POSTSCRIPT.

May, 1853.

The apprehensions which induced me to draw up the foregoing paper have been verified to the extent of nearly producing a war between England and France. Out of the "Spanish Marriages" came the confiscation of Cracow, and, within a short time, the fall of Louis Philippe and the revolution of 1818, on which the Cossacks entered Hungary. To that field I now pass on.

It is a fact here deserving of record, that the mutual exasperation of the two countries, in reference to the Spanish marriages, bore upon the Treaty of Utrecht, which the English Minister asserted had been violated by the union of a son of Louis Philippe and a Spanish princess. This Treaty, as that Minister had himself, on a previous occasion, stated in Parliament, had ceased to exist, having lapsed by war, and not having been restored at a subsequent peace. Had the author of the History of Civilisation' been a little earlier* quainted with this fact, there could have been no quarrel in 1847, and no revolutions in 1848.

ac

A note was sent to the French Embassy in London, inquiring in what article in the Treaties of Luneville, Amiens, or Vienna, the Treaty of Utrecht had been restored. It arrived two hours after the note of M. Guizot, taking ground upon the Treaty, had been

transmitted.

PART II.

HUNGARY.

CHAPTER I.

Political Value of Ilungary.

CANNING electrified the year 1826 by a quotation from the Eneid, "Celsa sedet Eolus arce," &c. It was not that it was charmed by a "calida junctura" in Æolus and England, but in Opinion and wind. For war, Ambition, it was perceived, was no longer required; it could be engendered by thoughts alone; hurricanes to overwhelm Empires, and tempests to subvert Thrones, could now be evolved from tropes and metaphors.

It took, however, two and twenty years for the poetic proposition to become historical, which it did in 1848, when the Continental Governments were blown up, with the single exception of the country (Spain) whence had been derived the explosive matter. The man, in the Eastern tale, who let the genius out of the bottle was only alarmed at his own work; but the nations of Europe, when they had ruptured their bags, were confounded at themselves: after a wild dance over hill and dale, they hurried back again to shut themselves in, and to sew themselves up. It was not, however, Canning's Eolus, who, reversing his trident, had let forth Eurus and Nothus; England did not ride the whirlwind, and had not been the Merlin of the storm. It is not, indeed, to be expected in the country of the winds, that operations should be very distinct, or the figure of the genius very discernible; and thus

when thunderbolts do fall, the startled nations may attribute them to a wrong Jove.

The astute, but earnest Emperor, Leopold the Second, had elaborated in the alchemy of his German brain two antagonistic Principles, which threatened to devastate Germany in the accident of their corporeal collision,-as he imagined them to be embodied severally in the neighbours of Germany on the North and on the West. That Emperor consequently adjusted his policy to meet this contingency, and thence that temporising scheme for Hungary, which has not been without its influence on recent events.

Napoleon too had his notions; they agreed with those of Leopold in respect to number, but differed in character. The German's principles were Despotism and Anarchy; the Corsican's, Revolution and Ambition. In the first case, Germany was only to be victimised; in the second, Europe herself was to be the prize. So he too was swept from the scene, and passed away as a myth, only that he left behind him a wreck, and a paradox. He bequeathed Europe to Ambition (Alexander), as Leopold had prepared Austria for Despotism (Paskiewitch). As for his prophecy of our becoming "Republican or Cossack," what child does not now see that these are but two stations on the same road,—all the roads lead one way: "Empire" brought the Calmucks to Paris; "Constitution" the Baskirs to Pesth. Thus, whilst the winds of '48 were blowing, and mankind was engaged in ascertaining their direction and estimating their effects, Russia leisurely laid one mailed hand on the heart of Austria, and stretched with the other arm, an encircling embrace around the Danish Belt. Here, for a time, pauses the epic, which opened at Isla de Leon, and we proceed to the incidents of the Hungarian canto.

We have heard enough that the inhabitants of Hungary are Magyars, but what it was important to know, and what for the best of reasons no one comprehends, is, that the Magyars are not Europeans: this truth the legislation of a hundred Diets and the rhetoric of a thousand Kossuths cannot

pervert; it is a fact which the Camarilla of Vienna, the Foreign Office of London, and Field Marshal Prince Paskiewitch himself cannot alter. The upper basin of the Danube is not included in the region of the winds, and owes as yet no fealty to the sceptre of Aolus. Had it been so, the chaos of the continent would ere this have been reduced to the order that reigns at Warsaw; the Hungarians, like the Spaniards, are an unreasoning mass slow in Progress, backwards in Civilization,

Wars in the West lead to great effusion of blood, but to little alteration of frontiers; those in the East alone determine great results. In the one case, contest is a mere shock of equally powerful arms, or equally futile doctrines; in the other, it is a tide sweeping on to dominion for a thousand years. On the descendants of Attila and his Seven Hordes hangs at this hour the future fate of European society; for Poland, and especially Hungary, though subjugated, stand even as the wreck of a battered wall in the victor's way.

Identity of race is no motive for political union; but when two people have the same interests and the same enemies, and happen to be of the same race, their enemy being of a different one, then indeed does that relationship become profitable and noble. The Turks are slow to move, and not likely, under any considerations of advantage, to unite themselves with a Christian people. But their ancient associations with the Hungarians, acting like gravitation on inanimate bodies, steadying for a time at least the Eastern bulwarks of the fabric of general power, afford to Europe a reprieve and a security not the less real because she is unconscious of its existence.

It is doubtless true that the fiercest wars have been carried on between the two people: so long as Hungary stood by herself, so long as the ancient line of monarchs, or the elected sovereigns, possessed the supreme sway, she dreaded the

Turkish power; the very ties which united the people

rendered that hostility all the more intense. When a member of the House of Hapsburg was elected to the throne, the position was reversed. Then Austria, the Empire, Germany,