To a foreigner the Hungarian tongue appears very difficult, because of its isolated character and its striking difference from any other European language.  In Cox’s ‘Travels in Sweden,’ published in the last century, he mentions that Sainovits, a learned Jesuit, a native of Hungary, who had gone to Lapland to observe the transit of Venus in 1775, remarked that the Hungarian and Lapland idioms were the same; and he further stated that many words were identical.  As a Turanian language, Hungarian has also an alliance with the Turkish as well as the Finnish; but there are only six and a half millions of Magyars who speak the language, and by no possibility can it be adopted by any other peoples.

For their men of letters it is an undeniable misfortune to have so restricted a public; a translated work is never quite the same.  The question of language must also limit the choice of professors in the higher schools and at the university.  But political grievances are mixed up with the language question, and of those I will not speak now, while I am still in Saxonland, where they do not love the Magyar or anything belonging to him.

Returning to the itinerary of my route, I left Herrmannstadt very early one morning, getting to Fogaras by four o’clock; it was about forty-seven miles of good road.  This little town is celebrated for the cultivation of tobacco.  There is a large inn here, which looked promising from the outside, but that was all; it had no inside to speak of—­no food, no stable-boy, nothing.  After foraging about I got something to eat with great difficulty, and feeling much disgusted with my quarters, I sallied forth to find the clergyman of the place, to whom I introduced myself.

I spent the evening at his house, and found him a very jolly old fellow; he entertained me with a variety of good stories, some of them relating to the tobacco-smuggling.  The peasants are allowed to grow the precious weed on condition that they sell it all to the State at a fixed rate.  Naturally, if they otherwise disposed of it, they would be able to make a much larger profit, as it is a monopoly of the State.  They have a peculiar way of mystifying the exciseman as to the number of leaves on a string, for this is the regulation way of reckoning; besides which, wholesale smuggling goes on at times, and waggon-loads are got away.  Occasionally there is a fight between the officials and the peasants.

I had intended getting on to Kronstadt the next day, but I stopped at the Saxon village of Zeiden.  The clergyman, on hearing that there was a stranger in the place, hastened to the inn, where he found me calmly discussing my mid-day meal.  He would not hear of my going on to Kronstadt, but kindly invited me to be his guest.  I heard a great deal later of his unvarying hospitality to strangers.