Gömör, lie conducted the magnates in
attendance on him—against whose oppression
of the peasantry he had heard many
complaints— into a vineyard. There he took a
hoe and commenced working, desiring the
magnates to follow his example; they
complied, but soon left off, complaining that
the work was too hard. The king then
said—-

"Now you have some idea of the hard
life of the poor peasant who toils for you;
treat him therefore with kindness and
forbearance, lest you destroy the source of your
wealth and thus be compelled to perform the
labour yourself."

The tradition of his virtues is handed down
like a holy relic from father to son, and still
lives in the grateful remembrance of posterity
in the following proverb:— " King Matthias
is gone, and with him justice,"  ever repeated
with a sigh of regret for the past. His time
was Hungary's golden age, often sung of by
poets, and oftener recalled by the sorrowing
nation.

Matthias died in 1490, after a reign of
thirty-two years, leaving no heirs to the
throne; with him, therefore, the family of
Hunyad became extinct. An illegitimate son,
John Corvin, inherited his name, and many
of his great qualities; but he was, unhappily
for Hungary, rejected at the next election
of king, at the suggestion of some ambitious
egotistical magnates. In spite of this
mortification, John Corvin devoted his great
military talents, as Ban of Croatia, for the
welfare of his country, and remained the
scourge of the Turks up to the time of his
early death. He left a son and a daughter,
Christopher and Elizabeth. The former soon
followed his father; the latter, heiress to his
large possessions, became the wife of the
son of John Zapolya, afterwards King of
Hungary.

                         BUTTER

BEFORE our great chemists had told us that
an infusion of oil into the human frame was
necessary to life, and why, there must have
been something puzzling to thinkers, as well
as amusing to travellers, in the inclination of
all nations for some kind of butter, which
must be had, it seems, through all obstacles
of climate and productions. We should say,
at the first glance, that nobody can get butter
of any sort in the Polar regions, nor keep
butter for five minutes at the Equator; and
there are many regions of the earth besides,
which are either burning or frozen, parched
or wet, to a degree which excludes the
English idea of a dairy altogether. What can
the Greenlander do, for instance— living in a
country where July is the only month without
snow (and not always that); where turnips
reach the size of pigeons' eggs, for a great
wonder; and where, in the cold months, the
rocks split with the sound of a cannon-shot,
and the sea reeks as if it was boiling? What
does the Greenlander do? Why, he finds oil,
thickened by the frost, a delicious butter.
He lives in a room where even spirit freezes;
and he would freeze too, but for his beloved
whale oil, which feeds in him the interior
combustion that is always going on in all of
us, and that keeps the temperature of the
human frame nearly equable in all climates
and positions. Then there is the African
under the line: what does he do for butter?
If we gave him cattle, they would presently
hang out their tongues, and conduct
themselves very like mad dogs, till, stung into
fury by hosts of insects, and panting for
breath in an atmosphere like a furnace, they
would rave, lie down bellowing, and die. We
can hardly suppose that he can milk the
lioness or the tigress, which are almost his
only animal neighbours. He milks something
rather less dreadful—his herd of trees!
The next wood is his dairy, and the shea
tree is his cow. When he was clearing a
space for his hut, he left the shea tree standing.
Its spreading shade is welcome for
itself; but the fruit, (the African olive) is
the most precious merchandise, and the most
delicious food to be found in those interior
provinces. The white kernel is boiled, beaten,
and pressed; and the oil oozes out and flakes
into a firm white butter, which Mungo Park
liked better than our finest dairy butter.
The making, and eating, and selling this
substance fills up a great part of the life
of the Bambarra peasant, who thus is in
strong sympathy, if he did but know it,
with our clever neighbour—Paddy on the
Kerry Hills.

There is no drier country than the Arabian
desert; and no shea tree grows there, nor
any other fruit-bearing tree; nor are there
oily fish, nor cattle. How then do the
Bedoueens get on for butter? Why, there is
the goat; and the goat's milk is uncommonly
rich and creamy; and the Bedoueens steal
along all day—in the shade of rocks, where
possible—following their goats, which spring
from rock to rock, and clamber into all sorts
of inaccessible places, to get at every aromatic
shoot and every tender spray and green blade
that grows in virtue of the night-dews. The
owner is busy with goats'-hair all the while,
not making wigs, which is the use we put
that hair to, but twisting it into threads and
cords, or preparing it for weaving into tent-
covers. When the shadows lengthen, telling
him the hour, he collects the flock, and the
kids come bounding to him, and the dams
follow more slowly and munch sprouts from
his hand while wife or daughter milks them.
Some of the milk is drunk fresh; but more
is kept. It becomes sour at once, of course;
and then there is the oily part to be eaten
with lentiles, and the curd for a sort of
cheese, and the whey for a very favourite
drink. Very different are the measures taken
in the wettest country— Holland— and none in