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.
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