To these structural changes in the population of Hungary, that is, to the home and internal cause of a potential revival, now came the external agency of those anti-national measures against Hungarian institutions, which Maria Theresa, with fine womanly tact, had used in a tentative manner, but which were applied by Joseph II. in the most reckless and irritating fashion. Joseph had one ideal: the homogeneous Austrian state. Like all ideals it was unrealisable. It was worse than that: it was suicidal. The Austrian empire has its very _raison d’être_ in the heterogeneity of its constituent parts. To level down the Austrian “lands” to one and the same pattern, is to deprive them of all vitality. They live by contrast to one another. Unable to be quite independent each by itself, they would, if unconnected by some common tie, only serve to aggrandize either Prussia, Russia or Italy, and so upset the balance of Europe in a fatal manner. United by the dynastic tie, they form an imposing, if incongruous whole, the component parts still retaining very much of a strong individuality. Any attempt at forcing them into blank uniformity must needs be answered by a still stronger attempt on their part to rend the dynastic tie asunder. The various provinces have, since 1648, and with respect to Hungary, since 1711, made no civil war on one another. Not one of them had, as had Prussia in Germany since Frederick II.’s time, or England since Cromwell’s time, the supremacy over the rest. Their sole union and bond was in their common dynasty. To try to reduce them to one and the same level, as Joseph II. did, was both the worst dynastic and national policy imaginable. The Austrian provinces, then or now, if reduced to complete uniformity, will first of all abolish the dynasty—as superfluous. In the _egalitarian_ ordinances of Joseph II. there was so much that was subversive of the very pillars and coping-stones of the whole Austrian edifice, that the Hungarians, as well as all the other nationalities under his rule (Belgians, Czechs, Poles, etc.), forthwith rose in a body in defence of their privileges, charters, rights; in fact, of their existence severally and collectively. The Emperor wanted to abolish the Hungarian language, Hungarian institutions, Hungarian society. At once the Hungarians, who had then almost entirely neglected their language, learned to regard it as the chief palladium of their nationality. Hungarian periodicals were started; such as the “_Magyar Múzsa_” (since 1787); “_Magyar Múzeum_” (since 1788, in Kassa); “_Mindenes Gyűjtemény_” (since 1789); “_Orpheus_” (since 1790, edited by Kazinczy); “_Urania_” (since 1794, edited by Kármán), etc. Hungarian actors were encouraged; Hungarian literary societies were started, the oldest being that founded by John Kis, at Sopron, in 1790. These efforts were immeasurably increased in efficiency by the publication of very numerous Magyar works in nearly all _genres_ of literature, and in styles