THE EMPEROR JOSEPH.

A GREAT contrast in every respect to Gustavus III. was presented by another Prince who flourished in the same age, Joseph II. In almost all qualities, both of the understanding and the heart, he differed widely from his contemporary of the North. With abilities less shining though more solid, and which he had cultivated more diligently; with far more information acquired somewhat after the laborious German fashion; with so little love for trick or value for his own address, that he rather plumed himself on being a stranger to those arts, and on being defective in the ordinary provision of cunning which the deceitful atmosphere of courts renders almost necessary as a protection against circumvention; with ambition to excel but not confined to love of military glory; with no particular wish to exalt his own authority, nor any indisposition to acquire fame by extending the happiness of his people—although presenting to the vulgar gaze a less striking object than Gustavus, he was in all important particulars a far more considerable person, and wanted but little from nature, though certainly much from fortune, to have left behind him a great and lasting reputation. That which he did want was, however, sufficient to destroy all chance of realising an eminent station among the lights of the world: for his judgment was defective; he was more restless than persevering; and though not

at all wanting in powers of labour, yet he often thought of royal roads to his object, and leaving those steep and circuitous routes which nature has formed along the ascents, would fall into what has been termed by Lord Bacon, the paradox of power-desiring to attain the end without submitting to use the means. Success in such circumstances was hopeless; and accident contributed largely to multiply and exaggerate his failures, insomuch that the unhappy monarch on his death-bed exclaimed in the anguish of his spirit, that his epitaph should be" Here lies Joseph, who was unsuccessful in all his undertakings." Men looking to the event, rated him very far below his real value, and gave him credit for none of the abilities and few of the virtues which he really possessed. Nothing can be more unjust, more foolish in itself or more mischievous in its consequences, than the almost universal determination of the world to reckon nothing in a prince of any value but brilliant talents, and to account worth of little avail in that station in which it is of the most incalculable importance. Nay, let a royal life be ever so much disfigured with crime, if it have nothing mean, that is, if its vices be all on a great scale, and especially if it be covered with military successes, little of the reprobation due to its demerits will be expressed, as if the greatest of public enormities, the excesses of ambition, effected a composition for the worst private faults. Even our James I. is the object of contempt not so much for the vile life he led as for his want of spirit and deficiency in warlike accomplishments; and, if the only one of his failings which was beneficial to his subjects had not existed in his character, his name would have

descended to us with general respect among the Harries and the Edwards of an earlier age.

It was in some degree unfortunate for the fame of Joseph that he came after so able and so celebrated a personage as his mother, Maria Theresa. But this circumstance also proved injurious to his education; for the Empress Queen was resolved that her son, even when clothed by the Election of the Germanic Diet with the Imperial title, should exercise none of its prerogatives during her life; and long after he had arrived at man's estate, he was held in a kind of tutelage by that bold and politic Princess. Having therefore finished his studies, and perceiving that at home he was destined to remain a mere cipher while she ruled, he went abroad, and travelled into those dominions in Italy nominally his own, but where he had no more concern with the government than the meanest of his subjects; and from thence he visited the rest of the Italian states. An eager, but an indiscriminate thirst of knowledge distinguished him wherever he went ; there was no subject which he would not master, no kind of information which he would not amass; nor were any details too minute for him to collect. Nothing can be more praiseworthy than a sovereign thus acquainting himself thoroughly with the concerns of the people over whom he is called to rule; and the undistinguishing ardour of his studies can lead to little other harm than the losing time, or preventing the acquisition of important matters by distracting the attention to trifles. But his activity was as indiscriminate as his inquiries, and he both did some harm and exposed himself to much ridicule by the conduct which it prompted.

He must needs visit the convents, and inspect the works of the nuns; nor rest satisfied until he imposed on those whose needle moved less quickly than suited his notions of female industry, the task of making shirts for the soldiery. So his ambition was equally undistinguishing and unreflecting; nor did he consider that the things which it led him to imitate might well be void of all merit in him, though highly important in those whose example he was following to the letter regardless of the spirit. Thus, because the Emperor of China encourages agriculture by driving, at some solemn festival, a plough with the hand that holds at other times. the celestial sceptre, the Emperor of Germany must needs plough a ridge in the Milanese, where of course a monument was erected to perpetuate this act of princely folly.

But of all his admirations, that which he entertained for the great enemy of his house, his mother, and his crown, was the most preposterous. During the Sevenyears' war, which threatened the existence of all three, he would fain have served a campaign under Frederick II.; and although he might probably have had the decency to station himself on the northern frontier where Russia was the enemy, yet no one can wonder at the Empress Queen prohibiting her son from taking the recreation of high treason to amuse his leisure hours, and occupying his youth and exposing his person in shaking the throne which he was one day to fill. At length, however, the day arrived which he had so long eagerly panted for, when he was to become personally acquainted with the idol of his devotion. His inflexible parent had, in 1766, prevented them from meeting at

Torgau; but three years after they had an interview of some days at Neiss in Silesia, the important province which Frederick had wrested from the Austrian crown. The veteran monarch has well conveyed an idea of his admirer in one of his historical works, which indeed contains very few sketches of equal merit :-" Il affectoit une franchise qui lui sembloit naturelle; son caractere aimable marquoit de la gaieté jointé á la vivacite; mais avec le désir d'apprendre, il n'avoit pas la patience de s'instruire." And certainly this impatience of the means, proportioned to an eagerness for the end, was the distinguishing feature of his whole character and conduct through life, from the most important to the most trivial of his various pursuits.

Although Frederick had a perfect right to look down upon Joseph in this view as well as in many others, and although there can be no sort of comparison between the two men in general, yet is it equally certain that in one most important particular a close resemblance may be traced between them, and the same defect may be found marring the projects of both. Their internal administration was marked with the same intermeddling and controlling spirit, than which a more mischievous character cannot belong to any system of rule. It is indeed an error into which all sovereigns and all ministers are very apt to fall, when they avoid the opposite, perhaps safer, extreme of indifference to their duties. Nor was he the more likely to steer a middle course, whose power had no limits; whose ideas of government were taken from the mechanical discipline of an army; and whose abilities so far exceeded the ordinary lot of royal understandings, that he seemed to have some