Harvard Classics Volume 28: Essays English and American
General
Harvard Classics Volume 28: Essays English and American
American essays; English essays
It is no very great time since the readers of the English newspapers
were, perhaps a little amused, perhaps a little startled, at the story
of a deputation of Hungarian students going to Constantinople to
present a sword of honor to an Ottoman general. The address and the
answer enlarged on the ancient kindred of Turks and Magyars, on the
long alienation of the dissevered kinsfolk, on the return of both in
these later times to a remembrance of the ancient kindred and to the
friendly feelings to which such kindred gave birth. The discourse has
a strange sound when we remember the reigns of Sigismund and
Wladislaus, when we think of the dark days of Nikopolis and Varna, when
we think of Huniades encamped at the foot of Haemus, and of Belgrade
beating back Mahomet the Conqueror from her gates. The Magyar and the
Ottoman embracing with the joy of reunited kinsfolk is a sight which
certainly no man would have looked forward to in the fourteenth or
fifteenth century. At an earlier time the ceremony might have seemed a
degree less wonderful. If a man whose ideas are drawn wholly from the
modern map should sit down to study the writings of Constantine
Porphyrogennetos, he would perhaps be startled at finding Turks and
Franks spoken of as neighbors, at finding _Turcia_ and _Francia_--we
must not translate _Tourchia_ and _Phraggia_ by Turkey and
France--spoken of as border-lands. A little study will perhaps show
him that the change lies almost wholly in the names and not in the
boundaries. The lands are there still, and the frontier between them
has shifted much less than one might have looked for in nine hundred
years. Nor has there been any great change in the population of the
two countries. The Turks and the Franks of the Imperial geographer are
there still, in the lands which he calls Turcia and Francia; only we no
longer speak of them as Turks and Franks. The Turks of Constantine are
Magyars; the Franks of Constantine are Germans. The Magyar students
may not unlikely have turned over the Imperial pages, and they may have
seen how their forefathers stand described there. We can hardly fancy
that the Ottoman general is likely to have given much time to lore of
such a kind. Yet the Ottoman answer was as brimful of ethnological and
antiquarian sympathy as the Magyar address. It is hardly to be
believed that a Turk, left to himself, would by his own efforts have
found out the primeval kindred between Turk and Magyar. He might
remember that Magyar exiles had found a safe shelter on Ottoman
territory; he might look deep enough into the politics of the present
moment to see that the rule of Turk and Magyar alike is threatened by
the growth of Slavonic national life. But the idea that Magyar and
Turk owe each other any love or any duty, directly on the ground of
primeval kindred, is certainly not likely to have presented itself to
the untutored Ottoman mind. In short, it sounds, as some one said at
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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