The Emperor's ordinances were coolly shelved, not even read, and with a few exceptions, all his commands proved abortive. Many Hungarians admitted then, as others do now, that Joseph's reforms were in more than one respect such as to benefit Hungary. Yet no Hungarian wanted to purchase these reforms at the expense of the hoary and holy Constitution of the country. Joseph, in commanding all those reforms, without so much as asking for the consent of the Estates, violated the very fundamental principle of the Hungarian Constitution. This the Hungarians were determined to resist to the uttermost. In the end they vanquished the ruler, who shortly before his death withdrew nearly all his ordinances, and so confessed himself beaten. It is in the midst of these historic and psychological circumstances that Jókai laid his fascinating novel. A young Hungarian nobleman, indignant at the illegality and injustice of public officials of his native town, who shamefully exploit the poor of the district, approaches the Emperor with a view to get his authorisation for measures destined to put an end to the criminal encroachments of the said officials. The Emperor gives him that authority. But far from strengthening young Ráby's case, the Emperor thereby exposes him to the unforgiving rancour of both guilty and innocent officials who desperately resent the Emperor's unconstitutional procedure. The novel is the story of the conflict between the young noble and the Emperor on the one hand, and the wretched, but in the nature of the case, more patriotic officials, on the other. As in all such cases, where virtue appears either at the wrong time, or in the wrong shape, the ruin of the virtuous is almost inevitable, while no student of human nature can wholly condemn his otherwise corrupt and despicable enemies. In that conflict lies both the charm of the novel and its tragic character. As in all his stories, Jókai fills each page with a novel interest, and his inexhaustible good humour and exuberant powers of description throw even over the dark scenes of the story something of the soothing light of mellow hilarity. EMIL REICH. _London, Nov. 1st, 1909._ CONTENTS.