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 a _valet 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 a _manège_, 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 the _ne plus ultra_ of 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 state _traineaux_
or 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 cottage _ornée_ on 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 the _Woman of Samaria at the well_, and
_Hagar 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 a
_maison 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.
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