venteen, where they learn Latin very thoroughly and get
a smattering of other things. They almost unconsciously absorb the
knowledge of managing the great estates which constitute their
wealth. They have a taste for reading and prefer rather serious
literature. With a perfect knowledge of Latin, English, German, and
French, nearly all masters are open to them in the original. They miss
only a few: Dante, Cervantes, and the ancient Greeks, although the
more scholarly ones like Apponyi know Greek. Since they have much
leisure, they often possess by the time they are thirty an
extraordinarily interesting amount of knowledge. In Hungary everyone
from peasants to counts is musical.

We took lunch today in the perfectly splendid old castle of the
Karolyi Hunyadis at Ivanka. The other guests were the Countess
Herberstein and an Austro-Hungarian General of Division, whose name I
did not catch. Count Apponyi and I drove over together from Eberhard
and after luncheon took the train from the neighboring station of
Pozsony Ivanka. I was received with the most extravagant cordiality by
the Hunyadis on account of services which I had been able to render to
members of their family in the course of my work at the Embassy in
Paris.

The Hunyadi castle was really as fine or finer than some of the
smaller ones which I visited along the Loire last spring, and it was
the more impressive because it was "alive"--inhabited--and furnished
with the most magnificent appointments. The stair-hall particularly
recalled some of those splendid old French ones, being in the same
sort of yellow Caen stone.

While we were waiting for a train today, Count Apponyi informed me
quite seriously that Hungary was not the least feudal, either in
theory or practice.

The Hungarians harbor no animosity against Britain and France and
really deserve the chivalrous friendship of these two nations. They
are the only people in the present conflict who, in the heat and
excitement of war, have on all occasions behaved like good sportsmen.
When trains of Russian prisoners arrive at Hungarian stations, the
people manifest no hostility, but greet them with kindness and
sympathy and offer them food and flowers. The populace has not
molested alien enemies, and their government has not indulged in
wholesale internments of enemies' subjects. In Hungary I found British
horse trainers, English tutors, and French governesses going
tranquilly about their peaceful occupations.