But before I quit this subject, I cannot forbear noticing the very exaggerated statements sometimes put forth by party spirit in England, respecting the state of learning in the Austrian empire. Without pretending to any personal knowledge of that country, there are however a certain number of admitted and well-attested facts, which prove that however inferior in mental cultivation Austria may be to some other states of Catholic as well as Protestant Germany, she yet holds a distinguished place in literature and science. The very general diffusion of popular education in that country--the great success with which all the arts and sciences connected with industry are cultivated--the admirable organization of its medical board--the distinguished physicians, theoretical as well as practical, whom it has produced--the great attention bestowed on strategy and the sciences subservient to it--the excellence to which the histrionic art has there attained--the universal passion for music, and the unrivalled degree of perfection the art has there reached--the acknowledged superiority of the Quarterly Review of Vienna, (the Wiener Jahrbücher)--lastly, the favour, countenance, and encouragement extended by the Austrian public to the oral lectures and published writings of the eminent literary characters, whether natives or foreigners, who for the last thirty years have thrown such a glory over their capital--all these incontrovertible facts, I say, prove this people to have reached an advanced stage of intellectual refinement. So far from finding among the Viennese that Bæotian dulness of which we sometimes hear them accused, Augustus William Schlegel (and his testimony is impartial, for he is neither a native nor resident of Austria,) confesses[10] that he discovered in them great aptness of intelligence, a keen relish for the beauties of poetry, and much of the vivacity of the Southern temperament. And the crowded audiences which flocked to the philosophical lectures Frederick Schlegel delivered on various occasions at Vienna, a metaphysician of equal celebrity might in vain look for in another European capital I could name, and which certainly considers itself very enlightened. There is no doubt that this Archduchy of Austria, which in the middle age produced some of the most celebrated Minnesingers, would with free institutions and a more generous policy on the part of the government, soon attain that intellectual station, to which its political greatness, and recent as well as ancient military glory alike bid it to aspire. If the statesmen that rule the destinies of that country were to regard the matter merely in a political point of view, they might see what moral dignity, weight and importance, the patronage of letters has given to the Protestant King of Prussia on the one hand, and to the Catholic King of Bavaria on the other.