only as an
author fully versed in his country's annals, but also as a patriot
jealous of her liberties, proud of her heroic sons, and loyal to her
fame.

For fifteen years, up to 1840, the popularity of Szechenyi extended over
Hungary, and his name was cherished by every patriot in the land. About
this time, however, the great statesman was destined to come into
collision with a man who was his peer in genius and abilities. The two
patriots were representatives of different methods, and in the contest
produced by the shock of antagonistic tendencies Szechenyi was compelled
to yield to Louis Kossuth, his younger rival. Although there was no
material difference between their aims--for both wished to see their
country great, free, constitutionally governed, prosperous, and advanced
in civilization--yet in the ways and means employed by them to attain
that aim they were diametrically opposed to each other.

Szechenyi, who descended from a family of ancient and aristocratic
lineage, and presented himself to the nation with connections reaching
up into the highest circles of the court, with the lustre of his ancient
name, and with his immense fortune, wished to secure the happiness of
his country by quite different methods from those adopted by Louis
Kossuth, a child of the people, who, although he was a nobleman by
birth, yet belonged to that poorer class of gentry who support
themselves by their own exertions, and who, in Hungary, are destined to
fulfil the mission of the citizen-classes of other countries. It is from
this class of the gentry, for the most part, that are recruited the
trades-people, the smaller landowners, professional men, writers,
subordinate officials, lawyers, physicians, clergymen, teachers, and
professors. By virtue of their nobility, it is true, they belonged to
the privileged class of the country, and were not subjected to the
humiliations of the oppressed peasantry, yet they had to earn a living
by their own work, and were therefore not only accessible to, but were
ready enthusiastically to receive, the lofty message of liberty and
equality which the French Revolution of 1830 began to proclaim anew
throughout Europe.

These doctrines formed a sharp contrast to the views of Count Stephen
Szechenyi, views which, owing to the social position of the man who held
them, were not devoid of a certain aristocratic tinge, and according to
which the most important part in the regeneration of the Hungarian