f the stranger, and saw her best and
noblest sons either voluntary exiles, or suspected rebels under police
surveillance. Jokai also was in the category of the proscribed. He had
played a conspicuous part in the Revolution; he had served his country
with both pen and sword; and, now that the bloody struggle was over, and
the last Honved army had surrendered to the Russians, Jokai,
disillusioned and broken-hearted, was left to piece together again as
best he might, the shattered fragments of a ruined career.

No wonder, then, if to the author of "Szomoru Napok," the whole world
seemed out of joint. The book itself is, primarily, a tale of suffering,
crime, and punishment; but it is also a bitter satire on the crying
abuses and anomalies due to the semi-feudal condition of things which
had prevailed in Hungary for centuries, the reformation and correction
of which had been the chief mission of the Liberal Party in Hungary to
which Jokai belonged. The brutal ignorance of the common people, the
criminal neglect of the gentry which made such ignorance possible, the
imbecility of mere mob-rule, and the mischievousness of demagogic
pedantry--these are the objects of the author's satiric lash.

As literature, despite the occasional crudities and extravagances of a
too exuberant genius that has yet to learn self-restraint, "Szomoru
Napok" stands very high. It is animated by a fine, contagious
indignation, and its vividly terrible episodes, which appal while they
fascinate the reader, seem to be written in characters of blood and
fire. The descriptions of the plague-stricken land and the conflagration
of the headsman's house must be numbered among the finest passages that
have ever flowed from Jokai's pen. But the mild, idyllic strain, so
characteristic of Jokai, who is nothing if not romantic, runs through
the sombre and lurid tableau like a bright silver thread, and the
_denouement_, in which all enmities are reconciled, all evil-doers are
punished, and Gentleness and Heroism receive their retributive crowns,
is a singularly happy one.

Moreover, in "Szomoru Napok" will be found some of Jokai's most original
characters, notably, the ludicrous, if infinitely mischievous, political
crotcheteer, "Numa Pompilius;" the drunken cantor, Michael Korde, whose
grotesque adventure in the dog-kennel is a true _Fantasiestueck a la
Callot_; the infra-human Mekipiros; the half-crazy Leather-bell; and
that fine, soldierly type, General Verte