lanterns; and many a blue-eyed maiden was there, with looks coquettish
yet demure, as German maidens are wont to appear.

A concert was going on, and I for the first time heard a gipsy band.
Music is an instinct with these Hungarian gipsies. They play by ear, and
with a marvellous precision, not surpassed by musicians who have been
subject to the most careful training. Their principal instruments are
the violin, the violoncello, and a sort of zither. The airs they play
are most frequently compositions of their own, and are in character
quite peculiar, though favourite pieces from Wagner and other composers
are also given by them with great effect. I heard on this occasion one
of the gipsy airs which made an indelible impression on my mind; it
seemed to me the thrilling utterance of a people's history. There was
the low wail of sorrow, of troubled passionate grief, stirring the heart
to restlessness, then the sense of turmoil and defeat; but upon this
breaks suddenly a wild burst of exultation, of rapturous joy--a triumph
achieved, which hurries you along with it in resistless sympathy. The
excitable Hungarians can literally become intoxicated with this
music--and no wonder. You cannot reason upon it, or explain it, but its
strains compel you to sensations of despair and joy, of exultation and
excitement, as though under the influence of some potent charm.

I strolled leisurely back to the inn, beneath the starlit heavens. The
outline of the mountains was clearly marked in the distance, and in the
foreground quaint gable-ends mixed themselves up with the shadows and
the trees--a pretty picture, prettier than anything one can see by the
light of "common day."

The following morning I set about making inquiries respecting the mines
which I knew existed in the neighbourhood of Oravicza. I found that an