They are essentially a _bourgeois_ nation, possessing neither titles nor nobility of their own, although many can boast of lengthy pedigrees. Those who happen to be _adel_ (noble) have only obtained their _von_ in some exceptional manner in later times, and the five-pointed crown seems somewhat of an anomaly. Although the Saxons talk of Germany as their father-land, yet their patriotic feeling is by no means what we are accustomed to understand by that word. Their attachment to the old country would seem rather to be of prosaic than romantic sort. “We attach ourselves to the German nation and language,” they say, endeavoring to explain the complicated nature of their patriotism, “because it offers us the greatest advantages of civilization and culture; we should equally have attached ourselves to any other nation which offered us equal advantages, whether that nation had happened to be Hungarian, French, or Chinese. If the Hungarians had happened to be more civilized than ourselves, we should have been amalgamated with them long ago.”[5] Such an incomprehensible sort of patriot would probably have been condemned by Scott to go down to his grave “unwept, unhonored, and unsung.” But I suppose that allowances must be made for their peculiar position, and that it is difficult to realize what it feels like to be a grafted plant. There is one village in Transylvania which, isolated in the midst of a Hungarian population, offers an instance of a more complex species of nationality than any I have yet heard of. This is the village of Szass Lona, near Klausenburg, which used to be Saxon, but where the people have gradually forgotten their own mother-tongue and can only speak Hungarian. There is, however, no drop of Hungarian blood in their veins, as they marry exclusively among themselves; and they have retained alike the German type of feature and the national Saxon dress intact in all its characteristics. Also the family names throughout the village are German ones—as Hindrik, Tod, Jäger, Hubert, etc. Though none of these people can speak a word of German, and no one can remember the time when German was spoken in the village, yet during the revolution of 1848 these Hungarian-speaking Germans rose to a man to fight against the Magyars. The Saxon dialect—totally distinct from modern German—has, I am told, most resemblance to the patois spoken by the peasants near Luxemburg. It is harsh and unpleasant to the ear, but has in some far-off and indefinable way a certain caricatured likeness to English. Often have I been surprised into turning round sharply in the street to see who could be speaking English behind me, only to discover two Saxon peasants comparing notes as to the result of their marketing. The language, however, differs considerably in different neighborhoods; and a story is told of natives of two different Saxon villages, who, being unable to understand one another, were reduced to conversing in Roumanian.