George Ticknor, Life, letters and journals of George Ticknor
George Hillard, Ed.

What Prince Metternich—who is a wise statesman—can hope to do with such means, it is not easy to tell. Mr. Krause, of Dresden, told me that in conversation with him, formerly, the Prince illustrated his policy by saying to the great landed proprietor, ‘If on your estates you had, upon that great height that overlooks the Elbe, a vast reservoir of water that you knew every moment threatened to overwhelm your rich meadows, and must certainly one day come down, would you at once break through the dike and let it down in broad ruin upon your lands, or would you carefully perforate it, so that it should send down the floods slowly and beneficently, to fertilize your fields instead of destroying them?’ It is a pretty comparison, but that, I fear, is all; though perhaps I ought to add, that I believe welledu-cated persons can get such books as they want in Austria, almost, perhaps quite, as easily as elsewhere in Germany, and that men of learning and of studious habits receive a carte blanche from the censors to have even the books that have received the sentence of damnatur.

. . . . In the early part of the evening. I drove to Hietzing, the pretty village on the borders of the gardens at Schonbrunn, and made a visit to the old Baron Eskeles, one of those rich bankers whom the policy of Metternich has ennobled. He has a fine country-house and ample grounds . . . .

At a little before ten I drove to Prince Metternich's. . . .The company had hardly begun to assemble. Only four or five persons, among whom was the Minister of Police, had come in, and the Prince had not made his appearance. The Princess sat at her rug-work as before, but seemed less sad. I sat down by her, and we fell into some downright gossip, which, however, with not a little smartness, she mixed up more or less with politics and passing events. We were in the midst of it, and the conversation was growing quite piquant, when somebody, who looked as if he might be a secretary, came in, with very unceremonious haste, and almost running up to the Princess, said very hurriedly, ‘Your Highness, the King of Naples is just coming in.’ She rose instantly, though without extraordinary haste, or as if anything strange had occurred; but before she had quite reached the door of the saloon he entered, followed by his uncle, the Prince of Salerno, Prince Metternich, and one or two others.

The King is a stout, dark-complexioned, sallow young man of six-and-twenty, a little awkward in his manners and address, with black