There is one of Sir Walter Scott’s ballads which from my earliest girlhood I have always loved; it first touched my heart by its plaintiveness, but in the quarantaine of Orsovar I learned to value it still more for its surpassing nature—its masterly delineation of the feelings of the human mind under captivity; the captivity, not of despair, but of impatience—the wail of the bounding spirit held back—and often, very often, as I paced up and down the paved court of our plague-prison, did I murmur out my own irritation in the words of the Mighty One of Song: “My hawk is tired of perch and hood, My idle greyhound loathes his food, My horse is weary of his stall, And I am sick of captive thrall.” But even had we looked on the peasantry of Hungary at a less joyous moment, we could not have failed to be struck with their extremely picturesque costume. The men were dressed like those of Servia, even to the ungainly sandal of untanned leather, laced above a short stocking of checked worsted; though many among them had discarded the rude conical cap of sheepskin, for one neatly made of white flannel, and bound with black ribbon, which had a very cleanly and smart appearance; but the women were in a costume which would have produced its effect at a fancy ball. Like the maidens of Scotland, the young girls wore their hair simply bound by a silken snood, into which they had stuck marigolds or wild roses; while the matrons covered their heads with a handkerchief placed very backward, and secured by bodkins, flowers, and coins, to a cushion worn low in the neck, and concealed by a thick plait of hair. A band of linen, a couple of inches in width, was fastened round the brow, and completed the head-dress; and many of these were elegantly wrought with beads and coloured worsteds; I also remarked one which was decorated with small white cowries. Herein alone existed any distinction of dress between the oldest matron and the youngest maiden; the garments varying only in the richness of their material. A chemisette of white linen reaching to the throat, where it was confined by a band worked with coloured worsteds, continued down the front of the bosom, and along the tops of the large, full sleeves, was girt about the waist with two woollen aprons worn like those of Servia, but falling only to the knee; where they terminated in a deep fringe of the same colours as the apron, that descended to the ancle. Some few made use of the same unsightly sandals as those of the men, but they were principally barefooted.