The gipsies (zigeuner) have given their name to the lofty hill, the Zigeunersberg by the Danube side, on which are the ruins of the castle of Hungary’s chief national hero, John Hunyadi (whose name in its Hungarian form, Hunyadi Janos, is familiar all the world over as that of a medicinal mineral water!). The hill should be climbed for the view it affords far over the Danubian plain; of the broad flowing Danube, where it is joined by the seemingly greater Save; of the valleys of these two rivers; and of the towns and roofs of the “White City” of Servia--Belgrade. It is a magnificent view, and while contemplating it we may well remember something of the famous hero who lived in the old-time castle hundreds of years ago--within sight of the town before which he had repeatedly shown his prowess in fighting the Turks in days when the Crescent threatened to dominate a large part of Europe. Though the historians tell us that Hunyadi was the son of a small landowner, popular tradition gives him a more romantic origin, for the story runs that his father was no less a person than King Sigismund. It is said that the king, being in Transylvania, became enamoured of a beautiful young woman, Elizabeth Morsiani, to whom he presented a ring, saying that if she ever brought it to the palace, he would fulfil the promises which he had made “to load their child with honours.” Some months later Elizabeth married a Wallachian nobleman, and soon after gave birth to a son, to whom was given the name of Janos or John. When King Sigismund had his camp in the neighbourhood, Elizabeth visited him, showing the child and the ring, on which occasion the king renewed his promises, and told her to go to Buda, which, after her husband’s death, she did. One day little John was playing with his mother’s ring, when a crow flew down and carried it off. The boy, we may be sure, cried out, when the king, who happened opportunely to be passing, heard him, shot the bird, and was greatly astonished to recognize the token which he had given the Transylvanian maiden some years before. On finding out who the boy was, the monarch adopted him, gave him a military education, and when he grew up, gave him the estate of Hunyadi, in Transylvania, and many villages, and granted him as his coat-of-arms a crow carrying a ring in its beak. Thus it was that John acquired his surname, and also the nickname of Corvinus, which is most frequently associated with his son Matthias. This is one of several versions of the romantic story which has grown up about the fame of Hungary’s national hero--the man who in the fifteenth century saved the kingdom again and again, who again and again drove back the tide of Turkish conquest. Gibbon says of him that “the idea of a consummate general is not delineated in his campaigns. The White Knight [Philip de Commines calls him the White Knight of Wallachia] fought with the hand rather than the head, as the chief of desultory Barbarians, who attack