At this time from some unfortunate financial speculations of his father, which were shipwrecked by the monetary crisis of 1841, the family fortune was irretrievably ruined &Mils was reduced to com parative poverty, and though a career of power and wealth would undoubtedly have been open to him if he had chosen to accept them from the Austrian court, with the sacrifice of some portion of his principles, he at once, without wavering, trusted his fortunes to the scantily remunerated labours of the pen. To demonstrate the vices of the old Hungarian system of government by county elections, he commenced a tale, intended at first to be little more than a political pamphlet in action, on the plan of Miss Martineau e' Illustrations of Political Economy.' It was published in numbers, and, as in the case of the 'Pickwick Club,' it grew both on the author and the public as it went on till at last it turned out something very superior to what either bad expected. ' A' Falu Jegyzoje,' or 'The Village Notary,' is one of the best national tales in the whole circle of European litera ture. In the second volume in particular the liveliness and vigour of the narrative, the easy and natural manner in which incident after incident keeps turning up, some of a humorous, some of a political character, and both treated with an equal mastery, present a combina tion of excellence which will not easily be matched, except in the masterpieces of Walter Scott. Strange to say, the Hungarian critics were some of the last to discover an excellence which soon carried the work into circles which no Hungarian novel had ever visited before. The English translation by Otto Wenckstern, published in 1850, with a preface by Pulszky, the author's former friend, to whom the original was dedicated, is executed with remarkable freedom and vigour, but in less close to the Hungarian than the German one by Mailath, which is an exact reproduction of the original. The Notary,' which was published in 1845, was followed in 1847 by a third romance 'Magya rorezog I514-ben,' or 'Hungary in 1514,' which is a delineation of the peasants' revolt, crushed at that time with singular cruelty by the nobles. The scene is laid on the banks of the Tcuses iu the very localities which a few years later were destined to be the theatre of tho momentous struggle which has terminated in the temporary loss of Hungarian independence. Eotvoe's political labours were continued with as much vigour as his literary ones. For some time ho wrote the leading articles in the 'Pesti llirlap,' one of the leading news papers of Hungary, and these were collected and published in a volume under the title of 'Reform.' His opponents were of course not slow to avail themselves of the old reproaches which have been directed against the combination of politics and literature, and perhaps the authorities which he cites in his defence in one of his articles will hardly be regarded as conclusive. "Richelieu," he says, "occupied himself with writing tragedies, Frederick the Great considered himself a poet, Canning is not regarded as an altogether brainless statesman, though he is the author of some fine verges, aud the whole of the last Whig ministry, which consisted almost exclusively of poets, did not govern England so badly after all—so long as it had a majority." The time was now approaching in which the whole existence of Hungary was to be shaken to its foundations. Eotviis, when after the revolution of February 1848, he went to attend the diet of I'resburg, told his friends, "I shall return a minister of state." He
was correct in his prediction. He was offered and accepted the post of minister of publie instruction in the Batthyani administration. Ile brought forward a large plan for the Improveineut of education, which was strongly opposed by different religious puttee on the same ground on which similar plans have been opposed In England, the Catholics protesting that Eiltv8a showed too much favour to the Protestants, and the Protestants to the Catholics. At length Kosauth by threatening to resign if the measure was rejected, carried it through the diet. But the headlong course of events which followed had much that was so alien to the feelings and opinions of Elitv6s that be became every day more averse to his position, and finally the out break on the bridge at Peath in which Count amberg, appointed by the emperor of Austria goicruor of Hungary, was torn to pieces by the populace, determined him to withdraw. Ile left, the country and went first to his family at. Vienna, thin' to Munich, and during the momentous crisis that succeeded remained quietly in &verbs. '• To those who know me and my way of thinking," ho wrote to a friend, "it is easy to explain why I retired, to others it la impossible." "Amid these contests," lie said on another occasion, "I feel myself useless; Heaven did not make me for a man of revolutions." Ili, friend Pulszky informs us in the preface to the English translation of the ' Village Notary,' that Eiltviis was often in the habit of relating to his friends that, when at Paris in 1837, he had visited Madame 1.4 Normant, the famous fortune-teller, and that she had told him, " You are rich; you will be poor: you will marry a rich wife ; you will be a minister of state, and you will die on the scaffold." The other portions of the prediction had been accomplished, mid Batthyani, the head of the ministry of which Eavos was a member, did die on the scaffold, a victim of the Austrian government.
From Bavaria F.8tvoe issued a German pamphlet 'On the Giving of Equal Rights.to Different Nationalities,' in which he aimed at showing that to do so was destructive of the unity and vigour of a state. lie has since returned to Hungary, and has published a large political treatise the Influence of the Leading Ideas of the Nineteenth Century on the State,' both in Hungarian and German, the German translation made by himself. The firstvolume of this work was issued in 1851, and the second in 1854. It has been remarked, and apparently with truth, that, although the ideas with which he commenced his political career were revolutionary in the extreme, Eitvos, the poet and novelist, has long been remarkable among Hungarian politicians for the sobriety and moderation of his views, which have lost him the favour of both of the extreme parties in his native country. The remark with which he commences his last work is one quite opposed to ordinary notions, yet one that is not unlikely to be ratified by posterity :—" Although it is usual to accuse the age in which we are living of the grossest materialism, a calm consideration of what is going on around us must convince any ono that scarcely a century is to be found in history in which whole nations have more readily offered up all considerations of their material welfare to the rcalisatiou of ideas."