n* 



AUSTRIA. 



AUSTRIA. 



73 



Nt-HHKR ASD KIM) OF PLACE* OF INSTRUCTIOX IS THE Al'STRIAX EvrlllK. 



In 1847 there were 12,936 scholars in the Universities, 12,488 in 

 the SchooU of Art, 4614 in the Lycea, 3821 in the Theological 

 Academies, 5600 in the SchooU of Philosophy, and 60,144 in the 

 Gymnasia. In the same year there were in the National schools 

 (exclusive of those of Hungary which are not included in the returns) 

 1,060,721 boys and 835,102 girls, in all 1,895,823 attending the schools, 

 out of a total of 2,756,688 children of an age to attend them. In 

 tile Adult schools (exclusive of those of Hungary which are not 

 returned) there were in the same year 363,622 men and 310,207 

 women, in all 673,829. 



Of public libraries there is no deficiency : those most deserving of 

 mention are the Imperial Library at Vienna, consisting of 350,000 

 volumes, and the University Libraries of 130,000 in the same capital, 

 and of 100,000 in Prague ; the Ambrowian of 90,000, and that belong- 

 ing to the college of Brera of 80,000, in Milan ; the libraries at Brescia, 

 Venice, (ir.it/, and Mantua, and of the Thercsianum in Vienna, of 

 about 70,000 volumes each; and the Pesth University Library of 

 about 100,000. The number of museums and cabinets of science and 

 the fine arts, both public and private, botanical gardens, Ac., is very 

 considerable ; they abound more particularly in Vienna, Milan, 

 Venice, Prague, and Pesth. The nine Austrian observatories are 

 those of Vienna, Milan, Padua, Gra'tz, Karlsburg, Erlau, Krems- 

 miinster, Ofen, and Prague. 



The liberty of the press is restricted by a censorship which is 

 intrusted to the police department, and officially confined to the 

 prohibition of such publications or articles in journals as may be 

 deemed injurious to the security of the state or of individuals. It 

 is illegal for any subject of the crown of Austria to print a work 

 lot previously examined by the censors in foreign parts. In such a 

 state of the press the number of political journals is of course as 

 inconsiderable as their character and influence are insignificant 

 Letters and science constitute therefore the great refuge of the 

 reading portion of the Austrian public. 



J/urory. In the times immediately succeeding the Christian era, 

 the Romann advanced from the Alps and invaded that part of the 

 Archduchy of Austria which is at present called the ' Province below 

 the Ens,' in which Vienna itself is situated. But they found here no 

 homogeneous state nor united people to encounter ; the land was 

 occupied as separate hunting-grounds, the resort of semi-barbarians, 

 among whom the Pannonii, Boii, and Norici occur most frequently in 

 the Roman annals. Over such a race triumph was easy ; a state of 

 dependence quickly succeeded to a condition of savage freedom ; and 

 the establishment of military colonies on the Danube, as part of the 

 Roman line of defence against the barbarous hordes of the north, was 

 succeeded in the year 38 by the incorporation of this tract of country 

 with the province of Pannonia. Noricum thenceforward supplied the 

 Roman legions with fierce and hardy soldiers. In the 4th century, 

 when the north poured down its horde* upon the south, the middle 

 regions of the Danube fell a victim to the spoilers who successively 

 srosssj them in quest of more alluring prey. The agriculture and 

 indtwtry which under the sovereignty of civilised Rome had covered 

 Noricum with towns and villages, gradually disappeared* under the 

 successive inroads of Rhadafnaiua's multitudes, Alaric's Ostrogoths, 

 the Rufrii. ant) the Huns, the last of whom, led by the ' Scourge of 

 2;;'_* i f r <1iffenjn . t periods traversed and devastated lllyria and 

 [ century brought rest with it : a new horde 

 of China now took possession of 



receptacle for the cattle and the 



r spoil, of which they stripped the adjacent countries. Its name 

 now merged into that of A varia ; and the Asiatics, from whom it was 



]J u -Jke succeeding century brou 

 of plunderer* from the frontiers of C 

 Norkom, and converted it into a rece 

 other polk of which the stried the a 



derived, held possession of it until Charlemagne, having been led into 

 these quarters after driving the Hungarians back upon the Raab in 

 the year 796 reduced the country between that river and the Ens to 

 subjection, and set margraves over his new conquest, ns the ' Oester- 

 reich,' or eastern mark or territory of his empire. We next find it a 

 dependency of Bavaria, and then in the possession of the counts of 

 Babenberg, one of whom, Count Leopold, made it hereditary in his 

 family in the year 944. Frederic I., after uniting the land above the 



I Ens to his dominions, raised the earldom to the dignity of a duchy : 

 from this time until the year 1246 it remained in the possession of 

 the house of Babenberg, who enlarged it by the acquisition of Styrin 



' in 1186. The line becoming extinct by the death of Frederic 11., 

 Ottokftr, king of Bohemia, took possession of the country, and in 1269 

 added to it the duchy of Carniola and part of Friuli, which fell to him 

 by right of inheritance ; but in his struggle to maintain his conquest 

 against Rudolph of Habsburg, emperor of Germany, the latter expelled 

 him from the Austrian territories in 1250, and seven years afterwards 

 invested his son Albert with the sovereignty, as an appendage to the 

 Habsburg possessions. His posterity in the course of time extended 

 their dominion over several other states, which they acquired either 

 by marriage, purchase, or inheritance; among these we may mention 

 the Margraviate of Burgau in Styria, acquired in 1283 ; Carinthia in 

 1881 ; the Tyrol in 1363 ; Triest in 1380 ; and the Landgraviate of 

 the Breisgau, in Swabio, in 1367. From 1487, when Albert II. was 

 raised to the dignity of King of the Romans and Emperor of Germany, 

 this high office has been uninterruptedly enjoyed by the Habsburg 

 line of Austrian sovereigns. For a brief interval, during the first half 

 of the 15th century, the sceptres of Hungary and Bohemia were 

 wielded by an Austrian prince, Albert V., who married a daugl.- 

 the emperor Sigismund. From this period the injluence and power 

 of Austria increased with great rapidity. 



In 1477 the marriage of Maximilian I., Frederic III.'s son, with 

 Maria, only daughter of Charles of Burgundy, brought him the valu- 

 able accession of Alsace and the Netherlands to his German pos- 

 sessions, which, it should here be observed, had been protected from 

 dismemberment by the establishment of the right of primogeniture at 

 the early date of 1156. The marriage also of his son Philip tlio Fair 

 with Johanna, only daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, for a 

 time inverted Frederic's grandson, Charles V., with th,. unit..-d sove- 

 reignties of Spain and the Indies, the Netherlands, and Austria ; but 

 the treaties of separation concluded in 1521 and 1640 dismembered 

 this gigantic monarchy ; the Spanish and Netherlands' dominions 

 being retained as a joint possession by Charles, and his An 

 inheritance relinquished in perpetuity to his brother Ferdinand I. 

 and his posterity. Ferdinand, by his union with the daughter of 

 Lewis II. of Hungary, who died without heirs male in 1526, became 

 possessed of her extensive inheritance, which was composed of Hun- 

 gary, Bohemia, Moravia, Silesia, and Lusatia. The ancient possessions 

 of the house of Habsburg in Switzerland had been gradually wrested 

 from it, the signal being given by the confederation formed by Uri, 

 Schwyti, and Unterwalden, in November 1807 ; and the thirty years' 

 war stripped it in the middle of the 17th century of Afcace and Lusatia. 

 Austria however reaeived ample compensation under the treaty of 

 Utrecht in 1713, which united the Netherlands and certain states in 

 Italy to iU dominions. The male line of the Habsburg dynasty 

 becoming extinct with the demise of the emperor Charles VI. in 1740, 

 the sovereignty devolved to Francis I., duke of Lorraine by his mar- 

 riage with Maria Theresa, Charles's only daughter, and under the 

 enactment of the Pragmatic Sanction in 1713, his sole heir. From 

 her very accession she was involved in a series of sanguinary struggles 



