ed, it will
seem very natural, that with the awakening of the national mind the
career of literature, suddenly interrupted by the late war, should be
bold, steadily progressive, and triumphant, despite the narrow and
contemptible canons of censors. As to prose fiction, it must be
observed that it is of quite recent growth. The beginning of this
species of composition was made about fifteen years ago by Baron
Nicholaus Josika, who soon found successful rivals in Kuthy and Baron
Eoetvoes. Jokai, who is now the favourite of the public, belongs, as has
been already observed, to the younger staff of writers.

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 fo