I spoke just now of a document, the treaty of Pressburg, which was signed by two personages described as the “Emperor of the French” and the “Emperor of Germany and Austria.” It must never be forgotten that the title of “Emperor of Austria” dates, not from 1806 but from 1804. The King of Germany, Emperor-elect of the Romans, while he still held the highest place on earth, thought good to call himself “Hereditary Emperor of Austria”--_Erbkaiser von Oesterreich_. What the two titles meant side by side, no man can tell; but when the Roman and German titles were dropped, the so-called “Empire of Austria” went on as a distinct survival of the old Empire, and a very memorable survival too. For it is the most successful imposture on record. This use of an Imperial style has caused a power which is in its own nature modern, upstart, and revolutionary, to be looked on as ancient, venerable, and conservative. A power of yesterday, which has lived only by trampling on every historic right and every national memory, has somehow come to be looked on as the very embodiment of dignified and conservative antiquity. But the particular way in which the imposture has succeeded is the most wonderful thing of all. In the last century among ourselves Smithson thought good to call himself Percy, and the world believes that he is Percy. But the world believes that Smithson is Percy; it does not believe that the old Percies were Smithsons. This last is what is believed in the Austrian case. Nobody believes that the present King of Hungary and Archduke of Austria is Emperor of the Romans and King of Germany. But many believe that real Emperors of the Romans and Kings of Germany were, what he calls himself, Emperors of Austria. I have seen Frederick Barbarossa called “Emperor of Austria;” half the world believes that the Pragmatic Sanction of Charles the Sixth settled an Empire of Austria on Maria Theresa; I have seen a book of the eighteenth century in which Joseph the Second was of course spoken of simply as “the Emperor,” but in which the editor in the nineteenth century thought it needful to explain that the “Emperor” spoken of was “Emperor of Austria.” I have found natives of Switzerland on their ground who believed that the Imperial eagle carved on this or that ancient building was the badge of Austria and not of Rome. Yes; never was imposture more successful; never was the truth of history more thoroughly turned round. It would be somewhat hard to bear if Francis of Lorraine were thought to be something like Frederick of Hohenstaufen; but the dead may turn in their graves when Frederick of Hohenstaufen is thought to be something like Francis of Lorraine.