It was the right of the nobles to assemble and pass resolutions which, when approved of by the king, obtained the force of law. Up to the commencement of the thirteenth century, they used to meet in the open air; and as each brought to the place of assembly as large an armed following as he could muster, it was no unusual circumstance to find as many as eighty thousand men in the field. Such a crowd could effect nothing of its own free will, and was hardly to be managed by any species of influence. At length, in 1235, Bea IV. succeeded in introducing the system of representation which still holds good. By this arrangement, an hereditary seat in the legislature was restricted to the magnates, with whom sat likewise such official personages as prelates and barons of the kingdom. The nobles of inferior rank chose one or more from each county to represent their body, while the clergy were represented by abbots, titular bishops, and dignitaries of an inferior degree. By-and-by, during the reign of Sigismond, in 1386, free towns and royal cities were authorized, in like manner, to choose deputies, and then the framework of the Hungarian legislature became complete. The Hungarians are never more gratified than when an opportunity offers of instituting a parallel between their houses of parliament and ours; indeed, their taste for comparing is such, that they gravely contend for a perfect similarity of principle between the constitutions of England and of Hungary. It would be as impolitic as unjust, when discussing the question with them, to deny that some such resemblance prevails. Both monarchies are limited monarchies, in which the sovereigns, though invested with absolute power as executors of the law, are just as completely circumscribed by the law, as the meanest of their subjects. It is curious to observe, likewise, how nearly the prerogatives of the one correspond in all essential points with the prerogatives of the other. The persons of both are sacred. Each is, within his own realm, the fountain of honour and of justice; each commands his own army, though by neither may its numbers be increased without a vote of the legislature. And more remarkable still, the king of Hungary, though a Roman Catholic, is the head of the church in Hungary, in the very same sense which we apply to the term, when we speak of the king of England as the head of the English church. In Hungary, the crown appoints absolutely to all bishoprics, abbacies, and even to canonries. Confirmed the choice must be, in the first of these cases, by the Pope, otherwise the spiritual authority attached to the office would be wanting; but the bishop-elect enters at once upon the possession of his temporalties, of which no exercise of papal influence can dispossess him. Moreover, it is in Hungary as it is in England,--the affairs of state are administered in all departments by the king's authority. The king's taxes, the king's duties, the king's