which Charles Lever might have envied, and can invent one with the ease of an ancient mariner. His exquisite sense of the ridiculous, his exuberant fancy and ready wit, are as decidedly Irish as his name ; and the felicity with which he sums up a man's foibles in a single nickname would have endeared him to the heart of Sir Key. Unfortunately his conceits, stories, and bons mots are not suited for English consumption; certainly not for that of contemporary Englishmen. Wycherley might have put some of them in the mouth of Dapperwit or Horner, but even Wycherley would have found it needful to exercise some discretion in the selection. His remarkable dramatic talent, had it been cultivated in time, might have obtained for its possessor a niche in the temple of Melpomene. His command over his features, which he is able to distort into the semblance of an enemy or a friend, would make the fortune of a professional comedian; and some of his feats of mimicry enable one to realise the almost incredible achievements related of Garrick; while his control over his feelings is so perfect that he could summon a smile to his lips on the rack, or, like Scarron, crack a last joke on his death-bed. His voice is as docile to his will as his facial muscles, and he can imitate beasts, birds, and bawling babies to perfection, while causing their moving forms to appear in shadowy outline upon the wall. These varied gifts and accomplishments are not usually reckoned among the indispensable qualifications of a contemporary English statesman; but they cannot be said to constitute useless ballast in Austria, where they have frequently enabled their possessor to score a solid triumph denied to his saturnine opponents, who consider him to be, like Mr. Podsnap, a "too, too smiling man." It is scarcely to be wondered at, therefore, that the members of the German Liberal Ministry (the so-called "Citizen Cabinet ") should have themselves requested the Emperor to appoint Count Taaffe to be their President, or that the monarch, while turning his back upon his Ministers, Herbst and Giskra, in order to mark his condemnation of the bungling way in which the insurrection in Dalmatia had been put down during his absence abroad, should have shown himself unusually affable to their colleague, Count Taaffe, who, as Minister of the Land Defences, was technically responsible for the imputed mismanagement. But no more striking proof of his extraordinary powers of suasion and his gift of raising vague hopes could possibly be instanced than the smile of satisfaction with which certain of his political opponents have left the precincts of Parliament, after having

listened to his disparaging remarks about them and their ways, firmly convinced that his speech was a mere sop to Cerberus, all the more necessary that he cordially sympathised with them in his heart.

His own countrymen are hopelessly divided in their estimates of Count Taaffe and his work. Many of the politicians who see him. only in Parliament, where, like Mrs. Fezziwig, he is always wreathed

in smiles, take him for a Hiberno-Austrian Ogniben, so bland, selfpossessed, and serene does he appear even in the face of difficulties that would drive any other statesman to desperation. Those who know him only from portraits and paintings fancy him to be an insufferable Sir Lucius O'Trigger, whose arms are mere bluster and bravado. Strangers who have noted for the first time the spare form, the marvellously black hair, the elastic step, and the mercurial gait of the Prime Minister as he enters the House, the agility with which, when an opponent rises to speak, he springs upon his table letting his feet dangle over his chair, and the smile in which bitterness is sufficiently blended with pity to harmonise with pose and figure, can scarcely dispel the illusion that they are in the presence of a perfect embodiment of one of the chief characters of Goethe's principal drama.

No better statesman could have been chosen to inaugurate a policy of conciliation; and no wiser policy could have suggested itself to a Government, whose peoples are so bitterly prejudiced against each other that trial by jury for political offences is found to be an impossibility. Count Taaffe possessed numerous points of contact with all parties, and had definitively broken with none. As a pronounced Catholic, he was popular with the Clericals; as a Minister who had voted against the Concordat, he was respected by the Liberals; he had worked together with the German party in the "Citizen Cabinet"; had won the heart of Bohemians, Croatians, and Poles by his outspoken advocacy of a federalistic policy, and even the anti-Semites, naturally disposed to barbour a grudge against the statesman whose ubiquitous Mentor and alter ego-M. Blumenstock-is a Jew, fancied that they could rely upon his sympathy and hope for his support.

But he himself regarded, as a far more solid qualification for the rôle of peacemaker, his conception of what government in Austria should be. Above all things it should discard all theories. Political principles Count Taaffe condemns as a weakness; and his friends and enemies are at one in declaring him free from any stain which the possession of them might be supposed to imply. The nationalities of Austria, although, or because, mostly Christians, cordially dislike each other, and can only be induced to cultivate affection for a tertium quid, who is the Emperor; the only union' possible being, therefore, one of the head, not of the heart, he holds that the power of the head should be strengthened till it becomes practically absolute. As the weakest element of the population never wholly loses the power to inflict serious injury to the State-the richest province of Holland was once ruined by a rat which burrowed a hole in a dyke and let in the sea—no nationality or class should ever be heavily trodden upon or forced to turn. Lastly, Austria, never having been one and indivisible, cannot be governed as if it were an organic whole; consequently, how imperative soever the need for unity, no system of

government can hold out long which is based upon the negation of federalistic principles.

The tactics which the new Minister employed, in order to obtain a fair trial for these maxims, were well adapted to time, people, and circumstances. Count Taaffe is a clever, practical psychologist of the most pessimistic type, who takes an incredibly low view of human virtue, which he is continually tempting into crooked ways, and he seldom discovers any grounds to question the correctness of his theory, or doubt the infallibility of his rules. His memory is a storehouse of the weaknesses, hypocrisies, and delusions of other men; his intellect a repository of cunning little devices for setting them in motion. But he never poses as a censor of morals; only as an appraiser of motives. He affects, and probably feels, surprise at nothing. He could listen calmly, nay, with seeming benevolence, to the reasoning of the President of a Taaffe Assassination Committee, and find some plausible pretext for paying him a compliment or making him a concession. One day a mass meeting of over ten thousand workmen assembled in the streets of Vienna to discuss politics and propagate Socialism. As this was the day fixed for the opening of Parliament, the meeting was ipso facto illegal; but Count Taaffe, although in possession of information for a fortnight before, had taken no preventive measures. The orators were dangerously outspoken, the crowd excited aud restive, and shouts were heard that the Prime Minister should be interviewed and called to task. Count Taaffe agreed to receive a deputation of three, to whom he accorded a most gracious reception, asking them to confide to him their troubles and formulate their wishes. They could not, they replied, be satisfied with less than complete freedom for Austrians to meet, speak, and publish what they think, the introduction of universal suffrage, the disbandment of the standing army, and immediate pledges that their demands would be complied with. Count Taaffe listened attentively to the utterances of the reformers, nodded his head knowingly at the proper places, came to the help of the speaker occasionally with a suitable expression, and in reply told them that they had formulated their views with admirable clearness and coherency, and as the realisation of their scheme entailed very comprehensive changes which could not be carried out by him alone, he would not lose a moment in laying the matter before the Council of Ministers. The Socialists went away delighted. What took place, however, on the following day, was not calculated to feed their hopes or tempt them to repeat their tactics in future.

The manner in which he receives disagreeable deputations affords one of the most typical illustrations of his method. The spokesman, painfully conscious of the seriousness of the situation, appears at the head of the delegates, who march solemnly, silently, and resolutely into the presence, determined to compel the Government to herd or

break, Count Taaffe receives them with the usual beaming smile,
strokes one affectionately on the shoulder, takes another familiarly by
the arm, offers them all cigarettes and cigars, volunteers a witty re-
mark on the latest topic of the day, tells some piquant anecdote in
connection with it, then seizes upon an observation made by one of
the delegates to start a fresh subject, which he illustrates with another
strongly flavoured story, and so keeps up a running fire of small talk
till the worthy deputation is laughed out of its resolution, as Mun-
chausen's bear was tickled out of the forest.
His suasive powers,

when brought to bear upon a limited circle of hearers, are of the
miraculous kind attributed by Irishmen to Cormack McCarthy, the
Lord of the Blarney Stone. As a public speaker, he is one of
the most dismal failures that ever addressed an audience. His tongue
is generally a knife to cut bis head off. Hence, in his public speeches,
as in Joe Gargery's private utterances, "I meantersay," recurs with
painful and bewildering frequency; the incautious wording or hasty
expression of intentions or desires calling for limitation or toning
down. The present Parliamentary and Ministerial crisis is the direct
outcome of one of these spontaneous outbursts of public oratory,
occasioned, but by no means provoked, by a speech of Prince Schwarz-
enberg. This time the ensuing "meantersay," which was carefully
written down and read out with due emphasis, not being found to
tally with well-known facts, was received with incredulity, and the
crisis was the result.

In his dealings with political allies and opponents, Count Taaffe is flippant and cynical to a degree. He transacts the most important business as if it were a practical joke. If politics were a comedy and political life a schoolboy's entertainment, the tone he adopts would be perfectly in place. He seems constitutionally incapable of treating the most momentous questions in a serious, sober spirit. This tone, which he has succeeded in imparting to others, constitutes an essential element of his tactics; it renders politicians more tractable and compliant, accustoming them to make light of the concessions they are called upon to make, and to minimise the advantages they neglect to secure. But, in truth, this levity and cynicism are but surface deep. The few who know the real man as he appears when the liamentary mask of folly is laid aside, find the contrast pathetic, almost tragic; solicitude for the well-being of the Empire is audible in his every word, visible in his every look, and to the mind of the observer who had been comparing him to a cavalier of the Restoration, reminiscences are suggested of the heroism of Junius Brutus and

par

the energy of Schiller's Fiesco. Attachment to his Sovereign and his

country is the one moving force of his being, and its intensity is that of the old Highland clansmen, or of the extinct Irish wolf-dog.

This is the real key to his living and working. What difficulties, disappointments, and dangers he has to contend with will never be

i

revealed. I have seen him at times when he evidently believed himself alone, and I shall never forget his expression, in which intense agony, wild defiance, and utter despair seemed fighting for the mastery; it was most painfully suggestive of the last look of the doomed fox, as it stands at bay a moment before the end. "You in Austria," wrote Adolph von Herzog to the celebrated MinisterPresident Schmerling, "require to be governed by a man possessed of a head of flinty hardness and a soul of the toughness of copper wire." And, he might have added, devoid of the slightest trace of selfishness; for the coin in which eminent Austrian statesmen are usually paid has little resemblance to gratitude. The official class which summed up Radetzky's brilliant services in the epithet "old ass, cannot well be expected to show itself more appreciative of the merits of a political galley-slave. One of the most successful of French statesmen once remarked to his friends, who were explaining his feverish pulse and sleepless nights as the result of anxiety about the destiny of Europe and solicitude for the welfare of France: "The few square feet that constitute the king's bedchamber cause me more trouble and anxiety than all the battle-fields of Europe." Whether, and to what extent, Count Taaffe could endorse this statement, had best be left to his future biographer to determine. Certain it is that, burdened as he is with a peck of private sorrows of his own, racked by a painful disorder, attacked by indefatigable opponents, thwarted by political allies, toiling and moiling day and night, Sunday and holy day, without respite or rest, his labour will be his sole reward. When his heart is withered like grass and his days consumed as smoke, the most appreciative epigraph he can hope for is a dry statement of the melancholy truth that

"Death wipes blame away."

Holding with Sir Robert Walpole that every man has his price, and having discovered for himself that many men simply give themselves away, Count Taaffe hopefully entered into negotiations with the Czechs for the purpose of inducing them to send their representatives to the Parliament of Vienna. The task, however, seemed utterly beyond his powers. For abstention from Parliament has been the trump card of sulking Austrian nationalities ever since the constitutional charter was conceded. Moravians, Ruthenians, Croatians, Poles, Germans, and Roumanians had played it in turn. It was one of the most efficacious weapons wielded by the Hungarians in their struggle for independence, and it had brought the Czechs themselves within an ace of the same goal in 1871. Their determination not to swerve an inch from this beaten track was therefore not easily to be shaken. But, like the Pied Piper of Hamelin,

Grünne, the Emperor's favourite and alter ego, wrote to Gyulai, who modestly hesitated to take command of the Italian army: "If that old ass, Radetzky, managed it, surely you can accomplish it."