Page:Once a Week, Series 1, Volume II Dec 1859 to June 1860.pdf/225

212 of that class have for centuries past affected the welfare of civilised society more than perhaps any other order of men, it may be profitable, and it must be interesting, to look a little into the life of Prince Metternich, and see how the world regarded him, and what he did in the world, during his long life of eighty-six years.

The child’s first impressions of life were derived from the political point of view. If his father had been a country gentleman, living in the forests or mountain regions of Germany, or if the little Clement had been born in a university, his strong will, his natural audacity and caution, singularly combined in him, might have made him a great social improver, or a distinguished philosopher. As it was, he was the son of a politician; and he was brought up to be proud of forefathers who had helped to save the Austrian monarchy when it was in the extremity of danger from the Turks. His father, Count Metternich, was intimate with the statesman Kaunitz; and Kaunitz was godfather to the little Clement, and two-and-twenty years later gave him his daughter to wife.

One would be glad to know what the boy’s talk was like at school and college, where (at Strasbourg University) we find him at the age of fifteen. He was removed to Mainz two years after; and when we meet him there, it is not as the recluse student among his books, nor as the political orator in the debating-club. At seventeen, Clement was actually qualified to act quite another part, and one requiring a special training and study. He was Master of the Ceremonies at the coronation of Leopold II.

All courtiers, everywhere, were at that time anxiously bent on despotic government as the only method of rendering social life endurable. The canaille was then the great object of horror, because “the people”—all below the aristocracy—were supposed to be like the leaders and mob of the French Revolution, which was then in full career. The selfish and the benevolent at every Court in Europe then held the same view of good government—that the people must be strictly ruled, and have all their affairs settled for them, in order to keep the bad out of mischief, and the good out of risks and misfortunes. The boy-courtier probably never heard of any sane persons holding any other opinion; and we may imagine, therefore, the impression that England made upon him when he came over, in 1794, on his travels, before settling down to business. It was the year after the execution of Louis XVI.; and we all know how English views of that revolution differed, and how English society was divided by those differences. The young Austrian found the aristocracy panic-struck; and he heard from them awful things about the popular politics of the day; and thus his opinions could hardly be much liberalised by his visit to England. When he left it, he settled down to business in the line of diplomacy. At one-and-twenty he was a member of the Austrian Legation at the Hague. During the next twelve years he was resident at the Courts of Prussia, Saxony, and Russia—first in a subordinate rank, and then as Minister; and, wherever he went, the conviction grew within him, that a perfect government was that which should control every circumstance of every man’s existence. He early applied himself to the great work of his life—that of obtaining an ascendency over the rulers of men, in order to set them operating on all other men, according to his views. He pursued this object, with every conceivable advantage from his own genius and the events of his time: he never relaxed in his course for sixty years: he appeared to himself to succeed, early and late; and when he met with a check he wonderfully recovered himself.

If ever a political career was consistent, pertinacious, and conspicuously powerful, it was that of Prince Metternich: and yet we have seen him die in depression and dread—perceiving the impending ruin of the empire which he intended to have made the mistress of Europe: and aware that every bit of political work he had done throughout the continent was being undone by princes on the one hand and people on the other.

It was a hard lot; but it was deserved, inasmuch as he had refused to learn anything from the noble efforts he had seen made by one nation after another to obtain good government, and establish popular liberties. The hearts of the most timid Conservatives had at times beat high when the noble principles of 1789 were upheld in France, and when all Prussia uprose in defence of the national liberties in 1812; and when the peoples of Germany rebuked their princes in 1822 for their breaches of faith in withholding promised constitutions; and when the Swedes, and the Swiss, and the Sicilians all nobly upheld, in their several ways, the claims of national and personal liberty: but Metternich regarded himself as superior to such vulgar sympathies. They only increased his sense of the necessity of his taking care of Europe, as the natural guardians of authority could be carried away by dangerous emotions.

We understand him well, now that his system is crumbling down about his grave, like a monument built without foundations or cement: and we can, in looking back, trace him from court to court, and from council to council, his heart growing colder, his tongue smoother, his will stiffer, his manners more pliable, his self-esteem more monstrous, his egotism more engrossing, with every piece of experience, till he believed himself the actual ruler of continental Europe, and considered himself in charge of the nominal sovereigns, whom it was his business to guide in the right path. At different stages of this career we find him in strange positions, occasionally, and with a curious team of circumstances in hand. After a hundred successes in making them go, in preventing their running away with him, and in turning them at sharp corners, and getting them through sloughs and bogs, he was doomed to see and feel the state-coach falling to pieces, while he and his skill lay sprawling.

In 1810 we discover him oddly employed at Paris. The great German physiologist, Gall, found a patron in him, when none else, except poor philosophers, saw the importance of his work on the brain. The work was issued at Prince