In the matter of economy, at least, they are worthy of all praise.  No other community spends less in proportion to its income.  From the emperor down, each person seems to count his pence.  This self-denial, which borders at times on parsimony, is the result of training and circumstances.  The soil in the eastern part of the kingdom, and especially around Berlin, is not fertile.  It yields its crops only to the most careful tillage.  Moreover, prolonged struggles for political existence and supremacy, with the necessity of being on the watch for sudden wars and formidable invasions, have sharpened the wits of the Berlinese and taught them the advisability of laying by for a rainy day.  The Viennese, on the contrary, live rather for the passing hour.  Austria is favored with an agreeable climate and an extremely fertile soil.  The immediate vicinity of Vienna is highly picturesque and invites to merrymaking excursions, while life in the city is a hunt after pleasure.  The court and the nobility, once proverbial for wealth, set an example of profuse expenditure which is followed by the middle and even the lower classes.

Were it possible, by passing a magic wand over the Austrian duchies and Vienna, to transform them into a Brandenburg or a Silesia, the Eastern question would be much simplified.  The entire valley of the lower Danube, Hungary not excepted, suffers from a want of laborers.  Agriculture, mining and manufactures are in a primitive state unworthy of the Middle Ages.  The exhibition from Roumania at Vienna in 1873, although arrayed tastefully, was a lamentable confession of poverty and backwardness.  Even Hungary, anxious to display her autonomy to the best advantage, could show little more than the beginnings of a change.  The actual condition of the lower Danube is a reproach to European civilization.  Everything seems to be lacking—­good roads and tolerable houses, kitchen and farming utensils, workshops of the most rudimentary sort, clothing, popular education, the first conceptions of science.  Germany is the only source from which to expect assistance in the spread of material comfort and spiritual enlightenment, for Germany alone has population and education to spare.  Yet that part of Germany which is nearest at hand is not adequate of itself to the task.  The Austrians have not such a preponderancy of numbers and influence within their own borders as would qualify them for conducting successfully a great movement of colonization.  Besides, it must be admitted, with all due respect to the many good qualities of the Austrians, that colonists should be of “sterner stuff”—­should have more self-denial, greater capacity for work and more talent for self-government.  In these particulars the North Germans are unquestionably superior.  The improved condition of Roumania (Moldavia and Wallachia) under Prince Charles of Hohenzollern teaches us what may be accomplished by an energetic administration.  During the past ten years the