the best seasoning of which was personality and abuse. Thus continued food
was supplied to fanaticism, and the hatred of two churches,
that were such near neighbours, was farther envenomed by the sting
of an impure zeal.

Among the hereditary dominions of the House of Austria,
Hungary and Transylvania were the most unstable, and the most difficult
to retain. The impossibility of holding these two countries
against the neighbouring and overwhelming power of the Turks,
had already driven Ferdinand to the inglorious expedient of recognizing,
by an annual tribute, the Porte's supremacy over Transylvania;
a shameful confession of weakness, and a still more dangerous temptation
to the turbulent nobility, when they fancied they had any reason to complain
of their master. Not without conditions had the Hungarians submitted
to the House of Austria. They asserted the elective freedom of their crown,
and boldly contended for all those prerogatives of their order
which are inseparable from this freedom of election. The near neighbourhood
of Turkey, the facility of changing masters with impunity,
encouraged the magnates still more in their presumption; discontented with
the Austrian government they threw themselves into the arms of the Turks;
dissatisfied with these, they returned again to their German sovereigns.
The frequency and rapidity of these transitions from one government
to another, had communicated its influences also to their mode of thinking;
and as their country wavered between the Turkish and Austrian rule,
so their minds vacillated between revolt and submission.
The more unfortunate each nation felt itself in being degraded into a province
of a foreign kingdom, the stronger desire did they feel to obey
a monarch chosen from amongst themselves, and thus it was always easy
for an enterprising noble to obtain their support. The nearest Turkish pasha
was always ready to bestow the Hungarian sceptre and crown on a rebel