The activity of this institute has proved, for the last fifty years, most beneficial to the development of the Hungarian language and the advancement of science in the country. This munificent act placed Széchenyi at once in the front ranks of the nation, and the very enthusiasm roused by his generous patriotism was the means of exciting his best energies, and of spurring him on to further action. Széchenyi, although acting, on the whole, with the exceedingly moderate opposition, which was conservative and not unfrequently quite reactionary, influenced as it was by the famous policy of Prince Metternich, never became a member of either of the political parties. His leading idea was that the first thing to be done was to improve the material and intellectual condition of the people, and to increase the prosperity and culture of the country. He had founded in the interest of civilization the Hungarian Academy, and now he labored enthusiastically to improve the commercial, industrial, and economical condition of the country. In this work he had to contend with all sorts of obstacles and prejudices on the part not only of the higher circles, but of the very class that was to be benefited by his reforms. But Széchenyi did not lose heart, and, undisturbed by many a bitter experience, he undeviatingly pursued his own course, and carried through with an iron will every measure deemed beneficial by him. His busy brain never ceased to devise new patriotic schemes, and to make them acceptable to the people. He won back the estranged aristocracy of the country, and assigned to them a leading position in national politics; he strove to raise the capital to a European level, and advanced the national prosperity by the discovery of new resources, the opening of new roads of communication, and by the creation of many useful public institutions. He had equal regard for the interests of all classes, from the lord to the peasant, and thus strove, while yet surrounded by the antiquated order of things, to awaken the people to a sense of national consciousness, and to promote the recognition of the solidarity of interests between all the classes of the nation. His busy brain embraced every public interest, and he exerted every social and economical agency to ripen in the nation the notions of modern European civilization. He was a powerful agitator, in equal degrees master of the sword and the pen, and although his whole individuality, his character, and his habits bore the stamp of the aristocratic circle in which he was born and educated, yet, by dint of his conspicuous and many-sided labors, he in reality was the most indefatigable champion and pioneer of democratic ideas in his own country.