Account of the Reign and Character of Maximilian II. Emperor of Germany; from Wraxall's History of France.

IF Europe has ever seen the throne occupied by a sage and a philosopher, it was in the person of Maximilian II. In benevolence and humanity his contemporaries compared him with Titus; and in the simplicity of his manners, renunciation of pleasure, and severe discharge of every moral obligation, we are reminded of Marcus Antoninus. Formed for peace, he endeavoured to dispense that invaluable possession to all his subjects; and to allay, by his interposition, or authority, the animosities produced by difference of religious belief. Suspected of leaning towards the new opinions, he yet steadily maintained, in his hereditary dominions, and in the empire, the purity of the Catholic faith; nor ever permitted the Protestants to break down the barriers opposed to their farther progress, by his predecessors. His mild and beneficent temper, illuminated by reflection, induced him to regard all violence, in matters of conscience, as equally unjust and impolitic. He stands, in this particular, strikingly opposed to his cousin, Philip II. king of Spain; whose bigotry and intolaVol. XXXVII.

rance produced the revolt of the Netherlands, and pursued heresy, throughout Europe, with fire and

sword. To render Maximilian one of the most illustrious, as he indis

putably was one of the most amiable princes, whom Providence has raised up for the felicity of mankind, a more martial and enterprising disposition was alone wanting. His exposed situation on the Hungarian frontiers, and the perpetual inroads of the Turkish sultans, during the sixteenth century, demanded a sovereign possessed of military talents, and personal activity in war. The operation of this defect, in his character, was, however, confined to Hungary; while his virtues dispensed happiness and tranquillity over all the other people, subjected to his government. He was beloved by the Austrians, idolized by the Bohemians, and regarded, throughout Germany, by the Catholics and Protestants, as the common parent and protector of his subjects, of every denomination.

The restless ambition and pretences of John Sigismund, prince of Transylvania, who had broken the truce, and invaded Upper Hungary, necessitated the emperor, at an early period of his reign, to convoke a diet, and to demand supplies of men and money. They were granted with an alacrity and cele[A]

rity

rity little customary in those assemblies; and which was not more the result of the apprehensions excited by the impending war, than due to the general respect and affection borne to Maximilian, Solyman, notwithstanding his age and infirmities, appeared again in the field, as the ally of his Transylvanian vassal; and, at the head of a vast army, laid siege to Sigeth. He expired, in the camp, before the capture of that city was effected; and the count de Serini, to whom its defence had been entrusted, obtained an immortal reputation, by the desperate valour with which he long repulsed the assailants. Reduced, at length, to the necessity of dying, or capitulating with an enemy who violated all compacts, he generously preferred the former alternative; and, rushing on the Turks, with the small remains of his garrison, perished by the scymitars of the Jaizaries. The vizier sent his head to Maximilian, with a contemptuous and insulting message, reproaching him for pusillanimity, or inactivity, in not advancing to the relief of Serini. Since the memorable campaign of 1532, when Charles V. had, in person, opposed Solyman, Germany had not sent so numerous a body of forces to combat the Turks, as that which Maximilian commanded. But the timidity, or prudence, of his generals, who were still greatly inferior to the Ottoman army, and the recollection of the many unfortunate battles which the Hungarian princes had fought against those invaders, induced the emperor to remain upon the defensive. Selim II. the son and successor of Solyman, whose views of conquest were directed against the Venetians, consented,

soon after his accession, to renew the truce between the two empires, upon terms favourable to the house of Austria. The Transylvanian prince was not included in the treaty, and continued his hostilities, or depredations, for several years: but they were at length terminated by his renunciation of the title of king of Hungary; which article formed the basis of an amicable agreement, and restored tranquillity to those desolated provinces.

The benign influence of the qualities and virtues, by which Maximilian was peculiarly distinguished, was more sensibly felt in the em. pire, and in his hereditary German provinces, where he appeared, in his proper and natural character, as the father and legislator of his

people. The internal repose of Germany suffered a temporary interruption, from the inflexibility and misguided adherence of John Fre derick II. duke of Saxe Gotha, to Grumbach, whose acts of violence had already excited universal indignation, under the reign of Ferdinand. The duke, son to the magnanimous and unfortunate elector of Saxony, deposed by Charles V. after the battle of Muhlberg, persisted, in defiance of the imperial mandate, to afford a retreat and protection to this invader of the public peace. Moved by consi derations of compassion and friend ship, the emperor warned him of his error, pointed out to him its consequences, and exhorted him to avert the inevitable punishment, by delivering up Grumbach. But John Frederick, who, to a contract ed understanding joined the wildest fanaticism, and the most unlimited credulity, persisted to grant him an asylumin his palace and capital

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Maximilian was, therefore, reluctantly necessitated to lay him under the ban of the empire; and Augustus, the reigning elector of Saxony, principally charged with its execution, besieged him in the city of Gotha. He was reduced to a surrender, carried prisoner to Vienfa, and, after being exposed to the view of the populace, in a state of ignominy and degradation, he was finally detained in captivity till his death. Grumbach suffered by the hand of the executioner, together with several of his adherents, or accomplices. Some slight disturbances, in the electorate of Treves, and in the dutchy of Mecklenburg, were the only circumstances, beides, which invaded the profound quiet enjoyed by Germany, under Maximilian.

Encouraged by so favourable an aspect of public affairs, and yieldng to the benignity of his disposttion, he ventured on a step, which places the superiority and expansion of his mind in the most conspicuous point of view. The stipulations contained in his coronation-oath, when elected emperor, as well as the articles constituting" the peace of religion," on which alone the stability and maintenance of the Catholic faith depended, fettered him in his imperial capacity, and permitted him to make no infringement whatever on those points. But, as archduke of Austria, he possessed a power of relaxing the severity of the laws which denied liberty of conscience to his Protest ant subjects.

Notwithstanding the remonstrances of the Spanish embassador, in the name of his sovereign, Philip II. and in defiance of the menaces of Pius V. who led the papal chair, Maximilian,

gave the first voluntary example of religious toleration to Europe, by permitting the nobility and equetrian order, in Austria, to celebrate publicly the ceremonies of their worship, in their castles and houses, as well as on their estates. This indulgence was, however, strictly limited to the two classes above mentioned; and neither extended to the people at large, nor even to the inhabitants of cities; who vainly endeavoured to shake the emperor's determination on the subject, or to elude his vigilance.

In the present century, when the minds of men, enlarged and humanized by philosophy, are become familiar with toleration; and when the most bigotted European nations admit some species of religious freedom; a permission so circumscribed in its operation, as that granted by Maximilian, may not appear to merit any extravagant eulogiums. But, the actions of men are not only to be appreciated by the eternal laws of rectitude and justice; they must be, in some measure, likewise, referable to the modes of thinking, received by their contemporaries, and generally adopted. On every side, Maximilian saw only the most intolerant bigotry. The Netherlands, and France, were desolated by their respective sovereigns, in order to extinguish beresy, and to spread the unity of the Catholic faith. Even among the Protestants themselves, the most rancorous and sanguinary animosities prevailed, to the subversion of all mutual good offices. Servetus was committed to the flames at Geneva, by Calvin, for some speculative difference of opinion on abstruse points of theology; and the Lutherans regarded with horror the doctrines [*A 2]

inculcated

inculcated by that reformer, and Zuinglius. Maximilian, in an age of persecution, declared publicly his repugnance to all religious violence, and his unalterable opinion, that "to the supreme being alone, it belonged to judge the conscience." Nor did he content himself with only asserting this principle: his active benevolence impelled him to make every exertion, to stop the destructive influence of bigotry, in other countries. Touched with the cries and complaints of the Flemings, he dispatched his brother, the archduke Charles, to Philip II. with directions to remonstrate with him on his violation of their privileges, civil and religious; though this humane interposition was ineffectual. He did not conceal his detestation of the massacre of St. Bartholomew, for which Rome and Madrid made public demonstrations of joy and when Henry III. king of France, passed through Vienna, in his flight from Poland to his own country, the emperor strongly exhorted him to commence his reign, by maxims and principles of toleration. It would have been happy for Henry, and his people, if he had been capable of profiting by the advice.

sides, and there was scarcely any entire intermission of them till evening. The places of public amusement, chiefly a sort of tea-gardens, were then set open, and, in many streets, the sounds of music and dancing, were heard almost as plainly as that of the bells had been before; a disgusting excess of licentiousness, which appeared in other instances, for we heard, at the same time, the voices of a choir on one side of the street, and the neise of a billiard-table on the other. Near the inn, this contrast was more observable. While the strains of revelry arose from an adjoining garden, into which our windows opened, a pause in the music allowed us to catch some notes of the vespe service, performing in a convent the order of Clarisse, only three of four doors beyond. Of the severe rules of this society we had bee told in the morning. The members take a vow, not only to renounce the world, but their dearest friends, and are never permitted to see even their fathers or mothers, though they may sometimes converse with the latter from behind a curtain. And, lest some lingering remains of filial affection should tempt an unhappy nun to lift the veil of separation between herself and her mother, she is not allowed to speak even with her, but in the presence of the abbess. Accounts of such horrible perversions of human reaTheir son make the blood thrill. fathers they can never speak to, for no man is suffered to be in any part

hood, nor, indeed, is admitted beyond the gate, except when there is a necessity for repairs, when all the votaries of the order are previously secluded. It is not easily that a cautious mind becomes convinced of

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the existence of such severe orders; when it does, astonishment at the artificial miseries, which the ingenuity of human beings forms for themselves by seclusion, is as boundless as at the other miseries, with which the most trivial vanity and envy so frequently pollute the intercourses of social life. The poor nuns, thus nearly entombed during their lives, are, after death, tied upon a board, in the clothes they died in, and, with only their veils thrown over their face, are buried in the garden of the convent.

Observations on the distinct Characters of Modern Whigs and Tories; from Belsham's Memoirs of the Reign of George III.

TH

HE established appellations of whig and tory, as descriptive of the two grand political parties which, under these or equivalent terms of distinction, will doubtless subsist so long as the present constitution of government shall remain, though greatly changed from their original signification, it would nevertheless te fastidious to reject. The gradations of sentiment and principle which mark their progress it is however of indispensible importance occasionally to specify. The principles of whiggism may indeed, in this respect, be said to have gained a complete triumph over those of the ancient tories, inasmuch as the once favourite maxims of toryism-passive obedience, nonresistance and the divine and indefeasible right of monarchy-have fallen into general contempt.

Nor

can any doctrines bearing the most distant analogy to these monstrous

absurdities be now maintained, without the use of such artificial and ambiguous phraseology as, however magnificent in sound and show, shall vanish from the touch of reason as mists and vapours from the noonday sun.

Agreeably then to the vicissitu des which have, in a long series of eventful years, taken place in the views and sentiments of the opposing parties of the state, a whig must now be understood to mean a man

who, in addition to the speculative principles of liberty, civil and religious, which have descended to him from his ancestors, entertains a lively and well-founded jealousy lest the prerogative of the crown should, in consequence of the prodigious increase of its influence, ul. timately absorb the whole power and authority of the other branches of the government, and with them the liberties of the nation at large, in its vast and tremendous vortex. A modern whig acknowledges and deeply regrets the improvidence of his ancestors in contributing, by the facility of their compliances, to the accumulation of an immensé public debt, and the establishment of a standing army, both of which are yet in a state alarmingly progressive. He can scarcely forgive those extravagant ebullitions of loyalty which could sacrifice the most sacred principles of the constitution to the interest or ambition of the reigning family, in prolonging, by a most unjustifiable stretch of power, the existence of parliaments to a term of dangerous duration, and in furnishing to a minister, little scrupulous of expedients, and regard. less of consequences, the means of universal and unbounded corruption. Whatever palliations of the fatal [*A 3] system