Were it possible, by passing a magic wand over the Austrian duchies and Vienna, to transform them into a Brandenburg or a Silesia, the Eastern question would be much simplified. The entire valley of the lower Danube, Hungary not excepted, suffers from a want of laborers. Agriculture, mining and manufactures are in a primitive state unworthy of the Middle Ages. The exhibition from Roumania at Vienna in 1873, although arrayed tastefully, was a lamentable confession of poverty and backwardness. Even Hungary, anxious to display her autonomy to the best advantage, could show little more than the beginnings of a change. The actual condition of the lower Danube is a reproach to European civilization. Everything seems to be lacking--good roads and tolerable houses, kitchen and farming utensils, workshops of the most rudimentary sort, clothing, popular education, the first conceptions of science. Germany is the only source from which to expect assistance in the spread of material comfort and spiritual enlightenment, for Germany alone has population and education to spare. Yet that part of Germany which is nearest at hand is not adequate of itself to the task. The Austrians have not such a preponderancy of numbers and influence within their own borders as would qualify them for conducting successfully a great movement of colonization. Besides, it must be admitted, with all due respect to the many good qualities of the Austrians, that colonists should be of "sterner stuff"--should have more self-denial, greater capacity for work and more talent for self-government. In these particulars the North Germans are unquestionably superior. The improved condition of Roumania (Moldavia and Wallachia) under Prince Charles of Hohenzollern teaches us what may be accomplished by an energetic administration. During the past ten years the army has been drilled and equipped after the Prussian fashion, the finances placed on a tolerable footing, and practical independence of Turkey asserted. At the Vienna exhibition Roumania was the only one of the nominally-vassal states that did not display the star and crescent. Were the prince unrestrained by respect for Austrian and Prussian diplomacy, and free to lead his well-disciplined army of fifty thousand men into the field, he would give the signal for a general uprising in Bosnia and Servia, and thus probably succeed in severing all the Christian provinces from the Porte.