into details. Few artists in this line, however, contented themselves with employing any one style. Their productions were generally of the composite order. The railway announcements, indeed, to which we have already referred, and which composed so large a body of literature a few years ago, presented an eminent example of this intermixture of styles, signalized by great felicity of handling, and certainly a most imposing effect.

To ourselves, we confess, the most interesting side of the subject is the reflex one. We look upon the heterogeneous phases of puffery as important, chiefly because they betoken and shadow forth the public mind to which they are addressed. Herein lies their great significancy; and the thing we find signified is not such as to afford us either pride or pleasure. The concoctors of puffs, of every class and kind, evidently find Danton's policy the best-that is, the most profitable, de l'audace, encore de l'audace, et toujours de l'audace. They adopt, advisedly, a style that would be endurable only by a public which had not time to inquire, nor the habit, even if it had the faculty, of reflection. Consequently, they deal in the largest measure with the abstract, the superlative, and the impossible. Mere 'goodness' never contents them. their claim everywhere is to be the best.' Simple or practicable virtues or definite aims are not qualities that suffice for their ambition. They promise articles universally virtuous, and possessing indefinite utility. It matters nothing that their assertions refer to qualities utterly unattainable or absurdly incongruous. The public can stand any amount of audacity and cajolery. If the puff writer will only contrive to 'prophesy smooth things,' in a tone of sufficient solemnity, he will be sure to obtain believers, and purchasers, too, in shoals.

Another conclusion forced upon us as we proceed in the interpretation of puffs is, that the public, besides being unreflective, is a very lazy public. It will not take the trouble to find out its own necessities. One of the main functions of the busy tribe of purveyors and puff writers evidently is to discover new wants for the nobility, gentry,

and public in general.' We have reversed the old maxim. Necessity is no longer the mother of inven tion; she is her daughter. Inventors are busy on all sides in finding out novelties which, when found out, are declared absolutely indispensable to existence. We, on our side, do not look to nature to tell us what things are necessary for us. We look, instead, into the advertisements; and there we receive abundant information, together with a benevolent assurance that the things in question can be supplied promptly, profusely, and on the most moderate terms.' Thenceforth these articles, hitherto unwished for and unknown, become articles of prime necessity. Our only wonder is, how it was we never wanted them before, or could possibly have done without them so long.

The trade in new wants' is large and lucrative enough. It often, moreover, assumes very singular forms. Medical dealers, in their time, invent new diseases, for which they announce the discovery of new medicaments. Political dealers invent new dangers and sores in the body of the state, and are equally ready with their prescription of some novel bolus, or bran-new safeguard, by which the evil consequences may be averted. And a miscellaneous herd of purveyors, of every species, are incessantly employed in detecting new phases of pain and privation in order to suggest a remedy and a supply. Most of these reap an ample harvest. The public is even more generous than the Eastern king. The lucky discoverer, not merely of a new pleasure, but of a new form of want and suffering, is pretty safe to make a rapid fortune.

All lies, to be profitable, must lie like truth.' But when a lie has grown into transcendental magnitude, it often happens that truth itself is forced to conform to the lie-to assume its post and adopt its habits, as it were-in order to get the public to believe that she is true. The annals of trade would furnish curious instances, wherein adulteration, long and daringly practised, has succeeded in putting the genuine article out of countenance. Were we not assured with official gravity by the Chancellor of the Exchequer that me better coffee was

made with chicory (to say nothing worse) than with the Mocha berry itself? A beer-loving generation have been so dosed with liquorice, quassia, nux vomica, and other delicacies of the sort, that respectable publicans have assured his Worship on the bench, the pure essence of malt and hops would not have a chance of going down with them. So, amid the throng and flash of puffery, the honest tradesman runs a risk of passing unnoticed and unpatronized, unless he will himself stoop to analogous arts and publish his genuine wares in the same style as the counterfeits. Carlyle, whose mission it is to demolish' shams,' speaks, somewhere, bitter words concerning a poor hatter, who, instead of labouring to make better hats than his neighbours, merely sent into the streets a huge glittering chapeau, mounted on wheels, to induce the world to believe that he did so.

But matters are now come to such a pass, that even if our friend the hatter had made articles of unrivalled quality, his skill would be wholly wasted, unless he used some glaring eye-attracting means of letting the world know of it. Thus, the falsehood, grown big, forces truth to bear it confpany, and derives in time fresh strength and substance from the association. The true dealer is forced to issue puffs; and the public, sometimes finding itself treated honestly in places where it has been invited by puffs, begins to put faith in all invitations indiscriminately. In the good old primitive times, every alluring notice to purchasers was looked upon as a puff, and was met by the homely proverb, which declared that good wine needs no bush.' Shakespeare, indeed, admitted that to 'good wine they might owe good bushes;' but the modern practice has far exceeded the poetical sanction; and the bushes' have long ceased to be 'good' for anything except to deceive the public. How could it be otherwise? The charlatan invented them to aid him in his rogueries. The honest dealer adopted them, as he believed, for self-preservation. And now charlatan and honest dealer flourish side by side, the unwary public being unable to distinguish between them-seeing the same bush' hanging over their doors.

If we have viewed this part of our subject from the ludicrous side, it is not because we do not take in view its severer aspect. But, as injuries often take the shape of boons, so oppression sometimes works its purposes under the mask of humour and good nature. It is difficult to deal with the varied phenomena of charlatanism in a spirit of gravity; and the lower arts of trickery and imposition are more successfully quizzed into ob livion than argued into exposure. The censure that awaits the revelation, however, will be one of unmixed condemnation. There can be no doubt that the modern system of puffing leads to a demoralization which includes the tradesman, the operative, and even the purchaser himself. Regarded in its most repulsive aspect, the puffing system, as imported into trade, and in its ultimate effect upon wages, may be said to supply a moral excuse for vice, and lend a sanction to immorality. For the tradesman is not what he pretends to be, and unhealthy trading is sure ultimately to work its depreciating effects upon wages. A minimum of wage is too often accompanied by a maximum of vice. The fault, however, is not entirely on the side of the dealer. Responsibility rests with. the purchaser. Buyers, of both sexes, are tempted by the bait of low prices to purchase articles which scrutiny detects to be inferior. They become the possessors of goods at prices so disproportionate to their intrinsic value, that, if they reflect at all upon their bargains, they must be convinced that the article was either got unfairly by the dealer, or was produced at wages totally inadequate to the wants and necessities of the operative. The public cannot plead the want of warning. A few months ago, The Morning Chronicle paper gave heart-rending pictures of the social misery and demoralization of our operative population, produced by a vicious system of trading, in which this very principle of puffing was a main element.

If the reader, having followed our cursory review of the various phases of the practice, shall at last have brought himself to reflect on its moral effects, these few pages will not have been written in vain.

THE

CHAPTER III.

The

HE Ban Jellachich crossed the frontiers of Hungary on the 9th of September, from his quarters at Kopreinetz, where he stood with the centre of his army, mustering 20,000 men. His right wing, of 13,000 men, was commanded by General Hartlieb, who threatened the fortress of Esseg; while 10,000 forming the left wing of the Croatian army, stood at Warasdin, under the command of General Schmiedl. His reserve force, under General Kempten, was at Kreuz, and consisted of 10,000 men. centre of Jellachich's army was composed of Austrian regiments of the line, which were equipped and paid through the treachery of Count Latour, the chief of the Viennese War Office. His right and left wings and his reserves consisted chiefly of Croatian levies and Szereczaners, savage troops, whose cruel and predatory disposition has become proverbial in the annals of Germany, and who have through many generations been trained to the sanguinary contests of the Turkish border. They are feared as the most formidable allies of the House of Habsburg, and execrated not for their deeds on the field of battle, but for the relentlessness of their warfare against the weak and the defenceless. In the religious wars against Sweden, and in the contest with Prussia for the possession of Silesia, the princes of Austria caused these bands of midnight assassins and marauders to overrun the German countries; plunder, conflagrations, the murder of children, the mutilation of aged men, and violence done to women, marked the path of the 'red-cloaked' soldiers. They massacred their prisoners or worse, they tortured them to death. Such

were the traditions. That their manners and morals were still the same had been proved by the events of the Lombard insurrection in March, 1848. It is notorious that at Milan the Croats burned their prisoners alive, and that women of every rank and age, when captured by them, were first violated and then literally cut into pieces. That Baron Jellachich was permitted and encouraged to attack and overrun Hungary with troops whose practices had acquired such an infamous notoriety, was in itself sufficient to prove the determination of the Imperial House to reconquer Hungary at any price. No other invasion was so terrible as this. No other attack could have roused all ranks, classes, and political parties to so powerful a feeling of danger, and to so firm a resolution to repel the invader. The Baron Jellachich, indeed, prefaced his march by a proclamation to the Hungarian nation, informing them that he came to crush the criminal intrigues of a faction, and that hewould free the country from the yoke of a hated, incapable, and rebellious government. He promised to respect all privileges; and protested that he came as a friend and a brother. But the friendship of the Croatians, and the brotherhood of the redcloaked Szereczaners were so formidable, that the inhabitants of the country protested against these insidious advances. Mr. Kossuth, acting on the spur of the moment, proposed and obtained the sanction of parliament to several important resolutions. The issue of five-florin notes, the creation of a parliamentary army of Honveds, or 'Defenders of the country,' and the incorporation of the Hungarian regiments into this new and essentially national force, were all decreed in

less than an hour. It was further resolved to invite the Hungarian soldiers in Italy and elsewhere to return to their country and to join the Honveds.

These were revolutionary measures. But they were justified by the terrible dilemma in which the Parliament was placed. They had either to resign themselves to the discretion of Jellachich and the mercy of his borderers, or to take their salvation into their own hands, by an appeal to the fears, the passions, the exasperation of the moment. It is almost an insult to the Cabinet of Vienna to believe that the violent and revolutionary measures which Mr. Kossuth proposed, and the parliament sanctioned without a single dissentient voice, either surprised or dismayed the Imperial family. On the contrary, although the events, and the all but fatal result of the war in Hungary were not foreseen, it was expected that the Croatian invasion would hurry the Hungarians into illegal actions, and thus furnish the Imperial government with a pretence for the subjugation, and perhaps the incorporation of Hungary. To shake off the humiliations of the year 1848-to turn defeat into victory, and resignation into conquest-to have but receded in order to perform a more astonishing feat of strength and agility, was, indeed, a task worthy of the ambition of a family who gloried in that part of its history which connected it with Florence and its proverbial policy. Monstrous though the statement appears, there are reasons to believe that the Archduchess Sophia and her favourites intended to punish Hungary for resisting Jellachich, and Jellachich for attacking Hungary, For although they did not conceal their enmity against the Hungarian Parliament, they were at great pains to give to every one of the Croatian leader's measures the appearance of having been taken without sufficient authority, and at his own peril. The official documents of the time mention the Croatian invasion as a quarrel between the Ban and the

Hungarian parliament;' and although the Baron Jellachich was subsidized by the Vienna War Office, and privately encouraged by confidential letters from the Imperial family, he very justly complained, in his correspondence with Count Latour, the Austrian Secretary at War, that he was placed in a false position,' and that he wished the government would publicly acknowledge him as their agent.'

While he forwarded these complaints to Vienna, he proceeded on his expedition against Gross Kanischa ; his right wing marched upon Esseg, and compelled that fortress to hoist the Emperor's colours. This done, the Croats, not caring to enter a fortress, which offered but small temptations to their predatory propensities, left the place in the hands of its old commander and garrison, and proceeded to the more grateful and profitable task of devastating the neighbouring districts. Νο

obstacles whatever were placed in their way by Count Adam Teleky, the commander of the Hungarian army, which consisted of four battalions of the line, four battalions of gardes mobiles, three squadrons of hussars, and about 9000 men, landsturm, or levies from the counties of Tolna, Shümegh, and Szalad. At the approach of the Croatian army, Count A. Teleky fell back upon Keszthely, on the north-western banks of Lake Balaton;* and but for the opposition of his officers, he would have continued his retreat, and left the capitals of Buda and Pesth at the mercy of the Croatians. These latter advanced to Szemes, on the south-western bank of the same lake, where the Ban Jellachich established his head-quarters.

Thus threatened, exposed by the cowardice of the commanding general, and apprehensive of treachery at the hands of the other military leaders, who seemed disposed to break the trammels of their divided allegiance, Mr. Kossuth considered that the parliament might still retain the services of the trained officers and troops, if the Palatine could be induced to take an active part in the war against the Croatians.

VOL. XLV. NO. CCLXV.

G

of hostile influences, which first paralysed and afterwards cancelled the Emperor's own decree against Jellachich, was still more irresistible in its struggle with a junior prince of the Imperial house, and the military chiefs were

accus

tomed to look for favour, patronage, and presents, not to the temporary commander of a detached corps, but to the Vienna War Office. Mr. Kossuth, who in the sitting of the 15th September proposed that a deputation should solicit the Palatine's assumption of the chief command of the army, was almost startled to learn that the prince, without a moment's hesitation, accepted the proposal, and intimated his readiness to proceed to the camp. His motives were consequently suspected, and three commissioners appointed to accompany him, and watch his movements. Maurice Perczel was among them. That impetuous young man had, in the early part of the Hungarian movement, taken the lead against Batthyanyi's cabinet, and Mr. Kossuth as its speaker. But the progress of events, and the defeat of Batthyanyi's peaceable policy, tended to prepare the future alliance between them. In the present instance, even Mr.Kossuth shrank from confiding so delicate a mission to the zealous and undiplomatic Perczel; but the urgency of the case admitted of no delay, and other men, better qualified for the office, declined accepting it.

Some delay was, however, caused by the prince, who allowed three days to pass before he proceeded to assume the functions of an office which he had accepted with so much apparent eagerness. Before he reached the Hungarian head-quarters at Keszthely, he had communicated with the Archduke Francis Charles, heir presumptive to the Imperial crown, and received his instructions. The Archduke approved of

the Palatine's assumption of the chief command, and care was taken to publish the Emperor's and the Archduke's assent to the steps taken by the Palatine. But at the same time, that prince was secretly instructed neither to offer battle to the Ban nor to accept it. In other words, he was to follow in the footsteps of Count Adam Teleky and the rest of the Austrian generals; he was to paralyse the forces of Hungary, and to retreat with them, if the Ban thought proper to advance.

Amidst the double-dealing and the treachery of that fatal period, it is almost a relief to find at least one member of the Imperial family of Austria less dishonest, but also unfortunately less firm, than the rest. It was clearly the intention of the Archduke Francis Charles that the Palatine should by his presence overawe the resolution of the popular leaders; that he should concentrate the armed forces, compel them to inaction, and surrender the country and the capital without any defence to the Croatian army. The Palatine Stephen, wavering between the dictates of his heart and his honour, between the guilty family which claimed his services and the country whose rights he had sworn to protect, found a temporary expedient in a course of negotiations; and when these proved unavailing; when his attempts to obtain a personal interview with the Ban Jellachich were met with sus picion and insult; and when he saw that the Croats were resolved to proceed to extremities, he left the camp and returned to Buda. the following night, the Prince, Archduke and Palatine, the Viceroy and Regent of Hungary, suddenly left his palace. He fled from Buda without a single attendant, and in a mean disguise. Mounted on a peasant's cart, he crossed the Hungarian frontier into Austria. Other princes, in that eventful year, fled like convicts, alone, disguised, on foot, and under the protection of night. But they made their escape from the fury of a mob, which hunted on their track. The Archduke Palatine's case was singular. Perhaps it was weak not to abdicate in plain daylight; but the

On