"I cannot possibly quit the history of the great king, without quoting the judgment of an able and experienced man, namely, the Apostolic Legate Castelli. He writes to the Pope: The king is learned, he speaks with earnestness and majesty, saying nothing but what seems to him worthy of belief. When I consider his talent, eloquence, morals, art, and valour, I find that he surpasses all the princes I know, without a single exception. Most Holy Father! This king is of an unwearied spirit; he is wholly martial, thinks but of war, and carries it on without many words."

The sun of Hungary set with Mathias Corvinus; and the remainder of the history of the Magyars is saddening. Yet its gloom is occasionally relieved by some gleams of intellect and heroism. Of the powerful Jesuit we have already spoken, and we cannot take our final leave of the subject without bringing before the reader one of those invincibly resolute defences of besieged towns, to which we have heretofore alluded.

"When the Sultan appeared before Szigeth, A.D. 1566, he saw the walls bung with red cloth, as though for a festal reception, and a single great cannon thundered once, to greet the mighty warrior monarch. Zrinyi assembled his troops, swore in their presence to hold out to the last drop of his blood, and required a similar oath from them. He then issued severe orders; whoever disobeys his commanders; whoever receives or reads a Turkish letter; whoever finds a letter shot into the town with an arrow, or otherwise introduced, and brings it not instantly to his commander to be burnt; whoever deserts his post; whoever speaks secretly with another; whoever sees such things and declares them not; whoever steals a single farthing, shall be forthwith executed. The gates were blocked up; the gardens and hedges that might have sheltered the Janizaries, burnt.

"The Turks assaulted the new town on three sides, they pressed on so powerfully the whole day long, they continued the attack so hotly through the night, that Zrinyi despaired of its defence, and next morning set fire to the new town. The Janizaries occupied the smouldering ruins, and thence fired upon the Christians in the old town."

We pass over several repulsed storms, as too long to detail. "Not content with the force of arms, the Turks likewise tried craft and seduction. German, Croatian, and Hungarian writings were shot into the town with arrows; they were so many exhortations to the troops to surrender upon honourable terms instead of uselessly resisting. To Niklas Zrinyi himself the Sultan promised the whole of Croatia. The hero had a harder trial to surmount, when he saw his son's banner wave in the Turkish camp, heard his son's trumpeter wind the wellknown war-song in the Ottoman army. Zrinyi was to be led to believe that his son was prisoner to the Moslem, in order to be induced to redeem him with the fortress. The fact however was otherwise,-young Zrinyi was in the emperor's camp; only his standard-bearer and trumpeter had fallen into the hands of the Turks.

"Vainly did Zrinyi gaze around; no relieving army appeared, and he knew but too well that a fortress must fall if not relieved. The Turks stormed and were repulsed; the ex-pacha of Egypt was slain, and two standards of the misbelievers fell into Zrinyi's hands. Three days after, the assault was more vehemently renewed; the anniversary of the battle of Mohaes, of the capture of Buda and Belgrade, was to be glorified by the fall of Szigeth: but the efforts of the Osmanli were unavailing. A few days later the Turks stormed more decisively. During the fight they managed to set fire to the houses in the fortress. Though pressed from without by the Ottoman arms, from within by the conflagration, Zrinyi battled still. Twice did the Turks break in, twice were they driven out; at length the flames approached the powder magazine; the Turks had struggled in on the opposite side, and Zrinyi retreated perforce into the inner castle. From its walls the waves of Ottoman war again recoiled. Solyman, peevish and impatient, wrote with his own hand to the grand vizier; Is not this chimney yet burnt out, and sound not yet the cymbals of conquest?' He lived not to joy in the fall of Szigeth, but died that night of dyssentery, apoplexy, or old age.

"The grand vizier, Mehmed Szokoli, concealed the padishab's death, and zealously prosecuted the siege. Three days Zrinyi held out in the inner castle; provisions he had none; women and children were perishing of hunger and thirst; the Turks flung in fire, and the roofs were in flames; the death-hour had struck. Zrinyi ordered his chamberlain Thawz Serenk, to adorn him as for a festival; he concealed the key of the for-tress in his garment, with an adjunct of 100 Hungarian ducats, 'In order,' he said, 'that he who strips me may not complain of want of booty! From four sabres he chose that which his father had wielded, with which he himself had in youth ridden into his first battle. Thus he appeared amongst his men, who awaited him crowded together in the court-yard. He exhorted them to think of God and their country, took a single shield from his chamberlain, and ordered the gate to be thrown open. The Turks were rushing on; he fired a great mortar that lay under the gate, and the foremost rank fell. With the battle-cry of Jesus! Zrinyi rushed out; his standard-bearer, Juranich, waved his banner before him, his men stormed after him. Two balls in his breast and an arrow in his head laid him low. With the exultation of victory the Janizaries shouted Allah! lifted him up, bore him above their heads to their aga, laid him, face downwards, on Kabzianer's cannon, and struck off his head.

"Death, flames, and confusion held divided sway in the conquered castle; the Janizaries slaughtered women and children when they could not at once agree as to their allotment. Zrinyi's chamberlain, treasurer, and cup-bearer were taken alive; their beards were shorn and burnt in scorn, and they were dragged before the grand vizier. He asked for Zrinyi's treasures. Then did the cup-bearer, a nobly-born, proud-spirited youth, reply; "100,000 Hungarian ducats, 100,000 dollars, 1000 goblets and other vessels has Zrinyi consumed; what remains, scarcely 5000 ducats, lies in a chest. But of powder he has plenty,

and soon will it explode: that fire, without which you had never taken the castle, will destroy you.' The Tshaush Bashi rode hastily off with his Tshaushes to prevent mischief; but ere he arrived, the town blew up with a thundering crash, and 3,000 Turks were blown up in it, or buried under its ruins."

With this extract we take our leave of Count Mailáth and the Magyars; yet, we would fain trust, not a final leave, as we cannot but think that his collection of Magyar legends, which we have not yet met with, must contain original and highly interesting matter, and that the mine he has undertaken to work cannot yet be exhausted.

With respect to the volumes now before us, that we consider them a very valuable contribution to the historic stores of the age, is evident from all we have said, and we should hope from what we have shown; but we cannot profess to esteem the History of the Magyars quite so highly as our German brethren, Considered as a composition it is not the production of a masterhand. The matter has assuredly been collected with great, laudable, and not easy diligence; but to omit minor defects of arrangement, blunders in names and genealogies, &c., already mentioned, there is great want of method in the conduct of the narrative. When the affairs of different countries or the different affairs of the same country, as religious and military, foreign and civil, wars, or the like, have to be carried on simultaneously, the author does not so order them, so keep them abreast, as to enable the reader to feel and appreciate as he proceeds their action and reaction upon each other. A difficult art certainly, but the historian's proper and especial business. With respect to the occasional inaccuracies in language and composition, and the awkward repetitions, all of which have now and then cost us no small trouble in translating, we apprehend that they may in great measure be excused upon the plea alleged by Count Mailáth for the numerous typographical errors; to wit; that his failing sight obliges him to trust, wherever it is possible, to the eyes of others. The work, however, in spite of these defects, is a great acquisition to literature and history.

ART. III.-1. Véritable histoire et description d'un pays habité par des hommes sauvages, nus, féroces, anthropophages, situé dans le nouveau monde, nommé Ămérique, inconnu dans le pays de Hesse avant et depuis la naissance de Jésus-Christ, jusqu'à l'année dernière que Hans Staden de Homberg, en Hesse, l'a connu par sa propre experience et le fait connoitre actuellement par le moyen de l'impression. Marbourg and Kolben, 1557: republished Paris, 1837.

2. Das Verdienst der Deutschen um die Philosophie der Geschichte.-Vortrag zum Krönungsfeste Preussens am 18 Januar, 1835, in der Deutschen Gesellschaft zu Königsberg gehalten, und mit erläuternden Beilagen herausgegeben von Karl Rosenkranz. (The Merit of Germans in developing the Philosophy of History. An Address to the Konigsberg German Society at the Anniversary of the Coronation of the King of Prussia, 18 January, 1835: with Notes, by Charles Rosenkranz.) Konigsberg. 8vo. 1835.

3. Das Hirn des Negers mit dem des Europaers und OrangOutangs vergleichen. Von Dr. Friedrich Tiedemann. Mit sechs Tafeln. (The Skull of the Negro compared with those of the European and Oran-Outang.) Heidelberg. 4to. Im Verlag bei Karl Winter. 1837.

4. The Brain of the Negro compared with those of the European and the Orang-Outang. By Dr. F. Tiedemann. Philosophical Transactions, 1836. London. 4to. 1836.

5. Bibliographical Essay on the Collection of Voyages and Travels edited and published by Levinus Hulsius and his Successors at Nuremberg and Francfort from 1598 to 1660. By A. Asher. Printed in English, and only sixty copies taken. London and Berlin. 4to. 1839.

ALTHOUGH few persons will agree with the eloquent and enthusiastic German reviewer* who claims for his countrymen the glory of alone leading the world in all future improvements, none will deny them the honour of having heretofore done a vast amount of good in this shape to mankind; and they undoubtedly stand at present among the very foremost of those Christian communities which are pressing forward the most energetically to advance general civilization.

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Two great powers," says the writer alluded to, are in con. flict; that which seeks to preserve all existing things, and that which would change them for some supposed better condition. The Germans alone of all mankind are capable of bringing this conflict to a good issue. Italians, French, and English have proved

* Dr. F. Tiedemann.

German Influence upon the Civilization, &c.

57

themselves incapable of that thorough regeneration of the heart which is indispensable for realizing the destiny of man. It is to Germany that the world must look for those who by individual character and by the favour of circumstances will purify it. The free German of antiquity destroyed the despotism of Rome; the German league of the Rhine, and the Hanse Towns, created the powerful marine of the middle ages, and then established civilization and freedom in all parts of the north and west of Europe: German genius produced the printing-press; and the German Luther, with his train of intellectual followers, destroying Roman domination a second time, show our influence."

"The principles which now animate the whole German nation are peculiar. They have no one point in common with the equality which the French have boasted of since 1789. They are the doctrines which alone can elevate the whole human race, and Germany alone is thoroughly imbued with them.*" It is not very clearly shown by this writer what these all-important doctrines are; and his pretensions, which are not new, have been disposed of by at least as able a German pen as his own, and in terms upon which those who share his opinion will do well to ponder.

"The historian of mankind," says Herder, "must take care that he chooses no tribe exclusively as his favourite, nor exalts it at the expense of others, whose situation and circumstances denied them fame and fortune. The Germans have derived information even from the Slavians: the Cimbri and Lettonians might probably have become Greeks, had they been differently seated with respect to surrounding nations. We may rejoice that people of such a strong, handsome, and noble form, of such chaste manners, so much generosity and probity as the Germans, possessed the Roman world, instead perhaps of Huns or Bulgarians; but on this account to esteem them God's chosen people in Europe, to whom the world belongs in right of their innate nobility, and to whom other nations are destined to be subservient in consequence of this pre-eminence, would be to display the base pride of a barbarian. The barbarian domineers over those whom he has vanquished; the enlightened conqueror civilizes those whom he subdues."

But without being troubled by patriotic exaggeration it will readily be admitted that the circumstances of the German people for some centuries past have been singularly propitious to the steady progress of civilization, and that these circumstances have greatly aided the natural advantages which favour the regions

* Braga. Heidelberg. 1838, p. 295 and 311.

+ Herder's Philosophy of History, (English translation) 2d vol. p. 361. 2d edition. 8vo. London. 1803.