this kingdom.  He is a very polite, agreeable, cheerful old man, wearing the Hungarian habit, with a venerable white beard down to his girdle.—­Raab is a strong town, well garrisoned and fortified, and was a long time the frontier town between the Turkish and German empires.  It has its name from the River Rab, on which it is situated, just on its meeting with the Danube, in an open champaign (sic) country.  It was first taken by the Turks, under the command of bassa Sinan, in the reign of sultan Amurath III. in the year fifteen hundred and ninety-four.  The governor, being supposed to have betrayed it, was afterwards beheaded by the emperor’s command.  The counts of Swartzenburg; and Palsi retook it by surprise, 1598; since which time it has remained in the hands of the Germans, though the Turks once more attempted to gain it by stratagem in 1642.  The cathedral is large and well built, which is all I saw remarkable in the town.  Leaving Comora on the other side the river, we went the eighteenth to Nosmuhl, a small village, where however, we made shift to find tolerable accommodation.  We continued two days travelling between this place and Buda, through the finest plains in the world, as even as if they were paved, and extremely fruitful; but for the most part desert and uncultivated, laid waste by the long wars between the Turk and the Emperor; and the more cruel civil war, occasioned by the barbarous persecution of the protestant religion by the emperor Leopold.  That prince has left behind him the character of an extraordinary piety, and was naturally of a mild merciful temper; but, putting his conscience into the hands of a Jesuit, he was more cruel and treacherous to his poor Hungarian subjects, than ever the Turk has been to the Christians; breaking, without scruple his coronation oath, and his faith, solemnly given in many public treaties.  Indeed, nothing can be more melancholy than in travelling through Hungary, to reflect on the former flourishing state of that kingdom, and to see such a noble spot of earth almost uninhabited.  Such are also the present circumstances of Buda (where we arrived very early the twenty-second) once the royal seat of the Hungarian kings, whose palace was reckoned one of the most beautiful buildings of the age, now wholly destroyed, no part of the town having been repaired since the last siege, but the fortifications and the castle, which is the present residence of the governor general Ragule, an officer of great merit.  He came immediately to see us, and carried us in his coach to his house, where I was received by his lady with all possible civility, and magnificently entertained.  This city is situated upon a little hill on the south side of the Danube.  The castle is much higher than the town, and from it the prospect is very noble.  Without the walls ly (sic) a vast number of little houses, or rather huts, that they call the Rascian town, being altogether inhabited by that people.  The governor