the original substratum of Slavs, overlaid by Szeklers, Magyars, German
immigrants, Wallacks, Rusniacks, Jews, and gipsies. An old German writer
has quaintly described the characteristics of these various peoples in
the following manner:--

"To the great national kitchen the Magyar contributes bread, meat, and
wine; the Rusniack and Wallack, salt from the salt pits of Marmaros; the
Slavonian, bacon, for Slavonia furnishes the greatest number of fattened
pigs; the German gives potatoes and vegetables; the Italian, rice; the
Slovack, milk, cheese, and butter, besides table-linen, kitchen
utensils, and crockery ware; the Jew supplies the Hungarian with money;
and the gipsy furnishes the entertainment with music."

Coming to hard facts, the latest statistics of M. Keleti give 15,417,327
as the total population of Hungary. Of these 2,470,000 are Wallacks, who
since the nationality fever has set in desire to be called Roumains; and
if you say Roman at once, they will be still better pleased. They were
in old time the overflow of Wallachia, now forming part of the Roumanian
Principality. The first historical irruption of the Wallacks was about
the end of the fourteenth century, when they became a terrible pest to
the German settlers in Transylvania, dreaded by them as much as Turk or
Tartar. They burned and pillaged the lands and villages of the peaceful
dwellers in the Saxon settlement; but at length they had become so
numerous that the law took cognisance of their existence and reduced
them to a state of serfdom, from which they were not relieved till 1848.

A subject race has always its wrongs, and there is no doubt the haughty
Magyar nobles treated the Wallacks with great harshness and indignity.
It was the old story--good masters were kind to their serfs, but those
less fortunate had a bad time of it, what with forced labour and other