cy, any more than he would have thought | seph even gave his supposed victory over his of preaching a crusade. Nor do we believe that Pius VI. for a moment entertained the notion. He was a good and zealous churchman, but neither wiser nor more original in his views than cardinals in general. His idea seems only to have been that of making a personal impression on Joseph, partly by his own persuasive powers-for there entered no small amount of vanity into his composition partly through that traditional aid from above which had made Attila quail before Leo. In this sense only his project was judged, when his advisers strenuously urged him against it, and the wise men of the world taxed him with consummate folly. "I was almost beginning to believe in your master's infallibility," said Frederick to Pius's envoy at Berlin, but this journey to Vienna!" Nor did the adoration of the multitudes which threw themselves at his feet in sudden enthusiasm during that long Alpine journey, or of those who flocked from far and near to Vienna to idolise him, insomuch that a famine was apprehended during his stay, however it might affect the feelings of observers, alter the general estimate of his undertaking. Even now some liberal historians, like Schlosser, affect to donbt the reality of its effects, and assert that the great South German "revival" of 1785 evaporated in smoke. They do not perceive the new impulse which was then given to the minds of men, if not to the immediate march of events. The progress of religious democracy in Catholic countries since that day, is but too marked a feature in modern history. There was but too much significance in the emblematic medal which the legate at Munich struck on the occasion, representing Religion as Cybele, drawn in her car by lions among the prostrate bodies of men. Holiness something of a comic turn, by paying him a return visit at Rome, where the populace, always anti-papal whatever the sentiment may be elsewhere, received him with shouts of "Long live the Emperor-king, siete a casa vostra, siete il padrone.' But the work of resistance to his reforms was not the less effectively commenced. The cause of reaction had received a moral aid, worth more than myriads of bayonets. Joseph was taught how thoroughly he had miscalculated, in his heedlessness, the influence of the ulemas and fakirs-the objects of his scornover the masses which he deemed made but to obey a beneficent despot. He knew that there was a power within his states greater than that of the Emperor; that half the allegiance, and more than half the reverence, of the millions, belonged to another than him. His pride was no less wounded than his purpose thwarted. And the blow was a fatal one. We have no space to dwell on the details of that reaction which completes, as it were, the dramatic unity of Joseph's ten years of reign. Perpetual opposition in Church and State made him in no degree alter his purpose, but it rendered him impatient and violent, and apt to exercise his power the more stubbornly in trifles, because he felt himself bound fast by a thousand invisible chains, when he attempted any greater movement. He became suspicious; and Vienna swarmed with government agents, noble and plebeian spies, instruments of the secret police, who poisoned his ear with suggestions of imaginary plots, and led him into the commission of acts of injustice towards some of his most faithful subjects. Then commenced in reality or in popular belief, that fearful system of the employment of agens provocateurs to stir up the opposition of classes and races, The Pope, indeed, gained no present ad- with which Austrian policy under several vantage by his journey, as is well known. reigns has been reproached, how far justly Joseph received him with a polite affectation it is impossible to say. When the Hungaof keeping all serious conversation at a dis- rian nobles were in organized passive resisttance. Kaunitz, according to the anecdotes ance to the attack on their Constitution repeated by Vehse, thought it politic to treat (1784), a Wallach boor, Horya, became the the unwished-for stranger with peculiar rude- leader of a peasant insurrection against them. ness, as if in contempt of his supposed power, His supposed complicity with government shook lustily the hand which Pius offered him agents was never proved; but he had tokens to kiss! received him at his villa in morning to show which worked strongly on the imadishabille, talked of nothing but his statues gination of his followers; a golden chain with and pictures, and pushed his visitor into all a picture of the Emperor, a writing in gold kinds of places and postures in order to give letters which he called an imperial patent. him a better sight of them, insomuch that The revolt was accompanied with great atrothe high-bred Italian, at once pontiff and cities, and was repressed with equal cruelty, patrician, remained" tutto stupefatto." Jo-Horya was executed by the wheel, a hundred and fifty of his people "after their countryfashion," that is, impaled alive. These horrors worked powerfully on the sensitive mind of Joseph, which was by this time lapsing into fixed disgust and weariness of life. In a It was mainly to shake off the pressure of disappointment at home that he rushed into the Turkish war, only to see thousands of his soldiery perish of fever in the marshes of the Lower Danube, and an Austrian army, for the first time since the rescue of Vienna, retreat in disorderly dispersion before the unbelievers. Then came the successful progress of the Belgian revolt, a revolt of which the cause was as undeniably rightful, as the conduct and agents were contemptible; begun by the drunken students of Louvain shouting for "better beer, bread, and tobacco, and orthodox doctrine and discipline," continued by a coalition of priest-led zealots and empty democrats. Conquered at last, he had to withdraw reforms and restore privileges, even with greater precipitation than he had evinced in the first part of his career. few months, all his greater innovations were cancelled, except the abolition of serfdom and the toleration edict. He could not survive his broken hopes and outraged authority. By whatever name his last disease might pass in the physician's catalogue, over-exertion, dropsy of the chest, malaria fever brought back from the Turkish frontier-the true cause, a broken heart, was plain enough to all. Yet he retained to the last, both the fundamental heroism of his character, and his clear conviction of the righteousness of his cause. "I know my own heart," he wrote; "I am convinced in my innermost soul of the purity of my intentions; and I hope, that when I am no more, posterity will examine, aye and judge, more considerately, more justly, and more impartially than the present age, what I have done for my people." pher (Röse) observes, much of what he retracted was lost in form only, but preserved in substance. Independently of mere political theory, the importance of his administrative changes is fully recognised by Austrian statesmen, who know the practical necessity of unity of action on the part of the central power. The obstinate and compact strength opposed by Austria to the invasions of Napoleon, is mainly attributed by some to the solidity which his reforms communicated to her executive; and Count Ficquelmont, in his recent writings, appeals to the occurrences of 1848, as bearing the most decisive evidence to the correctness of his judgment of her prospects and requirements. The national system of education, often admired even by those least in love with Anstrian institutions, is mainly the result of his regulations. The good which he did by the removal of feudal and municipal obstructions to industry, it is scarcely possible to over-estimate. Without believing what some affirm-that the population of Austria increased by one-fourth in the ten years of his reign, while its revenue undoubtedly doubled-we have no doubt that a great and simultaneous increase of population and wealth bore incontestable evidence to the soundness of his economical measures. Has posterity yet attained that impartiality respecting him for which he prayed? Placed beyond the sympathies of both the great leagues of modern thinkers, he has been condemned and satirized by liberals as an absolutist-by the partisans of reaction as a demagogue. With courtiers and statesmen it was the fashion, particularly during the revolutionary era, to sneer at him as a mistaken visionary. There was, at all events, one class among whom his memory was long and fondly cherished: and it was that to the sympathies of which he would best have loved "Here lies Joseph II." is his well-known to make his appeal. to make his appeal. The Austrian peasantself-composed epitaph, "who failed in every-ry of German blood are at once an eminently thing he undertook." They were the words of disappointment, not of truth. The greatness of what he achieved has been underestimated, only because measured by the gigantic scale of what he projected. The two great measures which we have just noticed, alone suffice to immortalize him: the liberation of the Leibeigeners, which has remained an accomplished fact; and the Edict of Toleration, which, however it may have appeared at times to be menaced, has never as yet been seriously encroached upon. But these form only a part of what his empire has to thank him for. As his latest biogra loyal race, and one on which affection and kindness are rarely thrown away. They were never misled in their judgment of him. Even when they were kneeling before the carriage of the Pope, they had no idea that they were assuming an attitude of opposition to their friend and Emperor. No royal name lives among them at this day, in reverential tradition, so truly as that of Kaiser Joseph. Their estimate of him cannot be better expressed than in the simple apologue which is still popular in Austria. The peasantry of a Styrian village are assembled to discuss the news of the Emperor's death. They will not believe it, it is a lie of the court nobles, day, notwithstanding the unquestionable the lawyers, the lazy friars. While they strength which the cause of order, as underare debating, information is brought of the stood in Austria, has derived from the mad revival, bit by bit, of the old order of outbreak of 1848 and its first consequences. things the Carthusians have returned to There are indeed many who imagine, though the neighboring abbey, the Capuchins have recent events have made the trade of proresumed their rounds, the Forstmeister and phesying more hazardous than ever, that the gamekeeper have reoccupied their lodges those events may have brought the catasand the steward is sitting at the receipt of trophe nearer. Many of the manifestations feudal dues. The oldest peasant rises and of local feeling then elicited, may now aptakes off his hat," Then Joseph is dead in- pear irrational enough. We may smile as deed, may Heaven have mercy on his soul." we please on the recollection of Austro-GerSixty years have since elapsed, and the mans raving abuut the Frankfort Parliament prolific house of Hapsburg-Lorraine has fur- and the National Fleet; haughty Magyars nished two numerous generations of princes, preaching French democracy, with one foot several distinguished for civic virtues, and trampling on the Wallach and the other on one at least of high military renown; but no the Croat; fierce military borderers brandishspirit like that of Joseph, or his mother, has ing their sabres, not as of old for plunder animated the race since his remains desended and provant, but for Federalism, and Panto the vaults of the Capuchins, nor has any- slavism, and all the inconceivable dreams of thing occurred to refute the saying of Kau- the German Professorate. But the practinitz, that it takes a hundred years to make cal question for our day is, whether the an Austrian great man." We should have events to which we refer have increased that wished, had space permitted, to follow Dr. mutual repulsion between the several races, Vehse through his last volume, bringing the through which the strength of the central internal history of the monarchy to our own government is now mainly preserved, or whetimes, and showing the connection of the ther they have been taught something of the present with the past. We should then necessity of union, and of forming mutual have seen, how the long struggle with France and balanced leagues for their support. If purified away, as it were, whatever there the latter be really the case, the map of Euwas of encroaching and arbitrary in the rope can hardly remain long as it is. foreign policy of Austria, and substituted for those politicians, both within and without it a strong principle of self-sufficing forbear- Austria, who wish to avert such an end, and We should have seen how the same at the same time look beyond the probable events raised into life, for the third time, the duration of a throne supported by bayonets, military monarchy, and created that heroic and a bundle of States tied together by red army, itself almost a nation, of which the tape, have to consider the double alternative endurance and constant fidelity are among which now deeply occupies many minds, the most remarkable features of political his- whether Austria must revert to the centralitory in our age; whose unsoldierly spirit is zing policy of Joseph, substituting by dethe one living principle of unity in that mis- grees liberty for repression, as becomes the cellaneous empire. We should recognize, age, and creating an Austrian nation through in the long administration of Metternich, one and beneath Austrian institutions, or must painful endeavor to maintain the status quo, have recourse, in due measure, to that federby a temperate and self-denying policy with- al principle which has had such triumphant out, but by unsparing and unsleeping re- results elsewhere. Either project is full of pression within a repression the less endu- difficulties, but neither, perhaps, beyond the rable, because enforced by statesmen who reach of practical accomplishment, if the enhad no faith in its effects, like religious per-ergy which Austria has shown in self-assersecution by unbelievers. For all the while, as we have said above, these have seemed to labor under the consciousness that the elements of that stability, to which they sacrificed all other considerations, were temporary only. And so matters remain to this ance. tion and defence, were turned towards internal reform, and courageous concessions made to that spread of political will and intelligence which is inevitably transforming the community, there as elsewhere, from an inert mass, to a living body. From Hogg's Instructor. MODERN BRITISH ORATORS.-No.1. EDMUND BURKE. BY GEORGE GILFILLAN. ALL hail to Edmund Burke, the greatest and least appreciated man of the eighteenth century, even as Milton had been the greatest and least appreciated man of the century before! Each century, in fact, bears its peculiarly great man, and as certainly either neglects or abuses him. Nor do after ages always repair the deficiency. For instance, between the writing of the first and second sentences of this paper, we have happened to take up a London periodical, which has newly come in, and have found Burke first put at the feet of Fox, and secondly, accused of being actuated in all his political conduct by two objects-those of places and pensions for himself and his family; so that our estimate of him, although late, may turn out, on the whole, a "word in season.' It is, at all events, refreshing for us to look back from the days of a Derby, a Disraeli, and a Biographer Russell, to those of the great and eloquent Burke, and to turn from the inhuman ravings and essential atheism of the "Latter Day Pamphlets," to the noble rage and magnificent philippics of a "Regicide Peace." First of all, in this paper, we feel ourselves constrained to proclaim what, even yet, is not fully understood-Burke's,unutterable superiority to all his parliamentary rivals. It was not simply that he was above them as one bough in a tree is above another, but above them as the sun is above the top of the tree, and Sirius above the sun. He was "not of their order." He had philosophic intellect, while they had only arithmetic. He had genius, while they had not even fancy. He had heart, while they had only passions. He had widest and most comprehensive views; their minds had little real power of generalization. He had religion; most of them were infidels of that lowest order, who imagine that Christianity is a monster, bred between priestcraft and political expediency. He loved literature with his inmost soul; they (Fox on this point must be excepted) knew little about it and cared less. În a word, they were men of their time; he belonged to all ages, and his mind was as catholic as it was clear and vast. Contrast the works and speeches of the men! Has a sentence of Pitt's ever been quoted as a maxim? Does one passage of Fox appear in even our common books of elocutionary extracts? Are Sheridan's flights remembered except for their ambitious and adventurous badness? Unless one or two showy climaxes of Gratten and Curran, what else of them is extant? How different with Burke! His works are to this hour burning with genius, and swarming with wisdom. You cannot open a page, without finding either a profound truth expressed in the shortest and sharpest form, looking up at you like an eye; or a brilliant image flashing across with the speed and splendor of a meteor; or a description, now grotesque, and now gorgeous; or a literary allusion, cooling and sweetening the fervor of the political discussion; or a quotation from the poets, so pointed and pat, that it assumes the rank of an original beauty. Burke's writing is almost unrivalled for its combination and dexterous interchange of excellencies. It is by turns statistics, metphysics, painting, poetry, eloquence, wit, and wisdom. It is so cool and so warm, so mechanical and so impulsive, so measured and so impetuous, so clear and so profound, so simple and so rich. Its sentences are now the shortest and now the longest; now bare as Butler, and now figured as Jeremy Taylor; now conversational, and now ornate, intense, and elaborate in the highest degree. He closes many of his paragraphs in a rushing thunder and fiery flood of eloquence, and opens the next as calmly as if he had ceased to be the same being. Indeed, he is the least monotonous and manneristic of modern writers, and in this, as in so many other respects, excels such authors as Macaulay and Chalmers, who are sometimes absurdly compared to him. He has, in fact, four or five distinct styles, and possesses equal mastery over all. He exhibits specimens of the law-paper style in his articles indomitable industry, and a cautious balancing disposition,. We may apply to him the words of Scripture, "He could mount up with wings as an eagle, he could run and not be weary, he could walk and not be faint." Air, earth, and the things under the earth, were equally familiar to him, and you are amazed to see how easily he can fold up the mighty wings which had swept the ether, and "knit" the mountain to the sky, and turn to mole-like minings in the depths of the miry clay, which he found it necessary also to explore. These vast and various powers he had fed with the most extensive, most minute, most accurate, most artistically managed reading, with elaborate study, with the closest yet kindliest observation of human nature, and with free and copious intercourse with all classes of men. And to inspirit and inflame their action, there were a profound sense of public duty, ardent benevolence, the passions of a hot but generous heart, and a strong-felt, although uncanting and unostentatious piety. of charge against Warren Hastings; of the calm, sober, uncolored argument, in his "Thoughts on the present Discontents;" of the ingenious, high-finished, but temperate philosophical essay, in his "Sublime and Beautiful;" of the flushed and fiery diatribe, here storming into fierce scorn and invective, and there soaring into poetical eloquence, in his "Letter to a noble Lord," and in his "Regicide Peace;" and of a style combining all these qualities, and which he uses in his speech on the Nabob of Arcot's debts, and in his "Reflections on the French Revolution." Thus you may read a hundred pages of him at once, without finding any power but pure intellect at work, and at other times every sentence is starred with an image, even as every moment of some men's sleep is spiritualized by a dream; and, in many of them, figures cluster and crowd upon each other in bickering profusion. It is remarkable that his imagination becomes apparently more powerful as he draws near the end of his journey. The reason of this probably was, he became more thoroughly in earnest toward the close. Till the trial of Warren Hastings, or even on to the outbreak of the French Revolution, he was a volcano speaking and snorting out fire at intervals-an Etna at ease --but from these dates he began to pour out-patient as the camel, and as the leopard incessant torrents of molten lava upon the wondering nations. Figures are a luxury to cool thinkers; they are a necessity to prophets. The Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel have no choice. Their thought must come forth with the fiery edge of metaphor around it. The Minerva of deep earnest feeling ever rushes out in armor. Let us look, in the course of the remarks that follow, to the following points-to Burke's powers, to his possible achievements, to his actual works, to his oratory, to his conversation, to his private character, to his critics, and to the question, what has been the net result of his influence as a writer and a thinker? 1. We would seek to analyze shortly his powers. These were wonderful, in their variety, comprehensiveness, depth, harmony, and brilliance. He was endowed in the very "prodigality of heaven" with genius of a creative order, with boundless fertility of fancy, with piercing acuteness and comprehension of intellect, with a tendency leading him ir resistibly down into the depths of every subject, and with an eloquence at once massive, profuse, fiery, and flexible. To these powers be united, what are not often found in their company, slow plodding perseverance, 2. His possible achievements. To what was a man like this, who could at once soar and delve, overtop the mountain, skim the surface, and explore the mine, not competent? He was, shall we say ? a mental cameleopard swift and spotted with splendor. We have only in his present works the fragments of his genius. Had he not in some measure, "Born for the universe, narrowed his mind, And to party given up what was meant for mankind," what rich works on general subjects had he written! It had been, perhaps, a system of philosophy, merging and kindling into poetry, resembling Brown's "Lectures," but informed by more masculine genius; or it had been, perhaps, a treatise on the Science of Politics, viewed on a large and liberal scale; or it had been, perhaps, a history of his country, abounding in a truer philosophy and a more powerful narrative than Hume, and in pictures more brilliant than Macaulay's; or it had been, perhaps, a work on the profound. er principles of literature or of art; or it had been, perhaps for this too was in his power -some strain of solemn poetry, rising higher than Akenside or Thomson; or else some noble Argument or Apology for the faith that was in him in the blessed religion of Jesus. Any or all of these tasks we believe to have been thoroughly within the compass of Burke's universal mind, had his lot been otherwise cast, and had his genius not been |