Metternich
Metternich, 1773-1859 ; a Study of his Period and Personality. By Algernon Cecil. (Eyre and Spottiswoode. 9s.) MR. ALOERNON CECIL has told the story of Metternich's life with a certain elaboration of style, yet without trace of pedantry, and after the manner of the " great world." Prince Metternich would have approved of this manner and of a philosophy which, at times, is hardly to be distinguished from his own disillusionment and pessimism over con- temporary events. Mr. Cecil, using an artist's right to choose his material, passes quickly over many questions which are a matter of prose and controversy in order to linger the more where he finds pageantry or anecdote or dramatic contrast. With few exceptions his omissions are justified in a book of three hundred or more pages. The greatest omission of all is Austria, other than an Austria seen from the palaces and great houses of Vienna. Metternich's principles of action, which Mr. Cecil bases upon " the facts of life," were based far more directly upon the facts of Austria, and, from the standpoint of political realism, the most serious charge one can bring against Metternich's statesmanship is that he overtaxed the resources of the Empire. For reasons partly within, partly without his control he did little to strengthen these resources ; every year in which, in Mr. Cecil's words, he urged mankind to " study to be quiet " widened the discrepancy between Habsburg ambitions and Habsburg power of execution. Every year made reform more difficult, and Metternich yet more timid of change.
Mr. Cecil is determined not to let the Whig dogs have the best of it in any time or place. He allows himself a number of modern instances of doubtful value or relevance, and a good deal of special historical pleading in things great and small. Thus he suggests that in Italy after 1815 " the Duke of Savoy was as arguably a foreigner as the Emperor of Austria." He defines (indirectly) the Reformation as " that deplorable result of loose-living popes and conceited hot-gospellers." In the field of English politics he is more than kind to Castle. reagh, less than just to Palmerston, whom he rarely mention's without some disdainful adjective or phrase. His persistent denigration of the French Revolution, taken together with his tenderness for the distinction of any society which cannot be called " parvenu," leads him into strange judgements. Some of these judgements are out of harmony with the religious idealism and fineness of outlook which distinguish the book as a whole.
Mr. Cecil may have his own views about the recent cata- strophe of Habsburg power, a catastrophe which, rightly or wrongly, has appeared to many who are neither fools nor fanatics as a sign that God is not mocked. The French Revolution is another matter. We are removed from it by more than four generations. Few historians would agree with Mr. Cecil's opinion that " nothing of Rousseau stands the
stress of life" or with his panegyric of Maistre as a philoso- pher of history. Wherever the French Revolution is mentioned in Mr. Cecil's book, it is accompanied by one of Metternich's favourite metaphors from fire, flood, pestilence, earthquake or other disaster. The reader almost expects to come upon Maistre's own phrase about an event purerrient satanique. Yet the French Revolution is something more than a tale of dark acts. Is it historically fair to think only of the excesses of ill-nourished crowds, a common people cradled for centuries in ignorance and roughness, knowing the rule of law only by its terrors ? Metternich, like Burke, was too near the Revolution to see beyond its cruelty, anarchy, and confusion ; but one cannot forget Paine's comment that Burke kept all his pity for the plumage. Few historians to-day would put the whole responsibility for the evils of the Revolution at the door of those who wished for immediate and far-reaching change, and free king, court, and church from moral and material blame. Mr. Cecil's study of the age of Metternich is an interpretation of the age exclusively from Metternieh's angle of vision. Metternich accepted, not without unction, the beatitude of possession. Mr. Cecil finds no fault with Metter- nich's contempt for a justice fondly conceived in equality." Is. it mere folly, or if it be folly, is it an ignoble folly, to think a society of equals more to be desired than a society of lords and men, masters and servants, rich and poor ? Metternich might have written Mr. Cecil's sentence that, with the fall of the French monarchy, " loyalty as a political motive went the way of reverence." Is reverence paid only to kings and bishops ? Is loyalty a virtue of inferiors and patrons, and never the bond of equals ? There is an older political wisdom than the wisdom of Metternich, a wisdom composed for the future as well as for the past in the funeral speeds of Pericles.
E. L. WOODWARD.
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