We said, Kemény is the Balzac of Hungary. We did not say, he was equal to Balzac. In Hungary a full-fledged Balzac can as yet not be expected. No amount of native genius will enable a man to overcome obstacles such as stand in the way of him who should undertake to do for Hungarian society what Balzac did for French. The France of Louis-Philippe was infinitely better adapted to the writing of its “_Comédie humaine_,” than the Hungary of Kemény’s time. Hungary is far from being as homogeneous as is France. In the latter country, despite much variety in language and social institutions, there is one pervading common spirit in all classes and peoples of the state. Whether Norman or Gascon, the citizen of France is chiefly a Frenchman, with distinctly French ideas and sentiments. France is the country of the French. Hungary is not the country of the Hungarians; it is a trysting-place of nations rather than the country of one nation. There are not only classes and ranks, but each class or rank differs according to the nation it belongs to. The Magyar _bourgeois_ is not like the Slav _bourgeois_; and both differed, especially in Kemény’s time, from the German _bourgeois_. No one, certainly not Kemény, can claim an intimate knowledge of all the nations in Hungary; and thus no one has, as yet, so profoundly impregnated himself with as immense an array of social facts as had Balzac before he wrote his great novels. Balzac knew the entire anatomy and physiology of the peasant, the soldier, the clergyman, the provincial, the Parisian, the maid, the _concierge_, the _bourgeoise_, the _grande dame_, the actress, the scholar, the lawyer, the speculator, the _viveur_, the diplomatist—in short, of every shade of character that went to form French society. In Hungary, such a knowledge could not be acquired. Familiarity with ten to twelve languages is required to know the full anatomy and physiology of the peasants in Hungary alone. To do, therefore, for Hungarian society what Balzac had done for French; to write the Hungarian “_Comédie humaine_” has so far been practically impossible; nor did Kemény do it. And yet, within the narrow limits of his arena, Kemény worked with the spirit and genius of Balzac. That his capacity was essentially akin to that of the great French writer there can be no doubt. It was not of the same comprehensiveness. Balzac had humour and wit; Kemény had none. Balzac had an exquisite sense of proportion, if not always in his style, at least always in the architecture of his plot; Kemény had not. Balzac was an encyclopædist of the human heart, in that he knew women as well as men; Kemény knew men far better than women. Balzac’s range of observation being greater, his mind was subtler even than that of Kemény. Yet, with all that, Kemény’s genius was essentially akin to that of Balzac. He, too, had that vast knowledge of historic events and that interest in scientific researches