6 bright object of Surrey's vow,' than that at Woburn; while of her clanswoman-this antique dame-there are innumerable 'presentments,' true and counterfeit-all provokingly taken at a time when her wrinkles, and not her dimples, made her a study for the painter. At Dromana, her birthplace, Lord Stuart de Decies' fine seat, there is a remarkable head-an ivdwλozoiz of the Roman matron, Metella, with the silver gray on her long tresses.' The picture at Chatsworth is understood to have descended to the Cavendish family from their ancestor Lord Cork. The head in the gallery at Knowle is questionable; devoid of tiring, and bristling with elf-locks, it is rather the effigy of a Dutch witch than the similitude of a lady of rank. The painting in the collection of Windsor Castle is now believed to be a likeness of the mother of Rembrandt :-and it would seem that this is not the only case of that particular confusion. Pennant obtained an engraving of the picture at Dupplin, for his Tour:'-anent this the author of Anecdotes of Painting (whose literary mission seems to have been to raise doubts) writes to Cole-'Mr. Pennant has given a new edition of his former tour, with more cuts: among others is the vulgar head called the Countess of Desmond. I told him I had discovered, and proved past contradiction, that it is Rembrandt's mother. He owned it, and said he would correct it by a note; but he has not. This is a brave way of being an antiquary-as if there could be any merit in giving for genuine what one knows to be spurious.' The Knight of Kerry's, a painting of merit, and well engraved, represents extreme old age, with an extraordinary degree of still remaining vigour ; but the features are dissimilar to those of the veritable portraiture. Gerard Douw's name appears on the panel, and it is impossible our subject could have sat to that great artist. The vraisemblance is at Mucross. We have lately done homage to it, and it is engraved-on our memory. Shades of veteran beauties, Diane de Poitiers and Ninon de l'Enclos! brilliant as were your earthly attractions after sixty summers, a nobler grace lingered in this doubly-septuagenarian original! Forfend that her stern shade ever resent a comparison with such frail creatures! She carries the historic prowde countenance of the Geraldines' of her day. Aristocratic, matrician, and placid, though deeply traced with sorrow; eyes hazel, features regular and handsome, a complexion yet fresh and healthy! Why-cette Comtesse, dans sa première jeunesse, fair and vivacious as the daughters of the Antediluvians, ere the term of vitality was diminished to six score years-must have been more lovely than the widowed Lady Anne, whose 'heav'nly face provoked,' and 'haunted the sleep' of, our and all the world's Glo'ster! Such 'divine perfection, 6 fection' in an Irish maid of honour may well have led the susceptible Royal Duke to ask her hand for the galliard! Her testimony, taken in connexion with coins, has been accepted by the calm and judicious historian of Europe during the middle ages' as sufficient proof of the handsomeness of the Usurper's face. As to his figure we can have no numismatic evidencesinewy and vigorous at all events it must have been; but very possibly the Irishwoman's gratified pride and warm native imagination influenced her flattering reminiscence when she extolled to Lady Dacre, as the model of symmetry, a Prince of the Blood who, straight or crooked, had taste enough to appreciate and do homage to her own early charms. ART. III.-1. Mein Leben und Wirken in Ungarn in den Jahren 1848 und 1849. Von Arthur Görgei. Leipzig. 1852.-My Life and Acts in Hungary, &c. By A. Görgei. From the German. London. 1852. 2. Der Winter-Feldzug 1848-49 in Ungarn unter dem Obercommando des Feld-Marshall's Fürsten zu zu Windisch - Grütz. (Nach officiellen Quellen.) Wien. 1851. 3. Der Feldzug in Ungarn und Siebenbürgen in Sommer des Jahre 1849. 4. Bericht über die Kriegs-Operationen der Russischen Truppen im Jahre 1849. Nach officiellen Quellen zusammengestellt von H. v. N. THE Berlin. 1851. THE literary records of the late campaigns in Hungary are already so numerous that, before we had perused the declamatory statements of the revolutionary leaders on the one side and examined the official reports on the other, the contents of a well-filled shelf passed before our eyes. To spare our readers the tedium of such researches, and yet to place before them a connected view of the Hungarian contest, we shall follow the more unpretending path of personal narrative; and we select the volume that heads our list as by far the most authentic and interesting memoir which has yet reached us. Arthur Görgei was, with one exception, the most con spicuous personage in Hungary throughout the military operations of 1849; and he was, without any exception, the man best qualified by military skill, by political insight, and, we think, by integrity of purpose, to save the honour and the constitution of his country. His present situation allows him to speak with independence of his former comrades, and his sense of obligation to the Imperial government has not prevented him from dealing very openly with its faults. Accord ingly, his book is on one hand violently assailed by the Magyar emigration, on the other severely prohibited by the Austrian police. As a general history of the contest it is far from complete, probably from the absence of documentary and written. evidence in the place of the author's detention. But upon the whole, after an attentive comparison of this statement with other accounts of these events, we give General Görgei credit for as much truth and impartiality as can be expected from a man in his position. The other works before us, and of which we shall make con-siderable use, are the official narratives of the campaign drawnup by officers on the staff of the two Imperial armies, and published under the sanction of those governments respectively. They lay claim to none of the higher qualities of historical composition, except that first condition of all, official accuracy:and, though the Austrians complain of some of the Russian representations, we see no reason to question the fidelity of these Reports on either side. We learn from a French biographer that Görgei was born in January, 1818, at Topportz, an estate of his family, in the country of Zips, in the north of Hungary. His ancestors had for centuries distinguished themselves in the Imperial armies. He was educated at Eperies, and afterwards at the military college of Tuln, whence he entered the Hungarian Noble Guard at Vienna. He had been promoted within five years to a Lieutenancy in the Palatine Hussars: but then, having married a French governess whom he met at Prague, he suddenly resolved to quit the service, and withdrew into the country, to devote himself to the study of chemistry, in which he is said to have attained uncommon proficiency. Nothing certainly indicated the fiery ambition of a soldier of fortune or a revolutionary chief in this apparent termination of his early military career. It was in the retired situation above described that the 30th year of his age found him :-and in the first stage of the disturbances of that year, 1848, the only use he made of his acquirements was, that he offered to superintend a manufactory of detonators. He was in fact too obscure a person to be reckoned amongst the protagonists of the revolutionary movement then fast gaining strength, and threatening to overthrow the national ministry which had been hailed with rapture by the liberal party a few months before. He had, however, joined the militia, and when the month of September arrived, which witnessed the murder of Count Lamberg and the commencement of open war, Görgei filled the post of a major n the 5th battalion of Honveds, in which capacity he was employed VOL. XCII. NO. CLXXXIV. 2 B employed in the promising task of converting a National Guard into a regular force. Although the number of these National Guards for the district of Szolnok was estimated at 5000, Görgei with difficulty succeeded in the course of a month in bringing together 700 men under arms, and of these barely 100, he says, were real volunteers—a statement which we quite believe, and which, if true, lends little credit to the vulgar theory that the agitators were mainly supported by the enthusiasm and military aptitude of the common people. The war was already raging with unparalleled ferocity between the Magyars and the Rátzen or Serbs on the southern frontier, and the corps of Roth and Jellachich menaced the Hungarian capital. At this time Görgei was sent with his small contingent to the isle of Czepel, below Pesth, with orders to hinder, if possible, the junction of these commanders, but especially to prevent them from crossing the Danube. He had been but a few days in this situation when an incident occurred which had a decisive effect on his career, and leaves a very dark blot on his reputation. On the 29th September-that is, two days after the massacre of Count Lamberg on the bridge of Pesth-Counts Eugene and Paul Zichy were arrested at the outposts of Görgei's detachment at Stuhlweisenburg, and brought on the following day to his headquarters at Adony. The first suggestion of two staff-officers of the Hunyady Legion, then serving under Görgei, was, that these unhappy gentlemen should be conveyed under escort to Pesth, where they would in all probability have been torn to pieces by the population which had just immolated Lamberg. This atrocious suggestion was rejected by Görgei. Even at Adony, on the right bank of the Danube, they were by no means safe; but by great personal exertions Görgei succeeded in protecting his prisoners against the infuriated peasantry whilst he conveyed them to the isle of Czepel. All the boats had been removed or concealed; and it was only by threatening two millers with instant death that the means of transport were provided. But, though they were thus preserved from the fury of the peasants, the Zichys had fallen into the hands of no merciful judge. The charge against them was, that they were the bearers of proclamations, still wet from the press, addressed by the Emperor and King to his subjects and troops in Hungary, which Count Eugene declared to have been packed up by mistake among his baggage by his valet; and that an open letter or safe conduct, signed by Jellachich, was found on the same nobleman's person. Upon these charges Eugene was convicted of an understanding with the enemies of his country by a court-martial, whose proceedings are said to have been regularly regularly conducted according to the usages and regulations of the Austrian army, and he was forthwith hung. Count Paul was acquitted for want of proof against him. Into Görgei's defence of this action it is needless for us to enter, for a more odious exercise of military power is hardly to be found even in the annals of this fratricidal war. At the outset of a civil contest, when parties are still scarcely defined, and when what is treason on one day is called duty to one's country on the next, it is not surprising that the more irresolute or prudent class of men should hesitate before they plunge into this abyss of evils. Count Eugene Zichy was living on his own estate, alternately exposed to the attacks of two armies, one of which was that of his sovereign, the other called itself that of his. country. He probably wavered, and sought safety between the, two. But he had done nothing to bring him clearly within this severe construction of the laws of high treason. His execution was a judicial murder, and the more deliberate Görgei makes it out to have been, the worse the case appears. At any rate, being, as he then was, within a few hours' ride of head-quarters, it was quite unnecessary for the major of an irregular company to take upon himself this terrible responsibility, and the precipitation with which the whole affair was conducted warrants the worst suspicions. The execution of Count Zichy, however, produced two most important results. It induced a multitude of wavering members of the Hungarian aristocracy to join the ranks of the insurgents, for it seemed less dangerous to take up arms than to retain a neutral position:-it was this terrible example that first drove many to a course which allowed of no retreat. It likewise pointed out the young Honved Major to the notice of Kossuth and the extreme party, as a man upon whom no light scruples were likely to have much influence. They probably took him for a more reckless revolutionist than he afterwards proved; and. we are bound to add, that we know of no action in his career so discreditable as the first. No doubt, it was this guilty transaction which recommended him to Kossuth, as it might be supposed to make him a desperate man; and if not already, he was soon afterwards acknowledged to be an able one; for his skilful assistance brought the operations of Moriz Perczel's corps against Roth and Jellachich to a speedy and successful termination, in spite of the blunders and resentment of Perczel himself. These facts had their due weight in Pesth, where it was felt that the war had been begun in earnest without any of the means of conducting it; and accordingly the Committee of Defence summoned Görgei to the capital, whence he was despatched to the main body of the army, then commanded by General Móga, on 2 B 2 the L |