very primitive fashion. The bee-hive, made of willowings, is plastered inside and out with a layer of cow-dung, and placed with its busy inmates on the bare ground. When it is filled with honey, a hole is dug beneath the hive, and the bees continue their work, as the Latin poet says-Sic vos non vobis mellificatis apes. In several parts of the country, the culture of silk-worms prevails, forming a considerable part of the earnings of the populace.

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But the idle propensities of the men are fully redeemed by the industry and dexterity of the women. The latter not only perform all the duties of the house, dairy, and garden, but even feed the cattle and horses, cleaning and harnessing the latter; while the men never stir till the women hand them the whip, which is the signal that the carts are ready. These, however, are only a part of their occupations: they provide all the men's clothing, except the hat and sandals; shear the sheep; dye, spin, and weave the wool or hemp, cut out the cloth or linen, which they then fashion into the required articles of dress; so that it rests only with the men to put on the ready-made garments, after their indispensable partners have even combed their hair. As we have stated, there is a weaving-loom in every bedroom, at which one or other of the inmates is continually employed, throwing the shuttle to and fro with marvellous skill and rapidity.

As the torba, or pouch, is the never-failing companion of the men, so is the distaff that of the women. Wherever they go, they invariably carry it with them in their girdle, their fingers being constantly employed in turning the spindle and drawing out the thread. In knitting and embroidery they are likewise skilful: every part of their dress is more or less tastefully ornamented with the latter, either in wool or gold.

The favorite food of the Croats is pork and milk. Their bread, although they grow wheat in abundance, is made of maize or hirse-panicum malacum.

The patriarchal authority of the Gospodar extends also to the marriages, which are arranged in the following manner: First, the two Gospodars hold a consultation as to the price of the girl, to be paid in cattle; and when they agree as to the terms, they ask the young people if they love each other. The answer, if in the affirmative, is considered as an official pledge of their mutual acceptance,

and from that moment, whenever the affianced see each other in public, they dare not exchange a word or a look, but must turn round and fly, as though smitten, not with love, but with the plague. So it goes on, till the parties meet at one of the church ales in the vicinity, on which occasion a fair is always held; when, at the general meeting of the friends and relations, rings are exchanged. After this public betrothal, the lass has the right of choosing and buying, at the expense of her future father-in-law, all the articles of finery for her wedding, which are not a few, and of the most gaudy description. On their return home, the Gospodar, in the name of the fiancé, sends the girl an apple filled with gold or silver coins, which form the chief part of her dowry. Besides the cattle, he has to present each member of her family with a gift, usually of wearing apparel; this sometimes making a greater drain upon his purse than even the apple with its costly contents.

On the wedding-day the procession proceeds to the church, headed by a clown, mounted upon the worst hack that can be found, and clad half in male and half in female attire; his hat decorated with the wing of a goose. This post is always filled by the wittiest and merriest person in the neighborhood, who is expected to entertain the company with his droll sallies. After the clown comes the bride, accompanied only by one female friend; then follows the bridegroom on horseback, carrying a nosegay, and wearing a cloak which, according to custom, was thrown over his shoulders at the bride's house, and surrounded by a troop of mounted comrades. In the church a canopy is prepared for the bride and bridegroom, and during the ceremony two crowns of silver-gilt, or bronze, are held above their heads. The priest, having offered up a prayer, first takes the man's crown, saying, as he places it upon his head: "I crown thee, servant of God, for the maiden N-." He then takes the girl's crown, and proceeds in a similar manner. With that the ceremony is concluded, and the procession, with the newly-wedded pair wearing their crowns, return to the house of the bridegroom, where the wedding is celebrated with feasting and dancing, which last for three days and nights, or longer-that is, until the numerous guests have as fairly emptied both cellar and larder, as if a swarm of locusts had swept over them. The morning after the marriage, the bride carries the water for washing to the guests, on which occasion she receives a gift from each.

The music of the Croats is the bagpipe;

In Croatia, the good old custom of celebrating every particular event, such as birthdays, baptismals, deaths, &c., by a feast, is still in full vigor. As they are, however, rather expensive affairs, the prudent Gospodar manages to keep several at the same time. This is most practicable in the case of a christening, which rite is seldom performed until the births of two or more children have taken place in one family. The names given to their offspring are selected less from the calendar of saints, than from the vocabulary of affection or of nature. Names such as Milosh, Darling; Lubitza, Beloved; Jagoda, Strawberry, are usually chosen.

At their feasts the Gospodar drinks to the health of the guests one by one, and every time in a bumper. It is a matter of courtesy, on the part of the entertained, to empty their glasses after each health; which of course brings about the natural consequence, that a very few veterans are left on Bacchus' battlefield to do bonor to those who come last; as most of the combatants are, by that time, disabled for further effective service on that day.

Another of their peculiar customs, is that of going to the cemeteries on Easter Monday, attended by their priests, where, for an hour or more, they pray for the souls of the departed. Many bring the wardrobe of a deceased relative with them, and, whilst laying the garments one by one upon the grave, exclaim, amidst tears and lamentations, "Oh, why did you leave us so soon? your clothes are still good-they would have lasted you for many years!" This singular act of piety over, they close the day, according to the usual custom, with feasting; and on the very gravemounds, where a few moments before they prayed and wept, they now display the contents of their torba, eating, drinking, and making merry; as if there were not enough mournful emblems around to check their mirth in its very core.

The Croatian language, which is understood also by the Servians, is an inharmonious idiom of the Sclavonian tongue. Like every Sclavonian tribe belonging to the Catholic creed, the

As we have stated, the Croatian, Sclavonian, and Servian borders are divided into eleven military districts, each of them furnishing one infantry regiment of four battalions, or three thousand one hundred men. however, every man is by birth a soldier, and must serve as long as he can bear arms, the number of battalions can easily be augmented.

As,

So imposing a number of armed men, led as they are by their own native generals, several of whom have gained at least Austrian renown, looks formidable enough upon paper, but loses much in the reality, like many other things in Austria bearing a grand name and an imposing appearance. It is a well-known fact, that military training alone does not instil true martial spirit, and far less heroic devotion. Where there is no nobler motivepower than pay, or at most the prospect of plunder, the soldiers may be driven into battle, and kept together as long as their arms are victorious, but the first reverse demoralizes them, and they rapidly succumb to the hardships of war. Such is the case, at least, with the Austrian Grenzers. They do well enough as cordonists against smugglers or Turkish depredators; yet, in their present condition, they can never gain fame in a regular battle. Even in the Austrian army they are looked upon as a body far below the common standard. As an illustration of this, we will quote one or two striking examples from modern history.

In September, 1848, Jellachich, Ban of Croatia, invaded Hungary with an army of fifty thousand Croats. This he did at a moment when the Hungarian nation still confided in the solemn oaths of their king, and were thus unprepared to meet a hostile aggression. Jellachich, aware of this, hastened by forced marches towards Buda-Pesth, in order to crush at one blow the liberty of the country. There was every prospect of a speedy victory; for who would dare to oppose the formidable legions that had already conquered the peaceful inhabitants of several counties, and, like their forefathers, the Trenck-Pandars, filled their knapsacks with

spoil? Yet, contrary to all expectation, a few miles from the capital, a corps of fifteen thousand men a medley of soldiers, citizens, national guards, ministers and members of the Diet-awaited the invaders in battle-array, determined to face and to fight them. The Ban, with his overwhelming force, could easily have crushed such a handful of men; so it was generally believed. But it turned out quite the contrary: for as soon as the Croats heard the Hungarian bullets whizzing about their heads, they at once remembered that the better part of valor is discretion. Accordingly, after a short cannonade, they turned and fled, never looking back until they were under the walls of Vienna. This movement of Jellachich is immortalized in the Austrian annals as "The Ban's famous flankmanœuvre !"

The reserve corps of Jellachich, amounting to ten thousand men with twelve guns, which advanced along the Lake of Balaton, a two days' journey behind the main army, was doomed to a still more ignominious defeat. At the tidings of the Ban's flight, the corps presently fell back towards Croatia. Yet the populace, exasperated by the excesses the enemy had committed during their advance, had already risen en masse, gradually hemming them in on all sides, until there remained no chance of escape. In this emergency, the Croats, instead of showing the muzzles of their guns, showed the white feather, and surrendered at the mercy of the people, without having fired a single shot. The Hungarians, however, as usual, generous in success, instead of treating the robbers as they deserved, regaled them with meat and wine, and after taking their oath that they would never again bear arms against the mothercountry, sent them back with an escort to their homes.

The campaign in the spring and summer of 1849, proved not less disastrous for the

Ban and his Croats. One of his brigades was annihilated by Damjanich, at Szoluok, on the 5th of March; another met a similar fate at Tápio-Bicske, on the 4th of April; and on the sixth of the same month, he was defeated at the head of his corps by Klapka and Damjanich. Such repeated reverses induced the Ban to fall back upon his resources in Croatia; from whence he reappeared in midsummer, at the head of twenty thousand veterans, and commenced an advance upon Pesth between the Theiss and the Danube. Unfortunately, at Hegyes, he encountered a Hungarian force of some eight thousand men, under the Generals Vetter and Guyon, who gave him such a warm reception, that he retreated, with a severe loss of men and guns, in one forced march behind the Danube-a distance of about fifty miles.

The Grenzers are all foot-soldiers, being quite unfit for cavalry service. During the above-named campaign, the Austrians, having no hussars at their disposal, made an attempt to organize a regiment of them in Croatia. They so far succeeded, that eight hundred horses were equipped and mounted by as many men, who were called the Rauderial Hussars. The new cavalry were to gain their first laurels in the battle of Tápio-Bicske. When, on that day, the genuine hussars of Klapka were told whom they had to attack, they sheathed their swords, exclaiming, that they could put such scarecrows of troopers to flight with their fists. At the ensuing onset, two squadrons of the 1st Hussars did literally disperse eight escadrons of Croats. The prisoners taken in that dashing exploit were conducted as great curiosities through the Hungarian camp, and the horsemen from the Theiss and the Puszta could not comprehend the impudence of a Grenzer daring to mount a steed in hussar attire.

After this defeat, the Croatian hussars entirely disappeared from the scene of action.

AMONG the many historical objects of curiosity in Cologne, to which the professional cicerone seldom fails to conduct the sight seeing traveller, is a goodly mansion, situated in the Sternengasse, and well known in the town by the name of Jabach House. The interior of the house is not usually shown to strangers; indeed, it contains no historical relics of the celebrated personages who once inhabited it, nor aught to satisfy the cravings of visual curiosity, the only gratification to be derived from an inspection of it being the association of ideas; for we naturally feel pleasure in contemplating even four bare walls, when we know that genius once resided within them, or fallen royalty underwent therein the bitter trials of poverty and deprivation.

The entrance to this mansion, like that of most of the larger houses in Cologne, consists of folding-doors, large enough to admit of the ingress of a carriage. Immediately over the door, in a kind of frame, is the bust of a man, carved in oak, which at once arrests the attention of the passer-by, the more so as he does not fail to recognize, at the first glance, the large bonnet so intimately connected with the well-known portrait of Rubens. On each side of the doorway is an inscription in German, engraved on a tablet of stone, let into the wall.

That on the left is as follows:

“On the 29th of June, 1577, being the festival of St. Peter and St. Paul, Peter Paul Rubens was born in this house, and baptized in the parish church of St. Peter's. He was the seventh son of his parents, who lived here nineteen years. His father was a senator at Antwerp for the term of six years. On account of religious troubles he fled to Cologne, where he died in 1587. He was buried with great pomp in St. Peter's church. Our Peter Paul Rubens, the German Apelles, wished to see his birth-place, Cologne, once more, and with his own hand inaugurate, in the church where he was baptized, his celebrated picture of the Crucifixion of St. Peter, which had been or

dered of him by our celebrated connoisseur of art, Eberhard Jabach, senator, but death overtook him, in Antwerp, on the 30th of May, 1640, in the sixty-third year of his age.

VOL. XXXIII.—NO. III.

On the right hand we read:

"To this house fled Maria de Medicis, widow of Henry IV. and mother of Louis XIII. of France. She called Rubens from his dwelling in Antwerp to paint for her palace in Paris the principal epochs of her life. He completed the work in twenty-one large pictures; but she, persecuted by fate, died in Cologne on the third of July, 1612, aged sixty-eight years, in the very room where Rubens was born. Her heart was buried before the chapel of the three kings in the cathedral; her body was afterwards removed to St. Denis. Before she died she thanked the senate for the permission they had granted her to reside in Cologne, accompanying her thanks with honorable gifts, which the turmoils of revolutions have for the most part destroyed."

The events recorded in these inscriptions give an historical importance to the house that, according to some indefatigable truthloving antiquaries, does not in reality belong to it. They were written in the early part of the present century by a learned antiquary, named Walraff, of considerable local fame, and whose name is associated with the museum of antiquities, which he founded and bequeathed to his native city.

His enthusiastic patriotic zeal has prompted him to speak of our Rubens, and the German Apelles-titles which the patriots of Antwerp will not be so willing to concede to the great painter. We are indebted also to the same zealous patriotism for the information that Marie de Medicis died in the very same chamber in which Rubens was born. The fact, if true, lends a greater interest to this historical monument; but in reality there is so little foundation in history for the asser tion, that even the identity of the house itself, as we have said, is a matter of dispute-the official documents of Cologne mentioning only the name of the street. Tradition, however, often the surest guide in such matters, has fixed upon the house in question as the scene of the recorded events, and, as the contrary has not yet been proved, we may say with the learned antiquary himself, on being asked what was his authority for fixing on this particular house, "We must take it for granted."

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