300 Personal and Political Portrait of Prince Metternich. QMAR. 



visited that spot,, and beheld the waters of the Rhine, and the woods 

 of Nassau from its terrace, but must envy its owner the fortunate 

 assault which led to so rich a prize ? The generous produce of a small 

 portion of its vines, has been long celebrated throughout Germany, as 

 possessed of rare qualities of intoxication, in exciting singular mental 

 delusion and visual deception, and in rendering the sense of sight wholly 

 unfaithful to its office. In the hands of Prince Metternich, it has be- 

 come exclusively diplomatic drink. Perhaps the various European 

 statesmen, whose errors of late may have excited hatred or contempt, 

 might have been more properly pitied for excesses, caused by the treach- 

 erous liquor of the prince. The ordonnances of "Charles" had no 

 other origin, and even the counsellors of Louis Philippe have not appa- 

 rently had the resolution to refrain from the fascinating but perilous 

 draught. The abstemious Hollander himself, when he commanded 

 the Wallons to gibber Flemish instead of French, (as Sir Walter had 

 previously made them do in Qtientin Durward,) and when he imposed 

 on De Potter a name, credit and influence, which but for the monarch's 

 imprudently expressed indignation, he would have never attained, was 

 clearly under its fatal influence. The Poles when they rushed to arms, 

 where arms were not, probably felt the effects of the pernicious 

 glass. The Swiss, but now tempted to the task, will shortly have to 

 deplore their weakness. 



To the same source must be referred the strange policy of the Prince 

 himself, since Johannisberg was his, and of which he is now reaping 

 or about to reap the rich reward. If consistency be a virtue, to it at least 

 he may lay claim ; and in respect to severity of discipline in his admi- 

 nistration, he stands in the position of the Frenchman, who on being 

 reproached by his sovereign, that "When once satisfied, courtiers 

 were proverbially ungrateful," frankly answered, te That is not my 

 case, Sire, for I am insatiable/' In selecting, for our present purpose, 

 one example from the vast, rich schedule of acts of ministerial justice, it 

 is but charitable and candid to the Austrian minister to vindicate his 

 exclusive title to the authorship of it as the mild, humane, and quiet cha- 

 racter of his master is known to be averse to cruelty ; and in his quali- 

 fied praise it may be asserted, that if he had not strength of mind to 

 give expression to his better feelings or enforce his better intentions, he 

 at least never counselled or directed the many remarkable operations of 

 his minister's Haute Police. The hand becomes weary in turning over 

 the records for selection ; and Austria Proper, the Tyrol, and Piedmont 

 and Italy press for preference on the choice. Let us take with Sterne 

 " a single captive* and look through the twilight of his grated door. 

 The Conte di Gonfalonieri, as the name imports, was of an ancient and 

 honourable family (derived from the noblest of the Florentine magis- 

 trates whose proud office it was, in ancient days, to bear the Gonfanon, 

 or Banner of the Church), and in consequence of his talent and virtues, 

 more than his name, was appointed by Eugene Beauharnois, when 

 Viceroy of Italy, his Grand Ecuyer, an office in which, in his public cha- 

 racter, he was as much respected as he had been beloved in his private ca- 

 pacity. On the fall of Buonaparte and the erection of the Lombard- Veneto 

 kingdom, he was removed from office, and aware that he stood an object 

 of jealousy to the new rulers of his native land, he cautiously abstained 

 from offence, and strove to avoid the very suspicion of interference 

 in politics. Unhappily, in a moment of false confidence in the few 



