When the fame of other men shall be noised abroad-the warrior for his "fields of glory," the statesman for his laws," the poet for his lays, and the patriot for his sufferings, the laurel will encircle the brow of Edward Stanley, and posterity rejoice in the memory of a good man.

The late Bishop of Norwich was an instance of what may be done for the elevation of mankind, by a resolute will and active perseverance. In all he did, in all he said, there was a spirit of progress in the right direction. He showed himself a type of the times; he set aside the idle notion, that man is a stationary creature; he proclaimed him always open to improvement and progress. And he further evidenced that this improvement must be wrought by hard work; that prejudices must be overcome with a stout heart; that truth must be proclaimed with a courageous front; that the emancipation of either the social or mental condition must be consummated by unflinching perseverance. Would he have reformed a rude rural population, or overcome the political and religious prejudices of a large diocese, had he not put the shoulder to the wheel with a deep conviction of the greatness of his labours? Had he left no other lesson behind him, he has left this, that the lowliest object, so long as it is open to advancement, is worthy of our deepest consideration, and that in the work we should be industrious and cheerful. In all social and mental regeneration, such men as Bishop Stanley will be found efficient and useful, inasmuch as they apply themselves with all their strength to the labour. He might have entertained very comprehensive views of the necessity of reform, but had he not accompanied his views with a resolute will to accomplish those reforms, his success would have been partial, or neutral. Hence, the man was peculiarly adapted to the wants of the age. Although his labours were limited to the parish of Alderley, or the diocese of Norwich, they showed that he was keenly sensible that the times in which he lived demanded reformation everywhere. In his sacred calling, and the liberality, impartiality, and industry, he connected with it, he again showed himself alive to the progressive character of the times. He showed to his contemporaries and his successors, the

character and offices of a truly Christian minister of the Church; not in heaping up emoluments, not in clothing "every day in scarlet and fine linen," but in a disinterested and hearty devotion to the great truths they are commissioned to diffuse.

LOUIS KOSSUTH.

WHEN the history of heroism shall be fairly written, a new light will be thrown upon the characteristics of the intellect and the emotions. The joint workings of sentiment and thought,of feeling and mental power, are essential in all the phases of the patriotic; and to passion, perhaps, more than intellect, we owe the finest traits in the history of the hero. The love of country is at once the source of the noblest heroism and the dearest of domestic ties. It gives warmth to the household hearth, vigour to the industrial energies,-force, purpose, and integrity to the national character,-and connects together, by a current of the same blood, rich and poor, ostentatious and humble, as though one heart pulsated for the whole.

"Breathes there a man with soul so dead, Who never to himself hath said,

This is my own, my native land!'

The Cretans express the love of country by a name which implies the love of a mother for her children. The Ethiopian believes that God made his deserts, while angels made the rest of the globe. We have all heard of the Indian, who, meeting a banana in the Jardine des Plantes, bathed it with his tears. The Chinese say, 66 "He who sincerely loves his country, leaves the fragrance of a good name to a hundred ages." It is the love of country which binds the Arab to his arid sands, and the Esquimaux to the arctic circle; which makes the Swiss peasant look joyfully on his barren mountains and bleak glaciers; which unites the Maltese to his isolated rock, and makes the Greenlander fonder of his snows. There is no land but has ties of affection for its own people; and when the Neapolitan exclaims, "See the Bay of Naples and die," or the Norwegians inscribe upon their coins, "Spirit, loyalty, valour, and whatever is honourable, let the whole world learn among the rocks of Norway," they simply utter the

universal sentiment of man, and express that feeling which is the first characteristic of human dignity, moral rectitude, and warmth of heart. But this love of country, though full of fine traits for the poet and the essayist, has one phase which especially claims the interest of the historian; and it is, that by so much as a people are wedded to their native soil, by so much do they love liberty, and feel the fire of a fine impulse stirring up their hearts. When we look through Europe, and see how despotism threatens to march, with armed heel, through the lands,-to lay prostrate every nation which dares to assert its independence,—we must see that the chief impediments to this enslavement of the peoples is their love of country and united sympathies for freedom and fatherland. If the love of nature give additional force to the manifestations of domestic sentiment, it is no less productive of that great spirit of liberty, which makes men more truly lovers of each other, and which strikes at the root of exclusiveness, vain ambition, and aggressive pride. It is not because vice has opened up the ways of licence, and revolution has been hailed by the licentious as a fit opportunity for unblushing crime, that revolution itself is a thing to be dreaded,-that the struggle for liberty is of necessity a wrong. Because we see treachery we should not abrogate confidence; because we see prostitution we should not deny the sentiment of love. It was a noble saying of the old Jewish Rabbin, that were the sea ink, and the land parchment, the former would not be sufficient to describe, nor the latter to comprise, all the praises of liberty. It is indeed the mother of every virtue, the nurse of genius, the primary agent in the development of the God-like

man.

If men are representative, assuredly Kossuth represents fatherland and freedom. Hungary is his one thought, around which cluster all the traditions of his Magyar people, and all his efforts for national liberty and independence. The love of country, and the traditional intelligence and patriotism of his people, take shape and colouring in his character, as though his brain were a lens, through which the elements passed, and emerged again with a sharpness of outline exactly correspondent with

the sphericity and transparency of his mind. It is no small region, no mere limited province, this Hungary. It comprises the principality of Siebenburgen, and the military districts of Carlstadt, Warasdin, and the Bannat; and is the largest division of the dominions of the Imperial House of Austria. Including the circles of the Hither Danube, the Further Danube, the Hither Theissa, the Further Theissa, Sclavonia, Croatia, and the Besondere districts, the extent of Hungary may be comprised within 105,197 square miles, with a population of 13,000,000 souls. Presburg was once its capital; but since 1784 that honour has been enjoyed by a suburb of Pesth, called by the Hungarians Buda, and by the Germans Ofen. The most numerous and most ancient of its many races of people is the race of the Magyars, a people remarkable for their muscular strength, their personal courage, their intelligence, consciousness, and pleasing language.

The Magyars made their first appearance in Europe in the year 894 of our era, under the leadership of Almus, having advanced from the shores of the Black Sea. They are not to be confounded with the Hunns, who are often considered as their progenitors, but whose language has no similarity with that of the Hungarians; and who, according to De Guignes, were a powerful nation of Tartary, who, under Attila, became the scourge of the world, although sinking into ruin shortly after his death.

The Magyars settled in the fruitful districts, acquired great power, and, by the subsequent exercise of the peaceful arts under Taksony and Geesa, they were ultimately formed into a great Christian nation, and a Throne was founded in the year 1,000. The laws by which the constitution was founded are known as the Golden Bull of Andreas II., dated in 1222, the magna charta of the nobles; and these were confirmed by the peace of Vienna in 1606, and of Lintz in 1647. By these two treaties the free exercise of their religion is secured to the Protestant sectaries.

In 1490, when Wladislaus was raised to the throne, the prosperity of Hungary began to decline. Civil war and insurrection swept away thousands of the people, and entailed misery on those who were spared. John Zapolya, an

adherent of the Romish Church, raised a faction in the states, and endeavoured to achieve glory by a persecution of heretics. The Protestants flew for shelter to the House of Hapsburg; and, in 1547, the hereditary right of the House of Austria to the throne of Hungary was solemnly established. The Hungarian people offered their crown to the House of Hapsburg, on the condition that the old constitution was to be maintained; and every new king, before coronation, should swear to maintain the constitution and its liberties. In spite of the royal oath, however, the House of Hapsburg has long striven to deprive Hungary of her national existence, so that the oppressed nation has had, on many occasions, to defend her liberties with arms against the encroachments of her own kings.

In fact, every means have been resorted to to annihilate a nation to which Austria had been many times indebted for its existence, which had saved the throne of Maria Theresa in the middle of the last century, and that of Francis I. during the wars of Napoleon. When the last French revolution broke out, the Parliament of Hungary was deliberating upon certain reforms, and the heroic Kossuth was then the leader of the Hungarian House of Commons. The contemplated reforms were adopted under the statesmanship of Kossuth, and the late King Ferdinand V., the father of the present Emperor of Austria, went to Presburg to give royal assent to the new laws. Parliament closed, and Hungary was comparatively happy, prosperous, and free, with a liberal constitution, sworn to by the King.

Louis Kossuth was born on the 27th of April, 1802, in the little village of Monok, in the comitat of Zemplin. The breath of the kine, the fragrance of the violet, and the fresh greenness of the spring grass combined with the picturesque associations of fertile fields and village homes, to usher into the world this patriot of the Magyars; who, in the vigour and strong purpose of a lusty manhood, was to foreshadow, if not to realise, the summer of his country's greatness. father was Andreas Kossuth, his mother, Caroline Weber, and he was an only child. His family is of Sclavonic origin, and comprise a very long line of Protestant Hungarian gentry, many of whom have fallen in the de

His

fence of their religious and political liberties. At the time of Kossuth's birth the family had become reduced, and the means of his parents were so small that he had to provide for his own education. His mother, "that noble old mother," as he terms her, brought him up as he might have been educated by a Roman matron. He was sent to the Calvinistic College of Patak, graduated as jurat at Epiries, and was called to the bar at the "Royal Table" at Pesth. After leaving Pesth he lived in the greatest poverty until several deputies made him their agent. At twenty-three years of age he had made friends of several members of the Diet, and was acquiring a steady fame by his bold and original views on politics, and his warm and natural eloquence. There were many who "loved to listen to the eloquence of the young man ; " and the many excellent friendships he made among men of talent and influence served to ripen his innate powers and increase that accurate knowledge of the complicated affairs of his country which stood him in such good stead during the periods of political and military conflict. Having completed his studies he returned to Monok in 1822, and was appointed Honorary Attorney to the county of Zemplin. Like Cromwell, he was at this age much addicted to the gaming table and to the dissipating frivolities which too frequently beset youth, so that he passed more of his time in the gaming saloon or on the turf than in the study of the law.

The first public appearance of Kossuth as an orator was in 1831, when the cholera broke out in Hungary, and ravaged the country like a destroying angel. At that time the peasantry were in a state of serfdom; and where serfdom exists, society always stands upon a volcano, which may suddenly break forth and involve the wealthy classes in anarchy and ruin. Austria, ever seeking, by intrigue, to undermine the prosperity of Hungary, that it might the more easily become a prey to the grasping hand of absolutism, had sown discontent in the hearts of the Slovack peasants; and had spread amongst them the awful belief, that the epidemic had been caused by the poisoning of the rivers by the landlords and the Jews. This belief gained ground; and the serfs, stung with the spectacle which the havoc of death

amongst them presented, and still more by the morbid idea which the creatures of the Imperial Court had sown amongst them, rose in large numbers, and murdered some of the upper classes; adding, to the horrors of pestilence, anarchy, privation, and panic. Kossuth sallied forth in this dark hour of trial to address the people, suggest plans of relief, and, by his powerful, though youthful, eloquence, dispel the horrible delusion to which the people were victims. Wherever the disease was most deadly, he was seen moving in the midst, cheering, consoling, advising, restoring order and confidence, and infusing into the hearts of the sufferers a hopeful reliance upon Providence. It may seem to some a trivial and every-day affair, this interposition in behalf of outraged humanity and violated truth; but to us there is something terribly sublime in the spectacle of a young man moving about fearlessly in the ranks of the dying and the dead, to win, by the philosophy of his argument, and the touching appeals of his humanity, a frenzied and ignorant population from a course of reckless and insane revenge. Be that as it may, it is certain, that, by this course of action, he very much increased his fame, and made many new friends among the wealthy and the noble. Thus distinguished, he was named by several peeresses to attend the Diet of 1832, as their proxy; and, duly nominated, he attended at Presburg, with the right of speaking in the Assemblies, but without having the right to vote. Here a new era opened in his career, and prepared the way for that series of conflicts, trials, sufferings, and triumphs in which he and his country were afterwards alike involved. In this Diet, Kossuth spoke only once: he was preparing for a more important labour than the composition of speeches. According to the constitution, the sittings of the Diet were public; but the Government, after its accustomed fashion, reserved to itself the right of publishing reports. Thus, except to those who heard the speeches, either as members cr visitors, the doings of the Diet were known only by a miserable Parliamentary report,- a garbled blue-book,-which made its appearance so long after the events of which it was the falsified record, as to be useless. Kossuth determined to set

aside this one-sided and lifeless mode of publicity by a vigorous and verbatim transcript of the actual speeches and proceedings. He set to work, wrote reports, and sent them in manuscript to his subscribers, the number of which so increased, that, in 1834, they had amounted to eighty. He thus developed and displayed his literary power, and created a new impulse for the cause of reform. The restrictions imposed upon printing determined him to set up a lithographic press, in order to evade, if possible, the censure of the police. But Kossuth had become too popular for the Government to neglect any hinderance by which it might oppose a work so dangerous to itself, The police managed to interpret the law so as to include the lithographs under the head of printed documents, and forbade the Parliamentary reports. This was in 1834. He returned to the manuscript form; and his editorial office in Pesth was daily frequented by a number of law-students and other young men, each of whom took a copy of that day's journal. The copies thus produced were passed from hand to hand, and local clubs were established for reading and debating on them; so that, though Kossuth had never more than eighty subscribers, he had thousands of readers for every issue of the work. The sittings of the Diet ended in 1834. It had shown too much the spirit of reform to please the Court at Vienna; and, to stay the progress of its measures, the old hackneyed story of a conspiracy was trumped up, and several young men of note were arrested. Their trials nearly resembled those of Naples, so well exposed by Mr. Gladstone. Kossuth urged the unconstitutionalism of the proceedings; but in vain. The influence of the men was dangerous to Austrian encroachment, and they were found guilty and imprisoned.

Kossuth at an early period perceived that the great object of the Imperial Government was to obtain control of the Hungarian finances, and that unless these were secured the liberties of Hungary could not be maintained; that the development of these liberties was impossible without the emancipation of the serfs, whose rebellion Austria always held in terror over their masters; and, above all, he urged the necessity for continuing the publication of the debates of the Diet as the primary

means for keeping Metternich in check. Kossuth continued his paper though threatened with prosecution for high treason, and obstinately persisted in asserting, in spite of every risk, the right of publication. The county meetings of the same kind as the old English shiremotes-were then of great importance; they discussed every project of reform, and resolved upon the course the representatives of the counties should adopt in the Diet; and were, in fact, local parliaments in preparation for the general or great Parliament. Hitherto the counties had been isolated, Kossuth's written reports united them; they worked in concert; discussion was promoted, and the spirit of reform grew so active that the Imperial Government took fright, and Kossuth was flung into a prison. His incarceration took place in 1837, just after the arrest of Baron Wesselenyi for his agitation in behalf of the emancipation of the serfs, and Kossuth's defence of Wesselenyi still further aggravated the court of Vienna. At night, when all was still, and the patriot having offered his prayers and thanksgiving to his Maker was in the first dreams of a welcome repose, there was a noise heard without. The doors were forced, and ere he could raise an alarm the assailants stood at his bedside. Though they came prowling, thief-like, in the night, they came not to plunder, but merely according to the Austrian fashion of making an arrest. He was required to rise from his bed and proceed at once to a prison. The people say that he was led round about with bandaged eyes, and was taken to prison also blindfolded, that he might not know where he was confined. It is quite possible, for nothing is too barbarous or miscreant for the tools of the Hapsburgs. He was confined for two years, and then brought to trial for high treason, and condemned to four years' imprisonment. His confinement caused an intense excitement; there had been too much said, too much written for such persecution to succeed. The Diet met at the end of 1839, and commenced its proceedings by declaring the prosecution of Kossuth illegal. The supplies were refused and only granted in May, 1840, on the condition of a general amnesty for all political offend

ers.

The supplies were granted on the 15th of May, and the next day the prisoners were liberated. Two

other patriots were confined with him: Wessenlenyi, who had become stone blind when he left his dungeon, and another, who before his liberation went raving mad. Kossuth came forth not blind or mad, but pale, wasted, but still unsubdued in spirit, and with a firmer determination than ever to struggle for his trampled country. His popularity was great, and his liberation was celebrated with the highest of Hungarian honours. At night thousands of torch-bearers assembled, and with cheers, responses, songs of freedom and fatherland, the mighty crowd escorted him through the town. The old walls laughed out in the torch-light, the stars were dimmed with the blazing lights and clouds of smoke, and the very sky echoed back the glad sounds of the ovation. His prison hours had been cheered by the winning eyes and tender smiles and heart-spoken words of her, who, while touching his patriot heart as sunshine touches the brown forest or the broad sea, had at the same time gladdened his mother's house and made a solace for lonely widowhood. Kossuth married Theresa Mezlanyi on the 10th of January, 1841.

Like a giant refreshed by sleep, Kossuth left his prison to renew his labours with a vigour which should know no bounds. The ministry, and a majority of the Diet, were liberal. On New-year's-day appeared the first number of the Pesti Hirlap, or Pesth Journal, with Kossuth as editor. This soon became a great organ of liberalism, and, as may be expected, a thorn in the side of the Austrian court. At first it was published four times a week, but soon it became a daily paper. Its circulation rose rapidly to five, six, eight, and ten thousand, and at one period even reached to twelve thousand. "His abilities," says a Sclavonic writer, “were now acknowledged by all. His mind, which had for some time been at rest, was only strengthened and invigorated by long repose. Like a bubbling stream, he watered the dry fields and deserts of old Hungarian society; like a storm, he swept over the towering growth of feudalism. Like a botanist, who knows, observes, and gathers every plant, was he in his restless activity." He found material on every side, and in his hands everything received life and truth. This Hirlap was essentially a democratic journal. It fostered Magyar nation