improved; but mine host, zum Golden Lowen, on my recent visits, always
managed to give a very good dinner, including two sorts of savoury
game. I recollect on a former visit, going to another inn, and found
in the dining-room an individual, whose ruddy nose, and good-humoured
nerveless smile, denoted a fondness for the juice of the grape, and
seitel after seitel disappeared with rapidity. By-the-bye, old father
Danube is as well entitled to be represented with a perriwig of grapes
as his brother the Rhine. Hungary in general, has a right merry
bacchanalian climate. Schiller or Symian wine is in the same parallel
of latitude as Claret, Oedenburger as Burgundy, and a line run
westwards from Tokay would almost touch the vineyards of Champagne.
Csaplovich remarks in his quaint way, that the four principal wines of
Hungary are cultivated by the four principal nations in it. That is to
say, the Slavonians cultivate the Schiller, Germans the Oedenburger
and Ruster, Magyars and Wallachians the Menesher. Good Schiller is the
best Syrmian wine. But I must return from this digression to the guest
of the Adler. On hearing that I was an Englishman, he expressed a wish
to hear as much of England as possible, and appeared thunderstruck,
when I told him that London had nearly two millions of inhabitants,
being four hundred thousand more than the population of the whole of
the Banat. This individual had of course learned five languages with
his mother's milk, and therefore thought that the inhabitants of such
a country as England must know ten at least. When I told him that the
majority of the people in England knew nothing but English, he said,
somewhat contemptuously, "O! you told me the fair side of the English
character: but you did not tell me that the people was so ignorant."
He then good-humouredly warned me against practising on his credulity.
I pointed out how unnecessary other languages were for England itself;
but that all languages could be learned in London.