Without Prejudice

the great suspension bridge and the railway bridges; and broken by the beautiful Margaret Island; the spires and chimneys and cupolas of Pesth, and the mountains of Buda.

Margaret Island is the 'Pearl of the Danube,' a charming retreat in spring and autumn, when the heat does not force Fashion to the mountains, and famous for its mineral springs, hot and cold. It belongs to the King's cousin, Prince Joseph, and is a white elephant. The cost of gardening this beautiful island is colossal, and though the Prince has just drained a portion which used to be a swamp, the Danube is a standing danger. It is scarcely surprising that he cannot find a purchaser at three million florins. One of the walls of his private garden (which produces celebrated roses) is the remnant of an old cloister. A tramcar runs through the island, giving one tantalising vistas of glorious stretches of woodland. Altogether Budapest would be an ideal place for a honeymoon but for the beauty of the women, which might make the bridegroom dissatisfied.

But the Pesth part of Budapest is a disappointment. One expects to feel the first breath of the East, and one gets a modern, a Western, almost an American town, with an electric underground railway and a telephonic newspaper which reads itself out all day long to whosoever will clap the cups to his ears-the old town crier in terms of modern science. But it rounds off the day, poetically enough, with music, so that when I sought to hear the latest news, I was treated to Handel's 'Hallelujah.' How much more soothing than our own 'extra special,' with its final crop of horrors! Music, indeed, is ever resounding: the gipsy bands are everywhere playing-Hungarian, not gipsy music, as Liszt imagined, for they never play to 'the white men.' The splendid 'Rakoexi' March, which Berlioz introduced into his 'Faust,' is, however, of gipsy origin, having been invented, says tradition, by Cinka Panna, the faithful gipsy girl of Rakoexi II., after his defeat. There are also Betjar melodies, the songs of the brigand cavaliers, the romantic robbers who took from the rich to give to the poor, like our Robin Hood.

The Exhibition, which I fear will be a financial failure, is only one of the many celebrations of the Millennium, which include the erection of statues and an Arc de Triomphe, the opening of a canal, the construction of two new bridges, of three or four great public buildings, the inauguration of the splendid new Houses of Parliament-situated like our own on the river-side,-international congresses, historical corteges, and the opening of five hundred new primary schools! This programme is a sufficient guarantee that the Exhibition itself is similarly thorough-going, that it represents every side and department of the national life; and if much of it does not differ from other Exhibitions, or even from Whiteley's Stores, this can only be the more gratifying to the Hungarians, inasmuch as it proves that they have indeed come into step with the general march of European civilisation. For my part I am not sure that I do not prefer Arpad's Hungarians, who believed in one God and one wife, and roved about Europe in the four- wheeled waggons they had invented. And I am certain that in the Exhibition I preferred the beautiful aquarium in the cool dim grotto, which has nothing to do with Hungary, to all the splendours of the Historical Group of Buildings, to the great model steamer, the naval and military pavilions, the very new and very glaring native pictures, and even the wonderful models of the town and the steamer-laden Danube. One great lack in the Exhibition is lavatories. Even at my hotel-a place of gilded saloons-they charged two florins (about 3s. 4d.) for a plain bath, as if in sheer surprise. In 'Old Buda' I could only get a bucket from an old woman in which to wash. And the next day, when I repaired confidently in search of this bucket, there was nothing but a tiny saucepan, the contents of which she poured over my hands, watering a garden-plot at the same time. After the first jet I moved my hands away and said that would do. 'No, no,' she cried: 'if you wash, you must wash properly.' And I had to stand still and be poured upon till she was satisfied.

Perhaps the most interesting exhibit is the 'ethnographic village,' designed to represent the life of the Hungarian provinces, though made rather ridiculous by the rigidity of the waxwork figures, arranged about the quaint and impossibly clean houses in their various occupations, but having the air of 'tableaux morts' rather than of 'tableaux vivants.' The best group was al fresco, representing half-naked gipsy-like creatures with coal-black hair squatting outside tents and mud-houses, the women smoking pipes. And this exhibition of unrealities brings me on to the most original feature of the Exhibition, which seems to have escaped all the reporters-to wit, the exhibition of realities. For the committee have hit on a most ingenious notion. The peasants of Hungary marry, and they marry picturesquely. Why should this picturesqueness be wasted, or only be reproduced artificially in comic operas? When a marriage is to be celebrated in any village, let the scene be shifted to the capital: let the wedding-party come up to the Exhibition. Free transit is provided on the railway for the happy couple, the wedding-guests, and all the stage-properties. And so they come up to Budapest,-from Toroczke', Szaboles, Krasso'-Szore'ny, and who knows what outlandish places, glad of the opportunity of seeing the great capital,-and they gather in the Exhibition grounds, the lads with flower-wreathed hats and streamers of many- coloured ribbons, the lasses with gay skirts and tall black combs, the old women with lace head-shawls, carrying bundles of house-linen and stockings for the bride; and the sheepish pair are made one, and the peasants dance and then go in procession to the strains of the Ra'ko'ezi March, and are photographed with odd spectators (like myself) tacked on, and they sit down to the wedding-dinner under the trees, and the viands are heaped high on the white table-cloths, sun-dappled with the shadows of the moving leaves. And then they visit themselves in waxwork, and go into ecstacies over the stolid representations of their life and their furniture, and they walk about the town-a sort of grown-up school-procession-and go home to thrill the wide-eyed village with tales of the wonderful city.

But the other instance of converting realities into spectacles is not so commendable. In the supplementary exhibition of 'Old Buda' stands a reproduction of an Old Buda mosque, built of stone, majolica and wood, in a mixture of Turkish and European architecture, with minaret and cupolas, and a small kiosk in the Indian style for a sleeping fakir. Here Moslems and Dervishes assemble to say or dance their prayers; and for a florin you may ascend the gallery and watch them below. The mosque opened on the holy night of Bairam, the most solemn feast of the Mohammedan year, and quite a crowd planked down their silver to listen to the pious worshippers. Is it not shameful? I am happy to say I did not pay for my seat. Even in Budapest I was a persona gratis. 'T was certainly a remarkable scene, its solemnity emphasized by the thunder without, that drowned the voice of the mueddin calling to prayer, and by the lightning and rain-torrents that sent the pretty little al fresco waitresses scudding about with their serviettes on their heads to tend the few parties in the leafy square that dined on regardless of diluted wine or under the protection of umbrellas. How the Turks further wetted themselves by complex ablutions in the tank (meydiah) in the courtyard without, how they removed their shoes and, entering the mosque, knelt on their carpets facing towards Mecca, and turning their backs on me, a serried array of long-robed figures swaying and falling forward with automatic regularity, and showing pairs of heels not always clean, while the Imam chanted heart-breaking dirges overhead, I shall not detail, for everybody has read of Moslem, services. But I do not remember to have come across any accurate description of a service of Dancing Dervishes such as followed the more orthodox ceremonial.

All the mere Mussulmans having retired, the Dervishes sat around cross-legged, forming an oval. Presently they began to say some phrase, presumably Turkish (it sounded like es 'klabbam vivurah' ), which they repeated and repeated and repeated with the same endless, uniform, monotonous intonation, swaying from right to left and from left to right, till I felt the whole universe was this phrase, and nothing else would happen till the end of the world, and the world would never end. At last, when I had reconciled myself to living for ever and ever with this sound in my ears, they broke into a pleasant melody with rhyming stanzas and a refrain of Hazlee. Then they started on another word with endless iteration, and then they repeated Allah, Allah, Allah, swaying and swaying till the universe began to reel. I became aware that their chief, who was seated on a special red carpet, was counting on a rosary, and I drew relief from the deduction that an end would come. It did, but worse remained behind; for the Dervishes got up and formed a ring round their chief, and began swaying right and left and backwards and forwards, unrestingly, remorselessly, getting quicker and quicker, till there was nothing in the world but swayings this way and that way, back and forth.

At last the movements began to slow down and to sweep over larger curves, and suddenly they stopped altogether, only to recommence as the fanatics started singing a joyous hymn. Alas! thought I, one half the world is a laughing-stock to the other half, if indeed not rather a source of tears. For now the chief, whose fine gloomy Eastern face still haunts me, was bowing to his men, and they were responding with strange raucous cries compounded of the roars of wild beasts and the pants of locomotives. Hu! Hu! they roared in savage unison, Hu! Hu! monotonously, endlessly, making strange motions. Hoarser and more bestial grew the frightful roars, wilder and wilder grew the movements, the head-gear falling off, faces growing black, the chief standing silent with his hand on his breast, but in his pale face a tense look of ever- gathering excitement. And then two of the Dervishes held out a curved sword, and the roars redoubled and the chests heaved with wilder breaths; and suddenly the Chief, throwing off his stocking-wraps, jumped on the blade with his naked feet and balanced himself upon it, the muscles of his face rigid, his teeth clenched. Four times he