The Congress of representatives of the principal states of Europe had met at Vienna, in order to arrange the confused and complicated interests which had arisen out of so prolonged a period of war and alteration. The lapse of twenty-five years of constant war and general change had made so total an alteration, not merely in the social relations and relative powers of the states of Europe, but in the habits, sentiments, and principles of the inhabitants, that it appeared altogether impossible to restore the original system as it existed before 1792. The continent resembled the wrecks of the city of London after the great conflagration in 1666, when the boundaries of individual property were so completely obliterated and confounded, that the king found himself obliged, by the urgency of the occasion, to make new, and in some degree arbitrary, distributions of the ground, in order to rebuild the streets upon a plan more regular, and better fitted to the improved condition of the age. That which proved ultimately an advantage to London, may perhaps produce similar good consequences to the civilized world, and a better and more permanent order of things may be expected to arise out of that which has been destroyed. In that case, the next generation may reap the advantages of the storms with which their fathers had to contend. We are, however, far from approving of some of the unceremonious appropriations of territory which were made upon this occasion, which, did our limits admit of entering into the discussion, carried, we think, the use of superior force to a much greater extent than could be justified on the principles upon which the allies acted.