BOOKS.

THE CONGRESS OF VIENNA.*

THIS capital version of the Souvenirs of a well-known French prosateur and poet need not have been headed by a

catchpenny English adjective suggestive of a mere string of stories arranged by some "whipper-up of unconsidered trifles." The author was not at Vienna in an official capacity; but his birth, social gifts, and antecedents, and in particular his intimacy with the famous military and intellectual veteran, the Prince de Ligne, then a resident in the Austrian capital, gave him an "open sesame" which brought him into contact with the notabilities of the Con- gress. The style is brilliant, but the descriptions are too

often maelstroms of poetical words in which realistic fact almost disappears, and, as the new French editor of the book points out, many of its details must be taken cum grano,

especially in cases where La Garde's feelings of personal attachment prevented "his criticisms from departing from the laudatory gamut."

The Sanhedrim of 1814-15 is said to have counted seven hundred heads, first of which for brain - power must be reckoned that of Talleyrand. The ex-Bishop of Autun was the right man in the right place ; but for the intuition, discretion, craft, urbanity of manner, with which he played off his opponents against each other, Bourbon France would have been a mere outsider in the game. La Garde justly says that it was the persuasive tongue

of the survivor of the am-len regime which broke up Russia's intimate alliance with Austria and England, so as to make Alexander complain, not without iteration, "Talley-

rand enacts the part here of Louis XIV.'s Minister." With- out his energies as member of the Managing Committee of the Congress the assembly might have separated without result ; the author says, alluding to certain rumours touching France which reached his own ears, "I also heard

the word 'partition' mentioned, and the example of Poland was there to prove that a nation may be struck off the European family register." La Garde does not reveal Talleyrand's inner feelings on the occasion of the ex- piatory funeral rites performed in the Stephanskirche with every gorgeous accompaniment of military and musical pomp, in memorial celebration of the execution of Louis XVI. The young Frenchman was one of the privileged few who were admitted to Talleyrand's early toilette, and he describes in his felicitous style how, thanks to the brushings, ablutions, and adjustments performed by an array of coiffeurs, barbers, and valets, the lame and " slippered pantaloon" in muslin peignoir was metamorphosed into a well-set-up grand seigneur resplendent in gilded ministerial attire. Metternich, of course, whether as handsome, imposing, and seductive "society man "—"one of the most charming story- tellers of our epoch "—or as statesman of sagacious power, is always to the front. "In politics," writes La Garde, "he has been reproached with his subserviency to the Law of Immobility; certainly a lofty mind like his understood well enough that it is impossible for man to remain stationary, and that in our age to remain stationary would be tantamount to retro- gression." According, however, to recent estimates, Metter- nich's statesmanship was of the extreme opportunist type ; his merits will be easier to weigh when we see the end of the Dual Monarchy as edited now. The secrets of the inner con- clave of the European Areopagus seldom oozed out; of the doings and talk of the great men in their familiar moments

the gossips of the Graben had plenty to relate :—

" M. de Talleyrand gave a dinner-party, and at the dessert all the political questions were pretty well exhausted. When the cheese was on the table, the conversation drifted in the direction of that dainty. Lord Castlereagh was loud in praise of Stilton ; Aldini was equally loud in praise of the Stra.chino of Milan ; Zeltner naturally gave battle for his native Gruyare, and Baron de Feick, the Dutch Minister, could not say enough for the product of Limburg, of which Peter the Great was so fond as to dole himself a certain quantity measured with his compasses, lest he should take too much. Talleyrand's guests were as un- decidel as they are on the question of the throne of Naples, which, according to some, will be taken from Murat, while according to others, he'll be allowed to keep it. At that moment • Anecdotal Recollections of the Conran of Vienne. By the Comte A. de Is Garde-Chambonas. With introduction and Notes by the Comte Fleury. Tmasisted by the Author of "An Englishman in Paris." With Portraits. :randy:1z Chapman and liall. [15e. aet.1 a servant entered the room to inform the Ambassador of the arrival of a courier from France. What has he brought?' asked Talleyrand. Despatches from the Court, your Excellency, and Brie cheeses.' 'Send the despatches to the chancellerie, and bring in the cheeses at once.' The cheese was brought in.

Gentlemen,' said M. de Talleyrand, I abstained just now from breaking a lance in favour of a product of the French soil, but I leave you to judge for yourselves.' The cheese is handed round, tasted, and the question of its superiority is put to the vote, with the result I have told you: Brie is proclaimed to be the king of cheeses."

The Frenchman was no Anglophobe, but his portraiture of our representatives is not very alluring. Castlereagh's "glacial air" pervaded his entertainments, which, though sumptuous enough, were as serious and cold in their physiognomy as the host. Always preoccupied and anxious, he sought distraction in dancing, and was in the habit of offering "a diverting spectacle" by "lifting his long spindle-shanks" and" disport- ing himself in an Irish jig or a Scotch reel." Byron's " carotid- artery-cutting " friend was, however, the right man for dealing with Royalty. When one of the Emperors, losing his self-com- mand in a discussion, threw his glove on the table, our pleni- potentiary said: "Would your Majesty wish for war ? " Reply : "Perhaps, Monsieur I " Castlereagh's "reproof

valiant" was: "I was not aware that any war was to be under- taken without English guineas." Lord Stewart's vanity and conceit brought him the nickname of "the golden peacock." Having challenged some unruly fiacre-drivers to a boxing match, he was dangerously belaboured and braised all over by the irate Vienna Jehus. Once, taking advantage of a theatre crush, he was guilty of an act of "impudent familiarity" towards a damsel with sixteen quarterings. Thereupon the "young, handsome, and innocent girl quietly turned round and gave him a sound box on the ears, as a warning to leave innocence and beauty alone." Our countryman was, however, a grand entertainer, while his Hyde Park equipages and horses were of unsurpassed beauty; how, in those pre-railroad days, they were brought from the Thames to the Danube is a mystery. Prominent amongst the hundred thousand strangers who were drawn to Vienna from all parts of Eurone by the magnetism of the Congress was the naval hero whose defence of St. Jean &Acre drew from Napoleon the growl "This devil of a Sidney Smith has made me miss my fortune." Our Admiral laid before the great tribunal two amateur proposals of his own : (1) the dethronement of Napoleon's intrusive King of Sweden in favour of the deposed Sovereign of the legitimate Vasa line ; (2) the annihilation by European naval means of the authors of the African white-slave traffic, the piratical Barbary Powers. When the Congress politely elbowed out these Crusades, Sir Sidney started a white-slave redemption fund, to which contributions were invited. His amended programme included a picnic dinner and ball at the Augarten, and what with the receipts from the sale of tickets and the separate subscriptions of the Sovereigns, Ambassadors, and the other grandees who flocked to his successful gathering, our would-be Peter the Hermit netted a large sum for his philanthropic purpose.

The liistige Wien has always been famous for what a visitor to the Congress called "the happy-go-lucky" existence of its citizens. The glamour of the local daily life must have been veiled rather than exalted by the endless roll of carriages and runners, which upset the calm of the Prater and the Graben, by the interminable banquets, balls, masques, con- certs, sleighing parties, tournaments, and the rest of the

social saturnalia of the Congress. Unlike their descendants, the great Austrians of the time maintained relations with the financiers of the city, on whose entertainments the French author lavishes some of his favourite superlatives. Of match- less splendour was a fete given by the Czar in the palace of his representative, Prince Rasumowski, whose superb pictures carvings, statues, precious books, and other treasures gave

his rooms and galleries—so the poet thought—the appearance of a temple erected to Art. In the supper-room of this edifice of mixed Asiatic magnificence and European taste stood fifty tables loaded with cherries brought from St.

Petersburg at the cost of a silver rouble apiece, besides London strawberries, and other ram edibles and flowers from

all parts of Europe, the whole crowned by a pyramid of pine- apples, the growth of the Czar's hothouses at Moscow. At the Hofburg there were ,sixteen fetes in a single month, some of the Tokay brought up from the cellars being valued at nearly 215 a bottle, while the cost of an Imperial sleigh party was written at £30,000. To believe the Frenchman's arith- metic, the Emperor of Austria's carriage and forage bill was not small; he ordered "three hundred conveyances of an identical form to be built," which "were held day and night at the disposal of his guests." By this time Haydn had passed away from the protecting friendship of Prince Esterhazy, but Beethoven and the youthful Schubert might have been seen in the streets. La Garde tells how the Creation and certain symphonies of Haydn and Mozart were inflicted on the diplo- matic audiences present, and describes an orchestra consisting of a hundred pianos, the performers on which were conducted by Salieri,—a "matchless charivari," no doubt, displaying more skill and sound than good taste. Strange to say, the Frenchman does not mention Beethoven's special Treaty Concert, on which he expended some of the dregs of his genius; the Prince Rasumowski above mentioned was the person immortalised by the dedication of a set of the composer's sublime quartets. On the occasion of a banker's ball the author speaks of "a band such as at that time only 'Vienna could produce." We take leave to add the comment that in military music, brass and string, as in bread, coffee, beer, cutlets, dancing, and refined intimacy of manner, the city of the Danube still reigns supreme. Of the gowns and doings of great Ladies and " Contesse" (the Vienna name for high-born frauleins) the author has plenty to say, but for want of definite personal characterisation some of his grander; dames are "clothes-horses," rather than lifelike Austrian or cosmopolitan types. In the juvenile department we see the little King of Rome at Schonbrunn, where Isabey, who had come to Vienna in rivalry of Terburg's visit to Miinster (vide our National Gallery), was painting the child's portrait. When the Napoleonidae were in question La Garde was always on the cringe, and his account of the small boy's talk and behaviour, his way of handling his toy soldiers, and his Paris antecedents assumes such startling precocity in a child hardly four years of age that the incident may be dis- missed as semi-fabulous. Marie Louise is in the background: she seems to have been consoling herself in the society of Count Neipperg for the loss of her French throne. The translator is a first-rate hand, who has not unlearned his "native English." The new French editor is a careless personage. He says that the Souvenirs were first published in 1820. Their author, who must have known best, distinctly speaks of himself as writing them twenty-five years after the Congress epoch,- i.e., in 1840 (see p. 410 and other references). He had ample time for beautifying his somewhat unreliable record of the table-talk and "magic scenes" of 1814-15, and of his memories of earlier times.