forced to serve any master.  In practice the serf would not readily relinquish the means of subsistence for himself and family, and generally preferred the burden, odious though it was, of the robot, or forced labour.  This personal liberty, which the Hungarian peasant in the worst of times has preserved, is deep-rooted in the growth of the nation, and accounts for their characteristic love of freedom in the present day.  It was this that made the freedom-loving peasant detest the military conscription imposed by the Austrians in 1849, an innovation the more obnoxious because enforced with every species of official brutality.

The poor Czigany had not been so fortunate as to preserve even the Hungarian serf’s modicum of liberty.  Mr Paget mentions that forty years ago he saw gipsies exposed for sale in the neighbouring province of Wallachia.

There are a great many “settled gipsies” in Transylvania.  Of course they are legally free, but they attach themselves peculiarly to the Magyars, from a profound respect they have for everything that is aristocratic; and in Transylvania the name Magyar holds almost as a distinctive term for class as well as race.  The gipsies do not assimilate with the thrifty Saxon, but prefer to be hangers-on at the castle of the Hungarian noble:  they call themselves by his name, and profess to hold the same faith, be it Catholic or Protestant.  Notwithstanding that, the gipsy has an incurable habit of pilfering here as elsewhere; yet they can be trusted as messengers and carriers—­indeed I do not know what people would do without them, for they are as good as a general “parcels-delivery company” any day; and certainly they are ubiquitous, for never is a door left unlocked but a gipsy will steal in, to your cost.

The gipsy is sometimes accused of having a hand in incendiary fires; but I believe the general testimony is in his favour, and against the Wallack, whose love of revenge is the ugliest feature in his character.  These people seem to forget the saying that “curses, like chickens, come home to roost,” for they will set fire to places under circumstances that not unfrequently involve themselves in ruin.

We were calmly sitting one day at dinner when we heard a great row all at once; looking out of the window, we saw dense clouds of smoke and flame not a hundred yards from the house.  We rushed out immediately to render assistance, but without water or engines of any kind it was difficult to do much.  However, Herr von B——­ and myself got on the top of the outhouse that was in flames, and stripped off the wooden tiles, removing out of the way everything that was likely to feed the fire.  There stood close by a crowd of Wallacks, utterly panic-stricken it seemed:  they did nothing but scream and howl as if possessed.  The building belonged to one of them, but he only screamed louder than the rest, and was not a bit of use, though he was repeatedly called on to help.  If the wind had set the other way, it would have been just a chance if the whole village had not been burned down.  In this instance the fire was caused by mere carelessness.