* * * * *
THE CROWN OF HUNGARY.
It seems that the Royal Insignia of Hungary have lately been dug out of
a hole in a very damaged condition. The Crown was cracked, and the cloak
of ST. STEPHEN, which, if it had been "made to measure" for the Saint
himself, must have been rather the worse for wear, was so injured by
damp that if ST. STEPHEN'S mantle should fall on anybody else the result
could only be rheumatism. The garment cannot, however, have been worth
much, for if it was the cloak that the Hungarian royalty used to wear,
it had long ago become transparent, and might have been seen through
very easily. We have not heard how the rubbish came to be discovered;
but as the cloak was very seedy it may have sprung up, as anything of a
seedy nature is apt to do when buried in the ground, and thus given a
clue to its own discovery. Who got the Crown into the mess in which it
was found is not a question very difficult of solution; but it is clear
that those who imputed its abstraction to M. KOSSUTH, were as much in
the dark as many of the acts and deeds of the Austrian Government. When
a Crown is dragged in the dirt and degraded, the probability is, that he
whom the cap fits is the one whose head it ought to rest upon.
* * * * *
A WORD FOR THE HOTEL-KEEPERS.
[Illustration: S]
Several correspondents of the _Times_ have been writing themselves into
a great rage lately, about what they are pleased to call the "Iniquity
of our present Hotel system." They complain, with a warmth of expression
which is really very seasonable, that go where you will throughout the
kingdom, you'll not find an Inn which is not inn-convenient--to your
person, certainly, if not to your purse. Everywhere, they say, you'll be
charged a good price for bad accommodation: and the larger the
establishment, the smaller is your chance of escaping imposition. If you
order a light dinner, you may be sure, nevertheless, you'll have to pay
a heavy price for it. If wine be your beverage, you'll be charged three
and sixpence for a glass and a half of Cape, served in a vinegar-cruet
and called "a pint of Sherry:" or, if you drink beer, you will get a jug
of what it were a bitter raillery to call bitter ale, and which, however
nasty, you'll be charged a nice sum for. So that, in either case, the
process of selling these liquids may be said invariably to include the
purchaser. Your candles, too, they say, which figure so highly as "wax"
in the bill, will prove in the candlestick to be as bad a composition as
the fourpence in the pound of a fraudulent bankrupt: and whether lit or
not, there's still the burning shame that you're to pay just the same
for them. For "attendance," too, you are charged about as much as for a
lawyer's: half-a-crown a day being no uncommon item for the luxury of
sometimes looking at a waiter. And if you want a horse, you'll find
there's not one in the stable but what's made a heavy charger.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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