whose name stands at the head of this paper. It is supposed to be one of the leading characteristics of the present age, that single individuals are no longer the great arbiters of human destinies; that the growth of intelligence among the masses has enabled them to dwarf the colossal power formerly exercised by intellectual magnates; and that, if isolated genius would command influence now, it must be no longer by the wand of independent agency, but by seeking to enlist the sympathies of large bodies of men in its designs, and by making them the factors of its will. But Metternich's career stands out in bold contradiction to this

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rather to the class of the Wolseys and the Richelieus than to any of his own cen tury; yet in the marvels he accomplished we must place him above the Wolseys and the Richelieus. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, when the European populations had hardly emerged from the trammels of servitude-when the multitude was besotted, and the public mind kept down to the stagnant level of a brutish mediocrity, it was indeed easy for a great genius, monopolizing all the learning of the period, to wield the destinies of a kingdom, and make a continent of people, like so many terror-stricken herds, crouch to receive his mandates with slavish obsequiousness. But Metternich fashioned society in the molds of his own creation, at a time when society was fully as enlightened as himself, and was rushing in a direction fatal to his purposes. He laid down his grooves with the cool air of one who has only to speak to be obeyed; and as the multitude were rejoicing in the vigor of newly-awakened intellect, he arrested their progress, and flung them upon a retrograde movement with a facility the more surprising, as he stood singlehanded in the conflict, and his resources appeared of the simplest character. During the times in which he lived, the literature of his country achieved its greatest triumphs; and the national energies were aroused by events the most startling and turbulent in human annals. To have possessed any influence at such an epoch would have been the mark of a high intellect; but to have been the presiding spirit of the period, and to have so guided its stormiest events as to make them run counter to their natural tendency, this must be confessed to be the mark of the loftiest genius. Yet such was the lot of Prince Metternich. If his system in Austria was at last overborne, the defeat was but momentary; like a ball, it rose higher from the rebound, and seems even now, with its originator in its grave, as likely to endure as ever.

Other men have performed dazzling achievements by the sword, but their empire has been fleeting, and their conquests as transitory as themselves. They have risen like a brilliant coruscation in the evening, and having overawed nations by their splendor, have been engulfed in mysterious darkness. Such was the career of Cæsar, Alexander, and Napoleon. Of the three, the Corsican was doubtless

the superior spirit. But Metternich contrived to overreach Napoleon, to bring him as a suppliant to his feet, and to help Austria to the richest kingdoms out of the spoils of the French empire, with no other agency than the stroke of his pen. He found Austria reduced to a shadow of her former greatness-a third-rate dependency of a confederation which was itself the puppet of France. He left her the most powerful kingdom in Europe, endued with a giant's strength, and fortified up to the teeth on the Po, on the Danube, on the Rhine. With its head resting on the sunny plains of Italy; with its trunk in Upper Germany, Illyria, and the Sclavonic provinces; with its extremities stretching far away to the icy ravines of the Riesengebirges, the Austria of Metternich's creation still lies a vast political balance-weight in the center of Europe. As governor of this huge empire, Metternich was the political Titan of his day. He insured victory to whatever side he leaned without unsheathing the sword. Italy, by secret stipulations with its princes, lay at his feet. He ruled Germany through that Confederation, which was itself the creature of his breath, and which, in addition to the imperial forces, placed under his control an army of 300,000 men. Even Napoleon, in the zenith of his power, hardly exercised greater influence, or could dispose of a larger military array than Metternich acquired by pacific means, and which he made Europe believe was essential to its peace that he should retain. But his career extends over double the space of the French hero, though the latter was more fortunate in this respect than any of his predecessors, with the exception of Frederick the Great. Metternich was famous as a European diplomatist in 1797, at the Congress of Rastadt; and the requiem has only just been sung over his catafalque in the Hauptkirche of Vienna. His recollection of and personal acquaintance with our chiefs extended from Pitt to Aberdeen. The Foxes, the Liverpools, the Castlereaghs, the Cannings, the Peels, and the Wellingtons all passed like so many shadows before him. He was acquainted and shook hands with all. Four sovereigns since his manhood sat on the throne of Russia; and five swayed the destinies of France, three of whom he lived to see in exile. During the intervening space, three Emperors stalked, like

so many shadows, through the chambers of the imperial palace; but the real government of Austria rested in the hands of Metternich. From the age of twentyfive up to within a few years of his death, he was the virtual sovereign of the heterogeneous populations united under the House of Hapsburg; and the prestige derived from his lofty position, as well as from the success of his tactics, gave him an influence with foreign princes which many of their own councilors did not possess. His name stood as high in Rome, in St. Petersburg, in Paris during the Restoration, and in London during the Regency, as at Vienna. Hence the action of Metternich was not like that of other potentates, confined to his own country, but extended over the most influential quarter of the globe. Wherever grave interests were at stake touching the kingdoms at the head of civilization, there his voice was in the ascendant. For upwards of half a century he presided over diplomatic councils, and gave the guiding stroke to the policy of Europe.

But it is in the hardy task of inclosing the career of the human spirit within fixed barriers, and of arresting the democratic current, that Metternich claims our principal consideration. Nations that might have proceeded gradually from one liberty to another have been kept by him in a degraded state of political infancy. His eyes unceasingly went round the globe, to see if there was not some trembling throne to support, some tribune to close, some germ of liberty to stifle. Hence he called himself the head constable of Europe. But his was not the bâton which secures order that men may enjoy the greatest amount of freedom, but that which extinguishes freedom at the sacrifice of order. The force essential to keep humanity in shackles was periodically giving way. It required all the energies of this extraordinary man to save Europe from convulsions, and repair the broken fetter, that the system might continue. According to Metternich, there was no law of progress for society. Men were destined, like animals, to execute continually the same gyrations, only on a higher platform of being. The infallibility attaching to his religious convictions was imported into the domain of politics. Heaven had not only appointed priests, but kings, for his vicegerents. One fixed and eternal round of blind acquiescence

in their decrees was the social Elysium he destined for mortals. The rapid development of science, the electric transmis-. sion of thought, the economization of labor, the volant flight of the steam-engine, which are, as we write, gradually elevating society to a more lofty region of existence, had no meaning for Metternich. The rosy morning of a golden future never knocked at his doors. His political world had no rainbow of hope illuminating its horizon, no blooming vistas indicating a speedy coming time when many of the thorns which at present infest men's path will be turned into flowers, when the course of society will lie through gardens, and not through deserts; when a social structure will arise, which shall beautify instead of disgracing material nature, and stand out in the same startling contrast to that of the present, as a Palladian palace to a Celtic hovel. Metternich read humanity backwards. The present with him was only a bad repetition of the slavish past; and he was determined the future should be in every respect a still more servile repeater of worn-out echoes than the present.

It is singular that this political phenomenon should have continued to knock about the world like a foot-ball for nearly half a century without extorting from his speculative countrymen more dignified notices of his doings than the miserable sketches which introduce this essay. The greater portion of these are vague eulogiums, of which Metternich must have been heartily ashamed, and were doubtless written by needy applicants for office, who expected by them to propitiate the favour of the Chancellerie. But if the press of Germany is in fetters, if its political bookmakers, overawed by the machinery of the Confederation, refrain from dealing with Metternich's career in a legitimate spirit, at least we, on this side of the water, are in a different position. If we had not had the blessing of Metternich's guidance, we have, at all events, experienced its influence, and have a claim to be just to his memory. Many of his political actions, also, are pregnant with the deepest meaning to Englishmen. We can not, therefore, allow the grave to engulf so much renown without canvassing the merits of a man whom England alternately regarded with pleasure and with distrust, and considering his public acts, both in relation to the foreign interests of

subsequently, with a flippancy little worthy of his genius, pronounced the only governments where order was unsupported by absolutism to be shams and not realities.

The first diplomatic office he undertook was to represent the Westphalian nobility at the Congress of Rastadt. The task probably was nothing more than nominal, to give him a title to a seat in that remarkable assembly, and initiate him into that astute policy which Austria made venerable in his eyes by transmitting it as a paternal legacy. Francis II. summoned his father to preside at the head of the empire over the deliberations of the Congress, and the part he had to play even exceeded the dissimulation which the son so artfully practiced, some nineteen years later, at Prague and Schönbrunn.* Austria, by secret articles in the treaty of Campo Formio, had given up the integrity of the Germanic empire, and conceded the left bank of the Rhine in return for Venice and a portion of Bavaria. At the same period, the exhausted and turbulent state of France, and the growing alienation of Russia to the Republic, led her to think a speedy opportunity might offer of resuming hostilities with effect. Before the Congress which met to decide the terms of the peace between the deputations of the Germanic empire and the French Republic, the elder Metternich had consequently two parts to play, one of which might even have exhausted the tactics of Talleyrand, He had to persuade the German princes his master was protecting their interests, while he was largely indemnifying himself at their expense. He had also to convince the French ministers that Austria was resolutely bent on peace, at the same time that she was only gaining time to recruit her forces and arrange with England the terms of a third coalition. The German princes were placed in the power of the Republic by the mock retreat of the Austrian forces beyond the Danube, which enabled the French to occupy Mayence and hold the empire in their grasp. The Directory, in turn, was cajoled by the in

It is amusing to find a writer in Fraser (June and July, 1844) confound the son with the father, and enter into a defense of Metternich's proceed ings at Rastadt, as if he had actually presided over the assembly. The same blunder has been committed in ten ostensible quarters. (Metternich and Austrian Rule in Lombardy, by JOBSON, p. 7. 1848.)

sertion of a clause in the preliminaries of the negotiations that no decision of the Congress was to be final until the entire stipulations drawn up in a complete form were ratified by the Emperor as head of the Diet. During the year 1797-8 this double farce went forward, exhausting the serious attention of the gravest diplomatists of Europe. The elder Metternich had the ability to waste three weeks in exchanging and verifying credentials. The formularies of the empire, with the etiquette and order of precedence of the thirty-five German courts, was another fruitful source of delay. Even Talleyrand, who then held the portfolio of Foreign Minister, made two or three journeys from Paris to the Congress, with a view to accelerate results, thinking there was something solid in the business. Bonaparte also favored the assembly with his presence on his return to the capital, and managed to dismiss that Count Fersen from its sittings who conducted the midnight escape of royalty from the Tuileries, and who sat as representative of Saxony. But two or three days' chicanery wearied the patience of the young soldier, and he was glad to escape to meet the plaudits of the Parisian populace. The secularizations required on the right bank of the Rhine for the territories conceded on the left, the question of territorial debts, of the navigation and custom dues of the river, each afforded the elder Metternich a rich theme for disquisition, and he availed himself of them with the skill of an Irish orator at Westminster, who seizes the precise moment when he has secured a majority by worrying his oppo. nents out of the House, to drop his speech and go to a division. When Bonaparte had landed in Egypt, this interminable Congress was still at its labors, without any prospect of coming to an end. But when the seizure of Malta had led Russia to assume an attitude of hostility against France; when the Porte, menaced with a dismemberment of his dominions, joined his flag with those of Russia and England, and the victorious cannon of Aboukir resounded through Europe- then Count Metternich pulled the boards from under the Rastadt Congress, and left its astonished members to their fate. The French deputies were informed, with "distinguished consideration," that Francis II. had revoked the powers of his deputy, and that the proceedings were at an end.