to preserve his country from entangling wars.  It was as much as he could do to preserve order and law in the various States of Germany, at the cost of all intellectual progress.  But he watched the developments of liberty in other parts of Europe with the keenest interest, and his correspondence with the different potentates—­whether monarchs or their ministers—­is very voluminous, and was directed to the support of absolutism, in which alone he saw hope for Europe.  The liberal views of the English Canning gave Metternich both solicitude and disgust; and he did all he could to undermine the influence of Capo D’Istrias, the Greek diplomatist, with his imperial master the Czar.  He hated any man who was politically enlightened, and destroyed him if he could.  The event in his long reign which most perplexed him and gave him the greatest solicitude was the revolution in France in 1830, which unseated the Bourbons, and established the constitutional government of Louis Philippe; and this was followed by the insurrection of the Netherlands, revolts in the German States, and the Polish revolution.  With the year 1830 began a new era in European politics,—­a period of reform, not always successful, but enough to show that the spirit of innovation could no longer be suppressed; that the subterranean fires of liberty would burst forth when least expected, and overthrow the strongest thrones.

But amid all the reforms which took place in England, in France, in Belgium, in Piedmont, Austria remained stationary, so cemented was the power of Metternich, so overwhelming was his influence,—­the one central figure in Germany for eighteen years longer.  In 1835 the Emperor Francis died, recommending to his son and successor Ferdinand to lean on the powerful arm of the chancellor, and continue him in great offices.  Nor was it until the outbreak in Vienna in 1848, when emperor and minister alike fled from the capital, that the official career of Metternich closed, and he finally retired to his estates at Johannisberg to spend his few declining years in leisure and peace.

For forty years Metternich had borne the chief burdens of the State.  For forty years his word was the law of Germany.  For forty years all the cabinets of continental Europe were guided more or less by his advice; and his advice, from first to last, was uniform,—­to put down popular movements and uphold absolutism at any cost, and severely punish all people, of whatever rank or character, who tempted the oppressed to shake off their fetters, or who dared to give expression to emancipating ideas, even in the halls of universities.

In view of the execrable tyranny, both political and religious, which Metternich succeeded in establishing for thirty years, it is natural for an ordinary person to look upon him as a monster,—­hard, cruel, unscrupulous, haughty, gloomy; a sort of Wallenstein or Strafford, to be held in abhorrence; a man to be assassinated as the enemy of mankind.