with great intellectual powers; and all that was wanting was to focus them. As long as the political or _the_ life of Hungary was crippled by the autocracy of Metternich, that is, down to 1825-1830, that national focus could not be forthcoming. With the revival of the political life in and through the national Diet assembled at Pesth in 1825, the only remaining condition of a quicker and more energetic pulsation of Hungary’s literary life was fulfilled. Henceforth Hungary employed the right strategy for the able men of her literary army, and the result was a short but brilliant period of literary productions, many of which attain to the higher and some to the highest degrees of artistic perfection. And inasmuch as the creation of the national focus was the most potent cause of the unprecedented revival of Hungary’s literature, we must first treat of that glorious man who was chiefly instrumental in its realization: Count Stephen Széchenyi. CHAPTER XIX. 1825-1850. 1825-1850. Count Stephen Széchenyi, “_the greatest Magyar_” as Kossúth called him, was one of those rare patriots whose enthusiasm is tempered by the most careful respect for facts and practical probabilities, while their love of detail and material work is broadened and elevated by the noble passion of disinterested patriotism. The maxim of his life was, “Hungary has not yet been; she will be” (“_Magyarország nem volt hanem lesz_”). A scion of a magnate family he had, like Mirabeau, derived much light from the study of foreign countries. As most of his contemporaries, he was convinced that Hungary, unless aroused from her political and industrial torpor, could not in her then state claim a place amongst the civilized nations of Europe. He was by no means of a revolutionary disposition against the Habsburgs. On the contrary, he wanted to realize all the vast reforms he contemplated in peace with Austria; for being a sort of enthusiastic Walpole (—the manes of Sir Robert will pardon us that epithet!—) his activity was directed mainly, at times at least, to the bettering of the material condition of Hungary.