dents who had assembled to see her, one was observed to keep his bonnet on his head, and his pipe in his mouth, as her Imperial MajesAty passed. The Prorector called the young man before him, and remonstrated with him on his rudeness. The defence was in the genuine spirit of Burschenism: "I am a free man; what is an Empress to me?" Full of lofty unintelligible notions of his own importance and high vocation, misled by ludicrously erroneous ideas of honour, and hurried on by the example of all around him, the true Bursche swaggers and renowns, choleric, raw, and overbearing. He measures his own honour, because his companions measure it, by the number of scandals he has fought, but neither he nor they ever waste a thought on what they have been fought for. To have fought unsuccessfully is bad; but, if he wishes to become a respected and influential personage, not to have fought at all is infinitely worse. He, therefore, does not fight to resent insolence, but he insults, or takes offence, that he may have a pretext for fighting. The lecture-rooms are but secondary to the fencing-school; that is his temple, the rapier is his god, and the Comment is the gospel by which he swears

· Vol. I. pp. 175—177.

All this proves something radically wrong in the frame and system of these institutions. They must have a tendency, the reverse of what Horace attributes to literature, the softening and subduing of rough and vehement natures. We do not join in the affected dread expressed by the Holy Alliance, lest these seminaries should become schools of sedition to overthrow established creeds and governments; but there is an immeasurable distance between the severity which would make them places of education for slaves, and the wholesome discipline which would turn them out gentlemen and scholars, without deadening or depressing their minds. The irregularities and insubordination of these colleges, is the opprobrium of Germany;-the more so, since a course of vigorous measures rightly pursued and judiciously adopted, and a few examples made of the most refractory, would soon bring back these Teutonic rebels to their senses.

We can afford but little room for the interesting subjects of the second volume,-Brunswick, Berlin, Cracow, Vienna. Cracow would seem to be one of the most disgusting places on the continent.

The ancient and magnificent capital of the Polish monarchs now consists of palaces without inhabitants, and inhabitants without bread; and only the improbable event of the restoration of Poland will relieve it from the desolation that reigns in its streets, and the misery that pines within its houses. The liberators of Europe, too jealous of each other to allow any one of themselves to retain a city which, as a frontier position, would have been of so much value, performed the farce of erecting it into a free town. Cracow, deprived of every

outlet to industry, and every source of revenue, was left to bear the expenses of a government and an university. Dowried by her high protectors with a few miles of territory, and some hundreds of beggared peasants, she was married to penury and annihilation. The sensible among her citizens are by no means proud of their useless independence; and even the senators break jokes with melancholy bitterness on their mendicant republic. There are neither arts nor manufactures; the surrounding country is abundantly fruitful, but the peasantry who cultivate it have no spirit of enterprise, and no stimulus to exertion. No spot in Europe can present a more squalid rural population than that which basks in the sun in the public places of Cracow on a market day. Twelve thousand of the inhabitants are Jews; they are sunk still lower than the peasantry in uncleanliness and misery, and appear to be still less sensible to it. The part of the city which they inhabit is scarcely approachable; two or three families, men, women, and children, pigs, dogs, and poultry, wallow together in the mire of some sickening and low-roofed hovel. The Poles complain of them as one great cause of the rapid decay of the city; they say that the Jews have gotten into their hands all the trade that remains to it; for purchasing cheaply by the practice of rascally arts, and living in a manner which scarcely requires expenditure, they under-sell their Christian competitors. The palace of the kings of Poland is itself a picture of the vicissitudes of the state. Once inhabited by the Casimirs, the Sigismunds, and the Sobieskis, it is now the abode of tattered paupers, and even these are principally dependent on casual revenues for the pittance which merely supports life.'

pp. 189-190.

Vienna has long enjoyed the character of being the most licentious capital in Europe. Bacchus and Venus had never more ardent votaries among their ancient worshippers. Lines too blasphemously profane for us to transcribe into our pages, translated from a popular German poet and novelist, in which the morals of a bacchanal are grafted on the sentimentalism of modern deism,-are stated to be the text on which every one of the three hundred thousand inhabitants who crowd Vienna and its interminable suburbs, seems to reckon it a duty to 'make his life a comment.' In other words, they have adopted for their Scripture rule the Epicurean maxim, Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die.

They are more devoted friends of joviality, pleasure, and good living, and more bitter enemies of every thing like care or thinking, a more eating, drinking, good-natured, ill-educated, hospitable, and laughing people, than any other of Germany, or, perhaps, of Europe. Their climate and soil, the corn and wine with which Heaven has blessed them, exempt them from any very anxious degree of thought about their own wants; and the government, with its spies and policy, takes most effectual care that their gayety shall not be disturbed by thinking of the public necessities, or studying for the public weal.'

This close connexion of moral and political degradation is perfectly natural. It may indeed be questioned, whether political liberty could long exist where such a state of morals prevails.

There cannot,' says Mr. Russell, be a more dissolute city,—one where female virtue is less prized, and therefore less frequent. A total, want of principle, the love of pleasure, and the love of finery, are so universally diffused, that wives and daughters, in not only what we should call comfortable, but even affluent circumstances, do not shrink from increasing the means of their extravagance by forgetting their duty.'... This, with the general want of manly and independent feeling, of which it is merely a modification, is the worst point in the character of the Viennese.'

Now for their political character, beginning with their public men.

• Gentz, bought into the service of the cabinet, draws up the declarations of the Holy Alliance, as manfully as he once addressed liberal exhortations to the King of Prussia. Frederick Schlegel, too, seems to have laid his genius to rest, since he sat himself down in the German Baotia, to fatten on the sweets of an Austrian pension. He has the reputation of being occasionally employed to pen political articles for the Austrian Observer. I have heard, indeed, his nearest relations deny it; and it certainly would be difficult to find, in that newspaper, any article that required Frederick Schlegel's cleverness; but, nevertheless, it is the public voice of Vienna, and it is natural that he should continue to take an interest in a journal which he himself first established.

• While such things are going on, it would be vain to expect any decay of superstition among those who pretend to have any religion at all. Prince Metternich is much too sensible a man, and much too jealous of his own omnipotence, to allow the priesthood to control his imperial master or himself, but he delivers up the subjects to their mercy. The superstition of the people is even fostered by the government encouraging pompous pilgrimages, for the purpose of obtaining the blessing of heaven by walking fifty miles in hot weather. The favoured spot is Mariazell, in Styria, and the pageant is commonly played off in July or August. The imperial authority is interposed by a proclamation affixed to the great gate of St. Stephen's, authorizing all pious subjects to perform this mischievous act of holy vagabondizing, that they may implore from the Virgin such personal and domestic boons as they feel themselves most inclined to, and, at all events, that they may supplicate continued prosperity to the house of Hapsburgh. On the appointed day, the intended pilgrims assemble in St. Stephens, at four o'clock in the morning; most of them have been anxiously accumulating many a day's savings, to collect a few florins for the journey, for they generally do not return before the fourth day. Mass is performed, and the long, motley line, consisting of both sexes, and all ages, separated into divisions by religious stan

dards and gaudy crucifixes, alternately cheered and sanctified by the trumpets and kettle-drums which head each division, and the hymns chaunted by the pilgrims who compose it, wends its long, toilsome, and hilly way, into the mountains of Styria. The procession which I saw leave Vienna, consisted of nearly three thousand persons, and they were all of the lower classes. The upper ranks do not choose to go to heaven in vulgar company; and, if they visit Mariazell at all, they make it a pleasure jaunt, (for the place of pilgrimage lies in a most romantic country,) like an excursion to the lakes of Scotland or Cumberland, and pray to the Virgin en passant. Females predominated; there were many children, and some of them so young, that it seemed preposterous to produce them in such a fatiguing exhibition. The young women were numerous, and naturally were the most interesting objects. Many of them were pretty, but they were almost all barefooted, both from economy, and for the sake of ease in travelling. Observant of the pilgrim's costume, they carried long staffs, headed with nosegays, and wore coarse straw bonnets, with enormous brims, intended to protect their beauties against the scorching sun,-unaware, perhaps, of the more fatally destructive enemy, who, ere this perilous journey is terminated, cuts down, in too many instances, the foundation of that pleasing modesty with which they pace forth to the performance of what they reckon a holy duty. Joseph II. saw and knew all the mischief of the ceremony, and abolished the pilgrimage; Francis I. restored and fosters it.

But, though the Austrians have no great capacity for thinking, and a very great capacity for immorality and superstition, much of both must be ascribed to that total prostration of intellect which their government inflicts upon them; a prostration which can never exist long, in the degree in which it exists in Vienna, without producing some degradation of the moral principle. The whole political system is directed, with prying and persecuting jealousy, to keep people in ignorance of all that goes on in the world, except what it suits the cabinet to make known, and to prevent people from thinking on what is known, differently from the way in which the cabinet thinks. All the modes of education are arranged on the same depressing principle of keeping mind in such a state, that it shall neither feel the temptation, nor possess the ability, to resist power. During the Congress of Laybach, the Emperor said to the teachers of a public seminary, “I want no learned men; I need no learned men; I want men who will do what I bid them," or something to the same purpose, the most unfortunate words for the honour of his throne, that could be put in the mouth of a monarch. The principle is fully acted on in Vienna; over all knowledge, and all thinking, on every thing public, and on every thing relating to the political events and institutions not only of the empire, but of all other countries, there broods a "darkness which may be felt;" no where will you find a more lamentable ignorance, or a more melancholy horror of being suspected of a desire to be wise above what is written down by the editor of the Austrian Observer. Nothing is known but to official men; and the first official duty is to confine all knowledge within the official circle.

Talk to a Viennese about the finances, for example. What is the amount of the public revenue? I don't know. What is done with it? I don't know. How much does your army cost? I don't know, How much does the civil administration cost? I don't know. What is the amount of your public debt? I don't know. In short, do you know any thing at all about the matter, except how much you pay yourself, and that you pay whatever you are ordered? Nothing on earth.

The Austrian police,-monstrum horrendum, ingens ;-it cannot be added, cui lumen ademptum, for it has the eyes of an Argus, though no Mercury has yet been found to charm them to sleep, while he rescued manly thought and intellectual exertion from the brute form into which political jealousy has metamorphosed them. The French police under Napoleon was reckoned perfect; in efficiency, it could not possibly surpass that of Vienna, which successfully represses every expression of thought, by forcing on all the deadening conviction, that the eyes and ears of spies are every where. The consequences of a denunciation are, secret arrest, secret imprisonment, and an unknown punishment. It can be tolerated, in some measure, that spies should be placed in coffee-houses, in the apartments of Restaurateurs, or in places of public amusement; for, on such occasions, every sensible person, to whatever country he may belong, will be on his guard; but it is sickening when, even in private society, he must open his lips under the conviction that there may be a spy sitting at the same table with him, This is the case in Vienna to a very great extent. The efficacy of such a system depends on those who are its instruments being unknown; but, if the Viennese themselves may be believed, not only men, but women too, and men and women of rank, are in the pay of the secret police. Among those whom you know to be your personal friends, if you indulge in a freedom of opinion on which you would not venture in more mixed society, they will draw back with a sort of apprehension, and kindly warn you of the danger to which you are exposing both them and yourself. This is true, not merely of what might be considered modes of thinking hostile to the whole frame of government, but it is equally so of individual acts of administration,-if you question, for instance, the propriety of punishing a public peculator, like T, by dismissing him with a pension, or the purity of the motives which procured Count Ahis provincial government. The government is not even very fond that its measures should be praised; it is much better pleased that nothing be said about them at all.

This is the general spirit of the thing. Every Englishman who has been much conversant with Vienna, and occasionally forgotten where he was, must have felt it so. Of the practical efficiency of the system of espionage, take a single example. A certain Russian nobleman was resident at Vienna in 1821. His political opinions were known to be somewhat more liberal than was agreeable to the courts of Vienna and Petersburgh; above all, he was favourable to the Greeks. The burden of the Austrian minister's political harangues delivered twice a week at his levees was, "You see it is the same thing with all