LETTER X.

The Adriatic—Albania—Gay Costumes and Beauty of the Albanese—Capo d’Istria—Trieste resembles an American Town—Visit to the Austrian Authorities of the Province—Curiosity of the Inhabitants—Gentlemanly Reception by the Military Commandant—Visit to Vienna—Singular Notions of the Austrians respecting the Americans—Similarity of the Scenery to that of New England—Meeting with German Students—Frequent Sight of Soldiers and Military Preparation—Picturesque Scenery of Styria.

The Doge of Venice has a fair bride in the Adriatic. It is the fourth of July, and with the Italian Cape Colonna on our left and the long, low coast of Albania shading the horizon on the east, we are gazing upon her from the deck of the first American frigate that has floated upon her bosom. We head for Venice, and there is a stir of anticipation on board, felt even through the hilarity of our cherished anniversary. I am the only one in the ward-room to whom that wonderful city is familiar, and I feel as if I had forestalled my own happiness—the first impression of it is so enviable.

It is difficult to conceive the gay costumes and handsome features of the Albanese existing in these barren mountains that bind the Adriatic. It has been but a continued undulation of rock and sand, for three days past; and the closer we hug to the shore, the more we look at the broad canvass above us, and pray for wind. We make Capo d’Istria now, a small town nestled in a curve of the sea, and an hour or two more will bring us to Trieste, where we drop anchor, we hope for many an hour of novelty and pleasure.

Trieste lies sixty or eighty miles from Venice, across the head of the gulf. The shore between is piled up to the sky with the “blue Friuli mountains;” and from the town of Trieste, the low coast of Istria breaks away at a right angle to the south, forming the eastern bound of the Adriatic. As we ran into the harbour on our last tack, we passed close under the garden walls of the villa of the ex-queen of Naples, a lovely spot just in the suburbs. The palace of Jerome Bonaparte was also pointed out to us by the pilot, on the hill just above. They have both removed since to Florence, and their palaces are occupied by English. We dropped anchor within a half mile of the pier, and the flags of a dozen American vessels were soon distinguishable among the various colours of the shipping in the port.

I accompanied Commodore Patterson to-day on a visit of ceremony to the Austrian authorities of the province. We made our way with difficulty through the people, crowding in hundreds to the water-side, and following us with the rude freedom of a showman’s audience. The vice-governor, a polite but Frenchified German count, received us with every profession of kindness. His Parisian gesture sat ill enough upon his national high cheekbones, lank hair, and heavy shoulders. We left him to call upon the military commandant, an Irishman, who occupies part of the palace of the ex-king of Westphalia. Our reception by him was gentlemanly, cordial, and dignified. I think the Irish are, after all, the best-mannered people in the world. They are found in every country, as adventurers for honour, and they change neither in character nor manner. They follow foreign fashions, and acquire a foreign language; but in the first they retain their heart, and in the latter their brogue. They are Irishmen always. Count Nugent is high in the favour of the Emperor, has the commission of a field-marshal, and is married to a Neapolitan princess, who is a most accomplished and lovely woman, and related to most of the royal houses of Europe. His reputation as a soldier is well known, and he seems to me to have no drawback to the enviableness of his life, except its expatriation.

Trieste is a busy, populous place, resembling extremely our new towns in America. We took a stroll through the principal streets after our visits were over, and I was surprised at the splendour of the shops, and the elegance of the costumes and equipages. It is said to contain thirty thousand inhabitants.

Vienna.—The frigates were to lie three or four weeks at Trieste. One half of the officers had taken the steamboat for Venice on the second evening of our arrival, and the other half waited impatiently their turn of absence. Vienna was but some four hundred miles distant, and I might never be so near it again. On a rainy evening, at nine o’clock, I left Trieste in theeil-wagon, with a German courier, and commenced the ascent of the spur of the Friuli mountains that overhangs the bay.

My companions inside were a merchant from Gratz, a fantastical and poor Hungarian count, a Corfu shop-keeper, and an Italian ex-militaire and present apothecary, going to Vienna to marry a lady whom he had never seen. After a little bandying of compliments in German, of which I understood nothing except that they were apologies for the incessant smoking of three disgusting pipes, the conversation, fortunately for me, settled into Italian. The mountain was steep and very high, and my friends soon grew conversable. The novelty of two American frigates in the harbour naturally decided the first topic. Our Gratz merchant was surprised at the light colour of the officers he had seen, and doubted if they were not Englishmen in the American service. He had always heard Americans were black. “They are so,” said the soldier-apothecary; “I saw the real Americans yesterday in a boat, quite black.” (One of the cutters of the “Constellation” has a negro crew, which he had probably seen at the pier.) The assertion seemed to satisfy the doubts of all parties. They had wondered how such beautiful ships could come from a savage country. It was now explained. “They were bought from the English, and officered by Englishmen.” I was too much amused by their speculations to undeceive them; and with my head thrust half out of the window to avoid choking with the smoke of their pipes, I gazed back at the glittering lights of the town below, and indulged the never-palling sensation of a first entrance into a new country. The lantern at the peak of the “United States” was the last thing I saw as we rose the brow of the mountain, and started off on a rapid trot towards Vienna.

I awoke at daylight with the sudden stop of the carriage. We were at the low door of a German tavern, and a clear, rosy, good-humoured looking girl bade us good morning, as we alighted one by one. The phrase was so like English, that I asked for a basin of water in my mother tongue. The similarity served me again. She brought it without hesitation; but the question she asked me as she set it down was like nothing that had ever before entered my ears. The count smiled at my embarrassment, and explained that she wished to know if I wanted soap.

I was struck with the cleanliness of everything. The tables, chairs and floors, looked worn away with scrubbing. Breakfast was brought in immediately—eggs, rolls, and coffee, the latter in a glass bottle like a chemist’s retort, corked up tightly, and wrapped in a snowy napkin. It was an excellent breakfast, served with cleanliness and good humour, and cost about fourteen cents each. Even from this single meal, it seemed to me that I had entered a country of simple manners and kind feelings. The conductor gravely kissed the cheek of the girl who had waited on us, my companions lit their pipes afresh, and the postillion, in cocked hat and feather, blew a stave of a waltz on his horn, and fell into a steady trot, which he kept up with phlegmatic perseverance to the end of his post.

As we get away from the sea, the land grows richer, and the farm-houses more frequent. We are in the duchy of Carniola, forty or fifty miles from Trieste. How very unlike Italy and France, and how very like New England it is! There are no ruined castles, nor old cathedrals. Every village has its small white church, with a tapering spire, large manufactories cluster on the water-courses, the small rivers are rapid and deep, the horses large and strong, the barns immense, the crops heavy, the people grave and hard at work, and not a pauper by the post together. We are very far north, too, and the climate is like New England. The wind, though it is midsummer, is bracing, and there is no travelling as in Italy, with one’s hat off and breast open, dissolving at midnight in the luxury of the soft air. The houses, too, are ugly and comfortable, staring with paint and pierced in all directions with windows. The children are white-headed and serious. The hills are half-covered with woods, and clusters of elms are left here and there through the meadows, as if their owners could afford to let them grow for a shade to the mowers. I was perpetually exclaiming, “how like America!”

We dined at Laybach. My companions had found out by my passport that I was an American, and their curiosity was most amusing. The report of the arrival of the two frigates had reached the capital of Illyria, and with the assistance of the information of my friends, I found myself an object of universal attention. The crowd around the door of the hotel looked into the windows while we were eating, and followed me round the house as if I had been a savage. One of the passengers told me they connected the arrival of the ships with some political object, and thought I might be the envoy. The landlord asked me if we had potatoes in our country.

I took a walk through the city after dinner with my mincing friend the count. The low, two-story wooden houses, the sidewalks enclosed with trees, the matter-of-fact looking people, the shut windows, and neat white churches remind me again strongly of America. It was like the more retired streets of Portland or Portsmouth. The Illyrian language spoken here, seemed to me the most inarticulate succession of sounds I had ever heard. In crossing the bridge in the centre of the town, we met a party of German students travelling on foot with their knapsacks. My friend spoke to them to gratify my curiosity. I wished to know where they were going. They all spoke French and Italian, and seemed in high heart, bold, cheerful, and intelligent. They were bound for Egypt, determined to seek their fortunes in the service of the present reforming and liberal pacha. Their enthusiasm, when they were told I was an American, quite thrilled me. They closed about me and looked into my eyes, as if they expected to read the spirit of freedom in them. I was taken by the arms at last, and almost forced into a beer-shop. The large tankards were filled, each touched mine and the others, and “America” was drank with a grave earnestness of manner that moved my heart within me. They shook me by the hand on parting, and gave me a blessing in German, which as the old count translated it, was the first word I have learned of their language. We had met constantly parties of them on the road. They all dress alike, in long travelling frocks of brown stuff, and small green caps with straight visors; but, coarsely as they are clothed, and humbly as they seem to be faring, their faces bear always a mark that can never be mistaken. They look like scholars.

The roads, by the way, are crowded with pedestrians. It seems to be the favourite mode of travelling in this country. We have scarce met a carriage, and I have seen, I am sure, in one day, two hundred passengers on foot. Among them is a class of people peculiar to Germany. I was astonished occasionally at being asked for charity by stout, well-dressed young men, to all appearance as respectable as any travellers on the road. Expressing my surprise, my companion informed me that they wereapprentices, and that the custom or law of the country compelled them, after completing their indentures, to travel in some distant province, and depend upon charity and their own exertions for two or three years before becoming masters at their trade. It is a singular custom, and I should think, a useful lesson in hardship and self-reliance. They held out their hats with a confident independence of look that quite satisfied me they felt no degradation in it.

We soon entered the province of Styria, and brighter rivers, greener woods, richer and more graceful uplands and meadows, do not exist in the world. I had thought the scenery of Stockbridge, in my own State, unequalled till now. I could believe myself there, were not the women alone working in the fields, and the roads lined for miles together with military wagons and cavalry upon march. The conscript law of Austria compels every peasant to servefourteenyears! and the labours of agriculture fall, of course, almost exclusively upon females. Soldiers swarm like locusts through the country, but they seem as inoffensive and as much at home as the cattle in the farm-yards. It is a curious contrast, to my eye, to see parks of artillery glistening in the midst of a wheat-field, and soldiers sitting about under the low thatches of these peaceful-looking cottages. I do not think, among the thousands that I have passed in three days’ travel, I have seen a gesture or heard a syllable. If sitting, they smoke and sit still, and if travelling, they economise motion to a degree that is wearisome to the eye.

Words are limited, and the description of scenery becomes tiresome. It is a fault that the sense of beauty, freshening constantly on the traveller, compels him who makes a note of impressions to mark every other line with the same ever-recurring exclamations of pleasure. I saw a hundred miles of unrivalled scenery in Styria, and how can I describe it? I were keeping silence on a world of enjoyment to pass it over. We come to a charming descent into a valley. The town beneath, the river, the embracing mountains, the swell to the ear of its bells ringing some holiday, affect my imagination powerfully. I take out my tablets. What shall I say? How convey to your minds who have not seen it, the charm of a scene I can only describe as I have described a thousand others?

LETTER XI.

Gratz—Vienna.

We had followed stream after stream through a succession of delicious valleys for a hundred miles. Descending from a slight eminence, we came upon the broad and rapid Muhr, and soon after caught sight of a distant citadel upon a rock. As we approached, it struck me as one of the most singular freaks of nature I had ever seen. A pyramid, perhaps three hundred feet in height, and precipitous on every side, rose abruptly in the midst of a broad and level plain, and around it in a girdle of architecture, lay the capital of Styria. The fortress on the summit hung like an eagle’s nest over the town, and from its towers, a pistol-shot would reach the outermost point of the wall.

Wearied with travelling near three hundred miles without sleep, I dropped upon a bed at the hotel, with an order to be called in two hours. It was noon, and we were to remain at Gratz till the next morning. My friend, the Hungarian, had promised, as he threw himself on the opposite bed, to wake and accompany me in a walk through the town, but the shake of a stout German chambermaid at the appointed time had no effect upon him, and I descended to my dinner alone. I had lost my interpreter. Thecartewas in German, of which I did not know even the letters. After appealing in vain in French and Italian to the persons eating near me, I fixed my finger at hazard upon a word, and the waiter disappeared. The result was a huge dish of cabbage cooked in some filthy oil and graced with a piece of beef. I was hesitating whether to dine on bread or make another attempt, when a gentlemanly man of some fifty years came in and took the vacant seat at my table. He addressed me immediately in French, and smiling at my difficulties, undertook to order a dinner for me something less national. We improved our acquaintance with a bottle of Johannesburgh, and after dinner he kindly offered to accompany me in my walk through the city.

Gratz is about the size of Boston, a plain German city, with little or no pretensions to style. The military band was playing a difficult waltz very beautifully in the public square, but no one was listening except a group of young men dressed in the worst taste of dandyism. We mounted by a zigzag path to the fortress. On a shelf of the precipice, half way up, hangs a small casino, used as a beer-shop. The view from the summit was a feast to the eye. The wide and lengthening valley of the Muhr lay asleep beneath its loads of grain, its villas and farm-houses, the picture of “waste and mellow fruitfulness,” the rise to the mountains around the head of the valley was clustered with princely dwellings, thick forests with glades between them, and churches with white slender spires shooting from the bosom of elms, and right at our feet, circling around the precipitous rock for protection, lay the city enfolded in its rampart, and sending up to our ears the sound of every wheel that rolled through her streets. Among the striking buildings below, my friend pointed out to me a palace which he said had been lately purchased by Joseph Bonaparte, who was coming here to reside. The people were beginning to turn out for their evening walk upon the ramparts which are planted with trees and laid out for a promenade, and we descended to mingle in the crowd.

My old friend had a great many acquaintances. He presented me to several of the best dressed people we met, all of whom invited me to supper. I had been in Italy almost a year and a half, and such a thing had never happened to me. We walked about until six, and as I preferred going to the play, which opened at that early hour, we took tickets for “Der Schlimme Leisel,” and were seated presently in one of the simplest and prettiest theatres I have ever seen.

“Der Schlimme Leisel” was an old maid who kept house for an old bachelor brother, proposing, at the time the play opens, to marry. Her dislike to the match, from the dread of losing her authority over his household, formed the humour of the piece, and was admirably represented. After various unsuccessful attempts to prevent the nuptials, the lady is brought to the house, and the old maid enters in a towering passion, throws down her keys, and flirts out of the room with a threat that she “will go to America!” Fortunately she is not driven to that extremity. The lady has been already married secretly to a poorer lover, and the old bachelor, after the first shock of the discovery, settles a fortune on them, and returns to his celibacy and his old maid sister, to the satisfaction of all parties. Certainly the German is the most unmusical language of Babel. If my good old friend had not translated it for me word for word, I should scarce have believed the play to be more than a gibbering pantomime. I shall think differently when I have learned it, no doubt, but a strange language strikes upon one’s ear so oddly! I was quite too tired when the play was over (which, by the way, was at the sober hour of nine,) to accept any of the kind invitations of which my companion reminded me. We suppedtête-à-tête, instead, at the hotel. I was delighted with my new acquaintance. He was an old citizen of the world. He had left Gratz at twenty, and after thirty years wandering from one part of the globe to the other, had returned to end his days in his birthplace. His relations were all dead, and speaking all the languages of Europe, he preferred living at a hotel for the society of strangers. With a great deal of wisdom he had preserved his good humour toward the world; and I think I have rarely seen a kinder, and never a happier man. I parted from him with regret, and the next morning at daylight, had resumed my seat at theeil-wagon.

Imagine the Hudson, at the highlands, reduced to a sparkling little river a bowshot across, and a rich valley thridded by a road accompanying the remaining space between the mountains, and you have the scenery for the first thirty miles beyond Gratz. There is one more difference. On the edge of one of the most towering precipices, clear up against the clouds, hang the ruins of a noble castle. The rents in the wall, and the embrasures in the projecting turrets, seem set into the sky. Trees and vines grow within and about it, and the lacings of the twisted roots seem all that keep it together. It is a perfect “castle in the air.”

A long day’s journey and another long night (during which we passed Neustadt, on the confines of Hungary) brought us within sight of Baden, but an hour or two from Vienna. It was just sunrise, and market-carts and pedestrians and suburban vehicles of all descriptions notified us of our approach to a great capital. A few miles farther we were stopped in the midst of an extensive plain by a crowd of carriages. A criminal was about being guillotined. What was that to one who saw Vienna for the first time? A few steps farther the postillion was suddenly stopped. A gentleman alighted from a carriage in which were two ladies, and opened the door of the diligence. It was the bride of the soldier-apothecary come to meet him with her mother and brother. He was buried in dust, just waked out of sleep, a three days’ beard upon his face, and, at the best, not a very lover-like person. He ran to the carriage door, jumped in, and there was an immediate cry for water. The bride had fainted! We left her in his arms and drove on. The courier had no bowels for love.

There is a small Gothic pillar before us, on the rise of a slight elevation. Thence we shall see Vienna. “Stop, thou tasteless postillion!” Was ever such a scene revealed to mortal sight! It is like Paris from the Barrière de l’Etoile—it seems to cover the world. Oh, beautiful Vienna! What is that broad water on which the rising sun glances so brightly?The Danube!What is that unparalleled Gothic structure piercing the sky? What columns are these? What spires? Beautiful, beautiful city!

Vienna.—It must be a fine city that impresses one with its splendour before breakfast, after driving all night in a mail-coach. It was six o’clock in the morning when I left the post-office, in Vienna, to walk to a hotel. The shops were still shut, the milkwomen were beating at the gates, and the short, quick ring upon the church bells summoned all early risers to mass. A sudden turn brought me upon a square. In its centre stood the most beautiful fabric that has ever yet filled my eye. It looked like the structure of a giant, encrusted with fairies—a majestically proportioned mass, and a spire tapering to the clouds, but a surface so curiously beautiful, so traced and fretted, so full of exquisite ornament, that it seemed rather some curious cabinet gem, seen through a magnifier, than a building in the open air. In these foreign countries, the labourer goes in with his load to pray, and I did not hesitate to enter the splendid Church of St. Etienne, though a man followed me with a portmanteau on his back. What a wilderness of arches! Pulpits, chapels, altars, ciboriums, confessionals, choirs, all in the exquisite slenderness of Gothic tracery, and all of one venerable and time-worn dye, as if the incense of a myriad censers had steeped them in their spicy odours. The mass was chanting, and hundreds were on their knees about me, and not one without some trace that he had come in on his way to his daily toil. It was the hour of thepoor man’s prayer. The rich were asleep in their beds. The glorious roof over their heads, the costly and elaborated pillars against which they pressed their foreheads, the music and the priestly service, were, for that hour, theirs alone.

I seldom have felt the spirit of a place of worship so strong upon me.

The foundations of St. Etienne were laid seven hundred years ago. It has twice been partly burnt, and has been embellished in succession by nearly all the emperors of Germany. Among its many costly tombs, the most interesting is that of the hero Eugene of Savoy, erected by his niece, the Princess Therese, of Liechtenstein. There is also a vault in which it is said, in compliance with an old custom, the entrails of all the emperors are deposited.

Having marked thus much upon my tablets, I remembered the patient porter of my baggage, who had taken the opportunity to drop on his knees while I was gazing about, and having achieved his matins, was now waiting submissively till I was ready to proceed. A turn or two brought us to the hotel, where a bath and a breakfast soon restored me, and in an hour I was again on the way with avalet de place, to visit the tomb of the son of Napoleon.

He lies in the deep vaults of the capuchin convent, with eighty-four of the imperial family of Austria beside him. A monk answered our pull at the cloister-bell, and the valet translated my request into German. He opened the gate with a guttural “Yaw!” and lighting a wax candle at a lamp burning before the image of the Virgin, unlocked a massive brazen door at the end of the corridor, and led the way into the vault. The capuchin was as pale as marble, quite bald, though young, and with features which expressed, I thought, the subdued fierceness of a devil. He impatiently waved away the officious interpreter after a moment or two, and asked me if I understood Latin. Nothing could have been more striking than the whole scene. The immense bronze sarcophagi lay in long aisles behind railings and gates of iron, and as the long-robed monk strode on with his lamp through the darkness, pronouncing the name and title of each as he unlocked the door and struck it with his heavy key, he seemed to me, with his solemn pronunciation, like some mysterious being calling forth the imperial tenants to judgment. He appeared to have something of scorn in his manner as he looked on the splendid workmanship of the vast coffin, and pronounced the sounding titles of the ashes within. At that of the celebrated Empress Maria Theresa alone, he stopped to make a comment. It was a simple tribute to her virtues, and he uttered it slowly, as if he were merely musing to himself. He passed on to her husband, Francis the First, and then proceeded uninterruptedly till he came to a new copper coffin. It lay in a niche, beneath a tall, dim window, and the monk, merely pointing to the inscription, set down his lamp, and began to pace up and down the damp floor, with his head on his breast, as if it was a matter of course that here I was to be left awhile to my thoughts.

It was certainly the spot, if there is one in the world, to feel emotion. In the narrow enclosure on which my finger rested, lay the last hopes of Napoleon. The heart of the master-spirit of the world was bound up in these ashes. He was beautiful, accomplished, generous, brave. He was loved with a sort of idolatry by the nation with which he had passed his childhood. He had won all hearts. His death seemed impossible. There was a universal prayer that he might live, his inheritance of glory was so incalculable.

I read his epitaph. It was that of a private individual. It gave his name, and his father’s and mother’s; and then enumerated his virtues, with a commonplace regret for his early death. The monk took up his lamp and reascended to the cloister in silence. He shut the convent-door behind me, and the busy street seemed to me profane. How short a time does the most moving event interrupt the common current of life.

LETTER XII.

Vienna—Magnificence of the Emperor’s Manège—The Young Queen of Hungary—The Palace—Hall of Curiosities, Jewelry, &c.—The Polytechnic School—Geometrical Figures described by the Vibrations of Musical Notes—Liberal Provision for the Public Institutions—Popularity of the Emperor.

I had quite forgotten, in packing up my little portmanteau to leave the ship, that I was coming so far north. Scarce a week ago, in the south of Italy, we were panting in linen jackets. I find myself shivering here, in a latitude five hundred miles north of Boston, with no remedy but exercise and an extra shirt, for a cold that would grace December.

It is amusing, sometimes, to abandon one’s self to avalet de place. Compelled to resort to one from my ignorance of the German, I have fallen upon a dropsical fellow, with a Bardolph nose, whose French is execrable, and whose selection of objects of curiosity is worthy of his appearance. His first point was the emperor’s stables. We had walked a mile and a half to see them. Here were two or three hundred horses of all breeds, in a building that the emperor himself might live in, with a magnificent inner court for amanège, and a wilderness of grooms, dogs, and other appurtenances. I am as fond of a horse as most people, but with all Vienna before me, and little time to lose, I broke into the midst of the head-groom’s pedigrees, and requested to be shown the way out. Monsieur Karl did not take the hint. We walked on a half mile, and stopped before another large building. “What is this?”—“The imperial carriage-house, Monseigneur.” I was about turning on my heel and taking my liberty into my own hands, when the large door flew open, and the blaze of gilding from within turned me from my purpose. I thought I had seen thene plus ultraof equipages at Rome. The imperial family of Austria ride in more style than his Holiness. The models are lighter and handsomer, while the gold and crimson is put on quite as resplendently. The most curious part of the show were ten or twelve statetraineauxor sleighs. I can conceive nothing more brilliant than a turn-out of these magnificent structures upon the snow. They are built with aerial lightness, of gold and sable, with a seat fifteen or twenty feet from the ground, and are driven, with two or four horses, by the royal personage himself. The grace of their shape and the splendour of their gilded trappings are inconceivable to one who has never seen them.

Our way lay through the court of the imperial palace. A large crowd was collected round a carriage with four horses standing at the side-door. As we approached it, all hats flew off, and a beautiful woman, of perhaps twenty-eight, came down the steps, leading a handsome boy of two or three years. It was the young Queen of Hungary and her son. If I had seen such a face in a cottageornéeon the borders of an American lake, I should have thought it made for the spot.

We entered a door of the palace, at which stood a ferocious-looking Croat sentinel, near seven feet high. Three German travelling students had just been refused admittance. A little man appeared at the ring of the bell within, and after a preliminary explanation by my valet, probably a lie, he made a low bow, and invited me to enter. I waited a moment, and a permission was brought me to see the imperial treasury. Handing it to Karl, I requested him to get permission inserted for my three friends at the door. He accomplished it in the same incomprehensible manner in which he had obtained my own, and introducing them with the ill-disguised contempt of a valet for all men with dusty coats, we commenced the rounds of the curiosities together.

A large clock, facing us as we entered, was just striking. From either side of its base, like companies of gentlemen and ladies advancing to greet each other, appeared figures in the dress and semblance of the royal family of Austria, who remained a moment, and then retired, bowing themselves courteously out backward. It is a costly affair, presented by the landgrave of Hesse to Maria Theresa, in 1750.

After a succession of watches, snuff-boxes, necklaces, and jewels of every description, we came to the famous Florentine diamond, said to be the largest in the world. It was lost by a duke of Burgundy upon the battle-field of Granson, found by a soldier, who parted with it for five florins, sold again, and found its way at last to the royal treasury of Florence, whence it was brought to Vienna. Its weight is one hundred and thirty-nine and a half carats, and it is estimated at one million, forty-three thousand, three hundred and thirty-four florins. It looks like a lump of light. Enormous diamonds surround it, but it hangs among them like Hesperus among the stars.

The next side of the gallery is occupied by specimens of carved ivory. Many of them are antique, and half of them are more beautiful than decent. There were two bas-reliefs among them by Raphael Donner, which were worth, to my eye, all the gems in the gallery. They were taken from Scripture, and represented theWoman of Samaria at the well, andHagar waiting for the death of her son. No powers of elocution, no enhancement of poetry could bring those touching passages of the Bible so movingly to the heart. The latter particularly arrested me. The melancholy beauty of Hagar, sitting with her head bowed upon her knees, while her boy is lying a little way off, beneath a shrub of the desert, is a piece of unparalleled workmanship. It may well hang in the treasury of an emperor.

Miniatures of the royal family in their childhood, set in costly gems, massive plate curiously chased, services of gold, robes of diamonds, gem-hilted swords, dishes wrought of solid integral agates, and finally the crown and sceptre of Austria upon red velvet cushions, looking very much like their imitations on the stage, were among the world of splendours unfolded to our eyes. The Florentine diamond and the bas-reliefs by Raphael Donner were all I coveted. The beauty of the diamond was royal. It needed no imagination to feel its value. A savage would pick it up in the desert for a star dropped out of the sky. For the rest, the demand on my admiration fatigued me, and I was glad to escape with my dusty friends from the university, and exchange courtesies in the free air. One of them spoke English a little and called me “Mister Englishman,” on bidding me adieu. I was afraid of a beer-shop scene in Vienna, and did not correct the mistake.

As we were going out of the court, four covered wagons, drawn each by four superb horses, dashed through the gate. I waited a moment to see what they contained. Thirty or forty servants in livery came out from the palace, and took from the wagons quantities of empty baskets carefully labelled with directions. They were from Schoenbrunn, where the emperor is at present residing with his court, and had come to market for the imperial kitchen. It should be a good dinner that requires sixteen such horses to carry to the cook.

It was the hungry hour of two, and I was still musing on the emperor’s dinner, and admiring the anxious interest his servants took in their disposition of the baskets, when a blast of military music came to my ear. It was from the barracks of the imperial guard, and I stepped under the arch, and listened to them an hour. How gloriously they played! It was probably the finest band in Austria. I have heard much good music, but of its kind, this was like a new sensation to me. They stand, in playing, just under the window at which the emperor appears daily when in the city.

I have been indebted to Mr. Schwartz, the American consul at Vienna, for a very unusual degree of kindness. Among other polite attentions, he procured for me to-day an admission to the Polytechnic School—a favour granted with difficulty, except on the appointed days for public visits.

The Polytechnic School was established in 1816, by the present emperor. The building stands outside the rampart of the city, of elegant proportions, and about as large as all the buildings of Yale or Harvard College thrown into one. Its object is to promote instruction in the practical sciences, or, in other words, to give a practical education for the trades, commerce, or manufactures. It is divided into three departments. The first is preparatory, and the course occupies two years. The studies are religion and morals, elementary mathematics, natural history, geography, universal history, grammar, and “the German style,” declamation, drawing, writing, and the French, Italian, and Bohemian languages. To enter this class, the boy must be thirteen years of age, and pays fifty cents per month.

The second course is commercial, and occupies one year. The studies are mercantile correspondence, commercial law, mercantile arithmetic, the keeping of books, geography and history, as they relate to commerce, acquaintance with merchandise, &c. &c.

The third course lasts one year. The studies are chemistry as applicable to arts, and trades, the fermentation of woods, tannery, soap-making, dying, blanching, &c. &c.; also mechanism, practical geometry, civil architecture, hydraulics, and technology. The two last courses are given gratis.

The whole is under the direction of a principal, who has under him thirty professors and two or three guardians of apparatus.

We were taken first into a noble hall, lined with glass cases containing specimens of every article manufactured in the German dominions. From the finest silks, down to shoes, wigs, nails, and mechanics’ tools, here were all the products of human labour. The variety was astonishing. Within the limits of a single room, the pupil is here made acquainted with every mechanic art known in his country.

The next hall was devoted to models. Here was every kind of bridge, fortification, lighthouse, dry dock, breakwater, canal-lock, &c. &c.; models of steamboats, of ships, and of churches, in every style of architecture. It was a little world.

We went thence to the chemical apartment. The servitor here, a man without education, has constructed all the apparatus. He is an old grey-headed man, of a keen German countenance, and great simplicity of manners. He takes great pride in having constructed the largest and most complete chemical apparatus—now in London. The one which he exhibited to us occupies the whole of an immense hall, and produces an electric discharge like the report of a pistol. The ordinary batteries in our universities are scarce a twentieth part as powerful.

After showing us a variety of experiments, the old man turned suddenly and asked us if we knew the geometrical figures described by the vibrations of musical notes. We confessed our ignorance, and he produced a pane of glass covered with black sand. He then took a fiddle bow, and holding the glass horizontally, drew it downward against the edge at a peculiar angle. The sand flew as if it had been bewitched, and took the shape of a perfect square. He asked us to name a figure. We named a circle. Another careful draw of the bow, and the sand flew into a circle, with scarce a particle out of its perfect curve. Twenty times he repeated the experiment, and with the most complicated figures drawn on paper. He had reduced it to an art. It would have hung him for a magician a century ago.

However one condemns the policy of Austria with respect to her subject provinces and the rest of Europe, it is impossible not to be struck with her liberal provision for her own immediate people. The public institutions of all kinds in Vienna are allowed to be the finest and most liberally endowed on the continent. Her hospitals, prisons, houses of industry, and schools, are on an imperial scale of munificence. The emperor himself is a father to his subjects, and every tongue blesses him. Napoleon envied him their affection, it is said, and certainly no monarch could be more universally beloved.

Among the institutions of Vienna are two which are peculiar. One is amaison d’accouchement, into which any female can enter veiled, remain till after the period of her labour, and depart unknown, leaving her child in the care of the institution, which rears it as a foundling. Its object is a benevolent prevention of infanticide.

The other is a private penitentiary, to which the fathers of respectable families can send for reformation children they are unable to govern. The name is kept a secret, and the culprits are returned to their families after a proper time, punished without disgrace. Pride of character is thus preserved, while the delinquent is firmly corrected.

LETTER XIII.

Vienna—Palaces and Gardens—Mosaic Copy of Da Vinci’s “Last Supper”—Collection of Warlike Antiquities; Scanderburg’s Sword, Montezuma’s Tomahawk, Relics of the Crusaders, Warriors in Armour, the Farmer of Augsburg—Room of Portraits of Celebrated Individuals—Gold Busts of Jupiter and Juno—The Glacis, full of Gardens, the General Resort of the People—Universal Spirit of Enjoyment—Simplicity and Confidence in the Manners of the Viennese—Baden.

At the foot of a hill in one of the beautiful suburbs of Vienna, stands a noble palace, called the Lower Belvidere. On the summit of the hill stands another, equally magnificent, called the Upper Belvidere, and between the two extend broad and princely gardens, open to the public.

On the lower floor of the entrance-hall in the former palace, lies the copy, in mosaic, of Leonardo da Vinci’s “Last Supper,” done at Napoleon’s order. Though supposed to be the finest piece of mosaic in the world, it is so large that they have never found a place for it. A temporary balcony has been erected on one side of the room, and the spectator mounts nearly to the ceiling to get a fair position for looking down upon it. That unrivalled picture, now going to decay in the convent at Milan, will probably depend upon this copy for its name with posterity. The expression in the faces of the apostles is as accurately preserved as in the admirable engraving of Morghen.

The remaining halls in the palace are occupied by a grand collection of antiquities, principally of a warlike character. When I read in my old worm-eaten Burton, of “Scanderburg’s strength,” I never thought to see his sword. It stands here against the wall, along straight weapon with a cross hilt, which few men could heave to their shoulders. The tomahawk of poor Montezuma hangs near it. It was presented to the emperor by the king of Spain. It is of a dark granite, and polished very beautifully. What a singular curiosity to find in Austria!

The windows are draped with flags dropping in pieces with age. This, so in tatters, was renowned in the crusades. It was carried to the Holy Land and brought back by the archduke Ferdinand.

A hundred warriors in bright armour stand around the hall. Their visors are down, their swords in their hands, their feet planted for a spring. One can scarce believe there are no men in them. The name of some renowned soldier is attached to each. This was the armour of the cruel Visconti of Milan—that of Duke Alba of Florence—both costly suits, beautifully inlaid with gold. In the centre of the room stands a gigantic fellow in full armour, with a sword on his thigh and a beam in his right hand. It is the shell of the famous farmer of Augsburg, who was in the service of one of the emperors. He was over eight feet in height, and limbed in proportion. How near such relics bring history! With what increased facility one pictures the warrior to his fancy, seeing his sword, and hearing the very rattle of his armour. Yet it puts one into Hamlet’s vein to see a contemptible valet lay his hand with impunity on the armed shoulder, shaking the joints that once belted the soul of a Visconti! I turned, in leaving the room, to take a second look at the flag of the crusade. It had floated, perhaps, over the helmet of Cœur de Lion. Saladin may have had it in his eye, assaulting the Christian camp with his pagans.

In the next room hung fifty or sixty portraits of celebrated individuals, presented in their time to the emperors of Austria. There was one of Mary of Scotland. It is a face of superlative loveliness, taken with a careless and most bewitching half smile, and yet not without the look of royalty, which one traces in all the pictures of the unfortunate queen. One of the emperors of Germany married Philippina, a farmer’s daughter, and here is her portrait. It is done in the prim old style of the middle ages, but the face is full of character. Her husband’s portrait hangs beside it, and she looks more born for an emperor than he.

Hall after hall followed, of costly curiosities. A volume would not describe them. Two gold busts of Jupiter and Juno, by Benvenuto Cellini, attracted my attention particularly. They were very beautiful, but I would copy them in bronze, and coin “the thunderer and his queen,” were they mine.

Admiration is the most exhausting thing in the world. The servitor opened a gate leading into the gardens of the palace, that we might mount to the Upper Belvidere, which contains the imperial gallery of paintings. But I had no more strength. I could have dug in the field till dinner-time—but to be astonished more than three hours without respite is beyond me. I took a stroll in the garden. How delightfully the unmeaning beauty of a fountain refreshes one after this inward fatigue. I walked on, up one alley and down another, happy in finding nothing that surprised me, or worked upon my imagination, or bothered my historical recollections, or called upon my worn-out superlatives for expression. I fervently hoped not to have another new sensation till after dinner.

Vienna is an immense city (two hundred and fifty thousand inhabitants), but its heart only is walled in. You may walk from gate to gate in twenty minutes. In leaving the walls you come upon a feature of the city which distinguishes it from every other in Europe. Its rampart is encircled by an open park (called the Glacis), a quarter of a mile in width and perhaps three miles in circuit, which is, in fact, in the centre of Vienna. The streets commence again on the other side of it, and on going from one part of the city to another, you constantly cross this lovely belt of verdure, which girds her heart like a cestus of health. The top of the rampart itself is planted with trees, and, commanding beautiful views in every direction, it is generally thronged with people. (It was a favourite walk of the Duke of Reichstadt.) Between this and the Glacis lies a deep trench, crossed by draw-bridges at every gate, the bottom of which is cultivated prettily as a flower garden. Altogether Vienna is a beautiful city. Paris may have single views about the Tuileries that are finer than anything of the same kind here, but this capital of western Europe, as a whole, is quite the most imposing city I have seen.

The Glacis is full of gardens. I requested my disagreeable necessity of a valet, this afternoon, to take me to two or three of the most general resorts of the people. We passed out by one of the city gates, five minutes’ walk from the hotel, and entered immediately into a crowd of people, sauntering up and down under the alleys of the Glacis. A little farther on we found a fanciful building, buried in trees, and occupied as a summer café In a little circular temple in front was stationed a band of music, and around it for a considerable distance were placed small tables filled just now with elegantly dressed people, eating ices, or drinking coffee. It was in every respect like a private fête champètre. I wandered about for an hour, expecting involuntarily to meet some acquaintance—there was such a look of kindness and unreserve throughout. It is a desolate feeling to be alone in such a crowd.

We jumped into a carriage and drove round the Glacis for a mile, passing everywhere crowds of people idling leisurely along and evidently out for pleasure. We stopped before a superb façade, near one of the gates of the city. It was the entrance to the Volksgarten. We entered in front of a fountain, and turning up a path to the left, found our way almost impeded by another crowd. A semi circular building, with a range of columns in front encircling a stand for a band of music, was surrounded by perhaps two or three thousand people. Small tables and seats under trees, were spread in every direction within reach of the music. The band played charmingly. Waiters in white jackets and aprons were running to and fro, receiving and obeying orders for refreshments, and here again all seemed abandoned to one spirit of enjoyment. I had thought we must have left all Vienna at the other garden. I wondered how so many people could be spared from their occupations and families. It was no holiday. “It is always as gay in fair weather,” said Karl.

A little back into the garden stands a beautiful little structure, on the model of the temple of Theseus in Greece. It was built for Canova’s group of “Theseus and the Centaur,” bought by the emperor. I had seen copies of it in Rome, but was of course much more struck with the original. It is a noble piece of sculpture.

Still farther back, on the rise of a mount, stood another fanciful café, with another band of music—and another crowd! After we had walked around it, my man was hurrying me away. “You have not seen the Augarten,” said he. It stands upon a little green island in the Danube, and is more extensive than either of the others. But I was content where I was; and dismissing my Asmodeus, I determined to spend the evening wandering about in the crowds alone. The sun went down, the lamps were lit, the alleys were illuminated, the crowd increased, and the emperor himself could not have given a gayer evening’s entertainment.

Vienna has the reputation of being the most profligate capital in Europe. Perhaps it is so. There is certainly, even to a stranger, no lack of temptation to every species of pleasure. But there is, besides, a degree of simplicity and confidence in the manners of the Viennese which I had believed peculiar to America, and inconsistent with the state of society in Europe. In the most public resorts, and at all hours of the day and evening, modest and respectable young women of the middle classes walk alone perfectly secure from molestation. They sit under the trees in these public gardens, eat ices at the cafés, walk home unattended, and no one seems to dream of impropriety. Whole families, too, spend the afternoon upon a seat in a thronged place of resort, their children playing about them, the father reading, and the mother sewing or knitting, quite unconscious of observation. The lower and middle classes live all summer, I am told, out of doors. It is never oppressively warm in this latitude, and their houses are deserted after three or four o’clock in the afternoon, and the whole population pours out to the different gardens on the Glacis, where till midnight, they seem perfectly happy in the enjoyment of the innocent and unexpensive pleasures which a wise government has provided for them.

The nobles and richer class pass their summer in the circle of rural villages near the city. They are nested about on the hills, and crowded with small and lovely rural villas more like the neighbourhood of Boston than anything I have seen in Europe.

Baden, where the Emperor passes much of his time, is called “the miniature Switzerland.” Its baths are excellent, its hills are cut into retired and charming walks, and from June till September it is one of the gayest of watering-places. It is about a two hours’ drive from the city, and omnibuses at a very low rate, run between at all times of the day. The Austrians seldom travel, and the reason is evident. They have everything for which others travel, at home.

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