"
EDWARD A. FREEMAN.
BORN 1823.
RACE AND LANGUAGE.
BY EDWARD A. FREEMAN.
It is no very great time since the readers of the English newspapers
were, perhaps a little amused, perhaps a little startled, at the story
of a deputation of Hungarian students going to Constantinople to present
a sword of honor to an Ottoman general. The address and the answer
enlarged on the ancient kindred of Turks and Magyars, on the long
alienation of the dissevered kinsfolk, on the return of both in these
later times to a remembrance of the ancient kindred and to the friendly
feelings to which such kindred gave birth. The discourse has a strange
sound when we remember the reigns of Sigismund and Wladislaus, when we
think of the dark days of Nikopolis and Varna, when we think of Huniades
encamped at the foot of Haemus, and of Belgrade beating back Mahomet the
Conqueror from her gates. The Magyar and the Ottoman embracing with the
joy of reunited kinsfolk is a sight which certainly no man would have
looked forward to in the fourteenth or fifteenth century. At an earlier
time the ceremony might have seemed a degree less wonderful.
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