The Life of Captain Sir Richard F. Burton, volume 2 (of 2) / By His Wife, Isabel Burton

"You have a small musical snuff-box with you. Mr. John Bull; wind it up, put it in your pocket, and try the effects of a polka or a waltz.

"All are silent in a moment. They start, stare, peer about the room, and look very much scared by the strange sounds. In another minute they will run away from us adepts in the black art. You see how many miracles could be got out of a few such simple contrivances as a grind-organ, an electrical machine, or a magic lantern. Now produce the cause of astonishment whilst I attempt to explain the mechanism of the invention. The sight of something soothes them; their minds become, comparatively speaking, quiet; still they handle the box with constraint, as if it had the power of stinging as well as singing. All are vociferous in praise of the music, probably on account of the curiosity of the thing, as a civilized audience applauds a sonata upon one string, at which it would yawn if performed upon four. Even the Minstrel declares with humble looks that the charm has fled his Surando, that his voice is become like to the crows. This, however, is his politeness, not his belief. In what part of the world, or at what epoch of the creation, did a painter, a musician, or a poet, ever own to himself that he is a dauber, a mar-music, or a poetaster?

"Ibrahim Khan will by no means refuse a 'dish a tea,' especially when offered to him during a short account of the Chinese Empire: the beardless state of the Celestials and the porcelain tower being topics which will at once rivet his attention. Orientals in their cups love to become inquisitive, scientific, theological, and metaphysical. But he qualifies the thin potation with quite an equal quantity of brandy, as in his heart of hearts he has compared the first sip to an infusion of senna disguised by sugar and milk. The Belochies, unlike their neighbours the Persians and Afghans, are not accustomed to the use of Chahi.[20]

"'Meer Ibrahim Khan Talpur, listen! The meetings of this world are in the street of separation. And truly said the poet that the sweet draught of friendly union is ever followed by the bitter waters of parting. To-morrow we wander forth from these pleasant abodes, to return to Hyderabad. My friend, Jan Bool Sahib, is determined to feast his eyes upon the Edens of Larkhana and to dare the Jehannums of Shikarpur.'

"The Chief rises steadily, though intoxicated.

"'You are the King of the Franks. You are the best of the Nazarenes, and, by the blessed Prophet, you almost deserve to be a Moslem! Swear to me that you will presently return and gladden the glance of amity. What is life without the faces of those we love? Wah! wah! I have received you badly. There are no dancing-women in my villages. I would have seized a dozen of the ryots' wives, but Kakoo Mall said—didn't you, you scoundrel——?'

"'Certainly, great Chief!'

"'How can the Haiwans,[21] the Scindees, venture to show their blackened[22] faces in the presence of those exalted lords? If I have failed in anything, pardon me.'

"The tears stand in Ibrahim's eyes. No wonder. He has nearly finished six bottles. He grasps our hands at every comma; at every full stop vigorously embraces us. Yet he is not wholly maudlin. To water the tree of friendship, as he phrases it, he stuffs my cheroot-case into one pocket, and a wine-glass into the other. I must give him your musical box, Mr. Bull, and as an equivalent—I don't wish him to go home and laugh at our beards—I gently extract his best hunting-knife from his waistband and transfer it to my own, declaring that with that identical weapon will I cut the throat of a poetic image called Firak or Separation.

"Now the adieus become general. The minstrel raises his voice in fervent prayer; he has received five rupees and a bottle of bad gin. All the followers put their heads into the tent to bless us, and to see if we have anything more to give them. The Ameer, convinced that there are no more presents to be distributed, prepares to depart, accompanied by his secretary, when Hari Chand, determined upon a final scene, raises the tent-fly and precipitates himself into Kakoo Mall's arms."

APPENDIX E.

POLITICS.

RICHARD'S VIEWS UPON THEM, AND WHAT OUGHT TO BE DONE—A SUBJECT TO BE CONTINUED IN THE FUTURE WORK, "LABOURS AND WISDOM OF RICHARD BURTON."

"And now for a serious bit of moralizing, from gay to grave. The radical changes of the last five years in Paris deserve chronicling and deep study. The War and the Commune have made a new world. 'La nation la plus aimable la plus aimée et peut-être la moins aimante,' has been translated, 'The light and joyous character may lie below, but there is a terrible hard upper crust of sulkiness and economy run mad—rage for lucre, and lust pour la revanche.' There is only the ancienne noblesse, the Faubourg St. Germain, the souls loyal to their King and to their Faith, who remain pure. So far, the Parisians are like the Irish Kelt,—a blathering, bumptious, bull-and-blunder loving race. The former have been converted in half a century by politics and polemics into a moping and melancholy brood. It is no longer the fashion in France to speak without an introduction. Men will sit side by side at table d'hôte in dead silence for a month; they travel twenty-four hours in the railway without opening the mouth; and if a loud laugh be heard in public, it is sure to come from some triste Anglais. Even the women, although they still fling the look of hate at a pretty toilette, seem to have abdicated the supremacy of the toilette. Once you never did, now you often see the absence of corsets upon figures that can't stand it. They are badly painted, and it is a sin to paint badly. They are outrées in their dress, and the neglect of these things is a bad sign in Paris. The middle and the lower classes, who used to be à quatre épingles, are mal coiffées, with their petticoats hanging below their dresses, as we were in the days of les Anglaises pour rire. We have learnt many things from our French friends, and amongst the good things, how to dress; but dress never made our women's beauty—it did that of the French.

"The theatres are clearing 27,000,000 of francs (1875), when during the palmiest days of the Empire they never exceeded 17,000,000. Except at the new Opera, the scenery and decorations are those of our penny gaffs. 'Les Italiens' bears the palm of dowdyism, and actors and actresses seem to have decayed with the decorations. The cuisine, except in special instances, has notably fallen off. The bottles are all 'kick,' the famous bread and butter has lost caste. The café au lait is all chicory—maximum water, minimum beans. Mammonolatry is rampant, and the great problem of manufacture and depôt, of store and shop, is how to charge the most for the worst article. Economy has now become a vice instead of a virtue, and 1,852,000 souls manage to pay 12,280,000 francs in taxes per annum.

"It is impossible to pass a day in Paris without hearing and speaking politics. The French, I have said, are sulky, especially with the 'Perfidious,' because she has supplanted them in Egypt, where for so many years England had by a tacit convention supplied the material and France the personal. They question the wisdom of our last dodge. It is the first move in the coming Kriegspiel. I hate half-measures, and I would have bought the Canal wholly out and out, and put a fortress at each end, and taken a mild nominal toll to show my right. I would annex Egypt and protect Syria, occupy the Dardanelles, and after that let the whole world wrangle as much as it pleased. What is the use of having a Navy superior to all the united navies of the rest of the world, if we can't do this? The world will never be still till Constantinople returns to the old Byzantine kingdom; and we might put a Royalty there, say the Duke of Edinburgh, who, being married to the Czar's daughter, would unite the interests of Russia and England. Let the Turk live, but retire into private life; he is a good fellow there, and we can respect El Islam so long as he has nothing to butcher.

"Let Austria become a mighty empire,—nineteen million Slavs, eight million Germans, five million Hungarians. Let Italy be satisfied with her Unity and Freedom and Progress, and Prussia repose upon her Bismarck, and France keep quiet and look after her health. But as it is, the three Emperors may say to us, 'Gentlemen, you have got what you want; we will follow suit—look on, and don't spoil sport.' Taken per se, this Suez Canal measure is a patch of tinsel gold plastered upon the rags of foreign and continental policy which our ins and outs have kept us up during the last decade, whilst under-authorities are apparently told off to declare periodically that England has lost none of her prestige abroad. Listen to the average politician of the multitude.[1] I do not like the doings of my own party (I am a Conservative); and what irritates me more is, that little as he knows, there is sound truth in what he says.

"The fact is, that England has repudiated the grand old rule of aristocracy which carried her safely through the Titan wars of the early Buonaparte ages, whilst she has not accepted the strong repulsive arm of Democracy, which enabled the Federal to beat down the Confederate. She rejects equally the refined minority and the sturdy majority; she is neither hot nor cold; she sits between two stools, and we all know where that leads to.

"This Suez move would have been a homogeneous part of a strong policy—that is, a policy backed by two millions of soldiers, by a preponderating fleet of ironclads, and by a school of diplomatists, which has not been broken in to 'effacing' themselves. Of our politicians generally, the less said the soonest mended; but I have unbounded confidence in our Premier,[2] in our Navy, and the good heart, rough common sense, firmness, and esprit de corps of our British public. The next shake—and it will be heavy and soon—will give us the Euphrates Valley Railway, despite the cleverness of an Ignatieff. The first disaster will bring on a revival of the Militia Law, and I should not be surprised if we live to see ourselves revolve round again to a general conscription, and the 'do nothings' will eventually go to the wall. It is a pity to tie the hands of so long-sighted a Premier.

"Revenge is still the dream of Paris, and the dream is not of the wise. The three Emperors love the three Empires, and hate one another; the Government and the Lieges are blinded by jealousy; each wishes to be the first in the race, and to see the other two distanced. All are mounted upon a war footing au piéd de guerre; which means that they intend fighting, and Germany especially must fight or she is lost; to her peace is more ruinous than war. France is cutting her way up with the purse instead of the sword. The great Triad might alter the map of Europe. 'The sons of Hermann' would absorb Belgium and Holland; the Muscovite swallow Constantinople with its neighbouring appendages, and Austria convey ('the wise call it') the remainder of Turkey's Slavonic provinces. But they will do nothing of the kind. Germany has proved herself the natural guardian of the Eastern frontier of Europe.

"A Franco-Russian alliance is now, in 1876, in everybody's mouth. France is for the moment safely republican, with a chance of M. Thiers, the kingmaker, succeeding to the Presidency.[3] She casts the blame of the Communal excesses upon the Buonapartists, because she fears them; but she has clean forgotten Legitimists and Orleanists. As regards the Franco-Russian alliance, opinions follow two courses. The sensible and far-seeing, which (like councils of war) never fights, would unite with Russia and temporarily keep the peace. The majority of hot heads and Hotspurs would use it for another 'À Berlin!' to attack Prussia from the east as well as the west.

"Yet, if the truth be told, France is far less ready for war than England. She can hardly raise 400,000 men to defend her own frontiers. We assisted at various reviews, and inspected many of the camps; we saw artillery, cavalry, and infantry equally unfit to face an educated enemy. Every order given by an officer was answered or questioned by a private, 'Mais, ce n'est pas cela du tout, mon Capitaine.' Guns, horses, and men were equally inefficient. True, the chassepot is being changed for the fusil Gras, the sword-bayonet is being supplanted by a neat triangular weapon unfit to cut cabbages and wood, and the six arms manufacturers of France are not wasting an hour. But after seeing the skirmishes and advances in line, one cannot help feeling certain that at this rate half a century will elapse before the Frenchman is ready to fight the Prussian. Meanwhile, every head of man, woman, and child here pay half a franc (fivepence sterling) per diem, and the municipality of Paris spends, I am told, an income inferior only to the six great Powers of Europe.

"The part of the Regal-Republican, Imperial-Republican Capital showing least change is that Conservative quarter which may be called 'Anglo-American Paris.' This 'West End' is bounded north by the Boulevards des Italiens and the Madeleine; south by the Rue Rivoli and the river (a mere ditch, but not so dirty as father Thames); east by the Rue Richelieu, the Palais Royal, and Véfour; west by the Embassy and the Chapel, with the Vendôme Column as a landmark. Here the northern and western barbarians have their King Plenipo, and their Consul, their chaplain and physician, their pet hotels, English (Meurice's), their club and library (Galignani's), their tavern (Byron's, famed for beer), their dentist, their pharmacies, and their shops labelled, 'English (or American) spoken here,'—which generally means, 'I'm a thief, you're a fool.' We can tell a compatriot a mile off—the men by their billycock hats and tweed suits, their open mouths, hats well at back of head, and red guide-books; the women by their wondrous dress and hats—for which there are special shops—their turned-up toes and noses, their manly strides, their taking men's arms, one on each side; and the glum faces of both sexes on the Sabbath, when the guide-book is exchanged for the Common Prayer-book and the Bible. In this region, where the snuffle of the Yankee mixes with the haspirations of the Cockney, the really Parisianized Englishman is never seen, and if compelled to pass through it he hurries with muffled face in trembling haste, like Mahomet rushing down the demon-haunted defiles of El Hidjr.

"Milan is bravely raising a monument to Napoleon III., whilst the popular feeling of young Italy runs strong against the French. The main reasons appear to be the abstraction of Nice, and the domineering tone assumed by the late Empire. Moreover, 'the peoples' (Kossuth still lives at Turin) do not readily pardon their benefactors. Witness the aversion of Spain and Portugal for England since the Peninsular War. In the next campaign the general voice of the younger and more fiery sort, and of that solid power, the Left Centre, will compel the constitutional Government of Victor Emmanuel, despite all his prepossessions and prejudices, to side with Germany against France. This was written years ago, but it is, methinks, still true.

"I was astonished to find the Italianissimo feeling so rampant in Upper Italy, and the people so excited upon the subject, when their Government have set them an example of calmness, common sense, moderation, and constitutional spirit of compromise, which go far to redeem the character of the Latin race, even in this, the darkest day of its history. Because Dante made the Quarnero Gulf finish Italy, and because Petrarch established the Alps as the surroundings of his fair land, their new geographical politicians would absorb Trieste and Istria; and when Jove shall wax wroth, he will probably grant them their silly prayer.

"Trieste has a mixed population. North of Ponte Rosso is Germania, composed of the authorities, the employés, and a few wealthy merchants. They have a maniacal idea of Germanizing their little world, a mania which secures for them abundant trouble and ill-will, for eight millions cannot denationalize thirty-two millions. There are twelve thousand Italians at Trieste who speak a corrupted Venetian; eleven thousand of these are more or less poor, one thousand are perhaps too rich. However, their civilization is all Roman, and they take a pride in it, whilst the exaltés and the Italianissimi hate their rulers like poison. In this they are joined by the mass of the wealthy and influential Israelites, who divide the commerce with the Greeks. The former subscribe handsomely to every Italian charity or movement; and periodically and anonymously memorialize the King of Italy. The lower class take a delight in throwing large squibs, here called by courtesy 'torpedoes,' amongst the unpatriotic petticoats who dare to throng the Austrian balls. The immediate suburbs, country, and villages are Slav, and even in the City some can barely speak Italian. This people detests all its fellow-citizens with an instinctive odium of race, and with a dim consciousness that it has been ousted from its own. Thus the population may be said to be triple. Politics are lively, and the Italianissimi thrive because the constitutional Government, which has taken the place of the old patriarchal despotism, is weak, acting as if it feared them. Austria of to-day is feeble and gentlemanly, and as such is scarcely a match for the actual Italy. Let us lay out a little map of politics immediately around our small corner of the world.

"Being devoted Austrians, we have many anxieties concerning the political health of this admirable country. Austria, once so famed for the astute management, the 'Politiké,' which kept in order the most heterogeneous of households between Bohemia and Dalmatia, and from Hungary to the Milanese, is suffering from a complication of complaints. The first is the economic: her deficit for 1877 is already laid at twenty-six millions of florins; she lives on paper, and she habitually outruns the constable. Secondly, are the modus vivendi with Hungary, the Convention, the Bank, and half a dozen other troubles, which result from the 'chilling dualism' of Count Beust (1867). The inevitable rivalry of a twofold instead of a threefold empire is now deepening to downright hostility. The Slavs complain that the crown of the Empire is being dragged through the mire by the 'Magyarists;' and on December 9th, the Vienna Chamber of Deputies heard for the first time a proposal to substitute Trialism for Dualism. Third, and last, is the Eastern Question, in which the poor invalid is distracted by three physicians proposing three several cures. Doctor Hungary wants only the integrity (!) of Turkey: alliance with England, war with Russia. Doctor Germany, backed by the Archduke Albert, and aided by the army, looks to alliance with Russia, and to the annexation of Bosnia and the Herzegovina when Turkey falls to pieces. Lastly, Doctor Progressist, with the club of the Left, advocates the cold-water treatment, absolute passivity: no annexation, no occupation, no intervention. The triad division seems inveterate: even the Constitutionalist party must split into three—a Centrum, a Left, and a Fortschritts partei. Hence Prince Gortschakoff, not without truth, characterized this mosaic without coherence as 'no longer a State, but only a Government.'

"Austria, like England, is suffering from the manifold disorders and troubles that accompany a change of life. At home we have thrown over for ever the rule of Aristocracy; and we have not yet resigned ourselves to what must inevitably come—Democracy pure and simple. Accordingly, we sit between two stools, with the usual proverbial result. Austria, in 1848, sent to the Limbo of past things the respectable 'paternal government,' with its carcere, its carcere duro, and its carcere durissimo; and threatened to make sausage-meat of M. Ochsenhausen von Metternich. Constitutionalism, adopted by automatism, found the Austrians utterly unfit for freedom; and the last thirty years have only proved that constitutionalism may be more despotic than despotism. Austria has ever been the prey of minorities, German and Magyar. Her Beamter class has adopted the worst form of Latin Bureaucratie. Her Press has one great object in life, that of 'Germanizing' unwilling Slavs. Her fleet has lost Tegetthoff and Archduke Max. Her army, once the best drilled in Europe, and second to none in the ingens magnitudo corporum, has been reduced by short service to a host of beardless boys; and the marvels of the Uchatius gun will not prevent half the regiments being knocked up by a fortnight's work. But these are the inevitable evils of a transition system, and if Austria can only tide over her change of life, she will still enjoy a long, hearty, and happy old age.

"Hence Austro-Hungary is freely denounced as 'disturbing the European Areopagus.' Hence Paskievich declared in 1854 that the road to Stamboul leads through Vienna. Hence Fadajeff, the Panslavist, significantly points out that Europe contains forty millions of Slavs who are not under the White Czar. These ancient Scythians have hitherto shown very little wisdom. Instead of cultivating some general language,—for instance, the old Slavonic, which would have represented Latin,—they are elaborating half a dozen different local dialogues; and, at the last Slav Congress, the Pan-Slav Deputies, greatly to the delight of the Pan-Germanists, were obliged to harangue one another in German. If 'Trialism' be carried out in the teeth of Hungary, what and where can be the capital of the Jugo-Slavs—the Southern and Latin, as opposed to the Pravo-Slavs or orthodox? Where shall be the seat of its Houses? Prague is purely Czech, utterly distasteful to Slavonia, Croatia, and Dalmatia. Laibach in Krain is the only place comparatively central; but that means that all would combine to reject Laibach. Meanwhile the Slavs declare that they are treated as Helots, and that they will stand this treatment no longer.

"Austria will hardly declare war against Russia even at the bidding of the Turko-Hungarian alliance—even if menaced with her pet bugbear, the formation of a strong Slav kingdom, or kingdoms, on her south-eastern frontier. She is thoroughly awake to the danger threatened by her friends, that of falling into her four component parts, each obeying the law of gravitation—Styria, Upper and Lower, absorbing herself in Germany, and Dalmatia and Istria merging into Italy. She has made all her preparations for occupying Bosnia, which the Turks are abandoning, and for which it is generally believed they will not fight. Count Andrassy, the rebel of 1848, the Premier of 1876-78, will keep his own counsel and carry out his own plans. He has been unjustly charged with a vacillating and uncertain policy; as if a man who is being frantically pulled diametrically in four opposite directions were not obliged to stoop at times in order to conquer.

"Italy has of late made strong representations at Vienna against the possible occupation of Bosnia by Austria. She knows that the step would for ever debar her from the possessions of Dalmatia; and that the old kingdom, the mother of Emperors, will never rest satisfied till her extensive seaboard is subtended by a proportionate interior. Italy would prefer to occupy Bosnia in propriâ personâ; but, that being hardly possible, she would leave it occupied, or, worst of all, occupied by the Turks. Italy is the deadliest enemy of Austria, and wears the dangerous aspect of a friend. Such is the present standpoint of the Empire,[4] and you see she is still, as she has been for years, a 'political necessity.' We, her well-wishers, can only say to her, in olden phrase, Tu, felix Austria, nube,—'Yea, marry, and take unto thyself the broad and fertile lands lying behind the Dinaric Alps.'

"Meanwhile, Italy, the rival sister of France, the recipient of many favours from her, and, par consequence, her bitterest foe, bides her time, remains quiet as a church mouse, and, like the Scotchman's owl, thinks hard. She is at present the last, the only hope of Latinism. She has shown, since 1870, a prudence, a moderation, an amount of common sense, comparatively speaking, which have surprised the world. Ethnologists, who scoffed at 'Panlatinism,' were overhasty in determining that the game of the Latin race was 'up;' and that the three progressive families of the future are the English (including the German and the Anglo-American), the Slav, and the sons of the Flowery Land. The present standpoint of Italy is this. She has a treaty with Russia which makes her a spectator. She has returned an overwhelming majority of the progressists, who aim at converting her into a Republic; and Italy, classical and mediæval, has never attained her full development except under Republican rule. Meanwhile, her 'citizens and patriots' look forward to recovering Nice, where, in 1860, some 26,000 votes against 160 were polled in favour of annexation to France. She wants an Algeria, and would like to find it at Tunis, with Carthage for capital. And finally, she would fain round off her possessions by annexing from Austria the Trentine, the county of Gorizia, the peninsula of Istria, including the chief emporium, Trieste, and even the kingdom of Dalmatia.

"It was not a little amusing to note the expression of simple amazement with which the general Press of England acknowledged the discovery that Italy 'actually contemplates' this extension of territory. Would they be surprised to hear that such has been her object for the last six hundred years; that in her darkest hour she has never abandoned her claim; that during the last half-century she has urged it with all her might, and that at the present moment she is steadily labouring to the same end? We, who derive experience from the pages of history, firmly believe that the prize would even now be in her hands were it not for Prussia, who calculates upon the gravitation of the Austro-German race, and who already speaks of Trieste as 'our future seaport.' But why, we ask, cannot Italy rest contented with Venice, which, after a century of neglect, might by liberal measures again become one of the principal commercial centres of Europe?

"Under Augustus the whole of Istria was annexed to the tenth region of Italy; the south-eastern limits being the Flumen Arsæ, the modern Arsa, that great gash in the Eastern flank beyond which began Liburnia. Hence Dante sang ('Inferno,' ix. 113-115)—

'Si come a Pola presso del Quarnaro
Che Italia chiude e i suoi termini bagna,
Fanno i sepolcri tutto 'l loco varo.'

Hence Petrarch (Sonnet cxiv.) declares of his Laura, whose praises he cannot waft all the world over—

'——udralo il bel paese,
Ch' Apennin parte, e 'l mar circonda e 'l Alpe.'

And who can forget the glorious verse of Alfieri, the first to discern Italy in the 'geographical expression' of the eighteenth century?—

'Giorno verrà, tornerà giorno in cui
Redivivi ornai gli Itali staranno,
In campo armati,' etc., etc., etc.

"Italy bases her claim to the larger limit, upon geography, ethnology, and sentiment, as well as upon history. Only the most modest of patriots contend that the Isonzo river, the present boundary of Austria, was a capricious creation of Napoleon I. The more ambitious spirits demand the whole southern watershed of the Julian Alps; nor are they wanting who, by 'Alps' understanding the Dinaric chain, would thus include the whole kingdom of Dalmatia inherited from the Romans.

"Ethnologically, again, Istria declares herself Italian, not Austrian. Her 290,000 souls (round number) consist of 166,000 Latins to 109,000 Slavs, the latter a mongrel breed that emigrated between A.D. 800 and 1657; and a small residue of foreigners, especially Austro-German officials. The Italians are, it is true, confined to the inner towns and to the cities of the seaboard; still, these scattered centres cannot forget that to their noble blood Istria has owed all her civilization, all her progress, and all her glories in arts and arms. Lastly, 'sentiment,' as a factor of unknown power in the great sum of what constitutes 'politics,' is undervalued only by the ignorant vulgus. The Istrians are more Italian than the Italians. Since the first constitution of 1848, they have little to complain of the Government in theory, much in practice. Austria, after the fashion of Prussia, unwisely attempts to 'Germanize' her Italian subjects, who in Istria outnumber the Teutons by five to one. The true policy of Austria would be to Italianize the Italians, to Slavonize the Slavs, and to Magyarize the Hungarians; in other words, to elicit the good qualities of her four component races, instead of attempting to unrace them. And her first practical step should be to abolish all idea of 'Germanizing.' If she did not try for it, it might settle itself.

"The chief danger of Italy, at present, is wishing to go too fast. She would run before she can walk steadily: she forgets the past: she ignores that her independence and unity were won for, and not by, her; that each defeat was to her a conquest. She had the greatest statesman in Europe, Cavour; who so disposed his game, opening it in 1854 with the Crimean War, and following it up with a seat for Piedmont amongst the Great Powers in the Congress of Paris, that it led by a mathematical certainty to Solferino in 1859, and to securing Rome for a capital in 1870. But 'milor Camillo' is dead, and Prince Bismarck, who rules in his stead, bluntly says, 'No one can doubt, even beyond the Alps, that an attack upon Trieste and Istria would meet the point of a sword which is not Austrian.' Italy must put her house in order before she can aspire to extend her grounds. Her income is insufficient for her expenses; her gold is paper; her currency is forced, and her heavy taxes breed general discontent. She has a noble estate for agriculture, but her peasants prefer the stocking to the stocks, the Funds, or the Bank. Her Civil Service is half paid, and compelled to pay itself. Her Custom-house duties are a scandal to a civilized power, and her post-office is a farce. Her army cannot compare, in fighting qualities, with that of Prussia, Austria, or even France. Her sailors are not tailors, but she cannot afford a first-rate armour-clad fleet; she was beaten at Lissa, and her seaboard would easily be blockaded by a great maritime power. Moreover, she has that dual Government at Rome, and a terrible skeleton in the cupboard,—her treatment of the Pope.

"The Liberal press and the 'indignation meetings' of Italy have been alternatively severe and sarcastic upon entente cordiale between the Vatican and the Seraglio. But the Papal logic is clear and sound. It says, 'The reverence of Constantine for the Keys transferred the seat of civil empire to the Byzantium, whereas Anti-Christ Russia founded the pseudo-throne of Saint Peter in the far north. We fought against the Moslem when he was an aggressor. Innocent XI., not to mention the crusader-Popes, preached the liberation of Vienna. Pius I. worked up to the Battle of Lepanto. But things are now changed. You, Bulgarian and Bosnian Catholics, have religious liberty, and you will have political liberty when you deserve it! Meanwhile, obey the Sultan, who has nothing to do with Christianity, and shun Anti-Christ—the Czar.' Good logic, I say, cold and clear-drawn; but powerless to purge away the sentiments, the prejudices, and the passions of mankind.

"Italy drives the coach too fast. Patriotic Italians declare that England has no right to hold Malta. Cyprus was under Venice; ergo, they think it should be under Italy. The Trentine, the Southern Tyrol, Istria, and Dalmatia, are in the same conditions. The Latin kingdom has achieved a great position in Japan. She sends her travellers to explore New Guinea. She aims at being the most favoured nation in Egypt, where she lately received a severe schiaffo. The Italian national expedition landed in the dominions of the Khedive without having had the decency to call upon him in Cairo. You know how the Egyptian noticed the affront. Finally, she talks of herself as one of the Powers, ready to occupy the insurgent districts which the Porte cannot reduce. Such is the actual standpoint of United Italy.

"I will now sketch the state of Hungary, whose ambition threatens to make her aggressive, entitled, by the press of England, the 'backbone of the Austrian monarchy;' and praised for the 'superior political organization' with which she has crushed her Slav rivals.

"Since the days, now forgotten, when Prince Esterhazy first flashed, in London society, his diamond jacket upon the dazzled eyes of the 'upper ten thousand,' the name of Hungarian has been a passport to favour amongst us. We meet him in the shape of a Kinsky, an Erdŏdy, or a Hunyadi,—well born, well clad, and somewhat unlearned, except in the matter of modern languages. But he is a good rider, a keen sportsman, and a cool player for high stakes—qualities in one point (only) much resembling Charity. He looks like a gentleman in a drawing-room and in the hunting-field; he is quite at home at a fancy ball; he wears his frogged jacket, his tights and his tall boots, his silks, satins, and furs, with an air; his manners are courteous, cordial, and pleasant; in money matters he has none of the closeness of the cantankerous Prussian, none of the meanness of the Italian; and, lastly, he makes no secret of his sympathy with England, with the English, and with all their constitution-manias. What can you want more? You pronounce him a nice fellow, and all, woman especially, re-echo your words, 'He is such a gentleman!' and—he received the Prince of Wales so enthusiastically!

"But there is another side (politically speaking) to this fair point of view. The Hungarian is a Tartar with a coat of veneer and varnish. Hungary is, as regards civilization, simply the most backward country in Europe. Buda-Pest is almost purely German, the work of the Teutons, who, at the capital, do all the work; you hardly ever hear in the streets a word of Magyar, and the Magyars have only managed to raise its prices and its death-rate to somewhat double those of London. The cities, like historic Gran on the Danube, have attempts at public buildings and streets; in the country towns and villages the thoroughfares are left to Nature; the houses and huts, the rookeries and doggeries are planted higgledy-piggledy, wherever the tenants please; and they are filthier than any shanty in Galway or Cork, in Carinthia or Krain. The Ugrian or Ogre prairies have no roads, or rather they are all road; and the driver takes you across country when and where he wills. The peasantry are 'men on horseback,'—in this matter preserving the customs of their Hun and Tartar ancestors. They speak a tongue of Turkish affinity, all their sympathies are with their blood-kinsmen the Turks, and they have toiled to deserve the savage title of 'white Turks,' lately conferred upon them by Europe.

"Fiume, the only seaport of Hungary, is a study of Hungarian nationality. The town is neatly built, well paved, and kept tolerably clean by Slav and Italian labour, the former doing the coarse, the latter the fine work. The port is, or rather is to be, bran-new. Because Austria chooses to provide a worse than useless, and frightfully expensive—in fact, ruinous—harbour for Trieste, whose anchoring roads were some of the best in Europe, therefore (admire the consequence) Hungary demands a similar folly for her emporium, Fiume, whose anchoring roads are still better. After throwing a few million of florins into the water, the works are committed to the charge of the usual half-dozen men and boys; moreover, as the port is supposed to improve, so its shipping and its business fall off in far quicker ratio. Commerce cannot thrive amongst these reckless, feckless people. There is no spirit of enterprise, no union to make force, no public spirit; the dead cities of the Zuyder Zee are bustling New England centres in comparison with Fiume; and the latter, which might have become the emporium of the whole Dalmatian coast, and a dangerous rival to Trieste, is allowing her golden opportunity to pass away never to return. For when Dalmatia shall have been vitalized by the addition of Bosnia and the Herzegovina, her glorious natural basins—harbours that can hold all the navies of the world—will leave Fiume mighty little to do except what she does now, look pretty and sit in the sun.

"All Englishmen who have lived long amongst Hungarians remark the similarity of the Magyar and the southern Irish Catholic. Both are imaginative and poetical, rather in talk than in books; neither race ever yet composed poetry of the highest class. Both delight in music; but, as the 'Irish Melodies' are mostly Old English, so the favourites of Hungary are gypsy songs. Both have the 'gift of the gab' to any extent, while their eloquence is notably more flowery than fruity. Both are sharp and intelligent, affectionate and warm-hearted; easily angered and appeased, delighted with wit, and to be managed by a bon mot; superficial, indolent, sensitive, punctilious, jealous, quarrelsome, passionate, and full of fight. Both are ardent patriots, with an occasional notable exception of treachery; both are brilliant soldiers; the Hungarians, who formerly were only cavalry men, now form whole regiments of the Austrian Line. They are officered by the Germans, who will not learn the language, justly remarking, 'If we speak Magyar, we shall be condemned for ever to Magyar corps, and when the inevitable split takes place, where shall we then be?' Both are bold and skilful riders; and, as the expatriated Irish Catholic was declared by Louis Le Grand—an excellent authority upon such matters—to be 'one of the best gentlemen in Europe,' so Europe says the same of the Hungarian haute volée.

"As regards politics and finance, Buda-Pest is simply a modern and eastern copy of Dublin. The Hungarian magnate still lives like the Squireen and Buckeen of the late Mr. Charles Lever's 'earliest style;' he keeps open house, he is plundered by all hands, and no Galway landowner of the last generation was less fitted by nature and nurture to manage his own affairs. Hence he is drowned in debt, and the Jew usurer is virtually the owner of all those broad acres which bear so little. An 'Encumbered Estates Bill' would tell strange tales; but the sabre is readily drawn in Hungary, and the 'chosen people,' sensibly enough, content themselves with the meat of the oyster, leaving the shells to the owner.

"This riotous, rollicking style of private life finds its way into public affairs; and as a model of 'passionate politics,' the Hungarian is simply perfect. He has made himself hateful to the sober-sided German and to the dull Slav; both are dead sick of his outrecuidance; the former would be delighted to get rid of the selfish and short-sighted irrepressibles, who are ever bullying and threatening secession about a custom tax, or a bank, or a question of union. They are scandalized by seeing the academical youth, the jeunesse dorée of Magyar universities, sympathizing with Turkish atrocities, declaring Turkey to be the defender of European civilization, fackelzuging the Turkish Consul, insulting the Russians, and sending a memorial sabre to a Sirdar Ekrem (Commander-in-Chief), whose line of march was marked by the fire-blackened walls of Giaour villages, and by the corpses of murdered Christians, men and women and babes. Could the Austro-Germans only shake off the bugbear of Panslavism, they would cut the cable, allow the ne'er-do-well Hungarian craft to drift away water-logged into hypostatic union with that big ironclad the Turk; they would absorb the whole of Bosnia, the Herzegovina, and Albania; they would cultivate the Slav nationality, and they would rely upon racial difference of dialect and religion to protect them against the real or imaginary designs of Russia. Prince Eugène of Savoy, in the last century, a man of wit, was of that opinion, and so are we.

"Hungary, indeed, is a tinder-box like Montenegro, and much more dangerous, because her supply of combustible is on a larger scale. The last bit of puerile folly has been to press for an Austrian military occupation of Servia; and why? Because an Austrian monitor, being in a part of the river where 'No thoroughfare' is put up, was fired upon with ball cartridges by a schildwache (sentinel) from the fort walls, and exploded, bungler that she was, one of her own shells. The Hungarians had been raving at the idea of 'occupation' in Bulgaria, but the moment they saw an opportunity of breaking the Treaty of Paris, they proposed doing so at once. By-the-by, now that Prince Wrede, a personâ ingratâ, is removed from Belgrade, you will hear no more of Servian outrages against Austria. To the 'Magyarists' we may trace most of the calumnies against the brave and unfortunate Servian soldiery—lies of the darkest dye, so eagerly swallowed by the philo-Turk members of the English Press, and danger of Hungary and her politics of passion. Russians and Turks might be safely put into the ring together, like 'Down-Easters' in a darkened room, and be allowed to fight it out till one cried, 'Enough!'

"If these views of Hungary and the Hungarians be true—and they are our views—you will considerably discount the valuation set upon them by the Turcophile Press. They were once a barrier against Tartar savagery, a Finnish race, invited by the Byzantine Emperors to act as a buffer against Mohammedanism. The three orders of Magyars—Magnates, Moderates, and Miserables—hate Russia for the sensible and far-seeing part which she played in 1848-49; all excitement is apt to spread; even so in a street dog-fight, every cur thinks itself bound to assist, and to bite and wrangle something or other, no matter what. And where, we may ask, is the power that can muzzle these Eastern ban-dogs? who shall take away the shillelaghs of these Oriental Paddies?

"A taste of Hungarian quality has been given by M. Vambéry in the columns of the Daily Telegraph. M. Vambéry was born in Hungary, of Israelitish German parents. Like the sons of Israel generally, he hates Russia, and he loves England, and probably he has good and weighty reasons both for his hate and for his love. He was daring enough to tell us, in his first book of travels, that after dinner with the Turkish Minister at Teheran—and a very good dinner it was—he just disguised himself as a dervish, and travelled perfectly incog. for months and months under Russian eyes, partly through Russian territory. The Russians must have known every step taken by M. Vambéry. He saw only what he was allowed to do; and thus Mr. Schuyler, whose name has, we regret to say, been altered by the irreverent Turcophile to 'Squealer,' roundly declares that he never visited the places which he has so well described. You will therefore regard M. Vambéry's opinions upon the subject of Turkey with suspicion, and reserve all your respect for his invaluable publications upon the Turanian dialects, his spécialité. Lieutenant Payer's book will disappoint you; its main merit is that of having been written by a Magyar.

"Do not believe these Ugrians to be 'the backbone of the Austrian Empire,' whatever they may be to its element of weakness, the Monarchy. And if you are driven to own that the Hungarians 'play the leading part in the events of Southern Europe,' understand that the chief end and aim of Magyarist policy is to ruin the Slavs. I am a strong Austrian, with a great admiration for the Hungarians, who are to me, personally and individually, most attractive; but this does not blind me to the disadvantages they, en masse, bring to Austria. I believe the Slav to be the future race of Europe, even as I hold the Chinese to be the future race of the East. In writing politics and history which may live after one is long forgotten, one must speak the truth, and bury repulsions and attractions.

"Were I Emperor of Austria, I should have the police organized on English principles. I should punish with death the first two or three cases of brutal crime. The people are excellent. It speaks highly for the independent Triestines that, with weak laws, and authorities that act as though they dreaded them, the worst crimes are only stabbing when drunk, and suicide; and the latter is entirely owing to the excitability of the climate and the utter throwing off of religion, whilst all moral disgrace or dread is removed by the applause conferred on the suicide, and sympathy with the surviving family—which last is good and noble. I have seen thousands accompanying a felo de se to the grave, with verses and laurel leaves and a band of music, as if he had done something gallant and brave. Indeed, one was considered very narrow-minded for not joining in his eulogy.

"They say that forty years ago Trieste was a charming place to live in; but that, with increase of trade, luxury and money flowed in and faith flowed out. Let us say that the population is 150,000, with suburbs; 20,000 are practical Catholics, 30,000 are freethinkers, and 90,000 are utterly indifferent. In fact, the national religion is dying out; and when that is so in a Catholic land, there is nothing to replace it except Socialism. After repeated outrages and torpedo-throwing, the Habeas Corpus would have been at once suspended in free England, and the French would have placed the City under martial law. The Empire-Kingdom does not, however, disfranchise the turbulent City by suppressing the local Diet till such time as the public expression of disloyal feeling shall have disappeared. A more manly policy would suit better. Trieste is also allowed to retain peculiar privileges. She is still a free port; her octrois are left to her for squandering and pillage, and are so heavy that till lately the adjoining villages consumed sugar which came viâ Holland all round and through Europe. Trieste has three towns, as well as three races. The oldest is the Citta Vecchia, which dates before the days of Strabo. Filthy in the extreme, it is a focus of infection. Smallpox is rarely absent from it, and it swells the rate of mortality to the indecent figure of 40 to 50 per 1000 per annum; London being 22, and Madras 36. The climate is peculiar. It has three winds—the Bora (Boreas), the Baltic current, the winter wind, cold, dry, highly electrical, very exciting, and so violent that sometimes the quays have been roped, and some of the walls have iron rails let in to prevent people from being blown into the sea. And there have been some terrible accidents in my time. An English engineer has been blown from the quay into the hold of a ship (thirty feet). I saw him in the hospital, a mere jelly, but nothing more; he is well and at work. A cab and horse have been upset, and also a train. The summer wind is the Scirocco, straight from Africa, wet, warm, and debilitating; whilst the contraste means the two blowing together, and against each other, with all the disadvantages of both.

"Trieste is a political and coy personage, hotly wooed by Italy and by Germany. The latter openly declares that she is part of the new Teutonic Empire, and that the eight millions or so of Austro-Germans ought to belong body and soul to the Fatherland. Meanwhile she is enjoyed by the Empire-Kingdom, greatly against the grain. A powerful rival is rising a few miles to the south, in the person of Croatian Fiume, which has long ago repented her of having cast her lot with Hungary. The Flanatic Bay of the ancients is magnificent, almost equalling the scenery of Naples. A French company is building a port, which will avoid much of the expense and some of the errors fatal to Trieste; and but for the inveterate backwardness of the people, the utter ignorance of what progress means, and the miserable local jealousies, Fiume, connected by a railway with Agram or Zagabria, might already have risen upon the decline of Trieste; but Fiume does not see her advantage, and we retain our supremacy.

"Beyond the Sinus Flanaticus begins the kingdom of Dalmatia, with a line of natural harbours between Zara and the Bocche di Cattaro, which are perhaps the finest in the European world. Unhappily, at present these ports have nothing to export or import. After long and careful consideration of the question, based upon the impartial hearing of both sides discussed, we have come to the conclusion, firstly, that the dualism of 1867 has not been successful; secondly, that Austria should have been a Triregno; thirdly, that H.I.M. Franz Josef might still be crowned King of Bohemia as well, and thus establish a nucleus about which the divided families of Slavs, especially the estimable Slovenes, the Wends who founded Venice, could and would group themselves. I am essentially Austrian by sympathy; but I do not like the Germans to chuckle when they tell me that the last great Slavonic Congress, which met in 1845, was compelled, after various failures, to make speeches in German; because the laughers ignore the fact that Panslavism is still rampant in Austria, and the clergy puff up the patriotic movement with all their might, and that schools and colleges are teaching the rising generation its rights as well as its wrongs. None but an inveterate theorist, who holds that the Slav race is not to be the race of the future, would neglect the importance of a people constituting nearly half the total of Austro-Hungary—nineteen millions out of the thirty-four which remained after the cession of Venice in 1866.

"The evil action of this unfair dualism is now causing profound discontent. Dalmatia is the narrowest kingdom in Europe—300 miles long by 0 to 15 miles broad, the cypher representing the two spots where Turkey touches the sea. She is a face without a head; the latter would be Bosnia and the Herzegovina. She has a profusion of ports which have nothing to port, and a fine seafaring population ready for, and capable of, any amount of carrying trade, but condemned to be professors, custom-house officers, and fishers of sardines. Bosnia, with her unworked mines and forests, her unimproved flocks and herds, and her hundred other sources of neglected wealth, is the complement of, a political necessity to, Dalmatia. Some day she must become Dalmatian, and the sooner she connects herself with Austro-Hungary by a plébiscite, or some such civilized instrument, the better it will be for both. The only drawback to this movement in the far west of the Ottoman Empire is that it appears to be somewhat premature. Russia has her hands full in Eastern Asia, and Austria has for some time a hole in her pocket. No one knows how sick the famous Sick Man really is since his last attack of Russomania, following his chronic Russophobia[5]—an attack brought on by our own disgraceful (Liberal) abandonment of the Black Sea Treaties. None know, save those who have sat by his bedside, looked at his tongue, and have felt his pulse. He was breaking fast when he determined to risk a national bankruptcy. Finding the so-called 'tax of blood' too heavy, he was already talking of a Christian recruitment, which would have been the beginning of the end; and the paroxysm induced by sending a few thousand troops to ravage and lay waste his discontented outlying estates, has reduced him to the last gasp. For the rebellion, although premature, is a reality—it will not be put down by paper; it means to last till next spring, and when the fighting season comes it will call for the armed intervention of Europe.

"The integrity of the Ottoman Empire has been, since the days of Chatham, a fortieth article of faith to English statesmen; although since the publication of Macfarlane's 'Turkey and her Destiny,' every traveller from Mostar to Bussorah, from Candia to Circassia, has shown up the miserable misrule which oppresses those fair and fruitful regions. The British Cabinet till now has not opened its eyes to ask 'How long?' or has had originality enough or irreverence sufficient to pull down the old idol, and to propose a remedy for the present condition of things. The official mind was made up; there was no more to be said upon the subject. A Government that preferred peace and present prosperity to the discharge of an arduous and distasteful duty, laid down its law, determined to let sleeping dogs lie, till that little matter of the Turkish debt, the neatest thing done by the arch-enemy of the Ottoman, came like a thunderbolt and 'roused the spirit of the British Lion.'

"Meanwhile the action of Austria has been sadly trammelled by the Dualism which she has brought upon herself. The German population of the Empire naturally dislikes being swamped by the new influx of Slavs, but it has not proved itself unpatriotic. The contrary is the case with the kingdom of Hungary—the five millions of Magyar who, strengthened by the position and the character of Count Andrassy, have opposed themselves with all their might to the development of Dalmatia. This is a mistake, because sooner or later Dalmatia will develop herself without them. The reason that Austro-German officers joining Hungarian regiments avoid as much as possible studying the language is that they fear not being allowed to exchange, and they do not see their way in case of a separation between the Empire and the Kingdom.

"The British philo-Turk, if any there be now, would characterize the absorption of Bosnia and Herzegovina—I would even add Montenegro and Albania, with the frontier of Greece—as a spoliation of Turkey. Let him prove that it is not a just and right retaliation for the centuries of injury which she has inflicted, which she still inflicts, and which she will ever inflict, upon the sacred causes of civilization and progress. If any casuist declare that the misrule of a Government, as in the case of Oude, does not justify the annexation by Powers professing faith in the development of man, in the religion of humanity; if he put forward that old saw, that 'the end does not justify the means,' let him be answered that Europe has duties which she owes to herself; that the first rule of conduct is her own safety, and that the second is the support of her co-religionists in Europe and Asia, throughout the Ottoman Empire. The Christian population equals, if not exceeds, the Mohammedan, and the evident hope with which it looks forward to emancipation from Islamism deserves the most careful consideration.

"For the last ten years the relations of Great Britain with Turkey have been peculiar and unsatisfactory. The Ottoman voice has openly said, 'The last Englishman who cared for us was Lord Palmerston. You will assist us if it be to your interest, no matter how we treat you, well or ill. You do not fight for an idea, like France. You will not fight for love of us, as in the days of Silistria and Eupatoria. We prefer an open enemy to a false friend. Go to! We have had enough of you.' And they showed their especial contempt by their treatment of English subjects in Turkey; the debts owed to them by the Turk remain unpaid, and in Syria our fellow-countrymen were the last to receive the compensation for the destruction of their property in the massacre of 1860.

"Again, the present is, if any, the moment for us to act, or to encourage action in others. The stride of the young Colossus is temporarily, not lastingly, stayed. In future times[6] quien sabe? (but God avert it!) we may be so hampered by civil disturbances between Capital and Labour, so trammelled by intestine troubles in Ireland, or so engaged in external war, that moral force only will not suffice to give our voice any weight in the European world. And the effect would be allowing Russia, a vigilant enemy of overpowering resolution, to annex Turkey in Europe without any attempt to preserve the last rag of balance of power by strengthening the hands of Austria.

"Again, there are thousands of our fellow-countrymen scattered over the surface of Turkey, and were England known to be incapacitated from using arms, yet having arms and money, it is to be feared that the first Russian gun fired from Constantinople would be the signal of a miserable butchery. But it will be said that the Sultan has begun the task of reform; his last rescript has been more favourable to the Rayyahs than anything ever issued by Turkey. I reply, it is easy to have dust thrown in our eyes provided we open them for the purpose. What have all the Hatts Shereef or Humayoun yet done for the Christian Turk? We must be made, after the image of David Urquhart, to believe in such pie-crust promises. Grant we that H.I.M. the Sultan is sincere, yet he cannot act himself, and there is no one to act for him. The Turkish official, and, for the matter of that, the unofficial, society is much like her army. The private is an excellent man, sober, honest, truthful, brave, and docile to a degree. Promote him, and he runs through the several grades of bad comparison, not repenté, but with an agility which surprises the slow northern mind. As a non-commissioned officer he is bad; higher he is worse; and command makes him worst. The same with the French peasant; give him a small emploi, a bit of gold lace, and he falls from an angel to a demon in a week, without stopping to look round.

"Now back to notre premier amour, Trieste. I associate with politicians and clever men all day, with open eyes and ears; and an occasional peep at a despatch makes one learn a great deal, and form strong opinions. I am neither philo-Turk nor Russ. I am John Bull to the backbone, with personal Austrian sympathies, and a strong leaning to all that is of Arab blood.

"This port was once a favourite with the British bird of passage, especially when embarking with the Austro-Hungarian Lloyd for Alexandria. But the Northerner did not approve of the line. He liked his beef and mutton in huge joints, not in slices and cutlets; he preferred his potatoes in their jackets to pommes de terre à la maître d'hôtel; in fact, he grumbled about everything, and at Suez he transferred himself on board the P. and O. like one that had found a home. The stranger has also been put to flight by the hotel-managers. This city is one of the dearest in Europe. The shilling, the lira, and the franc have become the florin; but these gentlemen gild refined gold, and charge highly for the operation. There are three establishments which call themselves first-rate, and which Englishmen would consider decently comfortable. Unhappily, they belong to companies, not individuals, and they are farmed out to managers, who squeeze you as the tax-gatherer does the Rayyah. There are no tables of charges hung up in the rooms, so you pay according to length of purse, real or supposed. Thus the late Lord Dalling had a bill of £45 for two days, during which he never dined in the house, and the present Prince Ypsilante was plundered at the same time of 950 florins. It is said that he sent for the manager, and, after settling his account, warmly complimented him upon being the greatest rascal he had ever had to do with. So the late Lord Hertford, when paying off his Parisian architect, politely regretted that he had never had le déplaisir de sa connaissance.

"All the world here is reading M. Charles Yriarte. That popular writer, the Ipsilon of the Revue des deux Mondes, who spent the winter of 1873-4 in Istria and Dalmatia, Montenegro and Herzegovina, published his trip in the illustrated journal, the Tour du Monde; and, the time being propitious, it was translated into Italian at Milan, with a variety of notes, taking the Italianissimo view of the matter, and converting a delightful tale of travel into a rabid wrangle of politics. The Austrian Government has shown a want of knowledge of human nature, put the book à l'index, confiscating every copy found in the libraries; consequently we are all devouring it en cachette."