It would be a mistake to imagine, from the Eastern origin of the Magyars, that the tales and romances to be found in the Hungarian language bear any resemblance to the _Arabian Nights_, or the familiar poetry of the East in general. None of the writers above mentioned carries the reader to fairy realms, and superhuman characters. In plot, tendency, and execution, Hungarian prose fiction is identified with the modern novel of the rest of Europe--deriving, withal, its most pleasing characteristics from the peculiar features of Hungarian life and history, as well as from the native idiom, which differs entirely in its figures, and many of its expressions, from the other cultivated languages. It must, however, here be added, that the more the time approached to the great catastrophe, the more the general literature partook of a political character--a circumstance attributable to the censorship, which did not allow political questions to be discussed in their proper place. The 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