at the business he is in.
Saving the Liberties of Europe! thinks Robinson confidently: Founding
the English National Debt, answers Fact; and doing Bottom the Weaver,
with long ears, in the miserablest Pickleherring Tragedy that ever
was!--This is the same Robinson who immortalized himself, nine or ten
years ago, by the First Treaty of Vienna; thrice-salutary Treaty, which
DISJOINED Austria from Bourbon-Spanish Alliances, and brought her into
the arms of the grateful Sea-Powers again. Imminent Downfall of the
Universe was thus, glory to Robinson, arrested for that time. And now
we have the same Robinson instructed to sharpen all his faculties to the
cutting pitch, and do the impossible for this new and reverse face
of matters. What a change from 1731 to 1741! Bugbear of dreadful
Austrian-Spanish Alliance dissolves now into sunlit clouds, encircling
a beautiful Austrian Andromeda, about to be devoured for us; and the
Downfall of the Universe is again imminent, from Spain and others
joining AGAINST Austria. Oh, ye wigs, and eximious wig-blocks, called
right-honorable! If a man, sovereign or other, were to stay well at
home, and mind his own visible affairs, trusting a good deal that
the Universe would shift for itself, might it not be better for
him? Robinson, who writes rather a heavy style, but is full of
inextinguishable heavy zeal withal, will have a great deal to do in
these coming years. Ancestor of certain valuable Earls that now are;
author of immeasurable quantities of the Diplomatic cobwebs that then
were.

To a modern English reader it is very strange, that Austrian scene of
things in which poor Robinson is puffing and laboring. The ineffable
pride, the obstinacy, impotency, ponderous pedantry and helplessness of
that dull old Court and its Hofraths, is nearly inconceivable to modern
readers. Stupid dilapidation is in all departments, and has long been;
all things lazily crumbling downwards, sometimes stumbling down
with great plunges. Cash is done; the world rising, all round, with
plunderous intentions; and hungry Ruin, you would say, coming visibly on
with seven-league boots: here is little room for carrying your head
high among mankind. High nevertheless they do carry it, with a grandly
mournful though stolid insolent air, as if born superior to this
Earth and its wisdoms and successes and multiplication-tables and iron
ramrods,--really with "a certain greatness," says somebody, "greatness
as of great bloc