west, had renounced Satan and devoted himself to the eternal war of the children of God, and then, turning to the east, had vowed, with exalted enthusiasm, obedience and devotion to the Law of God as revealed through Christ. Now we see him, according to the custom of the Church at that time, in the act of descending into the baptismal font in order to receive from the hands of the holy bishop the sign of the Cross, the sacrament of spiritual regeneration. [Illustration: BAPTISM OF ST. STEPHEN. (From a painting by P. N. Geiger).] Pious emotion is reflected in the countenances of the attendant Magyars, although there may be discernible here and there the expression of a hidden spirit of antagonism. And the supposition of such an expression can, in no way, be called a groundless one. The worship of God on the banks of rivers, in woods and groves, the offering of sacrifices, and sundry superstitions connected with the soothsaying of the Shaman priests, certainly impressed more forcibly the minds of the free and independent dwellers of the steppes than the mass pronounced in Latin, and the rites of the Catholic Church, introduced by the monks and priests of the West. Conversion to Christianity had to be unconditionally followed up not only by the relinquishment of the old national religion, but also by the renunciation of the ancient habits and manners, to which the Hungarians clung in spite of the generations that had passed since their coming to the banks of the Danube and Theiss. The reluctance, shown here and there, must be also ascribed to the overbearing attitude assumed by the foreign missionaries towards the ruling race of the Magyars, upon whom these Bavarians, Suabians, Czechs, Italians, etc., looked down as contemptible barbarians, a title they by no means deserved, for it was only the difference in culture and not the want of culture which separated the two elements. Suffice it to say that traces of this discontent became visible very early, and that the slumbering spark broke out in open rebellion in 997, in the very year when Stephen ascended the throne, made vacant through the death of his father, Geyza. History records three different risings, which took place with the intention of doing away with the newly introduced Christian religion, together with all the changed modes of life borrowed from western civilization. In the first instance the movement was headed by Kopán, a nobleman in the county of Sümeg. His object was to drive out the foreign Christian missionaries and priests, to dethrone Stephen, and to re-establish the old pagan faith. A vast multitude of discontented Hungarians gathered under his banners, but Stephen was not at all afraid. Collecting his army and the foreign Christian knights about him, he left his regal seat Gran (Esztergom), and marched on straight against the rebels. The engagement took place in the vicinity of Veszprém. It was a hard contested struggle, and only after a bitter