The Archduke Charles Louis, heir-presumptive to the Austrian Monarchy, died
on Tuesday, at the age of sixty- three. He was an excellent though not very able man, with strong clerical opinions, and tastes which made him the representative of his house whenever it was necessary to open an exhibition or honour any kind of artistic function. His son Ferdinand, by a Princess of the Neapolitan Bourbons, is also seriously ill with incurable pulmonary disease, and on his death the succession will pass to the Archduke Otto, who is described as a sporting squire, and who might decline the throne in favour of his son Charles, a young man believed to be of promise. The statesmen of the Empire are, it is said, greatly concerned about the succession, as many diffi- culties have been surmounted by the personal ascendency of the present Emperor, which would not belong to any successor less competent or less trusted. They must know their own business best, but, according to history, the Hapsburg Monarchy will survive almost any kind of monarch, as it did survive the early years of the pre- sent Sovereign, who, now a wise man, was for many years both tyrannical and rash. Bourbon blood, it is true, is unlucky blood ; but the eighteen States of Austria are welded together by a kind of political necessity, upon which even terrible defeats produce little effect. The present Emperor, more- over, though a saddened and even unhappy man, is only sixty-six.
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