These are some of the most important intellectual reforms which, from 1825 to 1848 completely changed the face of the Hungary of olden times. While previous to 1825, all attempts at reform were restricted to small circles and straggling individuals, and could, therefore, bear no fruit for the nation at large, now the efforts for the renascence of the material and intellectual life of the country were concentrated by the creation of a true capital of social, literary and scientific centres; by the co-operation of great numbers of patriotic and able men; and by the powerful, nay, in Hungary, all-powerful stimulus imparted to all the energies of the nation through the revival of its ancient parliamentary life. In Hungary, as well as in England, Parliament is the soul of the body-politic. The stagnation of parliamentary life in Hungary from 1813 to 1825 was almost tantamount to the stagnation of all the other intellectual energies of the nation. From 1825 onward, the National Assembly met frequently; the Magyar language was again used in the debates, and many reforms that had proved unrealizable in the hands of private reformers, were carried out by the power of the nation assembled in Parliament. The constant opposition offered to all reforms in Hungary, at the hands of the Vienna government, only acted as a further stimulus to the Hungarians; and within the five-and-twenty years of the present period, Hungary advanced by leaps and bounds, both in its politic and literary development. CHAPTER XX. The _rôle_ of Kazinczy as mentor and model for the younger generation of his time was now allotted to a very gifted poet, Charles Kisfaludy, brother of Alexander (see page 101). He was born in 1788, and like his brother, became a soldier in the Austrian army. His proud father, on learning that he had, in 1811, thrown up his military career, disowned him; and Charles had to rough it in wild wanderings over Europe amidst great privations. Yet his mind, singularly widened by the view and study of European civilization, was thereby so strengthened and developed, that on his return to his country (1817), he contrived to rise from abject poverty to comparative comfort by his own literary exertions. His dramas, some of which he wrote in the course of a few days, were at once so intensely relished by the public, that Kisfaludy, who produced with equal ease poetic works of lyric or epic character, quickly became the centre of the literary life of Hungary. The “_Aurora_,” a literary periodical founded by him in 1822, was enriched by the contributions of the foremost writers, mostly his followers; and he himself was the rallying personality for the new literary movement. Alas! his body, less elastic than his mind, could never overcome the effects of his wanderings, and he died of consumption in 1830.