he had correctly measured the power which had been conferred upon the opponents of the Sovereign by the alienation of the one party and the inert indifference of the other, I should not wish to decide. During the year before the crisis I was only for a time in Tuscany; and immediately before the outbreak I was not there at all, although I kept up constant communication with men of the most divergent views. But when I reflect that, apart from occasional expressions in his letters, Hügel in November 1858 described the present as a time of "restoration of, it is to be hoped, more than momentary quiet and order," and as "a time of truce," I am inclined to doubt whether he rightly appreciated the state of affairs. He was, I think, like many others, surprised, if not by the rising itself, yet by the turn which it instantly took. He left Florence immediately after the Grand-ducal family[1], and like them was not molested. He hardly anticipated that this was a parting for ever from a country which he loved, and where he may well have thought to spend the remainder of his life.
For more than a year he remained in his own country. He had visited it during the time of his mission to Florence, and in particular in the year 1855, when the dignity of Privy Councillor was conferred upon him; but he found it much changed. The death of Prince Metternich, which took place soon after his return to Vienna, on the 11th of June, 1859—the Prince had attained the great age of eighty-six—may well have reminded him of the full significance of the change. And what had not happened during those eleven years since he had rescued Metternich from the fury of the Viennese revolutionaries! In the following May (1860) the printing of his above-mentioned book on
- ↑ My father left Florence with the Grand Duke, April 27, 1859. a. v. h.
