their allegiance to the house of Austria.

Maria Theresa, young and generous and high-spirited herself, had
confidence in human virtue. She repaired to Hungary; she summoned the
states of the Diet; she entered the hall, clad in deep mourning; habited
herself in the Hungarian dress; placed the crown of St. Stephen on her
head, the cimeter at her side; showed her subjects that she could
herself cherish and venerate whatever was dear and venerable in their
sight; separated not herself in her sympathies and opinions from those
whose sympathies and opinions she was to awaken and direct, traversed
the apartment with a slow and majestic step, ascended the tribune whence
the sovereigns had been accustomed to harangue the states, committed to
her chancellor the detail of her distressed situation, and then herself
addressed them in the language which was familiar to them, the immortal
language of Rome, which was not now for the first time to be employed
against the enterprises of injustice and the wrongs of the oppressor.

To the cold and relentless ambition of Frederick, to a prince whose
heart had withered at thirty, an appeal like this had been made in vain;
but not so to the freeborn warriors, who saw no possessions to be
coveted like the conscious enjoyment of honorable and generous
feelings--no fame, no glory like the character of the protectors of the
helpless and the avengers of the innocent. Youth, beauty, and distress
obtained that triumph, which, for the honor of the one sex, it is to be
hoped will never be denied to the merits and afflictions of the other. A
thousand swords leaped from their scabbards and attested the unbought
generosity and courage of untutored nature. "_Moriamur pro rege
nostro_, Maria Theresa!" was the voice that resounded through the hall
("We will die for our sovereign, Maria Theresa!"). The Queen, who had
hitherto preserved a calm and dignified deportment, burst into tears--I
tell but the facts of history. Tears started to the eyes of Maria
Theresa, when standing before her heroic defenders--those tears which no
misfortunes, no suffering, would have drawn from her in the presence of
her enemies and oppressors. "Moriamur pro rege nostro, Maria Theresa!"
was again and again heard. The voice, the shout, the acclamation that
reechoed around her, and enthusiasm and frenzy in her cause, were the
necessary effect of this union of every dignified sensibility which the
heart can acknowledge and the unde