The dominant race was the Magyars, who numbered, however, only a third of the total population; their prevailing system was the feudal. A few hundred great nobles, or magnates, a considerable body of small nobles and a multitude of artisans, tradesmen, and peasants made up the social strata. Every Magyar who could trace descent to Arpád and his followers--though he were but a peasant in condition--was a noble: members of all the other races had no political rights. Hungary proper comprised fifty-two counties, each of which had its local congregation or assembly, which met four times a year, and sent suggestions or bills of grievances to the Central Diet, composed of the Table of Magnates and the Table of Deputies. A Palatine or Viceroy, representing the Sovereign, was the actual head of the kingdom. Outside of Hungary proper, the Croats had their local Diet at Agram, and Transylvania had hers; both also chose representatives to the Hungarian Diet. In a measure, therefore, we may call Hungary a federation, not forgetting, however, that it was a federation in which one race, the Magyars, domineered. The Latin language was the common medium of communication between Hungary and Austria, and among the diverse peoples. The most significant event of the Diet of 1825 was the use by Count Stephen Széchenyi of the Magyar language instead of the Latin. Széchenyi, having traveled in Western Europe, came back imbued with large schemes of progress. He helped to introduce steamboats on the Danube; he founded a Magyar Academy; he proposed to join Buda and Pesth by a suspension bridge. By stimulating the material welfare of his country, he hoped that many of the social abuses would vanish without a struggle. And now his use of the Magyar language was a symptom of the awakening of the spirit of nationality,--one of the controlling motives in the history of Europe during the nineteenth century. In Hungary, as elsewhere, the arousing of that spirit was evidenced not only by an intenser political life, but also by a literary revival.