Such were the feelings which animated me when I settled down in surroundings altogether apart from my studies, my desires and views of life, and such also were the feelings which made me proof against all the attacks and slights of a criticism animated more by ignorance than intentional ill-will. I simply revelled in the enjoyment of these first weeks and months of my new career. The healthy hunger for work acted like a precious tonic, the old indestructible cheerfulness returned, and when after my daily labour of eight or ten hours I went for a walk in the country I fancied myself the happiest man on earth. On account of the marked difference of treatment I had received in England and in Hungary, and in order not to subject myself to unnecessary slights, I had at home avoided all social intercourse as far as I possibly could. Thus on the one hand I had all the more leisure for my work, and on the other hand, through my large correspondence with foreign countries, I was led to remove the centre of gravity of my literary operations and the chief aim and object of my pursuits to foreign lands. At first this necessity troubled me; but the remark of my noble patron, Baron Eötvös, that Hungary never could be the field of my literary labours, and that I should benefit my native land far more by putting the products of my pen upon the world's market in foreign languages soon comforted me. I wrote mostly in German and English, and enlarged my mind in various branches of practical and theoretical knowledge of Asiatic peoples and countries. Two years had scarcely passed before my pen was the most in request on subjects of the geographical, ethnographical, philological, scientific, and political literature of Central Asia--in fact, of the whole Moslemic East. During this period I saw the realisation of the boldest ideas of my early days, and only now began to reap the benefit of my studies. I read the different European and Asiatic languages without the help of a dictionary, and as in most of them I had had practical experience, I could understand them the more easily, and also write in them. Gradually I had got together a small library of special books, and on account of the lively correspondence I kept up with my fellow-literati and friends of Oriental study, I was enabled to work with energy far from the centre of my studies as linguist, ethnographer, and editor. Now and then the want of intellectual stimulus and personal intercourse with my fellow-labourers made itself felt. I longed particularly for an interchange of ideas with authorities on the East, as in Pest itself I could only meet with a few orthodox scholars of Ural-Altaic comparative philology; but in the zeal and enthusiasm for one's undertaking one easily dispenses with encouragement, and with the device, "_Nulla dies sine linea_," which I always conscientiously followed, I must ultimately reach the goal and overcome all obstacles.