A celebrated Viennese Professor dined one day in England with a learned lord. "Pray, how is Baron Dash?" inquired a guest--said Baron Dash being at that time an Austrian Minister. "He is quite well," said the Professor. "And his wife!" pursued the other. "I remember meeting her at Rome; they were just married, and she was a most delightful person. She created a sensation, no doubt, when she was received at your court?" "She was not received at all," said the Professor. "How was that?" asked many voices. "Because she is not born." "Not born" is the customary mode of ignoring (if I may use a slang word of this time) the existence of the vulgar, among the noble Viennese. At the present moment, the family of a Minister, or of any of the generals who have saved the throne, may be excluded from society on this pretense. Two recent exceptions have been made in favor of the wives of two of the most important people in the empire. They were invited to the court-balls; but were there treated so scurvily by the "born" ladies, that these unborn women visited them only once. What is to be done by these poor nobles--shut out from commerce, law, and physic? Diplomacy is voted low; unless they get the great embassies. The church, as in all Catholic countries, is low; unless a nobleman should enter it with certain prospect of a cardinal's hat or a bishopric. The best bishoprics in the world (meaning, of course, the most luxurious) are Austrian. The revenues of the Primate of Hungary are said to be worth the comfortable trifle of sixty thousand pounds a year. But there remains for these wretched nobles, one road to independence and distinction; and this is the army. To the army, it may be said, the whole body of the Austrian nobility belongs. The more fortunate, that is to say, the highest in rank, add to their commissions places about the court. Cherished titles are acquired in this way; and a lady may insist on being seriously addressed in polite Austrian society as--say for example, Frau-ober-consistorial-hof-Directorinn.