It must be admitted that Prince Metternich has a profound acquaintance with the minutest sympathies and antipathies of all the European races; and this is the quality most needed in the direction of an empire which comprises not a nation, but a congregation of nations; not cohering through sympathy with each other, but kept together by the arts of statesmanship, and the bond of loyalty to the reigning house.  The ethnographical map of Europe is as clear in his mind’s eye as the boot of Italy, the hand of the Morea, and the shield of the Spanish peninsula in those of a physical geographer.  It is not affirming too much to say that in many difficult questions in which the mezzo termine proposed by Austria has been acceded to by the other powers, the solution has been due as much to the sagacity of the individual, as to the less ambitious policy which generally characterizes Austria.

The last time I saw this distinguished individual was in the month of November following, on my way to England, I venture to give a scrap of the conversation.

Mett.  “The idea of Charlemagne was the formation of a vast state, comprising heterogeneous nations united under one head; but with all his genius he was unequal to the task of its accomplishment.  Napoleon entertained the same plan with his confederation of the Rhine; but all such systems are ephemeral when power is centralized, and the minor states are looked upon as instruments, and not as principals.  Austria is the only empire on record that has succeeded under those circumstances.  The cabinet of Austria, when it seeks the solution of any internal question, invariably reverses the positions, and hypothetically puts itself in the position of the provincial interest under consideration.  That is the secret of the prosperity of Austria.”

Author.  “I certainly have been often struck with the historical fact, that 1830 produced revolutions then and subsequently in France, Belgium, Poland, Spain, and innumerable smaller states; while in Austria, with all its reputed combustible elements, not a single town or village revolted.”

Mett.  “That tangible fact speaks for itself.”

FOOTNOTES: 

[Footnote 26:  This chapter was written in Vienna in the beginning of 1844; but I did not wish to break the current of my observations on Servia by the record of my intervening journey to England.]

CHAPTER XXXV.

Concluding Observations on Austria and her Prospects.

The heterogeneousness of the inhabitants of London and Paris is from the influx of foreigners; but the odd mixture of German, Italian, Slaavic, and I know not how many other races in Vienna, is almost all generated within the limits of the monarchy.  Masses, rubbing against each other, get their asperities smoothed in the contact; but the characteristics of various nationalities remain in Vienna in considerable strength, and do not seem likely soon to disappear by any process of attrition.  There goes the German—­honest, good-natured, and laborious; the Hungarian—­proud, insolent, lazy, hospitable, generous, and sincere; and the plausible Slaav—­his eye, twinkling with the prospect of seizing, by a knowledge of human nature, what others attain by slower means.