experiment enabled Szechenyi to secure the
assistance of English capital; the splendid
bridge of Pesth, the tunnel of Buda, the
rectification of the course of the Theis, and
the explosion of the Iron Gates, are
imperishable records of his energetic genius

CHAPTER II

Amongst the Magyar nobility, whose
feudal supremacy was menaced and shaken
by the reform movement which had been
initiated in Hungary by Szechenyi, was
a certain Baron Vesselenyi, who
resolved to obtain from personal popularity
the influence he could no longer command
from hereditary privilege. Vesselenyi, the
descendant of an ancient Palatin, was the
owner of vast estates, and a seat in the
Transylvanian as well as the Hungarian Diets.
In  character and person, this man was an
exact antithesis of the great rival whom,
for a time, it was his evil fortune to eclipse.
Szechenyi, eminently high-bred in appearance
and refined in manners, was a sincere
Liberal in all his feelings as well as
opinions, and his temperament was
naturally gentle. He was cautious, temporising,
reticent; always preferring conciliation to
violence, and compromise to conflict; an
initiative thinker, with the patience of a
practical statesman; a man of heart, with
the tact of a man of the world; a sincere
patriot, with the acquired self-restraint of
a diplomatist. Vesselenyi, with the rude
bearing of democracy, combined the
supercilious spirit of the old noblesse. Violent,
impulsive, huge of stature, slovenly in
dress, with the shaggy mane of Mirabeau,
and the reckless animal spirits of Danton,
men called him the Transylvanian giant.

He deserved the title. He had the limbs
of a pugilist, the head of an ogre, and
the heart of a wild beast. That head of
his was said to be the strongest, the
shaggiest, and the blackest head in Hungary.
In order that we may not gain have to
interrupt the thread of our narrative, we
will here sketch in a few words the political
career of this Hungarian Gracchus. The
Transylvanian Diet of 1835, carried beyond
bounds by the impetuosity of his insubordinate
eloquence, was dissolved by the
Austrian government, and he himself was
prosecuted for the publication of a seditious
harangue. The brutality of his conduct
towards his peasants, however, subjected
him to a more serious prosecution on the
charge of cruelty and personal violence.
Condemned on this charge in Transylvania,
he removed into Hungary. There, exasperated
by the loss of a considerable portion
of his fortune, he endeavoured to
revolutionise some of the comitats, and was
tried for high treason; the charge being
founded on one of his addresses to the
comitat of Szathmar. On this charge he
was condemned, and thrown into prison.
The lower chamber of the Diet, opposed
by the chamber of Magnates, in which
Szechenyi still retained a great influence,
protested seventeen times against the arrest
of Vesselenyi; and to this protest may be
referred the commencement of that hostility
between the two chambers, which prepared
the anarchy of 1848. The government,
however, satisfied with having established the
culpability of Vesselenyi before the tribunals,
released him from prison, and he
retired to Graefenberg. He was comprised
in the general amnesty of 1840; and a
course of the water cure at Graefenberg
appears to have somewhat calmed his
effervescent temperament; for we hear and
see no more of him until 1848. Then, like
a decrepit vulture, recalled to the battlefield
by the scent of carrion, and the scream
of his kindred predatory fowl, the old giant
reappears at Vienna in the factious and
fatal deputation of September; blind,
broken, dying; and with little of him left
but his inextinguishable spirit of mischief.

In 1836, this man became the idol of the
crowd. Szechenyi at this time almost
entirely withdrew from that political life
which his own genius had evoked into
activity. To the theatre of his vast
industrial undertakings he now confined his
activities. There he was incessantly busy;
planning, creating, organising. Daily some
new obstacle was surmounted, some fresh
resource was developed, some further step
was made good in the peaceful path of
material progress. Meanwhile the popular
glitter of the Transylvanian Giant was
destined to be, in its turn, obscured by the
rising star of a greater genius: a greater
genius, but scarcely a wiser man.

In the Hungarian Diets, freedom of
speech had always been practically
unlimited. But there were no public
reports of their debates. About this time,
that is to say in 1836, certain Hungarian
Magnates resolved to start a journal
of which the sole function should be to
supply that deficiency. Some of these
noblemen had been in the habit of employing,
on matters connected with their
parliamentary business, a young lawyer, who
earned by jobs of this kind a moderate
subsistence. Favourably impressed by his
intelligence and activity, they selected him
for the editorship and practical management