Chapter V (7)

Vienna was not likely to strike one with its churches; yet the old cathedral is majestic, and by no means stript of those ornaments which, while one sect of Christians think it particularly pleasing in the sight of God to retain, is hardly warrantable in another sect, though wiser, to be over-hasty in tearing away. Here are however many devotional figures and chapels left in the streets I see, which, from the tales told in Austrian Lombardy, one had little reason to expect; but the emperor is tender even to the foibles of his Viennese subjects, while he shews little feeling to Italian misery. Men drawing carts along the roads and street afford, indeed, somewhat an awkward proof the government’s lenity when human creatures are levelled with the beasts of burden, and called _stott eisel_, or _stout asses_, as I understand, who by this information have learned that the frame which supports a picture is for the same reason called an _eisel_, as we call a thing to hang clothes on a _horse_. It is the genius of the German language to degrade all our English words somehow: they call a coach a _waggon_, and ask a lady if she will buy pomatum to _smear_ her hair with. Such is however the resemblance between their tongue and ours, that the Italians protest they cannot separate either the ideas or the words.

I must mention our going to the post-office with a Venetian friend to look for letters, where, after receiving some surly replies from the people who attended there, our laquais de place reminded my male companions that they should stand _uncovered_. Finding them however somewhat dilatory in their obedience, a rough fellow snatched the hat from one of their heads, saying, “_Don’t you know, Sir, that you are standing before the emperor’s officers?_”--“_I know_,” replied the prompt Italian, “_that we are come to a country where people wear their hats in the church, so need not wonder we are bid to take them off in the post-office_.” Well, where rulers are said or supposed to be tyrannical, it is rational that good provision should be made for arms; otherwise despotism dwindles into nugatory pompousness and airy show; Prospero’s empire in the enchanted island of Shakespeare is not more shadowy than the sight of princedom united with impotence of power:--such have I seen, but such is not the character of Keysar’s dominion. The arsenal here is the finest thing in the world I suppose; it grieved me to feel the ideas of London and Venice fade before it so; but the enormous size and solidity of the quadrangle, the quantity and disposition of the cannon, bombs, and mortars, filled my mind with enforced respect, and shook my nerves with the thought of what might follow such dreadful preparation.

Nothing can in fact be grander than the sight of the Austrian eagle, all made out in arms, eight ancient heroes sternly frowning round it. The choice has fallen on Cæsar, Pompey, Alexander, Scipio, Hannibal, Fabius Maximus, Cyrus, and Themistocles. I should have thought Pyrrhus worthier the company of all the rest than this last-named hero; but petty criticisms are much less worthy a place in Vienna’s arsenal, which impresses one with a very majestic idea of Imperial greatness.

On the first of November we tried at an excursion into Hungary, where we meant to have surveyed the Danube in all its dignity at Presburgh, and have heard Hayden at Estherhazie. But my being unluckily taken ill, prevented us from prosecuting our journey further than a wretched village, where I was laid up with a fever, and disappointed my company of much hoped-for entertainment. It was curious however to find one’s self within a few posts of the places one had read so much of; and the words _Route de Belgrade_ upon a finger-post gave me sensations of distance never felt before. The comfortable sight of a protestant chapel near me made much amends however. The officiating priests were of the Moravian sect it seems, and dear Mr. Hutton’s image rushed upon my mind. A burial passing by my windows, struck me as very extraordinary: not one follower or even bearer being dressed in black, but all with green robes trimmed with dark brown furs, not robes neither; but like long coats down to the men’s heels, cut in skirts, and trimmed up those skirts as well as round the bottom with fur.

It was a melancholy country that we passed through, very bleak and dismal, and I trust would not have mended upon us had we gone further. The few people one sees are all ignorant, and can all speak Latin--such as it is--very fluently. I have lived with many very knowing people who never could speak it with any fluency at all. Such is life!--and such is learning! I long to talk about the sheep and swine: they seem very worthy of observation; the latter large and finely shaped, of the old savage race; one fancies them like those Eumæus tended, and perhaps they are so; with tusks of singular beauty and whiteness, which the uniformly brown colour of the creature shews off to much advantage; amidst his dark curls, waving all over his high back and long sides, in the manner of a curl-pated baby in England, only that the last is commonly fair and blonde.

The sheep are spotted like our pigs, but prettier; black and yellow like a tortoise-shell cat, with horns as long as those of any he-goat I ever saw, but very different; these animals carrying them straight upright like an antelope, and they are of a spiral shape. Our mutton meantime is detestable; but here are incomparable fish, carp large as small Severn salmon, and they bring them to table cut in pounds, and the joul for a handsome dish. I only wonder one has never heard of any ancient or any modern gluttons driving away to Presburg or Buda, for the sake of eating a fine Danube carp.

With regard to men and women in Hungary, they are not thickly scattered, but their lamentations are loud; the emperor having resumed all the privileges granted them by Maria Theresa in the year 1740, or thereabouts, when distress drove her to shelter in that country, and has prohibited the importation of salt herrings which used to come duty free from Amsterdam, so that their fasts are rendered incommodious from the asperity of the soil, which produces very little vegetable food.

Ground squirrels are frequent in the forests here; but without Pennant’s Synopsis I never remember the Linnæan names of quadrupeds, so can get no information of the animal called a glutton in English, whose skin I see in every fur-shop, and who, I fancy, inhabits our Hungarian woods.

The Imperial collection of pictures here is really a magnificent repository of Italian taste, Flemish colouring, and Dutch exactness: in which the Baptist, by Giulio Romano, the crucifixion by Vandyke, and the physician holding up a bottle to the light by Gerard Douw, are great examples.

One does not in these countries look out particularly for the works of Roman or Bolognese masters; but I remember a wonderful Caracci at Munich, worthy a first place even in the Zampieri palace; the subject, Venus sitting under a great tree diverting herself with seeing a scuffle between the two boys Cupid and Anteros.

In the gallery here at Vienna, many of the pictures have been handled a good deal; one is dazzled with the brilliancy of these powerful colourists: and here is a David Teniers surprisingly natural, of Abraham offering up Isaac; a glorious Pordenone representing Santa Justina, reminded me of her fine church at Padua, and _his_ centurion at Cremona, which I know not who could excel; and here is Furino’s Sigismunda to be seen, the same or a duplicate of that sold at Sir Luke Schaub’s sale in London about thirty years ago, and called Correggio. I have seen it at Merriworth too, if not greatly mistaken. The price it went for in Langford’s auction-room I cannot surely forget, it was three thousand pounds, _or they said so_. I will only add a word of a Dutch girl representing Herodias, and so lively in its colouring, that I think the king would have denied her who resembled it nothing, had he been a native of Amsterdam. A Mount Calvary painted by the same hand is very striking, with a crowd of people gathered about the cross, and men selling cakes to the mob, as if at a fair or horse-race: two young peasants at fisty-cuffs upon the fore ground quarrelling, as it should seem, about the propriety of our Saviour’s execution.

But I have this day heard so many and such interesting particulars concerning the emperor, that I should not forgive myself if I failed to record and relate them, the less because my authority was particularly good, and the anecdotes singular and pleasing.

He rises then at five o’clock every morning, even at this sharp season, writes in private till nine, takes some refreshment then, and immediately after calls his ministers, and employs the time till one professedly in state affairs, rides out till three, returns and studies alone, letting the people bring his dinner at the appointed hour, chuses out of all the things they bring him one dish, and sets it on the stove to keep hot, eating it when nature calls for food, but never detaining a servant in the room to wait; at five he goes to the Corridor just near his own apartment, where poor and rich, small and great, have access to his person at pleasure, and often get him to arbitrate their law-suits, and decide their domestic differences, as nothing is more agreeable to him than finding himself considered by his people as their father, and dispenser of justice over all his extensive dominions. His attention to the duties he has imposed upon himself is so great, that, in order to maintain a pure impartiality in his mind towards every claimant, he suffers no man or woman to have any influence over him, and forbears even the slight gratification of fondling a dog, lest it should take up too much of his time. The emperor is a stranger upon principle to the joys of confidence and friendship, but cultivates the acquaintance of many ladies and gentlemen, at whose houses (when they see company) he drops in, and spends the evening cheerfully in cards or conversation, putting no man under the least restraint; and if he sees a new comer in look disconcerted, goes up to him and says kindly, “Divert yourself your own way, good Sir; and do not let me disturb you.” His coach is like the commonest gentleman’s of Vienna; his servants distinguished only by the plainness of their liveries; and, lest their insolence might make his company troublesome to the houses where he visits, he leaves the carriage in the street, and will not even be driven into the court-yard, where other equipages and footmen wait. A large dish of hot chocolate thickened with bread and cream is a common afternoon’s regale here, and the emperor often takes one, observing to the mistress of the house how acceptable such a meal is to him after so wretched a dinner.

A few mornings ago showed his character in a strong light. Some poor women were coming down the Danube on a float, the planks separated, and they were in danger of drowning; as it was very early in the day, and no one awake upon the shore except a sawyer that was cutting wood; who, not being able to obtain from his phlegmatic neighbours that assistance their case immediately required, ran directly to call the emperor who he knew would be stirring, and who came flying to give that help which from some happy accident was no longer wanted: but Joseph lost no good humour on the occasion; on the contrary, he congratulated the women on their deliverance, praising at the same time and rewarding the fellow for having disturbed him.

My informer told me likewise, that if two men dispute about any matter till mischief is expected, the wife of one of them will often cry out, “Come, have done, have done directly, or I’ll call our master, and he’ll make you have done.” Now is it fair not to do every thing but adore a sovereign like this? when we know that if such tales were told us of Marcus Aurelius, or Titus Vespasian, it would be our delight to repeat, our favourite learning to read of them. Such conduct would serve succeeding princes for models, nor could the weight of a dozen centuries smother their still rising fame. Yet is not my heart persuaded that the reputation of Joseph the Second will be consigned immaculate from age to age, like that of these immortal worthies, though dearly purchased by the loss of ease and pleasure; while neither the mitred prelate nor the blameless puritan pursue with blessings a heart unawed by splendour, unsoftened by simplicity; a hand stretched forth rather to dispense justice, than opening spontaneously to distribute charity. To speak less solemnly, if men were nearer than they are to perfect creatures, absolute monarchy would be the most perfect form of government, for the will of the prince could never deviate from propriety; but if one king can see all with his own eyes, and hear all with his own ears, no successor will ever be able to do the same; and it is like giving Harrison 10,000 l. for finding the longitude, to commend a person for having hit on the right way of governing a great nation, while his science is incommunicable, and his powers of execution must end with his life.

The society here is charming; Sherlock says, that he who does not like Vienna is his own satirist; I shall leave others to be mine. The ladies here seem very highly accomplished, and speak a great variety of languages with facility, studying to adorn the conversation with every ornament that literature can bestow; nor do they appear terrified as in London, lest pedantry should be imputed to them, for venturing sometimes to use in company that knowledge they have acquired in private by diligent application. Here also are to be seen young unmarried women once again: misses, who wink at each other, and titter in corners at what is passing in the rooms, public or private: I had lived so long away from _them_, that I had half forgotten their existence.

The horses here are trimmed at the heels, and led about in body clothes like ours in England; but their drawing is ill managed, no shafts somehow but a pole, which, when there is one horse only, looks awkward and badly contrived. Beasts of various kinds plowing together has a strange look, and the ox harnessed up like a hunter in a phaeton cuts a comical figure enough. One need no longer say, _Optat ephippia bos piger_[49]; but it is very silly, as no use can be thus made of that strength which lies only in his head and horns. Plenty of wood makes the Germans profusely elegant in their pales, hurdles, &c. which give an air of comfort and opulence, and make the best compensation a cold climate can make for the hedges of jessamine and medlar flowers, which I shall see no more.

Our architecture here can hardly be expected to please an eye made fastidious from the contemplation of Michael Angelo’s works at Rome, or Palladio’s at Venice; nor will German music much delight those who have been long accustomed to more simple melody, though intrinsic merit and complicated excellence will always deserve the highest note of praise. Whoever takes upon him to under-rate that which no one can obtain without infinite labour and study, will ever be censured, and justly, for refusing the reward due to deep research; but if a man’s taste leads him to like _Cyprus_ wine, let him drink _that_, and content himself with commending the _old hock_.

Apropos, we hear that _Sacchini_, the Metastasio of musical composers, is dead; but nobody at Vienna cares about his compositions. Our Italian friends are more candid; they are always talking in favour of Bach and Brughuel, Handel and Rubens.

The cabinet of natural history is exceedingly fine, and the rooms singularly well disposed. There are more cameos at Bologna, and one superior specimen of native gold: every thing else I believe is better here, and such opals did I never see before, no not at Loretto: the petrified lemon and artichoke have no equals, and a brown diamond was new to me to-day. A specimen of sea-salt filled with air bubbles like the rings one buys at Vicenza, is worth going a long way to look at; but the gentleman at Munich, who shewed us the Virgin Mary in a cobweb, had a piece of red silver shot out into a ruby like crystal, more extraordinary than any mineral production I have seen. Our attention was caught by Maria Theresa’s bouquet, but one cannot forget the pearls belonging to the electress of Bavaria.

What seemed, however, most to charm the people who shewed the cabinet, was a snuff-box consisting of various gems, none bigger than a barley-corn, each of prodigious value, and the workmanship of more, every square being inlaid so neatly, and no precious stone repeated, though the number is no less than one hundred and eighty-three; a false bottom besides of gold, opening with a spring touch, and discovering a written catalogue of the jewels in the finest hand-writing, and the smallest possible. This was to me a real curiosity, afforded a new and singular proof of that astonishing power of eye, and delicacy of manual operation, seconded by a patient and persevering attention to things frivolous in themselves, which will be for ever alike neglected by the fire of Italian genius, and disdained by the dignity of British science.

We have seen other sort of things to-day however. The Hungarian and Bohemian robes pleased me best, and the wild unset jewels in the diadem of Transylvania impressed me with a valuable idea of Gothic greatness. The service of gold plate too is very grand from its old-fashioned solidity. I liked it better than I did the snuff-box; and here is a dish in ivory puts one in mind of nothing but Achilles’s shield, so worked is its broad margin with miniature representations of battles, landscapes, &c. three dozen different stories round the dish, one might have looked at it with microscopes for a week together. The porcelane plates have been painted to ridicule Raphael’s pots at Loretto I fancy; Julio Romano’s manner is comically parodied upon one of them.

Prince Lichtenstein’s pictures are charming; a Salmacis in the water by Albano is the best work of that master I ever saw, not diffused as his works commonly are, but all collected somehow, and fine in a way I cannot express for want of more knowledge; _very, very_ fine it is however, and full of expression and character. The Caracci school again.--Here is the whole history of Decius by Rubens too, wonderfully learned; and an assumption of the Virgin so like Mrs. Pritchard our famous actress, no portrait ever represented her so well. A St. Sebastian divinely beautiful, by Vandyke; and a girl playing on the guitar, which you may run round almost, by the coarse but natural hand of Caravagio.

The library is new and splendid, and they buy books for it very liberally. The learned and amiable Abbé Denys shewed me a thousand unmerited civilities, was charmed with the character of Dr. Johnson, and delighted with the story of his conversation at Rouen with Mons. l’Abbé Rossette. This gentleman seems to love England very much, and English literature; spoke of Humphry Prideaux with respect, and has his head full of Ossian’s poetry, of which he can repeat whole pages. He shewed me a fragment of Livy written in the fifth century, a psalter and creed beautifully illuminated of the year nine hundred, and a large portion of St. Mark’s gospel on blue paper of the year three hundred and seven. A Bibbia de Poveri too, as the Italians call it, curious enough; the figures all engraved on wood, and only a text at bottom to explain them.

Winceslaus marked every book he ever possessed, it seems, with the five vowels on the back; and almost every one with some little miniature made by himself, recording his escape from confinement at Prague in Bohemia, where the washer-woman having assisted him to get out of prison under pretence of bathing, he has been very studious to register the event; so much so that even on the margins of his bible he has been tempted to paint past scenes that had better have been blotted from his memory.

The Livy which learned men have hoped to find safe in the seraglio of Constantinople, was burned by their late sultan Amurath, our Abbé Denys tells me; the motive sprung from mistaken piety, but the effect is to be lamented. He shewed me an Alcoran in extremely small characters, surprisingly so indeed, taken out of a Turkish officer’s pocket when John Sobiesky raised the siege of this city in the year 1590, and a preacher took for his text the Sunday after, “_There was a man sent from God whose name was_ John.” I was much amused with a sight of the Mexican MSS and Peruvian quipos; nor are the Turkish figures of Adam and Eve, our Saviour and his mother, less remarkable; but Mahomet surrounded by a glory about his head, a veil concealing his face as too bright for inspection, exceeded all the rest.

Here are many ladies of fashion in this town very eminent for their musical abilities, particularly Mesdemoiselles de Martinas, one of whom is member of the Academies of Berlin and Bologna: the celebrated Metastasio died in their house, after having lived with the family sixty-five years more or less. They set his poetry and sing it very finely, appearing to recollect his conversation and friendship, with infinite tenderness and delight. He was to have been presented to the Pope the very day he died, I understand, and in the delirium which immediately preceded dissolution he raved much of the supposed interview. Unwilling to hear of death, no one was ever permitted even to mention it before him; and nothing put him so certainly out of humour, as finding that rule transgressed even by his nearest friends. Even the small-pox was not to be named in his presence, and whoever _did_ name that disorder, though unconscious of the offence he had given, Metastasio would see him no more. The other peculiarities I could gather from Miss Martinas were these: That he had contentedly lived half a century at Vienna, without ever even wishing to learn its language; that he had never given more than five guineas English money in all that time to the poor; that he always sat in the same seat at church, but never paid for it, and that nobody dared ask him for the trifling sum; that he was grateful and beneficent to the friends who began by being his protectors, but ended much his debtors, for solid benefits as well as for elegant presents, which it was his delight to be perpetually making them, leaving to them at last all he had ever gained without the charge even of a single legacy; observing in his will that it was to them he owed it, and other conduct would in him have been injustice. Such were the sentiments, and such the conduct of this great poet, of whom it is of little consequence to tell, that he never changed the fashion of his wig, the cut or colour of his coat, so that his portrait taken not very long ago looks like those of Boileau or Moliere at the head of their works. His life was arranged with such methodical exactness, that he rose, studied, chatted, slept, and dined at the same hours for fifty years together, enjoying uninterrupted health, which probably gave him that happy sweetness of temper, or habitual gentleness of manners, which never suffered itself to be ruffled, but when his sole injunction was forgotten, and the death of any person whatever was unwittingly mentioned before him. No solicitation had ever prevailed on him to dine from home, nor had his nearest intimates ever seen him _eat_ more than a biscuit with his lemonade, every meal being performed with even mysterious privacy to the last. When his end approached by steps so very rapid, he did not in the least suspect that it was coming; and Mademoiselle Martinas has scarcely yet done rejoicing in the thought that he escaped the preparations he so dreaded. His early passion for a celebrated singer is well known upon the continent; since that affair finished, all his pleasures have been confined to music and conversation. He had the satisfaction of seeing the seventieth edition of his works I think they said, but am ashamed to copy out the number from my own notes, it seems so _very_ strange; and the delight he took in hearing the lady he lived with sing his songs, was visible to every one. An Italian Abate here said, comically enough, “Oh! he looked like a man in the state of beatification always when Mademoiselle de Martinas accompanied his verses with her fine voice and brilliant finger.” The father of Metastasio was a goldsmith at Rome, but his son had so devoted himself to the family he lived with, that he refused to hear, and took pains not to know, whether he had in his latter days any one relation left in the world. On a character so singular I leave my readers to make their own _observations and reflections_.

_Au reste_, as the French say; I have no notion that Vienna, _sempre ventoso o velenoso_[50], can be a very wholesome place to live in; the double windows, double feather-beds, &c. in a room without a chimney, is surely ill contrived; and sleeping smothered up in down so, like a hydrophobous patient in some parts of Ireland, is not _particularly_ agreeable, though I begin to like it better than I did. All external air is shut out in such a manner that I am frighted lest, after a certain time, the room should become like an exhausted receiver, while the wind whirls one about the street in such a manner that it is displeasing to put out one’s head; and a physician from Ragusa settled here told me, that wounded lungs are a common consequence of the triturated stone blown about here; and in fact asthmas and consumptions are their reigning diseases.

Apropos, the plague is now raging in Transylvania; how little safe should we think ourselves at London, were a disorder so contagious known to be no farther distant than Derby? The distance is scarcely greater now from Vienna to the place of distress; yet I will not say we are in much danger to be sure, for that perpetual connection kept up between all the towns and counties of Great Britain is unknown in other nations, and we should be as many days going to Transylvania from here perhaps, as we should be _hours_ running from Toddenham-court road to Derby.

Sheenburn is pretty, but it is no season for seeing pretty places. The streets of Vienna are not pretty at all, God knows; so narrow, so ill built, so crowded, many wares placed upon the ground where there is a little opening, seems a strange awkward disposition of things for sale; and the people cutting wood in the street makes one half wild when walking; it is hardly possible to pass another strange custom, borrowed from Italy I trust, of shutting up their shops in the middle of the day; it must tend, one would think, but little to the promotion of that commerce which the sovereign professes to encourage, and I see no excuse for it _here_ which can be made from heat, gaiety, or devotion. Many families living in the same house, and at the entrance of the apartments belonging to each, a strong iron gate to separate the residence of one set from that of another, has likewise an odd melancholy look, like that of a prison or a nunnery. Nunneries, however, here are none; and if the old women turned out of those they have long dwelt in, are not provided with decent pensions, it must surely distress even the Emperor’s cold heart to see age driven from the refuges of disappointment, and forced to wander through the world with inexperience for its guide, while youth is no longer _led_, but _thrust_ into temptation by such a sudden transition from utter retirement to open and busy life.

We have been this morning to look over his academy of painting, &c. His exhibition-room is neatly kept, and I dare say will prosper: the students are zealous and laborious, and earnestly desire the promulgation of science: their collection of models is meagre, but it will mend by degrees. Perhaps Joseph the IId. is the first European sovereign who, establishing a school for painting and sculpture, has insisted on the artists never exercising their skill upon any subject which could hurt any person’s delicacy;--an example well worthy honest praise and speedy imitation.

The very few charitable foundations established at Vienna by Imperial munificence are well managed; their paucity is accounted for by the recollection of many abuses consequent on the late Empress’s bounty; her son therefore took all the annuities away, which he thought her tenderness had been duped out of; but let it be remembered that when he rides or walks in a morning, he always takes with him a hundred ducats, out of which he never brings any home, but gives in private donations what he knows to be well bestowed, without the ostentation of affected generosity: it is not in rewards for past services perhaps, nor in public and stately institutions, as I am told here, that this prince’s liberalities are to be looked for; yet--

In Mis’ry’s darkest caverns known,
His useful care is ever nigh;
Where hopeless Anguish pours her groan,
And lonely Want retires to die.

To-morrow (23d of November) we venture to leave Vienna and proceed northwards, as I long to see the Dresden gallery. Here every thing appears to me a caricatura of London; the language like ours, but coarser; the plays like ours, but duller; the streets at night lighted up, not like ours now, but very like what they were thirty or forty years ago.

Among the people I have seen here, Mademoiselle Paradies, the blind performer on the harpsichord, interested me very much;--and she liked England so, and the King and Queen were so kind to her, and she was _so_ happy, she said!--While life and its vexations seem to oppress such numbers of hearts, and cloud such variety of otherwise agreeable faces, one must go to a blind girl to hear of happiness, it seems! But she has wonderful talents for languages as well as music, and has learned the English pronunciation most surprisingly. It is a soothing sight when one finds the mind compensate for the body’s defects: I took great delight in the conversation of Mademoiselle Paradies.

The collection of rarities, particularly an Alexander’s head worthy of Capo di Monte, now in the possession of Madame de Hesse, became daily more my study, as I received more and more civilities from the charming family at whose house it resides: there are some very fine cameos in it, and a great variety of miscellaneous curiosities.

So different are the customs here and at Venice, that the German ladies offer you chocolate on the same salver with coffee, of an evening, and fill up both with milk; saying that you may have the latter quite black if you chuse it--“_Tout noir, Monsieur, à la Venetienne_;”--adding their best advice not to risque a practice so unwholesome. While their care upon that account reminds me chiefly of a friend, who lives upon the Grand Canal, that in reply to a long panegyric upon English delicacy, said she would tell a story that would prove them to be nasty enough, at least in some things; for that she had actually seen a handsome young nobleman, who came from London (_and ought to have known better_), souce some thick cream into the fine clear coffee she presented him with; which every body must confess to be _vera porcheria_! a very _piggish trick_!--So necessary and so pleasing is conformity, and so absurd and perverse is it ever to forbear such assimilation of manners, when not inconsistent with the virtue, honour, or necessary interest:--let us eat sour-crout in Germany, frittura at Milan, macaroni at Naples, and beef-steaks in England, if one wishes to please the inhabitants of either country; and all are very good, so it is a slight compliance. Poor Dr. Goldsmith said once--“I would advise every young fellow setting out in life _to love gravy_;”--and added, that he had formerly seen a glutton’s eldest nephew disinherited, because his uncle never could persuade him to say he liked gravy.

PRAGUE.

The inns between Vienna and this place are very bad; but we arrived here safe the 24th of November, when I looked for little comfort but much diversion; things turned out however exactly the reverse, and _aux bains de Prague_ in Bohemia we found beds more elegant, dinners neater dressed, apartments cleaner and with a less foreign aspect, than almost any where else. Such is not mean time the general appearance of the town out of doors, which is savage enough; and the celebrated bridge singularly ugly I think, crowded with vast groupes of ill-made statues, and heavy to excess, though not incommodious to drive over, and of a surprising extent. These German rivers are magnificent, and our Mulda here (which is but a branch of the Elbe neither) is respectable for its volume of water, useful for the fish contained in it, and lovely in the windings of its course.

Bohemia seems no badly-cultivated country; the ground undulates like many parts of Hertfordshire, and the property seems divided much in the same manner as about Dunstable; my head ran upon Lilly-hoo, when they shewed me the plains of Kolin.

Doctor Johnson was very angry with a gentleman at our house once, I well remember, for not being better company; and urged that he had travelled into Bohemia, and seen Prague:--“Surely,” added he, “the man who has seen Prague might tell us something new and something strange, and not sit silent for want of matter to put his lips in motion!” _Horresco referens_;--I have now been at Prague as well as Doctor Fitzpatrick, but have brought away nothing very interesting I fear; unless that the floor of the opera-stage there is inlaid, which so far as I have observed is a _new_ thing; the cathedral I am sure is an _old_ thing, and charged with heavy and ill-chosen ornaments, worthy of the age in which it was fabricated!--One would be loth to see any alteration take place, or any picture drive old Frank’s Three Kings, divided into three compartments, from its station over the high altar. St. John Neppomucene has an altar here all of solid silver, very bright and clean; his having been flung into the river Mulda in the persecuting days, holding fast his crucifix and his religion, gives him a rational title to veneration among the martyrs, and he is considered as the tutelar saint here, where his statue meets one at the entrance of every town.

This truly Gothic edifice was very near being destroyed by the King of Prussia, who bombarded the city thirty-five years ago; I saw the mark made by one ball just at the cathedral door, and heard with horror of the dreadful siege, when an egg was sold for a florin, and other eatables in proportion: the whole town has, in consequence of that long blockade, a ragged and half-ruined melancholy aspect; and the roads round it, then broken up, have scarcely been mended since.

The ladies too looked more like masquerading figures than any thing else, as they sat in their boxes at the opera, with rich embroidered caps, or bright pink and blue sattin head-dresses, with ermine or sable fronts, a heavy gold tassel hanging low down from the left ear, and no powder; which gives a girlish look, and reminded me of a fashion our lower tradesmen in London had about fifteen or eighteen years ago, of dressing their daughters, from nine to twelve years old, in puffed black sattin caps, with a long ear hanging down on one side. It is a becoming mode enough as the women wear it here, but gives no idea of cleanliness; and I suppose that whilst finery retains its power of striking, delicacy keeps her distance, nor attempts to come in play till the other has failed of its effect. Ladies dress here very richly, as indeed I expected to find them, and coloured silk stockings are worn as they were in England till the days of the Spectator:--“_Thrift, thrift, Horatio_;” as Hamlet observes; for our expences in Great Britain are infinitely increased by our advancement from splendor to neatness.

Here every thing seems at least five centuries behind-hand, and religion has not purified itself the least in the world since the days of its early struggle; for here Huss preached, and here Jerome, known by the name of Jerome of Prague, first began to project the scheme of a future reformation. The Bohemians had indeed been long before that time indulged by the Popes with permission to receive the cup in the sacrament, a favour granted no one else; and of that no notice was ever taken, till further steps were made for the obtaining many alterations that have crept in since that time in other nations, not so hasty to do by violence what will one day be done of themselves without any violence at all.

I asked to see some Protestant meeting-houses, and was introduced to a very pleasing-mannered Livornese, who spoke sweet Italian, and was minister to a little place of worship which could not have contained two hundred people at the most; in fact his flock were all soldiers, he said. Not a person who could keep a shop was to be found of _our_ persuasion, nor was Lutheranism half so much detested even in Italy, he said. Though I remember the boys hooting us at Tivoli too, and calling our English Gentlemen, _Monsieur Dannato_.

The library does not seem ancient, but the grave person who shewed it spoke very indifferent French, so that I could better trust my eyes than my ears; this want of language is terrible!--A celestial globe moving by clockwork concealed within, and shewing the sun’s place upon the ecliptic very exactly, detained our attention agreeably; and I observed a polyglot Bible printed at London in Cromwell’s time, with a compliment to him in the preface, which they have expunged in succeeding editions. A missal too was curious enough from its being decorated with some singular illuminations upon one leaf; at the top of the page a figure of Wickliffe is seen, striking the flint and steel; under him, in another small compartment, Jerome of Prague blowing tinder to make his torch kindle; below him again down the same side, Martin Luther, the flambeau well lighted and blazing in his hand; at the bottom of the page poor John Huss, betrayed by the Emperor who promised him protection, and burning alive at a stake, to the apparent satisfaction of the charitable fathers assembled at the council of Constance. Another curiosity should be remembered; the manuscript letter from Zisca, the famous Protestant general who headed the revolters in 1420; I was amazed to see in how elegant an Italian hand it was written; the librarian said comically enough--“_Ay, ay, it begins all about the fear of God_, &c.; _those fellows_,” continued he, “_you know, are always sure to be canters!_”

The reigning sovereign has made few changes in church matters here, except that which was become almost indispensable, the resolution to have mass said only at one altar, instead of many at a time; the contrary practice does certainly disturb devotion, and produce unavoidable indecorums, as no one can tell what he turns his back upon, while the bell rings in so many places of a large church at once, and so many different functions are going forward, that people’s attention must almost necessarily be distracted.

The eating here is incomparable; I never saw such poultry even at London or Bath, and there is a plenty of game that amazes one; no inn so wretched but you have a pheasant for your supper, and often partridge soup. The fish is carried about the streets in so elegant a style it tempts one; a very large round bathing-tub, as we should call it, set barrow-wise on two not very low wheels, is easily pushed along by one man, though full of the most pellucid water, in which the carp, tench, and eels, are all leaping alive, to a size and perfection I am ashamed to relate; but the tench of four and five pounds weight have a richness and flavour one had no notion of till we arrived at Vienna, and they are the same here.

How trade stands or moves in these countries I cannot tell; there is great rigour shewn at the custom-house; but till the shopkeepers learn to keep their doors open at least for the whole of the short days, not shut them up so and go to sleep at one or two o’clock for a couple of hours, I think they do not deserve to be disturbed by customers who bring ready money. To-morrow (30th November 1786) we set out, wrapped in good furs and flannels, for

DRESDEN;

Whither we arrive safe this 4th of December,--

----A wond’rous token
Of Heav’n’s kind care, with bones unbroken!

As the ingenious Soame Jenyns says of a less hazardous drive in a less barbarous country I hope: but really to English passengers in English carriages, the road from Prague hither is too bad to think on; while nothing literally impels one forward except the impossibility of going back. Lady Mary Wortley says, her husband and postillions slept upon the precipices between Lowositz and Aussig; but surely the way must have been much better then, as all the opium in both would scarce have stupefied their apprehensions now, when a fall into the Elbe must either have interrupted or finished their nap; because our coach was held up every step of the journey by men’s hands, while we walked at the bottom about seven miles by the river’s side, suffering nothing but a little fatigue, and enjoying the most cloudless beautiful weather ever seen. The Elbe is here as wide I think as the Severn at Gloucester, and rolls through the most varied and elegant landscape possible, not inferior to that which adorns the sides of the little Dart in Devonshire, but on a greater scale; every hill crowned with some wood, or ornamented by some castle.

As soon as we arrived, tired and hungry, at Aussig, we put our shattered coach on board a bark, and floated her down to Dresden; whither we drove forward in the little carts of the country, called chaises, but very rough and with no springs, as our very old-fashioned curricles were about the year 1750. The brightness of the weather made even such a drive delightful though, and the millions of geese on and off the river gave animation to the views, and accounted for the frequency of those soft downy feather-beds, which sooth our cares and relieve our fatigue so comfortably every night. Hares will scarce move from near the carriage wheels, so little apprehensive are they of offence; and the partridges run before one so, it is quite amusing to look at them. The trout in these great rivers are neither large nor red: I have never seen trout worth catching since I left England; the river at Rickmansworth produces (one should like to know why) that fish in far higher perfection than it can be found in any other stream perhaps in Europe.

The being served at every inn, since we came into Saxony, upon Dresden china, gives one an odd feel somehow; but here at the Hôtel de Pologne there is every thing one can wish, and served in so grand a style, that I question whether any English inn or tavern can compare with it; so elegantly fine is the linen, so beautiful the porcelaine of which every the meanest utensil is made; and if the waiter did not appear before one dressed like Abel Drugger with a green cloth apron, and did not his entrance always fill the room with a strong scent of tobacco, I should think myself at home again almost. This really does seem a very charming town; the streets well built and spacious; the shops full of goods, and the people willing to shew them; and if they _do_ cut all their wood before their own doors, why there is room to pass here without brawling and bones-breaking, which disgusts one so at Vienna; it seems lighter too here than there; I cannot tell why, but every thing looks clean and comfortable, and one feels _so much at home_. I hate prejudice; nothing is so stupid, nothing so sure a mark of a narrow mind: yet who can be sure that the sight of a Lutheran town does not afford in itself an honest pleasure to one who has lived so long, though very happily, under my Lord Peter’s protection?

Here Brother Martin has all precedence paid _him_; for though the court are Romanists, their splendid church here is _called_ only a chapel, and they are not permitted to ring the bell, a privilege the Lutherans seem much attached to, for nothing can equal the noise of _our_ bells on a Sunday morning at Dresden.

The architecture is truly hideous, but no ornaments are spared; and the church of Notre Dame here is very magnificent. The china steeples all over the country are the oddest things in the world; spires of blue or green porcelaine tiles glittering in the sun have a strange effect. But nothing can afford a stronger proof that crucifixes, Madonnas, and saints, need not be driven out of churches for fear they should be worshipped, than the Lutherans admission of them into _theirs_; for no people can be further removed from idolatry, or better instructed in the Christian religion, than the common people of this town; where a decent observation of the sabbath struck me with most consolatory feelings, after living at Paris, Rome, and Florence, where it is considered as a _merry_, not a _holy_ day at all! and though there seems nothing inconsistent or offensive in our rejoicing on the day of our Lord’s resurrection, yet if people are encouraged to _play_, they will soon find out that they may _work_ too, the shops will scarcely be shut, and all appearance of regard to the fourth commandment will be done away. The Lutherans really seem to observe the golden mean; they frequent their churches all morning with a rigorous solemnity, no carts or business of any sort goes forward in the streets, public and private devotion takes up the whole forenoon; but they do not forbear to meet and dance after six o’clock in the evening, or play a sober game for small sums at a friend’s house.

The society is to me very delightful; more women than men though, and the women most agreeable; exceedingly sensible, well informed, and willing to talk on every subject of general importance, but religion or politics seem the favourite themes, and are I believe most studied here;--no wonder, the court and city being of different sects, each steadily and irrevocably fixed in a firm persuasion that their own is best, causes an investigation that comes not in the head of people of other countries; and it is wonderful to see even the low Romanists skilled in controversial points to a degree that would astonish the people nearest the Pope’s person, I am well persuaded.

The Saxons are excessively loyal however, and have the sense to love and honour their sovereign no less for his difference of opinion from theirs, than if all were of one mind; yet knowing his principles, they watch with a jealous eye against encroachments, while the amiable elector and electress use every tender method to induce their subjects to embrace _their_ tenets, and weary heaven with prayers for their conversion, as if the people were heathens. One great advantage results from this odd mixture of what so steadily resists uniting; it is the earnest desire each has to justify and recommend their notions by their practice, so that the inhabitants of Dresden are among the most moral, decent, thinking people I have seen in my travels, or indeed in my life. The general air and manner both of place and people, puts one in mind of the pretty clean parts of our London, about Queen Square, Ormond Street, Lincoln’s-Inn-Fields, and Southampton Row.

The bridge is beautiful, more elegant than showy; the light iron railing is better in some respects than a stone balustrade, and I do not dislike the rule they make to themselves of going on _one_ side the way always, and returning the other, to avoid a crowd and confusion.

But it is time to talk about the picture gallery, where, cold as our weather is, I contrive to pass three hours every day, my feet well defended by _perlaches_, a sort of cloth clogs, very useful and commodious. And now I have seen the _Notte di Corregio_ from which almost all pictures of _effect_ have taken their original idea; and here are three other Corregios inimitable, invaluable, incomparable. Surely this _Notte_ might stand side by side with Raphael’s Transfiguration; and as Sherlock says that Shakespear and Corneille would look only on the Vesuvius side of the prospect at Naples, while Pope and Racine would turn their heads towards Posilippo; so probably, while the two first would fasten all their attention upon the Demoniac, the two last would console their eyes with the sweetness of Corregio’s Nativity. His little Magdalen too set round with jewels, itself more precious than any or than all of them, possesses wonderful powers of attraction; it is an hour before one can recollect that there are some glorious Titians in the same façade; but Caracci, who depends not on his colouring for applause, loses little by their vicinity, and Poussin is always equally respectable. The Rembrandts are beyond credibility perfect of their kind, and produce a most powerful effect. His portrait of his own daughter has neither equal nor price, I believe; though the girl has little dignity to be sure, and less grace about her; but if to represent nature as she _is_ suffices, this is the first single figure in Europe as painting a _live woman_.--The Jupiter and Ganymede is very droll indeed, and done with very _un_-Italian notions; but the eagle looks as if one might pluck his feathers; it is very life itself.--A candle-light Rubens here is shewn as a prodigious rarity; a Ruysdael as much resembling nature in _his_ country, I do believe, as Claude Lorraine ever painted in _his_.--The crayons Cupid of Mengs which dazzles, and the portrait of old Parr by Vandycke which interests one, are pictures which call one to look at them again and again; and the little Vanderwerfs kept in glass cases, smooth as ivory, and finished to perfection, are all alike to be sure; one would wonder that a man should never be weary of painting single figures so, and constantly repeating the same idea; his eyes must have had peculiar strength too, to endure such trials, mine have been pained enough this morning with only looking at his labours, and those of the indefatigable Denny. Let me refresh them with a Parnassus of Giacomo Tintoret, who puts all the colourists to flight except Corregio.

But here are two pictures which display prodigious genius, by a master of whom I never heard any one speak, Ferdinand Bol, who unites grace and dignity to the clear obscure of Rembrandt, whose scholar he was. Jacob blessing Pharoah, painted by him, is delightful; and Joseph’s expressions while he presents his father, full of affectionate partiality and fond regard for the old man, heightens his personal beauty; while the king’s character is happily managed too, and gives one the highest idea of the artist’s skill. A Madonna reposing in her flight to Egypt with a fatigued look, her head supported by her hand, is elegant, and worthy of the Roman or Bolognese schools; the landscape is like Rembrandt. This gallery boasts an Egyptian Mary by Spagnolet, too terrifying to look long at; and a small picture by Lodovico Carracci of the Virgin clasping her Son, who lies asleep in her lap, while a vision of his future crucifixion shewn her by angels in the sky, agitates every charming feature of her face, and causes a shrinking in her figure which no power of art can exceed.