ART. III. STATE REFORM IN AUSTRIA.

1. Austria. By J. G. KOHL. London. 1843.

2. Austria in 1848-49. Being a History of the late Political Movements in Vienna, Milan, Venice, and Prague. By WM. H. STILES,

late Chargé d'Affaires of the United States at the Court of Vienna. 2 vols. New York. 1852.

3. Memoirs of the Court, Aristocracy, and Diplomacy of Austria. By DR. E. VEHSE. Translated from the German by FRANZ DEMMLER. 2 vols. London. 1856.

4. Die Wahre Richtung der National Politik. Wien. 1862.

AUSTRIA under constitutional and representative government! The words have a strange flavor in our mouths, as of a hot January, or a loyal South Carolina. It is not easy to understand them as implying anything more liberal in the way of a constitution, than those deceptive and ostentatious productions which absolute monarchs are accustomed to put forth in the stress of popular revolution, and to revoke at their earliest leisure. Who has forgotten these blazing words of Kossuth at Bunker Hill, in that short summer during which his marvellous eloquence swept over our prosperous and astonished land, sweet with all the poetry of the East, and yet strong and stirring as the blast of a Northern trumpet: "Young Nero in Vienna's old walls, thou mayst rage, and pour the embers of thy fury over my people's head! thou mayst raise thy scaffold, and people thy dungeons with thousands of new victims, and drain the life-sweat of my people, and whip it with the iron rod of thy unparalleled tyranny! I defy thee to break my people's high-minded spirit!. Foolish boy, thou mayst torture my family, break the heart of my old mother, murder my sisters, and send forth the assassins against him who, with ill-fated, but honest generosity, once saved thy crown: thou mayst do all thou canst, thy days are numbered, thy power is falling, and my people will be free!"

The words could scarcely be said to exaggerate the atrocity of the tyranny which they denounced. Francis Joseph, the "young Nero," then only twenty-one years old, had, after the breaking out of the Revolution of 1848, and the abdication of

his uncle, Ferdinand, succeeded to the throne of the Hapsburgs. What an opportunity for a prince commencing his manhood and his reign at the same moment! For sixty years the empire had groaned under the remorseless tyranny of Francis II. and of Ferdinand, his son, in both of whom all the traditionary traits of the Hapsburghers were concentrated. With the assistance of Metternich, who was not only the Prime Minister, but the inspirer of both Francis and Ferdinand, and of Schwarzenberg, on whom the mantle of Metternich descended in the succeeding reign, these two sovereigns had finally succeeded in rendering the condition of the vast population of the empire quite unendurable; and when, at length, the example of all Europe seemed to invite them to throw off the intolerable burden, they rose in self-assertion, demanding, not self-government, but simply their old privileges under the empire.

This was the moment chosen for the abdication of Ferdinand, and for the elevation to such a throne of a boy of eighteen years. His uncle's example was fresh before him,an example wholesome for warning; but it was not the only one he had to contemplate. Only one remove beyond the reign of Francis, his grandfather, was the reign of Joseph II., short, indeed, but prosperous, quiet, rich in examples of civil and religious toleration, in a liberal and really paternal government, and in the loyalty and affection of the whole people. Had the young Emperor chosen to follow in the steps of Joseph, what an auspicious reign might then have opened before him! At first this seemed possible. The Constitution of the 4th of March, 1849, wrung though it was from the reluctance of the government, was yet a good beginning, and went far towards conciliating the great body of the subjects in Austria proper. By just concessions to Hungary he might as easily have pacified the leaders of that unhappy country, and substituted a willing allegiance for the sullen subjection to which, by the end of the same summer, they were reduced. But he chose to follow the example of Francis and of Ferdinand: Hungary, instead of being conciliated, was scourged with merciless severity. In less than three years the Constitution, which had never been operative for a single day, was

formally annulled by an imperial edict; and from that time forward Francis Joseph, fairly launched on the desperate voyage on which so many rulers have sailed forth to their destruction, pursued the repressive policy throughout his great realms with an unremitting perseverance and stolid determination worthy of the worst of his imperial ancestors. Trial by jury was abolished, the censorship of the press was re-established on a more rigorous footing than ever before, the Jesuits were encouraged with fresh privileges, and the behavior of the Austrians in the Italian provinces grew year by year more insolent and threatening.

In this absolute career the Emperor was suddenly arrested by the intervention of Napoleon III., and the short but vigorous war of 1859, at the close of which he found himself deprived, after less than three months of fighting, of eight thousand square miles of Italian territory, and two and a half millions of population. This remarkable intervention on the part of a ruler hardly less absolute in his pretensions than himself, could hardly fail to arouse even a Hapsburg prince to some wholesome reflection on the folly of pursuing longer a theory of government which the rest of the world had repudiated. Whether the remarkable step of the next year was the direct result of this warning from his brother Emperor, or of other and less direct influences, it is of course impossible to say; but it is certain that, since the Peace of Villafranca, the empire of . Austria has seemed, for the first time in the present century, to feel the influence of the principles which have modified for many years the political course of the neighboring states, and that for now fully two years its people have enjoyed the opportunity of self-government in larger measure than any other of the great nations of Continental Europe.

Before reviewing the manner in which this singular and most important change has been accomplished, we wish to take a glance at the condition in which it found the population which it affected.

One of Dr. Johnson's wise commonplaces, that "it is a mortifying reflection for any man to consider what he has done compared with what he might have done," is as striking when applied to nations as when applied to men. Let us see how

Austria would come out of such a comparison.

What she

might have done, we can best judge from the means at her command. The empire, stretching over a territory of 250,000 square miles, and embracing a population of nearly forty millions, would seem to possess every element of material prosperity and wealth. It is blessed with a climate which knows nothing of the snows of Hamburg or Berlin, and which yet enjoys a happy exemption from the fierce heats of Italy. It is traversed for nearly a thousand miles by the Danube, which surpasses in size all European rivers except the Volga, and in beauty all but the Rhine, and which is navigable to the very heart of the country. It has mineral springs whose waters lure from Paris and London the enfeebled votaries of fashion and pleasure; it has mountains and lakes which enchant the astonished traveller by their grandeur and loveliness. In the extent and variety of economical resources, Austria need yield to no other country of Europe. Iron, salt, and coal are abundant; the soil is, in many portions of the Empire, extraordinarily fertile, agriculture is everywhere productive, and several branches of industry are pursued exclusively here. The quicksilver mines of Idria, in Lower Austria, are worked with surprising energy, and are the most productive in the world except those of Almaden; even gold, silver, and several of the precious stones are found occasionally in small quantities; and, in short, there seem to be very few of those natural products upon which the world depends for its subsistence and comfort, for which an Austrian need go out of his own country.

To improve and turn to account these splendid natural gifts, the intellectual aids have not been wanting. In the establishment of those institutions most calculated to advance a people in material civilization, the Austrian government has exercised a liberality and judgment not second even to the French. The three hundred and thirty-six miles of railway which connect the capital with the seaport constitute the finest line of railway in Europe, triumphing in some portions over obstacles which might well have seemed insurmountable, as in the passage of the Semmering Alps, where the road reaches an elevation of three thousand feet above the sea level, in gaining which

it passes through a continued series of tunnels and galleries, and over embankments and viaducts, and presents a course so tortuous, with an ascent so gradual and easy, as to excite the enthusiasm of engineers, and to extort admiration from the most careless traveller.

The system of public education has been rendered of late years wonderfully minute and complete, penetrating the rudest districts; compelling, under severe penalties, the attendance of every child at the schools, and assuring to a certain extent his education. A neglect of this wholesome regulation entails various civil disabilities on parents and children, and, without a certificate of the requisite amount of school attendance from both parties, the priests are forbidden to perform the marriage service. This system of general education for the masses is completed by the admirable institutions at Vienna and the other large cities of the empire, for the benefit of the higher classes; the gymnasia, or colleges, the military schools, the polytechnic schools, probably the most excellent in the world, not forgetting, as an aid to the latter, that very extensive and interesting museum of the useful arts known as the Technological Cabinet, which includes specimens of every tool, instrument, natural product, stuff, or manufactured article which has a place, however humble, in the civilization of to-day. We have only to remember the interest which attaches to every relic of the daily life of the old Romans, recovered from under the ashes of Pompeii, to see the prospective value which so complete a collection as this must possess. Then the hospitals and the various asylums, the libraries and the museums, the galleries, the cabinets, the baths, complete a list of public institutions which have their part in maintaining the intelligence of the people, and which, in the hands of an enlightened and constitutional government, could hardly fail of bringing the nation to a point of happiness and of solid prosperity which as yet, among the nations of Europe, England alone has realized.

For it is certain that, in point of natural endowments, no people is better calculated to enjoy and profit by such educational advantages than the people of Austria. The singularly mixed character of the empire, as at present constituted, ren