The Htcngarian Slavs. 25 



process by Baron Schlippenbach, a distinguished German art 

 critic, who had himself Hved for a time among the Slovaks. In 

 the name of all those present he welcomed Dr. Seton-Watson on 

 that his first visit to Ireland. 



Dr. Seton-Watson said, in coming before them to lecture 

 on the Slovaks and Slovak art, he felt the race was so little known 

 in this country that he should explain who the people were. The 

 Slovak race was one of the smallest in all Europe, numbering 

 two and a half million in Austria-Hungary. It was a Slav race, 

 related to the Russians and the Poles ; but counting as its nearest 

 kinsmen the Bohemians. They resided in the mountainous 

 country to the North of Hungary, and overflowed across the 

 Austrian frontier into Moravia. It was that latter portion that 

 was ahead of all the other in art. The reason why the Moravian 

 Slovaks led in art was due to political causes. He did not desire 

 to discuss politics, for if he were to touch on them he would 

 have many disagreeable and well nigh incredible facts to tell them. 

 However, he would content himself by saying that the Slovaks 

 were most unhappily situated in their own country, and also that 

 the Austrians, if behind the Hungarians in some respects, were 

 far ahead of them in everything concerned with the treatment of 

 smaller races, and in the qualities that made a State great. 

 However, despite their circumstances, the Slovaks had been 

 blessed with a keen artistic sense, and if their art was, as a critic 

 had said, art in the making it was exceptionally interesting. The 

 Slovaks were a pastoral people, but a good proportion earned 

 their living as raftsmen, and they produced a big tribe of pedlars 

 who wandered all over Eastern and Central Europe As to art, 

 the Slovaks carried out the dictum of Ruskin and William Morris, 

 that it should not be a thing aparr ; they applied decorative 

 designs not only to their houses, but to the very dishes from which 

 they ate, their knives and forks, clothes, whips, and even agricul- 

 tural implements. Their decorative art was fostered by the 

 patriarchal life which they led, but though these conditions were 

 now disappearing the art itself had survived. The lecturer then 



