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REUMONT

the names of his princely godfather the Elector, was one of the confidants of the Chancellor of State, Prince Metternich, whose father, also a Rhinelander, had had relations with the Hügel family. In later years this son exercised a certain influence over the literature of his time as Director of the Secret State Archives—a Department at that time administered on principles very different from those which obtain at the present day.

The younger son, Carl, was a student of law at Heidelberg, but discontinued his studies for the purpose of entering the Austrian army, with which he took his share in the last stages of the war of liberation, and entered Paris with the Allied Sovereigns. He next took part in the Northern Mission, which effected the union of Norway with Sweden, and, on his return south, commanded for a time a troop of Hussars stationed in Provence, and acted as Commandant de place at Arles and Tarascon. After the Congress of Laibach[1] he took part in the expedition which restored the absolute power of King Ferdinand in Naples, and, after the easy victory, remained as Military Attaché at the Imperial Embassy in the capital of the Italian South. In 1824 he returned to Vienna. In 1825 he lost his father by death, and was led by unexpected circumstances into new paths.

The circumstances which, apart from a pronounced inclination to scientific pursuits, determined Hügel, a brilliant member—not so much by birth as by personal advantages and connexions—of the brilliant and joyous Viennese society of the third decade of our century, to retire from the army and to absent himself from his home

  1. This Congress, held January—February, 1821, at which the Emperors of Austria and of Russia, the King of Naples, and the Representatives of France and of England, were present, declared itself in favour of an armed intervention in Naples. A. v. H.