156 HUNGARIAN LITERATURE His first great work, entitled Credit, was published in 1830. Arany called it "a pyramid on the boundary line dividing Hungary's dead pas t from her living present." The novelty of the book consisted in setting practical aims before th e nation. Széchenyi desired to create credit in Hungary, and to make money easily accessihle to the agriculturalist. He drew attention to the cumbersome methods of litigation, and the unpractical feudal customs which obtained on many estates ; to the need of improved mean s of communication and of the aholition of feudal services. In short he devoted hímself to pra ctical problems in such a way that men woke up to the fact that he was not the mere dreamer that they had taken him to be. Széchenyi's second book, The Wo rld, advocated amongst other things the claims of the national language, and his third, The Stadium, mai ntained the necessity of more equitable taxation, of the aholition of monopolies, and of equality before the law. Széchenyi's treatment of his subjects was not suffi ciently systematic. He leapt impulsively from one thing to anotber so that his writings have something of the character of a collection of aphorisms. His style, a mixture of irony and deep feeling, is somewhat bizarre. Passionate outbursts are often entangled amidst cum brous periphrases. Paul Gyulai, the critic, compared one of Széchenyi's books to a dense forest, in which we sometimes lose our way but where we are everywhere surr ounded by a sturdy growth of thronging ideas. Here and there the growth is so dense as to bar our way; the nettle of irony stings us, the thorn of sarcasm wounds us, but when once we reach the height to which our path leads, we see stretchi ng before us a sublime
