International Weekly Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science - Volume 1, No. 9, August 26, 1850. Various
floor. The images outnumber the devotees here, as in all other Roman Catholic countries (except Ireland, which is an exception to every rule.) To a stranger, the markets are always the most interesting haunts. A Spaniard, he or she, talks more while making the daily bargain than in all the rest of the twenty-four hours. The fruit and vegetable market was my especial lounge. There is such a fresh, sweet smell of the country, and the groups throw themselves, or are thrown, into such pretty tableaux after the Rubens and Snyders fashion. The shambles one avoids instinctively, and fish-market there is none, for Madrid is fifty hours' journey from the nearest sea, and the Manzanares has every requisite for a fine trout stream, but water.
"Madrid has one peculiarity which conduces very much to the visitor's comfort, namely, that there are very few inevitable 'sights' to be gone through. The armory said to be the finest in the world; the palace, ditto (which people who are addicted to upholstering may go and see, if they don't mind breaking the tenth commandment); the museum of natural history, where is the largest loadstone in active operation between this and Medina; and the Academia, nearly complete the list. Everybody should devote a morning to the last-named, were it only for the sake of the Murillos. The famous picture of 'St. Isabel giving alms to the sick' has been arrested at Madrid on its return from Paris to Seville. As the Sevilians have instituted a 'process' for its recovery, it is likely to stay there for some time longer. 'The Patrician's Dream' is quite cheering to look upon, so rich and glowing it is. Shut your eyes to the semi-ludicrous effect of husband, wife, and dog, in a decreasing series, like the three genders in Lindley Murray, all asleep.
"The gardens of the queen, sunk in a deep hollow below the palace, deserve a visit. The head-gardener, of course a Frenchman, struggles gallantly against all kinds of difficulties of soil, climate, and lack of water. By a series of ingenious artifices he has concocted a plot of grass, some ten feet square, to the great astonishment of all natives."
"One day my kind friend Colonel S. took me to hear a debate in the Senado, the Spanish Chamber of Peers, which holds its sittings in the chapel of a suppressed convent, near the palace. By dint of paint, gilding, and carpets, the room has been divested of its sanctified aspect, and made to look like a handsome modern room. They have not thought it necessary that a place in which a hundred gentlemen in surtouts meet to discuss secular matters in this nineteenth century, should be made to resemble a chapel of the fifteenth. Antiquity is here represented in the person of two halberdiers, who stand to guard the door, dressed in extravagant costume, like beefeaters in full bloom. Rows of raised seats extend on each side of the room; in the center, facing the beef-eaters, are the chair and desk of the president, and on each side a little tribune, from which the clerks read out documents from time to time. The spectators are accommodated in niches round the walls. Each member speaks from his place, and the voting is by ballot. First a footman hands round a tray of beans, and then each advances, when his name is called, to a table in the center, where he drops his bean into the box. The beans are then counted, and the result proclaimed by the president. On the right of the chair, in the front, is the bench assigned to the ministers; and there I had the good luck to see Narvaez, otherwise called Duke of Valencia, and a great many fine names besides, and, in reality, master of all the Spains. His face wears a fixed expression of inflexible resolve, very effective, and garnished with a fierce dyed mustache, and a somewhat palpable wig to match. His style of dress was what, in an inferior man, one would have called 'dandified.' An unexceptionable surtout, opened to display a white waistcoat with sundry chains, and the extremities terminated, respectively, in patent leather and primrose kid. During the discussion he alternately fondled a neat riding-whip and aired a snowy pocket-handkerchief. Those who know him give him credit for good intentions and great courage, but do not expect that he will ever set the Thames on fire, whatever he may do to the Manzanares. He is a mixture, they say, of the chivalric and the asinine: a kind of moral mule. His personal weakness is a wish to be thought young, and hence he was naturally angry when Lord Palmerston wanted to give him a 'wrinkle.' I saw, likewise, Mon, the Minister of Finance, smiling complacently, like a shopkeeper on his customers; and the venerable Castanos, Duke of Bailen, who, as he tottered in, stooping under the weight of ninety years, was affectionately greeted by Narvaez and others. On the whole, the debate seemed to be languid, and to be listened to with little interest; but that is the general fate of debates in July."
THE KANASZ
Of the Servian swineherd we have heard something of late, both in history and romance; because this was the vocation of Kara George, the Servian Liberator. In Hungary the swine-keeper does not seem to be so respectable a person. Here is a sketch of him from Max Schlesinger's new book on the Hungarian war:
"The Kanasz is a swineherd, whose occupation, everywhere unpoetical and dirty, is doubly troublesome and dirty in Hungary. Large droves of pigs migrate annually into the latter country from Serbia, where they still live in a half-wild state. In Hungary they fatten in the extensive oak-forests, and are sent to market in the large towns, even to Vienna, and still further....
"It is a true enjoyment to live in these shady forests. The oak attains a finer and more luxuriant growth on the Hungarian soil than in any part of Germany. The hogs find food in profusion, and commonly stuff themselves to such a degree that they lose all desire for roving about: so that dog, master, and ass, lead a comparatively easy life, and are left to the quiet enjoyment of nature. But the lot of the Kanasz is a pitiable one when, at the close of summer, he has to drive his swine to market. From Debreczin, nay even from the Serbian frontier, he has to make a journey on foot more toilsome than was ever undertaken by the most adventurous traveler, pacing slowly over the interminable heaths in rain, storm, or under a burning sun, behind his pigs, which drive into his face hot clouds of dust. Every now and then a hog has stuffed itself so full as to be unable to stir from the spot; and there it lies on the road without moving, whilst the whole caravan is obliged to wait for half a day or longer, until the glutted animal can get on his legs again; and when at length this feat is accomplished, frequently his neighbor begins the same trick. There is truly not a more toilsome business in the wide world than that of a Kanasz.... The fokos is a hatchet, with a long handle, which the Kanasz hurls with great dexterity. Whenever he desires to pick out and slaughter one of his hogs, either for his own use or for sale, the attempt would be attended with danger, in the half-savage state of these animals, without such a weapon. The fokos here assists him; which he flings with such force and precision, that the sharp iron strikes exactly into the center of the frontal bone of the animal he has marked out; the victim sinks on the earth without uttering a sound, and the drove quietly proceeds on its way. That he can strike down a man with equal precision at eighty to a hundred paces, is proved by the gallows at the entrance of the forest—the three-legged monument of his dexterity. During recent events, too, the surgeons of the Austrian army will readily furnish the Kanasz and Csikos with certificates of their ability and skill."
THE "WILD HUSSAR" OF HUNGARY
France, Russia, Prussia, and other countries, have introduced the Hussars into their armies; but these soldiers are merely Russian, French, and Prussian cavalry, dressed in the Hungarian laced jacket: they want the spirit, the horse, and—the 'Magyar Isten.' For this reason, the Hungarian Hussar will not acknowledge them as brethren; and whenever he comes in contact with foreign Hussars, he lets them feel in battle the full force of his contempt. A story is told, that during a campaign against the French in the war with Napoleon, the bivouacs of the Prussian and Hungarian Hussars were near to one another. A Prussian came over to his neighbors in a familiar way with a glass of wine, and drank it to the health of his 'brother hussar.' But the Hungarian gently pushed the glass back, and stroked his beard, saying, 'What brother?—no brother—I hussar—you jack-pudding.'
This expression is not to be mistaken for a brag. The Hungarian hussar is no fanfaron like the French chasseur, but he is conscious of his own powers, like a Grenadier of the Old Imperial Guard. The dolmany, the csako, and the csizma, have grown to his body; they form his holyday dress even when off duty—the national costume transferred into the army; and as he is aware that this is not the case in other countries, the foreign Hussar's dress is in his eyes a mere servant's livery; and logically the man is not altogether wrong.
The Hussar, like the Magyars in general,