the
head. They availed with admirable success to fit him for exercising a
supreme influence over men, especially young men, in the field, and
for all the duties of a guerilla leader. They would not have sufficed
to make him a great commander of armies; and did still less fit him
for becoming a political leader.

Whom next shall I present to the reader from the portrait gallery of
my reminiscences?

Come forward, Franz Pulszky, most genial, most large-hearted of
philosophers and friends!--I can't say "guides," for though he was
both the first, he was not the last, differing widely as we did
upon--perhaps not most, but at all events--many large subjects.

I had known the lady whom Pulszky married in Vienna many years
previously, and long before he knew her. She was the daughter of that
highly cultivated Jewish family of whom I have spoken before. When I
first knew her she was as pretty and charming a young girl as could be
imagined. She was possessed then of all the accomplishments that can
adorn a girl at that period of life. Later on she showed that she
was gifted with sense, knowledge, energy, firmness, courage and
_caractere_ in a degree very uncommon. Since leaving Vienna I had
neither seen nor heard more of her, till she came to live with
her husband and family of children in Florence. But our old
acquaintanceship was readily and naturally renewed, and his villa near
the city became one of the houses I best loved to frequent. She had at
that time, and even well-nigh I take it in those old days at Vienna,
abandoned all seeming of conformity to the practices of the faith she
was born in.

I used to say of Pulszky that he was like a barrel full to the bung
with generous liquor, which flowed in a full stream, stick the spigot
in where you would. He was--is, I am happy to say is the proper tense
In his case--a most many-sided man. His talk on artistic subjects,
mainly historical and biographical, was abundant and most amusing.
His antiquarian knowledge was large. His ethnographical learning,
theories, and speculations were always interesting and often most
suggestive. Years had, I think, put some water in the wine of his
political ideas, but not enough to prevent differences between us on
such subjects. He was withal--there again I mean "is," for I am sure
that years and the air of his beloved Pesth cannot have put any water
in _that_ generous and genial wine--a fellow of infinite jest, and
full of humour; in a wor