The Emperor of Austria has been making a progress through
Galicia, and has been received by the Poles with an enthusiasm which has excited serious political attention. That the peasantry should applaud the Emperor who, in 1849, made them freeholders, and swept away the landlords in a style that would delight Mr. Parnell, is natural ; but the nobles also are converted. It would seem that the Poles, hating Russia as heretical, and Prussia as suc- cessful in treading down their nationality, are turning to the Catholic House of Hapsburg and its semi-Slavonic Empire. Should that prove to be the case, and the Poles really throw their weight into that scale, the change may be of historical importance. Like every other of recent years, it tends to make the Hapsburgs more and more of a Slavonic Power, more and more inclined to seek territory in the Balkans, and less and less disposed to the pro-Turkish policy which pleases the Magyars. Poland has ceased to be a connecting-link, and become a cause of divergence between Vienna and St. Petersburg.
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