The name is absent

The Congress of Vienna         55

not invited, but, not standing on any ceremony, was doubtless
planning even then to be on time to break up the party.

All that summer which lay between the preliminary ar-
rangements by which eight powers signed the peace of Paris
and the great meeting of the diplomats at Vienna was a time
full of high hopes and expectations among the liberals of
Europe. By some wonderful magic, arrangements were to
be made which would forever reconcile the two principles of
liberty and order. From the standpoint of to-day we can
readily see what were the real consequences of the Napo-
leonic era in Europe. These, beyond any question, are the
reestablishment of the British empire, whose foundations
had been severely shaken in the American war; the awaken-
ing of the spirit of nationality, especially in Germany under
the burning words of Fichte and the great leadership of
Stein; and the spread of the French notions of constitutional
liberty and equality. Russia, Germany, Italy, and France
could never be again what they had been before. But the
men who went to Vienna were too close to these results to
see them in their full significance, and the event showed that
much of what the liberals desired was to be postponed to
other days, and that they must win their goal by their own
efforts. To Metternich it seemed that the world wanted
peace and not liberty. The past, and not the future, became
the guide of the deliberations, and Chateaubriand, with his
shallow notions, was their prophet. The same love for an
idealized past, a past full of gallant knights and gentle
ladies dealing kindly with an essentially inferior population,
which produced such remarkable effects in religion and in
literature, was also the sentimental notion which replaced
Louis XVIII on his throne and which led the authors of the
restoration to see, or rather to pretend to see, in the indolent,

<<   14   15   16   17   18   19   20   >>

More intriguing information