though large, was very simply
furnished, but admirably decorated in subdued colours, in the Italian
manner. A great improvement has lately taken place in internal
decoration in Vienna, which corresponds with that of external
architecture. A few years ago, most large apartments were fitted up in
the style of Louis XV., which was worthy of the degenerate nobles and
crapulous financiers for whom it was invented, and was, in fact, a
sort of Byzantine of the boudoir, which succeeded the nobler and
simpler manner of the age of Louis XIV., and tormenting every straight
line into meretricious curves, ended with over-loading caricature
itself.

I found Prince Metternich in his cabinet, surrounded with book-cases,
filled mostly with works on history, statistics, and geography, and I
hope I am not committing any indiscretion in saying that his
conversation savoured more of the abstractions of history and
political philosophy than that of any other practical statesman I had
seen. I do not think that I am passing a dubious compliment, since M.
Guizot, the most eminently practical of the statesmen of France, is at
the same time the man who has most successfully illustrated the
effects of modifications of political institutions on the main current
of human happiness.

It must be admitted that Prince Metternich has a profound acquaintance
with the minutest sympathies and antipathies of all the European
races; and this is the quality most needed in the direction of an
empire which comprises not a nation, but a congregation of nations;
not cohering through sympathy with each other, but kept together by
the arts of statesmanship, and the bond of loyalty to the reigning
house. The ethnographical map of Europe is as clear in his mind's eye
as the boot of Italy, the hand of the Morea, and the shield of the
Spanish peninsula in those of a physical geographer. It is not
affirming too much to say that in many difficult questions in which
the _mezzo termine_ proposed by Austria has been acceded to by the
other powers, the solution has been due as much to the sagacity of the
individual, as to the less ambitious policy which generally
characterizes Austria.

The last time I saw this distinguished individual was in the month of
November following, on my way to England, I venture to give a scrap of
the conversation.

_Mett_. "The idea of Charlemagne was the formation of a vast state,
comprising heterogeneous nations united under one head; but