THE CHEVALIER VON GENTZ AND PRINCE METTERNICH. TO THE EDITOR

OF THE SPECTATOR.

SIR—The prorogation of Parliament, which will give you more space, and above all, the circumstance that the columns of the Spectator, (23d of July,) in an extract from the recent work of Lord LONDONDERRY, respecting the ce- lebrated GENTZ, and headed" No fool like an old fool," have been made to serve to the propagation of statements calculated to depreciate the character of one of the brightest ornaments of German literature, and incontestably the first German statesman of the present century, embolden me to expect that, from your known sentiments of fairness and impartiality, you will grant me permission to rectify those erroneous statements, and justify the memory Of GENTZ.

No blame attaches to Lord LONDONDERRY, who only related a conversation he had with Prince METTERNICH at Vienna, and related no more than he had really heard. But as to the statements reported by him, we are in no manner obliged to place implicit belief in them ; it being pretty well known that MET- TERNICH, if he did not become the implacable enemy of GENTZ, at all events ceased to be his friend. This circumstance, however, presents no great diffi- culty, because VARNHAGEN VON ENSE, equally distinguished as a Prussian diplomatist, a German writer, biographer, and historian, has published a com- plete life of his personal friend GENTZ; which life, what is still more import- ant, is accompanied by twenty-eight letters of GENTZ, from which every false statement of METTERNICH'S can be victoriously refuted. The work in ques- tion is entitled Varnhagen von Ense Galerie von Bildnissen aus Rafters Um- gang und Briefwechsel. Berlin, 1836. Two vols. 8vo. The life of GENTZ will be found in vol. '2, pages 157-195; and the twenty. eight letters mentioned, and written in the interval from 28th September 1903 until 13th November 1831, at pages 196-266.• The work of VARNHAGEN VON Esse being based on a long intimate acquaintance with GENTZ, on docu- ments, and a remarkable knowledge of contemporaneous history, there is only one point in which his position as a Prussian diplomatist and public man renders him a suspicious witness,—that is to say, when he speaks of Prince METTER.. men : but upon a perusal of his work, it will be quickly perceived that he says of him as little as possible, and rather blinks the question by leaving cer- tain points in the life of GENTZ unexplained, to the evident detriment of the merits of his book as a literary production. To Mr. VARNIIAGEN we mug not apply for a true character of Merreesacu: but if we were to apply. to Lord LONDONDERRY ? The thing is worth attempting : let us see. "It 1St strange point in the character of this celebrated statesman, how eagerly and minutely he interests himself in mere trifles, or rather the smallest minutiae, where art and mechanism are combined. I saw him one evening remaining half an hour examining the interior of a clock playing different airs."

With a slight emendation, this passage can be converted into a characterism to whose impartiality and correctness, I feel confident, the whole of Germany will subscribe. "This celebrated statesman eagerly and minutely interests

himself in mere trifles; and secondly, in really contemptible minuthe where artfulness on his part and mechanism on the part of subjects are combined." As to the mysterious watch, I have likewise to offer a plausible explanation. Prince METTERNICH has devoted a whole his exclusively to forcing Provi- dence, world, and mankind, to the tune of "one air," namely, his own—the single little air of his narrow conceptions. That watch which, in presence of the all-powerful Prime Minister of the Holy Alliance, dared to play "different airs," was either an anarchist in itself or at all events the work of a downright conspirator, whom the safety of Austria imperiously claimed for immediate ha- In Lord LONDONDERRY'S book, the age of GENIE at his death is erroneonsloyt stated at eighty years. He was born at Breslau is 1764; entered into the se Austria in 1805, and died in Sane Id.n; consequently at the age of ststY-011hS Pm*. carceration at the Spielberg. Great thanks, undoubtedly, are due to Lord LONDONDERRY for this photographic likeness of Prince METTERNICH. In the same work we shall also find an excellent judgment respecting GENTZ. a I enjoyed another long conversation with Metternich, relative to an old

and common friend of ours—alas for his country and the world, now no more! I mean the celebrated Chevalier von Gents .... Eleven years Ambassador at Vienna had made me intimately acquainted with his singular abilities ; and Metternich repeated to me once again, what I had often heard him eay before, that he never knew a man, and believed no man ever existed, who possessed such intellectual powers, and such facility and felicity in giving expression to them."

Though in VARNHAGEN VON ENSE the abilities of GENTZ are better speci- fied and more fully appreciated than in this statement of METTERNICH, which he could not well unsay because "often " heard " before," it is quite sufficient ; and so far we agree both with Lord LONDONDERRY and Prince METTERNICH. But let us proceed, and hear what the Prince has to say more. " His (Gents's)

habits of business wholly ceased; and on Prince Metternich's observing and reasoning with him upon this change, Gents assigned as his formal excuse, that ' he had been so thunderstruck with the results of the Days of July, that from that moment he had given up Europe for lost, and was convinced that no effort could save the world from anarchy and confusion ; and therefore he ceased to occupy himself with state affairs.' Metternich argued with him, that in proportion as greater danger arose, so ought men of capacity to rise more energetically to the combat.' But Gents then more candidly avowed,

'that he had abandoned himself entirely to one engrossing feeling; he pro- claimed it—he gloried in it ; he was fondly, passionately, desperately, eter- nally in love, and had only that existence and that deity.' Extraordinary if true. But is it true ? Let us hear what VAnsirraneN vote Essz has to relate of the conduct of GENTZ immediatey after the Revolution of July. "Gentz believed that a truce with the Revolution of July was not impossible; and in this sense Gents wrote a memorable parr, the summary and bequest to posterity of his last political convictions."—(VARNHAGEN VON ENSE, vol. II. page 188.) A few pages after, page 193, VARNHAGEN not only hints at, hut states in all but express terms, that LOUIS PHILIPPE entered into a confidential corre- spondence with GENTZ, received him as his revered adviser, and what is still more remarkable—for liberality is not supposed to be the strongest propensity of the French King—allowed him to draw on his banker for as large MIMS as

be pleased- There exists evidently a slight contradiction between the state-

ments of Prince MErrenwicnt and VARNHAGEN VON ENSE—no against yes: but that only entitles to doubt ; we must get a third witness before arriving at a certain conclusion. But whom shall we call? GENTZ himself. In the letters written to VARNHAGEN and his no less ceebrated wife BABEL, never intended for publication, and published in the year 1836, when it was impossible to fore- see what Prince Met-rem-mu would choose to say to Lord LONDONDERRY in 1842, we find the following passages- 1. A letter dated Vienna, November 13th, 1831, page 259, begins—" Why did I hear nothing from you in the sad times, when a panic terror, which you perhaps have braved like myself, had even seized the reasonable?" This doubtful passage may, however, from the date, be said to apply rather to the revolutionary troubles in Germany than to the Revolution of July; but there is to be found another passage more explicit. 2. In a letter dated July 8th, 1831, page 257, it is said—" My monotonous life is divided into two unequal and in every respect unequal halves. From seven o'clock in the morning until eight o'clock in the night it belongs to public affairs, correspondence, etc. ; and from eight to eleven to love. All recreations by society have been gradually abandoned. . . . What I have to suffer in the first period of the day, and principally during the hours from ten to three, of that you can form no idea. Those who for such a long time stood in the reputation of being thoughtless optimists are now the blackest of all blackseers,' (die schwarzesten alter schwarzseher); and ten times a morning I must hear the solemn asseveration, 'that all our doings are useless—that the world is lost without a hope—that nothing remains for us but to lie down and die."

This looks rather strange. With whom did GENTZ chiefly confer and work during the fatal hours from ten to three ? With Prince METTERNICH and his official colleagues. Then they must have been the " blackseers "—not GENTZ, who, on the contrary, by his advice and resolution restraineI them from utmost despaint This, however, deserves an explanation. It was not of the Revolution of July directly that Austria and the German princes were afraid, but of the consequences that event was to produce and really produced in Germany—as the successful revolutions in Hanover, Saxony, Brunswick, etc. fully testified. The best authority in this matter, Mr. G. KOMBST, at that time Secretary to the Prussian Ambassador at the Diet of Frankfort, writes in his " Bundestag," that all the German Governments had lost their beads excepting Prince METTERNICH. With reference to the large meeting of 20,000 people at Hambach in 1832, the same author (" Atkenstucke," page 65) attributes to Prince METTERNICH the following words. "The meeting of Harnbach, if' put to good use, may be converted into a victory of the good ; the bad at all events have been a little too hasty." "These words Prince Met- ternich wrote shortly after the meeting of Hambach, May 1832, to the Prus- sian Ambassador at Frankfort, Von Nagler, who, during the absence of Count Munch-Bellingbausen, the Austrian Ambassador, acted as his substitute in presiding at the Diet." • Mr. Roamer could only perceive the apparent official fact which does not at all preclude the possibility of his attributing to another "substitute," Prince METTERNICH, a merit which in reality only belonged to his adviser, VON Germs. But some other considerations and facts remain to be adduced. Prince METTERNICH, in imitation of the old German nobility before the French Revolution, despises German, and has only learned to write in French ; SO that immediately upon the death of GENTZ be was obliged to send for JAIME at Berlin, because METTERNICH is incapable of writing a German letter fit for publication, never having learned German grammatically. The letter quoted by Mr. KOMBST was written in German, and consequently, because in German and not in French, by GENTZ and not by METTERNICH. But the subject can be made still clearer. In the same work of Mr. ROSIEST, we find a letter siped METTERNICH, and directed to the Austrian Ambassador at Dresden ; in which the latter was instructed to make serious representations to the Court of Saxony for the little resistance they had opposed to the Revolutionists who wrenched a constitution from them. This letter, written with strong Conser- vative energy, and entirely in the style of GENTZ, is dated " Freeburg, 28th of September 1830"; and in the work of VARNHAGEN we find a letter of GENTZ, dated from the same Presburg. the 10th of October of the same year 1830—that is to say, written twelve days after the first, which was written scarcely two months after the Revolution of July, said to have deprived GENTZ Of his clear judgment and rendered him unfit for service. Two months after the Revolution of July, GENTZ was with METTERNICH at Presburg acting 1111 his adviser, as he had always done before. Space not permitting to enter into this more extraneous matter, we must refer our readers to the little but precious work of Dr. KOMBST, in which they will find ample proofs that the revolu- tionary movement of Germany was overcome in the lifetime of GENTZ, before July 1832, by the famous Ordinances of June, which may be called the "Six Acts" of the German Diet, and by military measures of precaution taken by It is a welhknown fact in Germany, that the Emperor Feasters, upon hearing the first news of the Revolution of July. 'cox all courage, and cried out in In, Vienna jargon, for he could not even speak correct German, "011es ischt verlomn I "—all is lost. Prussia, at the suggestion of Austria ; likewise detailed in Kosinsr. With the death of GENTZ, Prince METTERNICH may be said to have lost hie rept' tation : not only has he never done any thing remarkable since the fatal month of June, when GENTZ died, but committed since that period each egregious blunders, that at this moment scarcely a vestige remains of his former repute- tion, immense as it had been.

But to return to eine subject; what have we gained now ? The most con- vincing proofs that Prince METTERNICH' in telling Lord LONDONDERRY What he did, permitted himself freedoms with the politeness of hospitality and the respect for generally known facts which it will be difficult for him to excuse, If Prince METTERNICH were only a simple diplomatist, his little reverence for truth might be excused ; but Prince METTERNICH prides himself SO MI6 on his old nobility, and once felt so confident of carrying the world back into the olden times of chivalry, that we ought in all charity to presuppose in him at least this little knowledge, that in those ancient times, though the villain was allowed to be a villain, it was a sacred obligation for the knight to have a word; and to the present day, in Germany we have the proverb—" A word, a man." Another equally sacred obligation was to protect the weaker, and above all to respect the women- " A Dieu mon ame,

Mon cceur aux dames.

Ma vie an rot,

honneur our ml" Let us bear now in what terms Prince METTERNICH, in presence of Lord LONDONDERRY, spoke of a celebrated lady, to whom he can make no other reproach but that, in faithful imitation of the manners of chivalry, she, like the noble ladies of old, granted to her knight her " colours and minnesold"— " Is it not, then, passing strange, that this profound genius, (Gentz,) this subtle politician, this phcernx of literature and composition, should have died actually from an overwhelming excess of the passion of love ? and this too when Nature cools down the passions and bids them subside—for he VISS near fourscore : yet au stands the case. He imbibed a maddening attachment for Fanny Ellsler, the Vienna danseuse, then more partially known, but of late conspicuous both in England and America. . . On this opera-girl Gentz lavished large sums of money ; and whilst exhibiting his partiality, contracted debts, and ultimately died in penury and wretchedness." So " the Vienna danseuse," "this opera-girl," ruined GENTZ and plunged him into " penury and wretchedness." I say again, extraordinary if true ! Let us hear what GENTZ himself has to say in this matter. In a letter dated Vienna, 22d January 1831, and directed to the lawful celebrated wife of VARN- HAGEN VON ENSE, page 251, 255, he writes—" 1 he best danseur of this town (Vienna) being absent on leave, we have now few ballets, and I pass all those evening hours I am able to save near Fanny alone. I instruct her in German and French, and educate her like a beloved child of mine. This is the only occupation left which yields some charm to me; and only near her I often forget my grief, old age, and death. I look on her as a gift from heaven ; as a Nivel

of spring, which blossoms for me in the midst of graves and fields of dreary ice. . . . My conversations with Fanny, and her incomparable behaviour to-

wards me, are now indeed the only sunny points in my life. . . . But I initiate Fanny as little as possible into the secrets of my grief. The purer and opener she remains, the surer I am to find near her that recreation and diversion without which I should succumb and perish in a short time." Several passages might be adduced of a similar nature, but these are sufficient for our purpose: those, however, who are able to consult the original, we beg leave to refer to that splendid letter in which GENTZ discloses to Relish his love, and how he had not abased his FANNY—how he had elevated her mind, and how she herself had avowed to him that he bad opened new worlds to her that had slept before unknown in her mind. This, then, Prince MET- TERNICH, is your "Vienna danseuse," your "opera-dancer," who plundered old doting GENTZ and plunged him into "poverty and wretchedness"! This is a serious concern, Prince MErreanrcu. Was it I that spoke against you? I only copied the words of GENTZ. You have dared to insult and slander the dead, and the dead have heard you and risen against you. There it stands, your own soul, GENTZ, that in departing from this world left you behind, a mere lump of flesh, staring into your face and reminding you of your ingrati- tude, and the silent gnawing grief you thrust into the inmost recesses of his mind. "What a horrid sight !" exclaim you. Not at all : only look, it is a blessed spirit, that still, as in life, smiles at his love, holding a crown over her head whose splendour will never tarnish as long as the German tongue is spoken and known. But perhaps, for you are a highly-enlightened man, you do not believe in ghosts and spirits ? Then it is likely you believe in nursery-tales. Well, I suppose you have learned, in spite of the time you devoted to French, just enough of German to understand the nursery-rhymes which Margaret sings when found by Faust in her prison. They are taken from the " Juniper-tree " in Gaunt's Tales, and belong to the little bird that once was a little brother whom his wicked stepmother killed. Now look again—how strange! the little bird sings its beautiful air to its little sister that played with him and loved him whilst he was her brother, and throws down a beautiful chain of gold that falls aright round her neck. But for what purpose does it carry the heavy millstone around its little neck ? With that millstone the guilty step- mother shall be crushed; and the guilty stepmother are yon, who allowed GENTZ, according to your own confession, to die, after thirty years' faithful service, "in poverty and wretchedness." Or, Prince METTERNICH, are you perhaps so great an unbeliever as not even to believe in nursery-tales? Then I will broach a subject of which, old as you are, you have still a great deal to learn, I mean the German language. Search all the German dictionaries in existence, old or modern, and see if you can hunt out such a word as "black- seer." It is quite a new word, coined by GENTZ; and such a wondedul word in itself as alone to outweigh whole volumes. Its meaning is "cowardice, dastardly cowardice": but if you call a man a coward, you risk that he take it for an insult ; name him, therefore, a " blackseer," and you satisfy your malice without furnishing him the least pretext for calling you to account. And for whom was this splendid word intended ?—for Prince METTERNICH, the principal interlocutor GENTZ had to do with during the fatal hours "from ten to three," when he saw his "blackest blackseers. ' That word " black- seer " will stick to your memory as long as BOERNE'S " Franzoseufresser" will to the name of MzsizEL—for ever !

But I should not have completed my task if I were not to take into Mg.. deration two final questions still subject to doubt,—viz. has Prince METTER- NICH indeed lost his former reputation ? and what were the reasons for Which GENTZ fell out with METTERNICH, Or the latter with him ? With reference to the first question, I can be very brief: it is shown by the result : since the death of GENTZ, and principally during the last four years, he has lost every particle of influence in Switzerland, where they openly bearded him in the affair of the Argan monasteries; and lost, almost irretrievably lost, his last hold on Germany ; whilst on the other hand his vacillating conduct has brought him into contempt with a considerable portion of the diplomatic world. A solution of the other question is more difficult, but still not repug- nant to elucidation.

GENTZ was not a man of a servile mind; on the contrary, he was originally proud and independent. •VARNHAGEN, for instance, relates the following amusing anecdote of him. Having one day been invited to an appointment with a minister of state, he did not find him at the hour agreed. Full of rage, he took from the shelves of' the library into which be had been shown, one of the books, and lustily went on trampling it under his feet. In this interesting occupation be was interrupted by a friend ; who, quite astonished, asked what that meant. GENTZ then related his story, concluding, " As the Minister is not here, I have no other way to satisfy my revenge." His friend, who saw in this a high imprudence, then asked him good-humouredly, " Why, is that your ius Gentium ?' —a pun on his name, which made him laugh, and immediately flayed his wrath. It is evident that such a nature could not have but been occasionally galled by the yoke of obedience he was condemned to bear in the

Austrian service for the space of thirty years. •'

GesTz, further, was very ambitious. Though under grievous pecuniary dis- tress before he entered the Austrian service in 1803, yet his most anxious care was that be should be received, not as common drudge and hireling, but as their equal in all his strength and brilliancy of mind. A. self-sufficient aristo- cracy, like that of Austria, is indeed very subject to a common mistake in man- kind, namely, that of a longing for a thing for the sake of its power, and then depriving it of the best part of its strength for the sake of rendering it fit for management ; or to choose an illustration, just suppose a bad horseman who would buy a valuable high-mettled horse, and then, conscious of his had horse- manship, cut his hamstrings lest he should run away with him or throw him into the ditch. This, according to the representation of VARNHAGEN, who could know the circumstances very well, was the principal apprehension GENTZ entertained before he struck Ids bargain. Until the time of the peace, how- ever, there was no room left for this apprehended misfortune : GENTZ was Olsen the man of Germany and even Europe; it was rather he who covered under his splendour his masters and employers, of whom at that period scarcely mention was made. After the peace came the period of the Congresses, in which GENTZ again was the principal man, at least in as far as writing was concerned ; he being the official recorder who worded the protocols. But when, after the murder of KOTZEBUE by SAND, (1819,) Austria began her reactionary mea- sures, and openly endeavoured to quash every spark of intelligence abroad and at home. Gzierz was condemned to the most abject drudgery-work ; being charged with the censorship for the Austrian empire. A curious monument of this period remains in SCHNELLER'S modern history of Austria (" Oestreichs Einfluss auf Europa.") SCIINELLER, who was Professor of History at the University of Greets, had sent in his manuscript, but received it back without an imprimatur, and accompanied by some marginal observations in the hand- writing of GENTZ: when afterwards, about 1822, all aliens of distinction were ordered away from the Austrian territory, SCHNELLER was obliged to return to his native country, Baden, where he WSS made Professor of Philosophy at the University of Freyburg; and whilst there he published both his work and the notes added by GENTZ. These notes are undoubtedly of a piteous pue- rility, which does little honour to GENTZ: but we must not forget that be did not act upon his own free choice and discretion, hut after clear instructions; so that, in all fairness, the blame falls in an equal if not higher degree on those who had drawn up those instructions and forced the dirty work on him. From that moment GENTZ bad no longer an opportunity of showing himself: what- ever be did was done at the bidding of his masters, on whom, if there was any, the merit of all his industry and intelligence fell ; whilst his own share ex- clusively consisted in the odium and hatred which people did not dare to fling into the face of the all-powerful Minister of Austria, Prince METTERNICH. Both the nature of his occupations and the terrible recompense he earned from them could not fail to fill with the gloomiest dissatisfaction a mind constructed like that of GENTZ. VARNHAGEN says of him expressly—" Gentz never re- nounced a certain love of freedom, a high desire of independence, an unquench- able thirst of knowledge and research, a strong belief in the supreme right of reason and truth ; and whoever considered him in the light of a blind partisan of servile abjection and arbitrary oppression, has either never known or never understood him." GENTZ, in one word, was only a Conservative with political antipathies, who opposed anarchy in every shape : but GENTZ was endowed with too much intelligence himself to hate and prosecute intellect, which, on the contrary, he admired even in his antagonists; whereas METTERNICH was and is the sworn enemy of intelligence itself, which, wherever he can, he pro- secutes to death and annihilation. Such two opposite characters could no longer agree.

GENTZ could just as little he an admirer of the turn which the foreign policy of Austria had taken. GENTZ began as an ardent enthusiast of the French Revolution, which he afterwards exchanged for the principles of BURKE. Be became the stoutest friend Great Britain and British institutions ever bed; and VARNHAGEN observes expressly, that during the war GENTZ always felt unhappy when Austria was not allied to England, in which he saw the only safety for Austria and Europe. After the peace, he could no longer abandon himself to his old predilections, because the Holy Alliance soon began to work for an isolation of England. Something even more positively bad happened. The Emperor ALEXANDER, after having amused Austria for several years by Congresses, on a sudden gave her the slip at the time of the outbreak of the Greek revolution, which he had been all this while preparing in silence. As afterwards both England and France united with Russia for the pacification of Greece, Austria found herself isolated ; but METTERNICH notwithstanding

clung with unpardonable obstinacy and blindness to Turkish legitimacy; and while all Europe was filled with one cry of indignation at the horrible whole- sale massacres of their Christian brethren in the East, the official organ of Prince

METTERNICH, The Austrian Observer, gloated with disgusting exultation at

this repetition of the worst scenes of the French Revolution. What could not fail to happen happened : the very name of Austria became a word of abomination to the whole of Germany. Could the loving heart of GENTZ bear

such a lciad (shafted without breaking?

AU that precedes, plausible as it may appear, still would prove nothing, if, in &letter of GENTZ addressed to VARNHAGEN, we did not meet with more posi- tive indications of his secret sentiment& This letter, dated Vienna, December 7th, 1828, which exhibits the gloomiest dissatisfaction imaginable, was written as a kind of acknowledgment for the favourable manner in which VARNHAGEN had reviewed two of GENTZ'S older works ; and contains, among others, the fol-

lowing passages. " You have twice (in the Berliner Iahrbucher) made men- tion of me in a highly flattering manner. But the epoch of my authorship lies

SO far behind me, and its very memory has been obliterated by what I had to undergo for the last twenty years to such an extent, that I can scarcely appre- ciate what I may have accomplished at that time. Perhaps I should have done better never to forsake my former career. Destiny has thrown me into ano- ther, whose delusions proved an indemnification to me for a little while Your honourable mention gives me the more pleasure, as in presence of our public some courage is required to speak well of an 'Obscurantist and Turkophil ' like myself." Ile regrets, first to have exchanged a literary career against the delusions of

his less happy one at Vienna, near the person of METTERNICH. Astonished bow any man could muster up courage enough to show him still some esteem, he designates himself, secondly, by the term of" Obscurant,"—a term we have Preserved in spite of its outlandish character, because in Germany generally chosen for designating that violent crusade against intellect and that constant Propagation of ignorance so peculiar to the Austrian Cabinet ; and thirdly, he pleads guilty to the charge of being a" Turkophil,"--at that time also a word fraught with remarkable odiousness. In these three distinct confessions, we

can scarcely avoid perceiving a positive corroboration of what we have pre- viously stated upon mere assumption to have been the principal causes of Griszz's dissatisfaction.

f To be just, however, we must avow, that partly GENTZ was also the author o his own inisfortune; as by extravagancies of all kinds he not only continually involved himself in pecuniary difficulties, but had also considerably ruined his health. Both VARNHAGEN and METTERNICH, in the conversation reported by Lord LONDONDERRY, agree in one point, namely, that GENTZ at a certain period ‘. ceased his habits of business "; but they disagree in two important points- 1. Time; VARNHAGEN placing the event distinctly several years before the Revolution of July, and METTERNICH11 statement implying a period shortly before and after the Revolution of July: but it has been proved already, by un- objectionable evidence, that GENTZ displayed great activity after the B.evo- Intim of July, and moreover, VARNUAGEN adduces circumstantial details for his assertion ; so that if the evidence of Prince METTERNICH is not to be rejected altogether, it can only be received in corroboration of the statement of VAIINHAGEN.

2. Causes and explanation ; VARNHAGEN assigning as the cause of his in- activity broken health, and METTERNICH two reasons, despair and "mad- dening" love, already disproved.

The case now stands thus: VARNHAGEN asserts that several years before the Revolution of July, GENTZ was incapacitated for business by ill health, but that in consequence of a remarkable cure at a watering-place, GENTZ recovered all his former health and business-like propensities; so that the Revo- lution of July found him in full activity. If any thing is to be added to this statement from the evidence of METTERNICH, it can only be his confession that "be had observed and reasoned with GENTZ upon his ceasing his habits of business,"—that is to say, that METTERNICH, in a case which rather deserved compassion than blame, had probably augmented the number of grievances by cruel reproach and haughty dictation.

What GENTZ did after the Revolution of July has already been stated. As to the reason °Ulla death, VARNHAGEN makes the following curious disclo- sures. Describing GENTZ as possessor of great moral courage, be does not deny a certain nervousness in him, which gave to him the appearance of a want of physical courage. It moreover appears that GENTZ could not bear the idea of death. Oa a sudden a remarkable death happened, that of GOETHE ; by which GENTZ became like one thunderstruck. The fact that such a man should really die, reminded and convinced him of the possibility of his own death. From this moment GENTZ prepared himself manfully for that event, which, a few months later, really took place. Until the present moment we have only discovered circumstances calculated IO Cause in GENTZ dissatisfaction with METTERNICH, but not one that ought to have inspired the latter with the least feeling of hostility against him. Not to mention that, from several passages quoted above from the letters of GENTZ, it becomes evident that he did not disclose even to his FANNY the causes of his dissatisfaction—nay, not even confess to her its existence—it at all events stands firm that METTERNICH called on GENTZ while he was 011 his deathbed and showed himself friendly to him. The only inference to be drawn from this circumstance is, that GENTZ, having given offence, must have done so after his death. But is that possible ? Why not ? According to the Austrian law, the papers of a high functionary in possession of Government secrets are secured immediately upon his death. To give an instance : if the Austrian Ambassador here were to die at this moment, in the next minute afterwards the person nearest to him in office would be obliged to lay all his papers under seal ; and this seal would remain intact until a special Envoy from Vienna would arrive here with the special mission of taking away the seal, and carry all the papers of a political character to Vienna, where they would be deposited in the Chancery of State. The same proceeding must have taken place in the case of GENTZ, because founded in law and custom. Let us now suppose that GENTZ had left writings of a character to displease Prince METTERNICH : would not this amply account Sir his present hostility, which induced him to throw, by statements partly un- founded and partly exaggerated, ridicule on the very memory of Germ? There is a general rumour spread over Germany and Austria, that GENTZ has left Memoirs; and if Prince METTERNICH thinks prudent to withhold these Memoirs from the knowledge of the world, they can under no circumstances be supposed to contain a very flattering description of the Prime Minister of Austria. This general rumour is converted almost into a certainty by the fol- lowing passage iu the work of Lord LONDONDERRY. "Cents left behind him some beautiful sentimental letters in manuscript, addressed to his fair Dal- eines, breathing feelings stronger, perhaps, than ever were penned before. I could not obtain copies." Now, in the name of all probability, how is it pos- sible that love-letters addressed to FANNY ELLSLER should have remained in the possession of GENTZ ?—whether she was at Vienna or abroad, these letters must have been in her possession. The absurdity of such a proposition is too glaring to permit one moment's belief. And again, even if by some strange whim of accident such had been the case, why should such harmless produc- tions be withheld from public knowledge ? The only reasonable conclusion open to us is that GENTZ has left Memoirs, in which Prince METTERNICH cuts no very bright figure. Before concluding, I beg leave to offer one observation more. I am well aware that such detailed attempts at historical criticism are neither alto- gether to the taste of the English public nor well adapted to the limits of a weekly paper. But let us not forget that this is also quite an exceptional case : without strong proofs, the assumption would only meet with incredu- lity: and further, what is called the balance of power in Europe was exclu- sively erected at the Congress of Vienna, and chiefly by the action of GENTS and METTERNICH. A correct knowledge of these two men is of the highest importance for contemporaneous history, and almost indispensable for a true understanding of the present condition of the Continent. Happy shall I ac- count myself, if by my conscientious though feeble attempt I. have at least succeeded in bringing this topic to discussion.

A GERMAN Kum'