master mind is required for a proper decision. There is no great difficulty in going wrong, especially with regard to historical subjects. An ample scope may be afforded for offensive subjects. Where there is such division as among us, even in the principles of politics, it would be extremely difficult to fix on points in which all would agree in the moral or principle to be inferred; and undue importance may be attached to recent times. Some may think a great sprawling Reform dinner should demand a great portion of our walls. We will only say that we hope one thing will be a rule, that all men who have really distinguished themselves, whether in arts, arms, or any other manner that shall have highly benefited their country, shall have a place allotted for their portraits and their busts, and that the decision for this honour should rest with the Parliament. This would be a great incitement to do well-to deserve honour; and we cannot conceive any greater encouragement to art, especially as there may be no necessity of being always confined to the bare portrait. Medallions may be made, descriptive of the particular means by which each person may have merited this high distinction. One other point we will venture to touch upon, that the absurd plan of decorating ceilings with pictures, whether historical or otherwise, be for ever relinquished. Ornament them by all means, and highly, by gilding, and colour, and blazonry, with as much splendour as may be-but not with pictures, subjects which require continued view. Whatever may be seen at a momentary glance, and thereby promote the general effect, may be so placed; but to look up, and strain the neck and fatigue the eye, by making out what pictures mean in such a position, is not only painful, and engenders a wearisome disgust, but it is really an absurdity, destructive of the very intent of architecture. We do not wish to follow the arguments of the committee with regard to the proposed benefit to our manufactures. Art is not handicraft; and we regret that there should ever be an attempt to chain it to manufacture. The arts will undoubtedly benefit trade; they will, without doubt, benefit every class of society; but keep them distinct. Genius must not be VOL. L. NO, CCCXIII,

chained down to dead matter. It is of the effort of those who "Corpora quinetiam jungebant mortua vivis."

Whatever tends to raise arts and artists, tends to exalt the civilization of general society-whatever degrades them, is injurious to all. We trust to see the subject again taken up by a new committee as soon as possible, and look with no common anxiety to the result of their labours.

The above was intended for publication last month, but unavoidably postponed. Since our writing our remarks upon the Report of the last Committee, we rejoice to find, from some observations made by Sir Robert Peel in the House of Commons, that there will in all probability be formed a commission of peers, commoners, and gentlemen not in Parliament, conversant with the fine arts, appointed by the Crown, with Prince Albert at its head, to investigate the subject left so incomplete by the former commission, with more particular attention to the general encouragement of the arts, and particularly to their application in embellishing the new Houses of Parliament. This is as it should be. A commission with Prince Albert at its head, will not be satisfied with low or mutilated views. The public will expect something worthy such a commission. We see from this that Sir Robert Peel's mind is in it. What the public-the public a great nation-not the stinting, coldly calculating false economists, who too often choose to establish themselves as the public-require, will be done. It is said that Prince Albert has a great love for art-a love not unaccompanied by practical knowledge. This, too, is a circumstance to give great hope and expectation of the results of the new commission-that we should have a prince at its head, who has that great qualification which the accomplished Castiglione thought so essential to the character of his "Complete Courtier."

We see, too, in this commission, nothing incompatible with the view we have taken, that ultimately the entire management should be in the hands of a " Minister of the Fine Arts," and that that minister should be Sir Robert Peel.

2 R

Frangipan, the valiant Ban of Illyria, who was slain in besieging Waradin. In this extremity, he took refuge among his strongholds in Transylvania; and thence commenced negotiations for aid, on the one hand with his brother-in-law the king of Poland, while, at the same time, he dispatched a confidential agent to Constantinople, in order to solicit in his behalf the potent intervention of the Sultan Soliman, who might, in virtue of the campaign of Mohácz, claim to exercise the rights of a lordparamount.

The management of this delicate mission was confided to Jerome Lasczki, a Pole of noble birth, and palatine of Sirad in that kingdom, who appears to have combined in an extraordinary degree the qualifications of a diplomatist with those of a soldier. He arrived at the Porte in December 1527; but his first interview with the all-powerful grand vizir Ibra him, was far from portending a favourable result to his embassy. "Knowest thou not," (exclaimed the haughty favourite of the sultan,) that the ground whereon the war steed of the Commander of the Faithful has set his hoof-print, becomes thenceforward inalienably annexed to his empire? How then has thy master, who is less than the least of the loyal slaves of our Sublime Porte, dared to enter and take up his residence in the royal castle of Buda, where the Padishah himself had reposed after the toils of war? And how comest thou here, not with tribute in thy hand as a suppliant imploring grace and favour, but audaciously claiming the friendship and protection of my auspicious sovereign, in the terms of a son requiring aid from his father?" Such was then, and such continued to be for more than a century later, the arrogant tone of the Ottoman diplomacy but the pride of the vizir* was soon conciliated by the adroit flattery of Lasczki, and the views of the ambassador were further facilitated by the acquisition of an able auxiliary, in the person of the notorious Aloysio

Gritti. This singular personage (who afterwards acted an important part in the troubled drama of Hungarian politics, and was assassinated in Transylvania in 1535) was an illegitimate son of the reigning Doge of Venice; and though holding no ostensible employment at the Ottoman court, had con.. trived, by an unscrupulous exercise of Italian finesse, to render himself indispensable in conducting the Turkish relations with foreign powers, and fully to establish himself in the confidence of the vizir. His representations soon convinced the divan of the advantages to be derived from accepting the voluntary submission of Zapolya, who might, with little difficulty, be established on the Hungarian throne as a vassal prince, in complete subservience to the Porte; and Lasczki was admitted to the honour of a private audience of Soliman, who announced to him his gracious intention of granting to his master the conquered kingdoms of Magyar and Erdel, (Hungary and Transylvania,) and of putting him in possession of his dominions by the expulsion of Ferdinand. On this basis was signed (Feb. 29, 1528) the first treaty of alliance between Hungary and the Porte, by which Zapolya, as far as in him lay, surrendered the independence of his country, and solemnly acknowledged the supremacy of the Sultan.

The tidings of the treaty thus concluded, struck the councillors of Ferdinand with consternation; and no time was lost in forwarding an embassy, (the first from Austria to the Porte,) in the hope of averting the wrath of the puissant arbitrator who had assumed the decision of the Hungarian quarrel. The envoys, Hobordanski and Weichselberger, reached Constantinople at the end of May; but the tenor of their instructions, in which Ferdinand assumed the tone of equality befitting a powerful sovereign, was little calculated to find favour with the Ottoman ministers ; and the personal character of the ambassadors, rough soldiers, trained in the wars of the Austrian and Illyrian

borders, still further unfitted them for coping with the subtle Lasczki in the labyrinth of intrigue enveloping an Oriental court. On a proposition being at length made for the restitution of Belgrade and the other frontier fortresses, Ibrahim, transported with rage, demanded "why they had not also required the cession of Constantinople?" and ordered them to be imprisoned in the Seven Towers. Their confinement lasted till the spring of the following year, (1529,) when the military preparations being complete, they were dismissed with an insulting message, "that the Sultan would speedily come and confer in person with their master, and if he were not to be found in Hungary, would seek him at Vienna!" It was at this juncture that the extraordinary rank of serasker-alsultanat (alluded to in a previous chapter) was conferred on Ibrahim, who was thereby elevated almost to an equality with the sultan himself, and allowed the unheard-of privilege of having six horsetails, and seven standards of various colours borne before him in public. With all the pomp of their united cortège, Soliman and Ibrahim repaired in company (May 9) to the camp at Daood- Pasha, where 250,000 men of all arms, drawn from every government of the empire, were mustered and passed in review before them: and on the following day the whole vast host was put in motion, and pressed forward towards the Drave and the Danube.

The march was conducted for two months with the order and regularity of a peaceful procession, till, on the 19th of July, the advanced guard was encountered on the plains of Mohácz by Lasczki, who had been sent forward with 6000 Transylvanian horse to announce the approach of his master, Zapolya. The morrow saw the humiliation of Hungary in the person of her nominal monarch, on the same ominous spot which had witnessed the fall of the last of her inde

pendent kings. After traversing the ranks of the janissarios, who stood mute and motionless, holding_white wands (as usual on occasions of public ceremony) in lieu of arms, Zapolya was introduced into the imperial tent, where, in the presence of the dignitaries of the Ottoman court, and the principal officers of the army, he knelt and kissed the hand of Soliman, who had risen from his throne and advanced three steps to receive his new vassal. On the completion of the act of homage, "the kral Yanush" (John,) as the Ottoman writers term Zapolya, "was seated on the right hand of the Padishah, while the grandvizir, with Ayaz and Kassim, the second and third vizirs of the bench, remained standing on the left: the sultan, moreover, addressed Yanush with words of benignity and assurances of continued favour, and presented him at his departure, in token of beneficence, with four caftans of cloth of gold, and three Nejd horses, with their caparisons studded with gold and jewels. So Yanush returned from the Salamlik, (place of audience,) with his face whitened and his heart expanded, having found favour with the Padishah of the Moslems."

Buda was still held for Ferdinand by a German garrison, under a Hungarian noble named Nadasti; but these mercenaries were panic-stricken at the first appearance of the Turkish force; and, in spite of the efforts of their commander, they surrendered the place (September 9) after a siege of six days, and before even a breach had been opened, on a promise of personal safety. But the janissaries, enraged at losing the anticipated plunder of the town, massacred these dastards in defiance of the capitulation: the brave Nadasti alone escaped, by committing himself to the stream of the Danube in an oarless skiff; and being happily stranded on the further shore, close to the quarters of Zapolya, he was pardoned and pro

tected by the Transylvanian prince. The capture of Buda was, however, only a secondary object in the expedition and Soliman, after deputing to Gritti the task of installing the Vaivode anew in the palace and throne of the ancient kings, left a Turkish garrison for his support and protection, and announced by a proclamation to his troops, that their further destination was Vienna: the order for the march being issued three days only after the fall of the Hungarian capital.

Vienna, called by the Turks, Betj, and often Kizil-Alma, the Red Apple (or metropolis) of Germany, was at this period a place of far less extent and comparative importance than at present. Though the capital of the hereditary territories of the House of Hapsburg, it was only at intervals the residence of the Emperors, whose political system had hitherto been principally directed towards France and Italy, rather than the eastern countries of Europe; and, at the close of the preceding century, it had even been seized by the Hungarian king, Matthias Corvinus, who annexed it during several years to his own dominions. Charles V. had never since his birth visited his patrimonial states, and at this time had been nearly seven years absent in Spain: and his brother and vicegerent Ferdinand, king of Bohemia, and nominally of Hungary, lacked both influence and authority to obtain succour from the princes of the empire, then occupied by the religious and political disputes of the Protestants and Catholics. Resistance in the field, therefore, to the vast advancing tide of Turks and Hungarians, (for many of the adherents of Zapolya had proffered their services against the hated Germans,) was evidently hopeless; nor did Ferdinand venture to trust his own person within the walls of the devoted city, but retired into the upper provinces, leaving the defence of Vienna to his lieutenants. The Count Nicholas of Salms, the reputed captor of Francis I. at Pavia, acted as governor of the city; and John of Hardeck, William of Roggendorf, with other German nobles whose prowess had been proved in the Italian wars, held subordinate commands over the Austrian soldiers; while the auxiliaries furnished by the empire were under the orders of the Count-Palatine Philip of Bavaria. The troops of the garrison amounted

to 16,000 lanzknechts, and 2000 cavalry; and their zeal was stimulated by the presence of not a few volunteers scions of the most illustrious houses of Spain, who had hastened from their native country to testify their ardour in the cause of their faith and the service of their common sovereign, by aiding in the defence of the frontier bulwark of Christendom against the Moslem invader.

This force would appear abundantly sufficient for the defence of a city, the circuit of which (corresponding nearly with what is now called the Stadt, or old town within the glacis) was less than three miles, and which was further protected on one side by the narrow branch of the Danube, separating it on the N.E. from the islands now occupied by the Prater and the Leopoldstadt suburb. Of the eleven or twelve gates of modern times, only sevent existed at this period; and the suburbs, the inhabitants of which, at the present day, constitute at least five-sixths of the population, were limited to a narrow belt of houses and gardens without the walls. But the defences of the town (which had never been besieged in form since the introduction of artillery in war) called for all the exertions of the garrison to render them tenable against the numbers and military skill on the point of being brought to bear on them, consisting only of a dry ditch, and a rampart of brick and earth, without bastions, or salient and reentering angles; in many parts not more than six feet thick, and unfit from its height and weakness to have heavy guns mounted on it. The short respite which the march of the Turks afforded, was anxiously employed in improving these imperfect fortifications; a cavalier, or broad bank of earth, was thrown up in the rear of the old wall, and bastions and batteries were hastily constructed on various weak points; while the suburbs were razed to prevent their affording shelter to the numerous tirailleurs and archers of the enemy; and those houses within the walls which had wooden roofs shared the same fate, in order to obviate the danger of fire from the missiles of the besiegers.

The march of Soliman from Buda, along the right bank of the Danube, (though impeded, as in the campaign of Mohácz, by heavy rains which made the country almost impassable,)