5. A FEW WORDS ON JUNIUS AND ON MARAT. 6. BENJAMIN FRANKLIN AND JOSEPH DE MAISTRE: A DIALOGUE OF THE DEAD. HISTORICAL STUDIES. JOSEPH II. THE world has judged this excellent though unfortunate sovereign, as it usually judges, by success. Because he failed, he has become a byword. Had he carried into execution the scheme of policy which he conceived, he would have been regarded as the greatest, as well as the most beneficent, monarch who ever swayed the destinies of the human race. And had not his early death intervened, it is hard to say whether a large portion of that scheme might not have. been realised. We cannot safely pronounce on what might have been, nor decide whether his death only prevented a general rebellion, as the popular notion is, or whether it cut short the career of one who was beginning to learn by experience the true means towards his magnificent ends, and who would in a few years have changed much more than the surface of European politics and society. But however this might have been-without farther speculation on that favourite but idle field of historical theory, the contingent past—the test of mere success is one which ought to be utterly disclaimed, when judging of a character such as his. It claimed, in reality, not that B |