302 Personal and Political Portrait of Prince Metternich. [MAR. 



cold respect, or violated those severe and formal observances, which, 

 in spite of estranged feeling, honour and duty imposed on him towards 

 her mother. In 1825, the Prince unexpectedly and abruptly learned 

 the illness and imminent danger of the woman he had loved, when all 

 the feelings of his heart were suddenly aroused in their fullest force ; 

 but he arrived only to give them utterance over her death-bed. The 

 surpassing beauty of the daughter has been delineated with great skill 

 and delicacy by Sir Thomas Lawrence, who, when commanded to pre- 

 pare for the admiration of posterity the portraits of Earth's Potentates, 

 with instructions, on his referring to an obvious difficulty, to supply all 

 deficiency of spiritual or intellectual expression, by an increase of em- 

 broidery and orders, must have felt all ornament unnecessary there. 

 The portrait of the father was equally successful ; for King Ferdinand 

 after regarding it (at Naples, in 1819), with demonstrations of awkward 

 fear and pious awe, observed, in a tremulous whisper, " Faith, one 

 might almost imagine the Prince incapable of tricking the world 

 Let us be off let us be off I don't trust him I don't trust him." 



The devotion of the Prince to the tastes of his royal master, who 



had but a few years previously married his fourth wife, induced him to 



imitate that uxorious example ; and he had already speculated upon 



noble, wealthy, and influential connections, when the charms of 



Mademoiselle de Laeckem induced him to renounce nobility for the 



stage prefer pirouettes to quarterings and cabrioles to title-deeds. 



Great was the astonishment, and excessive the indignation of the 



noblesse of Vienna Semper Augustus was more august than serene, 



and declared the measure a pas-bas that the minister should be 



coupe, and his agile intended chassee by the court. The Prince was 



however obstinate, and the monarch had to balancer between the loss of 



a favourite minister and the recognition of the Saltatrix. The minuet 



and gallopade were at length successfvd ; and this union of L'Automne 



au Printemps was duly sanctioned and recognized. It was terminated 



in somewhat less than a year by the hand of death ; and, since that 



epoch, little has occurred in the events of his political life, to soothe 



Prince Metternich's feelings for the various domestic privations he has 



been doomed to endure. It is now believed, that having witnessed 



the ruin and destruction of that costly but sand-built edifice of European 



government, which had demanded of him such time and pains to rear ; 



that having survived his ministerial utility, which, wholly independent 



of affection, respect, or moral confidence, preserved him in his " pride 



of place ;" conscious of the distrust entertained of him by the King of 



Hungary, the heir to the sceptre of the Caesars ; baffled in the success 



of the schemes of the Cardinal in France, in which he was haply earlier 



identified than the unhappy ministers who are paying the severe penalty 



of misplaced obedience to another's will ; he is preparing to deposit, in 



the hands of Monsieur dc Wessenberg, the portfolio of his Ministry'; and 



intends, in the desolation of his home, to indulge in reminiscences of 



the past, and " chew the cud of bitter fancy" within the walls of 



Johannisberg. We have scaled the fence of the domain ; and shall 



haply, ere long, approach 1 the edifice in threading the thicket of its 



woods. If our ears may catch some of the Manfred-like musings of its 



lord, " Nous serous secret comme un coup de canon." 



