imprisoned near its gates. The streets are as narrow as those in Italy; the palaces recall, in some degree, those of Florence; in short, nothing there resembles the rest of Germany, except a few Gothic edifices, which bring back the middle ages to the imagination.

The first of these edifices is the tower of St. Stephen, which rises above all the other churches of Vienna, and reigns majestically over the good and peaceful city, whose generations and glories it has seen pass away. It took two centuries, they say, to finish this tower, begun in 1100;1 the whole Austrian history is in some manner connected with it. No building can be so patriotic as a church; in that alone all classes of the nation are assembled,—that alone brings to the recollection not merely public events, but the secret thoughts and inward affections which both chiefs and people have carried into its sanctuary. The temple of the divinity seems present, like God himself, to ages passed away.

The monument of Prince Eugene is the only one that has been, for some time past, erected in this church; he there lies waiting for other heroes. As I approached it, I saw a notice affixed to one of its pillars, that a young woman begged of those who should read this paper to pray for her during her sickness. The name of this young woman was not given; it was some unfortunate being, addressing herself to beings unknown, not for their alms, but for their prayers; and all this passed by the side of the illustrious dead, who had himself, perhaps, compassion on the unhappy living. It is a pious custom among the Catholics, and one which we ought to imitate, to leave the churches always open; there are so many moments in which we feel the want of such an asylum; and never do we enter it without feeling an emotion which does good to

1 "The South Tower, begun in 1359, and carried to two thirds its present height, by an architect named George Hauser, was completed in 1423 by Anton Pilgram. It is a masterpiece of Gothic architecture, diminishing gradually from its base to its summit in regularly retreating arches and buttresses. It is four hundred and forty-four English feet high."--(Murray's Hand-book for Southern Germany, p. 198.)-Ed.

the soul, and restores it, as by a holy ablution, to strength and purity.

There is no great city without its public building, its promenade, or some other wonder of art or of nature, to which the recollections of infancy attach themselves; and I think that the Prater must possess a charm of this description for the inhabitants of Vienna. Nowhere do we find, so near the capital, a public walk so rich in the beauties at once of rude and ornamented nature. A majestic forest extends to the banks of the Danube; herds of deer are seen from afar passing through the meadow; they return every morning, and fly away every evening, when the influx of company disturbs their solitude. A spectacle, seen at Paris only three times a year, on the road to Longchamp,' is renewed every day, during the fine season, at Vienna. This is an Italian custom-the daily promenade at the same hour. Such regularity would be impracticable in a country where pleasures are so diversified as at Paris; but the Viennese, from whatever cause, would find it difficult to relinquish the habit of it. It must be agreed that it forms a most striking coup d'œil, the sight of a whole nation of citizens assembled under the shade of magnificent trees, on a turf kept ever verdant by the waters of the Danube. The people of fashion in carriages, those of the lower orders on foot, meet there every evening. In this wise country, even pleasures are looked upon in the light of duties, and they have this advantage-that they never grow tedious, however uniform. The people preserve as much regularity in dissipation as in business, and waste their time as methodically as they employ it.

1 The annual promenade de Longchamp takes place in the Champs Elysées and the Bois de Boulogne, on the Wednesday. Thursday, and Friday of Passion Week.—Ed.

2 "The Prater, the Hyde Park of Vienna, consists of a series of low and partly wooded islands, formed by arms of the Danube, which separate from the main trunk to rejoin it lower down. The entrance to it is situated at the extremity of the street called Jägerzeile. Here there is an open circular space, from which branch out six alleys or avenues. Close to the first alley is the Terminus of the Northern Railroad-Kaiser Ferdinand's Nordvahn-extending to Brunn. The second, on the right (Hauptallée), is the

If you enter one of the redoubts where balls are given to the citizens on holidays, you will behold men and women gravely performing, opposite to each other, the steps of a minuet,' of

most frequented, and leads to the Panorama, the Circus, and the coffeehouses, the resort of the better classes, round which they sit under the shale in the open air, and take their tea or coffee. At the end of this alley is a sort of pavilion, called the Lusthaus, close to an arm of the Danube, commanding pleasing prospects through the trees. This building formis the boundary of 'the drive;' carriages turn at this point, and, in the summer season, they are often so numerous as to form an unbroken line from St. Stephen's Place in the city up to this pavilion.

It

"Upon Easter Monday, the great day for visiting the Prater, no less than twenty thousand persons collect here, and all the new equipages and liveries are then displayed for the first time. It is the Longchamps of Vienna. Paris, however, can hardly match the splendor of the Prater; and, except in London, such a display is probably nowhere to be seen. is like the ring in Hyde Park, with this difference, that the humble fiacre is admitted by the side of the princely four-in-hand; and not unfrequently the emperor's ambling coursers are stopped by the clumsy hackney-coachman, who has cut into the line immediately before him. Thus, amid all the display of coats-of-arms, with quarterings innumerable, of crowns and coronets, scarlet and gold-laced liveries, Hungarian lacqueys in dolmans (the hussar dress), belted Bohemian Jägers, with swords at their sides and streaming feathers in their cocked hats, there is far less aristocratic exclusiveness than in England.

"He who confines himself to the drive, however, has seen but half of the Prater, and that not the most amusing or characteristic portion. A few steps behind the coffee-houses, the Prater of the great world ends and that of the common people begins. It is called the Würstl Prater, probably from the quantity of sausages (würste) which are constantly smoking and being consumed in it. On Sundays and holidays it has all the appearance of a great fair. As far as the eye can reach, under the trees and over the greensward, appears one great encampment of sutlers' booths and huts. The smoke is constantly ascending from these rustic kitchens, while long rows of tables and benches, never empty of guests, or bare of beerjugs and wine-bottles, are spread under the shade. Shows and theatres, mountebanks, jugglers, punchinellos, rope-dancing, swings, and skittles, are the allurements which entice the holiday folks on every side. But in order to form any tolerable notion of the scene-the laughter, the joviality, the songs and the dances, the perpetual strains of music playing to the restless measure of the waltz, must be taken into consideration."-(Handbock for Southern Germany, p. 217.)-Ed.

1 The waltz has now taken the place of the minuet; but the spirit of the people has not changed. We have heard more than once, at Vienna Englishmen and Americans exclaim, "How conscientiously these people dance !"--Ed.

which they have imposed on themselves the amusement; the crowd often separates a couple while dancing, and yet each persists, as if they were dancing to acquit their consciences; each moves alone, to right and left, forwards and backwards, without caring about the other, who is figuring all the while with equal conscientiousness; now and then, only, they utter a little exclamation of joy, and then immediately return to the serious discharge of their pleasure.

It is above all on the Prater that one is struck with the ease and prosperity of the people of Vienna. This city has the reputation of consuming more victuals than any other place of an equal population; and this species of superiority, a little vulgar, is not contested. One sees whole families of citizens and artificers, setting off at five in the evening for the Prater, there to take a sort of rural refreshment, equally substantial with a dinner elsewhere, and the money which they can afford to lay out upon it proves how laborious they are, and under how mild a government' they live.

Tens of thousands return at night, leading by the hand their wives and children; no disorder, no quarrelling disturbs all this multitude, whose voice is hardly heard, so silent is their joy! This silence, nevertheless, does not proceed from any melancholy disposition of the soul; it is rather a certain physical happiness, which induces men, in the south of Germany, to ruminate on their sensations, as in the north on their ideas. The vegetative existence of the south of Germany bears some analogy to the contemplative existence of the north in each, there is repose, indolence, and reflection.

:

If you could imagine an equally numerous assembly of Parisians met together in the same place, the air would sparkle with bon mots, pleasantries, and disputes; never can a Frenchman enjoy any pleasure in which his self-love would not in some manner find itself a place.

Noblemen of rank take their promenade on horses, or in

1 It must be remembered that the Austrian government is oppressive only in a political sense.--Ed.

carriages of the greatest magnificence and good taste; all their amusement consists in bowing, in an alley of the Prater, to those whom they have just left in a drawing-room; but the diversity of objects renders it impossible to pursue any train o. reflection, and the greater number of men take a pleasure in thus dissipating those reflections which trouble them. These grandees of Vienna, the most illustrious and the most wealthy' in Europe, abuse none of the advantages they possess; they allow the humblest hackney-coaches to stop their brilliant equipages. The emperor and his brothers even quietly keep their place in the string, and choose to be considered, in their amusements, as private individuals; they make use of their privileges only when they fulfil their duties. In the midst of the crowd you often meet with Oriental, Hungarian, and Polish costumes, which enliven the imagination; and harmonious. bands of music, at intervals, give to all this assemblage the air of a peaceable fête, in which everybody enjoys himself without being troubled about his neighbor.

You never meet a beggar at these promenades; none are to be seen in Vienna; the charitable establishments there are regulated with great order and liberality; private and public benevolence is directed with a great spirit of justice, and the people themselves having in general more industry and commercial ability than in the rest of Germany, each man regularly pursues his own individual destiny. There are few instances in Austria of crimes deserving death; every thing, in short, in this country, bears the mark of a parental, wise, and religious government. The foundations of the social edifice are good and respectable; "but it wants a pinnacle and columns to render it a fit temple of genius and of glory."

I was at Vienna, in 1808, when the Emperor Francis the Second married his first-cousin, the daughter of the Archduke of Milan and the Archduchess Beatrix, the last princess of that house of Este so celebrated by Ariosto and Tasso. The Arch

1 With the exception of the English.-Ed.

* Suppressed by the censors.