novel or romance writer, not being so suspicious to the censor as the politician, often intermingled his love scenes and adventures with single touches, unfinished periods, and marks of exclamation, which escaped the vigilance and attention of the scissors-holder, but were only too well understood by those to whom they were addressed. Even the literary journals, sternly interdicted from meddling with politics, swarmed with allusions to the questions of the day; and while tending to cultivate the taste of the public, their usefulness was greater than might have been expected in rearing new labourers for the field of literature. In the presence of a public eminently conservative as regards book buying, not a tenth part of the more highly gifted youth would have gone farther than the composing of some slight specimens while at college, had it not been for the encouragement given by three weekly journals. The first of these periodicals, entitled the Honderu, was started by Lazarus Horvath, a gentleman who had travelled much in Europe, and was familiar with high life, and who is known as the unsuccessful translator of Childe Harold. The two other journals, started afterwards, were conducted by Frankenburg and Vachot. It was through the medium of these latter papers that the young bard Petöfi sent forth his wild, touching strains, and that Jokai, his intimate friend, became gradually known, when the unexpected events of 1848 changed the face of the whole country. Disastrous civil feuds, commenced on the one hand by the Slavonic population in the south of Hungary, and on the other by the Wallachians or Roumins in Transylvania, were followed by a desolating general war; and for nearly two years nothing was heard but the din of arms. Two or three daily papers alone testified that literary life was not yet extinct in the nation. As almost every one did who felt in any way capable of serving his country, Jokai followed the Government (obliged to abandon the capital to the Austrians in the beginning of 1849) to the town of Debreczin, on the other side of the Theiss, where he conducted for a short time a small political Journal. The rapid progress of the Hungarian arms in the same year, followed by the Russian invasion, was, as the reader may be aware, suddenly converted into a most disastrous defeat. The subjugated country was handed over to General Haynau; the nationality of its people was destroyed, and its noblest defenders fled into other lands, or awaited certain death in their own. The country people, struck with fear and amazement, confined themselves in sombre silence to their homes, which were filled with disguised literati, and other classes of delinquents; the different races of the population, their hands yet wet with blood, gazed confusedly on the ruins of their own working; the streets of Pesth, the gay capital, were deserted, and the single voice that broke the deep silence was that which pronounced in its official organ sentences of death, imprisonment, and confiscation. In such a state the country continued for several months, when even Haynau, a few days before being removed from his post, began to loathe his work, and to sign pardons as carelessly as he had hitherto subscribed sentences of death. It was at that juncture that a few straggling literati, gradually assembling at Pesth, commenced to issue a literary periodical, to which Jokai largely contributed. The press, it must be observed, was placed under the control of the police, established on an Austrian model. The head and chief members of the police belonging to the other parts of the Austrian empire, and totally ignorant of the Hungarian language, were naturally obliged to employ some natives to peruse the literary productions and translate their contents; after due consideration of these, the verdict was passed. The consequence of such a state of things was, that very frequently a single seemingly portentous phrase, or even the mere title, doomed to oblivion the most innocent work of the brain, while more substantial writing was allowed to make its way into the country, and frequently to be again prohibited, after having become familiar to thousands.

Most of the sketches contained in this volume, and which Jokai wrote under the name of Sajo, underwent this fate. The latest production of Jokai's pen is a novel entitled The Magyar Nabob, which is highly praised. His strictly historical pieces, depicting scenes of the civil war, though recalling the more vividly to mind the dreary and not yet forgotten past, were most eagerly read in Hungary; nor will the English reader peruse without deep emotion the fate of the Bardy family, contained in this volume.

Within the last two years, the state of literature in Hungary, if judged by the number of new books published, appears astonishingly progressive. The chief reason of this phenomenon may be found in the denationalizing measures of the Government, attempting to suppress the national idiom by excluding it from the public schools, and substituting in its place the German—a policy attempted without success by Joseph II. about the end of the last century.

That the people—though now perhaps more willing than ever to give their full support to literature—are inclined to look with some suspicion at the productions of a press in the hands of foreign authorities, and that many branches of a more serious nature than novel-writing must remain excluded from the sphere of literary activity in a country subjected to martial law, need hardly be remarked.

Besides, some of the more prominent and elder authors still persevere in their sad mournful silence, while others have sunk from a state of patriotic gloom into mental imbecility. But whatever shape Hungarian literature may henceforth assume, it is undoubtedly true that much that has issued within the last few years from the Hungarian press is worth translating; and I believe that the present volume, presented in a faithful and easy translation, and likely to be soon followed by several others of a similar class, will be found to introduce the English reader to scenes hitherto undescribed, and to characters as interesting as unusual.

Emeric Szabad.

HUNGARIAN SKETCHES.

DEAR RELATIONS.

One evening, towards the end of summer, my uncle, Lorincz Kassay, the sub-sheriff of the county, was seated on a bench before his porte-cochère, which stood wide open, without bar or gate, as beseemed the entrance to the house of an hospitable Hungarian gentleman.

True, half a dozen dogs, nearly as large as bears, were lying lazily about the court, and might have rendered the entrance embarrassing to persons of hostile intention; but as for strangers in general, these honest guards were too well accustomed to see them treated as the angels were by Abraham, to take any further notice than by a friendly bark, and a slow shake of the tail.

Uncle Lorincz Kassay sat enjoying his pipe, and calling across the road to his assistant, who was likewise seated at the door of his house, enveloped in the same comfortable fumes. The conversation might have been carried on with more facility had one of these worthy gentlemen crossed to the other side—the road being wide, and a stentorian voice necessary to make one's-self understood—but the mud lay so deep between the two houses, that it was severe work for carts and carriages to get through; and when it was absolutely necessary to cross the road, the passenger was obliged to make a considerable circuit, by the garden and meadow, holding on by the rail, besides returning the same way: consequently Uncle Lorincz and