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    AUSTRIA—HEIt CIIAItACTElt, AOT DEALINGS WITH HUNG AllY.

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    pleasurergrounds , hot-houses , conservatories , poultry-yards , stables , and , indeed , all the appliances of a nobleman ' s mansion . The house was large , and Mr , Pblnce could accommodate a considerable number of boarders ; and it appears lie rarefy'had vacancies . Indeed , the style of living 1 at the Abode was highly attractive : the table was liberal , the minor comforts of the boarders were well cared , for , and there was no restriction upon personal liberty , once the boarder had paid over or conveyed by deed all they possessed to Mr . Pkince . Mr . PfiiNCE was no ascetic . By no means . His doctrine admitted of good dinners , and regular dinners ; it did not forbid hockey ; there was a suspicion that it favoured cricket , and it certainly encouraged horseriding . The Misses Nottidge and the other boarders could all have their park horses for paying for them , and Mr . Pkince himself

    bad a partiality for driving out in a chaise and four . Altogether it seetns to have been a very jolly place to stop a week at , if Mr . Pbince would only have extended his hospitality to the outside public . On this point alone , he was monastic . He liked to keep his love to himself and the boarders . Well , really there is nothing' very dreadful in all this . Have we not heard of hydropathic establishments kept by handsome young doctors , where delicate ladies live in much the same way ? The doctor keeps a fine house ; presides at a well-supplied" board ; attends the ladies iu their walks and rides , prescribes for them , makes love to them , and occasionally marries the most eligible one that he can persuade to have him . The only difference thafc we can see between Mr . Prince's establishment and one of these is , that whereas the hydropathic apostle accepts a

    stated amount for the board , lodging , recreation , and benefit of waters which he offers to his patients , Mr . Peince eases them of the whole of their cash , and in place of medicinal water offers religious consolation . It is true that the breath of scandal has fallen both upon the Abode of Water and the Abode of Love . Envious neighbours , whose curiosity frets itself against the jealous gates of these bowers of bliss , whisper of doings which will not bear the light . No evidence , however , 'has been adduced to show that anything very immoral has taken place at the Agapemone . Mr . Pbince seems to have preferred elderly female lodgers—old maids in fact . His intentions towards them in a matrimonial point of view appear to have been highly honourable and merciful . The conscientiousness of his disciples , Messrs . Cobble , Thomas , and . Price , who had visions revealing to ' them that it was their duty to

    marry three rather aged and , as it is said , half-witted Misses Nottidge , js worthy of all admiration . Did they hesitate ? Aged and half-witted as the ladies were , they married them off-harid ^ . m obedience to the decrees of Heaven . Under these circumstances , what could old maids possessed of only half their wits do , but give up all their property to their lords—all that they possessed worth having ? We have had a vast ' number of new tabernacles , dispensations , millenniums , and doctrines of late years ; but undoubtedly Mr . Pbince ' s is at once the most practical , and on the whole , most comfortable we have met with . No mortification at the Abode of lipve ;' all / on the principle of Enjoy yourself as much as you caneat , drink , and be merry , for the day of judgment is past : the time for prayer and supplication is over ; self-denial and humiliation are no longer virtues , and you have nothing to fear , nothing to do but make yoiirself happy . We cannot trust " ourselves to comment ^ nirjnjir ^ nr ^ easoirablenessof Mr : PijiNCE ' a doctrine , or to question Mr . Pjkince ' s sincerity .

    In these days religious toleration has reached such a pitch , that you must not condemn a man as a madman , or a fanatic , even if he should select the JBeadle of Exeter 'Change as the object of his worship . Let this Beadle establish himself in some Adullam in Drury Lane , or say in his own ' Change , and preach—with sufficient eloquence—Sunday after Sunday , that lie is the coming mancome , —a perfect man though a beadle , and therefoi-e the sign of a new era , and he will find people to listen to him , and believe him ; and more than that , he will find grave journalists , not suspected to be half-witted , insisting that we must not call his doctrines blasphemous and ridicnlons , because this is a land of religious toleration , where every man ' s fuiLh is entitled to respect . We should hesitate then to be guilty of the intolerance of denouncing Mr .

    Pkince either as a fanatic or a rogue . His assertion that he is the tier van t of the Loud ; that the Loud has opened His counsels to him ; that the Judgment is past , that the Bible is out of date , and that all the world outsido the gates of the Afjapemone is damned to all eternity—is not to be regarded either as blasphemous or absurd . Nor is the sauity of Miss Louisa Jane Nottidoe , who believed all this , and gave up all her property to Pbince in the belief that he was the holder of a Divine commission and the new Tabernacle of the Flesh , to be doubted or questioned . We can only congratulate Mr . Puince thafc hi * new dispensation— -a dispensation so exceedingly comfortable and indulgont—has been enunciated in times when religious toleration can be extended even to the wildest blasphemies and the most ; flagrant impostures .

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    there is such a struggle between the higher Powers in the State , as to make an appeal to the people the best policy for the contending parties alternately . For want of one or more of these conditions , most of the nations of . Europe present us with a scene of constitutions granted and violated , and the fragments of promises given underpressure , and broken the instant . that pressure was removed . Small are the thanks for any advice given to despotic Governments in times of tranquillity ; blinded with pride and power , they either will not accept the advice , or if by any chance they are led to adopt a prudent measure it is pretty sure that the prudent measure will not be a sincere and a final one . . _ .

    Of Austria it is difficult to write with ordinary patience , especially for an Englishman who knows anything of the history of his own country , and of its connexions with Austria . We care little about adopting a mild or friendly tone in any of our remonstrances with her , feeling sure that nothing but an exclusive regard for her own interests will tempt her to throw her sword into the scale either of liberty or tyranny in a European contention . Even where these interests have been strictly coincident , it could rarelv be said that England had reason to be thoroughly satisfied with " the good faith of Austria . In the parliamentary discussions to the t

    which these relationships have given rise , Tory peace pary m the reign of Anne , and the Whig peace party in the last general war , found her conduct equally open to attack , and the two war parties equally difficult fairly to justify . We might make many citations from Swift and Bolingbroke , in the earlier , and from Sheridan and others in the latter periods ; we prefer avoiding evidently party men , and will content ourselves with one quotation from Bubke , in . his " Thoughts on French affairs , " premising that he wished to conciliate the monarchical party in Europe , wherever it was possible . Yet he is oLliged to speak thus of Austrian selfishness : —

    " The present policy of Austria is to recover despotism through democracy , or , at least , at any expense ; every where to ruin the descriptkui of men who are everywhere the objects of their settled and systematic aversion , but more espec-ially in the Netherlands . Compare this with the Emperor ' s refusing at first all intercourse with the present powers of France , With las endeavouring to excite all Europe iagainst them , and _ then his not onl y withdrawing all assistance and till countenance from theTfugitives who had been drawn by his declarations from their houses , situations , and military commissions—many even from the means of their very existence , but treating them with ivery species of insulfc and outrage . " So much for the cbmiiiencemeiit , and now for the close of that war . After many severe losses Austria tried to connect herself with the spoiler of- Euro ' pe-for safety : _ every scholar and reader of history knows the line— " Bella gerant alii tu felix Austria iiube . " She tried once more to put a wedding-ring into the nose of Fortune , and in a measure she succeeded , for the pledge helped her to betray . We are not in the . habifc of pitying the first Napoleon , but if the shade of Josephine did notforbid s we should almost pity him when , after his defeat in Russia , MEXXERNicir , the outlook of Austria , was watching with cat-like glance , whether the safest policy would be to support or to betray the son-in-law . Accustomed to every treachery , it was a move which even Napoleon himself could scarcely credit , «»< l ^^ . ;^ . Ii _ an _ Ti ] nglishman . even though he was the gainer by it , could scarcely praise . Look where we will for the policy and conduct of Austria , wo iind her begging , borrowing , self-seeking ^ oppressing , and betraying—the servant , and not the leader oi '

    ri ^ HE concessions despotic Governments nro almost always the JL result of fear and preaauro , resumed at the curliest opportunity » nd at the brief banquet of freedom the people scorn nil to sit , like the Sicilian Damocles , under tho " hnir-eukpended sword . " All history , old and recent , proves this position ,, and thoro is small hope for a people if they stop short of wide ovgunio changes , or unltmH they ure endowed with extraordinary firmuosa and peraiBtonco of purpose—or lastly , as was formerly tho caso with England , unless

    events . We do not , as a matter of course , sympathize out of measure with the weak , or , at least , though we sympathize with them we do not forget their faults : we know with regard to Poland , for instance , what many of the sympathizer * do hot , that her final fall was owing in a great measure ; to the discords and jealousies of her own nobility , that her elective monarchy while it lasted Was a nuisance to Europe , and that sho had robbed Russia by wholesale of territory , before Russia robbed her . We know of the Hungarians , Igours , Ugri , or Unghreu , according to the different etymologies brethren of tho Turks , that they were the merciless ravagern of France , Italy , and Germany , and we suppose that ?• ¦ time brings its revenges . " But their conversion and final union with Germany was its salvation from their own Mohammedan kindred . We know too , from the , accounts of intelligent travellers , that their Protestantism has been rather of that querulous and jealous kind , often found in tho professors of a tolerated religion , such ns wo observe in tho pr «? sbyterianism of Scotland , and the second period of Roman Christianity , « s soon as it dared to show its irritability—an irritability which always passes by contagion to the dominant power which it distempers , but still not sufficient in this case either to justify or account for tho large scale and wide measure of recont Popish aggression . Indeed , had the Protestants been as submissive and as socially agreeable as they may have been the reverse , no doubt the same measures would have been taken . The debt of Austria to Hungary has been immense , from tho time when the latter nation , in 1087 , willingly acknowledged Josjsi'Ji

    the son of Leopold I . as the hereditary King of Hun . ga ' ry , on the condition , on tho part of tho Protestants of both the Lutheran and Culvinisfc professions , thut they should bo left in possession of those churches and prerogatives which had been scoured to thorn by the diet of Odenburg—liberties and privileges which , in fact , have never been secured substantially . We will here introduce a piissn ^ o from Buunkt's " History of His Own Times , " in which the State of Hungary is incidentally mentioned , because il is an express ion of the general stylo of Austrian conduct towards tho depomlonL fltuto : — " It is certain that tho Germans played the masters very severely

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    566 The Leader and Saturday Analyst . LJtjne 16 > 186 ° -

    Austria—Heit Ciiaitactelt, Aot Dealings With Hung Ally.

    AUSTllIA—HEIt CIIAItACTEK , AOT PEALING S WITH HUNG AllY .

• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), June 16, 1860, page 566, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2352/page/10/