjects of the crown of St. Stephen number about 800,000!

The subject is worth mentioning at some length, because a good deal of confusion exists respecting this particular division of the great Slav family.

Judging from what I saw of the inhabitants of Svenica, I think they have not progressed very far in the ways of civilisation.  I could get nothing in the whole place but a piece of bread; but I was not to be balked of my tea, so I entered the principal room in the wretched little inn, and proceeded to take out my cooking apparatus.  I was obliged to content myself with a thick fluid, which they called water; no better was to be procured.  Now it happens that my spirit-lamp, when it begins to boil up, makes a tremendous row for two or three minutes, as if it meant to burst up with a general explosion.  This circumstance, and my other novel proceedings, had attracted a lot of idlers round the door, and before the tea-making was over a number of Serbs and Wallacks crowded into the room in a state of excited curiosity, and it was with difficulty that I defended my tea-machine from absolute dismemberment.  Though my horse and I had done a good day’s work, I determined to push on to Uibanya, for it seemed to be not much more than a two hours’ walk; moreover, I had been warned of the bad reputation of the people in the village.  I had heard it was not an uncommon trick with them to steal a traveller’s horse in the night, and quietly ship him over the Danube into Servia.  I had no fancy for losing my possessions in this way, so altogether it seemed better to go on.