In striking contrast to the character and music of the Slavic peoples are the character and music of the Hungarians. Living on the confines of the East and West, this people belong to the former by descent and to the latter by civilization. Between two elements, they have been exposed to the attacks of both, and their history records only a continual struggle for existence as a nation. This prolonged warfare has made _nationality_ the uppermost thought in the life of the Hungarian: it is the influence controlling all his ideas, his feelings, his poetry and his art. His music embalms a thousand years of struggle for it, and every note of its wild, melancholy strains breathes tales of war and sorrow, of hope and triumph. The music interpreting such an intense nationality ought to be a peculiar one; and it is. A foreigner, having once heard it, can never mistake its sounds for those of any other national music. But to understand the Magyar music you must apprehend the Magyar's character. He is a singular mixture of East and West, habitually passive and melancholy, yet easily roused to the wildest excitement. His step is slow, his face pensive, his manners imposing and dignified; yet when once roused he rushes forward with a furious impetuosity which his enemies have learned to estimate and dread. His eloquence is wonderful, and after success he throws aside his solemnity and gives himself up with wild abandon to the feast, the dance and the song. All this various character he has imparted to his national music: it is full of pathos and earnestness, yet often impetuous and even hilarious. The "Rakotzy" is so perfectly national that it thrills like a shout from the Hungarian heart, and it is no wonder that the Austrian government found it necessary to forbid it to be played on public occasions, and even to confiscate all printed copies of it. "When I hear the 'Rakotzy,'" said a famous Hungarian, "I feel as if I must arise and conquer the world." As my readers can easily procure a copy of it, it would be a kind of sacrilege to give so grand a march shorn of any of its noble proportions; and I can with far more justice give an example which embraces two of the most predominant traits of Hungarian songs--the Scotch _catch_ introduced in the middle or end of the bar, instead of at the beginning as in Scotch music, and the beautiful modulations from the major to the minor key of the minor third--a change very unusual in any national music but the Hungarian: [Illustration: HUNGARIAN AIR.]