d'ébranler les coûtumes établies, en sondant jusque dans leur source, pour marquer leur défaut de justice: il faut, dit-on, recourir aux lois fondamentales et primitives de l'état, qu'une coûtume injuste a abolies. C'est un jeu sûr pour tout perdre: rien ne sera juste à cette balance.' His strong conscientiousness Joseph inherited from his mother, but the passion for ideal justice was his own. There can be no stronger instance of it, than that he assumed the power, unknown to sovereigns of Western Europe, of sharpening as well as remitting the sentences of criminal courts. Undoubtedly he was right in principle. Beccaria and Bentham expended almost a needless amount of acuteness in showing the absurdity of the feudal custom of pardon. If the executive does exercise the power of interfering with the sentences of the judicial body, it should unquestionably be with the object of correcting mistaken lenity as well as severity. But that a 'King's face should give grace' was a prejudice far too deeply rooted for Joseph to shake, and this innovation, founded on the purest intentions, was one of the first which he was compelled by public opinion to withdraw.

Closely allied with these peculiarities were an occasional roughness of manner, carried to affectation, a harsh and dictatorial air; an assumed outside, which covered singular delicacy as well as strength of sentiment, and feelings tremblingly alive to every variation in those of the persons whom he loved; an eager, inquisitive, but attractive bearing; a special fondness for refined, and particularly female, society-his only relaxation in later years, and in which he appeared to great advantage; being described by the minister, Kaunitz, in his barbarous Frenchified dialect, as ein ganz aimabler perfecter cavalier.' Baron Reitzenstein, author of a 'Journey to Vienna' (1789), describes not amiss this double aspect of Joseph's

outward demeanour. says, the Emperor was still speaking to a gentleman to whom he gave some orders. His tone was so rough, so harsh, his pronunciation so Austrian, that the impression made on me was unpleasing in the highest degree. Immediately afterwards, two French ladies were introduced to him how polite, refined, and soft his manner at once became! The imperious monarch disappeared: the most prepossessing attractive man of the world stood before me instead.' One of the most touching of the many pieces of his writing which remain is the billet of adieu to the Princess Francis Lichtenstein, written just before his decease, and addressed' Aux cinq dames réunies de la société, qui m'y toléraient.'

'When I entered the room,' he

And in either character-whether under his assumed air of abruptness, or his natural geniality of manner—all agree as to the effect produced by the glance of his attaching and sympathetic eye. Kaiseraugenblau' was for a time the fashionable colour of the ladies of Vienna. It was an eye which seemed to recognise and speak to every one. There was something in Joseph's softness of heart, and also in the scrupulous earnestness with which he regarded his duties, which rendered it impossible for him to assume that official look of half-notice which every one must so often have observed in the optics of the powerful. It is a glance which seems compounded out of the fear of affronting some one who may be entitled to acknowledgment, and the fear of encouraging an address which may lead to inconvenient solicitation, or at least to the loss of valuable time. I cannot at all agree with that charming writer of travels, Aubrey de Vere, who, happening to meet the Sultan in a stroll through Constantinople, and being apparently a little discomposed by a look of this description, thus describes it: That gaze in which there

is nothing of recognition, and in which no distinction is made between animate and inanimate objects, appears peculiar to the East; perhaps to absolute power in the East.' It is just as much occidental as oriental, and any one who wishes to realise it has only to go into the lobby of the House of Commons, and try to catch the eye of a minister, or other much preoccupied public man.

Such were the general characteristics of the sovereign on whom the task of regenerating a chaotic assemblage of dominions, unconnected except by the personal tie of sovereignty, and offering every possible variety of senseless misgovernment, rooted abuses, mutual prejudices and jealousies, devolved on the death of Maria Theresa. The sovereign of Austria was, in Austria itself, a native prince amidst a loyal population, but controlled by an enormously wealthy clergy and aristocracy; in Tyrol, he was the chief looked up to by an independent peasantry; in the Netherlands, the political head of a nest of mediaval commonwealths with clashing rights and usages; in Bohemia, Moravia, Silesia, he was a foreign potentate, governing an indifferent and sullen population with the aid of a nobility chiefly foreign like himself and an exótic hierarchy in Hungary, the feudal suzerain of a nation of nobles, interposing their proud will and their impracticable constitution between him and the millions of oppressed inferior races who vegetated in the background; in Galicia, Lombardy, and other outlying regions, a conqueror ruling absolutely by right of the sword. To wield an empire of such discordant materials was the problem laid before the House of Lorraine-Hapsburg in 1780, and remains the same problem still for if in some points the difficulty may have diminished, thanks chiefly to the achievements of Joseph himself through the comparative reduction, for instance, of the noble and clerical power-it has in

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other respects increased, by the augmented strength of the democratic element, and the great impulse given of late years to those antipathies of races which constitute the worst canker of modern polity. This problem has been differently dealt with at different periods: by flattery and management of the more powerful elements, so as to induce them to combine against the weaker, as had been the policy of Maria Theresa, and was that of Metternich in his better period; by jealous military and police repression, as in the worst times of the long reign of Francis; by the bold experiment recently made of constructing a central representative body, which seems to be as yet in suspense. All these have their several share of worldly wisdom, but all have hitherto failed to achieve more than a mere temporary success. Joseph undertook the task beyond his, and probably beyond human strength, of cutting the knot which so many able hands, both before and since him, have failed to untie. His scheme was no less than to consolidate all his dominions into one homogeneous whole; to abolish all privileges and exclusive rights; to obliterate the boundaries of nations, and substitute for them a mere administrative division of his whole empire; to merge all nationalities, and establish the German language as the only recognised one; to establish an uniform code of justice; to raise the mass of the community to legal equality with their former masters; to constitute a uniform level of democratic simplicity under his own absolute sway. It was his object,' says Schlosser, 'to effect, by force, that which it is the object of other monarchical states to prevent by force: and he consequently came into collision with the people, and with the spirit of the age, on precisely opposite grounds from other autocrats. He wanted to alter the administration, government educa

tion, religious constitution, legislation, and legal procedure of his states. This could not possibly be done without a revolution, and without taking the people into council; and Joseph was determined not to invoke the people. His history is therefore only the long and sorrowful story of a prince animated by the best intentions, engaged in a contest with things as they were, without finding or even looking for, supporters and allies. He set his own sound good sense in opposition to rooted prejudice, to absurdity, to so-called policy, to pedantry, to jurisprudence, to reigning superstition, to old constitutions and charters and he was thus compelled, against his own will, to become occasionally a tyrant, before he could carry through even those few successful measures of his reign in which all rational Austrians rejoice even at the present day.'

Never, assuredly, was so complete a sweep made of old institutions and usages, as far as mere change of law could do it, as in the five first years of Joseph's reign. Even that effected by the French Revolution itself was less rapid and extensive, especially when regard is had to the different genius, and state of preparation, of the two communities. It was like the sudden advance, in the locomotion of the same country, from the old Eilwagen crawl of four miles an hour, without intervening improvements, to the speed of the railway. It takes away the breath of those accustomed to the bit-by-bit proceedings of constitutional countries, to recite the mere catalogue of Joseph's reforms. In the short space of time above mentioned, exclusive rights, privileges, monopolies, were clean done away with; serfdom, and compulsory feudal dues and services ceased in point of law to exist; all men became, in theory, equal under the sovereign. The old constitutions of his several kingdoms and states, including that of Hungary, with which his mother had dealt so warily, were