because the case of the Siberian animals preserved | can be little doubt that the beds were accumulated with their flesh in the ice offers the same apparent difficulty with the glaciers; namely, the union in the same hemisphere of a climate in some senses severe, with one allowing of the life of those forms which at present, although abounding without the tropics, do not approach the frozen zones. The perfect preservation of the Siberian animals perhaps presented, till within a few years, one of the most difficult problems which geology ever attempted to solve. On the one hand it was granted that the carcasses had not been drifted from any great distance by any tumultuous deluge, and on the other it was assumed as certain that, when the animals lived, the climate must have been so totally different, that the presence of ice in the vicinity, was as incredible as would be the freezing of the Ganges. Mr. Lyell, in his " Principles of Geology," has thrown the greatest light on this subject, by indicating the northerly course of the existing rivers, with the probability that they formerly car. ried carcasses in the same direction; by showing (from Humboldt) how far the inhabitants of the hottest countries sometimes wander; by insisting on the caution necessary in judging of habits between animals of the same genus, when the species are not identical; and especially by bringing forward in the clearest manner the probable change from an insular to an extreme climate, as the consequence of the elevation of the land, of which proofs have lately been brought to light. either in a shallow sea, or in an estuary. From the description given in Beechey's voyage of Eschscholtz Bay, the same remark is applicable to the north-west coast of America: the formation there appears identical with the common littoral deposits recently elevated, which I have seen on the shores of the southern part of the same continent. It seems also well established, that the Siberian remains are only exposed where the rivers intersect the plain. With this faet, and the proofs of recent elevation, the whole case appears to be precisely similar to that of the Pampas: namely, that the carcasses were formerly floated into the sea, and the remains covered up in the deposits which were then accumulating. These beds have since been elevated; and as the rivers excavate their channels the entombed skeletons are exposed. 'Here, then, is the difficulty: how were the carthink it has been sufficiently noticed, that the preservacasses preserved at the bottom of the sea? I do not tion of the animal with its flesh was an occasional event, and not directly consequent on its position ling as showing that the bones of the elephant, buffalo, far northward. Cuvier refers to the voyage of Biland rhinoceros are nowhere so abundant as on the islands between the mouths of the Lena and Indigirska. It is even said that, excepting some hills of rock, the whole is composed of sand, ice, and bones. The islands lie to the northward of the place where Adams found the mammoth with its flesh preserved, and even ten degrees north of the Wiljui, where the In the former part of this volume, I have endeav- rhinoceros was discovered in a like condition: In our ed to prove, that, as far as regards the quantity of the case of the bones we may suppose that the carfood, there is no difficulty in supposing that these casses were drifted into a deeper sea, and, there relarge quadrupeds inhabited sterile regions, producing maining at the bottom, the flesh decomposed. But but a scanty vegetation...... I suppose no reason in the second and more extraordinary case, where can be assigned why, during a former epoch, when putrefaction seems to have been arrested, the body the pachydermata abounded over the greater part of the world, some species should not have been fitted probably was soon covered up by deposits which were then accumulating. It may be asked, whether for the northern regions, precisely as now happens the mud a few feet deep, at the bottom of a shallow with deer and several other animals. If then, we sea which is annually frozen, has a temperature higher believe that the climate of Siberia, anteriorly to the than 32°? It must be remembered how intense a physical changes above alluded to, had some resemblance with that of the southern hemisphere at the that the mud at some depth below the surface would degree of cold is required to freeze salt water; and present day-a circumstance which harmonizes well have a low mean temperature, precisely in the same with other facts, as I think has been shown by the manner as the subsoil on the land is frozen in counimaginary case, when we transported existing phe- tries which enjoy a short but hot summer. If this be nomena from one to the other hemisphere-the fol- possible, the entombment of these extinct quadrupeds lowing conclusions may be deduced as probable :is rendered very simple; and with regard to the conFirst, that the degree of cold formerly was not ex-ditions of their former existence, the principal difficessive; secondly, that snow did not for a long time culties have, I think, already been removed.'-vol. together cover the ground (such not being the case iii. pp. 293–298. at the extreme parts 55°-56° of South America); thirdly, that the vegetation partook of a more tropical character than it now does in the same latitudes; and lastly, that at but a short distance to the northward of the country thus circumstanced (even not so far as where Pallas found the entire rhinoceros), the soil might be perpetually congealed; so that if the carcass of any animal should once be buried a few feet beneath the surface, it would be preserved for centuries. Both Humboldt and Lyell have remarked, that, at the present day, the bodies of any animals, wandering beyond the line of perpetual congelation, which extends as far south as 620, if once embedded by any accident a few feet beneath the surface, would be preserved for an indefinite length of time: the same would happen with carcasses drifted by the rivers; and by such means the extinct mammalia may have been entombed. There is only one small step wanting, as it appears to me, and the whole problem would be solved with a degree of simplicity very striking, compared with the several theories first invented. From the account given by Mr. Lyell of the Siberian plains, with their innumerable fossil bones, the relics of many successive generations, there The whole of the chapter (xvi.) on volcanic phenomena, and the great earthquake at Concepcion, is admirably writ ten. It brings absolutely before us the frightfully gigantic powers of subterranean agency. We have reason to believe that Mr. Darwin means to justify what he has said upon this perilous subject in the forthcoming part of the Geological Transactions. One word as to the extent of the operations, and the comfortable position of the inhabitants : "The extent of country throughout which the subterranean forces were thus unequivocally displayed, measures 700 by 400 geographical miles. From several considerations, which I have not space here to enter on, and especially from the intermediate points whence liquefied matter was ejected, we can scarcely avoid the conclusion, however fearful it may be, that a vast lake of melted matter, of an area nearly doubling in extent that of the Black Sea, is spread out beneath a mere crust of solid land.'-vol. iii. p. 380. A pleasant locality this for a building speculation! three were taken alive. They turned out to be messengers or ambassadors from a large body of Indians, united in the common cause of defence, near the Cordillera. The tribe to which they had been sent was on the point of holding a grand council; the feast of mare's flesh was ready, and the dance pre pared in the morning the ambassadors were to have returned to the Cordillera. They were remarkably thirty years of age. The three survivors of course fine men, very fair, above six feet high, and all under possessed very valuable information; and to extort this they were placed in a line. The two first being and were one after the other shot. The third also questioned, answered, "No se" (I do not know.) said, "No se;" adding, "Fire, I am a man, and can die!" Not one syllable would they breathe to injure the united cause of their country!-pp. 120, 121. But it is not to the scientific alone that Mr. Darwin's volume will prove highly interesting. The general reader will find in it a fund of amusement and instruction. Mr. Darwin is a first-rate landscape-painter with the pen. Even the dreariest solitudes are made to teem with interest. Nor less striking are his accounts of the state of society in South America, espe- We must not be tempted farther :-here cially those which relate to the murderous hatred mutually felt and exercised towards each other by the aborigines and those whom they justly consider usurp ers, but who look upon them more as wild beasts than fellow-men. An intelligent Spaniard gave him the following account of the last engagement at which he was present. It is a sickening example of 'man's inhumanity to man :' Some Indians, who had been taken prisoners, gave information of a tribe living north of the Colorado. Two hundred soldiers were sent; and they first discovered the Indians by a cloud of dust from their horses' feet, as they chanced to be travelling. The country was mountainous and wild, and it must have been far in the interior, for the Cordillera was in sight. The Indians, men, women, and children, were about one hundred and ten in number, and we close an imperfect notice of one of the most interesting narratives of voyaging that it has fallen to our lot to take up, and which must always occupy a distinguished space in the history of scientific navigation. ART. VIII-1. Austria and the Austrians. 2. Hungary and Transylvania, with Re- 3. 4. 5. 1839. Germany, Bohemia, and Hungary, visited in 1837. By the Rev. G. R. Gleig, A.M., Chaplain to the Royal Hospital, Chelsea. In 3 vols. London. 1839. Vienna and the Austrians, with some Account of a Journey through Swabia, Bavaria, the Tyrol, and the Salzbourg. By Frances Trollope. In 2 vols. London. 1838. they were nearly all taken or killed, for the soldiers sabre every man. The Indians are now so terrified, that they offer no resistance in a body, but each flies, neglecting even his wife and children; but when overtaken, like wild animals, they fight against any number to the last moment. One dying Indian seized with his teeth the thumb of his adversary, and allowed his own eyes to be forced out, sooner than relinquish his hold. Another, who was wounded, feigned death, keeping a knife ready to strike one more fatal blow. My informer said, when he was pursuing an Indian, the man cried out for mercy, at the same time that he was covertly loosing the bolas from his waist, meaning to whirl it round his head, and so strike his pursuer. "I however struck him with my sabre to the ground, and then got off my WE start on our present expedition into horse, and cut his throat with my knife." This is a dark picture; but how much more shocking is the Austria with a company as varied, though unquestionable fact, that all the women who appear not quite so numerous, as that which set above twenty years old are massacred in cold blood. forth with Chaucer on his memorable pilWhen I exclaimed that this appeared rather inhuman, grimage to Canterbury. We have, first, a regular London book-maker, who fills a account of Mad. B. Constant's Parisian chapter on Austrian aristocracy with an soirée, and illustrates the Vienna stage by sixteen pages about Schiller's Mary Stuart ;-secondly, a gentleman in the transition state between an English squire and an Hungarian Freyherr-exhibiting spirit, cleverness, and a dash of chivalry, based on the solid foundation of information and In the battle four men ran away together. They good sense ;-thirdly, a grave F.R.S., were pursued, and one was killed, but the other loaded with foreign statistics enough to he answered, " Why, what can be done? They breed so!"-pp. 119, 120. Who,' exclaims our author, would believe in this age, in a civilized country, that such atrocities were committed?' But they are committed, and upon a race who are not without the highest manly qualities. The stern virtue of an ancient Roman could not have surpassed the heroism here recorded : make Dr. Bowring jealons, and foreign lordships without end. It is enough that political information that might well make the present emperor rules over more than Lord Palmerston ashamed;-fourthly, a 35,000,000 of subjects of all degrees of cispecimen of the true church militant, the divine engrafted on the soldier, combining the love of adventure inspired by his former profession with the tone of feeling suggested by his last;—and fifthly, an authoress of singular acuteness and originality, who boasts that the Princess Metternich has assigned her portrait a place in an album hitherto devoted exclusively to males. vilisation and all modes of faith;-enough -perhaps more than enough, for those who cannot form a notion of national happiness without sundry facilities for disaffection which they are pleased to term liberty-that his power is based, not on force, but affection-not on habit or bigotry, but on an enlightened sense of benefits conferred; and that the people are prosperous and contented in exact We need hardly add that so heteroge- proportion as they are placed by situa neous a company is more amusing than tion or circumstances under the direct harmonious; that they often disagree with influence of his authority; in other one another and occasionally with them- words, that the practical advantages of selves; but far from feeling embarrassed the present system of government are in or disconcerted by their differences, we an inverse ratio to its checks. Thus, the do not despair of turning these to good hereditary dominions of the emperor, account. If in a multitude of councillors where he is all-powerful, are the most there is safety, in a multitude of witnesses thriving; Bohemia, Moravia, and Silesia, there is truth-that is, for those who where there is still a privileged class with know how to look for it; and by collating some vestige of independence, only rank the summaries or results of one with the details of another, observations with adventures, and theories with facts, we shall try to do for Austria, the autocrat of the south of Germany, what we not long since attempted as to Prussia,* the head of the northern portion of the confederacy-describe the real nature of her constitution, estimate the actual amount of her resources, analyse the true spirit of her society, and vindicate her government from the broad reproach of despotism. Archdeacon Coxe, in the preface to his 'Memoirs of the House of Austria,' compares that House to the Danube of its native mountains, 'at first an inconsiderable rill, obscurely wandering amidst rocks aad precipices, then swelling its volume by the accumulation of tributary streams, carrying plenty and fertility to numerous nations, and finally pouring its mighty waters by a hundred mouths into the Euxine Sea. The peculiar policy to which it is principally indebted for its aggrandisement is indicated in the well-known lines 'Bella gerant alii: tu, felix Austria, nube; Nam quæ Mars aliis, dat tibi regna Venus.' But it is beside our purpose to state by what alliances, conquests, or treaties the descendants of Rhodolph of Hapsburg contrived to mount the throne of the Cæsars, and became possessed of two ancient independent kingdoms, besides archduchies, principalities, countships, and * Quarterly Review, No. CXVI. as second best; whilst Hungary and Transylvania, with their constituent bodies, their county meetings and their turbulent barons, are about as far advanced in civilisation as the English under the Plantagenets. This is the obvious and almost necessary result of a paternal government; and we quite agree with Mr. Turnbull that the Austrian is on the whole a paternal gov ernment, in the truest acceptation of the term. Joseph II.-that most mischievous and dangerous of characters, a liberal, philosophical sovereign-had ways of his own for making his subjects happy, and was full as much influenced by vanity as philanthropy in the sweeping innovations he endeavoured to force upon them. But his nephew, Francis, acted on a widely different principle: in all he said or did there was a perfect abnegation of self; equally sagacious and well-meaning, he consulted the tastes, habits, and even prejudices of his poople, as well as their real wants; and preferred the homely affection inspired by his quiet unassuming virtues, to the dazzling glories of the conqueror, or the deceitful halo a correspondence with foreign jurists or philosophers, a Vol taire or a Bentham, might have flung around his name.* His first step, before The termination of Voltaire's correspondence On the with Frederic the Great is well known. Emperor of Russia's refusing to follow Jeremy Bentham's advice implicitly, the philosopher indig nantly returned the portrait and ring which had accompanied the imperial application for a code. adopting any scheme of consequence, | tried galleries, he was followed by as many was to ascertain how far the existing state as could squeeze in. Deeply touched, he of feeling would be disturbed; and, not exclaimed to the officer at his side, "This content with the reports of agents, he is affection-it may be that I have never took every occasion of bringing himself done good to any of them.' into personal contact with individuals of every class. Extremes meet. There is an amusing account in Major Downing's Letters of the labours imposed on the President of the United States during his progresses. After shaking hands for five or six hours successively, he is obliged to sit down on a sofa and suffer his hand to be put through the required exercise by his secretary. The Emperor Francis must have undergone little less on his weekly reception-days, when everybody, without distinction of rank, sex, or age, was privileged to enter; and he might be seen mingling amongst them with the inquiry, 'Well, my children, what is there I can do for you?'-to which, as Mrs. Trollope assures us on the Princess Metternich's authority, the frequent answer was, 'We are not come to ask for anything, only to have the pleasure of looking at you.' Nor must it be supposed that this personal feeling was confined to the inhabitants of the capital. More than one Jeanie Deans has wandered up from the dells of the Tyrol, or the remotest confines of Bohemia, to tell her tale of sorrow to Franz ; and we believe there is not a corner of his dominions, out of Italy, where they do not still kindle at the bare mention of his name. He had one failing, however: the new-fangled French doctrines of the day had given him such a horror of insubordination, that the bare semblance or suspicion of it was sufficient to effect an entire change in his disposition. Let the meanest peasant complain of the highest noble, and he was sure of a patient hearing; but woe to the subaltern, civil or military, who ventured to bring a charge against his superior in command. The charge would be investigated, the wrongdoer punished or displaced; but the subaltern's chances of preferment were at an end. We need hardly add, that his Italian subjects were the objects of his marked After a dangerous illness, which had distrust. It may be all very well,' he thrown the whole empire into dismay, he would reply to those who ventured to rewas taking an airing in a close carriage, monstrate with him against the severity when he was surrounded by a crowd exercised towards Pellico and other prisshouting their congratulations on his re- oners of state, 'to say that these are highappearance and, with uplifted hands, call- spirited, gallant men, acting from a sense ing down blessings on his head. For- of duty. Reflect on the mass of misery getting the prescribed caution, he let caused by a single insurrection, and then down the glass to thank them; but instead say whether such attempts as theirs can of being impressed with the condescen- be too rigidly suppressed.' sion, the populace seemed to think only On one occasion Prince Metternich reof the imprudence of the act. 'No, no-quested leave to allow a few books to a oh! he will catch cold, he will catch cold,' was the cry, and those who were nearest the carriage instantly laid violent hands on the window and forced it Two incidents of his life, also related by the Princess, illustrate in the strongest light the enthusiastic affection he inspired. up. state prisoner of rank, and offered to select some from his own library for the purpose, but the request was peremptorily refused. A nearly similar manifestation, render- We dwell particularly on these traits, ed still more striking by the time, occur- because for years, perhaps for centuries, red on his return from the fatal campaign Francis will be regarded as the beau ideal of 1809, when the resources of the empire of an emperor: his successors will try to had been taxed to the uttermost, and her tread in his footsteps, and the mention of debest blood expended at his bidding, but in spotic rule will be associated in the minds vain. He entered Vienna in a plain car- of the people with the blessings his govriage, with a single attendant, hoping to ernment conferred upon them. What is escape attention, but he was recognised still more important, almost the whole exat the turning of a corner by an apple- isting system of internal administration woman, and the news spread like wildfire was established by him, and is marked through the town. In a few moments the throughout by the peculiar features of his horses were taken out and he was drag-policy. An outline of this system forms ged in triumph to the palace, into which, an essential part of the task we have unup marble staircases and through tapes- dertaken; and, fortunately, the informa tion supplied by Mr. Turnbull regarding the main topics is complete. But before proceeding farther, it may be as well to specify the principal divisions of the empire, and the classes of which the population is composed. nobled a great many merchants and bankers, not a few amongst them being Jews, In fact, almost any man who chooses to pay the price may have a patent of nobility ;* which may serve to account in some measure for the exclusive spirit There are, first, the German States, which we shall find in full force in the namely, Upper and Lower Austria, Styria, capital when we come to its society. Carniola, Carinthia, the Tyrol, the Istria The condition of the clergy is next to Littoral (the country round Trieste), Mo- be considered, and the Austrian church ravia, Silesia, Bohemia, Gallicia, and Dal-establishment is well worth studying, if matia, containing altogether about fifteen only for the sake of the curious anomalies millions of inhabitants; secondly, the presented by it. The pope has always Italian states, containing about four mil- been the acknowledged head, but down lions and a half; thirdly, Hungary and to a very recent period his authority Transylvania, with a population, including seemed almost extinct; and although the 'the military frontier,' of between four- Vatican is at this moment straining every teen and fifteen millions. nerve to regain its old power here as elseThe German states are under the direct where-and in some isolated cases, such control of the Imperial Chancery at Vien- as that of the Zillerdalers, the priesthood na, and are all governed by one and the have been able to produce scandalous same code of laws, civil and criminal. violations or evasions of the law-we The Italian states, which are hardly yet hope the Imperial government will suc consolidated with the rest, are governed cessfully resist this new spirit of encroachby a viceroy, and have a jurisprudence of ment. According to the system which, their own. Hungary is a totally distinct in spite of a few audacious outrages, we kingdom, with an independent constitu- do not believe to be abrogated, Austria is tion; and Transylvania, except that it is tolerant. Every sort of employment or but a principality, stands on pretty nearly the same footing as Hungary. - In Austria, as in most other countries of Europe, the rights of the feudal proprietors long presented a fatal barrier to improvements of every sort, whether in the cultivation of the soil, the diffusion of commerce, the administration of justice, The Archduke John, the actual Palaor the condition of the peasantry. The tine of Hungary, has had three wives; the emperors gradually contrived to abolish first was a member of the Greek church, or mitigate the most injurious of these the second of the Calvinistic communion, rights within their hereditary dominions, the third of the Lutheran. This may and in some of the rest in which they remind the reader of the boast of a well could venture to carry things with a high known literary character of the last cenhand; but the nobles were too strong for tury: "I am not a man of prejudices: I them in Bohemia and Moravia, until 1773, have had four wives: two catholics, a when a general rising of the peasantry jewess, and a methodist: two were sistook place, and the lords were compelled ters, and my second was living when I to give way to the combined influence of married my fourth.' The Archduke the popular movement and the crown. Charles was married to a Lutheran: when In Hungary and Transylvania (which, she died, the Emperor gave orders for before concluding, we must make the the funeral rites to be performed in St. subject of a brief episode), the most op- Stephen's. The Archbishop of Vienna, at pressive of the feudal rights and restric- the request of the Nuncio, remonstrated tions exist still; but throughout the rest against the incongruity: Tell the Nunof the empire, the only prerogative of cio,' said the Emperor, 'that this is no afvalue retained by the nobles (and the fair of his: the Archduchess must be buItalian nobles have not even this) is ex- ried as I have directed.' She was so buemption from military conscription and from certain civil offices in the provinces. Even the prestige of rank has been a good deal broken of late, probably with malice prepense, by the emperor, who has en. occupation, the law, the army, the civil service, are, by law, open to all persons without reference to creed; and the imperial family have shown, it must be allowed, by their own conduct that they feel no disposition to abet the pretensions of the papacy. 6 *Mr. Paget says that the price of the title of Baron is 2000, and that of Count 50007., but that Baron Stultz was compelled to pay 10,000l., which strikes us to be exceedingly unjust. According to the old adage, he ought to have paid nine times less |