at this day has hundreds of ships engaged in the local and export trade. His most glorious work, however, was the regulation of the Theiss, resulting, in the course of time, in the reclaiming of a marshy territory containing one hundred and fifty square miles, and turning it into a rich and fertile soil. His mind was teeming, besides, with various schemes looking to the building of railways, and to the promotion of commerce and industry; but all these various undertakings were marked by the same steady spirit of patriotic endeavor. For fifteen years, up to 1840, the popularity of Széchenyi had gone on increasing throughout the country, and his name was cherished by every good 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 Széchenyi 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. Széchenyi, 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 these classes of the gentry that are, for the most part, recruited the tradespeople, 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 all Europe. These doctrines formed a sharp contrast to the views of Count Stephen Széchenyi, 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 nation was assigned to the aristocracy. It was a part, however, which the Hungarian aristocracy was itself by no means