Prague. Of late the name of Friedrich Halm has acquired deserved celebrity as a tragic dramatist. But, on the whole, we may apply to the nation the words of Sydney Smith, and ask, "In the four quarters of the globe, who reads an Austrian book? or goes to an Austrian play? or looks at an Austrian picture or statue?" Little Saxe Weimar had its Karl August; Bavaria had its Ludwig. But what Hapsburg has been the patron of literature? The intellectual tastes of the race were only too well expressed in the question put by Francis to Châteaubriand at the Congress of Verona: "Ah! M. de C., are you related to that Châteaubriand who-who-who has written something!" Austria claims to be the chief of the Catholic powers. During the last half century the Romanist press of Germany has been incessantly active. Though not in exegetical, yet in dogmatic, in controversial, above all, in historical theology, the German Romanists have maintained a not altogether unequal contest with the Protestants. But Freiburg and Tubingen, Munich and the Rhine-land, not Vienna or Prague, have been the centres of such confessional activity through the press. The works of greatest immediate or permanent interest, the Symbolik of Möhler, the Athanasius of Görres, the religious philosophy of Franz von Baader, have all been produced apart from Austrian control.

Still we have no wish to see Austria dismembered in the interest of France, or for the advantage of Russia. She has a useful Future before her, would she pursue it. To do so, it is indispensable that she retrace her two chief blunders since the end of the Hungarian war-the Concordat of 1855, and the System of Centralization. The evils of the former are too palpable and too generally admitted to be dwelt on here. In regard of the latter, to use the language of a recent thoughtful and well-informed writer in the Revue des Deux Mondes, "Austria is fertile in material resources; she can then get rid of her present embarrassments, if her Government does not lose precious time. To abandon a system of administration at once expensive and unpopular, to throw herself with confidence on the nation,—such are the energetic measures which it is necessary to take. That Political Unity may continue, it must be made popular. Hitherto, unhappily, its name recalls to the people only the ideas of imposts tripled, deficits increasing, constant bureaucratic annoyances. In giving to the country liberal institutions, in according to it a just participation in public affairs, the Government would at one blow destroy all anti-unionist passions, and would communicate general popularity to the idea of Political Unity, which can only be solidly founded on the basis of a national representation: Bis dat qui cito dat.

The amount of taxation in Austria has increased 70 per cent. since 1849, a rate perfectly without precedent in history. This enormous increase has been chiefly caused by the new system of centralization, which, sweeping away all previously existing local government, is still more minutely ramified than that of France. In the latter country, the Minister of the Interior has prefets and sous-prefets under his authority; but the corresponding Cabinet official in Austria has three sets of functionaries below him, the governors of provinces, the chiefs of circles, and the chiefs of cantons. In 1847 the expense of administration amounted to 62 millions of florins; in 1856 they had risen to more than 160 millions. This new system has thus oppressed the people by the increased imposts it has necessitated, while it has disgusted the nobility, whom it has excluded from their position of previous local importance.

From the most recent German sources, we extract the following statistics about Austria. Previous to the cession of Lombardy to Sardinia, the Austrian Emperor ruled over 29,000,000 of Romanists, somewhat more than 3,000,000 of Protestants, nearly 3,000,000 of Greeks, and 850,000 Jews. The German population of the empire amounted to 8,000,000, the Slavonian to nearly 15,000,000, and the Magyar to 4,800,000. There were 10 universities,-Vienna, Prague, Pesth, Pavia, Padua, Cracow, Lemberg, Innsbrück, Grätz, and Olmütz. The intermediate education was provided for by 282 "gymasien," and the primary instruction by 20,000 "Volks-schulen." The Romish ecclesiastics amounted to nearly 70,000, or about double of the number to which Joseph II. reduced them. Last year there were published within the bounds of the empire 97 political journals-58 in German, 10 in Slavonic, 19 in Italian, 8 in Hungarian, 2 in Romaic, and 1 in Greek. There were 257 journals not political-125 in German, 21 in Slavonic, 89 in Italian, 20 in Hungarian, 1 in French, 1 in Russian. These statistics of journalism afford a fair index of the relative amount of intelligence in the different sections of the population of the Austrian states.

In taking leave of M. Michiels, we can honestly recommend his work to the English reader. The works of Baron von Hormayr and others, which he enumerates in his preface as having furnished him with his materials, have indeed been diligently availed of in Germany for the last dozen of years. But they have hitherto remained, for the most part, closed against the mere English reader. M. Michiels has rendered an important service, by putting them within reach, in a volume of moderate size and price. He intimates his intention of following up the present volume with another, in which Modern Austria will be "shown up." As the apologetic work of Baron von Hortig has

been, a few years ago, issued in this country, in a cheap translation, it is desirable, for the general public, to listen to the full statement of the other side. But should the promised second volume appear, or should this one reach more editions, alike for the sake of M. Michiels and of his subject, we would desire a reconstruction of his style. He says, in his Preface, "I have reproduced facts in a simple and severe style.

I have abstained from declamation, and almost from reflection." This, unfortunately, is not the case. M. Michiels has a good deal of common-place reflection to get rid of, and a number of inflated epithets to discard. The taste is questionable anywhere, which indulges in such language as this, "Oh, severe and terrible Muse of History! thou who carriest the thoughts through ruins and tombs!" But when we meet with such tawdry grandiloquence in a preface, the effect is irresistibly ludicrous. M. Michiels appears, from his book, not to know much of English literature. His literary allusions are generally French. We can give him no better advice, than to study, before his next volume appears, the manner in which our best English authors have written history. Let him then try his best to approachsurpass he cannot-the excellence of the English, which Kossuth has, by force of genius and dint of study, learned to employ. As he is not an unpractised writer, it may be somewhat difficult to get rid of his unfortunate mannerism; but M. Michiels may be assured, that only an ill-cultured taste, or an indiscriminate partisanship, can admire it. History, perhaps, above all other themes, demands a noble simplicity of treatment.

ART. VI.-On Colour, and on the Necessity for a General Diffusion of Taste among all Classes; with Remarks on laying out Dressed or Geometrical Gardens. Examples of Good and Bad Taste, illustrated by Woodcuts and Coloured Plates in Contrast. By Sir J. GARDNER WILKINSON, D.C.L., F.R.S., F.R.G.S., M.R.S.L., M.R.I.B.A., etc. London, 1858. 8vo. Pp. 418.

THE subject of the Harmony and Contrast of Colours, and their applications to the arts, has, during the last fifty years, been forcing itself upon the attention both of the philosopher and the artist. The phenomena of accidental, or complementary, or harmonic colours, as they have been called, have been long ago studied and explained by optical writers, and the subject has to a great extent been exhausted by the labours of De La Hire, Castel,1 Beguelen, Buffon, Scherffer, Epinus, Darwin, Laplace, Hauy, Plateau, and others. The law of contrast, or the change which colours undergo when seen simultaneously or successively, was observed by several of these writers, but particularly by Dr Darwin; but it is to M. Chevreul, a distinguished member of the Institute of France, that we owe the establishment of the important law of the simultaneous, successive, and mixed contrast of colours, and of its application to the numerous arts in which coloured materials are employed.

Under a more limited aspect, the subject of harmonious colouring has been ably treated by our countryman, Mr D. R. Hay, in several excellent works which have excited much interest.2 Adopting the discoveries of Newton respecting the decomposition of white light, and the combination of colours, and guided by a knowledge of those physiological actions of light upon the retina upon which the harmony and contrast of colours essentially depend, Mr Hay has laid down the rules of harmonious colouring for all the arts of ornamental design, whether they are practised in the interior decoration of houses, or in the various fabrics in which coloured materials are employed.

Previous to the researches of Chevreul and Hay, so early as 1810 indeed, the celebrated Goethé had published his Farbenlehre, or Doctrine of Colours; a work which, but for the reputation of its author, and its partial reappearance in an English dress, would have long ago sunk into comparative oblivion. Farbenlehre, as originally published, was divided into three

The

1 L'Optique des Couleurs, fondé sur les simples observations, et tournée surtout a la pratique de la peinture, de la teinture, et des autres arts colorées, 1740. 2 The Laws of Harmonious Colouring, adapted to Interior Decorations; with Observations on the Practice of House Painting. By D. R. Hay, House Painter and Decorator to the Queen. Sixth Edit. Edin., 1847.

In 2 vols. 8vo, with a quarto volume of sixteen plates.

Goethe's Attack upon Newton's Discoveries.

127

parts, Didactic, Controversial, and Historical; but Sir Charles Eastlake, who translated it in 1840, has given us only the didactic portion, "with such extracts from the other two as seemed necessary, in fairness to the author, to explain some of his statements." The attack upon Newton's optical discoveries contained in the author's preface, is equally presumptuous and impertinent. The Newtonian theory is described as an old castle, precipitately erected by a youthful architect, and abandoned by those who assisted in its construction and worshipped within its walls, and now occupied only by "a few invalids who, in simple seriousness, imagine that they are prepared to defend it." Thus "nodding to its fall, as a deserted piece of antiquity," the mighty Goethe proclaims to the world of science that he begins at once to "raze the Bastille," and "to dismantle it from gable and roof downwards; that the sun may at last shine into the old nest of rats and owls, and exhibit to the eye of the wandering traveller that labyrinthine, incongruous style of building, with its scanty make-shift contrivances, the result of accident and emergency, its intentional artifice, and clumsy repairs!"

It would be an unprofitable task to examine the pagoda of card-board which Goethe has substituted for the old castle of the prince of philosophers; but it is curious to remark, and not unworthy of being recorded, that Sir Charles Eastlake, and other cultivators of the highest art, have chosen it as their residence, and announced it as a truth, "that the statements of Goethe contain more useful principles, in all that relates to harmony of colour, than any that have been derived from the established (Newtonian) doctrine." It is needless to say to any well-informed reader, that Newton never contemplated the æsthetic application of his discoveries, nor to any philosophical artist, that laws of colouring that are to guide his hand, and regulate the public taste, must have a better foundation than optical paralogisms and poetical paradoxes.1

In a very different spirit from that of the German savant is the subject of harmonious colouring treated by Sir Gardner Wilkinson. Abjuring all theories "founded upon a fanciful basis," he maintains that a perception of the harmony of colours is a natural gift,—that discords in colour can only be perceived by a correct eye, in the same manner as discords in music can only be perceived by a correct ear, and that a sound knowledge of the subject "can be derived only from a natural perception of the harmony of colours, improved and matured by observation." This opinion will doubtless require some modification when we have studied it in the light of optical and physiological laws;-but

1 The reader will find a severely critical analysis of Goethe's speculations in the Edinburgh Review, Oct. 1840, vol. lxxii. p. 99–132.