is remarkable, they threaten to overwhelm the Saxons, whose numbers, on
the other hand, are seriously on the decrease. They are also supplanting
the Magyars in _Southern_ Hungary.

I have myself seen villages which I was told had been exclusively
Magyar, but which are now as exclusively Roumain. It is even possible to
find churches where the service conducted in the Magyar tongue has
ceased to be understood by the congregation.

To meet a Roumain possessed even of the first rudiments of education is
an exception to the rule: even their priests are deplorably ignorant;
but when we find them in receipt of such a miserable stipend as 100
florins, indeed in some cases 30 florins a-year, it speaks for itself
that they belong to the poorest class. The Wallacks lead their lives
outside the pale of civilisation; they are without the wants and desires
of a settled life. Very naturally the manumission of the serfs in 1848
found them utterly unprepared for their political freedom. Neither by
nature or by tradition are they law-respecting; in fact, they are very
much the reverse.

The Roumain is a Communist pure and simple; the uneducated among them
know no other political creed. It is not that of the advanced school of
Communism, which deals with social theories, but a simple consistent
belief that, as they themselves express it, "what God makes grow belongs
to one and all alike." In this spirit he helps himself to the fruit in
his neighbour's garden when too lazy to cultivate the ground for
himself.

This child of nature is by instinct a nomadic shepherd and herdsman; he
hates forests, and will ruthlessly burn down the finest trees to make a