Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 129.djvu/181

Rh and Pizarro are past; it will be a painful burlesque if their career be mimicked by Japan. Author:Cyprian Arthur George Bridge.    

the lofty Academic Hall at Pesth, where the remains of the great Hungarian patriot lately stood amidst a nation's sympathetic sorrow, there might be seen on the black drapery with which the marble walls were hung, the escutcheon of the Deak family; showing, in the middle, a pen and a book—a battle-axe crowning the top. In a way, this rare coat of arms prefigured the late statesman's character and life.

For his country's rights he battled manfully, though his own hands never grasped the war-hatchet, which he would have readily buried forever. The pen and the book more fitly symbolize his doings. Public speech and public writings were his only weapons. By these he wrought an extraordinary success; entering his name, with indelible letters, in the checkered history of his fatherland. Yet the battle-axe that surmounted his armorial bearings, and the use of which he personally spurned, had a good deal to do with the triumph of his efforts; for without the repeated favour of warlike events in neighbouring lands, Hungary could not have regained those constitutional rights of which he was the moderate, but steadfast, champion.

The outward career of Francis Deak can scarcely be called an eventful one. His life was one of the simplest. Averse to all show, he neither sought distinction, nor power. No stars or crosses covered his breast; nor would he accept any of those titles which royalty showers upon men it wishes to fetter. The consciousness of having done right was ever enough for him, from early youth down to his dying hour.

Born on October 17, 1803, at Söjhör, in the comitat of Zala, the offspring of a family belonging to the lesser nobility, he studied law at Raab. The first training in the knowledge of State affairs he received from a brother—his senior by twenty years. At an early age, we find Francis Deak as a leader of the liberal party in his native comitat. The county assemblies of Hungary have always served as a nursery for political talents — as a preparatory school for greater action in the Diet. When returned, in 1832, for the latter assembly, after the withdrawal of his brother, he rose almost at once to the foremost rank as an opposition speaker.

His bearing, at that time, is described as serious and dignified; of a gravity almost too great for so young a man. Of shortish build; with features by no means striking; the clear and quiet eyes overshadowed by bushy brows; with a good forehead; but otherwise lacking the characteristics that might have marked him as a future leader of men: so he stepped into the Parliament at Pressburg. In bodily form, as well as in temperament, he had few of the peculiarities of his race. But he soon proved himself a very Magyar of Magyars in his profound acquaintance with parliamentary lore; in the fertility of his legal resources; in the copiousness of his vocabulary when a point was to be gained by speaking, as it were, against time; as well as in his wonderful tenacity, which in later years almost served the purposes of a death-defying enthusiasm.

His maiden speech, modest in tone, but showing great tact and full of maturity of judgment, created a deep impression on both sides of the House. Unadorned by any rhetorical flowers; studiously free from all invective or pathetic appeals, his eloquence, entirely of a persuasive kind, mainly influenced the hearer by the logical marshalling of facts and arguments; by the strong array of weapons taken from the arsenal of constitutional legality; by the homely illustrations and quaint anecdotic humour with which the orator relieved his otherwise plain speech. The whole was given in an easy conversational tone, but in well rounded, sometimes even stately periods. Simple common sense marked every utterance. Deak wished to convince, not to rouse and to hurry on, those whom he addressed. Only reluctantly he grappled with an enemy in the strong polemic vein; but then he generally managed to make his foe beware of a future quarrel with him. At a glance it could be seen that, in ordinary times, this youthful, almost precociously wise statesman would exercise a leading influence. But the very strength which he displayed for such an epoch of exclusively legal contests, bore in it a germ of weakness for those mighty revolutionary struggles when an outraged people — to speak with Stauffacher, in Schiller's "Tell" — "boldly reclaims those natural