Mot to tht
MAJOR NOEL AND THE LATE PRINCE METTERNICH.
Oatlands Park Hotel, 10th January, 1860. Sm—The Spectator of last Saturday in the notice of an article in Fraser's Magazine, "Conversations with Prince Metternich," cites the Globe to show that I have fallen into error in attributing to the Prince want of po- litical foresight at the commencement of the year 1848. The writer in the Globe (which journal I did not see at the proper time) principally bases his doubts of the correctness of my authority for the above opinion on the Poli- tische Briefe, wherein Prince Metternich is reported to have said to Herr von Usedom in the summer of 1847, that he then believed the maladies of Austria to be mortal.
As two leading newspapers appear to attaeh some value to the vindication of Prince Metternich's memory from the charge of want of capacity at the beginning of 1848 to read the immediate future, I trouble you with this note to state that the opinions expressed by Prince Metternich at his New Year's levee, as reported by me in Fraser, were communicated to me by a friend, an Austrian diplomatist, who was present, and on whose veracity I can entirely rely. But, apart from the value of my authority, I must ex- press my surprise that the writer in the Globe, after quoting Herr von Use- dom to show that in 1847 Metternich considered Austria's disease mortal, (no trifling confession from the proud Austrian statesman to a Prussian!) should nevertheless go on to state that when the Prince was driven to our shores by the revolution of 1848, he should have foretold a speedy return in Austria to the absolutist system, or, in other words, an entire recovery from a mortal malady.
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