y Hungarian, and the poor Slavonic. The
traders pick holes in the gentry and the poor folks hate them both. He
saw the heady young squires of the _Alfoeld_[7] idle away their time at
school in unedifying contrast to the diligent sober conduct of himself
and his friends, and yet the masters treated them with the greatest
distinction. Some of them scarcely attended the lectures at all, and yet
they sat on the front benches. They were able to have private lessons,
and thus easily outstripped the poor scholars who had to slave night and
day to keep pace with them. They marched about in fine clothes and got
their poorer fellow-students to copy out their exercises for them. At
the public examinations they declaimed Hungarian verses with such
emphasis, with such a fire of enthusiasm, that even that portion of the
audience which did not understand a word of their fulminating periods
cheered them vociferously, whereas he, Thomas Bodza, recited the
affected, pedestrian, poetic effusions of the Slavonic School of
self-improvement without the slightest effect. Even in the rude arena of
material strength the Asiatic race showed a determination to be
paramount. The youths of the _Alfoeld_ were the better wrestlers, more
skilful in gymnastic exercises, and in all serious encounters asserted
themselves with more self-confidence and greater enthusiasm; they
boasted ostentatiously of their nationality, and scornfully looked down
upon his.

[Footnote 7: The great Hungarian plain.]

And then, too, during the sessions of the Diet, when the haughty
Hungarian gentry flocked to the capital from every quarter of the realm
with extraordinary pomp and splendour, a new and clamorous life filled
all the streets, and the brilliant visitors monopolized every yard of
free space. It frequently happened, in the evenings, that a dozen or so
of high-spirited _jurati_ would join hand to hand, occupy the whole
road, and squeeze against the wall any shabby-coated alienist who
happened to come in their way. The poor devil might be carrying home his
meagre _jusculum_[8] under his mantle in a coarse unvarnished pot, with
a piece of brown bread stuck into it, revolving in his mind the whole
time the story of another poor scholar in days gone by who, once upon a
time, used, in the same way, to carry home his humble mess of pottage in
just such another coarse earthenware pot, and who, nevertheless, came to
be one of the princes, one of the great men of Hungary, w