on" which is based on slavery. All is now changed toward
Prussia, as most has been changed toward us for twenty months, ever
since the fall of Richmond. If Prussia should not soon establish a
"cordial understanding" with England, _vice_ France discarded, it will
be because she is not disposed to an English alliance, or because her
fortunes shall have undergone a change, and rendered her unworthy of
being courted. That ancient connection of England and Austria, dating
from the time that the Bourbons became dangerous to Europe, and which
was so often alluded to in the time of the Italian war, and in the days
that immediately preceded the German conflict, is thought little of by
Englishmen, who prefer to think of Pitt's connection with Frederick when
the latter was threatened with annihilation by Austria. Prussia has not
only beaten the Austrian armies; she has conquered English
prejudices,--much the more difficult task of the two.

The Austrians must be amused by the change that has come over the
English mind; but with their sense of the satire which that change may
be said to embody, there is possibly mingled the reflection that their
case, bad as it is, is not so bad as to deprive them of hope. Looking
back over the history of the house of Austria, there is much in it to
allow the belief that possibly it may again rise to the highest place in
Europe. That house has often fallen quite as low as we have seen it
fall, and yet it has not passed away, but has renewed its life and
strength, and has taken high part in effecting the punishment, and even
the destruction, of those who might have destroyed it. When Matthias
Corvinus held Vienna,--when that city was besieged by the great Solyman,
whose troops marched as far to the west as Ratisbon,--when Charles V.
fled before Maurice of Saxony, "lest he might one fine morning be seized
in his bed,"--when Andrew Thonradtel took Ferdinand II. by the buttons
of his doublet, and said, "Nandel, give in, thou must sign" (a paper
containing the articles of the union of the Austrian Estates with the
Bohemians, which Ferdinand refused to sign, and never signed),--when
Gustavus Adolphus was beating or baffling all the Imperial
generals,--when Wallenstein was directing his army of _condottieri_,
with which he had saved the Austrian house, against that house,--when
Kara Mustapha, at the head of two hundred thousand Turks, aided by the
Hungarians, and encouraged by the French, laid siege to Vie