portion of the
poorer nobility equally sided with the middle class, and as to the
lower classes of the population, who always had found plenty of
grounds to complain of their superiors, if not of the Government, they
in most cases could not but adhere to the reformatory wishes of the
bourgeoisie.

It was about this time, say 1843 or 1844, that a particular branch of
literature, agreeable to this change, was established in Germany. A
few Austrian writers, novelists, literary critics, bad poets, the
whole of them of very indifferent ability, but gifted with that
peculiar industrialism proper to the Jewish race, established
themselves in Leipsic and other German towns out of Austria, and
there, out of the reach of Metternich, published a number of books and
pamphlets on Austrian affairs. They and their publishers made "a
roaring trade" of it. All Germany was eager to become initiated into
the secrets of the policy of European China; and the Austrians
themselves, who obtained these publications by the wholesale
smuggling carried on upon the Bohemian frontier, were still more
curious. Of course, the secrets let out in these publications were of
no great importance, and the reform plans schemed out by their
well-wishing authors bore the stamp of an innocuousness almost
amounting to political virginity. A Constitution and a free press for
Austria were things considered unattainable; administrative reforms,
extension of the rights of the Provincial Diets, admission of foreign
books and newspapers, and a less severe censorship--the loyal and
humble desires of these good Austrians did hardly go any farther.

At all events the growing impossibility of preventing the literary
intercourse of Austria with the rest of Germany, and through Germany
with the rest of the world, contributed much toward the formation of
an anti-Governmental public opinion, and brought at least some little
political information within the reach of part of the Austrian
population. Thus, by the end of 1847, Austria was seized, although in
an inferior degree, by that political and politico-religious agitation
which then prevailed in all Germany; and if its progress in Austria
was more silent, it did, nevertheless, find revolutionary elements
enough to work upon. There was the peasant, serf, or feudal tenant,
ground down into the dust by lordly or Government exactions; then the
factory operative, forced by the stick of the policeman to work upon
any terms the