“O peacock fair, O peacock bright, O peacock proud and high! I fool! for though of lowly birth, A noble wife took I; But nothing that I e’er could do Would please my peacock high. The moon was shining in the skies When to the woods I sped; I cut a hazel rod full long, And hid it ’neath the bed. ‘Thy duty bids thee call me lord, My darling wife,’ quoth I. ‘Nay, nevermore, that will I not. And though I had to die.’ Then in my hand I took the rod And beat my bosom’s wife, Until she cried, ‘Thou art my lord! My lord for death and life!’” The Armenians deserve something more than a passing notice at the fag-end of a chapter; but having had little opportunity of being thrown together with these people, I am unable to furnish many details as to their life and manners. Persecuted and oppressed in Moldavia during the seventeenth century, the Armenians were offered a refuge in Transylvania by the Prince Michael Apafi, and came hither about 1660, at first living dispersed all over the land, till in 1791 the Emperor Leopold granting them among other privileges the right to establish independent colonies, they founded the settlements of Szamos-Ujvar (Armenopolis) and Elisabethstadt, or Ebesfalva. This latter town, which counts to-day about twenty-five hundred Armenian inhabitants, is renowned for the good looks of its women—pale, dark-eyed beauties, with low foreheads and straight eyebrows, whose portraits might be taken in pen and ink only, without any help from the palette. They have the reputation—I know not with what reason—of being very immoral, but in a quiet, unostentatious fashion. In the men the pure Asiatic type is yet more clearly marked—the fine-shaped oval head, arched yet not hooked nose, black eyes, jetty beard, and clean-cut profiles betraying their nationality at the first glance. In manner they are singularly calm and self-possessed, never evincing emotion or excitement. They are much addicted to card-playing. In many parts of Hungary the Armenians have so completely amalgamated with the Magyars as to have forgotten their own language, but where they live together in compact colonies it is still kept up. There are two languages—the popular idiom and the written tongue, the language of science and literature. Their religion is the Catholic one, but their services are conducted in their own language instead of Latin. Like the Hebrews, the Armenians have great natural aptitude for trade; and it is chiefly due to their influence that the Jews have not here succeeded in getting the reins of commerce into their hands. The bankers and money-lenders in Transylvania are almost invariably Armenians.