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 shade 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 Danubo, commanding pleasing prospects through the trees. This building forms the boundary of ‘the drive ;' carriages turn at this point, and, in the summmer season, they are often so numerous as to form an unbroken line from St. Stephen's Place in the city up to this pavilion.

"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. It is like the ring in Hyde Park, with this difference, that the humble flacro 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." (Handbook 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 phys ical 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 Pa risians 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

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

With the exception of the English.-Ed.
Suppressed by the censors.

duke Ferdinand and his noble consort found themselves both deprived of their states by the vicissitudes of war, and the young empresa, brought up "in these cruel times," united in her person the double interest of greatness and misfortune. It was a union concluded by inclination, and into which no political convenience had entered, although one more honorable could not have been contracted. It caused at once a feeling of sympathy and respect, for the family affections which brought us near to this marriage, and for the illustrious rank which set us at a distance from it. A young prince, the Archbishop of Waizen, bestowed the nuptial benediction on his sister and sovereign; the mother of the empress, whose virtues and knowledge conspire to exercise the most powerful empire over her children, became in a moment the subject of her daughter, and walked in the procession behind her with a mixture of deference and of dignity, which recalled at the same time the rights of the crown and those of nature. The brothers of the emperor and empress, all employed in the army or in the administration, all in different ranks, all equally devoted to the public good, accompanied them respectively to the altar, and the church was filled with the grandees of the State, with the wives, the daughters, and the mothers, of the most ancient of the Teutonic nobility. Nothing new was produced for the fête; it was sufficient for its pomp to display what each possessed. Even the women's ornaments were hereditary, and the diamonds that had descended in every family consecrated the remembrances of the past to the decoration of youth; ancient times were present to all, and a magnificence was enjoyed, which the ages had prepared, but which cost the people no new sacrifices,

The amusements which succeeded to the marriage consecration had in them almost as much of dignity as the ceremony itself. It is not thus that private individuals ought to give entertainments, but it is perhaps right to find in all the actions of kings the severe impression of their august destiny. Not

Suppressed by the censors.

far from this church, around which the discharge of cannons and the beating of drums announced the renewal of the union between the houses of Este and Habsburg, we see the asylum, which has for these two centuries inclosed the tombs of the emperors of Austria and their family. There, in the vault of the Capuchins, it was that Maria Theresa, for thirty years, heard mass in the very sight of the burial-place which she had prepared for herself by the side of her husband.' This illustrious princess had suffered so much in the days of her early youth, that the pious sentiment of the instability of life never quitted her, even in the midst of her greatness. We have many examples of a serious and constant devotion among the sovereigns of the earth; as they obey death only, his irresistible power strikes them the more forcibly. The difficulties of life intervene between ourselves and the tomb; but every thing lies level before the eyes of kings, even to the last, and that very level renders the end more visible.

The feast induces us naturally to reflect upon the tomb; poetry has, in all times, delighted herself in drawing these two images by the side of each other; and fate itself is a terrible poet which has too often discovered the art of uniting them.

CHAPTER VIII.

OF SOCIETY.

THE rich and the noble seldom inhabit the suburbs' of Vienna; and, notwithstanding that the city possesses in other respects all the advantages of a great capital, the good company..

"Every Friday, for thirteen years after the death of her husband, Maria Theresa descended into this vault to pray and weep by the side of his remains." At the present time, the most interesting sarcophagus in this "last home" of kings, is that of young Napoleon, Duke of Reichstadt.-Ed. ■ Vienna differs from most other European capitals in this respect, that the old part of the town, and not the new, is the most fashionable. Within