as no national industry, only some manufactures of
articles of luxury favoured by the government. Not long ago it was
maintained by a Bavarian monthly journal, that manufacturing activity
and the like were not very practicable for Bavarians, because the great
river of the country flowed to Austria, and a competition with the
Imperial hereditary States was not possible. The most flourishing
countries in Germany, next to the small territories on the North Sea,
were then Electoral Saxony and the country of the Lower Rhine, up to
the Westphalian county of Mark; and this is little altered.

To those who dwelt in the Empire the inhabitants of the North were a
remote people, but they were in the habit of considering Prussia and
Austria also as foreign powers.

Of the people in Austria the citizens of the Empire knew little. Even
the Bavarian, before whose eyes his Danube flowed to Vienna, desired no
intercourse with these neighbours; he preferred looking over the
mountains to the Tyrol, for the hatred which so readily divides
frontier people was there in full force. The Saxon had important trade
with the Germans in Northern Bohemia; it mattered little to him what
lay beyond; it was a foreign race, in evil repute, from the old war. To
other Germans the "Bohemian Mountains" and an unknown land signified
the same thing. The nations which dwelt along the Danube, amongst them
Czechs, Moravians, Italians, Slovenes, Magyars, and Slovaks, were a
vigorous, powerful race, of ancient German blood; the Thirty Years' War
had little injured their stately carriage and personal beauty, but
their own rulers had estranged them from Germany. By persecution, not
only the heretics, but also the activity and culture of those who
remained, had been frightened away; but a life of enjoyment and
pleasure still pulsated in the great capital. Any one who wished to
enjoy himself went there--Hungarians, Bohemians, and nobles from the
Empire. Germany lay outside the Vienna world, and they thought little
of it.

Undoubtedly the ruler of Austria was also the Emperor of Germany. The
double eagle hung against all the post-houses in the Empire, and when
the Emperor died, according to old custom, the church bells tolled. Any
one who sought for armorial bearings, or quarrelled about privileges,
went to the Imperial court; otherwise the Empire knew nothing of the
Emperor or his supremacy. When the soldiers of the Princes of the
Empire came together with the Aust