steam-engine, upon the billows of the Danube, down to old Buda and to young
Pesth, and while we, in the House of Representatives, passed the laws of
Justice and freedom, the people of Pesth rose in peaceful but majestic
manifestation, declaring that the people should be free. At this
manifestation all the barriers raised by violence against the laws, fell of
themselves. Not a drop of blood was shed. A man who was in prison because
he had dared to write a book, was carried home in triumph through the
streets. The people armed itself as a National Guard, the windows were
illuminated and bon fires burnt, and when these tidings returned back to
Presburg, blended with the cheers from Vienna, they warmed the chill of our
House of Lords, who readily agreed to the laws we pro posed. And there was
rejoicing throughout the land. For the first time for centuries the farmer
awoke with the pleasant feeling that his time was now his own--for the
first time went out to till his field with the consoling thought that the
ninth part of his harvest will not be taken by the landlord, nor the tenth
by the bishop. Both had fully resigned their feudal portion, and the air
was brightened by the lustre of freedom, and the very soil budding into a
blooming paradise. Such is the memory of the 15th of March, 1848.
L. Kossuth.


LXXXI.

THE SAME CONTINUED.

One year later, there was blood, but also victory, over the land; the
people because free, fought like demi-gods. Seven great victories we had
gained in that month of March. On this very day, the remains of the first
ten thousand Russians fled over the frontiers of Transylvania, to tell at
home how heavily the blow falls from free Hungarian arms. It was in that