102 HUNGARIAN LITERATURE mere conglomerate of populations. It may be that our wealth would increase, but this prospect does not attract me. Before aU else, fidelity to my race l " Progrss, in any department of life, was but a means to the preservation of the race. This appears to have been the centr.d idea in Széchenyi's mind, as in the minds of his contemporaries, and when that idea came into con tact with other noble ideas, it helped to atrengthen them. The rearing of the edifice of the new state demanded incalculable labour, enterprise, self-denial and self sacrifice. It is an old idea, which exists in th e popular legends, that to make the foundations of a building strong, the sacrifice of human life is necessary. True it is that the Hungary of to- day has been baptize d with the blood of her ch ildren. The sacrifice which her establish ment demanded, and which was ungrudgingly given, was the lives of her nobiest sons. So great a result could only be achieved by a combina tion of spl endid talents and great ch:1racters. Sacrifice we see everywhere, fro m the time when · Kazinczy was flung into the fortress of Kufstein, to the time when Madách, also. confined in a political prison, wrote his immortal Tragedy of Man. Many a poet besides Kazinczy and Madách found his way into prison : Verseghy, Ba csányi, and Szentj óbi-Szabó, who died in his chains. Half a century later, Petőfi, Hungary's greatest lyric poet, died on the battlefield, laid low by a Russian hullet or the lance of a Cossack. The greatest statesman, Széchenyi, in consequence of mental strain due to exces sive labour and anxiety, los t his reason . The nobiest patriats were írnprisoned or exiled. Naturally the great sons of this great epoch ware filled
