From Vienna to Cracow is now but a step. Prague and Dresden
will shake hands with Vienna next year. If we look southwards, line
upon line interpose themselves between Vienna and the Adriatic, but
the great Sommering has been pierced. The line to Trieste is open
beyond Gratz, the Styrian capital. The Lombard-Venetian line proceeds
rapidly, and is to be joined to that of Trieste. In 1847, the
traveller may go, without fail, from Milan to Stettin on the Baltic.
But the most interesting line for us is that of Gallicia, in connexion
with that of Silesia. If prolonged from Czernowitz to Galatz, along
the dead flat of Moldavia, the Black Sea and the German Ocean will be
joined; _Samsoun and the Tigris will thus be, in all probability, at
no distant day, on the high road to our Indian empire_.
But to return to Austria; this spectacle of rapid material
improvement, without popular commotion, and without the trumpets and
alarm-bells of praise and blame, is satisfactory: but when we look to
the reverse of the picture, and see the cumbrous debt, the frequent
deficits, and the endless borrowing, we think the time has come for
great financial reforms,--as Schiller hath it:--
"Warum denn nicht mit einem grossen Schritte anfangen, Da sie mit
einem grossen Schritte doch enden mussen?"
THE END.
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