Photo by A. VV. Cutler 



SLOVAK WOMAN E;NTE;RrNG THE TOWN OF MUNKACS, HUNGARY, CI,OTHE;d IN HER 

 SHEEPSKIN COAT AND LEADING THE OXEN HARNESSED TO THE WAGON 



a total incapacity to unite on great issues 

 and the power to fight on any soil but 

 his own, but spared the Celtic reproach 

 of having disturbed all States but founded 

 none. 



Imagine this people, its gods still the 

 bards of the victor's camp, cut off from 

 all the world we know by its Turanian 

 tongue, whose beauty chained the ad- 

 miration of Cardinal Mezzofanti (who 

 is said to have spoken 58 languages), 

 but holding its own as a minority by 

 sheer force of character in that strange 

 Pentecostal mosaic of race, creed, and 

 caste which holds the Danube and the 

 Central Plain in fief for Christendom. 



Imagine a virile stock which can still 

 sit and think, can mourn its past in a 

 fair present, can fall into gleaming 

 frenzy as its harp or picture-poet storms 

 a delicate imagination with breathless 

 deed ; a race which combines the Bud- 

 dhist aversion from action with the Celtic 

 instinct of opposition ; improvident, 

 again, as the Celt ; lavish, naively 

 charmed at the courtesy of the stranger ; 



simple, with the barbarian lust of pleas- 

 ure to the eye , sensitive to its inmost 

 chords to gentleness — a passionate, chiv- 

 alric, lovable, dreamy race of fatalists ; 

 the true Asian mystery. Not so Asian, 

 however, that it could 



"Let the legions thunder past 

 And plunge in thought again." 



"Lora! Lora! To horse! To horse! 

 One with the legion !" The contempla- 

 tive side of the Asiatic inheritance would 

 give instant way to the atavism of the 

 Attilian tradition. 



''the SMIEE BETWEEN tears" 



Perhaps the true psyche of a race 

 might be gathered from its folk-lore. 

 The mine is rich and rare. Here the 

 keynote is a sad and plaintive being 

 mourning dead glories, but electrified to 

 his strong depths by the barbaric beauty 

 of battle-songs. The language itself is a 

 picture-poem, fitted like the Doric for the 

 alto-relievo of rough, untutored emo- 

 tion; fitted like the Phrygian for the 



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