104 HUNGARIAN LITERATURE races, had kept its political independence the longest. He writes : "It was at sunset that I reached the summit of a hill where Hungary and Transylvania touch one another. I stopped awhile, for both before and behind me there opened a grand view, which nevertheless made my heart ache. To the west I saw my country, with her wide-stretching plains, which I had to leave. To the east lay Transylvania, with a line of dark blue hills in the distance, her undulating surface swelling like the waves of the ocean. "My heart also began to swell at the thought of parting. To take in the picture around me, I threw myself down upon the ground, just on the frontier line; my head and my heart rested on the soil of that dear fatherland which my next step would leave behind. Tears fell from my eyes upon the uttermost sods of my country, and at that moment I resolved that I, a descen- dant of those who had conquered this land, even though a nameless child of the middle class, would work with all my might, even if silently and unobtrusively-I would work like the silkworm, spinning from the substance of my own heart what might serve my ill-starred nation, if aught that I could bring of inspiring word or true deed might prove of service." The youth, who was not less inspired by poetic genius than by fervent patriotism, did actually spin the silken thread of which he had dreamed, and weave it into fabrics of beauty. He was Alexander Kisfaludy, the author of Himfy and one of the pioneers of the nine- teenth century. In 1818, at Athens, a young Hungarian traveller (styled by the Greeks "the English lord" on account both of his wealth and his dress) was musing amid the ruins
