Stupid dilapidation is in all departments, and has long been; all things lazily crumbling downwards, sometimes stumbling down with great plunges.

Cash is done; the world rising, all round, with plunderous intentions; and hungry Ruin, you would say, coming visibly on with seven-league boots: here is little room for carrying your head high among mankind.

High nevertheless they do carry it, with a grandly mournful though stolid insolent air, as if born superior to this Earth and its wisdoms and successes and multiplication-tables and iron ramrods,--really with "a certain greatness," says somebody, "greatness as of great blockheadism" in themselves and their neighbors;--and, like some absurd old Hindoo Idol (crockery Idol of Somnauth, for instance, with the belly of him smashed by battle-axes, and the cart-load of gold coin all run out), persuade mankind that they are a god, though in dilapidated condition.

That is our first impression of the thing.
But again, better seen into, there is not wanting a certain worthily steadfast, conservative and broad-based high air (reminding you of "Kill our own mutton, Sir!" and the ancient English Tory species), solid and loyal, though stolid Ancient Austrian Tories, that definition will suffice for us;--and Toryism too, the reader may rely on it, is much patronized by the Upper Powers, and goes a long way in this world.

Nay, without a good solid substratum of that, what thing, with never so many ballot-boxes, stump-orators, and liberties of the subject, is capable of going at all, except swiftly to perdition?
These Austrians have taken a great deal of ruining, first and last! Their relation to the then Sea-Powers, especially to England embarked on the Cause of Liberty, fills one with amazement, by no means of an idolatrous nature; and is difficult to understand at all, or to be patient with at all.
Of disposition to comply with Prussia, Robinson finds, in spite of Mollwitz and the sad experiences, no trace at Vienna.