of the new journal. The young lawyer, poor,
ambitious, and energetic, soon organised
a small staff of scribes whose daily report
of the debates in the Diet was sent in
lithograph to the comitats. The Austrian
government prohibited and seized the
paper. Undismayed, the editor and his
patrons increased their staff of scribes;
and the journal continued to appear in
manuscript. When the session was over,
the editor, instead of suspending his journal,
devoted it to similar reports of the deliberations
of the comitats. These reports were
of a very inflammatory character. The editor
was arrested and imprisoned. The government
did not venture to bring him to open
trial, but he remained in prison three years.
At the end of that time, a general amnesty
restored him to liberty; and he
immediately entered the lower chamber of
the Diet, bringing with him a concentrated
hatred of the Austrian government, and
remarkable talents for giving effect to it.
In a short time he was among the chiefs
of the radical opposition in the lower
chamber. The influence rapidly acquired by
his astonishing eloquence he grasped with a
resolute hand, and a vindictive determination
to convert into a revolutionary force
the liberal movement created by Szechenyi.
The name of this man was Louis Kossuth.
Great reputations are rapidly worn out by
societies which are passing through a
revolutionary period; as men wear out their
boots on forced marches. Doubtless the
greatest benefit conferred by Count
Szechenyi on his country was a little group of
noble characters formed by him in his own
image; men who, like Deak and Eotvas,
are at this moment worthily continuing his
salutary policy and beneficent example. But
the public mind of Hungary, in 1840, was
too feverish to follow the orderly leadership
of such men. Kossuth (who, having
performed nothing was ready to promise
everything) became the idol of the hour.
And then, for the first and last time in the
whole of his blameless career, the Great
Magyar was for a moment untrue to his
own convictions. No eloquence could
disguise from his penetrating intellect, the
fundamental fallacies of Kossuth' s
revolutionary doctrine. But he seems, for a
moment, to have been intimidated by the
overwhelming popularity of the new
demagogue; and, only feebly deprecating the
form of that doctrine, to have virtually
implied his assent to the substance of it.
Kossuth was fully entitled to reply, as he
did, with indignant impatience: "If we
are agreed as to the substance, it is puerile
to quarrel about the form. Revolutions
are not to be carried on by polite phrases."

Szechenyi fully recognised the vexatious
and obstructive character of the connexion,
such as it had latterly been, between
Hungary and Austria; but he no less clearly
perceived that the total severance of that
connexion would, even were it practicable,
be fatal. His object was, not to sever
Hungary from the Austrian empire, but to secure
to Hungary the magnificent position which
he perceived her to be capable of assuming
in that empire; and, by means of that
empire, in Europe. His constant effort
was to bring about a better understanding
between the Hungarian people and the
Austrian government. In one of his great
speeches he says: "Fairly to appreciate
the acts of the government, we must
endeavour to place ourselves at its point
of view. We shall then perceive that
much which we are wont to attribute
to Machivelian craft, is only due to
deplorable ignorance. Similarly, it is to be
wished that the government should be
enabled and induced to place itself more
often at an Hungarian point of view— the
point of view which is furnished by our
constitutional régime. Otherwise, the most
legitimate preoccupation on behalf of our
rights will be misconstrued as seditious!"

Again, he clearly perceived that the true
destinies of Hungary could only be worked
out by developing the splendid natural
resources of the country, and the culture and
character of its people. "I have awakened
my countrymen," he used to say, "in order
that they may walk upright, and conduct
themselves like men; not in order that
they may throw themselves out of the
window." How much he achieved in
two short years towards the regeneration
and development of Hungary is amazing.
He found the national language all but
unknown; he made it universal throughout
Hungary, and obliged the Austrian government
to adopt it as the medium of all official
intercourse with its Hungarian subjects.
At his creative call, a national literature
and a national drama— those two great
agents of culture—sprang into active life.
"When," says M. Saint René Taillandier,
"we compare the moral and intellectual
culture of the Hungarians previous to
1830, with what they have become under
the influence of Count Szechenyi, the
result seems scarcely credible." "Few
men," wrote M. Langsdorff, in 1848,
"have ever effected more for the welfare of