Maria Theresa ; and Joseph II. By Rev. J. Franck
Bright, D.D. (Macmillan and Co.)—These two volumes are to be read con- secutively. They form, indeed, one monograph. Maria Theresa came to the throne in 1740; Joseph died just fifty years later. Wenceslaus von Kannitz, who represented Hungary at the Con- gress of Aix-la-Chapelle, when Joseph was seven years old, outlived his master by four years. His influence was a potent factor during the two reigns, though it was greater with the mother than with the son. Dr. Bright gives this remarkable man more justice than he commonly receives. In domestic policy, at least, he was distinctly in advance of his age. He had not the philanthropic temper of Maria Theresa, nor the philo- sophical views of her son ; but it is probable that if he had been allowed a free hand he would have contributed more than did either of the two SoveTigns to the happiness of their subjects. It is certainly instructive to read the external history of Maria Theresa's reign from the Austrian point of view. Carlyle's "Frederick the Great" has, in what may be called a masterful fashion, dominated the opinion of this generation as to the merits of the Silesian quarrel. It is as well that we should be reminded that whatever Frederick may have professed in docu- ments which were intended for the world, he confessed in more confidential utterances that his real motives for his attack on Silesia were ambition and the desire to aggrandise his kingdom. Not the least interesting part of the two volumes is the per- petually recurring analogy between the Austria of the eighteenth century and the Austria of to-day. "Nowhere," writes Dr. Bright at 'the beginning of his Maria Theresa, "was the want of union so obvious as in the complex dominion of the Austrian House ; nowhere had the provinces which formed the Empire so slight a bond between them ; nowhere were they so entirely dependent for their national feeling upon the person of their ruler." It is remarkable what emphasis is being added almost every day to this observation by the course of events in the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. Dr. Bright narrates with spirit and clearness the complicated, and, it must be owned, the occasionally tedious, story of Austrian history. Nor does he fail to relieve it with occasional glimpses of the very interesting personality of "Fair Austria with her mournful charms," "The Queen, the Beauty" that "set the world in arms."
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