fortified ourselves for the home journey with the inevitable coffee
and _Mai-brank_,--Turk's-head cake,--and sandwiches of brown and white
bread and butter. We started at seven on our return to Trier, merry
as we came, not one discordant note having jarred on the universal
harmony; and to one only of our party had there been anything like
a hitch in the perfect pleasure of the day, and this hitch was
occasioned by what, at the beginning of our journey, I had so foolishly
considered "a comparative trifle,"--the ever-recurring red silk
pocket-handkerchief from under Hartstein's hat and over his nose, which
sorely disturbed the equanimity and wounded the conjugal pride of his
devoted wife. With this exception, our expedition had been a complete
success; and I was indeed pleased to add to my travelling sketches the
Jumping Procession at Echternach.
THE CAPITAL OF AUSTRIA.
JOHN RUSSELL.
[It is with Vienna as it appeared in 1825 that we here propose
to deal, in the language of a traveller of that period, who has
given a graphic account of what was then and there to be seen.
Russell's "Tour in Germany" is a sprightly and interesting work,
and the Vienna which he describes, while yet in its chrysalis
state, displayed many of the characteristics of the handsome and
attractive city of to-day. Our extract begins with a distant view
of the Austrian capital.]
On reaching the brow of the low eminences that border to the north
the valley through which the Danube takes his course, a magnificent
prospect burst at once upon the eye. A wide plain lay below, teeming
with the productions and habitations of industrious men. On the east,
towards Hungary, it was boundless, and the eye was obstructed only by
the horizon. To the westward rose the hills which, beginning in orchard
and vineyard, and terminating in forest and precipice, form, in this
direction, the commencement of the Alps; and to the south the plain
was bounded by the loftier summits of the Styrian mountains. Nearly
in the centre of the picture lay Vienna itself, extending on all sides
its gigantic arms; and the spire of the cathedral, high above every
other object, was proudly presenting its Gothic pinnacle to the evening
sun. From this point the inequality of the ground on which Vienna
stands strikes the eye at once, and the cathedral has the advantage of
occupying the highest point of the proper city; for not only the spire,
but nearly the whole body of the edifice, was distinctly seen above all
the other buildings of the city.
Every one of the three hundred thousand inhabitants who crowd Vienna
and its interminable suburbs seems to reckon it a duty to make his life
a commentary. They are more devoted friends of joviality, pleasure,
and good living, and more bitter enemies of everything like care
or thinking,--a more eating, drinking, good-natured, ill-educated,
hospitable, and laughing people,--than any other of Germany, or,
perhaps, of Europe. Their climate and soil, the corn and wine with
which Heaven has blessed them, exempt them from any very anxious degree
of thought about their own wants; and the government, with its spies
and police, takes most effectual care that their gayety shall not be
disturbed by thinking of the public necessities, or studying for the
public weal. In regard to themselves, they are distinguished by a love
of pleasure; in regard to strangers, by great kindness and hospitality.
It is difficult to bring an Austrian to a downright quarrel with you,
and it is almost equally difficult to prevent him from injuring your
health by good living.
The city itself is a splendid and a bustling one; no other German
metropolis comes near it in that crowded activity which distinguishes
our own capitals. It does not stand, strictly speaking, on the Danube,
which is a mile to the northward, and is separated from it by the
largest of all the suburbs, the Leopoldstadt, as well as by the
extensive tract of ground on which the groves of the Prater have been
planted and its walks laid out. The walls, however, are washed, on this
side, by a small arm of the Danube, which rejoins the main stream a
short way below the city, and is sufficiently large for the purposes
of inland navigation. On the south, the proper city is separated from
the suburbs by a still more insignificant stream, which, however,
gives its name to the capital, the Vienna. This rivulet, instead of
serving effectually even the purposes of cleanliness, brings down
the accumulated refuse of other regions of the town, and its noisome
effluvia often render it an effort to pass the bridge across it, one of
the most crowded thoroughfares of Vienna.
The proper city is of nearly a circular form, and cannot be more than
three miles in circumference, for I have often walked quite around
the ramparts in less than an hour. The style of building does not
pretend to much ornament, but is massive and imposing; the streets are
generally narrow, and the houses lofty, rising to four or five floors,
which are all entered by a common stair. There is much more regularity,
and there are many more cornices and pillars, in Berlin; in Dresden
there is a more frequent intermixture of showy edifices; there is more
lightness and airiness of effect in the best parts of Munich; and in
Nürnberg and Augsburg there is a greater profusion of the outward
ornaments of the olden time; but in none of these towns is there so
much of that sober and solid stateliness, without gloom, which, after
all, is perhaps the most fitting style of building for a large city.
Some individual masses of building, in the very heart of the city, are
as populous as large villages....
"The art of walking the streets" in London is an easy problem,
compared with the art of walking in them in Vienna. In the former,
there is some order and distinction, even in the crowd; two-legged and
four-legged animals have their allotted places, and are compelled to
keep them; in the latter, all this is otherwise. It is true that, in
the principal streets, a few feet on each side are paved with stones
somewhat larger than those in the centre, and these side slips are
intended for pedestrians; but the pedestrians have no exclusive right;
the level of the street is uniform; there is nothing to prevent horses
and carriages from encroaching on the domain, and, accordingly, they
are perpetually trespassing.
The streets, even those in which there is the greatest bustle, the
Kärnthnerstrasse, for example, are generally narrow; carriages,
hackney-coaches, and loaded wagons, observing no order, cross each
other in all directions; and, while they hurry past each other, or
fill the street by coming from opposite quarters, the pedestrian is
every moment in danger of being run up against the wall. A provoking
circumstance is, that frequently a third part, or even a half of
the street, is rendered useless by heaps of wood, the fuel of the
inhabitants. The wood is brought into the city in large pieces, from
three to four feet long. A wagon-load of these logs is laid down on
the street, at the door of the purchaser, to be sawed and split into
smaller pieces, before being deposited in his cellar.
When this occurs, as it often does, at every third or fourth door,
the street just loses so much of its breadth. Nothing remains but the
centre, and that is constantly swarming with carriages, and carts,
and barrows. The pedestrian must either wind himself through among
their wheels, or clamber over successive piles of wood, or patiently
wait till the centre of the street becomes passable for a few yards.
To think of doubling the wooden promontory without this precaution
is far from being safe. You have scarcely by a sudden spring saved
your shoulders from the pole of a carriage, when a wheelbarrow makes
a similar attack on your legs. You make spring the second, and in all
probability your head comes in contact with the uplifted hatchet of a
wood-cutter. The wheelbarrows seem to be best off. They fill such a
middle rank between bipeds and quadrupeds, that they lay claim to the
privileges of both, and hold on their way rejoicing, commanding respect
equally from men and horses.
To guide a carriage through these crowded, encumbered, disorderly,
narrow streets, without either occasioning or sustaining damage,
is, perhaps, the highest achievement of the coach-driving art. Our
own knights of the whip, with all their scientific and systematic
excellencies, must here yield the palm to the practical superiority of
their Austrian brethren. Nothing can equal the dexterity with which a
Vienna coachman winds himself, and winds himself rapidly, through every
little aperture, and, above all, at the sharp turns of the streets.
People on foot, indeed, must look about them; and, from necessity, they
have learned to look about them so well, that accidents are wonderfully
rare, and very seldom, indeed, does it happen that the Jehus do not
keep clear of each other's wheels. The hackney-coachmen form as
peculiar a class as they do in London, with as much _esprit de corps_,
but more humor, full of jokes and extortion. It is said that the most
skilful coachman from any other country cannot drive in Vienna without
a regular education. A few years ago, an Hungarian nobleman brought out
a coachman from London; but Tom was under the necessity of resigning
the box, after a day's driving pregnant with danger to his master's
limbs and carriage....
Vienna has some very noble public squares, though no people requires
them less for purposes of recreation; for, when amusement is their
object, they hasten beyond the walls to the coffee-houses of the
glacis, or the shades of the Prater, the wine-houses and monks of
Kloster-Neuburg, or the gardens of Schönbrunn. The best of these
squares happen to be in parts of the city where the fashionable world
does not often intrude; they are not planted, but they are excellently
paved; they are not gaudy with palaces, but they are surrounded by the
busy shops and substantial and comfortable dwellings of happy citizens,
and are commonly adorned with some religious emblem or a public
fountain. Both the temples and fountains have too much work about them;
there is too much striving after finery of sculpture, a department of
art in which the Austrians are still very far behind. The consequence
is, that there are crowds of figures which have no more to do with a
basin of water than with a punch-bowl.
The _Graben_, an open space in the most busy part of the town, and
entered at both extremities, by the narrowest and most inconvenient
lanes in Vienna (although, on Sundays and festivals, it is the great
thoroughfare of all classes, from the Emperor to the servant-girl), is
embellished with two fountains. The fountains themselves are simple and
unaffected; but it was necessary to have statues. Therefore at the one
well stands Joseph explaining to the Messiah his Hebrew genealogy, and
at the other St. Leopold holding in his hands a plan of the Monastery
of Neuburg! The artist of the fountain in the Neumarkt, or New-market,
seems to have felt the want of congruity in this union of holy saints
with cold water, and he placed on the edge of his basin four naked
figures, representing the four principal rivers of Austria, pouring
their waters into the Danube, whose genii surround the pillar that
rises from the centre. But even here comes something Austrian and
absurd. The basin is so small that half a dozen of moderately-sized
perch would feel themselves confined in it; yet these four emblematical
figures are anxiously gazing into the tiny reservoir, and brandishing
huge tridents to harpoon the invisible whales which are supposed to be
sporting in the waters....
Vienna is no longer a fortified city; promenading is the only purpose
to which the fortifications are now applied; and, from their breadth
and elevation, they are excellently adapted for it. In one part
they look out upon the gradually ascending suburbs; on another the
eye wanders over intervening vineyards, up to the bare ridge of the
Kahlenberg, from which Sobieski made his triumphant attack against
the besieging Turks, traces of whose intrenchments are still visible;
in another it rests on the waters of the Danube, the foliage of the
Prater, and the gay crowds who are streaming along to enjoy its shades.
The twice successful attacks of French armies having proved the
ramparts, or bastions, as they are universally called, to be useless
for the protection of the citizens, trees, benches, and coffee-houses
have taken the place of cannon, and rendered them invaluable as sources
of recreation to this pleasure-loving people. On Sundays and holidays,
so soon as the last mass has terminated (which it always does about
mid-day), they are crowded to suffocation with people of all ranks.
Even on week-days, so long as the weather permits it, the
coffee-houses, surrounded with awnings, are the favorite resort of
persons, chiefly gentlemen, who prefer breakfasting in the open
air, and in the evening they are the favorite resort of both sexes,
especially of the middle classes. An orchestra in the open air
furnishes excellent music; as night comes on (and the crowd always
increases with the dusk) lamps are hung up among the trees, or
suspended from the awnings. The gay, unthinking crowd sits to be gazed
at, or strolls about from one alley to another to gaze,--good and bad,
virtuous and lost, mingled together, sipping coffee or keeping an
assignation, eating an ice, or making love. Till ten o'clock, when the
terrors of the _Hausmeister_ drive them home, the ramparts, and the
glacis below, form a collection of little Vauxhalls.
The glacis itself, the low, broad and level space of ground which
stretches out immediately from the foot of the ramparts, and runs
entirely around the city, except where the walls are washed by the
arm of the Danube, is no longer the naked and cheerless stripe which
it used to be. Much of it has been formed into gardens belonging to
different branches of the imperial family; the rest has been gradually
planted and laid out into alleys, and two years ago the Emperor, in
his love for his subjects, allowed a coffee-house to be built among
the trees. Beyond the glacis, the ground in general rises, and along
these eminences stretch the thirty-four suburbs of Vienna, surrounding
the city like the outworks of some huge fortification, and finally
surrounded themselves by a brick wall, a mere instrument of police, to
insure the detection of radicals and contraband goods, by subjecting
everything and every person to a strict examination....
Though the suburbs, from the greater regularity of their streets, the
smaller height of their buildings, and the general elevation of the
site, are in themselves more open and airy than the city, yet, owing
to the absence of pavement and the presence of wind, they can scarcely
be said to be more healthy. Vienna, though lying in a sort of kettle,
and not at so absolute an elevation as Munich, is more pestered by high
winds than any other European capital. In the proper city the streets
are paved, and excellently well paved; but throughout the immense
suburbs they present only the bare soil. This soil is loose, dry, and
sandy, and the wind acting upon it keeps the city and suburbs enveloped
in a thick atmosphere, loaded with particles of sand, which medical men
do not pretend to deny has a perceptible influence on the health. From
the summit of the Kahlenberg, an eminence about two miles to the west,
I have seen Vienna as completely obscured by a thick cloud of dust as
ever London is by a cloud of smoke; and our smoke is, in reality, the
less disagreeable of the two. When the wind is moderate, and allows the
dust to settle, rain commonly follows, and the suburbs are converted
into a succession of alleys of mud....
The Prater of Vienna is the finest public park in Europe, for it has
more rural beauty than Hyde Park, and surely the more varied and
natural arrangement of its woods and waters is preferable to the
formal basin and alley of the garden of the Tuileries. It occupies the
eastern part of that broad and level tract on the north of the city,
which is formed into an island by the main stream of the Danube on
the one side, and the smaller arm that washes the walls on the other.
They unite at its extremity, and the Prater is thus surrounded on
three sides by water. The principal alley, the proper _arive_, runs
from the entrance in a long straight line for about half a mile. Rows
of trees, consisting chiefly of horse-chestnuts, divide it into five
alleys. The central one is entirely filled with an unceasing succession
of glittering carriages, moving slowly along its opposite sides in
opposite directions; the two on each side are filled with horsemen,
galloping along to try the capacity of their steeds, or provoking them
into impatient curvetings, to try the effect of their own forms and
dexterity on the beauties who adorn the open calèches.
The two exterior alleys are consecrated to pedestrians; but those
of the Viennese who must walk, because not rich enough to hire a
hackney-coach, are never fond of walking far, and, forsaking the
alleys, scatter themselves over the verdant lawn which spreads itself
out to where the wood becomes more dense and impenetrable. The lawn
itself is plentifully strewed with coffee-houses, and the happy
hundreds seat themselves under shady awnings or on the green herbage,
beneath a clump of trees, enjoying their ices, coffee, and cigars, till
twilight calls them to the theatre, with not a thought about to-morrow,
and scarcely a reminiscence of yesterday.
But though the extremity of this main alley be the boundary of the
excursions of the fashionable world, it is only the beginning of
the more rural and tranquil portion of the Prater. The wood becomes
thicker; there are no more straight lines of horse-chestnuts; the
numerous alleys wind their way unconstrained through the forest maze,
now leading you along in artificial twilight beneath an overarching
canopy of foliage, and now terminating in some verdant and tranquil
spot like those on which fairies delight to dance; now bringing you to
the brink of some pure rivulet, which trickles along unsuspectingly to
be lost in the mighty stream, and now stopping you on the shady banks
of the magnificent river itself.
THE ESZTERHÁZY PALACES.
JOHN PAGET.
[Paget's "Hungary and Transylvania" is the source of our present
selection, we having chosen, from his many pictures of Hungarian
life and people, a description of the famous Eszterházys, a family
renowned particularly for its jewels, which have been gathering
for centuries in the castle of Forchtenstein.]
It was at six o'clock in the morning that the smart Presburg post-boy
sounded his bugle, to express his impatience at the half-hour we had
already kept him waiting ere we started for the Neusiedler Lake, in
the neighborhood of which we intended to pass a few days. The journey
to the end of the lake might be some sixty miles, and we reckoned to
accomplish this by post within the day.
Of all the modes of travelling in Hungary, the post is the most
expensive, and to me, at least, the most disagreeable. The supply of
horses is too scanty, and if the traveller happens to arrive before
or after the _post-wagen_, he must generally wait some time before
he can obtain the number he requires. There is an awkward rule, too,
which it is as well a stranger should know. If he arrives at any place
with post, he can oblige the postmaster to send him on with the same
number of horses he arrived with; but should he, as occurred to us on
the present occasion, feel a wish to leave the post-road, and for that
purpose hire private horses, at the next post-station they may refuse
him a supply, or oblige him to take as many as they choose.
It was at Gschies we learned this rule, for the postmaster stoutly
refused to send us on with a pair of horses, which was all we had
previously required, and declared we should either take four or remain
where we were. Entirely ignorant as I then was of any other means of
getting forward, I at last consented, and desired him to give us the
four horses. "But I have only three in the stable at present," was his
cool reply; "and you may either take those and pay for four, or you may
remain where you are until to-morrow, when the others will come home."
Nor is this the only instance of gross imposition I could relate. The
worst of it is, there is no redress. In one case I applied to the
judge and notary of the village, and though they had the best will to
protect me, all they could do was to give me peasants' horses, and so
enable me to avoid the like treatment for the rest of the journey.
For the matter of speed, you get on by post at the rate of five miles
an hour, with strong, large horses, and post-boys wearing huge cocked
hats, each with a plume of feathers worthy a field-marshal, and a red
coat with purple facings. But if ever the reader should have occasion
to go from Vienna to Pesth, and is an amateur at driving, I recommend
him to what is called the _bauern post_,--that is, if steamboats and
railroads have not ere this entirely destroyed it.
The peasants between the frontiers of Hungary and Pesth, on the great
high-road from Vienna, combined to supply relays of horses at a cheaper
rate and better than the royal post; and though at first opposed by
government, they eventually succeeded so well that at present the whole
line is supplied by them almost exclusively. The pace at which these
men, with their four small horses, take on a light Vienna carriage
is something wonderful, especially when the length of some of their
stages is considered. The last stage cannot be less than forty miles
from Pesth, and, with a short pause of about a quarter of an hour to
water, they do it for the most part at full gallop, and with the same
horses, in four hours. It is glorious to see the wild-looking driver,
his long black hair floating in the wind as he turns round to ask your
admiration when his four little clean-boned nags are rattling over
hill and hollow in a style which for the first time since he left
home shakes an Englishman's blood into quicker circulation. There is
certainly a pleasure in rapid motion which has on some men almost an
intoxicating effect.
[Illustration: BUDAPEST]
But to return to our five miles an hour. We passed through a
well-cultivated country, chiefly inhabited by Germans, who have crept
in upon this side of Hungary from Presburg nearly to the borders of
Croatia. The Neusiedler Lake, or the Fertö Tava Hungarian, which we
soon came in sight of, is about twenty-four miles long by twelve broad,
varying in depth from nine to thirteen feet. In parts, particularly
at the north end, its shores are hilly and pretty, but on the eastern
side they are flat, and terminate in a very extensive marsh, called the
Hanság.
It is supposed to be this lake which the Emperor Galerius drained into
the Danube, and which has been allowed to re-form by the destruction
of the Roman works. There is little doubt, I believe, as to the
practicability of draining the lake again, if it were desired; but,
as a neighboring proprietor observed, it would spoil some glorious
snipe-shooting....
At Eisenstadt, some short distance from the lake, is a palace of the
first of the Hungarian magnates, Prince Eszterházy. This palace, though
not remarkable for its beauty (it is in a heavy, though florid, Italian
style), is well fitted up for a princely residence. We walked through
suites of apartments innumerable; but by far the most striking of them
was the great ball-room, an elegantly-proportioned hall of great size,
and richly ornamented in white and gold. This room was last used when
the present prince was installed lord-lieutenant of the county of
Oedenburg, an office hereditary in his family; and great is still the
fame of the almost regal pomp with which he fêted the crowds of nobles
who flocked around him upon that occasion.
The gardens, laid out in the English style, are very fine, and the
hot-houses larger than any I remember to have seen; even Alton must bow
to Eisenstadt. They contain no less than seventy thousand exotics, and
are particularly rich in New Holland specimens. One can hardly help
lamenting that so much luxury and beauty should be wasted; for, except
the inhabitants of Eisenstadt, to whom the gardens are always open, it
is rarely that the palace or its grounds receive a visitor.