THE CROWN OF HUNGARY.
It seems that the Royal Insignia of Hungary have lately been dug out of a hole in a very damaged condition. The Crown was cracked, and the cloak of St. Stephen, which, if it had been "made to measure" for the Saint himself, must have been rather the worse for wear, was so injured by damp that if St. Stephen's mantle should fall on anybody else the result could only be rheumatism. The garment cannot, however, have been worth much, for if it was the cloak that the Hungarian royalty used to wear, it had long ago become transparent, and might have been seen through very easily. We have not heard how the rubbish came to be discovered; but as the cloak was very seedy it may have sprung up, as anything of a seedy nature is apt to do when buried in the ground, and thus given a clue to its own discovery. Who got the Crown into the mess in which it was found is not a question very difficult of solution; but it is clear that those who imputed its abstraction to M. Kossuth, were as much in the dark as many of the acts and deeds of the Austrian Government. When a Crown is dragged in the dirt and degraded, the probability is, that he whom the cap fits is the one whose head it ought to rest upon.
A WORD FOR THE HOTEL-KEEPERS.
SEVERAL correspondents of the Times have been writing themselves into a great rage lately, about what they are pleased to call the "Iniquity of our present Hotel system." They complain, with a warmth of expression which is really very seasonable, that go where you will throughout the kingdom, you'll not find an Inn which is not inn-convenient—to your person, certainly, if not to your purse. Everywhere, they say, you'll be charged a good price for bad accommodation: and the larger the establishment, the smaller is your chance of escaping imposition. If you order a light dinner, you may be sure, nevertheless, you'll have to pay a heavy price for it. If wine be your beverage, you'll be charged three and sixpence for a glass and a half of Cape, served in a vinegar-cruet and called "a pint of Sherry:" or, if you drink beer, you will get a jug of what it were a bitter raillery to call bitter ale, and which, however nasty, you'll be charged a nice sum for. So that, in either case, the process of selling these liquids may be said invariably to include the purchaser. Your candles, too, they say, which figure so highly as "wax" in the bill, will prove in the candlestick to be as bad a composition as the fourpence in the pound of a fraudulent bankrupt: and whether lit or not, there's still the burning shame that you're to pay just the same for them. For "attendance," too, you are charged about as much as for a lawyer's: half-a-crown a day being no uncommon item for the luxury of sometimes looking at a waiter. And if you want a horse, you'll find there's not one in the stable but what's made a heavy charger.
Another of their complaints is, that in the fitting up of our hotels there is as much bad taste as in the wines you cannot drink there. For, while the second-class houses are barely half-furnished, those which are anomalously styled "first-rate" are as much over-done as the victims who frequent them, all the rooms being crammed to every corner with a lot of ugly furniture, for which nevertheless you've to pay pretty handsomely.
In short, the British Innkeeper, as these writers represent him, figures as a sort of human apteryx, who supports himself entirely by the length of his bill.