Balázs György (szerk.): The abolition of serfdom and its impact on rural culture, Guide to the Exhibition Commemorating the 150th Anniversary of the Revolution and War if Independence of 1848-49 (Budapest-Szentendre, Museum of Hungarian Agriculture-Hungarian Open-Air Museum, 1998.)

demerits as follows: „Streets need to be kept in order not only for health's sake, but also for the sake of order and cleanliness. It will, therefore, be necessary to prescribe that no dead animals should be thrown into the streets, nor rubish, manure, and weeds. Such things should be cast into holes to be dug in the backyards, and carcasses should be buried unobjectionably. Foul waters in the streets should be drained, and no mud should be brought beside the houses from the ditches. Hogpens should not built facing the street, nor beside the neighbouring houses, but exclusively in the backyards." The conditions of Hungary in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries are illustrated in the exhibition by drawings and prints under the title „Hungary Through the Eyes of Foreign and Hungarian Travellers". The naturalistic works of art by famous Hungarian and foreign artists offer a true picture of castles, towns, and villages of that period. Genre pictures in the romantic style of the age illustrate peasant life idealized by contemporary artists. Selected quotations from some travellers' diaries, the descriptions of land and people, and works of art by contemporary artists render a comprehensive picture of the age. Let us make a journey with them in Hungary one hundred and fifty or two hundred years ago. THE REFORM DIETS AND THE BIRTH OF LEGISLATION ABOLISHING SERFDOM When the outstanding opportunities for selling wool and grains were over, all problems of the feudal system - for example, the lack of creditability, the impossibility of marketing produce, and the nobility's monopoly of land-ownership - manifested themselves ever more. Even certain members of the nobility realized that these conditions were untenable, both for economic and moral reasons. Kölcsey Ferenc, the 25