600 Politics and Prospects of Russia. [Dkc. 



Metternich will not congratulate himself on the iiltra-tliplomatic dexte- 

 rity, by which lie thus, at once, averts a Russian war, secures an addi- 

 tional territory, and keeps himself in his place ? 



The tardiness of Austria is proverbial. Her territory is an immense 

 expanse of States thinly peopled, one half of them scarcely above 

 barbarism, and the great majority either in direct discontent, as the 

 Hungarian provinces, — or utterly careless who their master may be, as 

 Croatia, Transylvania, and the whole range of her south-eastern 

 dominions. Italy, her chief boast, is her first peril. The Italians, a 

 contemptible and vicious people, deserve the chain, and will always be 

 slaves, while society among them continues the idle, vile, and profligate 

 thing it is ; this great European house of corruption — the haunt of the 

 most grovelling superstition, and the most open licentiousness, its 

 natural and unfailing offspring — must be under the government of the 

 beadle and the hangman ; but Italy, from the Alps to Calabria, hates 

 the name of Austrian ; and the first foreign banner that waves to the winds 

 of the Apennine will be shouted after by Italy as a dehverer. Yet 

 the nervous eagerness of retention is as keen as the subtle and undying 

 hatred of the slave. And the threat of a Russian invasion of Italy — a 

 threat which a jMediterranean fleet would always render ominous — must 

 lay the Austrian cabinet at the mercy of the Czar. 



Prussia, the next hope, would be utterly unable to make head alone 

 against a Russian force pressing on her from the Polish frontier ; and 

 the question of her preferring the hazards of war to the easy enjoyment 

 of the bribe which Russia could so easily offer, and would so undoubtedly 

 offer, is one which may well perplex the politician. Of all the great 

 European powers Prussia is the most exposed to invasion. For her 

 strength is wholly in her army, the most expensive, artificial, and preca- 

 rious of all defences. 



We have already seen it vanish away, like a mist, before the fierce bril- 

 liancy of Napoleon's genius. It perished in a day ; literally between sun- 

 rise and sunset the army of Prussia was a mass of confusion, the kingdom 

 at the feet of a conqueror, the king crownless, and the nation captive. 

 Prussia has no other strength, no mountains where a bold peasantry might 

 supply the place of discipline by courage, and make nature fight for 

 them ; no great rivers, no ranges of wild territory in which the steps of 

 an invader might be wearied by long pursuit ; no fierce and iron climate 

 in which the clouds and snow might war against the human presumption 

 that dared to assault the majesty of Winter in his own domain. 



All is open, brief, and level ; the frontier straggling and penetrable 

 in every direction ; even the population at once too scattered to resist a 

 vigorous enemy, and too close to deprive him of their services. In every 

 war since the foundatioa of the kingdom, even under the subtle and daring 

 generalship of the second Frederic, Prussia was never invaded but to 

 be overrun. With this justified sense of peril on the one side, and with 

 the splendid donations which Russia has it within her power to offer, on 

 the other ; there must be no trivial necessity to urge Prussia against the 

 immense preponderancy of her gigantic neighbour. 



Family alliances, the recollection of the late war, and the value 

 of a continental support against Austrian ambition, which has never 

 forgotten the loss of Silesia, have made Prussia for many years look to 

 the cabinet of St, Petersburg as its natural confederate. Her bias is 



