Where the Magyar Reigns

“The shades of night have fallen o’er the low plains.”
- Poushkin

W. B. Forster Bovill: Hungary and the Hungarians, 1908 - CHAPTER IV

WHERE THE MAGYAR REIGNS (Kassa - Tokaj - Debrecen)

The traveller from Berlin to Budapest cannot avoid Kassa (Kosice). It was night when I entered Kassa (Kosice), and political demonstrations rendered an otherwise uncommonly quiet town unusually turbulent. There was little to be seen at such an hour, but I realised the “stone age” was not over, and sought the comparative peace of a barber’s shop. Hungarian barbers are good, and in the country places inexpensive. Both are a consolation to the man with a strenuous beard and a meagre purse. This, of course, is true of England - in a few places.

In Hungary you must first learn the quarterings of the knight of the lather ere you meet him. Outside the shop stands not the variegated pole, which was the envy of my youth in England, but two golden coloured discs, like abandoned plates hanging in mid air, as if to tempt the accuracy of the schoolboy and the agility of the midnight youth. In a foreign town the barber is usually the first man I seek acquaintance with, and, as a rule, he is better informed than the evening papers and just as reliable. In Kassa (Kosice) the Hungarians are the dominant race, and you are not long before you realise this. There is a comparatively busy air about the place, for the railway activities, which centre there bring into the place the spirit of progress from the outer world.

Kassa (Kosice) owes much to this factor. In a Western sense it is, however, only in its infancy, though in a few years it will be found in long clothes.

After leaving the comfortable hotels in the Tátra, it is rather disagreeable to put up at the inns the town provides, lacking as they are in all those little conveniences, which an Englishman calls necessary. It is not luxury that one demands, but English necessity. Too often we expect too much, and always forget that it is we who are the foreigners. Hungarians love heat, closed windows, smoke-filled rooms. We English love air, exercise, open windows, plenty of water and large towels. Many a time I’ve been nearly roasted in a railway carriage when travelling with Hungarians, who feared a draught even in summer. It is true that the night air is very deceptive in Hungary, and several times I have paid the penalty of my indiscretion; but to be smothered with bedclothes in summer, or not allowed to open the window when travelling, is indeed a custom difficult to reconcile oneself to.

Never ask for tea in Hungary, save where you know they have been taught how to make it. To put a little cheap tea into a cold teapot, then pour over it some water, which has never reached boiling point, is the conception of tea-making many have arrived at. At Kassa (Kosice), mine was so weak it could hardly get out of the spout. I am sure, however, all these things, which the insular, prejudiced English dote upon will soon be found in Kassa (Kosice), so keen are its inhabitants and so complete its progress.

Until I visited Kassa (Kosice) it had never interested me. Budapest, Debreczen (Debrecen), and Transylvania were something more than mere names on a map to me, they were historical centres I longed to explore, they were influences reaching out into Western civilisation; but Kassa (Kosice) was a new spot for research, an unknown quantity. The growth and development of the town is not without its history. History is often silent or scant regarding its past, but it is clear that Kassa (Kosice) was known as far back as Géza I. In the fourteenth century the city sprang into some measure of importance as a ” frontier-town,” and became a royal free city. And a century later, owing to a continued increase of privileges and the expansion of its strongholds, it assumed the leadership of all Northern royal free cities, and became at the same time the capital of Hungary. Around it raged a series of conflicts prior to the battle of Mohács, which added to its renown and stimulated its growth. Sympathy, ever a variable quantity, at one time flowed out generously to the Habsburgs, and Kassa (Kosice) became one of the most reliable towns. An attack upon the Church, by Belgiojoso and Stephan Bocskay, won them over to the Magyar cause. It was the turning-point in its history, and ever since Kassa (Kosice) has been identified with the successes and failures of the Magyars. Bocskay directed his big campaign from Kassa (Kosice), and, after concluding peace with Vienna, he returned and died at Kassa (Kosice). Bethlen Gábor also played a great part in the history of the city. But after the death of George Rákóczy I., Kassa (Kosice) passed into the exclusive possession of the Hungarian kings, and the influence of the Transylvanian princes vanished. Both Thököly and Francis Rákóczy 11. and those who followed them attempted to woo and win the Kassans, but failed. Then following the Peace of Szatmár came a fading away of the military glory of the town, which was not revived until the fateful Revolution of 1848.

Despite continued struggles, the city boasts of the finest Gothic cathedral and the oldest playhouse in Hungary. The former pleased me immensely. It was so encouraging to see something Gothic, after gazing for weeks at ruined castles and Slovak cottages. The play that Gothic always gives to the imaginative faculties, the spirit of ages it bears, and its variety, came as a panacea, so that life again became bearable. Inside the Cathedral I felt nearer home. The architect was one named Villard d’Honnecourt, a Frenchman.

It was ever the aim of the great Matthias to secure the best available men for his work, and undoubtedly the Cathedral is magnificent. One never feels alone there. It is not so large and so pillared and aisled that man loses his identity therein. In a land where magnificent churches are scarce it stands out royally, though its merits alone justify the position it occupies.

There is a superb piece of filigree work by Stephen Crom, standing 66 feet high and forming a canopied tabernacle. This was probably executed in 1472. The altar pictures, forty-eight in number, are Early German, and said to be by Wohlgemut. One must also take notice of the fifteenth-century frescoes in the walls of the St. Stephen and John chapels. There is nothing really great about them, but in a country, which by reason of its continually being kept in the battlefield, and thus unable to cultivate or store any of the arts and emblems of peace, it is interesting to fully note what really may be found. Both the choir and staircase date from King Matthias. Apart from the Cathedral, Kassa (Kosice) has few monuments of general interest to show - churches galore, Franciscan, Dominican, Reformed, all evidences of the life that was, as well as of the life to come.

The Kassa (Kosice) of today rears its head ambitiously. It is social, political, cultural, and commercial. Possibilities simply swarm in upon one. When I first visited Kassa (Kosice), only a few - a very few - spoke English. Now, thanks to the energy of Madame Horthy, many are able to converse, to say nothing of reading and writing in English. For some time I found it difficult to account for such a keen economic sense so far North, and though attributing much to the railway, it must not be forgotten that during the one hundred and fifty years of Turkish occupation the development of economic life and civilisation was practically nothing, and the spirit of industry was only kept alive by taking refuge in the towns of Upper Hungary. This is also true of art. Little is left of the monuments of the fifteenth and sixteenth century in their original state, and the little that is left may be found in the North.

Apart from the institutions common to all towns, one has gained more than local notoriety. In Kassa (Kosice) - that is, within easy distance of the centre of the town - is one of those industrial institutions for young criminals, which, by reason of its success, has made Hungary famous. It may safely be said that the police, magistrates, judges, and prison authorities, having passed beyond the theory of mere vengeance as a legitimate social function, even yet scarcely realise the emptiness and absurdity of administering the criminal law on a theory of retribution or punishment, and the weakness and futility of that plausible last refuge - deterrence. Hungary in this respect has its own standards, and therefore its unique institutions.

The Hungarian State regards itself as responsible for all “abandoned” infants and children, and the term is applied liberally, so that no child is called upon to suffer for the misdoings of its parents. There is no idea of “stamping out” crime, but what is assailed is the tendency. In Kassa (Kosice) the spaciousness of the place makes its appeal to the juvenile consciousness. There is an entire absence of anything resembling a house of detention. It is the sanatorium idea. They are ill, and must wait and be cured. Residents in the colony are not called prisoners, but boarders, and they are grouped in families. In the boys’ home each head of a family has twenty-four foster-children to father, and he has constantly to exercise the duties of a parent toward them, teaching them to be forbearing, kind, and courteous to each other. The success of the experiment is unprecedented. In the thirteen State infant institutions in 1903 there were 16,660 children distributed into 466 colonies, where children of tender age are cared for and trained. We have nothing in England comparable with this system, and have much to learn from it.

Two things in the family life struck me as invaluable - the daily use of the tooth-brush and the neat folding of clothes every night. The children are all classified according to behaviour and age, and the distinguishing marks of the different clans or families is to be found in a pretty badge, or by the colour of the dress. Religious instruction is regular and simple. Everything is done to render the life of the child not penal, but pleasant. They have their games, bands, and swimming school, and may even visit their parents occasionally. The educational scheme is a laudable one, for the main idea is the rearing of good citizens, by creating pleasure in work, and teaching some remunerative employment. In the workshops the most up-to-date machinery and methods are employed. The boys at Kassa (Kosice) are allowed to earn wages, thus stimulating diligence and engendering thrift. There are moments, I was told, when a strange waywardness will come over a boy, and when the position renders it impossible for him to be allowed to continue violating the rules of the family. For such as these, and the cases are remarkably infrequent, a scale of reprimands has been arranged.

In the official book for 1905 I found the following system and scale of reprimands:

1. Private admonition.
2. Reprimand in the presence of the family to which the offender belongs.
3. Meals to be taken apart from others, and no amusements allowed.
4. Loss of distinctions, which may have been gained, and of special favours, such as the right to receive visits, write letters, and to walk outside the bounds.
5. Meals of a less varied character than usual, to be taken at a separate table.
6. Banishment from the family, and enrolment in one of lower class.
7. Complete isolation from the other inmates.
8. Expulsion from the establishment, and consignment to prison.

This is surely an object lesson for advocates of corporal punishment. No patient is sent for a specific or fixed term, the virility of the disease and the success of the treatment only to be the determining features of their stay, with this limitation, that none can be detained after arriving at their twentieth year.

In one of the suburbs of Budapest a similar institution exists for girls, and it is equally successful.

In the Museum, which is supposed to be of exceptional interest, little of surpassing value was found, many of the 30,000 curiosities being of too local a nature to admit of description. Perhaps the most valuable collection is that of ancient coins. Schools abound, and official residences proclaim its dignity and importance as a city. I found fewer Jews and more Slovaks than I expected. What a study in cobbles the roads are! - and driving after a time becomes painful. Often I sat and wondered how those strange-looking vehicles drawn by such lean horses stood the unevenness of the Kassa (Kosice) streets.

Harness even now is often a collection of assorted string and leather. Primitive carts, primitive drivers, and primitive horses, what rich objects for the painter! It is obviously not a writer’s land, but an artist’s. How amazing also that such a collection of colours should be found upon one person without fighting! Some prominent person in Hungary must be found to promote a society for the preservation of national costumes. How much Hungary would lose if clad in regulation black and white! Away in the North, surrounded by much that even yet must be styled primitive, one longed for art, for literature, but one felt remarkably close to the distant past. Though the grand and majestically expressive Magyar tongue was heard, I felt that I had not yet reached the real Magyar impregnated atmosphere - that I, like them, must push on to the heart of things and there abide a while. This much must be said for the railway accommodation, that it is cheap and good.

The day that I selected to visit Tokay (Tokaj) for the first time was one of the hottest the August of that year had provided. Travelling was unbearable even with an English crowd near one. To talk almost scorched one’s tongue. I remember one such day in Egypt. It is a little off the beaten track from Kassa (Kosice) to Debreczen (Debrecen), but it was the obvious thing to do to have a peep at the vineyards of Tokay (Tokaj). I remember even now the sensation of being called at a monkish hour: even then everything and everybody seemed to have been awake hours - just one of those days one is called upon to eat two breakfasts.

There were several Hungarians on the train who spoke English, and the tales they told of the wine we were going to drink simply added to the thirst, which commenced soon after eight in the morning, and, which continued until Debreczen (Debrecen) was reached at midnight. Then, it was too hot to doubt or even question their opinion; now, on deliberate reflection, it would be unfair.

Tokay (Tokaj) as a town is nothing, but Tokay (Tokaj) as a wine is every- thing. I recall everything - the crowd at the station, the flag-bedecked streets, the banquet, the speeches, the wine - and the white dust. I can even remember an unpremeditated hiccough. Twice that day I thanked the forces of war that resulted in Rákóczy II. concentrating his influence on the Hegyalja district.

Much, I learnt that day, was due to this illustrious Prince of Transylvania for making renowned the golden juice of Tokay (Tokaj). It became then and has remained the “wine of kings and king of wines.” This is no national conceit, but a unanimous foreign opinion. At the Council of Trent, Pope Pius IV. was presented with a small barrel of the Talya vintage by the Bishop of Zagrab, George Draskovich, as the most costly gift he could give. His Holiness on tasting it exclaimed, with unaccustomed generosity of speech, “Summum Pontificem talia vina decent,” or, “Such wines are fit for the highest Pontiff.”

Tokay (Tokaj) as a wine-growing area is a very small one. The output is scant and imitations are many. One may almost stand on a hill and see the entire Tokay (Tokaj) wine district. A tiny mountain range, a few assiduous, patient workers, and here you have the producing spot of that famous wine, which the poet affirms is “gold become liquid.” They say that the district was probably first planted by Italians, who brought over slips during the time of Louis the Great. Dryness is the chief characteristic of the climate in this district.

The summer is very warm, and the winter cold, with hurricane winds. In the spring it is cool in the beginning, and dry, passing in May without any transition period into warmth. The beginning of autumn is damp, but as the month proceeds the days become dry, fine, and long. Spring frosts, I was told, injure only those vineyards, which lie on the plain, whilst the best vineyards are to be found at a height of 150-190 metres above the level of the Adriatic.

Naturally I had many opportunities of tasting the best that Tokay (Tokaj) could produce, therefore can testify that there’s nothing on earth to equal it. Its qualities as a medicine are only now being recognised, though Max Wirth wrote as far back as 1885 that “Tokay Ausbruch has throughout Europe won the name of the King of Wines, and is held to be the Crown of Wines for convalescents and those decrepit with age.”

Tokaji wine, however, has to be approached at the right angle to be appreciated. A good appetite is not sufficient. You must be one who does not take wine just for your stomach’s sake, but able to approach it artistically. There is a right and a wrong feeling with, which to approach wine. He who heeds not the bouquet and is blind to the rich colour will never have the imagination stimulated, and on such a person Tokaji is wasted. A legend tells of a monastery- containing a cave in, which the noblest growth of Tokaji was stored. The custodian was never permitted to approach the cave save in the most courtly garb, bearing in his hand a silver candlestick. Such was its effect upon an aged friend of mine, a timorous soul in his bravest moment, that after tasting some of this delectable nectar he felt constrained to deliver in an alien tongue a powerful oration on the value of a revolution. But its medicinal qualities are as numerous and more efficacious than those unsuspecting article advertisements that so often lead us astray in the English newspapers.

In the Tokay (Tokaj) wine district something of the generosity of the wine has entered into the character of the people, and everything seems to blend harmoniously. A rich owner of vineyards entertained me at tea, and the sensation of witnessing two stout-limbed servants bear upon their shoulders a tray laden with the choicest of grapes, rich and lustrous, for our dessert, led me to determine upon a neglect of everything save Tokay (Tokaj) grapes. Alas! evening shadows drove me away, and to undergo a most painful experience. A slow, tired train, crowded with jaded travellers, the evening air stifling, whilst as if to crown events fitly the whole lighting system gave out, and the long journey to Debreczen (Debrecen) was undertaken in the dark. Only an hour later everybody irritable and impatient. No Tokay (Tokaj).

But it was Debreczen (Debrecen), the “City of the Magyars,” the Protestant Rome.

Curiously enough, both the first and the last occasion upon, which I visited Debreczen (Debrecen) I arrived after midnight. I never advise anybody now to attempt to go from Kassa (Kosice) to Debreczen (Debrecen) via Tokay (Tokaj) in a day. Once, however, you are in Debreczen (Debrecen), and drive down the wide street to the hotel, you feel something of what poets have sung - a peculiar sense of abidingness, of largeness, of expanse, and of . rest. From over the great plain, immense and fertile, this feeling steals.

Here again mere monuments cease to attract you. Long, dwarfed - looking streets; the usual large square; an abundance of coffee-houses; good shops, and you have the whole town. In Hungary one soon grows accustomed to the dead level of the houses, the Almost German regularity and uniformity of the towns. Life is never to be found within the walls of such as these, but in the one principal thoroughfare, along which passes the restless activity of a pleasure-loving race.

Debreczen (Debrecen) with its 75,000 inhabitants strikes quite a different note to Kassa (Kosice). When, however, I think of what we in England are able to do with so many thousands of people, and what a town we make of it, I sit and wonder at Magyar content. Whilst there is so much missing apparently, so many possibilities not utilised, there is a collectivity about the place, which we don’t possess in England. They are Hungarians. The concerns of the great, outside, troublous world do not concern these hardy agriculturalists: it is only the Alföld and Hungary for them, and it sufficeth. Debreczen’s part in the Revolution of 1848 was a noble one. But I love Debreczen (Debrecen) because of its Petőfi associations -Petőfi, the greatest literary genius Hungary ever had. The poet always seemed to have been suffering there. Listen as he sings:

“Oh, Debreczen (Debrecen)!
When I recall thee!
Much I suffered within thy walls;
Yet notwithstanding,
It is a pleasure
For me to recall thee. -
Papist I am not,
Yet I did fast and fasted long.
‘Tis good that a man’s teeth are bone,
‘Tis a wise ordinance of heaven.”

Age makes few calls upon one here; one is near to moving events and men. In the very centre of the square stands the Protestant church, which every Magyar points out to the visitor as the spot where Louis Kossuth proclaimed from the pulpit on April 14, 1849, the separation of Hungary from Austria and the deposition of the Habsburg House. Every time they recall the event even the eyes of the young flash strangely, as if remembering past wrongs. Quite near to the church another Hungarian poet is immortalised - in bronze.

In the eighteenth century, Debreczen (Debrecen) was the largest town in Hungary, and in this village - town stood a commodious but ugly building, which to the passer-by appeared to be a barracks. Alas! how deceptive appearances are, for the inmates wore long black togas, and it was none other than the famous College of the land. Here, amid so much external gloom, was educated one of the most extraordinary poets of his age, Michael Csokonai (Csokonai Vitéz Mihály). He was the finest lyrist of his time. A restless wanderer, Csokonai for many years delighted the heart and quickened the pulse. Nothing disturbed his sense of nationality, though his poems show how keenly aware he was of the “ruling ideas and tendencies of his time.” Rousseau’s conception of solitude stirred him to his noblest poetic efforts. Professor Beöthy says of Csokonai: “He sang his unhappy love in lyric songs, which with their tender sweetness, and the noble inwardness of their outbursts of sorrow, together with the fluent ease of their verse, made them our best amorous poetry up to the time of Vörösmarty and Petőfi.”

Behind the church one may find Csokonai Place, and there remember that the poet died at thirty-two. In Dr. Riedl’s Hungarian Literature what was known as the “Arcadian Controversy” is dealt with, and it is interesting as occurring after Csokonai’s death. Kazinczy suggested as an epitaph to be engraved on the poet’s tombstone the words: “I, too, have been in Arcadia.” The poet’s fellow-townsmen, the worthy, matter-of-fact burgesses of Debreczen (Debrecen), did not know what it meant. They looked up the name “Arcadia” in Barthelemy’s popular Le Jeune Anacharsis and there discovered the following statement: “In Arcadia there were excellent fields for the rearing of domestic animals, especially asses.” Naturally they felt dismayed. What a theme this controversy would have provided Csokonai with!

Debreczen (Debrecen) had another son, who in the French wars achieved distinction as a soldier, and later as a man of letters. In all the writings of Michael Fazekas (Fazekas Mihály) it is easy to distinguish the influence of French literature gained in the wars.

On one occasion he was in a position to increase his worldly store by pillage, but, entering the French chateau, he found his way immediately to the library, selected a volume, and read for some time, eventually leaving bootyless, after replacing the book on the shelf of such stuff was Fazekas made. A monument to the gallant Honveds who fell at the battle of Debreczen (Debrecen) on August 2, 1849, recalls and reminds.

A dying lion on a pedestal of rock is a fitting symbol of the courage these home-bred soldiers possessed. Here in the busy mart you may behold the flower of the Magyar peasantry. It is the Magyar race you see, which is not to be confounded with the Hungarian nation. The one is united and unanimous: action and deeds is its motto. The other, ethnically speaking, is yet in process of formation. With an unusual degree of fitness, the Magyars, the very kernel of the nation, are welded together in the centre of the land, a compact body.

The natural conditions surrounding Debreczen (Debrecen) made its appeal to those earlier settlers, for it corresponded to their mode of life, and the expansiveness and freedom, to say nothing of the scope provided by the Alföld, seemed in keeping with their past. It must have been a sparsely populated area when the followers of Árpád first sojourned here. From such a centre radiates the strength and patriotism of the Magyar race. Pressed in on the north by Slovaks and Ruthenians, on the south and south-west by Croatians and Servians, on the south-east by the Wallachs, the Magyars have been, so to speak, solidified by ethnological conditions, as well as by their own passionate love of race.

It is agricultural Hungary here, and Debreczen (Debrecen) is its centre. But it was something more than fertility of soil that made Hungary agricultural. About the close of the seventeenth century Turkish power ended, and Hungary came under the rule of the House of Habsburg. This change did not bring any special economic improvement.

In Hungary the King could only impose taxes with the consent of Parliament. The nobility were relieved of the duty of tax-paying, and Parliament desired to protect the tax- paying capacity of the people in the interests of the landowners. In Austria the prerogative of ruler was extended, and he was able to impose taxes without consulting Parliament. Therefore, as the needs of the State grew apace, and perpetual warfare depleted its coffers, the ruler and his retinue sought the economic development of the “hereditary countries,” and simply regarded Hungary as a mere granary and colony of Austria, thus reducing it to selling its surplus to Vienna, and purchasing its necessaries there.

The King of Hungary being Emperor of Austria, one and the same indivisible person, naturally assented to such tactics. Parliamentary protests’ failed, and Hungary simply lost the little industry, which had survived Turkish occupation, and settled down to its future as an agricultural country.

Personally I doubt whether any power on earth could at that juncture have made it industrial. Something in the composition of the Magyar always leads me to associate him with agriculture. By temper he is a farmer - and a politician. Listen to a group of these top-booted, serious-faced Magyars discuss a political problem, and the intelligence they bring into the debate is astounding. These over-patient souls, whose vision seems as boundless as the plain upon, which they work, have an education that mystifies one; it is not of the schools, scholarly, but of men and matters.

Of the great, blustering, Western world they know little, but they “can do more things and have learnt a greater variety of names to express the same thing by.”

Give us a description of a Magyar? This was sent from a London paper, and I was expected to answer on a view-coloured postcard. But what is he like? I can only answer. What is a man like? The Magyar is no savage, no tawny gipsy, no dissolute reveller. Hungary is not a howling wilderness, and to it one need not come armed.

The Magyar is of medium stature, with a skull just above the middle size. His head is short, and his face broad and inclined towards being oval, guided by a short nose and small eyes and ears. As a rule, the Magyar mouth is finely cut and the chin oval. Strong and luxurious hair, and vigorous moustache, often well pointed, with a broad open forehead, and a chest denoting great physical endurance and strength. This will give some idea of the Magyar. Look at his broad palms and the short thumb! Watch him move! Never but elegantly, activity and strength harmonising grandly. But he rarely moves when he is able to sit, or walks when a ride is possible. In a measure he does lack energy, and this denotes little perseverance. He is easily discouraged.

The Magyar character is a strange compound of habitual passivity and melancholy, and great susceptibility to excitement. His step is slow, countenance pensive, address dignified and imposing - all qualities, which may suddenly change and give place to an excited precipitation. The magnetism of his character results from the fact that he is a bundle of extremes. Never have I seen either an individual or a nation more wonderful in success. You see the character of the Magyar emerging from every bar of Hungarian music.

Patriotism in him is a fetish. To explain or describe him adequately is impossible. My dear old friend of the hills, how reposefully serious he was, and yet what pride of race he would suddenly flare up with! In the “tiszta Magyar” there is nothing mean nor deceitful. His hospitality amounts to a disease almost. But these noble souls of the plain, these peasant farmers, they are a perfect compendium of self-respect.

It is true the Magyar is hot-tempered, and when he roars it is in no uncertain tones. Fundamentally he is serious, and to weep is to capture joy.

There is also a measure of conservatism about him. He dislikes change, and is averse to new conceptions, ideas, and methods. Though this is so, he will always give you a hearing. Naturally he is a partisan: men with such a compound nature cannot avoid it. One is always encountering Irish traits in the race. In judgment he is invariably right, and his apprehension quick. Capable of a huge amount of labour, he seems like the man who, though longing for work, was no sooner confronted with it than a peculiar inability to perform it seized him. “Any time except the present” is the motto of many in Hungary.

Conversation or pleasure first, business afterwards, is also carried to excess, save by the Jews. They reverse it.

To avoid loving such a race is an impossibility. Generosity of nature, tenacity of friendship, combined with an enormous capacity for enjoyment, is a trinity of virtues, which must make for happiness.

But the race is changing. The movement towards industrial experiments progresses. In the nobility one may even see the dawning of a desire for commerce. The influence of the Turk becomes less every year. Whatever may happen in the crowded cities, it seems an impossibility to change the character or temperament of Hungary’s phalanx of strength, which is focussed upon the great plain.

Debreczen (Debrecen) is not only a Magyar stronghold, but the great Protestant headquarters. Here the language is spoken in its greatest purity. Nobly rearing its head is the Protestant College, the centre of interest in Egyház tér. A marvellous library of 100,000 volumes is stored here, whilst some 2000 students still pursue their studies in law and theology. Mingling with the crowds of students one may see the inquiring sons of the plain and the heroes of Hortobágy. Let us visit the home of the latter.

From: W. B. Forster Bovill, Hungary and the Hungarians, 1908

Kosice, Kassa, Tokay, Tokaj, Tokai, wine, Debrecen, reformed, Hungarian character