BOOKS.

MEMOIRS OF METTERNICIL* THESE two volumes are not as interesting as the first two. We believe diplomatists of a certain age enjoy them, and say they .explain many things, but to the ordinary reader they are rather .dull. They deal with events much smeller than those of 1808- 1815 ; they contain no sketches of character like the remark- able one of Napoleon in the first volumes, and they are full of .evidence of Prince Metternich's besetting literary sin,—preachi- nese. There never, perhaps, was a man so highly placed in Europe who preached so much, and so dully. Extremely self- .conceited, convinced that among European statesmen he alone understood principles, Metternich lost no opportunity of stating them ; and when beyond fear of contradiction or ridicule, would go back in conversation or writing to first -causes, like some old and prosy divine. No matter whom he addressed,—great Sovereign, or fine lady, or subser- vient agent, preach he would. He must latterly have become a bore of no mean weight, and we have heard evidence that this was really the case, and that women in particular, who had been fascinated with the talk of the young diplomatist,

declared that in mature years Metternich had become intoler- able. Take, for example, a highly favourable specimen, his ,secret memorandum to the Emperor Alexander on the evils affecting European society. It is nothing but an essay on presumption, not in itself particularly good, entirely devoid. of ,originality, and for political purposes almost valueless :- "Religion, morality, legislation, economy, politics, administration, all have become common and accessible to every ono. Knowledge .seems to come by inspiration ; experience lies no valno for the presumptuous man ; faith is nothing to him ; he substitutes for it a pretended individual conviction, and to arrive at this conviction dis- penses with all inquiry and with all study ; for those means appear too trivial to a mind which believes itself strong enough to embrace at one glance all questions and all facts. Laws have no value for him, because he has not contributed to make them, and it would be beneath a man of his parts to recognise the limits traced by rude and ignorant generations. Power resides in himself ; why should he submit himself to that which was only useful for the man deprived of light and knowledge ? That which, according to him, was required in an age of weakness cannot be suitable in an ago of reason and

• vigour, amounting to universal perfection, which the German inno- vators designate by the idea, absurd in itself, of tho emancipation of the people ! Morality itself he does not attack openly, for without it he could not be sure for a single instant of his own existence ; but he interprets its essence after his own fashion, and allows every other person to do so likewise, provided that other person neither kills nor robs him. In thus tracing the character of the presumptuous man, we believe we have traced that of the society of the day, composed of like

• elements, if the denomination of society is applicable to an order of things which only tends in principle towards individualising all the ,elements of which society is composed. Presumption makes every man the guide of his own belief, the arbiter of laws according to • which he is pleased to govern himself, or to allow some one else to govern Lim and his neighbours ; it makes him, in short, the sole .judge of his own faith, his own actions, and the principles according to which he guides them."

This sin of presumption manifested itself almost exclusively

in the middle-classes, and the business of great Monarchs was to repress it, first., by silencing doctrinaires ; secondly, by putting ,flovp that new "scourge," the Press ; and thirdly, by refusing

all reforms whatever. "The first and greatest concern for the immense majority of every nation is the stability of the laws, and their uninterrupted action—never their change. Therefore, let the Governments govern, lot them maintain the ground- work of their institutions, both ancient and modern ; for if it is at all times dangerous to touch them, it certainly would not now, in the general confusion, be wise to do so." This was the sum and substance of Metternich's political faith, repeated in every chapter of these Memoirs, dinned into the ears of every .correspondent, and made the basis of all his diplomacy in Europe, and of all his executive action in the States belonging to the Hapsburgs. The world, in truth, after all, was right about him. He was Conservatism incarnate. He dreaded and hated change, and the whole of the modern spirit from which it springs, with the loathing antipathy which other men feel for irreligion or laxity of morals. He held Alexander of Russia to be

.a dangerous reformer, a man swayed. by a secret Liberal, Pozzo di Borgo, whom he hated with the most comical hatred, as a man who had the impudence to influence Kings, yet was not ." noble," even in Corsica. He told the King of Prussia, in 1818, that any kind. of Parliament would produce revolution, * Memoirs of Prime Metternich, 1814-11329. Edited by Prince Hichard Hotter. nloh. Translated by Mrs. Alexander Napier. Vele, III. and IV. Loudon alchard Bentley and Son. 1881.

and that " the formation of provincial Diets, in a very carefully

considered, circumscribed form," ought to be the limit of his concessions. In 1819, he declared, in a letter to Gontz, that a

German Prince who did not help to repress the Press by a strict preventive censorship was guilty of " felony " against the Bund, and should be " compelled " to change his ways ; and in the same year he classed with the unhappy journalists those "tyrants and fools who, under the names of philosophers, philanthropists, Socialists, Democrats, religious fanatics, are nothing, or much worse." It was this spirit, which never varied, that made him so consistent, and inspired him with the energy in moving troops and risking wars for purposes of re- pression which, throughout his later life, made him the most

feared and hated man in Europe. His theory appears to have been sincere, and to have been held. with the strength of a religious tenet which it would have been sin in himself to doubt,

or even thoroughly examine. He never did doubt ; his attitude of mind from 1815 till he resigned power being best portrayed.

in this inimitable sentence to his wife, dated September 4th, 1818 :— •

" You can have no idea of the effect produced by my appearance at the Diet. An affair which, perhaps, would never have ended has been concluded in three or four days. I am more and more convinced that affairs of importance can only be properly conducted by oneself. Everything done second-hand is vexatious and troublesome, and makes no progress. I have become a species of moral power in Germany, and, perhaps, even in Europe—a power which will leave a void when it disappears ; and, nevertheless, it will disappear, like all belonging to poor, frail human nature. I hope Heaven will yet give mo time to do some good; that is my dearest wish."

Conceit, indeed, rose in Metternich to heights which almost make the observer doubt his sanity. It is, for example, exces- sively difficult even for a Protestant to he sure that the following astounding statement was not an illusion of half-crazy vanity. It exists, however, in Metternich's own hand, written on July 3rd, 1825, to Gentz :—

" Cardinal Albani, who as Papal legate was sent here to com- pliment the Emperor, has also departed. I have for many years had the most friendly relations with the Cardinal, and he therefore visited mo very often. When Albani, a little while ego, informed me of his approaching return to Rome, he said to me with a certain solemnity that he was commissioned by the Holy Father to ask me a question. He then took out of his pocket an autograph letter from his Holiness, and begged me to make myself acquainted with its con- tents. In it were the few lines as follows :—‘ I have received with pleasure your confidential communication respecting Prince Mottor- nioh's desire to be admitted into the College of Cardinals. Tho Prince [here follows a list of meritorious actions] has so many claims to this dignity, that I am ready to bestow it upon him. But before I can nominate the Prince, be good enough to ask him whether ho really desires the Cardinalship, in which case I will propose him in the next secret consistory.' You may imagine what an impression this overture has made on me. I begged for en explanation from. the Cardinal, and he answered that he had inferred my desire from seine of my expressions—that is, from my expressions concerning a red colour, which in talking to the Cardinal I had mentioned as extremely pleasing to me. The answer which I gave to the friendly interpreter of thoughts I had never had, you may well imagine."

The Pope must have been playing with the Prince, who, though orthodox, was not only not pious, but notoriously a man as loose in life as most Viennese of his time. With this profound. conceit was mingled, as is often the case, a yet more profound misanthropy. He utterly despised human beings. He was accustomed to say that the mass of mankind would infinitely rather look at an obscene picture than at the most glorious work of art, and these 111.CMOirti are studded with incidental proofs of his feeling. In 1820 he was ill, and on his recovery, the world of Vienna hastened to congratulate him :— " February lfith.—I have returned to the world again ; to-morrow evening I reopen my salons. Already I tremble at the prospect of the crowd of tiresome people whom I must receive. Nothing delights such people more than a death or a return to life, i.e., the opportunity of condoling or congratulating. If it were only possible that this cursed race would confine themselves to the first of these occasions, at least as far as concerns me ! To die is nothing but to live for these people—that is worse to me than death !"

Ho declares all Frenchmen frivolous and all Englishmen slightly mad, and it may be doubted if he bad the slightest internal respect for any human being not of his own family, unless it were his own Emperor, Francis, who made him so powerful. He certainly speaks heartily of no statesman what- ever, though he shows much affection for his daughters, and a deep tenderness for his son, Victor, whose early death was probably the greatest misfortune of his life.

Why, then, did. Metternich succeed, and become such a per- sonage in Europe P These Memoirs give us exceedingly little information on that subject, but we take it the explanation is

not difficult. Whether he could manage men or not—a doubtful point, for a good many of those whom he tried to conciliate hated him most cordially—Metternich undoubtedly did manage the Emperor of Austria, and therefore wielded very great and very substantial power in Europe. He could move easily great masses of troops, and was resolute enough, as he showed repeatedly in Italian affairs, to do it. This power he exercised steadily in a single direction,—to keep things as they were, and for thirty years, the lifetime of one generation, that seemed to the ruling men of Europe very wise. They had suffered from the French Revolution, till it seemed to them that every change must pro- duce incalculable results. They dreaded movemeut rather than change, and it was not until the generation which remembered the Revolution had passed away, or, like Louis Philippe, had grown senile, that the Progressists of the Continent made decided stops forward, and the radical weakness of Met- ternich's views was made patent to the world. He had simply dammed up the current till it became a flood. That he did his engineer work well, raising his dykes higher and higher, and watching them with laborious attention, should be freely admitted, and was his claim upon the Sovereigns ; but the theory on which he acted was essentially feeble. He thought the rise of the tide a mere flow of the water artificially caused, and the blunder is fatal to his reputation. Metternich was not a wise man, though he was a keen and, what is less understood, a singularly energetic one. There is one strange fact revealed in these llfernoirs, which makes us doubt whether he was even a sensible one. Strange or in- credible as it may seem, no one can read those two volumes without a certainty that Metternich disbelieved in the very existence of Democracy, and after all his ex- perience, believed. that the mass of European mankind care for nothing except the stability of law. If the middle-class could but be crushed or silenced, all would be well for Kings. This extraordinary idea, contradicted by every event since 1789. reappears in every page, and suggests that Metternich de- rived his only idea of a " people " from the Austro-German peasantry, among whom he was brought up, and who un- doubtedly were and are the least discontented of European mankind. For a man in his position to have seen Democracy in movement, and not to have credited its existence, is a failure of mental insight.