soon made him a
favourite with Hungarian readers.

Among the earlier of his productions, those best known are a novel
entitled, "The Common Days," and a collection of minor tales,
published under the title of "Wild Flowers."

The present volume has been written for the most part since the late
memorable national movement, and embodies descriptions of several of
the direst scenes in the civil war which devastated Hungary from the
year 1848 to 1850.

Most of the Hungarian literati were, at the close of the war, either
roaming in foreign countries, or wandering in disguise through their
native land; and the field of literature for a long time threatened to
remain neglected and barren--a monument of national grief and
desolation! Those patriotic writers who had for years wielded the pen
with the noblest impulses thought to do their duty best by letting
their highest faculties lie dormant; and laid aside the lyre rather
than bring unacceptable offerings to a fatherland laid low, and at
the mercy of foreign swords. And who will deny that there is sometimes
great virtue in silence, and that the tongue that speaks not is often
more eloquent and heroic than that which dares to utter sublime truths
even at the foot of the gibbet? Many of the noble-hearted of Hungary
resigned themselves to such a martyr-like silence, and persevere in it
to the present day; while the great bulk of the people, unwilling to
enhance the triumph of their victorious enemies by a show of
unavailing lamentation, followed their example. Pesth, which had been
the scene of literary activity, was at once deserted; the bards of
Hungary, abandoning their homes to the wantonness of a foreign
soldiery, went back to the districts whence they had come, there to
mingle with those peasants whose chivalry and patriotism afforded
constant themes to their lyres. Their renewed intercourse with their
rustic countrymen served again to revive their hopes, quenched as in
the grave.

In the sketches of Jokai, the reader will find many original
delineations of Hungarian life among the middle-class nobility--a race
of men whose manner of life and thought cannot fail to be interesting,
however cursorily described. But the Hungarian peasant is in his way
no less attractive. Nothing can be wilder than his dress, consisting
of a sheepskin cloak (bunda), or a similar habit of the coarsest
cloth, a shirt, scarcely reaching below the waist, and wide linen
drawers, to which boots