absence of a central
national government; the effect of Hapsburg rule had always been to
crush the political institutions of the country, and repress its
noblest efforts, regarded as the sure forerunners of revolution. The
Court of Vienna, besides excluding from public office and emolument
such as were known for their independent principles and national
feelings, now began gradually to arrogate to itself the right of
censorship--an institution which alone would have sufficed to cripple
the intellectual progress of the country.

Such, however, was the mental activity of the present generation, that
Hungarian literature, despite the numerous obstacles it had to
encounter, made rapid progress, and created in the minds of the people
a spirit of inquiry and a desire after intellectual pursuits hitherto
unknown. Never before had the cultivated tongues of the West been so
much studied, or so many valuable translations made from the German,
French, and English literatures. That the influence of the first was
originally the strongest, and that several of the leading writers in
philosophy and history took for their model the German school, will
appear no matter of surprise. The rising writers of a more recent
date, however, insensibly turned their attention to the more lively
literature of France, and afterwards to that of Britain; and while
some read with rapture the fictions of Scott, Bulwer, and Dickens,
politicians learned to admire the doctrines of Adam Smith and Jeremy
Bentham. Of poets, none were more extensively read and more generally
admired than Byron and Moore. Thus did the merely literary progress
march on boldly and combine with the new political movement to further
a change which had already made itself felt in every grade of society,
and which was the more remarkable and satisfactory from having
followed a too long period of stagnation.

A few words will suffice, and perhaps not be superfluous, to bring to
the English reader's mind the deplorable causes of this long neglect.

The fifteenth century, which illumined the sky of Italy, and thence
reacted on the rest of Europe, brought for Hungary nothing but an
endless series of wars, distinguished by dazzling military
achievements, against the hosts of the Sultans, and turning out in the
end but useless victories, productive of most ruinous effects and
general exhaustion. The next age proved still more disastrous. The
race of the Hunyadis, who in the preceding cen