The private life of Prince Metternich has been repeatedly visited with domestic affliction. Mourning has darkened his dwelling, and the distractions of the busy world have not always been able to mitigate his grief. In private society his manners are affable, and he enjoys the repose of home after the fatigues of his vast ministerial duties. A clever writer has observed that he spends great part of his time in conversation; it is a propensity indulged in by men who have seen every thing--they take pleasure in _talking history_ in their fireside conversations, which are carefully preserved by their auditors. And who has not listened with delight to M. Talleyrand, when he used to give vent to his recollections? Prince Metternich has written long and curious memoirs, full of justificatory notes, for he considers himself at the bar of posterity. His work is a great one, and, as I said at the commencement of this sketch, all the glory and all the responsibility of it will rest with him. When we look back upon what Austria was after the peace of Presburg, and that we contemplate her now, greater than she had ever been, with her public credit, her ascendancy among the European states, the peace and the government of her provinces, her civil and military organisation, and then consider that all this is the work of _one_ minister, who has governed the empire for the last thirty years, we may easily form an idea of some of the judgments of posterity. We are ourselves surrounded by ruins, both of men and things; government, administration, ministry, every thing, has fallen to pieces, and when, from the midst of the wreck the revolutions have brought upon us, we turn our eyes upon a countenance which has remained unmoved among all the ravages of time, it appears as if it did not belong to the present period; we look back upon Richelieu, upon those ministers who laid down a system, and then carried it onward to its completion.