assembled nobles the difficulties and dangers by which she was surrounded, and threw herself, her child, and her cause, upon their generosity. At that appeal every sabre leapt from its scabbard, and the shout, "Moriamur pro rege nostro, Maria Theresâ!" called all Hungary to arms. The tide of invasion was rolled back beyond the Alps and the Rhine, and the empire was saved. "On avait vu," says Montesquieu, "la maison d'Autriche travailler sans reláche à opprimer la noblesse Hongroise; elle ignorait de quel prix elle lui serait un jour. Elle cherchait chez ces peuples de l'argent, qui n'y était pas; elle ne voyait pas les hommes, qui y étaient. Lorsque tant de princes partagaient entre eux ces états, toutes les pièces de la monarchie, immobiles et sans action, tombaient, pour ainsi dire, les unes sur les autres. Il n'y avait de vie que dans cette noblesse, qui s'indigna, oublia tout pour combattre, et cru qu'il était de sa gloire de périr et de pardonner." The nobles of Hungary had fallen by thousands; many families had been ruined; all had been impoverished by a war of seven years, which they had prosecuted at their private charge; but their queen had not forgotten how much she owed them. She treated them with a kindness more gratifying than the highest distinction; acquired their confidence by confiding in them; taught them to speak the language of her court; made their residence in her capital agreeable to them; promoted alliances between the noble families of Hungary and Austria; obtained from their devotion concessions which her predecessors had failed to extort by force; and prepared the way for a more intimate union between two nations which had hitherto regarded each other with aversion. M. A. de Gerando has discovered, in the portrait-galleries of the Hungarian magnates, amusing traces of some of the means by which the clever empress-queen extended Austrian influence and authority into Hungary.