The Kaiser's laudable zeal for commerce had to expend itself in
his Adriatic Territories,--giving privileges to the Ports of
Trieste and Fiume; [Hormayr, OEsterreichischer Plutarch,
x. 101.] making roads through the Dalmatian
Hill-Countries, which are useful to this day;--but could not
operate on the Netherlands in the way proposed. The Kaiser's
Imperial Ostend East-India Company, which convulsed the Diplomatic
mind for seven years to come, and made Europe lurch from side to
side in a terrific manner, proved a mere paper Company; never sent
any ships, only produced Diplomacies, and "had the honor to be."
This was the third grand Shadow which the Kaiser chased, shaking
all the world, poor crank world, as he strode after it; and this
also ended in zero, and several tons of diplomatic correspondence,
carried once by breathless estaffettes, and now silent,
gravitating towards Acheron all of them, and interesting to the
spiders only.

Poor good Kaiser: they say he was a humane stately gentleman,
stately though shortish; fond of pardoning criminals where he
could; very polite to Muratori and the Antiquaries, even to
English Rymer, in opening his Archives to them,--and made roads in
the Dalmatian Hill-Country, which remain to this day. I do not
wonder he grew more and more saturnine, and addicted to solid
taciturn field-sports. His Political "Perforce-Hunt (PARFORCE
JAGD)," with so many two-footed terriers, and legationary beagles,
distressing all the world by their baying and their burrowing, had
proved to be of Shadows; and melted into thin air, to a very
singular degree!