is not disposed to an English alliance, or because her fortunes shall have undergone a change, and rendered her unworthy of being courted.  That ancient connection of England and Austria, dating from the time that the Bourbons became dangerous to Europe, and which was so often alluded to in the time of the Italian war, and in the days that immediately preceded the German conflict, is thought little of by Englishmen, who prefer to think of Pitt’s connection with Frederick when the latter was threatened with annihilation by Austria.  Prussia has not only beaten the Austrian armies; she has conquered English prejudices,—­much the more difficult task of the two.

The Austrians must be amused by the change that has come over the English mind; but with their sense of the satire which that change may be said to embody, there is possibly mingled the reflection that their case, bad as it is, is not so bad as to deprive them of hope.  Looking back over the history of the house of Austria, there is much in it to allow the belief that possibly it may again rise to the highest place in Europe.  That house has often fallen quite as low as we have seen it fall, and yet it has not passed away, but has renewed its life and strength, and has taken high part in effecting the punishment, and even the destruction, of those who might have destroyed it.  When Matthias Corvinus held Vienna,—­when that city was besieged by the great Solyman, whose troops marched as far to the west as Ratisbon,—­when Charles V. fled before Maurice of Saxony, “lest he might one fine morning be seized in his bed,”—­when Andrew Thonradtel took Ferdinand II. by the buttons of his doublet, and said, “Nandel, give in, thou must sign” (a paper containing the articles of the union of the Austrian Estates with the Bohemians, which Ferdinand refused to sign, and never signed),—­when Gustavus Adolphus was beating or baffling all the Imperial generals,—­when Wallenstein was directing his army of condottieri, with which he had saved the Austrian house, against that house,—­when Kara Mustapha, at the head of two hundred thousand Turks, aided by the Hungarians, and encouraged by the French, laid siege to Vienna, and sent his light cavalry to the banks of the Inn, and came wellnigh succeeding in his undertaking, and would have done so but for the coming in of John Sobieski and his Poles,—­when the French and Bavarians, in 1704, had brought the Empire to the brink of destruction, so that it could be saved only through the combined exertions of such men as Eugene and Marlborough,—­when almost all Continental Europe that was possessed of power directed that power against the Imperial house immediately after the death of Charles VI., last male member of the line of Hapsburg,—­when Napoleon I. destroyed an Austrian army at Ulm, and took Vienna, and beat to pieces the Austro-Russian army at Austerlitz,—­when the same Emperor took Vienna the second time, in 1809, after a series of brilliant victories, wonderful even