tures. It is quite natural, for we always cherish more anxiously what we are in constant danger of losing, than the most precious treasures which we can quietly enjoy in the security of unchallenged possession. These features also are uppermost in the popular tales and ballads, as we saw when considering the Kurucz poetry. Every innovation in the way of culture was first looked at from the point of view of the patriot, who asked, how far did it strengthen the nation? Science, art, literature were all estimated according to the probability of their developing the national sentiment. This was the one test by which to try the value of everything. In Hungary it was never l'art pour l'art. What in other countries were merely refined pleasures, became in Hungary patriotic duties. Art and literature ministered to patriotism, and patriotism ministered to the preservation of the race.
No more touching example could be quoted than that of Alexander Körösi Csoma, the learned explorer. That heroic scholar bade farewell to his fatherland for ever and travelled from Transylvania, through Alexandria, Nineveh, and Bokhara to India, doing a great part of the journey on foot, and suffering greatly from hunger, disease and the deadly climate, in order to penetrate to the Himalayas. This task, in which he was generously aided by England, was undertaken with the object of discovering the origin and cradie of the Hungarian race.
Széchenyi, the reformer, was the hero, and the martyr, of one idea, that of the nation's advance. Th is great man, who devoted his whole life to the service of reform and progress, exclaimed once in Parliament: "I admit that I would not value any advance which was not markedly national in its character. The national sentiment is the foundation of the state. Without it, we shall become a
