The interior of the church is in that unhappy condition which bespeaks the churchwarden’s period—­whitewash plastered over everything, obliterating lights and shades and rare carvings beneath a glare of uncouth cleanliness.  In their desire to remove every object that could harbour dust or obstruct the besom of reform, they have bodily removed from the church many rich monuments and interesting effigies, and these are to be seen huddled away in an obscure corner of the churchyard.  The church has a large collection of richly-embroidered vestments belonging to the pre-Reformation days.

Herrmannstadt is decidedly rich in collections.  The Bruckenthal Library contains an illuminated missal of great beauty; the execution is singularly fine, and the designs very artistic.  The curious thing is that the history of this rare volume is unknown; by some it is believed to have come from Bohemia during the time of the troubles in that country, however nothing is positively known.  The book is of the finest vellum, containing 630 pages in small quarto.  The pictures of architecture and scenery are extremely interesting; the first represent buildings familiar to us in old German towns, and the rural scenes depict a variety of agricultural instruments, together with many details of home life in the olden time.  The colours of the birds and flowers are as bright as if only finished yesterday.  The ingenuity of the design is very striking; no two objects are alike.  It would have taken hours to have looked over the volume thoroughly.

In the palace, of which the museum forms a part, there is a gallery of pictures, collected by the Baron Bruckenthal, formerly governor of Transylvania.  The history of these pictures is very curious, they were mostly purchased from French refugees at the time of the first revolution.  It appears that both at that period, and at the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, many French families had sought an asylum in Hungary and Transylvania.  In the Banat I am told there are two or three villages inhabited entirely by people who came originally from France; they retain only their Gallic names, having adopted the Magyar tongue and utterly lost their own.  This little colony of the Banat belonged of course to the Huguenot exodus.  I had now an opportunity of examining a collection of the Roman antiquities obtained from the Hatszeg Valley.

I remained several days at Herrmannstadt, principally for the sake of resting my horse, which unfortunately had been rubbed by the saddle-bags on my ride from Petroseny.  I spent the time agreeably enough, exploring the neighbourhood and making chance acquaintances.  I bought here Bishop Teusch’s ‘History of Transylvanian Saxons,’ a handy-book in two volumes.  It interested me very much, especially reading it in the country itself where so many stirring scenes had been enacted.