r 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 Petoefi 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
(obliged to abandon the capital to the Austrians in the beginning of
1849) to the town of Debreczin, on the other side of the Theiss, where
he conducted for a short time a small political Journal. The rapid
progress of the Hungarian arms in the same year, followed by the
Russian invasion, was, as the reader may be aware, suddenly converted
into a most disastrous defeat. The subjugated country was handed over
to General Haynau; the nationality of its people was destroyed, and
its noblest defenders fled into other lands, or awaited certain death
in their own. The country people, struck with fear and amazement,
confined themselves in sombre silence to their homes, which were
filled with disguised literati, and other classes of delinquents; the
different races of the population, their hands yet wet with blood,
gazed confusedly on the ruins of their own working; the streets of
Pesth, the gay capital, were deserted, and the single voice that broke
the deep silence was that which pronounced in its official organ
sentences of death, imprisonment, and confiscation. In such a state
the country continued for several months, when even Haynau, a few days
before being removed from his post, began to loathe his work, and to
sign pardons as carelessly as he had hitherto subscribed sentences of
death. It was at that juncture that a few straggling literati,
gr