DB25 .K792 -' .*^ ^^"-. •. .y/;«k-/^^. .^\^ikJi'X. .A^:i^r^^. S^^ik ■' V..* .«^\>;;%>-i%\, A*''.';^-.%. .^'^".'ikJi-.X A^'j^ % *» V T) > ^ > J J) J^JL> ■:J>:'-^h ^^ v>.,-.,isr ^:^ '•■;■ ■>■ -^^y r->:- ^^ ^^ - , . ,-»■,•■■ ■^ ^ > ^-':-V> " ^ > ^ ^i> ^^ ^y > > ^- ■ ■» >' ^ T»- ^ ^~^ 3^8^ :>> ' "> J03?^' ^1> 7 ) '^^!BB> > :> "JXf^ - > > J2Bn& ' >"■> > ^^sfy^ 3 ?>> > ^sS* > :> :» : ■'^E^ -) .3 ->' ?,'- i«S> ^■t>"> ■s-t'- ■-. Jj|ST> "^'J'S'' > 5f^^ ^5S^^-^ > Price Tiventif'five Cents, ' MyA^^^^^^ . AUSTRIA. YIENNA, PRAGU ETC. ETC. BY J. G. KOIIL, AUTHOR OF " RUSSIA AND THE RU.SSIANS." PRINTED FOR CAREY AND HART, 126 CHESTNUT STREET, AND SOLD BY ALL BOOKSELLERS AND NEWS AGENTS IN THE UNITED STATES. HARRY lORREQUER'S WORKS COMPLETE, IN LARGE TYPE, FOR PHILADELPHIA, Have just published a New and Uniform Edition of tlie COMPRISING CONFESSIONS OF HARRY LORREQUER. In One Volume, 8vo. Cheap Edition, Price 50 cents. " He has enabled us to pass many an hour that would otherwise have been dull, weary, and idle, in inn< cent mirth and jovial fellowship ; deeply interested in his wayward pilgrimage to final fortune and happines but delighted beyond the possibility of adequate expression with what may be termed the pathetic humour c his narrative." — Montreal Gazette. ♦' We would rather be the author of this work, than of all the ' Pickwicks' and ' Nicklebys' in the worl It is full to overflowing of homour of a very high order; and as for incidents, it contains enough to supply stoc for half a score of modern novels." — United Service Gazette. CHARLES O'MALLEY, THE IRISH DRAGOON, EDITED BY HARRY LORREQUER. Complete in One Volume, 750 pages, 8vo. Cheap Edition, Price 50 cents. " We look back to the opinion we expressed when this writer made his debut, with increased satisfactioi from the firm conviction that he has hardly a rival in that free, manly, dashing style of sketching life, manner and humorous incidents, to which he has devoted himself. Charles O'Malley is, to our thinking, the clevere number of any periodical work, the production of a single pen, which has yet come before us. — Pickwick Nicklebys, Poor Jacks, «&c., all included." — United Service Gazette. JACK HINTON, THE GUARDSMAN. BY THE AUTHOR OF CHARLES O'MALLEY. Complete in One Volume. Price 50 cents. " The two greatest fiction writers of the age are Dickens and Harry Lorrequer. Their works have giv( birth to a new school of novelists, and to a new era in our literature." — Fife Herald. " We do not know a more spirited and engrossing work, and plead guilty to being among the most imp tient and insatiable of its devourers." — Scottish Standard. " This is decidedly the pleasantest book of the time." — Liverpool Courier. " These admirable sketches keep pace with the previous portions in vigour of diction, attraction of incidei and racy colloquies, sparkling with wit and humour." — Caledoiiian Mercury. (Xj' Carey 4- Hart also publish an edition of the above Works with Illustrations by Phiz, at $\ each volum til WMILi COMPLETE IN THREE LARGE OCTAVO VOLUMES OF Upwards of Fifteen Hundred Pages, Large Type, XTO'W RZ!.A.DV, FOR $1 50. A remittance of $5 will pay for FOUR copies of the COMPLETE WRITINGS of « Harr; liorrequer," in 3 volumes, originally published at TEN DOIiliARS per copy. AUSTRIA. VIENNA, PRAGUE, ETC. ETC, 4-;< J873 M -\ BY J. G. KOHL, AUTHOR OF " RUSSIA AND THE RUSSIANS.' A\ PHILADELPHIA: CAREY AND HART No. 126 CHESNUT STREET. 1844. ->t^' PEEFACE. The following pages consist of a portion of Mr. Kohl's admirable work on Austria. Should the work meet with the favour that the publishers confidently anticipate, it will be immediately followed by the remaining portion, con- taining Hungary, Bohemia, the Danube, &c. » AUSTRIA. BOHEMIA FROM DRESDEN TO TEPLITZ. To travel or not to travel, was once more the question. To wander, to stroll through the ■world, or to remain and shoot out roots like a tree. Whether 'twas nobler in a man to tend his own little garden, or to arm himself against a sea of troubles, and plough his way round our terrestrial j)lanet1 A house, or a tenti A warm room, or a windy seat in a post coachl A shady tree, or a budless staff? One friend, or a thou- sand friendly faces'? I must own I had heard in a quiet little farm on the banks of the Elbe, the cackling of hens and the crowing of cocks; I had visited the peaceful chambers, and the cozy garden with its circling wall; had seen the contented cattle fattening in their stalls, and the tempter had said to me, "Might not all this be thine?" and mightst thou not find here all that thou seekest in the wide world, and bearest thou not in thy own breast a world that cannot come to a birth lor want of repose?"— "Ye?, if a wish could command repose, who would fardels bear, and groan and sweat beneath a load of travelling troubles?" I replied to my advising friend, ■whispered many other things into his ear that were not intended fur the crowd, and concluded with these* words: "Look, my dear friend, thus it is that necessity makes brave men of us, and enterprises that seem full of great pith and mo- ment, with this respect lose much of the merit ascribed to them." So saying, I once more took leave of him, and stepped into the Saxon Postwagen that had been standing for some time ready harnessed in the courtyard of the Diligence office at Dresden. I was about to start for Teplitz, there to consign myself to the keeping of a Bohemian vehicle, by the aid of ■which I hoped to reach the deep-rolling Danube, ■«'here I fully intended to embark on ■a steamer that should convey me to Vienna. After that I contemplated intrusting my person to a Hunga- rian^ Sjfucrwagen, and alternately by land and by water, sometimes with the aid of a living steed, and sometimes by that of a many-horsed power of the unquiet steam-engin", to press forward to the confines of Turkey, and when I had done all this, my purpose was to return quietly to my native land. Such was my plan, but in the execution of it I was delayed for full five minutes, by a country- 2 man of the gallant Falconbridge. "A proper man's picture," as Portia says; i. e. an English- man, came rushing into the court-yard, just as the horses were starting. His appearance was striking enough. His collar, I believe, had been bought in Italy, his trousers in France, his cap in Germany, and his manners had been picked up everywhere. It did not rain, nevertheless he carried a huge umbrella to shield him against the sun. He was out of breath, placed himself right before the horses, and having slightly adjusted his crav^at and dusted his coat, he began a series of pantomimic demonstrations, addressed by turns to the horses, the postilion, and the conductor. The horses whom he had grasped by the bridle, were the only part of his audience who seemed to understand him ; for he spoke neither Latin, French, nor Italian, and not one mortal word of German. We made him out to be a passenger who had overstaid his time, and the diligence was stopped. He ran immediately into the office, where he paid the remainder of his fare, and then again, in mute despair, he rushed through the crowd of spectators, to gaze out into the street. The con- ductors took him by tlie arm to lead him back to the carriage, but he broke from them and ran into the street again, where he.^rood gazing to the right and to the left, ip ^.vklent anxiety. No one could guess the me.^nvug of all this, and in a little time we should siave lelt him alone with his despair, if at the critical moment a valet-de-place, who came panting into the yard, with a hatbox in his hand, had not atl'orded a solution to the enigma. My Englishman now took his place by my side, and related to me that he was setting out with a determination to visit and inspect all the provinces of the Aus- trian empire. He appeared to me like one ■who had gone forth to till a field, but had forgot- ten his plough at home. Even in English he was not very talkative. "Who can converse with a dumb show?" as Portia says: so I found I had abundant time to meditate further on the theme with which I started — to travel or not to travel. All the charming vineyards, and all the com- fortable country-boxes that smiled over to us from the other side of the Elbe; all the cheerful Saxon villages of the Dresden plain; all the 80,000 peaceful townsfolk of Dresden, whom we were leaving behind us— all seemed to be 10 KOHL'S AUSTRIA. reproaching me for leaving them; and every time that a labourer by the roadside looked up at our wandering vehicle, he looked as though he would say to me, " Friend, stay at home, and earn thv bread like an honest man." Perhaps when Napoleon retreated over the same ground, after the battle of Culm, the Saxon villages may have spoken to him in the same strain. He might still be reigning in France, had he known belter how to stay at home. After passing Pirna, indeed all the way from Dresden to Teplitz, you pass over a succession of fields of battle. The War of Liberation, the Seven Years' War, the Thirty Years' War, and the Hussite War, have all contributed to make memorable the mountain passes of Bohemia; at Culm, at Pirna, at Maxen, again and again at Culm, up to that battle of Culm which the German king Lothair lost to the Bohemian, Sobieslav, in 1126, when Albert the Bear was taken prisoner by the Bohemians, much in the same way in which Vandamme was taken 700 years later by the Cossacks. At Peterswalde, we come to the Austrian frontier. This frontier runs, for the most part, along the highest summit of the Erzgebirge; but, strange as it may seem on a frontier of such ancient standing as that between Saxony and Bo- hemia, there exists to this day a boundary dis- pute, the existence of which, by the by, was only recently discovered, in consequence of the sur- veys rendered necessary for the magnificent map of Saxony lately executed. The Saxon surveyors came to a frontier village, which they took to belong to their own country, but the inhabitants declared they were Austrians, and drove the strangers away. In the same way these vil- lagers are said constantly to have repelled the visit of the Austrian tax-collector, by declaring themselves Saxons. Upon the Saxon map the village has, in consequence, been marked by a white spot, and will continue so till the labours of diplomatists have determined under what royal wings these mountaineers are to have a shelter assigned them. The Erzgebirge must not be supposed to be a series of mountain pyramids placed side by side. It is rather a Vuge extended mound, sloping away to the north into Saxony, but rising ab- ruptly on the Bolie.iiian side. Seen from Sax- ony the chain presents nothing very striking*, but from the Bohemian side it looks like a huge wall girting the land. In the same way, the views from the summit are tame, looking towards Saxony, but magnificent when the eye wanders over the Eger and Bila valleys of Bohemia. " Heavens! what beautiful country is thatl" exclaimed one of our lady passengers, as we reached the summit; "only look, deep precipices and mountain ravines; a wide plain, with towns and villages scattered over it, while in the dis- tance again, mountains rise to close in the hori- zon!"— "This portion of our resplendent planet," we replied, " presents itself to the astronomers oftheinoon as a bii;'lU squaiv enclosed by a dark rim, and mav l>c IvImjv.u tu tliose loani-'d personages as the Ici^ituiy of Alpha, or the kind of Fsi. Perhaps they may inform their students that the said territory is an island, and that the dark frame by which it is bounded is a mass of light absorbing water. Here upon earth we call the tract Bohemia, and il we knew how to impart it to them we might inform the sages of the moon that the dark circling mass is caused by light absorbing forests, and by yawning ra- vines. No doubt, in the same way in which we terrestrials often talk of the man in the moon, do the learned there speak of the virgin of the earth. The square piece of surface which we call Bohemia, as it corfcsponds very nearly with the virgin's girdle, may pass for her buckle; and when the country, covered with clouds and mist, seems darker than on those days when the sunbeams are immediately reflected from the surface, the mooners perhaps say, 'The virgin's buckle looks dull to-day;' or, in the contrary case, 'The virgin has brightened up her buckle this morning.'" Be this as it may, upon one point the Bohemians may fully rely— namely, that the boundaries of their country' must be ap- parent to the very schoolboys in the moon, to whom the limits of Saxony, Prussia, and of olher merely politically-bounded countries, must be utterly unknown. The piece of Bohemia which first becomes visible to the enraptured eye of the traveller, from the heights of NoUendorf, is the valley of the Bila, and so lovely is the view that tliere presents itself, that every one who sees it for the first time, however he may have been pre- pared beforehand, will be likely to exclaim with our fair companion, " Heavens! what beautiful country is that"!" Along winding roads the diligence descends gradually into the valley, accompanied the whole way by a troop of children, who, in ex- change for raspberries and strawberries, levy a little frontier-tribute on the traveller, and greet him on his entrance into a new country with the pious salutation, "Blessed be Jesus Christ." The three eagles, whose wings upon these heights fluttered so fatally around the French legions; have erected three monuments upon the field of battle, and weather-beaten veterans are stationed there as sentinels. English travel- lers, on passing the place, are wont to note down very conscientiously how many hundred- weight oi' metal have gone to the composition of each monument. Our Englishman wrote among his memoranda that the Austrian was large and solid, the Prussian very small, and the Russian remarkable for its elegance. In Teplitz, not only the inns and public- houses, but even private buildings have each a distinguishing sign. Thus one house is called the Lyre, another the Angel, and a third the Golden Ring. It is, if not more convenient, at all events a much prettier and more pictur- esque way of marking the houses, than our fa- shion of numbering them, and prevails through the greatej- part of Bohemia, and even in some of the adjoining countries. To become well acquainted with Teplitz, one should endeavour to wander about tl^ place with one of the regular annual visitors. There are certain sufferers from the gout who arrive there at fixed seasons, and may be looked for as confidently as a stork at her last year's nest, or as certain human fixtures may be reckoned on in their accustomed colfee-rooms. Such people gradually conceive for Teplitz al- most as much interest as for their own homes. KOHL'S AUSTRIA. 11 and when they arrive, can have no rest till they have satisfied themselves that Clary Castle stands where it did, and that all thfe public ■walks are in due order. They hasten to the bath-rooms to receive the obsequious salute of each well-remembered attendant, and enter the glass magazines to admire the new colours and fashions; for every year is as certain to bring its new colours into the Bohemian glass manu- factories, as to usher in its old ones to the Bohemian meadows. The invalid who visits the baths of Teplitz passes the first few days at an inn; and, during this time, he abandons himself to the delights of reviewing the old scenes, till he is able to find a private lodging at the Three Cossacks, or at the Paradise, or at the Palm-tree, or at the Prince of Ligne. Then he calls in his phy- sician, aiul delivers himself over to the pre- scriptions of the place, rises early, and drinks most scrupulously his allotted portion of sul- phur water, which glides through his lips to the enchanting accompaniment of a band of music; he is careful not to miss the promenade at noon in the garden of the Castle of Clary, even though he should not be able to participate in its plea- sures otherwise than in a rolling chair; and eats, drinks, sleeps, and reposes, accordingly as his doctor directs" him, in whose hands he is even as a watch — wound up, regulated, and made to go. From the castle hill the view is most beauti- ful and comprehensive, extending over nearly the whole valley to the sources of the tributary streams. I made a pilgrimage tolhe siiiuiuit, in company with some Poles. In a small \'illage, on our way, we met with some Polish Jews, ■who are frequently to be seen in Bohemia. They carried in their boxes a variety of little ornaments for sale among the peasants; needles, pins, beads, &c. They called such an assort- ment of merchandise Spiiulliki, a word half Polish and half German; and they told us they had been to Riga, Brody, Warsaw, and Cracow. They spoke Bohemian, Polish, German, and Russian, and were a fair sample of the jew ped- lars that generally wander about the Slavonian countries of Eastern Europe. In Russian Po- land, they told us, they used formerly to gain most money, but the government did not allow them to go there any longer. Like the whole country round Teplitz, the castle hill is evidently of volcanic origin. It is a tolerably regular cone, rising ICOO feet in height from the surrounding plain. A girdle of beautiful oaks encircles the middle, and the summit, an extinct crater, is crowned by the ruins of the castle which was destroyed by fire. From among the oaks may be discovered the most beautil'ul landscapes, charmingly framed by the spreading branches of the stately trees; but all that the pen can do to convey an idea of pictures such as these is idle and imperti- nent, and even the pencil may timidly shrink from the task. On fine days the hill is swarm- ing with visitors, who form for themselves a temporary settlement, in the corners, under the porches, and on the terraces of the ruins, and watch the sun as he describes his marvellous course, till he vanishes behind the Carlsbad mountains. The wondrous effects of the light at sunset, with the endless gradations of its colours, and all the glories of the evening we had spent to- gether, had excited our Poles to such a degree, that, as we passed through the girdle of oaks, the place was made to ring again with the na- tional songs of Jescze Puhku nezglnala (yet is Poland not forsaken), and Gdy na wijbizezech. The latter is one of the most beautiful of all the patriotic melodies t)f Poland. The words run nearly as follows: — " When thou seest a ship by the sea-shore, tost about by the storm, and cast upon a trea- cherous shoal, less by the fury of the waves than by the fault of the pilot; oh, then, deign to shed a tear for that poor ship, for it will remind thee of the fate of unhappy Poland. "When thou beholdest a volcano, a giant among mountains, pouring forth lava, and emit- ting smoke, while in its bosom is burning an eternal fire; oh, then, remember, that such is the love of liis country that burns in the bosom of the Pole." The Milleschauer, three thousand feet high, is the loftiest among the Central mountains, the whole of which may be seen at ease from its summit. These central mountains are all ex- tinct volcanoes, and all of a tolerably regular conical form. The Elbe breaks here in quick succession through two chains of mountains, the Central mountains and the Erzgebii-ge, and it is remarkable that just at this poiut, where the water forced its way through the hills, the violence of the fire should likewise have been so great. When Bohemia was still a lake, these central mountains must have borne some resemblance to the Lipari islands, a group of volcanoes crowded together, and surrounded by water. The Milleschauer is also called the Donnersberg, or Hill of Thunder. May not this name refer to a remote period, when loud de- tonations were yet heard within the mountain's womb? Are not many hills that bear the name of Donnersberg extinct volcanoes'! It is difficult to imagine a more delightful prospect than that from the summit of the Mil- leschauer. The distant blue lines that bound the horizon, belong on one side to the Riesen- gebirge, or Giant Mountams; on the other, to the nearest hills of the Bohemian forest, while towards the south the plains of central Bohemia lay spread out before you, so that you may yield to the flattering belief of having more than half the kingdom at your feet, and of contemplating at one glance, the scene of the joys and sorrows of several millions of human beings. You be- hold the vessels that dot the surface of the Elbe, but of vi'hose presence the dwellers by the Eger, whom you comprehend in the same glance, have no suspicion. You see the carriages that roll forth from the little town of Lobositz, un- known to those that dwell in the valley of the Bila. The weather was remarkably favourable when we reached the summit of the Mille- schauer, the air was clear and transparent, and the eye roamed unconstrained over the most distant objects. A few clouds indeed were fly- ing about, and a thunder-storm was experidmg its fury on a distant portion of the landscape. The whole dukedom of Schlan and Munzifay, for instance, was overcast for a while with gray KOHL'S AUSTRIA. clouds that menaced ^vith thunder and hail. The fowls there were scudding with ruffled feathers before the storm, the dogs were creep- ing into their holes, and the men as they barred their doors, and made' their houses fast, seemed to say: — " Heaven be merciful to us! Is the last day cornel" — " Ye fools of Munzifay," thought we on our Olympian thrones, "be warned by this of the shortness of earthly sufferings!" and then we looked into the county of Tepiitz, and into the circles of Leitmeritz and Bunzlau, smiling in the tranquil light of sunshine, and enjoying themselves in the cheerfulness of the atmosphere. Seven thousand human beings dwell there upon every square mile,* and from every square mile seven thousand voices rise in praise of the beautiful weather. Without umbrellas they walk forth, and in uncovered carriages do they take their diversion! Short- sighted mortals that they are! Oh that they could but see the clouds that are gathering be- hind the Krkonnrski hills, as the Bohemians call the Giant mountains. That mischievous wight Rubezahlf is preparing to blow over to- wards them a mass of vapour that will spoil their diversion, by pouring down some millions of drops of rain. On the summit of the most elevated peak of the Donnersberg stands a wooden chair under a roof, said to have been erected for his own convenience by the late King of Prussia. Here he was wont to abandon himself for hours to- gether to the enjoyment of the glorious land- scape. It is a throne fit for a king, nay for a god, and I am surprised that the ancient Kings of I3oheiiiia should not have chosen this spot for their coronation instead of the Vissehrad, on the banks of the Moldau. Here on the Don- nersberg, within sight of the whole kingdom, while invested with crown and sceptre, they might have received the homage of all their subjects at once. The eye ranges to the eastern mountain frontier, from behind which rises the Bohemian sun, and follows the glorious orb in his course till he sinks again behind the western rampart of the kingdom. Here the nobles, while uttering the oath of allegiance, might have been impressed with the vastness of their fatherland, and the littleness of its minute parts. , As So- crates once said to Alcibiades, though he, like the Prince of Schwarzenberg, had his ninety- nine lordships — even so the King of Bohemia, before receiving the homage of his magnates, might have taken them each by the arm, and have said to them: — " I:;'ook, magnate, what you see before you is our common fatherland Bohe- mia, but that little misty point which you see yonder, marks the extent of dirt with the pos- session of which heaven has blessed you, and of which you are so immoderately proud. You, Duke of Friedland, will find your dukedom hid- den in the valley behind yon hill; and you, Im- perial Prince, by the grace of God, of Schlan * Whenever a mile is spnUen of in the course of the present work, a German mile is nridersiood. The Ger- man mile is «qual to about 4 3-7lh English miles, and conseriuenlly a German scjuare mile is equal to rather mure than St English square miles, or to about 13 G'lO acres .... t Kiibezahl is the name of a eoblin supposed to inhabit the Rlesencebirae. The legendary lore of Germany is full of tales, in which Kubezahl plays a part. and Munzifay, we must wait a little before we can find out your principalit}^ for a passing cloud conceals it for the moment. As to you, combative gentlemen of the Beraunerthal, there is your home, a small clear streak beyond the cloud; cut the streak up into little pieces, and each piece will be the territory of one of you, save only two of the pieces that belong to the high wise counciimen of Beraun and Rakonitz. Be advised, gentlemen, and live peaceably to- gether, like good neighbours, instead of cutting each other's throats lor a fragment of the streak. And now, honourable gentlemen and council- lors, look round upon the whole. Look at the spires of Raubnilz, of Lobosilz, of Trebnitz, of Brozan, and of Anscha; and there on those of Bilin, Brux, and Dux; see how cozily the smoke curls up from among yonder cottages, or from among those, or those, or those. See how life nestles in every corner, and how the mountains girdle the whole picture, and how the rivers run sparkling through the landscape. All this is our great and beautiful fatherland. The whole is great, the fragments trivial. Let us then stand faithfully and firmly for the whole, and now, gentlemen, come and set me my crown upon my head." Should the King of Bohemia then have had the wit to select for the moment of his corona- tion, the period of a rainbow such as we had the pleasure of greeting, the splendour of the solemnity would be complete. A group of clouds, that seemed to have detached itself from the main army which had been moving over the country the whole day, and that now poured down Its abundance close before the summit of the mountain, afforded us the glorious spectacle. The golden pearls were dropping down almost within reach of us, and as the sun had almost set, the rainbow was stretched out right above our heads. Gradually, however, we became more nearly acquainted with the damp mate- rials whereof the bow was constructed, and,. moistened by the liquid seven-coloured gems, we were glad to find a shelter among the mossy huts of the Donnersberg, that form about as cu- rious an hotel as a traveller might wish to see» A number of small, low huts, built of stone and draperied with moss, form a close circle around a small open space. In the centre is a kind of orchestra for I3ohemian musicians, who play every day during the Tepiitz season. Some of these mossy huts are refreshment rooms, others are fitted up as sleeping apartments, and in one there is even a museum to illustrate the natural curiosities of the mountain. Each door is deco- rated by some metrical inscription, from the pen of the poetical host, whose daughter pre- sents to each guest on his departure a neat little nosegay composed of flowers of the m.ountain. It had rained heavily while we were sheltered in the m^ossy cabinets on the mountain, and when we issued forth on otir downward journey, our guides told us the peasants near Trzeblitz would be certain to find great quantities of garnets; not that the garnets came down from heaven in the rain, but because, after a rain, they were more easily detected when turned up by the plough. Trzeblitz is a village at the foot of the Central Mountains, where garnets are not merely found thus by accident, but are likewise KOHL'S AUSTRIA. 13 carefullj' dug for. "The corn, however, will have suffered from the rain," added my guide. — " Why sol" — "Because it fell through a rain- bow. The rain -that falls through a rainbow always breeds a mildew, and if it falls *on a newly sown field, it burns the corn away." — "Why this is downright witchcraft," said I. — "Ay, ay," resumed the guide, " we have witches, and devils enough here. On yonder hill, where you see the ruins, there's a cave called the Devil's Cave, that is fall of them." I had to translate this to my French companion, who philosophically exclaimed, " Partouf on park plus des demons que des anges. En France c^est la meme ch/ise." And to say truth, it is strange, that throughout Christian Europe, so many beauti- ful and picturesque objects should be pointed out to us as Devil's Caves and Devil's Bridges, Devil's Rocks and Devil's Leaps. Why does not fancy sometimes attribute the workmanship to angels] The Greeks would at least have talked to us of Bacchus' Caves and Diana's Bridges; and how much more pleasing and cheerful are the images called forth by such names, than by constant allusions to a dirty, ugly, black, lauky-tailed devil! And then, how abominable a superstition must that be, which announces woe to the land over which the lovely Iris has swept with her many-coloured train! From what perverse imagination can such a notion have sprung? Is it that there is some- thing peculiarly gloomy in our nortiiern bloodT Does not the JBible itself teach us to hail the rainbow as a heavenly messenger of peace? Amid such discourse, my Frenchman and I had lost sight of our party, and suddenly found ourselves alone. He became ail at once afraid he should have to pass the night on the moun- tain, and commenced a series of lamentations on the shortness of German beds, and the scanty dimensions of German quilts; on tlie bad teeth of the German ladies, and on the incapacity of the Germans to prepare so simple an article of food as a lait au poulet, which insipid decoction, it seems, is to be had nowhere, save in the "Capital of Civilization." In proportion as the night grew darker, he became more and more eloquent on German suj^rstitions, and on the absurd tales of ghosts and goblins, in which the people believed so firmly. I consoled my com- panion, however, by assuring him I would lead him the right way; nor did we miss it, but arrived safely at the little village where we had left our carriage prior to our ascent, and where Tve now found the rest of our party awaiting our arrival. The following moVning was again bright and cheerful, and we omitted not to avail ourselves of it for another excursion to tlie environs of Teplitz. In addition to that of an esteemed friend, I had the company of two Bohemians from Prague, who told us much of the national efforts now making in Bohemia, of the learned societies at Prague, and of the patriotic balls that had been given there during the preced' ig winter, when the ball rooms were each time decorated with white and red, the national co- lours of Bohemia. No German, nothing hut Bohemian, was allowed to be spoken at these balls, and the guests were saluted, on their en- trance, by the stewards, in the Bohemian dialect, which, not many j^ears ago, was universally looked upon as a mere peasant's patois. The public announcement of the balls was to have been also made in Bohemian; but to this the police refused their consent, permitting, how- ever, by way of compromise, that the balls should be announced at once in both languages; a plan verj' generally adopted for other an- nouncements, besides those of patriotic balls. Our first visit was to the convent of Osseg, one of the most ancient in Bohemia, several portions of the building dating back as far as the year 11 9G. In the passages and corridors of convents, you may generally meet with a number of pictures, illustrative of the history of the religious order to which the convent belongs. Sometimes a pedigree of all the convents of the order, sometimes pictures of miracles performed by former monks and abbots, and sometimes portraits of the popes that have been members of the order. Here at Osseg, accordingly, I made the acquaintance of the six popes who had belonged to the Cistertian order. Among the large paintings in this monastery, there were three that particularly interested us. One represented a learned Frenchman, of the name of Alanus, sitting as a shepherd among his sheep, in a solitary part of the wood. This worthy Parisian, the quintessence of all learning and science, had discovered that it was only in the simplest occupations that a man enjoyed real happiness, and impressed with this belief, he had laid aside his doctor's cap and gown, to take up the crook of a philosophical keepe>i- of sheep. The second represented the Abbot Erro of Armentaria, wandering away into the Ibrest, to reflect upon what appeared to him an unin- teUigible verse in the Bible, that "before the Lord years pass away like moments, and centu- ries like thoughts." Coming into the wood, a bird rises, and so charms the abbot with its song, that he follows deeper and deeper into the recesses of the forest. When the bird ceases, the abbot, regretting the shortness of the melody, turns again homeward, but is surprised to find his convent in ruins, and a new one erected by its side. The monks, however, who dwell there, are all strangers; and,oninquirj% he learns that he is now in the year 1367, whereas it was in 1 167 that he started on his walk, so that he has been listening to a bird for 200 years. Satisfied now of the truth of holy writ, he prays God to take him up into Heaven. On a third picture was another Cistertian of the name of Daniel, who studied and read so indefatigably in his solitude, that the flames of his holy zeal issued forth at his fingers' ends, so that he could hold them, at night, like so many little tallow candles before his book. This allegory is a beautiful one; for no doubt there is within the human breast a self-illuminating power, that enables the possessor to read the mystrt-ies of God without the aid of a teacher; but in the way the painter has placed his subject before us, it loses all dignity, and looks rather as if the artist had designed to turn the matter into ridicule. In the picture galler}', in the upper rooms of the convent, we were much interested by two portraits of Luther and Melancthon. They are painted on wood, and marked with the initial of Albrecht Diirer. Luther gave them to his sister, 14 KOHL'S AUSTRIA. a nun in a LusAtian convent, who remained truejo Rome to her end. The Lusatian nunnery was, and stili is, a dependency of Osseg, and thus it was that the pictures came hither. In the beautiful parlc of the Cistertians we en- joyed magnificent views of the Bila valley, and, on going to the carp ponds in the garden, a few crumbs of bread brought hundreds of lusty carp to the surface in a minute. The monk who showed us over the place, told us these were only the small reservoirs, to furnish the daily supply; the large fishponds, he said, were fai-ther away. He told us also, that the convent possessed twenty-four villages, besides a sepa- rate estate of six villages for the abbot's private use. As soon as we pass the Erzgebirge we find things of which the name only is known farther north. With us these wealthy almsgiv- ing convents are mere things of romance, but here in Bohemia you see them and feel them. The present abbot of Osse^;-, Mr. 8alesius Krii- ger, if spoken of as a highly distinguished and amiable man. We were sorry not to be able to make any nearer acquaintance with him, than was afforded us by his portrait, painted by Professor Vogel. The convent of Osseg lies immediately at the foot of the Erzgebirge, whence you drive down into the plain to the Castle of Waldstein, and the small dependent town of Dux. The artistical treasures of this castle are of the highest interest, and may be enjoyed with the greater satisfaction, as they are not arranged with any view to sys- tem or completeness like the collections of a German university. The paintings decorate the customary sitting rooms of the owner of the castle, and sofas and ottomans seem to indicate the leisure and comfort with which the pictorial representations are daily enjoyed. The museum of natural history is chiefly illustrative of the natural peculiarities of Bohemia. The salle d'armes is connected with the castle, and the library adjoins the owner's cabinet. A beautiful picture in most of our public collections has to me an abandoned and orphanlike look, while the statues and antiques are crowded together without harmony or connection. In a private mansion, on the contrary, every thing seems to have found its own place, and to harmonize with the building, with the men that dwell there, and with the scenes by which they are sur- rounded. It is to the portraits of the celebrated Duke of Friedland, by Van Dyk, that our attention is natu- rally first directed, and should even the host of Netschers, and Dows, and Rubenses, by which they are surrounded, be confounded in the tra- veller's mind with the Netschers, Dows, and Ru- benses, which he has had elsewhere to pass in review, yet never, I am satisfied, wiU the features of Wallenstein be effaced from his recollection — features which he will nowhere be able to look upon as here. There are two portraits here of the duke. In the one he is painted as a young man; and in the other, as a gray-headed warrior. The comparison between the two pictures is highly interesting. There the youth stands before you, with his light curly hair, of which a lock falls coquettishly upon the fore- head, while a small neat moustache is carefully turned up at the end, with an evident view to effect. The face is a lengthened oval; the nose is handsomely formed, and the eyes, beautifully expressive, are, if I remember rightly, blue. An z^jf§ii cloudless sky forms the back gi'ound. The same noble features, but hardened and stern, mark the second portrait. The smooth skin is furrowed by innumerable lines that seem' to hear testimony to violent passions and che- quered fortunes. The hair of the head has grown thin, while the moustache, having lost its graceful curl, is changed into a wilderness of bristles, many of them standing stiilly out, like those with which Retzsch has often Icnown how to give such expressive effect to his outlines. The old weather-beaten countenance looks an- grily and imperiously down upon us, like the wrinkled bark of a sturdy old oak. The sword is half drawn, as about to give the signal for battle. Gloomy scattered clouds are sweeping over the back ground remnants of a recent storm, or tokens of fresh levies that are to ex- pend their electricity in new battles. The azure sky of peace that smiled upon the youth never returned for the diike, as it has often done for the aged and retiring warrior when his battles are over ; it was among the gloomy agitations of his career that Wallenstein fell. A portion of his skull is presei-ved at the Castle of Dux, and has been duly examined by phrenologists. The protuberances discovered there have been carefully numbered and ticketed. Among them may be seen No. 6, Firmness; No. 7, Cunning; No. 18, Boldness; No. 19, Reflection; No. 20, Vanit}'; No. 21, Pride and Love of Glor3\ The partizan with which he was stabbed is likewise shown, and his embroidered collar, stained with the blood that flowed from the deadly wound. Also a letter written by his own hand, com- manding the execution of some citizens who had served against the emperor. The picture of his first wife hangs by the side of that of the youthful duke. The expression of her face is beautiful. So much so, that the be- holder finds it difficult to tear himself from the painting. It is quite a type of Bohemian beauty, and as such ought to be studied and got by heart by evcy ethnologist. As he advances farther into the country, he will constantly meet with similar large dark eyes, a similar oval head, black hair, and melancholy cast of coun- tenance. Among the family portraits, our guide called upon us to notice some scenes in the Spanish War of Sections, as he very innocently charac- terized the War of Succession. A remarkably pretty picture was pointed out by him as that of the Princess of Something, who, he said, ha^ " lost herself very much" since it was painted, in saying which, he simply meant to inform us, in his Bohemian-German, that Time had not failed to leave his traces upon the lady's counte- nance. As we were taking leave, we were ad- vised to seek another opportunity of payiog our respects to the present owner of the castle, our guide assuring us that the Count was very " forward" to strangers. FROM TEPLITZ TO PRAGUE. On leaving Teplitz you have to pass the Mit- KOHL'S AUSTRIA. 15 telgebirge, or Central Moimtains, A Bohemian bird takes tliree minutes to do this, a Bohemian coachman three hours. From these hills }n)U descend into the marshy country, in which the Elbe and the Eger unite their waters. Even as the waters mingle here, so also do the elements of population; for there are here three famous Bohemian towns lying close together; Lobositz, Leitmerilz, and Theresienstadt. The first, through which the traveller passes, is a comfort- less city of Jews; the second, seen only at a dis- tance, has the appearance of a thriving manu- facturing place; the f.hird, examined at greater leisure, is the most important fortress of Bo- hemia, and the usual breakfasting station for those who start from Teplitz at an early hour. The building of Tlieresienstadt was com- pleted, not by Maria Theresa, but by Joseph, in honour of her memory. It is a strong fortress, surrounded by marshes, and still a virgin, thoiiglx more than sixty years old. She was courted by Napoleon in 1813, and his bridal envoy Van- damme was, it must be admitted, received within the coy lady's M'alls. It was not, however, as a conqueror, but simply as a prisoner of war. The ancient maiden's wardrobe must have cost a pretty penny in her time, and her maintenance must still be expensive, for every thing about her is of the smartest and the best; and so in- deed It ought to be, for at lier girdjifche carries the key of the whole of northern Jronemia, and the suitor that conquers her scruples, may have all her land with her. Her collection of pearls is of inestimable value. We saw them in huge piles in the public squares, where they looked for all the world li^e so many bombs and can- non-balls. Among the prisoners or convicts at Theresien- stadt, I remarked the considerate care that had been taken to lighten the weight of their fetters. The thick iron rings which hung loose on the leg, were supported by a broad band of leather strapped round the thigh, so that the iron did not press with its full weight upon the flesh. The arrangement is one that deserves to be imitated, •wherever it is felt that a criminal is laden with chains for security's sake, and not merely for the infliction of incessant torture. There are cases enough still in Europe, where no one in- quires whether the fetters, resting on the ancles, eat their way into the flesh or not. The valley of the Eger is the most beautiful part of Bohemia, and also the part best known to the rest of Europe. The population is chiefly German, and our proverb respecting Bohemian villages has no application here, where there are many villages which no one must be igno- rant of if he would pass for a travelled man. These are the villages of the circles of Leitme- rilz, Saatz, and Elnbogen, bordering on Saxony, and only projecting at their southern extremities into the country of the genuine Bohemians, or StockbOhmen. The whole of Bohemia is divided into sixteen circles, of which three border on Saxony, three on Silesia, three on Bavaria, and three on Moravia. Three are central, and bor- der on nobody, and one, the circle of Budweis, borders on Austria. It is only the three central circles, the core of the kingdom, that are Sfuck- bo/imisch, or thoroughly Boliemian, in all the Other circles a large portion of the population is German. The most populous are the three that border on Silesia. In that of Koenigingratz there are as many as 6900 inhabitants to the (German) square mile. The least populous is that of Budweis, where there are only 2800 in- habitants to the square mile. The circles in the valley of the Eger have from 4000 to 5000. The dJlTerent parts of Bohemia difler quite as much in the quality as in the quantity of their population. In the north and north-east, the Saxon and Silesian cirles, the people are in- dustrious, and the country is full of manufacto- ries and commercial establishments of every kind. In the south and south-west there is more of grazing and tillage. How great the diflerence must be, is shown by the difierence in the rate of wages. In the north, in the circle of Leit- meritz, a common labourer earns from five to seven ^rosc/ien a day; in the south, in the circle of Tabor, only from two to four gro.scke?!.* These were the current wages when I was there, -and people assured me they might be looked on as a fair average of ordinary times. My coachman was a genuine Bohemian. As we were passing through the gate of Theresien- stadt, he told me that we should find no more Germans between that and Prague. "At Koe- nigingratz, however, you come to the Germans again, and so you do at Budweis and Pilsen. All round our country the Germans are every- where peeping over the border." Hereupon I began to turn it over in my own mind, that this land belonged to the German Confederation, and then I began to speculate upon what the people themselves might think of the said con- federation. I found it impossible, however, in any language, to make the people understand wliat I meant, and I believe there are very few of them that have any notion of what sort of thing the Germanic Confederation may be, of which they, nevertheless, form a part. Proba- bly not one Bohemian in a hundred has ever heard the confederation spoken of. I once saw a Bohemian most immoderately angry on read- ing in a German book this sentence: " Prague is one of the handsomest cities in Germany." I need not attempt a description of the Bohe- mian villages through which we passed after leaving Theresienstadt, for though we Germans profess to know so little about them,f yet we are all familiar with the lamentations of those who have made a nearer acquaintance with them. I will not, however, repeat these melan- choly ditties about dirt and disorder, for I know of places in Germanj', ay of large districts, where the population live in quite as much dirt as the Bohemians do. What attracted my at- tention most in these villages were the charac- teristic little booths that we saw erected in every market-place, with theirGerman-Slavonic wares and inscriptions. A booth of this sort is called a Kramek, from the German word Kram, and in it are usually displayed for sale a pile or two of tasteless pears, a plate of sour cherries, and some wheaten rolls of various f--, imwever, that more than one-fourth of all ihc toads to Prague, iacluding that from Dresden, unite at the north-eastern gate, at which there enter more travellers and merchandise, than at all the other seven gates taken together. The reason is, that Prague is of easier access at this than at any other point, and the consequence has been that the quarter of the town which has been most modernized and improved of late years, is that which lies in the vicinity of the Porzizer Thor, or north- eastern gate. Attended, accordingly, by all the persons and things that happened to stream together at that point, exactly at 7 p. m., on the 23d of Jul}', 1841, from northern and eastern Bohemia, from Saxony, Prussia, and Scandinavia, from Si- beria, Poland, Russia, .and Asia, did we, pre- cisely at the time stated, hold our entry into Prague New Town, which having done, and having duly placed ourselves under the protec- tion of the Burgomaster of the Old Town, we consigned ourselves for that night to the wel- come repose of bed. THE VISSEHRAD, Every part of Prague is still verdant and blooming with the ruins and monuments of re- mote countries. The streets, the churches, and the burying grounds are full of eloquent appeals to the history of the land and the people. Pa- laces and countless steeples are trj^ing to over- top each other in their zeal to talk to you of times gone by. Even on the walls of their taverns, the townsmen may read the names of the first dukes of Bohemia, and thus familiarize themselves(||tith their ancient annals. On the outside of one large house of public entertain- ment, near the Vissehrad, on the place %^here formerly the dukes were interred, there may yet be seen six grotesque fresco paintings of the six first Bohemian dukes, with their names very legibly mscribed: — Przemislus, — Nezamislus, — Mnata, — Vogen, — Vratislav, — Venzislaus. The features of these redoubtable potentates have even been repaired and beautified within the last few years. Where, I would ask now, is there a place in all Germany, in which the an- cient history of the land is made palpable to hand and eye as here? Where is there a town where so much has been done for German, as here for Tshekhian history] Where the Ger- mans do as much for their mighty emperors, as is here done for petty dukes'? Bohemia is a piece of land wonderfully se- parated by nature from the rest of the world. The magic circle which surrounds it, consists of stupendous hieroglyphics, traced by the hands of the primeval Titans, and from this mighty wreath depart a multitude of concentrating rays that join together in a vast central knot. These are the streams that flow from the east, the west, and the south, the life-sustaining arteries of the land. In the middle of this magic circle rise the hills of Prague, where every great event by which the country has been agitated has set its mark, either in the shape of new edifices and enduring monuments, or of gloomy ruins and wide-spread desolation. The central point of a country sharply cut ofi'from the rest of the M'orld, and witness constantly to new modifica- tions of its political lile, Prague has become full of ruins and palaces, that will secure to the city an enduring interest for centuries to come; and while the hills are singing sweetly to us the traditions of past ages, let it not be supposed that the whispers of futurity are not likewise murmuring mysteriously around them. KOHL'S AUSTRIA. 17 The hill first spoken of in Bohemian chroni- cles, and upon which resided the first dukes of Bohemia, is the Vissehrad, whence the Pro- phetess Libussa announced to Prague her fu- ture glory, declaring that the city would one day become a sun among cities. The old chroni- clers hence call their city often the daughter of Libussa, exclaiming in their rapture: O ter magna triurbs, triturbs eringens, o orbin caput, ct decus Boliemiae.' Pulchrae filia pulcJirixyr L'l- hussae.' Such were the words with which the venerable Hammerschmidt apostrophized the glorious city on her thousandth anniversary, in 1723, in his Prodromus Gloriae Pragcnat, the city of which Charley IV. was so enamoured, that he declared her Iwrtem deliciaruiu, in qua reges delictarentur. The Vissehrad is a hill, abrupt on every side, but flat on the summit, presenting a plateau of some extent, convenient to build on, and easy of defence. The Hradshin is indeed rflore ele- vated, and has a more picturesque situation, but is commanded by other hills near it, and of- fered, on many accounts, fewer inducements to the early rulers than the Vissehrad, to choose it as their place of residence. The steepest side of the Vissehrad is towards the river Moldau, which seems to be compressed between the hill and the opposite meadows, rushing over its bed with greater rapidity here than in any other part of its course. Here, probably, were the rapids or poragi, to which the city is supposed to have been indebted for its name. If we may believe what the historians and chroniclers of Bohemia relate to us of the former condition of the Vis- sehrad, the pomp and magnificence that once dwelt there offer a strange contrast to the dust and rubbish that have usurped their place. This, once the centre of a bustling city, is now the most remote point of the town; and the most wretched quarters are grouped about the hum- bled Vissehrad, whose chief glories now live only in the imagination of the Bohemian antiquary. On the northern side of this Acropolis — for such the Vissehrad may well be called — Hows the little brook Botitz, now a dirty piece of water, but memorable in the songs of ancient bards, and witness to numberless bold deeds and hard-fought battles. On the extreme point of the little peninsula formed by the Botitz and Moldau, whence the finest view may be ob- tained of Prague, of the valley of the Moldau, and of its enclosing the hills, there we may su^> pose the bard to have stood, as he composed the favourite old national ditty, Kde dnmnf mug, of which the following is nearly a literal trans- latioiu Whpro is my house'! whpre is my homej Sueitnis aiiiiirifl: ttie meadows crpf ping, BiooUs fnim rimk to rocli are leapiu-r,' Kv^ryivliere. bloom sprin? and Uowers, M'iihin lliis p.iradlse of ours; TliPre. 'lis lliere, the bfauleous land! Botiemia, my falherlaud! Where is my house? where is my home? Know'ei thou the c.otiniry loved o1 God. AVIiere roble souls in well shaped fmns residp? Where llie free glance cri.shes the f leiiian's pridn? There will thou find of Tshekhs the honour'd race, Among the Tshekhs be, ay, my dwelling place. For my own part I was twice on the Acropolis of Prague. Once with an honoured friend, a professor at the nniversitj'-, whose antiquarian lore enabled W/i to point out to me every frag- ment of the ruins, to which any historical asso- ciations attached. The second time I was there in the company of a couple of humble originals, who, equally learned in their way, found means, by the mingled simplicity and zeal of their nar- rative, to breathe life into every bush and stone about the place. These were old Joseph Tshak, who has been for 52 years attached to the ser- vice of the church on the Vissehrad, and his daughter, herself past the meridian of life. I had made a kind of acquaintance with this pair of living curiosities, on the occasion of my first visit, when I promised them if they would stop at home the following Sunday I would visit them again. Now, though I must own tliat I derived myself quite as much pleasure from the society of my esteemed and learned friend, yet I am inclined to believe that my reader may prefer seeing me in the company of old Joseph and his daughter, and, to say truth, they were cer- tainly the most original guides by whom it has ever been my fate to be attended. Joseph Tshak was originally pulksant, i. e, bell-ringer, to the church on the Vissehrad. la course of time he obtained preferment to some more exalted office on the ecclesiastical estab- lishment, and since then, somewhat about the close of the last century, he has been invested, as a mark of his present dignitv, with a red coat, now faded and almost as gray as his once auburn locks. His daughter, since her mother's death, has succeeded to the appointment of laundress to the eight venerable d^f^ons of the church, in addition to which she washes, starches, and irons the lace and linen of the altar, and of all the "blessed saints" that dwell within the holy edifice. The father and daugh- ter live together in a little house perched upon the summit of the hill, where they have ample elbow-room, dwelling in complete solitude on a spot which, 500 years ago, was animated by the bustle of a populous city. Here, amid relics of the olden time, the daughter M-as horn and has grown old; while the lather has for more than half a century been the attendant cicerone of all the great and little people, from emperors and kings dfiwnward, who in the meantime have honoured the Vissehrad with their visits. The ruins of the place are the only objects with which the worthy pair have ever occupied themselves, and with these they have so com- pletely identified themselves, that they have be- corrie in their own persons almost as interesting to a stranger, as the scenes among which they dwell. The "Bohemian Chronicle" of Hajek, Hammerschmidt's "Glory of Prague," and a few other hooks of the same character, they may almost be said to have learned by heart, In addition to the learning thus acquired, they have cai^ght up and treasured in their minds every little tradition or anccdcte about the Vis- sehrad that they happen to have heard from the priests of the ciiurch, or from the strangers that visit it, and all this they have embellished and connected here and there by the helping hand of their own imagination. In short, they have pursued the course usually followed by our own professors of history, and have retailed their medley tales to all the numerous listeners they 18 KOHL'S AUSTRIA. havt had around them durin^the last half- century. Their lectures have ^t indeed been taken down in shorthand, yet have their in- structions extended far and wide, and not only the citizens of Prague, but simples and gentles from the fartliest lands have carried away with them the tales and legends of old Tshak, and would be ready on occasion to stake their own honour on the old sexton's veracity. " Gracious me, your honour, and there you are indeed!" exclaimed Joseph's daughter, as I presented m3'self at their little dwelling on the promised Sunday. The day happened to be the festival of St. Anne, and all Prague was making merry in the taverns, at the public dan- cing-houses, and on the islands of the Moldau. The Vissehrad, as was its wont, lay solitary and forgotten. Upon its naked and desolate brow, sported a moist breeze, and scattered clouds were sweeping over it, attended by sundry flights of ravens, who were .winging their flight towards the city; for even they have abandoned the old hill, and fixed their quarters in less elevated re- gions. " And there you are indeed, sir ! Father and I were just sitting together, and this being St. Anne's day, we were thinking of my mother, whose name was also Anne. I was weeping a tear or two, and looking out of the window. There father's eye caught the steeple of St. Ja- cob's, and said, ' Thou shalt go down to St. Jacob's to-morrow, and have a mass read for Mother, Anne.' ' Ay,' said I, and then I thought to myself, ' Mother is dead; father and she lived forty-five y#lrs up here together; Father, too, is old now. Friends we have none in the world. If he dies, thou'lt be alone.' So, thought I, I'll have a prayer read for father, too, and I'll pray God to spare him to me for many years. Not true, your honoui", 'twill be well so? And look, just as I was thinking so, you come and climb up all this weary way to us. Gracious! you must be tired; pray sit down." I did so with pleasure, for I was struck by tlie little domestic arrangements of the venera- ble sexton. The furniture was all of great an- tiquity, and the walls were hung with maps and pictures, one of which represented the Visseh- rad, as it may be supposed to have looked in the days of its glory, when it must have had somewhat of the same appearance as the Krem- lin at Moscow. A bible was lying on the table, and I expressed my pleasure at seeing the book there. "Ay, ay," said the daughter, "we set great store by the book. A Jew once offered us two florins for it, but father said he would not give it him. Henry, my brother's son, has chil- dren, they may use it one day, when we can read it no more. Is it not so, fatherl" "'Ay, a)%" answered the old man, "I wouldn't part with the book." I commended them for their good resolution, and we proceeded, all three, to go over the curiosities of the Vissehrad, which I longed to see, not only in its own form, but as modified through the medium of the fancy of my guides. " There is but little left of what was once here," began the old man, " and of that little there is much of which we know the meaning no longer. Even old Hammerschmidt, in his time, could only tell us, that this was supposed to be, and that was said to be, and we are not likely to know as much now as was known then; but we will show your honour nothing but what is certain. First of all, then, we come to the church itself, formerly consecrated to St. Vitus, and afterwards to St. Peter. The warriors that broke down the rest of the brickwork, had some re- spect for God's house, I suppose, and so it has remained standing somewhat longer." The trembling hands of the old man, as the keys clattered in his grasp, worked away for a ^e^^ moments at the crazy gates, before we ob- tained access to the interior of the church. The place has been sacred to religion from a very remote antiquity. Before th? introduction of Christendom, there stood on the same spot a temple dedicated to Svantovid, the god of war of the Slavonians. The emblem of this heathen divinity was a cock, and this bird was likewise the chosen bird of St. Vitus. This similarity of taste, and perhaps the similarity of their names, (Svantovid and Sanct Vit) may have facilitated the transfer of the property from the heathen to the saint The church was built by Vratislav, the first king of Bohemia, and was finished in 1088. It was afterwards rebuilt, having been destroyed by the Hussites, who seem to have dealt even more hardly by the sacred edifice than the devil himself, for his Satanic majest}', in his rage, contented himself with kiiocking a hole in the roof, which it was long found impos- sible to lepair. The memorable tale was told me it) the following words, by my conductress: " Once upon a time a poor man went into the forest. There he met a smart, jovial-looking huntsman; at least so he supposed, but in truth it was no huntsman, but the devil in disguise. Now the huntsman spoke to the sorrowful man, and said, ' Art poor, old boy?' — ' Ay, miserably poor, sir, and full of care,' replied the other — 'How many children hast thou?' — 'Six, noble sir,' answered the poor man — ' Give me for ever that child of .thine that thou hast never seen, and I'll give thee thy fill of money.' — ' Willingly, sir,' was the silly father's reply. 'Then come, and we'll sign and seal on the bargain' — The old man did so, and received countless heaps of money. When he got home, however, to his own house, to his surprise he found he had seven children, for his wife had in the mean time brought the seventh into the world. Here- upon, the father began to feel very uncomfort- able, and to suspect that the devil had talked him out of his child. In his anxiety, he called his new-born son Peter, and dedicated him to the apostle; praying St. Peter to take the boy under his protection, and shield him against the devil's arts. Peter, who appeared to the old man in a dream, promised to do what he was asked, provided the boy Avere brought up to the church; so, of course, the lad was given to God's service, that he might be a priest when he grew up. Peter turned out a good, pious, and learned young man. ■ When he was twenty-four years old, arid had been installed as a priest at the church on the Vissehrad, the devil came one day to put in his claim to his reverence; but the holy apostle St. Peter interfered, and de- clared the deed which the devil produced Avas a forgery. The devil and the saint came to high words at this; while the poor priest, frightened KOHL'S AUSTRIA. 19 out of his wits, ran into the church, and betook himself to reading the mass. Now, as they could no way come to an understanding, St Peter, by way of a compromise, proposed a new bargain. 'Do you fly to Rome,' said he to the devil, ' and bring me one of the twelve columns of St. Peter's church, and if you're back with it before my priest has read to the end of the mass, he shall be yours; but else, mine.' The devil, who thought he should have plenty of time, ac- cepted the proposal with pleasure; and in a kw seconds, Peter saw him flying up full speed with one of the columns. The devil would have won, there's no doubt,if St. Peter had not quick- ly gone to meet him, and begun to belabour him with a horsewhip. The devil, in his fright, dropped the huge pillar, which fell plump to the bottom of the Mediterranean sea. He lost but little time in diving for it, and bringing it up again; but he lost quite enough, for when he arrived at the church, the priest had just said his I/.a missa est, and so his mass was at an end. St. Peter laughed heartily; and the devil was so vexed, that in his rage, he flung down the big colutnn, which went through the roof of the church, and fell upon the floor, where it was broken into three pieces. Many attempts M-ere made to repair the hole in the roof, but they could never make the work hold, for it always fell in, and so at last they gave it up; and there the hole remained for many hundred years, leaving a free way for rain and wind. The Em- peror Joseph, however, insisted upon having the roof repaired, so they carved the two keys of St. Peter in the centre stone of the vault, and since then the work has held." The cross-keys still remain, but I am inclined to think it was the priests and not the emperor, who ordered them to be placed there, and that they did so to save appearances. If they are now asked how the masonry comes to hold, they have their answer ready, attributing every thing to the virtue of Peter's keys. As long as the hole coiginued in the roof, the fragments of the broken column remained on the floor of the church; but, according to the old sexton's account, " the Emperor Joseph said, people should pray to God in the church, and not gossip about the devil and his wicked works. Those were his very words," continued the old man, " for I heard them from his majestj^'s own mouth, as I was showing him about the place, when he was here and looked closely at every thing. And for my own part, I don't know that it would be a serious sin, if a man should not happen to believe the story." Since Joseph's time, a large painting repre- senting St. Peter horse-whipping the Pnnce of Darkness, and the Mediterranean rolling its waves beneath them, has, I am sorry to say, found its way back into the church. The broken column, in three fragments, lies on the grass in front of the church. " The stone," said my old guide's daughter, " is put together out of seven sorts of stones. One is very precious, erne ver)' hard, and one stinks detestably. When his majesty the blessed Emperor Francis was here, and my fether told him the story, his majesty Francis said, ' the stone stinks, I suppose the devil has left something sticking to it." Down below, )-ou may see the stone is somewhat worn away, for that's where father knocks ofl^ bits for strangers to carry away as a remembrance. The soldiers also grind bits of the stone into powder, and have found it good for all sorts of complaints." In addition to the painted and belaboured devil, I found a little miniature of his Satanic majesty, neatly cut in wood, and led by a chain, M'hich was held by a St. Procopius, likewise carved in wood. Two celebrated men of this name figure in the history of Bohemia; one a distinguished leader of the Hussites, the other the first herald of Christianity in the country. The latter of these was the saint, and wherever he is represented in a Bohemian church, he never fails to have a few devils in chains. Like s(^ many greyhounds in a leash. He was a great exorciser of devils, and there is still a hole in the mountains near Pr^ue, into which he fastened a vast number of them, where they fly about by hundreds to the present day. There is in this church another relic of great celebrity in Bohemian Christendom, namely the stone coffin of St. Longinus. This man, accord- ing to the legend, was a Roman centurion, and was present at the Crucifixion. He was blind, but some of our Saviour's blood having fallen upon him, he recovered his sight, and immedi- ately began praising the Redeemer, crying out, "This is Christ the Anointed!" The soldiers seized him and stoned him, and put him into a stone coflin, which they threw into the sea. The coffin, however, would not sink, but floated on the surface till it arrived at some Christian city, and in due time found its way to Bohemia. The Hussites threw him again into the water, namely, into the river Moldau, and for a long time no- body knew where to look for the saint. One day, however, when the Hussite disturbances were at an end, some fishermen saw a flame burning on the surface of the water. They tried 4.0 extinguish the flame, but they could not, and it always continued precisely at the same spot. A miracle was immediately presumed to be on the eve of birtu. An ecclesiastical commission was appointed, and lo, before their eyes, the stone coflin of St. Longinus I'ose up from among the waves, and was carried back with due ho- nours to the Vissehrad. " Who knows whether it's all quite true or not?" observed my talkative conductress; "but one thing's certain. An arm of St. Longinus lies still in the coflin. When their majesties the blessed Emperor Francis, the Russian emperor x\lexander, and the Prussian king Frederick William, were up here, they were all alone with father and me. Only one soldier-like servant had they with tliem. Well, they made us show them this coflin most particularly, and we had to take two candlesticks from the altar, that they might see the better. The Russian emperor's majesty was most anxious of all to know about it, and he crept i^as far as he could, to feel after the saint's arm,^d when the emperor's majesty came out again, he was all covered with cob- webs and dust. ' Oh, your majesty,' said I, you've ma.de yourself quite dirty,' and with that I knocked the dust off" his back with my hand. ' That'll do, child, that'll do,' says he to me, and I was quite surprised to hear him speak such good German." 20 KOHL'S AUSTRIA. In the year 1187 there lived in Bohemia a duke of the name of Frederick, who involved himself into a quarrel with the clergy, in con- sequence of having applied to his own use the revenues of tlie village of Czernovitz, then the property of some convent or chapter. The priests imposed heavy penance upon him for this offence, and one of them seems to have had the audacity to subject the duke to a scourging. Gregory VII., who kept a German emperor wait- ing like a beggar in a courtyard, had not yet been dead a hundred years. Tiie memory of tliis scourging, the priests sought to preserve by a picture, in which the duke is represented re- ceiving punishment from the hand of St. Peter. This picture, which still hangs in the church, bears the inscription, Flagellatus Fredericus, Dux Bohe/niae, a S. Petro oh Pagum nomine Czerno- vitz abalicnaium, 1 187. Fr^erick, who died in 1190, was reconciled to the clergy before his death, for, it seems, he authorized the canons of the church on the Vissehrad, to adopt the said flagellation as their coat of arms, and the reve- rend gentlemen still preserve it, representing the saint belabouring the duke with a cat-o'- nine-tails of most awful dimensions. " Wlien we showed this picture to his majesty Joseph the Second," m}' old sexton continued, — "I believe it was in '84, and the emperor was up here with Laudon, Lascy, and other great gentlemen, I was a young pullesant then, and had to stand modestly aside, but I saw and heard every thing for all that. The fine Hungarian guard was drawn up on the Vissehrad, and the carriages and servants waited below. Now when we showed his majesty the picture, he looked vexed, and shook his head, saying, ' It was not civil for Peter to scourge a prince in that way, no, it Avas very uncivil.' Then he looked down for a moment, as if he was consi- dering to himself, and after that he said, ' but the thing is old, so it may stop there.' Laudoii, was standing hj, and smiled." Another object that interested me in the church, was the tomb of a Utra:;uist or Calix- tine. The ruling idea with those people was the wine-cup. They bore it as an emblem on their banners, and after death had it carved on their tombs. Before these wild zealots drove Sigismund's troops from the Vissehrad, no less than thirteen churches stood there.- Only one now remains, and the fragment of what was once the wall of another, and which seemed to me like a few odd lines of a lost poem. " Oh! it must have been sad work here," said my old sexton; "the Hussites had no mercy at all, but brought dogs and eagles with them, to fight against Christian men." Behind the church lies a newly-erected ar- senal, and several barracks for soldiers, for the Vissehrad still preserves its character as a kind of citadel. On the edge of the rock, that over- hangs the Moldau, may be traced some ruined walls of great antiquity. Tiftse, according to tradition, belonged to the fortress of Libussa, and one part of the ruin is still pointed out as having been Libussa's bath-room. "But all that is mere vulgar talk," resumed my con- ductress, "for nothing is known for certain. That Queen Libussa did once live up here in a fine palace, among these rocks and shrubs, — oh, that's certain enough. She was a heathen, to be sure, but she was Queen of Bohemia, and a very good woman for all that. She had two sisters. Kasha and Theka. Kasha helped her to govern the land, but Theka was an apothe- cary, and knew all about plants, and the nobles came from far and wide to be cured by her. She also used to give medicines to the sick peasants, and she could prophecy, and give good advice to her sisters. Of course things changed when Libussa married Przemysl, who as king had a right to have his own way. Now, Li- bussa had a waiting-woman called Vlasta, a very beautiful maiden; and when the queen was dead, Vlasta thought Przemysl would marr>' Aer, and make her Queen of Bohemia. He did not do so, however, which so enraged Vlasta, that she vowed vengeance, and resolved to make herself Queen of Bohemia without his aid. She went over the Moldau, — there was a bridge here then, — and she set up her kingdom right oppo- site the Vissehrad. She got together four hun- dred Bohemian maids and wives, who were at feud with their husbands and lovers. There, beyond the meadow, in the corner between the hills, your honour may still see the spot where Vlasta's castle stood. It was called Divin, and thence she used to sally with her maidens, and wage a cruel war against all the Bohemian men. She cut the right thumb off of all the boys that fell into her hands, that they might not be able to draw a bow, and from all girls she cut off the right breast, that it might not hinder their archery. She might not herself have been able to do what she did, but she had a sorceress in her service, who used to say to her, 'My gentle lady, when you go into battle, I will fly on before you. Observe my flight and my signals. I'll show you the ambush cf your enemies, and ad- vise you what you must do.' So, when she sallied forth, the old witch always flew before her, and all the Amazons rushed on, crying, ' Yaya, yaya! baba, baba!' Not true, father, that was their cry]" "A^ ay, child, that was their cry." — "And then they lured the knights into their power, and cat oil' their noses and ears, or threw them from the rocks, and captured all their castles hereabout. Up tliere, on that high hill, lay the castle of the Knight Modol, a true friend of Przemysl's. That they captured too. Vlasta, with her own hand, cut Modol's head off, and then (mad wench that she was) she got upon the wall, and blew her trumpet, that Przemysl might hear her triumph here on the Vissehrad. She had her silver armour on, and her beautiful hair fell dovv^n to her elbows, and in her left hand she carried her banner. When Przemysl saw her and heard her trumpet, I warrant you he was vexed enough to think he had not made her his wife at once, and spared all this turmoil. He made one more trial, how- ever, and sent out his general Prostirad, who went over with a countless number of knights, and took back Modol's castle, and killed Vlasta, and brought back her beautiful round head. The rest of her women fled to Divin Castle, and defended themselves for a while, but they were all taken at last, and all their heads were cut off. Not true, fatherl" — "Ay, girl, all their heads were cut off." Amid these and many other legends of tlie KOH'LS AUSTRIA. 21 same kind, evening crept on, and I could no longer distinguish the distant objects to which my talkative conductress directed my attention. Her eloquence and animation invested her in the sober twilight, almost with the air of an an- cient sibyl, or Druid prophetess, nor did her flow of words cease when I prepared to take my de- paruue. On the contrary, still conversing of the antiquities of the place, she accompanied me down the hill to the French Gale, where the countrywomen and the Devi Slovaiski (Slavo- nian maidens) were entering heavily laden with vegetables and other provisions for tlie market, at which they meditated to display their wares at an early hour on the following morning. For more than a thousand years has such been the accustomed evening-scene at that gate, and lor a thousand years perhaps have the same old Tsliekhian ditties been nightly sung by the fair rustics that have meanwhile provided for the pantries of the townspeople. THE METROPOLITAN CHURCH ON THE HRADSHIN. Even in the time of the last dnkes, much of the glory of the Vissehrad was transferred to the rival hill, the Hradshin, which became the residence of the sovereign in time of peace, while the Vissehrad was only an occasional re- treat in sunimer, or when the city was pressed by an enemy. At present, much of the Visse- hrad, that was once coveretl with houses, has been converted into arable land, or pasturage for cattle, while at the foot of the hill dwell the most wretched portion of the population of Prague. "They are poorer even than those behind the Hradshin," said a Prague friend to me one day. Thus to each of the castle crags has poverty clung, to shame the luxury of wealth by the contrast of misery. High upon the Hradshin stands the glorious cathedral, the metropolitan church of Prague, dedicated to St. Vitus, and which, during the wars by which Bohemia has successivjely been desolated, has alternately suffered from the sa- crilegious violations of Hussites, Catholics, and Protestants, Swedes, Germans, and Hungarians. The Hussites, on one occasion, stripped the church of nearly every thing in the shape of or- nament. The Swedes, who, towards the close of the Thirty Years' War, made themselves masters of the Hradshin by stratagem, plundered the church to such a degree, that they were able to send whole shiploads of valuables down the Elbe to Stockholm, where they may still be seen among the public collections. Frederick the Great, too, when he besieged Prague, in 1757, seems to have set his heart on the destruction of the cathedral, against which the fire of his artillery was pecuharly directed. What his motive was, it would be difficult to say. He could scarcely think that the garrison of 50,000 men would surrender to him, for the sake of saving the cathedral. It could not be zeal for Protestantism that impelled Frederick to vow the destruction of an ancieiit Catholic church, without regard to its beauty, its antiquity, and the numberless objects of art which it contained. I should like to know whether Frederick, in any of his works, has attempted to justify himself for this barbarous treatment of the Hradshin church, or whether any one has ever cited him before the tribunal of public opinion on account of it. The impartial Bohemian historian, Pelzel, gives a very detailed enumeration of all the balls, bombs, and shells, that were hurled against this admirable specimen of ancient architecture, by the merciless order of Frederick. On the .'Jth of June the building served as a target for 537 bombs, 989 cannon-balls, and 17 carcasses, of which, however, it must not be supposed, that all, or indeed any thing like half of them, hit the mark they were fired at. On the 6th, 7th, 8th, and 9th, the town was complimented with 7144 bombs, 14,821 balls, and 111 carcasses, of which the majority were aimed at the cathedral. During those four days the building was thirty times on fire, and each lime it was saved from entire destruction by the vigilance and exertions of the canon, John Kaiser. The roof was per- forated by no less than 215 balls, and when, after the cannonade, the church was cleared of the rubbish that had meanwhile accumulated there, no less th*i 770 balls were collected from dif- ferent parts of the edifice. Napoleon, when he entered Moscow, sent a guard to protect the children in the great Foundling Hospital. Why- did not Frederick, when he fired ihis first gua against Prague, grant a similar protection to the cathedral on the Hradshin, by ordering his ar- tillerymen rather to fire on any object than that? Perhaps it was fortunate for Frederick that he did not succeed in entering the city. He, the friend and patron of the arts, would have grieved in very bitterness of soul, had he witnessed the destruction his own artillery had eflecled. The Gothic ornaments cast down, the graceful colnmns shattered, and the beautiful statues mutilated in every imaginable way. Scarcely one of the many splendid tombs re- mained uninjured. Neither the beautiful marble monument, executed by Kolin of Nuremberg, and erected in 1589, by Rudolph II., to the me- mor}' of Maximilian II., Ferdinand I., and Anne, his wife; nor the jenerable statues, stretched on their sarcopha^lPof the old Bohemian dukes Spitignev and Brzetislav; nor the chapel of the tombs of the archbishops; nor the other chapel that contains the monuments of twenty-four of the noblest families of Bohemia; indeed the monument of Vratislaus von Baren stein, the Chancellor of Maximilian II., is almost the only one that escaped unscathed. Few churches in Germany surpass this cathe- dral in beauty, richness, and in the interest of its historical associations. There is none to which it seems to bear more afiinity than to the metropolitan church of Cracow, in which re- poses the dust of all the Polish kings. In both may be traced a similarity of architecture, and a simdarity of fortunes. It is astonishing how much there is about each to remind one of the other. Even the legend of Nepomuk has its companion at Cracow, so closely respmbling it in all its details, that one cannot help wondering at the occurrence at places so remote from each other, of two series of events so perfectly alike. Nothing is there that a stranger in Bohemia is doomed to have more frequently related to him than the history of St. Nepomuk, and next KOHL'S AUSTRIA. in importance and frequency of repetition come the adventures of the two imperial counsellors, Slavata and Martinitz, to whom it happened, in 1618, to be one day tossed out of a window. These two narratives may literally be said to persecute a stranger from the day of his arrival till that of his departure. However well you may have prepared yourself by historical studies with a knowledge of all the details of the Thirty Years' War, whose commencement, as your professors at Bonn or Gottingen will have told you, is to be dated from the day on which the two above-named personages were tumbled upon the dunghill under the Ilradshin; yet rest assur- ed that in the first diligence you travel in, there will be some learned gentleman or other who will find or make an occasion to tell the story over again for your especial benefit. And by the time your learned gentleman has got to the end of his first story, it "will go hard, but at the next bridge you cross there will be a chapel, or an image dedicated to St. Nepomucene, and, if so, you may rest equally assured that you will have related to you, with all its accompanying incidents, the whole legend of the sjiint, which, it is odds but you have heard and forgotten again sundry times before you set foot on Bo- hemian ground. By the time the story is at an end, you are probably at the next bridge, where, of course, your attention is called to another effigy of the bridge-protecting saint, when your charitable informant will be likely to open again with "There, look there, sir; there you have the holy Nepomuk again; he is the same as the one I was telling you of, whom King Venzeslaus, &c.," and how far the et ccetera may extend will depend on your patience under the infliction. Well, m due time the hills of Prague present themselves to your view, the Hradshin towering proudly a,bove the rest. Immediately your tra- velling companion will open again upon you with "There, look there, sir; there you may see the castle from the windows of which the two imperial counsellors, Slavata and Martinitz, &c." — The next morning you are tempted to walk abroad, but if you come ta the Prague bridge, beware how you stop to lo«atfive golden stars that are erected there. If you neglect my cau- tion, rely upon it your quality of stranger will be discovered, and some kind self-elected cice- rone will approach and tell you, "This, sir, is the very spot fi"om which St. Nepomuk was thrown into the water. He was a pious man, but King Venzeslaus, &c." Animated, no doubt, by this time, with a salutary dread of the saint, you probably cut your interlocutor short, by praying him not to inflict upon you a legend which you have learned by heart during the few days you have been in the countrJ^ You fly to a neighbouring coffee-house, the \Wndows of which, to your sorrow, look upon the Hrad- shin. You order a cup of bouillon perhaps, and while you sit sipping it, your host comes simpenng up to you. In your ungiiarded inno- cence you may allow some such question to escape you, as "What's the news?" If so, you have sealed your fate. "Your honour ivere looking out of the window. Have your honour already had the condescension to go to the top of the hilll But you have from here a very good view of the two windows — look, your honour, there they are, at which many years ago a very remarkable event occurred." — "What, some romantic love-storyl" — "No, sir; from those windows it was that the two counsellors of the Emperor Matthias — their names were Slavata and Martinitz " "Oh, heavens!" you exclaim. Your very bouillon turns to bit- terness, and you snatch up hat and stick, and run to St. Vitus's chuich, in the hope that if any volunteer informant take you in hand again, he may make the patron of the edifice the topic of his discourse. Idle hope! Of St. Vitus no one deems it necessary to say a word, but one of the attendants of the church will be sure to come up to you, with a face all radiant with the hope of a douceur, and thus his oration will begin: "The most remarkable object in our church, is this rich monument of silver, which contains no less than twenty-seven hundred- weight of that metal. It was erected in honour of St. Nepomuk, whom the Emperor Venzeslaus, &c." My poor stranger! this is one of the dis- comforts of travel that thou must not hope to escape, and the sanctity of the place forbids thee the relief of a good set oath. Nay, wouldst thou even save thyself by sudden flight, the chances are that thy retreat is cut off by some venerable priest, who takes up the stor>^ at the point that thy humbler attendant had just reach- ed. In that case, patience is thy only resource. Listen with resignation, and thou hast a chance that the story will come all the sooner to an end. So, now having prepared thee for the infliction, hear and attend. Nepomuk, or more properly, Johanko von Ne- pomuk, was born about the middle of the four- teenth century, in the little Bohemian town of Nepomuk. At his birth, it is said, bright rays of glory were seen to shine around his mother's house. He became a preacher in the ancient city of Prague, where his fame spread so ra- piclly, that he was raised to the ofiice of almoner to the king, and became the queen's confessor. Now the king (Venzeslaus IV., the celebrated German emperor, the son of Charles IV., who had also in his time been King of Bohemia and Emperor of Germany), — the king, I say, was desirous of knowing what the queen, who had often manifested great dejection of spirits, might have confided to her confessor. Venzeslaus wished to know whether she made his own rude behaviour the subject of complaint, or whether perhaps her melancholy were occasioned by a secret love-aftair. Johanko, however, could never be prevailed on to betray a syllable of what he had learned in the confessional. Some- time afterward it so chanced that there was brought up to the royal table a very fine capon, but which, on being carved, was found to be very much underdone. The king was hereupon in such a rage that he ordered the cook to be spit- ted alive and roasted to death. Nepomuk did not fail to rate his majesty roundly for so atro- cious' an act of barbarism, but the holy man took nothing by his motion but a few days' soli- tary confinement, where he would probably have been permitted to indulge for some time longer in his pious meditations, had not the king still hoped to draw from him some of the queen's secrets. Nepomuk remained firm, though he appears to have had some foreboding KOHL'S AUSTRIA. 23 of what the consequence would be, for he pro- phesied one day that he would shortly die a vio- lent death, and so saying took an affectionate leave of his friends. The following morning, as he was passing by the castle, the king called him in, and renewed his former solicitations. Johanko was inflexible, whereupon the king had him seized, bound hand and foot, and had him thrown that very evening from the bridge into the Moldau. The king thought nobody would have knowTi any thing about the matter; but there he was mistaken, for not only were bright rays of glory seen to shine over the spot where the body lay, but for three whole days the bed of the river was dry, no water flowing over it. Miracles without number A\'ere per- formed at the saint's grave, and people observed that if any man happened to express a doubt of the holy man's beatitude, or to step slightingly or scornfully upon his tomb, the day never passed over without some disgrace or calamity to the sceptic. In due time the saint was beati- fied by Pope Clement XI., and canonized by Benedict XIII. Since then, the veneration for St. Nepomucene has spread with marvellous rapidity through Bo- hemia, Moravia, and a part of Poland and Aus- tria. In all these countries he is esteemed the patron saint of bridges, and the usual oraison addressed to him by hir. devotees is this: " O holy St. Nepomucene, grant that no such mis- fortune befall us on this bridge as once befell thee." By the side of the silver monument of the saint, over which sundry silver angels are seen to hover, there hangs a golden lamp of immense value. This lamp has been stolen on three several occasions, and now, to protect this and the other valuables of the church, a large fierce dog is nightly shut up there as a guard to the gems and relics of the holy place. It is well that the Turks but seldom visit the Hradshin, or this dog in charge of a churchful of saints would be added to the already formidable cata- logue of atrocities laid to the charge of the Christians. So vmclean is this animal in the eyes of a Mahometan, that he would greatly prefer to have a whole legion of devils shut up in his mosque. With the varying versions that have obtained currency of the saint's adventures, I will not now detain the reader, that I may the sooner have done with the other great national bore of Bohemia, which, as he is now accompanying me through the country, he is bound to" endure, as I have done many a time before him. So here goes for Slavata and Martinitz, and if we are to have the story, we could have it nowhere more opportunely ihMt in this very church, in which we may at th€* same time admire the monument erected to the memory of Counseller Martinitz himself. Allans/ Courage/ Frightened by the daily increasing spread of Protestantism in Bohemia, a Catholic nobleman and a Catholic abbot had found means, in 16 IS, to sluit up and destroy two newly-erected Pro- testant churches, alleging that they did so by order of the Emperor Matthias. All the Pro- testants and Utraquists of Bohemia, among whom wevQ many of the first men in the coun- try, were greatly excited, and held meetings, at which it was logically demonstrated that such treatment was in direct violation of the royal Letters of Grace tltat had been granted them. A deputation was sent to Vienna to remon- strate. The Emperor, meanwhile, had taken serious oflence at the stormy meetings of the Protestants and Utraquists, to whom he sent a menacing epistle, which the states of the king- dom were summoned to the Hradshin to hear read. They assembled, listened to the foimi- dable threats of the emperor, and promised to return an answer on the following day. They assembled again, accordingly, at the time ap- pointed, attended by bodies of armed men, M-hen they found the royal governors, Slavata, Mar- tinitz, Adam von Sternberg, and Diepold voa Iiobkowitz, waiting to receive them. Of these four men, the two last were generally popular; but the two first, bigoted Catholics, and tyranni- cal rulers, were universally detested, and there were many among the states who were of opi- nion, that religious freedom could never be firmly established in Bohemia, so long as those men continued in power, and that therefore the best thing they could do, would be to get rid of them as soon as possible. Some opposed these violent counsels, but the majority applauded them, and crowded from the Green Chaxhber, where they had been consulting together, into the Government Hall, where they addressed bitter reproaches to the governors, for attempt- ing to deprive the Utraquists of their Letters of Grace. The Oberdburggraf, Adam von Stern- b(•^^^ addressed the tumultuous assembly in a cdjiriliatory tone, and warned them against the ciiiiimission of any act of violence. Kolon von Fels thereupon stepped forward, and said that they meant no harm to the Oberstburggraf, nor to his Lordship of Lobkowitz, with v/hom they were verj' well contented, but -they were in no Avay satisfied with Messrs. Slavata and Mar- tinitz, who were always seeking occasion to op- press the Utraquists.* Venzeslaus von Rapowa exclaimed, that the best thing they could da, would be to throw them out of the window, ac- cording to the good old Bohemian fashion {po sfarolshesku). Some of the party now went up to Sternberg and Lobkowitz, took them by the * To si^me of our English readers it may not be super- fluous 1(1 explain thai the UiranuislsorCalixlines received their name in consequence of iheir demand thai the calix or wine-cup should be given U) laymen as well as priesia in the coinuiunioii. Their .e details of which are frightful and revolting, had continued for seven years, the emperor came to Prague with his family, and, having sumn\oncd a diet, had his son Ferdinand III. cr..w,-u\l as king. A i'ew years before, the (lunMion hail l.i'eii ;:Tavely dis- cussed by the slales, whether it would not be better to erect Boliemia into a republic, like Switzerland or Holland, than to elect Frederick of the Palatinate to the throne; in this new diet, no one even ventured to raise the question whether the crown was elective or hereditary. Ferdinand annulled the Letter of Grace, and all the privileges of the states> commanding at the same time^that the Bohemian language should no longer be used in any of the law tribunals. The nobles readily adopted the German lan- guage, and the townspeople were obliged^ to learn it, for tlie monks preached only in Ger- man. The burghers in the cities began to be ashamed of speaking Bohemian, though, not long before, even the nobles had prided them- selves on their national language, and had not hesitated to speak it at the court of the German emperors. The peasant only continued to speak as his ancestors had spoken, and what had beea the language of a imtion, came to be considered thi' dialect of the vulgar. Distinguished as Bo- b iiiia had been, vtnder the preceding emperors, {'■'I- the cultivation of science and art, she 3iow sank rapidly into ignorance and barbarism. That the people might be more readily ruled by being kept in ignorance, the Jesuits went from house to house, as missionaries, and took away what books they could find, and burnt them. So effectually do they appear to have performed .. tlieir mission, that to speak of a "Bohemian" book, or a " scarce" book, is now esteemed the same. Even the costume of the people was changed, and gradually superseded by that of the conquerors. "I must remind my hearers," says the his- torian Pelzel, at the close of his reflections on the consequences of the battle of the White Mountain, " that here the history of Bohemia closes, and the history of other nations in Bo- _ hernia commences." Bohemia now stands like its metropolitan church, incomplete, weather-beaten, and cover- ed with scars, but like its church, also restored to peace and order. We must read the resolu- tions of the Bohemian diet if we wish to know, to what extent, and according to what plans, the Bohemians meant to have constructed their state edifice; but the original plan of St. Vitus's church may more easily be studied, for all the drawings are still preserved in a small room over the vault of one of the chapels. In its present condition the church is evidently a mere commencement of the architect's design; if completed, the building would have been more than three times its present size. The treasury of the church is rich in a mul- titude of curious and valuable objects. In one cabinet I counted no less than .33 goklen mitres.^ I took several of them in my hanel, and observed to my guide that I thought them heavy. "And yet, sir," said the man, archly, "our gentlemen are so ^-eiy fond of wearing them!" In various drawers are preserved no less than 368 priestly vestments for the service of the mass, many of liiem of astonishing richness and splendour. Om- of tliem Avas of a material that might have furnished a mantle, either for a beggar or a pi'ince; it was of common straw, but plaited and worlceil with such surprising art, that the whole looked likc'Mabof;:!." embroidery. Most of these vestments ai'i" gills front Bohemiair nobles, and the liistory of soine of those presents may con- tributi' to illustraio tlie character of the country. Thus, one vestnient has been made up from the bridal diess of a (Jountcss Tshernin, another of the coronation robes of Maria Theresa. One of the richest of all, andAvhich is only displa}^ed on occasions of great solemnitv, has been deco- rated by the Piince of Schv\artze;roarg, with a number of golden bunclies of grapes and vine- leaves, and -with all the buttons worn on his wedding coat. Each of these fiiUions is a jewel of considerable- value, fashioned into the form of an animal, and set in gold. What wasteful KOHL'S AUSTRIA. 27 profusion! and what a strange whim, to dedicate the wcddin!^ dresses of lords and ladies to the service of the church! One of the vestiariits Mas embroidered by the hand of Maria Theresa; but of all the em- broideries, the most wonderful is one made iu the beginning of the fourteenth century by Anne Queen of Lohemia (Anna Kurukvnu Tshtska). She and her sister Elizabeth were the two last descendants of the ancient princely line of Przemysl, whom Libussa called to the throne from the village of Staditz near Teplitz. Some of our young ladies, who think they have attained no mean proficiency in the art of em- broidering, ought to come to Prague, for the sake of looking at the work of the last princess of the house of Przemysl. It is a piece of white linen, upon which are worked, with threads of gold, the most beautiful and delicate llowers and arabesques. The pattern is precisely the same on each side, and withal so accurate and yet so fanciful, that one is never tired of achniring it. The pattern, moreover, is constantly varied by the invention of new figures and forms, though the whole piece is thirt)'-three ells in length. The length of way which the liule needle and the dainty finger of the qu.een must have traced over the linen with golden thread, is estimated at about ten leagues; and to me it seems as if the labour of half a life must have been devoted to the work, which was executed in exile, and sent to the Hradshin, as the parting gift of the last scion of a long race of kings. Of rehgious relics the church has also an abundant supply. Among'" others, a neatly or- namented little hand, said to have belonged to one of the little children killed at Bethlehen), on the occasion of the massacre of the' innocents; a piece of the tablecloth that served our Saviour and his disciples on the occasion of the Last iJupper; and a nail taken from the real cross, and now shown in a splendid setting of pure gold. A piece of the sponge with vhich our Saviour's lips were -moistened when on the cross, and a thorn from the real crown of thorns, are set in a crucifix, which crucifix, the kings of Bohemia respectfully kiss on the occasion of their coronation. In addition to these, there are several relics brought by Godfrey de Bouillon from the graves of Abraliam, Isaac, and Jacob. In addition to the crown and sceptre, con- cealed in the secret cabinet of which mention was made several pages back, there -are other parts of the regalia respecting which less mys- tery is made, and upon which, accordingly, I was allowed to feast my eyes. There were, for instance, the four golden statues of tlie four an- cient Boiiemian saints: Adalbert, Venzeslaus, Vitus, and Ludmilla. These four statues are always carried in procession before the kings on the occasion of their coronation. I was also shown the sword of state, with which the new- ly-crowned monarch always imposes tlie honour of knighthood upon tile shoulders of a select number of his subjects. This sword is remark- ably light. Some time ago, a little rust was dis- coTTcred about half way down the blade. That it might not, howevjer, be said, Bohemia's sword of state had grown rusty, the ofi"ending"spot was cut or filed away, and the form of a cross was given to the hole thus formed. The said hole I saw with my o-\^ti eyes; its cause and origin I can only give upon the. authority of my in- formant. PUBLIC INSTITUTIONS AND CONVENTS. The royal library is contained in the Great College Building ( Cullegmmsgfbaude) as it is called. My visit to the 100,000 volumes hap- pened on a noiseless holiday afternoon. The reading rooms' that in the morning had been occupied by the studious, were now still and untenanted, like a deserted bee-hive. It was an unaccustomed time for a visit to the librarj-; but the good-natured librarian made an excep- ' tion on my account, and did not grudge' the trouble to which I pat him. "U^hen the last heavy lock closed behind us, and I was able to let my eye wander through the long halls, I ex- perienced that feeling of mingled awe and en- joyment, which I always experience on entering a large library, where the boards are so richly decked with the produce of human intellect. Thick walls and stout bolts shut out the rest of the woi-ld from us, and we wandered, like her- mits in a solitude, but a solitude where nearly all the fritits of mental speculation "hung invft- ingly aro\ind us. I thought of Ulysses in the Cyclops' cave, examining the bright bowls full of rich milk, and thr packages of cheese and butter, and the cas'r-^ of honey, all filled to the brim. The dill'rrcnre was, that Ulysses had been locked in by his Cyclops, whereas we had just locked out our Cyclops, the great, nois}', busy, bustUng world.' At a time when, according to the exaggerated accounts of so'me, 60,000 students were assem- bled in Prague from all parts of Germany,* these rooms must have literally swarmed like a bee-hive; but if those times were to return again, the halls and readings-rooms of the library M'ould still be found sufficiently spacious. Of the sixt3'-six deans, who Avere then at the head of what was called the nations, only twelve were Bohemians. The Germans Avere by far the most numerous. Even then there appears to have existed something of the jealousy that still prevails betAueen German and Bohemian. Huss was a zealous adherent to the Bohemian party. To destroy the influence exercised by the Ger- mans, he recommen4ed that in all university af- fairs the Bohemian nation should have two votes, and all _ the other nations together only one. This measure led, in 1409, to tlie departure of the Gennan students, and to the rapid decline of the university. Thus did the people of Prague strike a severe blow at the prosperity of their city, and even in Bohemia there was at the time no lack of ridicule cast upon the Bohemian party; but the incensed German students and professors, it is still believed in Prague, ad- dressed bitter remonstrances to the emperor and * The most moderate accounts say 20,00n, a number still abuniianlly large, when vvp consider thai even ai the present day, all ihe German universities together do nai contain a larger number. And yet there were then oiher other universities in Germany, and many German siu- dents went lo Italy. Besides, Germany is at present much more populous, and must contain a great many more peo- ple than it did then, who occupy iheoiBelves with learned pursuits. KOHL'S AUSTRIA. clerg;y; and the vindictive charges thus brought against. Huss, are supposed to have done more in exciting the pope and emperor against the reformer, and to have contributed more to bring about his melancholy iate, than any apprehen- sion that w&s ever entertained on account of his doctrines. Unless the University of Prague had at that time more books than it has now, the whole library must have been exhausted if only each student occupied one work at a time. On the 26th of July, 1841, the number of volumes was 99,888, and the catalogues are so arranged, that the sum total may every day be known with the greatest precision. Although much that was interesting has been removed to Vienna, there are still books in the Prague library quite as well deserving of de- scription as any other curiosity, either in the town or its vicinity. One of the most curious is, perhaps, a Hussite hymn-book, which is written and illuminated with singular splendour. The book, which must have cost many thousands of tiorins, Avas the joint production of a large por- tion of the inhabitants of Prague. Every guild and corporation of the city had a few hymns \yitten, and pictures painted to accompany them, and several noble families did ;lie same, each family or corporation placing its arms or crest before its own portion of the book. In most of the other cities of Bohemia similar hymn-books were composed during the ascend- ancy of Utraquism, and I doubt whether of all the Christian sectsthat have at v^urious times protested against the pope, there ever was one that produced hymn-books of such surjiassing splendour. All the pictures in .that of Prague are of a superior order, and executed in a mas- terly style. Most of them represent incidents from biblical history, or from the life of Huss, as for instance, his dispute with a popish priest, and his death at the stake. Bloated priests and monks, pope and emperor, are represented grouped around the funeral pile of Huss, whom angels are comforting in his agony. Poor Huss raised a flame in which he himself was burnt, as well as many that came after him, but from that flame posterity has derived neither light nor warmth. 'I'he history of the Calixlines of Bohemia is a sadder one than of any other religious sect, for no doctrine ever made its way amid acts of greater violenee, and none was e^-er annihilated by a more ruthless reaction. Lu- theranism was also cradled amid fearful storms, but the tempests have spent themselves, and millions have become peaceful participatory; in the blessings at which Lutheranism aimed. The Hussites raised a mighty conflagration, of which the Auslrians succeeded in treading out the last spark; the Lutherans lighted a roaring fire on their own hearths, and their homes, in spite of pope and emperor, have been warmed by its genial influence ever since. Yet Huss, despite of his heresy, lives in the affections of his coun- trymen. I have often observed in them a strange struggle, on this score, between religion and nationality. As Bohemians they love to take credit for all the great things that the Hussites did, though as Catholics they cannot, of course, approve of them. Utraquism preceded the art of painting; hence the profuse adornment of the hymn-books I have described. The Hussites afterwards caused a multitude of books to be printed in Bohemia, and when this could no longer be done in the country itself, their bibles were printed abroad, in Venice, for instance, whose printing-presses in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, were at the disposal of almost every religious sect. In the Prague library arc several bibles in the Bohemian language, that were printed at Venice. In one of the year 150(), is a picture of hell, in which the devil is treading down a whole host of monks and popes; to this some zealous com- mentator has aflixed a manuscript annotation, to inform us that the picture represents "Pope Julius IL in Hell." The best bible, however, in the Tshekhian language was of a much later date (1579 — 1593) when a Moravian nobleman called toge- ther a number of learned Bohemians to his castle of Kralitz, where the sacred volume was trans- lated anew from the original text. This trans- lation is said to be the best: the Bohemians even maintain its superiority to any translation that has ever appeared in any language, a point which veiy few scholars are in a condition to dispute. This translation is known under the title of Bibfia Czeska Brafeiska (?'. e. the Tshek- hian Brother Bible), and is still occasionally printed at Berlin for the use of the Moravian brethren. In the Prague library I found a copy of the first book ever printed in Bohemia. It's date is 1462. These old Bohemian books are well printed, and upon solid lasting paper, like our old German and Dutch editions, which look no- thing the Avorse for the three or four centuries that have passed over their heads. Our modern paper is mere tinder in comparison. I took up a new book that had come from the binder's only a few days before, and while I was turning ovef the leaves several of the corners broke off. If we go on iniproimig the manufacture of our paper, as we have done of late years, there will be nothing left in our public libraries, five hun- dred years hence, but the solid old incunabulse and parchment manuscripts. In the halls of the library may be seen the portraits of several Jesuits of Prague, and of other distinguished men. Among them are Campianus, the Jesuit, who was executed in England under Elizabeth, and Collin, the friend, of the late Palalogus, avIjo was burnt in Rome by order of the inquisition. There is also a picture of Georg Plachy, who, at the head of the students of Pi-ague, defended the city bridge so gloriously against the Swedes. The most interesting of all these worthies, to .me, was a marble burst of Mozart, the greatest musical genius that Germany ever produced. This bust stands in a room, the shelves of which are filled only with the woi'ks of the great master. Mozart is one of the very i'ew Germans for whom even the BohemiaTi patriots express their respect without any arriere peyisfct but then they usually remind you, that though Mozart was born in Germany, they consider him "to have been a Bohemian in all but the place of his birth.' In the first place, they will tell you, he wrote all his best works, his "Don Juan," "Figaro," and a few others, in Prague, in the KOHL'S AUSTRIA. 29 atmosphere of Bohemian song. Then they will add, that nowhere out of Bohemia is Mozart properly understood. In Vienna the people were at first quite unable to estimate liim. and Mozart himself, they -will assure you, would often say, that he had nowhere been Cdmprehended but in Prague. '-My father," said a Bohemian once to me, "was one day looking for Mozart's grave in the cemetery at Vienna, hut the gravedigger was a long time before he could make out whom my father meant by the divine Mozart. At length the man suddenly cried out, 'Oh, per- haps your honour means the musician that was drowned!' " I thought the anecdote much more characteristic of the place where it was told me, than of that to which it referred. The Bohemians in thus claiming Mozart be- cause he lived among them, reverse the conduct of the Poles, who would rob us even of Coper- nicus, because hQ was born in a city subject to Poland, though his parents were Germans, though he received a German education, and resided the greater part of his life in Germany. The Slavonians are apt to appropriate every German who comes among them, and assimi- lates himself to their spirit. On the other hand, however, we are often disposed to look upon many a Slavonian author as a German, merely because he has chosen the German language as the vehicle for giving his ideas to the world, in the same way that many a German, because he happened to write in French, is always set down in France for a Frenchman. We often look upon all the Western Slavonians as so many Germans, perhaps because we consider that those countries owe their education and enlightenment to Germany, but the Slavonians themselves are much more exact in these mat- ters. For instance, before I came to Bohemia, I never dreamt of looking on Huss but as a German. In Bohemia I was soon corrected on this point, and learnt that Huss (the h must be pronounced with a* strong guttural intonation) is a arenuine Tshekhian plebeian patronymic, and means neither more nor less than goose. Huss himself was born in a Tshek- hian village, and was the son of Slavonian peasants, and in proportion as I became ac- quainted more intimately with his history, among his native hills, I was made gradually aware tliat the Hussite wars were not merely religiotis wars, but were in reality, a struggle on the part of the Bohemians to shake otf the domination of the Germans; the emperor and his priests were hateful rather as foreign rulers than on account of their theological errors. If I am not mistaken, I have heard it asserted at Prague that the first inventor of gunpowder was likewise a Bohemian; that we owe the art of. printing, not to a German, but a Slavonian of Bohemia, has lately been repeatedly maintain- ed, and many imagine they have demonstrated it in the most incontrovertible manner. The Bohemian version of the story is this. There lived in the early part of the fifteenth century, in a Bohemian town called Guttenberg, or Knt- tenberg, a man of the name of Joseph Tshasfni. He was a learned man, and al"ler the fashion of the learned men of his time, he translated his •Bohemian name into Latin, and called himself Faustus, for tshastni is the Tshekhian word for happy. At the same time, according to a prac- tice tliatalso then prevailed among learned men, he added to his own name that of the place of his birth, and called himself Joannes Faustus Kuttenbergensis. In 142l,aboutthecommence- inent of the Hussite Avars, he M-as driven from his country, and arrived as a fugitive at Slrasburg, -where he dro]ipcd the name of Faustus, and called himself simply Johann Guttenberg. There is an ancient manuscript to which reference is made in support of this claim, and in which the folloAving sentence oc- curs: — " Fosfeaquarn artem libroriim iniprimen- dorum 'isdem Joannes Kuttenbergensis Boemus, patria Kutltnbergensis, prius Joannes Faustus nominates, qui circa annum 1421, bella Hussitica fngiens in Germaniam abiit Strassburgise Kutten- bergium a. patria {ex more ejus temporis et sitnul ut pntriain suam ah inventione Typographiae ' commendaret) appellavit." The house is still shown in Prague in which this Mr. Faustus is said to have lived. He must have been in comfortable circumstances, for the house is a large one, and has since been fitted up for the reception of a public institution, that of the Deaf and Dumb School, which I visited, partly for Fanstus's sake, and partly for the sake of the pupils instructed there. There were fortjr-one pupils residing in the house, be- sides twelve children who came merely as day scholars. Very few among them, I found, were completely deaf. The sound of the German « (like the English oo in prnof) tln^y could ahva)^S distinguish, and wlieu we spuke very slftwly and distinctly, the children cottid understand the greater part of what we said by closely ob- serving the movement of our lips; but, of course, they understand their own language of signs much more fluently. Many of their signs were of their own invention. The sign for God and heaven was always accompanied with a pious look upward. I tried to tell them something about a tower, and in doing so, endeavoured to imitate the sign which the teacher had taught me as representing the word; but I saM' evidently that they misunderstood me, and when th^ teacher came to mv assistance, it turned out thar they had imagined I was telling them something about the pope, whom they picture to themselves as a kiiuT of moral tower rising far above the " r^ of human kind. One of the most important public institutions of Prague is the Lunatic Asylum, which, though it may not "fulfil all that, at the present day, is expected from such an establishment," as one of the physicians belonging to the house ex- presses himself, must yet be considered among the best of its kind, as" I think my readers will themselves be ready to infer from the particu- lars I am about to relate of it. The average number of patients usually in the hospital is 100, of whom about one half are dismissed cured. The number of patients usually in the hospital is 190. The gardens are handsome and spacious, and distributed into diflisrent sec- tions for the several gradations of madness. Those who are not considered dangerous meet every Sunday in the principal garden, on which occasion a band of music is always provided. The labour in the kitchen garden is always per- formed by the patients, and beyond these gardens KOIIL'S AUSTRIA. there are some fields of considerable extent, Avhich are ploughed, sowed, and reaped by the inmates of the house. A piece of hop-ground even is attached to the establishment, that those patients who come from the circle of Bunzlau, where this species of cultivation prevails to a great extent, may find themselves engaged in their accustomed occupation. Ct)nstant occu- pation is lookoii upon as contributing more than any other means to a cure. We saw no less than forty or fifty poor lunatics engaged in mow- ing, digging, weeding, watering, planting, &c. With the exception of the straight-jacket, no species of corporal punishment is ever resorted to. Nearly all the work iu the interior of the house is likewise performed by the patients, — such as cleaning the rooms, malcing the beds, chopping.wood, cooking, carrying waier, and the like. For my own part, I experienced sincere satisfaction, as I Avandered about among the busy multitude, and thought of the principles by which such institutions were governed only 30 or 40 3-ears ago, of the scenes which were then daily witnessed there, of human beings laden witli cliaius, or strapped to benches, and fre- quently scourged with revolting cruelty. A lu- natic asylum in those days was a place in which madmen were shut up tHat they might not inconvenience the rest of the world; noAv the object kept in view is to restore them to society. It is characteristic of music-loving Bohemia, that in the lunatic asylum of its capital, music should be considered one of the chief instru- ments for the improvement of the patients. In addition to the garden concerts, in which all assist who can, there are quartettos every morn- ing and evening in the wards, and a musical di- rector is appointed for the express purpose of superintending this part of the domestic arrange- ments. Among the patients there was none who ex- cited my interest more than a gentleman of the name of Sieber, an accomplished scholar, who had spent sometime in the East, had written several works of acknowledged merit, and had, one time, been looked upon as a man of great natural abilities, as well as of vai'ied ac- quirements. On first entering the house, he continued for some time to devote himself to his accustomed avocations, but gradually he fell into a brooding melancholy, and thence into a state of sullen madness whence no man had been able to rouse him. I saw him lying in his bed, quite motionles'S, with his eyes closed, and his arms crossed over his breast, more like a statue on a tomb than a human being. In this position, I -was told, he lay almost always, no woiil p\-pr i^suingfrom his lips. His friends oc- casioiuiUy vlsil him and A^-eep around liis bed, but he seems uiiconsciou-^ of th'ir pn'-^eiico. I was afterwards sorry to hear lh;it tins s'-iitlemaa's presence in the madlionse siood in .some con- nection with liis ])olitical opinions, which he had, perha;)s, the imprudence to proclaim some- what too freely.* * riiis pxprpssi'in niieht Ipad >Tr Kohl's rpador.'j In sup- pose the oriemuliai Sjpber. to h;ivp bppii ap^luii-al viciiin of ihe Aiisiriaii yivrriiiiipnt. wlinrpas in |ioinl ot fact, rliir ing his stay in rari=, in 1S.3'), he mamfHsipil siirh pviilpnl FVinploins of insanlly, as U-u hrs friends litilp hopp of bp ina itble to preserve him to socieiy much lonser Francis William Sieber was born at Prague, in 1785. Ai his own I was allowed to see the lists of the patientiS treated during several preceding years, from which I deduced two or three statistical infer- ences that may not be without value when com- I)ared with the results obtained at other estab- lishments of a similar character. Among 517 patients, I found there had been 206 women and 311 men; so that the men were in the proportion to the women of more than three to two. Wed- lock seemed in 'some measure to be a preserva- tive against madness, for of the 517 patients, 293 had been unmarried, and 224 had been in the holy estate; the proportion, therefore, of the single to the wedded patients had been as 4 to 3. The middle stage of life would appear to be most liable to attacks of insanity, for of the 517 inmates there were 15G in whom mental aliena- tion had manifested itself between the ages of 30 and 40. Of the 311 men, 148 had been servants and day labourers. Of agricultural labourers and gardeners there were only 4. Among the 206 women there liad been 1 1 sempstresses. Among' the men, I also ol>scrved, as a remarkable fact, that there had been 8 schoolmasters, or 2-^ per cent, of the whole. The blind-school is, comparatively speaking, unimportant, atibrding accommodation to only sixteen children, and remarkable only on ac- count of the religious ladies (the Grey Sisters) under whose superintendence the house is placed. For this puqiose four young ladies Avere sent from Prague to Nancy, to pass their noviciate in the house of the Soeurs Crises, and prepare themselves for the charitable office of tending the sick. These four ladies on their return, with a French abbess at their head, founded the institution, to which has already been added, an asylum for the sick blind, in which I found twenty-eight patients. It is gene- expense he travellefl. in 1817, by way of Vienna .and Trieste, to the Arrhipelaco, where he made the island of Candiathe immediate object of his researches, and collect- ed materials for a work which he published in 1822, under the title vf Reisc nnch cler Insel. Kreta, which is accompa- nied by a number of valuable encravinps executed from his own drawings In 1S18 he visited Eaypt, ascended the Nile toThebe8,and afterwarUs travel led throush Palestine and Syria, and during this journey hia collections were so extensive and valuable, that, when on his return ihey were exhibited in Vienna the public refused for a long time to believe thatoiie man could have collected so raucli in so short a lime His collection of Eiryptian antiquities was afterwards purchased by the Academy of .Sciences ir» Munich In 1822, Sieber sailed from .Marseilles on a voy- ace round the world, during which he visited the Isle of France, the ("ape of Good Hope. New Holland, New Zea- land, Cape Horn, and arrived in London in July, 1824. His collections in the depariutent of natural history, dur- i>iK this voyasp, were astonishingly exiensive, and were exhibited to tiip public in Dresden in 1824. Here already symptoms of insanity besan to manifest ihernselves He was haiiiited by a belief ilial an eminent Austrian states- man aimed al liis life, and ihi.s notion continued to ensrosa him more and more He imagined he had discovered an arcanum Tt the rnrp of liydrophobia, and offered to sell his secret to the iMiiperor of Austria fir a larae sum of money. Neiilo-r tlie Aii.sirian, however, nor any other government maiiifesteil a willingiiessio pay Sieher'.s price, which induced him to eo to Paris, where in 18.30 he pub- lished a Pioapcclus iVunnouvemi syxl^mede lanalure, a work which boirays in every pas:e siitficient proof of the melani Imly roarimon iiiio which iia author had gunk, to say nothin;; of a rPiiiarkahle sitriialure affixed to the book." "■Pi iincois Ciiiilliiiime, S'i'her, ie pfna griuid not Otimonde, !a hel.: de t Apocalypse " Aii^'iii; liis other works may be meiilioiipd the followine: On the Radical Cure of Hjdro- phobia. Aliiiiich, 1S20: On thp Mummies of Eaypt, their • Origin, Onject, Acc, Vienna, IS.'O; A Journey from Cairo to Jerusalem and bacl£, Prague, 1823 — 2V. KOHL'S AUSTRIA. 31 rally said that the sick are much better tended by these ladies, who devote themselves to the cause from a motive of religious zeal, than by hired nuiscs, who can seldom be iiilluenced ex- cept by the fear of losing their places. We visited the French abbess, and found in her a stirring;, bustling lady. She was writing at her table when we entered, and left her pajiers and account books to receive us. She told us we must look upon the institution as only in its infancy, but that it would gradually grow and become more extensive. I asked her whether she felt herself comfcntable in a foreign country. At first, she answered, she had pined after home, and one day, asshe was sitting alone in her room, brooding over the many inconveniences of a fo- reign residence, somebody knocked at her door. An elderly gentleman came in, who introduced himself as a landed proprietor, and began to inquire after the circumstances and prospects of the institution. "Ma chore mere," he said, "you are a stranger here, and must have many difficulties to contend with. Your undertaking is still a young one, but it deserves universal sympathy. Allow me to hand you this parcel as a trifling contribution to the comforts of tiiose under your charge." Before she could thank him, the stranger was gone, and had left a pack- age containing a considerable sum of money in her hands. About three years afterwards she received a letter from a Prince L., who expressed a wish to establish a branch in,<iy of I in Cold Northerns Avill find it hard to I'oriu u \-Qiy cicar couceplion. KOHL'S AUSTRIA. "As sisters too," she resumed, "we lead a»life of constant self-denial, such as to you, no doubt, ■rt-ill seem very hard. Seven hours a day we invariably spend in prayer, besides which, on certain liolidays, we have prayers and masses to chaunt at midnight. During the day we sel- dom speak to one another, and only in the morn- ing and^vening we have one hour of recreation. During these two hours we visit each other, and converse together. We make and mend our own clothes, and attend to other work in the convent, endeavouring to do as much of it as possible with our own hands. "Is it true," I asked, ''that you Wear nothing but this coarse gannentof wool or hair!" "This is the only garment we wear, and our food is equally simple. Meat we never touch, but only vegetables, and fish, dressed either with oil or butter, and water is our only drink; but we are cheerful and contented, and it never oc- curs to us to covet any thing beyond that. We sleep on straw, and a sack of straw serves us for a pillow. ■ Some of its, however, impose, at times, additional hardships on themselves. They will sleep, for instance, on the naked boards, or will save a portion of their scanty meals, and send it out to the poor in the world, or they will pass whole nights in prayer. In these exercises we often emulate each other, and think we can- not carry them too far; for, indeed, how can we hope sufficiently to chastise and mortify our sin- ful flesh?" Good God! thought I; and these sacrifices, these ordeals, are imposed in a house sur- rounded by sumptuous palaces, and in the very centre of a populous luxurious cit}'. Almost unconsciously I exclaimed — "But why do you not rather choose to live in some remote soli- tude, in some gloomy forest, or on some black heathl" "It would indeed be better," resumed my nun, with her accustomed sweetness of voice, "and we would much prefer it, but we cannot remove the convent that has been assigned to us, and are not rich enough to build one in a more suit- able place. Besides, we may live here as else- where, free from all commerce with the world, happy and cheerful, in perfect concord, and de- voted to God, and to friendslup for each other." At this moment there arose before my mind's e3'e,one of those crooked little black things that ask questions, and I began to think, that before my informant persuaded me of the cheerfulness and perfect concord of her little community, it would be necessary for her to admit me a little more behind the curtain. "And you M'ere right in your doubts," said a friend to me afterwards; "the concord, I am sorry to say, is not such as might be expected to prevail among beings de- voted to such constant exercises of piety. In- trigues and cabals are of constant occurrence in this liUle state within the state, particularly on the occasion of electing their principal, who is chosen anew every third year." My geiule Carmelite, however, unconscious of my doubts, continued in the same strain, "Oh, you cannot imagine how happily, bow blissful))^, we live here, without a wish or a want [p gratify. It is only rules so severe as ours that make it possible to enjoy heaven already upon earth," Thus saying, she closed the glass case of Maria Electa, after she had once more kissed the hand of the witheied mummy, and praying God to have me in his keeping, she withdrew into the interior of the convent. Through the open door I discerned a long passage, and at the end of it a small piece of ground planted with trees, the only place whence these poor crea- tures are ever able to gaze upon God's heaven. God be v\-ith thee, poor girl, thought I, as the end of her garment vanished round the corner, how grievous makest thou life to thyself! and yet has not the Lord himself said — "My yoke is soft and my burden is light!" and then I thought of the many faitliful, pious mothers that I had known without the convent walls, living a life of godli- ness, and of daily usefulness to their fellow- creatures. The great charm which convents, particularly nunneries, have for us, lies in the nature of the vows taken by those who retire there, and partly in the unusualness of character and fortune which we presume in the inmates. Another cause of the great interest we take in these in- stitutions, is the mystery which surrounds them. This charm, so irresistible to a sober Protestant, attracted me once more to the Carmelites, but this time in company with a lady of rank of Prague, who went to pay a visit to the principal or Oberhi Aloysia. We were received in the parlour, which is separated into two divisions by a double grating, such as is placed in all Carmelite convents before every window or opening through which the profane world might look into the dwelling of the holy sisters. Be- hind this grating hung a dark curtain which was rolled up, and presented to us the pi'incipal, and another nun, who had preceded her in otfice. Both were closely veiled, and my imaginatioa was left at liberty to embellish them with end- less charms, of the existence of which I was not allowed to obtain any more satisfactory evi- dence. My companion offered indeed to ask the principal to unveil, and expressed a conviction that the request would be complied with; but I prayed her, on no account to do so, for I feared, I scarce know why, l^e dissipation of those agreeable illusions in which I had been in- ^Iging. My two visits convinced me, at all events, that the CaWielites did not live in such complete seclusion from the world as I have been told. The principal keeps up friendly relations with many ladies in Prague, receives visits from them, and accepts trilling presents. Nor do I believe, in spite of the assurances of my first in- formant, that they -would at all like to remove into a wilderness. They do not see the world, indeed, but it is something to know that the world is about them, and though they imagine they have renounced every feeling of vanity, still it is necessary to them to know themselves admired for their "self-denial. They place their sohtude among the princely palaces of the Hradshin, as Diogenes placed his tub opposite to the palaces of the Athenians. The palaces that he despised were as necessary to his self- importance as to the pomp of Pericles and Alci- biades. Had the Athenians all taken to living in tubs, Diogenes would have soon found his way back into a decent house; and in the same way, I am convinced, the Carmelites would not be 34 KOHL'S AUSTRIA. long in knocking away their gratings, if they •were to hear one fine morning that all the fine ladies in Prague liad immured themselves. In Vienna, the Carmelite nuns have not been able to re-establish themselves since the days of JosepI;, any more than the Jesuits. The latter, however, are tolerated in several of the provin- cial cities of Austria. Prague has, indeed, far more convents and religious orders than Vienna, or than any other city in the Emperor's domi- nions. It would be much more easy to enume- rate the orders that are not to be found in the Bohemian capital, than to coimt all the varieties of religious habits and uniforms that one en- counters in every street. It would be an interesting thing perhaps to observe all these monks in their cells, but we satisfied ourselves with a visit to the most im- portant of them, the white Premonstrants of the monastery of Strahof, which contains one of the most celebrated hbraries in Bohemia. This convent, whose real name is Strasha, which the Germans have corrupted into Strahof, was founded in 1140, or only twenty years after an angel had shown to St. Norbert, near Coucy in France, the field on which he was to build the first convent of the order. In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the order possessed two thousand monasteries. At present the number does not exceed one hundred, of which that of Strahof is probably by far the most wealthy. Like all the Prachtkloster, or convents on a large scale in Austria, Strahof is only partially finished. The church is in a ruinous condition, and oilers a painful contrast to the magnificence of the interior of the library. The beneficial effects of this library must be inestimable, if all the pious texts and moral precepts with which its walls and columns are so liberally inscribed, have not only served as architectonic decora- tions, but have, at the same time, been duly impressed upon the hearts of the monks. The library contains fifty thousand volumes, arranged with exemplary order and elegance, which would be the more gratifying if there were not so kw bees to collect the honey from so fair a garden. The thirty monks of the co% vent can enjoy but a small portion of the rich sweets consigned to their keeping, and the channels through which their fertilizmg in- fluence might be made to flow over a wider space, require the bold hand of another Joseph to open them. Ziska, who preached in the name of Huss, and baptized with fire where Huss had come armed only with water, — Ziska whose name next to that of Joseph 11., is oftenest heard in Bohemian monasteries, instead of setting the garnered sweets free for the benefit of mankind, would have stopped them up altogether, for he destroyed the monastery of Strahof as he had destroyed many others before. At present, bow- ever, his wild one-eyed countenance hansfs in the picture gallery at Strahof, along with a mul- titude of other historical portraits; indeed [ have found the picture of this puller down of castles and convents, occupj-ing a prominent and ho- nourable place in the collections of the many Bohemian convents and castles that I have had occasion to visit; and those who, if he were still living, would move heaven and earth to bring him to the gallows, now that he is net likely to do them any more mischief, appear to be not a little proud of the privilege of counting such a dare-devil among their compatriots. THE JEWS' QUARTER. The Jewish community of Prague, boasts of being the most numerous and most ancient of the Austrian monarchy, and indeed of all Ger- ma.ny. It consists of 10,000 individuals, so that it comprises about one-tenth of the whole popu- lation of the city. In the Galician cities only are the Jews sometimes fomid in a greater proportion. In Vienna, on the contrary, they amount only to one-fifth of the number resident in Prague, and if the greater population of Vi- enna is taken into account, the Jews of the Bohemian stand in numerical proportion to tliose of the Austrian capital, as twenty to one. All Bohemia is said to contain about 70,000 Jews; one-seventh of the whole, therefore, have their domiciles in Prague. All Bohemia con- tains four millions of inhabitants; consequently, every sixtieth man in Bohemia is a Jew, and in the capital every tenth. There are Austrian provinces in which no Jews are to be met with. These are Austria above the Ens, Styria, Ca- rinthia, and Carniola. In the last-named pro- vince, within a few years, ten Jews have established themselves. In Styria one solitary Israelite is said to hold his residence. In the whole of the Austrian states there are at present 652,000 Jews; more than one-third of the whole, 265,000, being included within Aus- trian Poland, and nearly as many, 260,000, in Hungar_y. About one-sixth, or 1 1 0,000, inhabit Bohemia and Moravia, and the remainder are distributed in small portions, over the remaining provinces of the empire. Thus, in Transylva- nia there are 3,500; in Tyrol, 1,900; in Dalmatia, 500; in Lombai dy, 2,000; in Venetian Lombardy, 4,000; in the Military Frontier, 400, &c. Hence it would seem, that in ancient times, the Slavo- nians and Magyars must have been most tolerant to the Israelites, while the Germans and Italians must alwaj's have been less willing to admit them as residents. The purely German pro- vinces of Austria contain only 5,000 Jews, the purely Italian only 7,000; whereas in those pro- vinces in which the Slavonian and Magyar elements of population preponderate, the Jews number no less than 620,000. Moreover, in the German and Italian provinces, the Jews are yearly decreasing in numbers, although the population generally is increasing; in Hungary, on the oliier hand, the Je\vs are increasing at a far more rapid ratio than any other class of the population. The other question, that -which refers to the antiquity of the Hebrew conimiinily at Prague, will be less easy to solve; indeed, so wide a range is therebetween different authorities, that there is a dift'erence of no less than a thousand years between the date assigned by one party, and that contended for by those of an opposite opinion. The Jews maintain that their settle- ment at Prague dates back at least to the year 632 of the Christian era, that date being in- scribed upon the most ancient tombstone of their cemetery, while several tombstones are KOHL'S AUSTRIA. still to be foimd inscribed with various dates from the 8th century. The Bohemians, how- ever, refuse to recos^nise the claim of the Jews, and deny the authenticity of the stone altogether. The Je\fs, they say, have occupied their present quarter only for a few centuries, having been removed to it, from the opposite side of the river, by the express command of one of the kings of Bohemia, who assigned to them the loc;ilitynow known under the name of Judenstudl, or Jews' Town. One Bohemian antiquary told me that tlie inscription in question referred probably to tlie year 1632, and not to 632, it being still usual in many parts of Austria to abridge dates by leaving out the first figure, and to say for in- stance, 841, in speaking of the year 1841. If the Jews are correct in their chronology, their community must have existed *as early as Uie reign of the celebrated Slavonian king, Samo, who united Bohemia and Morawia into a pow- erful Slavonian empire; nor would there beany thing very marvellous in supposing that this mighty sovereign, under whom commerce is known to have been actively carried on, should already have had Jews among his subjects. It is not, however, known in what part of his do- minions King Samo held bis residence, and it is only his successors Krok and Libussa to whom credit is given for having founded Prague. Nevertheless, according to Ptoloma^us, there is very little doubt that Marobudum, the ancient capital of the mighty Marbod and his Marko- mans, stood on the same spot on which Prague was afterwards built, in which case it is very likely that Samo ruled over the whole land from the banks of the Moldau. There would be no- tliing absurd therefore in supposing that the Jews may have dwelt for 1200 years where Prague now stands, even though we may not feel disposed to receive their tombstones as authentic evidence of the fact. Nay, it is quite possible, that Marbod himself, the cotemporary of Augustus, as he adopted so many things from tlie Romans, may, among other importations from Italy, have received a consignment of Jews for the supply of his city of Marobudum. A Hebrew colony may even have existed here at a still earlier period, when, previously to the Christian era, and before the invasion of the country by the Markomans, the Celtic sovereigns held their court in their antique capital Bubie- num, which must also have been situated very near to where Prague now stands, and probably on the spot now occupied by the village of Bu- bcnetz. In this way the Jews may have dwell in the country even before it was ruled either by Germans or Slavonians. \\'hether oi- no there be any foundation for Hiese speculations, it is not the less certain that the said Jewish cemetery has all the outward appearance of great antiquity, and belongs, as well as several of the synagogues, to the most interesting objects that a traveller can expect to look upon. The cemetery lies in tbe veiy heart of the Judensfdc/t, where it is encircled by buildings and narrow lanes.. Its form is very irregular winding, now broad and tben narrow, amid the houses that overtop its lofty wall. This very irregularity of form seems to speak in favour of the high aiuiquity of the place, to which, through succeeding centttries, a fragment seems now to have been added here, and now there. In the central part of the enclosed space, the tomb- stones are crowded together in a manner I never saw equalled anywhere else. Close to the wall, on the inside, is a footpath, and a man must' walk tolerably fast to be able to make the round in a quarter of an hour. The Jews do not, as we do, inter fresh corpses in graves vrhose for- mer tenants have mouldered into dust, but al- ways place their dead either over or by the side of each other. This practice occasions the as- tonishing accumulation of tombstones, of which I am sure there are several hundred thousand in this cemetery. They have all a family re- semblance, being four-cornered tablets with neatly-executed inscriptions. They stand liter- ally as closely together as ears in a cornfield. All are carefully preserved, though some have sunk more or less into the ground, so much so, that here and there you see a stone, of which only a small portion is still visible. The whole is overgrown with elder bushes, that stretch their knotty and confused branches from stone to stone. These elders are the only trees that grow there, and some of them seem to be nearly as old as the stones which they overshadow. The presence of the elder tree in burying-grounds is not, however, peculiar to this place, but pre- vails very generally throughout Bohemia. Here and there a small path winds among the thicket of tombstones and elder trees, and on following it you come to small elevated spaces of ground, that have been left unoccupied, and are now overgrown with grass. If I were a painter, and wished to paint a picture of the Resurrection, I must confess, I should choose one of these little grass-grown knolls in the Jewish cemetery of Prague for the scene, in preference to any other. I can imagine no more picturesque spot from which to contemplate so vast a spectacle, and I wonder, when we have so many pictures of the celebrated burying- ground at Constantinople, that our artists should not also have taken that of the Jews at Prague as a subject for their pencils. The inscriptions are nearly all in Hebrew. Nowhere did I see a Bohemian inscription, and only here and there, on a stone of comparatively modern date, has the German language been used. The year is always at the top. The tombs of those of Aaron's race are distinguished by two hands graven into the stone, and those of the Levites by a pitcher, .to mark the ofiice of the latter to pour water on the hands of the for- mer, Avhen performing their ablutions in the temple. The descendants of Aaron never visit the cemeterj' during their lives. Any contact with, or even a near approach to, a dead body, is a pollution for them. They may not, therefore, remain in a house in which a dead body is lying. There is but one exception made to this law, namely, when the father of an Aaronite dies, in which case the son may rome within three ells of the body, and follow it to the burying-ground, till within three ells of a grave. The Jewish lat^'s evep prescribe the distance at which an Aaronite must keep when passing a bur}-ing- ground, which distance, however, is not calcu- lated from the outer wall, but from the nearest 36 Kf)HL'S AUSTRIA. grave. Now, in Prague, it happens that one street passes close to this Vail, and that just in this spot the graves not only reach up to the very wall, but that some are even supposed to lie under tlie pavement of the street. This would, con- .Sequently.be a forbidden roadtoeveiy Aaronite, had not particular arrangements been made to provide a remedy. This has been done by un- dermining that part of the street, and the empty vaulted space thus obtained,;prolects the Aaron- ite against pollution, for, according to the law, one hiuidrcd ells of vaulted space, are deemed equal to one thousand filled with solid earth. Here, as in every other Jewish cemetery, a piece of ground has been set apart for the in- terment of children stillborn, or of premature birth. In the coarse of time, this portion of the cemetery has grown into a hill or mound, eighty' paces long, ten paces broad, and twelve feet high. Ephel is the Hebrew word for a child •whose life does not extend beyond the fourth week, and Ephel is the name given by the Jews to this mound formed of infantine remains. Close to this Ephel are situated some old houses that seem to be on the point of falling in. They are propped up by beams resting on the Ephel; thus the mouldering bones of deceased infants lend their support, perhaps, to the tottering dwel- ling-places of their living parents. When, some sixty years ago, the Emperor Joseph prohibited all future interments within the walls of the city, the Jews had purchased a small piece of land, and consecrated it as an addition to their cemetery. Having once been consecrated, though not one body has been in- terred there, the ground has become holy, and may not be sold again; but though it may not be sold, it may be let for hire, and accordingly a dealer in wood has become the tenant, and uses the place as a depot for his merchandise. The whole cemetery, since Joseph's time, has been only an interesting piece of antiquity, still no portion of it can be sold or built upon. The Hebrew community of Prague enjoys a high reputation among all tlie Jews of Central Europe, and many celeb ;> ted Hebrew scholars, many distinguished women, and many eminent merchants and bankers, rest within its cenietery. The community of Prague may even be looked on as the parent hive, Avhence many an enter- prising swarm departed for the colonization of Poland and Hungary, and I had subsequent opportunities of satisfying myself of the influ- ence which a Jew irom Prague is able, even at the present day, to "exercise among his co-reli- gionaries of Hungary. In the cemetery of Prague, many a grave is pointed out to the stranger as that of a man high in renown among those of his own na- tion. Among others,! was called on to admire the beautifully-sculptured monument of a fair Jewess, who had risen to be a lady of high rank, the wife of a Avealthy Polish Count, 'i'liere were several tombs which, I was told, belonged to Levites and Rabbis of high fame and distinc- tion, and to one my attention was directed, as that of a youth who died some centuries ago, at the early age of eighteen. This youth had been, even in childhood, they told me, a miracle of learning, wisdom, beauty, and virtue. God had endowed him with the most pleasing qualities, and Jehovah's spirit hovered unceasingly over the boy'^ head. He was too virtuous, however, for this world, and his Creator therefore called him away in his eighteenth year. At his death there were signs and miracles, and the heavens were obscured. The King of Bohemia who then reigned, observing this , sent over to the other side of the river to demand of the wise men among the Jews, the cause of this sudden darkness, and was informed, in reply to his interrogatories, that an angelic soul had just departed from the earth. One tomb, erected early in the last century, was pointed out to me as that of a wealthy and benevolent Israelite of the name of Meissel. He had inherited nothing from his father, and continued, till death, to be a dealer in old iron. He lived in the same modest and parsimonious manner as the majority of his nation; but with the money that he was thus able to save, he built the Jewisli council-house at Prague, and four sjmagogues. Six streets were paved at his expense, and sixty poor people were weekly fed by him. No one knew whence his money came, or where he concealed it, but it was supposed that he had found a quantity of gold among some old iron that he had accidentally purchased. At present, the Jewish cemetery, like most old ruins or deserted places, serves as a refuge to a number of thieves and deserters, who are often able to conceal themselves for a long time among the bushes and tombs. Among the im- mediately adjacent houses are an asylum for j'oung children, an infirmary, and an hospital. For the accommodation of the children a door- way has been broken through the wall, and a small unoccupied space of the cemetery has been assigned to them as a playground, where a shed with benches and tables has been erected for their use. I own, when I saw the little crea- tures spoiling about in their little corner of a church-yard, and frolicking among the closely- crowded gravestones, I could not help asking myself what influence such a playground was likely to exercise over the future development of their minds. They were plucking wild flow- ers from the graves, and wreathing them into garlands. There were many pale, meagre, help- less little creatures among them; and, as I looked on them, I could not but think of the different fate of the little favourites of fortune, whose first tottering steps are made among flowery parterres, or over the lawn of a pai'k. A sin- gular contrast to this scene presented itself Avhen I visited the infirmary, where I found a number of aged creatures of both sexes, who had com- pletely sunk into the helplessness of a second infancy. Among them Avas a Jewess more than a. hundred years old, who had been bedridden for years. She lay crooked, blind, and almost motionless, more like a vegetable than an animat- ed being, and the only sign of life manifested by her, was an occasional whining sound. About forty old men and women were coughing, hob- bling, and groaning around us. I was accom- panied by a man of some consideration in the community. He was saluted by the inmates of the house in a completely oriental style. They came tottering up to him, kissed his garment, addressed hira over and over again by the title of " Gracious Master," and wished him long KOHL'S AUSTRIA. 37 life, health, and the blessing of God. Man}^ of these poor people had nothing in this institution but a rude couch in a very uninviting corner of a room; yet they were unceasing in their pro- fessions of gratitude, for the mercies vouchsafed to them, though there seemed to me to be little about the house deserving of commendation except the fact of its existence. I shuddered Tvlieii I thought how wretched must be the dens, to be rescued from which, was calculated to call forth such warm expressions of thankful- ness. In fact, I believe, that in the Jews' quarter of Prague, many a human being breathes forth his spirit among scenes of such heart-rending wretchedness that even an infirmary, such as that I was now visiting, may still deserve to be deemed a beneficent institution, entitling its founders and supporters to the thanks and es- teem of every truly benevolent mind. Would that they were more powerfully seconded in their humane endeavours, that they might re- deem a larger share from the floods of misery with which the Judenstadt of Prague is at pre- sent overflowing! What a vast extent of moral desolation there must still exist in this cily, was made evident to me by the case of a liuman being whom I saw in this infirmary. He \yas a boy that had been found wandering about the streets of Prague. He appeared to me to be between ten and twelve years old. He was taken up by the police in the streets, a wild little creature, and unable to speak or understand any language. He was handed over to the Jewish magistrates, who placed him in the infirmary, after having vainly endeavoured to find a clue to the child's family. The name of Lebel Kremsier was given him. We found him crouching in a corner be- tween a window and a large chest. " He is wild and ungovernable," said the superintendent of the house; " and though I have beaten him for it repeatedly, he will sometimes jump like a cat out of the window, and go hiding among the bushes and gravestones yonder. His delight is to hunt the cats, and if he catches them he kills them. His limbs are powerful, and his teeth remarkably strong and sharp. So saying, the man pulled open the boy's mouth, and showed us his teeth, much in the same way that a show- man at a fair would have exposed the tusks of some M'ild animal. " He will eat as much as two grown men," continued the superintendent, 'but he is not at all dainty, swallowing indiffer- ently every kind of food ollered him. Sometimes he is more than usually wild, and then he is iangerous, biting and scratching all who come near him; me, however, he never ventures to ittack. He says nothing, and if any one speaks to him, he merely repeats the words, like an in- listinct echo." The countenance of the child was regularly formed, and his eyes were full of animation. I said to him, " What is your namel" and he replied only by imperfectly articulating the two last words, " your name." " Why have ^'ou no trowsers onl" said I. "No — trow — on," was the echo that answered to my interrogatory. 'Lebel Kremsier, are you not cold?" "Old," was the sound with which he replied. While he was thus repeating my words, his face was dis- torted by a kind of smile or grin that seemed to tremble over his features. I attributed this to embarrassment; but my guide told me it was the effect of mere terror, and then, lor the first time, I observed that the whole body of the child was trembling. After I had passed on, I looked back, and saw that he still sat cowering, trem- bling, and grinning. In desolate places, among forests or marshes, such wild abandoned beings have sometimes been found; but how it was possible fof a wretch- ed creature lilce Lebel Kremsier t-o grow up in a populous city, is a riddle I am unable to solve. There are no less than twenty Jewish Bessa Medercsh, or houses of instruction, besides eight temples, the greater part of which are in the immediate vicinity of the cemetery. The oldest and most interesting is that called the Allneu- schalc, whose internal arrangements interested me the more, as the ancient style of the archi- tecture, and the order of divine service still observed there, afforded me an opportunity of instituting a comparison with the reformed sys- tem of worship which is making rapid way among the modern Jews, and has already taken firm root at Prague, where it threatens to drive the old synagiigues and the old schools com- pletely out of the field. I scarcely believe that there is any thing like the Altneuschule of Prague to be found, at the present day, in any other part of Germany. The outside of this synagogue looks like one of those old warehouses that ma}' still be seen in some of our German cities, that have under- gone but little change since the middle ages. Within, the dust, diit, glooin, and smojiiness of the whole place, remind one of a catacomb. From the ceiling hangs a large flag, so large in- deed, that it extends the whole length of the sy- nagogue. This flag was given to the Jews by Ferdinand III., after the termination of the thirty years' war, for the patriotism and'gallantry they had displayed when Prague was besieged by the Swedes in the last year of the war. During this siege, all the citizens of Prague, even the students, the Jesuits, and the monks, had fought bravely on the walls, and had even made seve- ral sorties to attack the besiegers. In reward for their gallant behaviour, the emperor con- ferred the honour of knighthood on a number of the citizens, including all the city councillors, in addition to which, various honours and im- munities were conferred on several of the cor- porations and convents. The Eiorus Nashim (that portion of the syna- gogue set apart for the women) is partitioned off from the body of the temple by a wall a foot and a half in thickness. A narrow staircase, such as maybe seen behind the scenes of a low theatre, serves as the only means of access for the women. In the narrow passages surrounded by walls, they have their chairs. At regular m- tervals there are in the walls certain rents or apertures, about an ell in length and an inch in breadth, and through these narrow holes comes all that the female members of the congregation are allowed to hear of the word of God. Here they crowd together, looking and listening down into the temple, through an opening that would be abundantly small for one of them, if she had it all to herself. " They will hear but little there," KOHL'S AUSTRIA. I observed to the Israelite lA'ho conducted me down the stairs. " Oh, quite enough for women," was his ungallant repl}^ On the tribune, in the centre of the syna- gogue, stood an old rabbi and preached. His listeners crowded around the tribune, and some had even intruded upon the tribune itself. Close before the preacher sat a white-haired old man, who ajipeared to be hard of hearing, and stretch- ed forth his ear in the ellbrt to catch the words of the speaker. Near him was a crowd of boys. The preacher was not, as with us, confined within the limited space of a pulpit, but moved freely about from one side of the stage to the other. There -was much in this that would have been highly indecorous to our Protestant no- tions. As far as grouping and outward form are concerned, a highly interesting daguerreo- type picture might have been furnished by the assembled congregation; but, however loudly the preacher vociferated, the spirit that should have given warmth and life to his discourse was alto- gether wanting. His discourse was the strangest medley of German and Hebrew that I had ever heard. Every text from the Bible was first given in Hebrew, and then translated into German. At one moment the speaker would be comment- ing upon Nebuchadnezzar, then upon the de- struction of Jerusalem by Titus; then again he would enlarge upon the false lights of modern times, to elucidate which he would skip up the vhole ladder of history to the days of Adam. The changes introduced into their temples of late years by the more enlightened Israelites, have altered none of the essential parts of divine service. Which, in spirit and form, remains pre- cisely such as it is prescribed by the ancient law. It is only the innovations, that had crept in during the course of time, that have been re- formed; and jn complying with the letter of the law, they have endeavoured to avoid, as much as possible, whatever is calculated to offend the enlightenment of modern times. Thus, in the reformed Jewish temples, the women still con- tinue to be separated from the men; but by open railings, and not by thick M'alls. The ancient hymns have been retained: but they are more carefully performed, and a suitable choir of singers is maintained for the purpose. The doc- trine of the sermon may be also little altered; but some oratorical ability is looked for in the preacher, who is expected to cultivate a purer style, and to refrain from a perpetual repetition of Hebrew quotations. It was in Berlin and Hamburg that the first associations were formed among the Jews, with a view to bring about these reforms, and the exanrple Avas soon followed in every part of Germany. In Prague, about a hundred men joined together, built a new synagogue, and sent a deputation to Berlin and Hamburg, to obtain more complete information res]iecting the refomied mode of worship, and to select a preacher of learning, piety, and oratorical ability. The first selection was not a fortunate one; for the new teacher obtained but little favour in the eyes of his flock. The second, Mr. Sax, who, like his predecessor, came from Berlin, has, however, become so popular, that even Protestants and (catholics will often go to hear him preach. I went to hear him on the day kept in commemoration of the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus; but, unfortunately, I arrived too late, the sermon being just over. The wo- men, like the men, were sitting in the lower space of the temple, with this difference only, that the men occupied the centre, and the women the side aisles. The choir was composed of a number of young men and ho3''s, in a black cos- tume, with small black velvet caps. As they sung, they were accompanied by a small organ, and the psalms had been rendered into a pure and well-written German version. The reform in the Jewish temple took root in Vienna somewhat sooner than in Prague, and is now extending its influence from these two centres to all the Hebrew communities of the Austrian empire. Schools, hospitals, and other institutions connected more or less with religion will not fail to be beneficially affected by the movement; which, indeed, they already feel, as I had subsequently more than one occasion to remaik. The Austrian government has tole- rated and even encouraged these reforms; the more readily, as they iiave not hitherto led to any religious cabals and dissensions. These indeed, the friends of reform and progress, are sedulous to avoid, and for that very reason they always protest against their being called or treated as a separate part}^ Nevertheless, some- thing like a feeling of aversion shows itself be- tween those of the old faith and the new. The Old Jews look upon their in::ovating brethren, however cautious these may be, as violators of the law, and murmur at their proceedings ac- cordingly; but if the reformers continue to ob- serve the same moderation, they will carry their whole nation with them in time. "Our chief rabbi, Rappoport, is an enlightened man," said one of the reformers to me, " and in his heart he is certainly on our side; but he must not quarrel with either side, and therefore does not choose to pronounce himself too openly against the old ones." This Mr. Rappoport is at present one of the most eminent and most highly-considered men in the whole community of Prague, though it is but lately that he arrived there, and that from Poland, a country in which no one can say that enlightenment has as yet made any great pro- gress among the Jews. He resided formerly at Tornopol, in Galicia, but his reputation for learning and liberality spread far and wide, and caused him, a few years ago, to be promoted to the post which he now holds. I went to pay my respects to him, and found him surrounded by a circle of learned scribes. The rabbis in this part of the world — I mean in Bohemia, Poland, and Hungary — continue to live after the fashion of the wise men of the East. They allow the light of their wisdom to shine upon the woild in a very different way from our learned philosophers of Europe, who, unless when addressing a respectfully listening auditory from the rostrum, are seldom accessi- ble to the multitude that stand so much in need of their instructions. Here the rabbis sit upon the open market-place, like the kings and judges in eastern lands, and in their houses they sit with open doors, ready to receive and answer all who come lor consolation or advice. This is particularly the case on the solemn festivals, KOHL'S AUSTRIA. when the rabbis receive all who come to them, their dwellings beingf looked upon, app.arently, on those occasions, less as private houses, than as places of assembly for the whole congrega- tion. The wife and daughters are generally found in an ante-room, where they receive the guest, and usher him into the inner apartment, into the presence of the rabbi, who, arrayed in his pontificals, generally sits at the end of a long table, encircled by a numerous assemblage of visitors, strangers, and friends. It was thus that I found the chief rabbi, Rap- poporl, whose acquaintance I was desirous to make. He had not yet laid aside the costume of the Jews of Eastern Europe, and sat in his arm-chair in a black silk caftan and a high fur- red cap. Israelites from Magdeburg, from Ham- burg, I'rom Warsaw, and from Amsterdam, were sitting around him, and other visitors were con- stantly arriving and departing. Mr. Rappoport is an Aaronitc, a distinction that carries with it privileges far mure burdensome than profitable. Of one i-f these I have already spoken. Another is, that every newly-born cbiid is brought to an Aaronite that he may bless it. There are also some Levites at Prague, but they are less nume- rous than the Aaronites. The same is observed to be the case in all the other Jewish commu- nities of Europe; and this, I was told, was be- cause Cyrus, when he re-established Jerusalem, brpught back to Palestine a greater number of Aaronites than of Levites. Mr. Rappoport told us that the Jewish Cara- Ites of the Crimea and Turkey, had lately found a stone, from the inscriptions on which they sought to sliow the very remote antiquity of their sect; but that he had lately written an epistle to them to show that the stone could not be genuine, as it professed lo be dated from the r real ion of the world, at a time when that M-as imi the era by which the Israelites reckoned, la his letter he said, he had proved to the Cara- ites, that the era from which the Jews originally reckoned was the flight from Egypt, with which their political history commenced. This system of chronology they retained for about one thou- sand years, when they adopted the era of the Seleucidre, which prevailed among the Chal- deans, the Syrians, the Persians, and among mo* of the oriental nations. This system of computation was retained by the Jews till about five hundred years ago, when the creation of the world was adopted. Religion among the Jews fonns naturally a subject of constant and familiar conversation, as having been the element in which their po- litical and moral relations have at all times been developed. We were led to speak of the subject by an allusion to the cherub wings lately placed by the Israelites of Prague, over tl\e holy shrine of the tablets of the law. I observed that these wings appeared to me very incomplete withcmt the bodies of the angels. This they told me, one and all, was a remark that none but a Christian woirtd have thought of making; that to them such figures of angels would be an abomination, and that whene^-er they entered a Christian church, with its pictures and statues, tliey felt much as their forefathers must have felt" when they entered the temples of the hea- thens. From the rabbi's house my Jewish friends conducted me to their council-house, erected by the Israelite Meissel, of whom I have already spoken. In this' building is preserved the an- cient charter of the community, which has been signed and confirmed by each of the emperors and empresses of Austria. This charter is pre- served as an invaluable treasure, and yet I be- lieve the only privileges granted by it are such as peaceful subjects ought to enjoy, without re- quiring the security of the sign manual of their sovereigns — namely, the toleration of their reli- gion, and the permission to exist. From the turret of this council-house the whole Juden- studl may be surveyed, bounded on one side by water, and on the other by a row of Christian churches. From this turret maybe seen all the Jewish streets, swarming with beggars, and all the wretched roofs under which so many fonns of wretchedness creep for shelter. As I gazed on what I knew to be the scene of so much suf- fering, the words of the prophet Baruch came into my mind : 1 Therefiire the Lord hatlJ'inKJe good his word, whiSi he proiioyiiced against us, and against our judges that judged Israel, and aaainst our kinas, and aeainst our pri fires, and against the men of Israel and Judah, 2 To brina: upon us areal plagues, such as never hap- pened under (he whole heaven, as ii came to pass in Jeru- salem, according lo llie things that were wriueu iu the law of Moses; 3 That a man should eat the flesh of his own son, and the tiesli id" hifi own daushter. 4 Moreover he haih delivered them to be in subjection to all the kinid.Mns iliat are round about us, to be as a re- proach and des'ilaiion aiiinng all the people round about, where Uie 1,'ird liaih scattered them. 5 riiud we were cast down, and not exalted, because W8 have siiuipd acainsl ihe Lord our God, and have not been obedient uuio his voice BARUCH, chap. iL It is melancholy to think that this description has continued true through centuries, and ap- plies even at the present day to the condition of the Israelites in every hemisphere and in every land. POPULAR SCENES IN PRAGUE. The Austrians say of the Bohemians (that is to say, of the genuine Tshekhs), that they are incapable of abandoning themselves to any thing like a frank, cheerful gaiety, tneir temper being naturally gloomy and reserved, with a tendency towards melancholy. This judgment respecting the Bohemians is so universally adopted by the Austrians, that there must be some foundation for it, for there is always some truth in the sentence which one nation passes on another. We will not at present in- quire how the Austrians came to adopt such an opinion, for our business is at present rather with facts than speculations; and as far as the city of Prague is concerned, the manners of the people have been so decidedly Germanized, or rather Austrianized, that the provincial distinc- tions at which I have hinted are not likely to appear very evident to a stranger. A German arriving at Prague feels himself in an Austrian city; he hears everywhere the Anstro-German dialect; meets at every turn some specimen of Aitstrian goodhnmour; and in the popular scenes that present themselves to his notice, he will re- 40 KOHL'S AUSTRIA. cosrnise the characteristic E^aiety of the humbler classes of Vienna; nor M'ill he, for some time, even detect the modifications Avhich the man- ners of Vienna have undergone in their trans- plantation to Prague. I was one day passing through the streets of the latter city, and saw a house-door standing open. Music and song were sounding from ■within. I stopped, and saw in the courtyard a boy with a barrel-organ, playing a Bohemian Polka, and two pretty girls were waltzing along the hall and around the courtyard to the accom- paniment which chance had thus provided. Their dance was graceful and spirited, and I continued for some time to look at and enjoy the scene. As I went away, I endeavoured in vain to remember having ever seen the like, from the street, in any other great city. Another day I went to the Farberinael (Dyers' Island), to close the day agreeably by listening for a while to the evening music of the grena- diers. I came unfortunately, too late, lor before I reached the Speil garden, I met the band on fteir return. They jafUpfched along the broad road of the island, playing a lively air. This already pleased me. I had elsewhere seen mili- tary bands break up, but they went home singly; here they were marching homeward in military order, and giving one tune more for the benefit of the public. This made an agreeable im- pression on me. But now for the manner of their march. By their side went some five or six boys with torches, and in front of the band, along the broad level path of the promenade, some ten or twelve merry couples were dancing away lustily. The band were playing one of Strauss's waltzes. These dancers were not merely children, but grown people were among them, whirling and tripping, in frolicsome mood,, around the stiffly marching soldiers, like flowery garlands wreathing themselves around the huge trunk of some lirne-honoured monarch of the forest. The bearded grenadiers, meanwhile, seemed to enjoy the gaiety of their youthful at- tendants, and the more merrily these danced, the more lustily the others blew away. The young girls seemed indefatigable, for if one pair gave in, another was sure to issue from the ac- companying crowd, and join the dancers. Thus the march^procecded along the whole promenade, of the Farberinsel, and over the bridge which con- nects the island with the mainland, where the roughness of the pavement put an end to the ball. Here was another popular scene that I thought well worthy of being engraven on my memory, and I would fain have had a painter at hand, to preserve a copy of what afforded me ■ so much pleasure to look on. " This is really a remarkable scene," said I to my companion. "It is an every-day one here," was his reply. That the Bohemians are passionately fond of music, dance, and song, is undoubtedly true. So far as music is concerned, the world has long been aware of the fact, for Bohemian musicians are to be met with, not only in all parts of Eu- rope, but some have even wandered with the Russians into Siberia, to the very confines of the Chinese empire; others have of late years ac- companied the French to Algiers; andeven in Syria and Egypt Bohemian bands are listened to with pleasure. Of their fondness for dance and song I had daily opportunities of convincing myself "while at Prague. I met with dancers where T could never have expected them, and wdiere I should not have met with them in any other country; and song — ay. and m'cU executed —I was daily hearing from cellars, from ser- vants' halls, and upon the public street. As to music, not the lowest alehouse in the city is without it. These low alehouses again have quite a dif- ferent air from those of the large cities that border on Bohemia, — such as Dresden, Miuiich, Breslau, &c. Those of Prague have something more poetical about them. Let us enter for in- stance, one of the many beerhouses about the cattle-market of Prague. They consist mostly of large rooms or halls on the ground floor, and are nightly filled with merry guests. ITie en- trance is generally tastefully adorned with branches of fir or other evergreens, and the walls of the room are often tapestried in the same way. Here and there you may see some neat arbours fitted up in the courtyards, which are illuminated at night. Saturda\^, Sundays, and Mondays there is music in all these houses, and in many of them on the other days also, and music of so superior an order, that I often wondered where so niuch musical talent could come from. These itinerant orchestras of Bohemia, I was told, had much improved of late years, in consequence of the revolution effected at Vienna by Strauss, Lanner, Libitzki, and the other composers, so popular among the dancing world. The com- positions of these gentlemen require to be played with remarkable firmness and precision; and though in some respects their influence may have operated very unfortunately, yet I believe it has had the effect, by exciting emulation among the inferior class of musicians in Bo- hemia, of rousing them to increased efforts to improve themselves. Nor is it an uncommon thing, in the beer- houses of Prague, to find singers who accom- pany themselves on the harp. They have in general a veiy varied collection of songs and melodies, and a musical collector might discover many that would be new to the world at large. Their songs are sometimes German and some- times Bohemian, and many that I heard were evidently popular favourites, for I could see tRat the waiters and the guests knew the words by heart, and frequently joined in chorus. Some- times, the whole assembly would suddenly inter- rupt their conversation, and accompany the singer with a sort of wild enthusiasm. The singer had generally a table before him in the centre of the room, and on this table the little piles of copper kreuzers accumulated fast, for almost eveiy guest, as he left the room, depo-. sited his offering unasked. These are trifles, no doubt, but I believe them to be peculiar to Prague, and they afford an insight into that love of song and music which pervades all classes in Bohemia. It seems strange to me, that after Teniers and Ostade have immortalized the boorish dances, the brolrcn bottles, the black eyes, the torn hair, and the red Bardolph noses of the Dutch gin- shops, and that so delightfully, that princes think themselves happy in having one or two of these coarse bacchanalian pictures in their drawing- KOHL'S AUSTRIA. 41 rooms, — it seems strange to me,T say, that none of our modern painters should have attempted the far more poetical and characteristic scenes that are of daily occurrence in one of these beerhouses of Prague. Imagine the crowded room transferred to canvass, the singer forming the central figure, the guests joining in chorus, the waiters with their mugs of beer snatching up a fragment of the sung as they hasten from one customer to another; the jolly well-fed host moving with dignity through his little world; nor must we forget the stalls at the door for the sale of bread and sausages, for the vender of beer supplies not these, he ministers only to the thirst of his visitors, and those who would satisfy their hunger must bring their viands with them. Even the coffee-houses, which are numberless in Prague, whereas in Dresden there are none, have many peculiarities; but they are all fash- ioned after Austrian models, of which I shall have occasion to speak hereafter. I, coming from the north, was struck by the brilliant man- ner in which these places were lighted. I could not at first persuade myself that the rooms were not illuminated with gas. The fact is, the peo- ple here understand the management of oil lamps better than in any other part of Germany. Something of this, I believe, is owing to the su- perior quality of the oil. "So, now we're to be bored about lamp-trim- ming!" mathinks I hear some of my fair readers exclaim. "Pretty company you take us into! First you introduce us to girls that go dancing about the streets, heaven knows why; then to the beer-bibbers of the cattle-market, to the to- bacco fumes of the cotfee-houses', and — " No farther, my fair censor, pray. Does 3-our name happen to be Anna, or Annette, or Annchen, or Annerl, Nancy, Nannetie,Nannerl, or Nettchen? for so far as the Austrian eagle stretches its wings over the fair sex, these names all pass- foroneand thesame. If any one of these names then belong to you, I congratulate you, for in that case you are most pressingly and kindly invited to the festival of St. Anne, celebrated this day in the charming Moldauinsel, and thera it will be my agreeable duty to introduce you into very well-bred and agreeable company, in which you will find all the pretty Annes of Prague, a crowd worthy of all admiration, and where you will find the popular manners of Prague presented to you in a totally different point of view. St. Anne's day is one of the most distinguished popular festivals in all parts of the Austrian dominions, but nowhere are the Annes made more of than in Prague. This holiday falls on the 26th of July, and on the preceding evening every street-corner is tapestried with urgent in- vitations to festivities of every description. The tavern-keepers and other masters of the revels are emulous in their descriptions of the brilliant preparations made by them for the entertain- ment of all the pretty Annes in Prague. One addresses himself simply to the "beautiful Annes," another to the " charming Annes of llie Bohemian capital," a third heads his placard with an invocation to the "highly respected Nannetles." Accordingly, when, on the all- imporlant day, the rising sun sheds his illumi- nating rays on the corners of the streets of 4 Prague, those pretty maidens for whom their godmothers have taken the necessary care, may behold their fdtcd name made glorious in yel- low, blue, and red letters, in Latin, Gothic, and German characters, and may see themselves invited to such a countless number of dinners, suppers, breakfasts, rural excursions, balls, and illuminations, that it must sadly puzzle them to determine to which of so many kindly soliciting admirers they will extend their approving smiles. The beautiful Fdrberinatl is always tlie chief point of attraction on this day. This island, perhaps one of the most beautiful places of public resort in all Germany, is not large, of an oval form, about 150 fathoms long, and 100 fathoms broad, is surrounded by the rapid waters of the Moldau, and presents its visitors with a complete Panorama of Prague and its hills. To the right j'ou see from the Fdrbcrinsel the old city, to the left the Hradshin and the Kkinseiie, behind rises the Vissehrad, and in front lies the old Moldau bridge. In the centre of the island are some elegant buildings, which stand open all day long for the entertainment of strangers. In the rear of these buildings, he who feels him- self disposed for sedentary enjoyment, will find abundance of benches and tables laid out under the canopy of huge spreading trees, and a tribune erected for the accommodation of an orchestra will seldom be found unoccupied. On both sides are paths, which wind off among grassplots and bushes, and on St. Anne's day, every place is hung with wreaths and garlands, with here and there triumphant arches, illuminated at night, and decorated with colossal A's and N's. Early in the morning the host who farms the bridge that leads to this charming little island, has already taken a more considerable toll than is received during the whole twenty-four hours on any other day in the year; for the music, on St. Anne's day, begins at sunrise, and closes not till the moon has vanished on the following night. The greatest throng is between five and seven in the afternoon, but the more aristocratic of the Annes generally retire on the first appearance of the moon and lamplight. The afternoon on which I found myself in the Farhcrinsel, in honour of the distinguished day, was favoured by the most delightful weather. The fair sex: were in a majority of two to one, owing, no doubt, to the great number of Annes with -whom Prague has from time immemorial been blessed. The place was small and the crowd great, so great that the visitors could do little else than move in slow procession along the broad walk which encircles the island. "I can confidently say that I am not what is generally called an enthusiast," said a friend who accompanied me, as we plunged from the little bridge over the Moldau, into this stream of life and beauty, "but it does'Seem to me as if in the whole course of my life I had never been surrounded by so many angels' heads, by so many graceful forms, or by so many beautiful faces." — "It is truly a bewitching spectacle," was my answer. We now proceeded'to stem the current, that we might admire the fair pro- menaders at greater leisure, and without making use of the slightest hyperbole, I was obliged to own that never in my life had I seen so magni- ficent a display of beauty. One lovely face KOHL'S AUSTRIA. followed another in quick sxiccesjion, and eT«n I. d:-:]] 2nd nnercitable as I have often been I . _ ~ -cli", could not resist uie in- : and the enthusiasm -niUi V - :.>pired. iras lo me the be^t pri.\ : il:^: ihc- ^pLCiaciC -vras one of unusual beaurr. Like Xerxes at the Heliespcnt, vrhen contemplating his numerous arrar of soldiers, I could hare shed a tear at the thought, that all the loveliness before me vas destined to be the prer of Time and Death. That ihe litUe ugly, squalling, red-faced crea- tures (for all newly-bom babies are alike) should grow up in Prague into such remark- ably beautiful girls, is one of those phenomena of nature ■which I cannot take upon mj-self to explain. Some hare atrributed the fact to the miugling of German with Slavonian blood, but this the Slavonians protest against most loudly, icllmc you that in the vil]age5 of die interior, where no such mixture of the rac^s has taken place, much finer specimens of female beauty are to be found, than in any of the frontier dis- tricts. The members of the Bohemian Patriotic Association boast, moreover, that by far the :hest display of beauty is to be seen at ibeir .lis, where liothing but Bohemian is ever :^i.oken, and where, consequently, the bulk of the company must be genuine Slavonian; nay, even the far-famed beauty of the Hungarian ladies is attributed by these zealous patriots to the mixture of Slavonian blood with that of the original races. The theory is not one that I would at once reject as absurd. On the con- tranr, I often fancied, in the c^r.urse cf my subse- quent wanderings, thai I saw reason lo believe " there was some ground for it. Be this, however, as it may, Prague is decidedly a very garden of beauty. For tlie young ladies of 1S41, 1 am ready to give my testimony most unreservedly, and many an enraptured rnareller has left us his books as living witnesses to the loveliness of the grandmothers and great grandmothers of the present generation. The old chronicler, Ham- merschmidi, and his contemporaries, dwell with equal pleasure on the sweet faces that smiled upon them in their days, and the picture gallery of many a Bohemiaii castle is there to testify to the truth of their statements. One witness there is to the fact, whose right few will question to decide on such a poinu Titian, who studied the faces of lovely women for ninety-six years, and who, while at' the court of Charles V., spent nve years in Germany, tells us. it was among the ladies of Prague, that he found his ideal of a beautiful female head. If we go back beyond the hmes of Titian, we have the declaration of Charles IV. that Prague was a Aorius delidamnu, and whoever has read tlie life of that emperor, will scarcelv doubt that beautiful women must have been included in the delights of a capital so apostrophized. Xay. the time-honoured no- bility of the beauty of" Prague, may be said to go back even to the earliest tradition, where we iflnd it celebrated in the legends of Libussa and Viasta, and the countless songs composed in honour of the Deviy Siavanske or Tshekhism damsels. I own I am still at a loss to conceive how it was possible for Przemysl to reject the overtures of his iiair Bohemians, and how he could find it Ib his heait to wage seainst them the barbarons war that has since become so famous in history. I am not at all suq->rised that his first enterprises against them should have been marked by such singular failure. I am sure tlvat if the two thousand Nancies and Nannettes whom I saw assembled on the Farberinsel had taken it sud- denly into their head? to get up an insurrec- tion, and intrench themselves within their little island, any army that the Empcn^r could have sent against ihem, would have been mnch more likely to surrender at discretion to the besieged, than to turn their murderous artillery against such a garden of loveliness, or to fiesh their bright swords among the Vienna shawls and French silks that were paraded so bewitchingly before my eyes. By the time that, stemming this tide of beauty, we had made the round cf the island some three or four limes, night had stolen upon us, though to do him justice, Helios was in no hurry to ran away from so fair a scene, but seemed to linger long, unwilling to depart, before he could make up his mind to consign himself to the accus- tomed embraces of Thetis. The fireworks had to wait long before it was sufficiently dark for the proper display of the rockets and Chinese fire that were intended to blaze in honour of the day, and when they were let ofi", they turned out to be very little worthy of being waited for; but the music of tlie Bohemian polhas and redotvks compensated for the failure of the fireworks. The whole festivity closed with a *• splendid supper," at which I found it impossible, either for money or fair words, to obtain the slightest panicle of any thing to eat or drink. From the delightful promenade of the Farbe- rinseL, I went to ane of tlie popular balls, given at the twelve dancing-rooms at Prague. These rooms are never closed on Sundaj-s or holidays, but on this day they had recommended them- selves to public favour with even more than wonted assiduity. I extended my patronage to an establishment of which the host recommend- ed himself by a feeling of "Veneration for all ^anneties.* The classes represented in this ball-room belonged to the humbler section of the middle orders, and I*ara sorry to be obliged to own that I found neither the Bohemian beauty nor the Austrian merriment that I had looked for. There is something repulsive in the im- pression produced by an assemblage in which we find the costume of the cultivated classes copied with great precision, but from which the manners and conversation of refined life are entirely excluded. In proportion as the fashions and habits of the great are imitated by the little world, will aU originality, cheerfulness, and fun, be extirpated from among us. THE NATIONAL ^lO^'EMENT AMONG THE BOHEMIANS. One of my first walks in Prasue was to a Tshekhian bookshop, and to the Museum of the Patriotic Association. I was anxious to see what new blossoms the Bohemian tree had shot forth, and what ancient fruits it had garnered up. The shop in which the literary novelties of Bohemia are offered to a patronizing public. KOHL'S AUSTRIA. 43 Is situated in a narrow gloomy lane, and the man who owns the shop, and is the chief pub- lisher of modern Bohemian literature, is a Ger- man. His shop is small, hut is often visited by the youn|j patriots, — the advocates, the students, and the literati, — who go there to turn over his Bohemian, Illyrian, Polish, and Russian books, and sometimes to buy them. All these Slavo- nian languages are at present studied with great zeal by the Bohemian patriots; and it is a sin- gular coincidence, that in Russia, also, there is at present quite a rage for the study of Bohe- mian, Polish, and Illyrian. For Russian books, I was told, there was a frequent demand, but they were difficult to obtain. It has long been customary among the young men at Prague to study Russian, which they acquire with little trouijle, and which many find of great advantage, numbers of yonng Bohemian physicians emi- grating yearly to Russia, where their familiarity •with the Slavonian languages facilitates their advancement.* Bohemian literature works for the enlighten- ment of four countries: Bohemia, Moravia, a part of Silesia, and the country of the Slovalcs in Hungary. For this reason the Bohemian journals (the Vlaslbnil for instance) point to the four corners of the world, or more properly to the four corners of the paper, with the four words: Slezan, — Czech, — Slovak, — Mornvan, — (the Silesian, — the Bohemian, — the Slovak, — and the Moravian). Among the new publications "of 1841, 1 was shown the Semski Sud, or the Old Law of Bo- hemia. The Austrian censors were long before they could be induced to accord the Imprimahir to this work, on account of some severe articles which it contains against the Germans, but the censorship is becoming more indulgent now, and, with a few omissions, the book has been allowed to walk forth into the world. The Bohemians, therefore, may again sing in the M-ords of the famous old poem, the Judgment of Libussa: — Shameful 'twere from Germans' laws to borrow, Laws wo have ourselves of holy statute Brought in days of yore by our good fathers To this land of blessing t Twenty years ago, nay, fifteen years ago, the literature, that is the living literature of Bohe- mia, was perfectly insignificant. At that time little was spoken or heard of the Slavonians living under German domination. Some of our travellers of the last century carried their sim- plicity so far, as to express surpise. in their printed books, at finding the country people of Bohemia speaking a dialect altogether unintel- ligible to a German. Some very learned people had only an indistinct notion, that in some parts • * The various Slavonian dialects (Russian, Polish, Bo- hemian, Illyrian, &c ) bear so strong a reseniblace to each other, that the peasants of one of these countries camisu- ally make himself understood to those of all the rest. 'I'he grammatical acquirement of the llussian language must, therefore, be an easy task to a well educated Bohemian.— Tr. t Bohemian poetry, like that of most of the Slavonian languages, is destitute of rhyme, a deficiency the less felt on account of the distinct measure of time which prevails in the Bohemian words, and which makes it more easy to adapt the Roman and Greek rhythm to the versification of this than of any other modern language.— Tr. of Germany the population was of Slavonian origin. Bohemian literature, in the mean time, had sunk to a level about as low as that of the Lettes and Esthonians in the Baltic provinces of Russia, and was confined almost exclusively to popular balLvls. Things have changed since then, and the Bohemians go so far now as to take it very much amiss when they read in a German book, that " Prague is one of the most interesting towns in Germany." The cuckoo, they say, might just as well call the nest his own, from which he has just expelled the linnet, as the Germans call Prague a German city, seeing it was built by the Tshekhs; but here I would humbly remark, that the cuckoo would play a less odious part in our books on natural history, if after taking possession of another bird's nest, he were to embellish and beautify it as the Germans have done by Prague. The fact is, the whole of Bohemia is still a disputed territory between the Germans and the Slavo- nians. The Germans maintain it was origin- ally a German land, or, at lea.'^t, that it was inhabited by the Germans four hundred years before the Tshekhs came into the country; but the Tshekhs (see Palazky's History of Bohe- mia) saj' — "You Gennans took the country from the Boyers, and held it by no other right than that of the sword. By the sword you won it, and by the sword you lost it again, and for eight hundred years we held it against 3-ou." To this we Germans may reply: — " But we have again won the mastery of the land from you with the sword, and we have triumphed over you yet more by the energ}" of our civilization. Here are tvN-o swords for one, and as ancient and modern lords we have the most perfect right on our side; so we shall continue to call Bohe- mia a German land, in right of our sword, our civilization, and our industry, — a German land, in which the intruding Tshekhs are condemned to plough our fields."* Till very lately, there had existed no good Bo- hemian dictionary; but this Avant has now been supplied by Mr. Jungmann, who, though a Ger- man by name, is said to be a very zealous Bo- hemian patriot. His dictionary was the work of several years, and has been published at his own expense. He is even said to have sold a vineyard, to defray the cost of his undertaking. The publication commenced in 1836, and is now complete. I was not so much surprised at the sacrifices made by the patriot scholar, as at the backwardness of other patriots, to assist him in his undertaking. One might almost be led from this to believe what a Bohemian once said to me, in speaking of the great movement and excitement among the Bohemian patriots* ■ " It is a kind of luxury," said he, " in which a few idle young men indulge, and in which they are encouraged by the professors and anti- quaries; but it is no movement originating in the wants, or emanating from the wishes, of the peoplQ. All that is eminent with us is German. * Bohemia can scarcely be said to owe muc^i^liza- lion to Germany. When the country passed ^^Bl^he domination of the house of Austria, there waJ^^^Hier country that stood higher in point of civilizatioHHrthe Bohemians have since fallen into the rear of the "tnarch of improvement," Austrian oppression, and particularly the unrelenting barbarity with )y.hich the Protestant reli- gion was extirpated, must bei^Hi^blame.— T'r. vith )y.mcn w 44 KOHL'S AUSTRIA. Our men of education read Schiller and Goethe, in preference to any other writers; every offi- cial man, down to the humblest clerk, writes and speaks German; and as every Bohemian feels that he cannot get on in the world without a knowledge of German, he seeks to learn it himself, and teach it to his children, and has no time to trouble himself about the fantastic vi- sions of the Tshekhian patriots. Besides, the (Tcrmau language is taught, ex-ujicio, in every school, and many of our gentry do not even un- derstand the patois of the country. With all tiiese miglity agents at work, what avail the efforts of a few enthusiasts'? The government, meanwhile, feels itself strong enough to let the Tshekhian party go their own way. Foreign- ers, moreover, are deceived, if they attribute to politics all that is done licrc in the way of Sla- vonian investigation. The inquiring spirit of the time, the revived fondness of every thing that tends to the illustration of antiquity, has led to similar eiforts in other countries, as well as in those inhabited by Slavonians. Every pro- vince in Europe has been burnishing up its re- collections; every city has been turning over the leaves of its chronicles, and repairing its cathe- dral or its t.)\vn-house. Not only the Slavonian jirovinces, but all the provinces of Austria, have been collecting their antiquities, dusting their records, and new binding their chroni- cles. The same has been done in the provinces oi" Prussia, and indeed in the provinces of al- most every European country. We have seen Ossian's literature rescued from its lomb in Scotland, and in Germany we have seen Voss writing poems in Plutt Deiifsch,- we have seen Westphalian, Saxon, and Brandenburg Asso- ciations, not to speak of hundreds of other provincial societies; and thus the fashion has readied Bohemia at last. It is not any inclina- tion on the part of the Western Slavonians to accept the fraternization offered them from the East, that has led to all these Slavonian jour- nals, grammars, dictionaries, and poetical an- thologies. In England, and even in France, books and newspapers have been printed in the local dialects, and so in Russia have works been of late published in Lettish and Esthonian, lan- guages of which, some years ago, no cultivated man made use, unless perhaps in the pulpit. It is not to be denied that tlie provincial, litera- ry, and patriotic movements in the Slavonian provinces (ff Austria, acquire a peculiar cha- racter from the spirit of Panslavismus, of which so much has been heard of late years. No nation, while yet a breath of life is in it, becomes recon- ciled to^the loss of its independence; and though the ]|^imians, the Slovaks, and the other Sla- vonian's, would do better to attach themselves more and more to the mild sceptre of Austria, ihan to stretch out their hands after the ques- tionable independence which seems to be offered tiiemfrom the East, yet nations, like individuals, are not exempt from acts of folly, prejudicial to others as to themselves; and for their own sake, thei^jl^, as well as for Austria's, the Bohe- miaHbust be watched. The classes, how- evefUPffich have most influence in the country, are the least disposed to sympathize with Rus- sia. The clergy and the nobihty know how litde they would ]j||jg|j|||^ to gain by exchangin i^m^tc the sovereignty of Austria for that of Russia- Recent events in Poland have likewise much contributed to cool the enthusiasm formerlv ma- nifested for Russia. The less instructed Bohe- mians, indeed, look upon much that they hear of Russia as mere German calumnies; but those among us who stand higher, have had opportu- nities, many of them, of seeing with their own eyes. In short, should it ever come to a struggle between the Slavonian and German elements, the Tshekhs, in spite of their sympathies and a.itii)alaies, will be found fighting on the side of the (Jermans, audit will be for their own advan- tage to do so." iin the museum of the Bohemian Patriotic Association, on the Hradshin, whither I went in company with a learned and highly esteemed Bohemian, nothing interested me more than the collection of coins. Though not so complete as the Bohemian antiquaries wish, it is by far the richest Bohemian collection m existence, and consists exclusively of national coins, those merely put into circulation by the Boyers, the Markomans, and the Romans, being excluded. There are old Tshekhian coins of a period far an- tecedent to the Christian era; — these are rudely fashioned pieces of gold, somewhat in the form of modern buttons. In the early period of Christian- ity, when it was still uncertain whether Bohemia would be brought within the influence of By- zantine or Roman civilization; the coins of the country seem to have had a decidedly Byzantine character. At a later period, when the Hun- garian invasions had cut Bohemia off from the Byzantine world, the coinage assumed an Ita- lian or rather a Florentine character. On the Florentine ducats coined in Bohemia, may be seen the Florentine St. John, with a small Bo- hemian St. John by his side, in the same way as during their revolution of 1831, the Poles coined Dutch ducats, on which a diminutive Polish eagle appears by the side of the Batavian knight. As we reach less remote ages we may ob- serve alternate advances and retrogressions in the arts. The cultivated age of Charles IV., and the fanatic century of the art-destroying Hussites, may be distinctly traced in the little glittering denarii and ducats, dollra's and brac- teati. Coins may likewise be seen here of all the great Bohemian families that, at various times, have enjoyed the privilege. Among these families the most distinguished are the Schlicks, the Rosenbergs, and the Waldsteins, or Wal- lensteins, as Schiller, for the convenience of his rhythm, has thought proper to call them. Of the Waldstein family, however, none have ex- ercised the right of coinage since the days of their great ancestor, of whom some very beau- tiful ,gold coins still exist. The Counts of Schlick exercised thc^irivilcge longer than any other of the old Bohemian families. Coins of a very recent date maybe seen with their efligy. Their celebrated silver mines at Joachimsberg w^ere so productive, that in the beginning of the 16th centurj', they coined Avhat were called Joachiinstliakr, which weighed a full ounce, and which may still be found in circulation in Rus- sia, Avhere they are known sometimes by the name of Thulcri, and sometimes by that of Yefunld. KOHL'S AUSTRIA. 45 A peculiar kind of Bohemian coinage are the royal Rechenpfenuige, or counters. Among the various public departments of the Bohemian government, it seems to have been usual from the earliest period to have employed, for ba- lancing public accounts, a certain coin which ma}^ be looked on in the light of a copper re- presentative of a certain amount of gold or sil- ver. Tlicse arbitrary coins circulated only from one public department to another. The noble families in Bohemia appear to have adopted this custom, and coined similar copper counters for the convenience of the various departments of government on their estates. The collection of the Patriotic Association is richly provided with various specimens of these royal and lordly counters. The Bohemian lion, with a crown on his head, with his two tails, and walking erect on his hinder feet, is to be seen on all Bohemian coins, even on most of those struck by the sove- reigns of the house of Ilabsbiirg. Under Maria Theresa the lion becomes less omnipresent. The latest ducats that bear the eiligy of the royal beast are those of 1780. It was on the large silver money that he first resigned his crown. On the smaller silver coins he conti- nued to hold his state throughout the Mhole of Joseph II.'s reign, but since then the whole coinage has been purely Austrian. Of all joyful and deplorable events in Bohe- mian histor3% there seems to have been a desire to preserve the recollection by means of silver and gold medals. Thus we have medals of Huss, who, as the inscriptions inform us, was burnt at Constance in violation of public faith. Frederick of the Palatinate has also not failed to leave golden and silver monuments of his brief and disastrous sojourn in Bohemia. Close to these, and adorned with ominous inscriptions lie the medals struck by Ferdinand on the oc- casion of his sanguinary victory on the White Mountain. In honour of the victory, Ferdinand erected on the mountain a church, which he dedicated to the Virgin, and under the fonnda- t'oa-stone a very large gold medal was depo- sited. At a subsequent period, Joseph demo- lished this church, and the medal, being found, was sent to Prague, and came, in due time, to the museum of the Palrittic Association. On one side is a view of th§ conquered city of Prague, over which is seen hovering the image of Maria de Victoria in (ilbo Mv^ite, with the in- scription Reddife ergo quae sunt Caefuris Caesari, et quae sunt Dei Deo. Christ little thought, when he pronounced those words, that they would be- come one day in the mouth of an imperious victor, a symbol of terror to millions of human beings. Ferdinand, as we are told, saw a vision the night before the battle. Oiu" Saviour, it is said, appeared to him in a dream, and said to him, "Ferdinand, I will not forsake thee." To this vision allusion is made on the reverse of the medal on which is represented a crucifix;, whciicc rays of light shine on the emperor, who knee's before it, and underneath are .the words, " Ferdinandc, Ci^o fe von dcseraTn." It seems strange that after he had made so unchristianlike a use of his victory, our Lord did not again ap- pear to him in a vision, and say to him, " Sed tu, Ferdinandc, me et meos deseruint'. After the Battle on the White Mountain, Ger- manism became so impressed on Bohemia, that many Bohemian families Germanized the Sla- A'onian nanies they had borne till then. Thus the family from which had issued the celebrated St. John of Nepomuk or Nepimucenus. bore originally the Slavonian name Hassil. Nepo- muk is a small town in Bohemia, and the bishop, according to the fashion of his day, was called John Hassil of Nepomuk, and sometimes, for greater brevity, John Nepomuk. After the bat- tle of the White Mountain, the Hassils trans- lated their name into German, and called them- selves Loeschner. Many of the nobles, however, had Germanized their names long before the catastrophe. of the White Mountain. Instances of the kind occurred during the reigns of Charles IV. and his son Venzeslaus. During their reigns, many castles were built on mountains and rocks, according to the German fashion, whereas the ancient Bohemians had been accustomed to build for greater strength among marshes oron the banks of rivers. These castles, built after German fashion, received also German names, ending generally in berg or burg, and the fami- lies began to be called after their castles. In this way the family of Vitkovy came to be the family of Rosenberg, the house of Dipoldit;, changed into the house of Riesenburg, Ransko was metamorphosed into Waldstein, and Divis- hovzi into Sternberg, and all these families be- came much more famous under their German than they had ever been under their Slavonian Jirnias. The Bohemian patriots claim all these I'aniiltes as genuine Slavonians; maintaining that a Slavonian is no more a German because he has taken to speaking German, than the Russian nobles can be said to be Frenchmen because they speak habitually French. The largest Austrian gold coins have the weight of twenty ducats. Ten ducat pieces, I am told, are still coined, and are occasionally found in circulation. As my readers are ail honest people, there can be no harm in my tell- ing them that fifty of these seductive looking lumps of gold are to be seen in the collection at Prague. The largest gold medal in the museum weighs no less than one hundred ducats. The mosfc modern medal is one struck a few 3'ears ago, i« honour of a visit paid by the Emperor Nicholas to Prague. The inscription is: Nic/in- lau.i /., Cesarsch Rusfiki, ^c. (Nicholas I., Rus- sian Emperor, the Illustrious Guest in Prague.) I also found much that interested me in the library of the Bohemian Association, though I was not so fortunate as to have the learned and esteemed librarian. Professor Hanka, for my guide. The departm.ent of Bohemian literature is by no means complete, much having been taken by the Royal Library where a section is set apart for it. The collection on the Hradshin is rich chiefly in Natural Histor)'. On the other hand, however, the kindred Slavonian literatures of Russia, Poland. Illyria, Sen-ia,and Carinthia, have each its department. I was told that a Russian grammar for the use of Bf>hemians would shortly be published, and could not but feel surprised that the relations between the great Russia and the little Bohem.ia should al- read}' have become so active, that the want of such a work should have been felt. It is not 40 KOHL'S AUSTRIA. many years that Germany has been in pos- session of a usable Kussian grammar. Of Bohemian Bibles many are to be seen here, as well the faithful Utraquist version from the original languages, as that arranged for the Catholics fi-oi#the Vulgate of Hieronymus. At present, Bohemia can be supplied with Tshek- liian bibles only by contraband. There is not indeed any prohibition against their sale, but they are not allowed to be either printed or im- ported. The smugglers on the Saxon frontier, however, arc very active, and Iceep the market supplied, though perhaps rather sparingly. The bibles are supposed to come from Berlin and from England. The Bible Society of Dresden, I was assured by the president himself, did not themselves send a single copy into Bohemia, but the free traders of the frontier, in the same way in which they receive ord':>rs for cotTee and sugar, receive orders proljiibly t\om time to time for bibles. Two years ago, I was told, several waggon-loads of bibles fell into the hands of the Bohemian custom-house officers, by whom they are kept to the present day under lock and ke}'. ^ Autographs of men celebrated in the history^ of Bohemia are likewise to be seen at this mu- seum; among many others, those of Huss and Zizka. The latter'usually added the place of his nativity to his signature, and signed — Zizka von Trotziiow. Some of his letters, however, are signed — Jan Zizka z'Kalichu, from a castle which he had built and to which he had given the name of Kalich or the Chalice. In the cabinet of natural history on the Hrad- shin is sliown what strangers are told was the last bear that ever existed in a state of nature in Bohemia. This animal is said to have been shot in 1817, but I had subsequent!)^ an oppor- tunity of satisfying myself that the race of wild bears is not yet extinct in the country, for on the Schwarzenberg estates, near Bud weis, I saw at lea.^t a dozen of them. Jiynxes and wild cats are also to be found in the mountains, and bea- vers along the banks of the Moldau, and some- times even in the immediate vicinity of Prague. Their unsuspected presence near the capital led, not long ago, to a singular lawsuit. A farmer who owned a field near the rive^-, ob- served that some ti'ees and shrubs had several times been cut down and carried away during tlie night. He brought an aciion, in conse- quence, against one of his neiglihours. The court appointed persons to visit tlie place and inspect the stumps that remained. Tl,..'>e per- sons, on viewing t'.ic ground, (Ici'lar^'d iuime- diately that the jirnperly had broii canied away by fourfooted thieves, and after a close searcb, a little colony of beavers was discovered, sup- posed to have come down the river from the neigbbouihood of Budweis. In the mineralogical collection the most cele- brated piece is the "accursed burgrave," a meteoric stone weighing upwards of two hun- twppn the Ausin.in ami SaxoD eovprnmeiits relative loUiis rail- road, Uail nui yei beeu coinpleied.— 2V. * ThP nainp shnuM bn prnnnnnrpfl Phiphka, or rather more suftly, thp Roliemiau z having a sound like itie French j iu jarUia. 50 KOHL'S AUSTRIA. head, and a bandage over his right eye, which he had lost early in life. His left eye he lost at the sie2;e of Rabi castle, where, a javelin strik- ing a tree near him, a sijlinter tlevv aside and completely blinded iiim. Nevertheless, he re- tained his command as general, though he had to he led into battle by a guide; and it was, in fact, after his blindness, that he attained the zenith of his power, when he gained his victory over the people of Prague, who, though Hussites themselves, had gotten into a quarrel with the devastator of their country.^ Hereupon, he con- cluded a treaty of friendship and alliance with them, and dieir elective king, Korybut, and so great was at this time the power of the blind chief, that the Emperor Sigismund offered him the government of the kingdom and the com- mand of its army, if he would consent to re- cognise the imperial authorit)^ During the negotiations that followed, Zizka, at the height of his power, died suddenly of the plague. Every thing about the man, even from his birth, appears to have been extraordinary. His mother was suddenly attacked by the pains of child-birth while in a forest, and Zizka was born with no shelter but that of a tree. In his character he was savage and cruel, as much as he was valiant and eloquent. Bohemian writers say that the peculiarities of his style are as difficult to render into German, as are the refine- ments of Caesar's eloquence. He rose from a comparatively humble station, to supreme power in his native land, and gained thirteen pitched battles, several of which were fought after the loss of his second eye. The manner of his death was also remarkable, and so is the memory preserved of him to this day by his countrymen. The place of his birth is still pointed out as an unblessed spot, and the ground where stood the tent under which he breathecil^is last, remains uncultivated to the present day. Just as the history of Napoleon is known to all Europe, so is that of Zizka, in all its details, fanliliar to every Bohemian, and there is scarcely a castle or a convent in the land, in which his portrait is not to be found. After the death of Zizka, his soldiers called themselves his orphan children, and divided themselves into four parties: the Orphans, the Taborites, the Orebites, and the Pragueis. Bo- hemia was denominated the Promised Land, and the surrounding German ])rovinces were declared to be the lands of the Philistines, the Moabites, and the Idumeans. It was at this time, no doubt, that the large lake n^r Tabor received the name of Jordan, and the hill behind Tabor, that of Horeb. As Tabor was the chief city of the Hussites, so it now became the scene of their worst excesses, which attained their cul- minating point in the M'ild extravagance of the Hussite sect of the Adamites. At Tabor too, where the Hussite wars had commenced, they were likewise brought to a close, for it was the last city that submitted to the Royal States. It is said, that a remnant of the Adamite sect still exists in Bohemia, and that other Hussite sects have maintained themselves under such deno- minations, as the " Red Brothers," and the "Brothers of the Lamb." From the foregoing it will be seen, that we had turned our time to good account during our. short stay at Tabor. At the next stage, the name of which I have forgotten, I had an opportunity to see a Bohemian pheasant-preserve. The rearing of pheasants in Bohemia is carried on upon an enormous scale, as may be judged from an advertisement which I saw, and in which a certain Count Schlick offered three thousand pair of living birds for sale in one lot. In these preserves the pheasants are divided into wild and tame; the wild are kept in large woods, the tame under roof or in enclosed yards. The night was already far advanced when we reached Budweis, but in that city, for the consolation of travellers be it known, the sun never ceases to shed his light upon the benighted stranger, for the inn so named has a large lamp burning conspicuously, from evening till morn- ing, in front of the chief entrance. THE CASTLES AND ESTATES OF SCHWARZENBERG. The souther* extremity of Bohemia, the country round Budweis, is distinguished, even in a land «o rich in stately mansions and princely estates, for the magnificence of its casties, and for the extent of territory held by individuals. Here it was that formerly dwelt the family of the Rosenbergs, a race so power- ful, that several of the Bohemian monarchs wooed the daughters for their brides. The Lords of Rosenberg frequently contracted mat- rimonial alliances with the sovereign houses of Germany, and on one occasion we find the name of Rosenberg among the candidates for the Polish crown. At present the family is extinct, a circumstance that cannot but seriously have afilicted Charlemagne, the Trojan heroes, Noah, and sundry others of the ancestors of so illus- trious a line. It is certainly a singular coinci- dence, that the branch of the Rosenberg family which had been planted and had taken root in Courland, should have died away much about the same time as the main family-tre^n Bohe- mia. Similar coincidences, however, are on record respecting other families, of which dif- ferent branches established in distant countries have all become extinct nearly at the same time. In the cellar of the Senate at Bremen there is a wine that by its great age has acqitired such an odour (so exquisite a bouquet as the con- noisseurs of wine express it) that 3'ou need only pour a few drops upon your pocket-handker- chief, and you will have no occasion for eau de Cologne for several days afterAvards. Nobility seems to be like this wine — the older it grows the more it is prized, and if its origin is lost in the dark ages it becomes quite inestimable. The last of the Rosenl>e!-gs, according to all the things that are related of him, seems to have thought his nobility justsucha jewel of priceless value, but dear as it was to him, he was unable to bequeath it to a successor; for nobility, like genius, virtue, and learning, is not to be disposed of in a man's last will and testament. Unblessed v/ith an heir to what he most esteemed, the last of the Rosenbergs went to his grave, but his sublunary possessions, his broad lands and stately castles found an heir soon enough in the family of the Schwarzenbergs, who are now the KOHL'S AUSTRIA. 51 undisputed lords of all the lands in which the Moldau and its tributaries take their rise. The most important of their castles and es- tates are called Krummau,Wittingau, and Frau- enberg, and all thati had heard of the charms of these castles excited too much curiosity in me to allow me to neglect an opportunity of paying thein a visit. What I saw far exceeded what I had expected to see. I paid my first visit to the one that passed for the least important, and diove with an hospita- ble friend, a resident of Budwei^, down the verdant banks of the Moldau to Schloss Frau- enberg, which stamls on a rock by the river- side, where it forms a conspicuous object to ail the surrounding country. Upon the said rock there stands an old castle, and a new one of much greater splendoiw is rising by tlie side of it. Over the entrance to the old one stands the inscription, Frudus Belli, referring, I believe, to the gift which one of the Austrian emperors, Ferdinand II., if I nm not mistaken, made of this castle and lordship, to one of his Spanish generals, Don Balthasar Maradas, Count of Salento. Under the gateway of the castle may still be seen a tablet, on which this Don Balthasar is styled Comes, Dominus in Frauenberg. At present, however, the gate- way is surmounted by a Turk's head, from which a raven is picking out the eyes. This is the crest of the Schwarzenbergs, who, like many Austrian families, carry Turkish emblems and spoils jn their shields. The view from the castle is unspeakably beautiful. The fields and- meadows of the Moldau lie at your feet, and farther on lies a plain, from the midst of whicli rise the steeples of Budweis. The whole is bounded by branches of the mountain range of the Bohemian Forest, and over the landscape lie scattered a number of villages, all of which belong to the lordship of Schwarzenberg. To- wards the east the eye travels on towards Wit- tingau, another Schwarzenberg lordship. When the French Marshal, Bernadutte, visited the castle in 1805, (by the by, the French must liave carried away more agreeable recollections from this southern extremity of Bohemia, which they visited leisurely as visitors, than they did from the northern part of which they obtained only a few hasty glances through the sulphurous Kmoke of Culm;) but when the marshal visited the castle, as I was saying, and the intendant pointed out the magnificent prospect to him, and then asked him what he thought of it, the mar- shal answered, " What strikes me as most won- derful is, that your prince should be lord and master over all I see." And, in fact, without being a French marshal of the days of the em- pire, whose fingers would naturally be itching at the sight, it is difficult for any one to let his syes roam from village to village, and from field :o field, without some little sensation of envy, without some slight approximation to a wish ;hat he were able to step into the Schwarzen- berg's place. All the while I was there. I was ihinkiiigof the old fairy tale of "Puss in Boots," where, as the king and his son-in-law arc driving ;hrough the country, the cat keeps saying, 'Every thing you see belongs to our lord and master the prince, your majesty's son-in-law." I am not aware that the old castle is yet in. so ruinous a condition, that it might not have stood, and kept out the wind and rain for many years longer; but when a man has 4,000,000 florins (£400,000) a year, as Prince Schwarzenberg is said to have, he is not expected to take as much care or his pennies as might beseem a thrifty cobbler; and as the prince is passionately fond of Gothic architecluie, it is very excusable ia him to have set aside .500,000 florins to build himself a new house according to his favourite fashion. When this new building is finished, Frauenberg will be one of the handsomest cas- tles in Boliemia. The sandstone for the Gothic ornaments comes all the way from Vienna- We saw standing in the court-yard a quantity of these stones, packed up in chests with as much care as if they had been so many loaves of sugar. Frauenberg is celebrated throughout Bohemia for its wild-boar hunts, which are carried on here, probably, on a grander scale than in any other place in Europe, and are, indeed, unique in their kind, like the Esterhazy stag-hunts oa the Platten liakc in Hungary. The menagerie or Thiergarttn, in which the wild boars are kept, covers a space of a (German) square mile and a half; and even of late years, as many as 300 boars (a kind of game growing every day more scarce in Europe) have been killed at one of these hunting-festivals. The sport is carried on with extraordinary pomp, and something after the following fashion: Near the park in whicii the animals are kept, is a small reedy lake, bounded on three sides by gently-rising heights. On the fourth side the bank is low and swampy. This lake is the scene of the yearly slaughterings. On the swampy side of the lake, a high and hollow dike has been erected, resting upon vaults, in which are confined the animals intended to be hunted. By the side of the dike projecting into the wa- ter, are small tribunes or balconies, in which, the lords of the chase take their places. On the dike, ready, if wanted, to aflbrd assistance, stand the foresters and huntsmen of the prince; all, from the head forester to the whippers-in, ia splendid uniforms. There are not less thau twenty of the prince's foresters, and I.'jO of his huntsmen present on one of these occasions. The animals arc let out of their vaulted prison about fifty at a time, and, driven by a crowd of peasants collected for the purpose, they imme- diately take to the water, to conceal themselves in the reeds, or to swim towards the opposite hills, where they hope to find shelter in the fo- rest. On the way thither they seldom fail to find their death from* the constant fire poured in upon them by the gentlemen stationed in the balconies. <■■ I observed to my companions that this kind of sport seemed to me mere butchering, and must be very insipid and monotonous; but they assured me it was full of pleasure and excite- ment, on account of the pomp with which the whole was conducted. In the centre of the dike there was always a full orchestra, and behind it an amphitheatre for spectators, of whom num- bers came from all parts of the surrounding countiy. The moment, they told me, when the sport was about to begin, when the trumpets sounded, and the gates were opened to set the KOHL'S AUSTRIA. wild boars free, was one of great suspense. Then the situations in wliich the creatures pre- sented themselves to the fire of the hunters, were very varied. Sometimes the game would hide itself among the reeds, whence it would have to be driven by the rifles; sometimes it would swim as a mere black speck upon the water. Now one would swim directly toward a balcony filled with its foes, and often a few Xrould gain the opposite shore, antrput the best marlcsman to the proof to prevent their escape. Then, an old established law among German hunters requires that the creature's head should remain uninjured, and the himters are often put to it, to avoid the penalties which an infraction of this law draws after it. In the plain below Schloss Frauenberg, and not far from the lake I have just described, lies an old castle erected for the express purpose of bear-baiting. Such castles existed formerly in many parts of Germany, but have all disappear- ed now, with few exceptions. The buildmg I am now speaking of is an extensive one, with apartments below for the huntsmen and keepers, with dens for bears and kennels for dogs, and large suites of rooms above for the prince and his guests. A balcony, for the accommodation of spectators, projects into the courtyard, Avhich is surrounded by high walls, and in which beasts of all kinds were formerly baited. The last great bear-baiting that took place there, oc- curred only sixty years ago. The principal saloon of this castle is hung all round with beautiful pictures by the celebrated animal-painter, Hamilton, and I believe the col- lection contains the best paintings he ever made. Hamilton spent the years 1710 and 1711 with a Schwarzenberg, who arranged sundry bear- baitings, deer-stalkings, and boar-hunts, for the painter's sake; and the latter had thus an oppor- tunity, under peculiarly favourable circum- stances, of painting these beautiful pictures, which may now be said to waste their sweetness on the wilderness, being but rarely seen by an eye capable' of estimating their worth. The pictures are all of the natural size, and the sub- jects mostly — a stag overpowered by dogs, a bear battling it with his assailants, wild boars surprised in a thicket by hunters, and other scenes of a similar kind; and all so full of truth, that as formerly Hamilton became for a while a recluse here to study the physiognomy of the huge beasts of the chase, so a mixloin painter, profiting by the labours of his prcdeci's-wr, mi-iu shut himself up in the castle for a wliili^ and pursue a similar course of study with infinitely more ease and convenience. The dogs in these pictures are all portraits of animals famous in their day, and deserving even greater fame now that the}-- have been transferred to the canvass. When the French were here, in 174-2, they would fain have carried away the wlmlp ciillec- tion, but for some reason or other contented themselves with cutting the best head — that of a wild boar — out of the best picture. The dam- age was repaired as well as it could be, but the scar is evident at the first glance, and so is the inferior workmanship of the modern artist. After leaving Frauenberg, our next visit was to Schloss Gratzen, another fructus hdli. The battle of the White Mountain, Ayhich gave Bo- hemia back to Ferdinand, and which lost Frau- enberg for-the house of Malowitz, deprived the Protestant Lords of Schwamberg of their castle of Gratzen, which they defended valiantly for a while against the imperial troops. With the castle went also their seven (German) square miles of territory. The confiscated estate was conferred on a Frenchman, Charles Bonaven- tura Longueval, Count of Bocquoi, and Barou de Vaux, whose descendants still possess it. The estate is entirely unincumbered, and is said to bring in an annual revenue of 700,000 florins, or 70,000/. There are three castles at Gratzen. One is the old fortress that was so stoutly defended by the old Baron von Schwamberg, another is the summer residence of the Count de Bucquoi, and the third is intended for the accommodation of the Count's officers of state, in whose hands is the administration of the lordship. This central government of the estate is called the " princely court chancery," at the head of which are four " princely court counsellors." These Bohemian nobles exercise in fact a multitude of rights, which in other countries we are accustomed to look on as the exclusive attributes of sovereign- ty. They confer the dignity of court counsel- lors, grant privileges to their cities, and compose coats of arms for them. The magistrates, how- ever, whom they appoint, are obliged to go through the same studies, and submit to the same examination as those appointed by the state. We found the officers of the Bucquoi house- hold paying compliments to one another at the entrance to a concert-room. Here, as on many of the largte estates of music-loving Bohemia, a private band is kept, to give occasional con- certs, and on the fetes of the lord or lady of the castle to accompari}'' the organ in the church. Several pieces from Norma and other mcdern operas were performed, and were executed with tolerable brilliancy, the gentlemen of the house- hold were loud in their applause, and resolved that the concert should be repeated on die fol- lowing Sunday, the birthday of the young heir, when the money taken at the doors was to be applied to the relief of the poor. .We supped at the castle, where the conversa- tion turned chiefly on tAvo subjects, partly on the Austro-Boheinian frontier, and partly on the great fishponds, the most interesting feature in an ect>nomical point of view, of the large plain between Wittingau and Gratzen. In Northern Germany, we understand under the name of A.ustrian every one who comes from any part of the great Austrian conglome- ration of lands, provided he speaks German; but every well-educated Bohemian, Hungarian, Croatian, or Slovak, speaks our language quite as well as do the people of Vienna or Styria. Here on the mountain border, however, the contrast between the Bohemian and Austrian, and their mutual antipathies were forced upon my attention. Of s;//«pathies betv/een neigh- bouring nations there is seldom much to be said. In Paris or Berlin indeed, a Bohemian and an Austrian may sympathize with each other, but at home they know of no such feel- ing. Not merely the common people in Bohe- mia, but even the higher classes, participate KOHL'S AUSTRIA. 53 more or less in this aversion to the Austrians, and even the German part of the population agree with the Slavonians in this, with whom in other respects they are little in the habit of singing in unison. Our evening party at Grat- zen consisted almost entirely of Bohemian- Germans, yet I observed upon the countenances of all of them a certain half-suppressed sarcastic smile, when I undertook the defence of the Aus- trians. "Ay, ay," said one of them at last, ''honest enough they are, no canting hypocrites like the Italians, and hardworking enough too; but good God!"' and liere he shook his head with a smile of evident satisfaction, "what unlicked cubs they are! How awkward, stupid, and help- less in every thing! In short," added he, " it is a perverse and wrongheaded people." On their part, the Austrians reproach the Bo- hemians with insincerit}'. "A false Bohemian," is a common expression, and tlie Austrian gene- rally describes the Bohemian as a gloomy, me- lancholyi uncomfortable creature. The antipa- thy felt by the Bohemian, however, is decidedly marked by more bitterness. A fat carp, served in black sauce, composed according to a national recipe, of grated ginger- bread, blood, and onions, led our conversation naturally to the great fishponds of the neigh- bourhot)d. Gralzen has sixty ponds, the Duke- dom of Krunimau seventy, Frauenberg one hundrtnl and forty-five, and Wittingau two hun- dred and seventj'. Among these is the cele- brated Rosenberg pond, which occupies nearly twelve hundred yoke-of land, from which and the other Wittingau ponds, no less than four thousand cwt. of carp are yearly taken, and sent chiefly to Vienna. I cannot say I ever made myself so familiar with the complicated sj'stem of management to which the Bohemian fishponds are subjected, as I did with the manner in which the fish were usually brought to table, still, as I am not aware that any of the travellers who have preceded me have spoken at all upon the subject, I will en- deavour to give a concise account of what I learned about it. The main point, it seems, is to take care that at different ages and at different seasons, the fish be provided with the depth of water suitable to them, and also that the kinds of fish that do not suit each other should not be put together in the same pond. Now, as it is impossible that one pond can salisf3''all these demands, the Bohemian landowners have brought the ponds on their estates into a sort of connected system, and have given to each class of ponds its sepa- rate destination. Firstly, there are the brood ponds, {Brut, or Satz-lcic/ie,) in which the young fish receive the rudiments of their education. These ponds are small and contain but little food, that the rising generation may not injure themselves by glut- tonous indulgence. In proportion, however, as the finny babes improve in size, they are re- moved to the Slreck-teiche, or stretching ponds, where the interesting little ones are to begin to stretch themselves. Thence the creatures are' removed into the large reservoirs called Kam- nier ov ' Hu:ip(-leiche. In winter the water is warmest at the bottom, in summer at the^tpp; young fish, therefore, who require warmth,'^jpist often be put into deeper ponds in winter It would of course be as absurd to put old pike and young carp into the same pond, as to shut up wolves and lambs in one stable. Ac- cordingly there are separate ponds for each. When the carp, however, grow older, they are apt to grow lazy, and bury themselves in the mud, which prevents their proper development; and then, by way of making them more lively, a few young pike are put into the pond, for the purpose of keeping the young republic in a state of healthful excitement, like opposition men in a representative assembly. It may easily be supposed that all these te- movals and minglings necessitate a great variety of occupations. Usually the Avork is performed in spring or autumn, and great care and caution are necessary. If, for instance, snow were to fall on a fish, he must on no account be put back into the pond, but must be sent to market and sold for -what he will bring. If a sudden frost covers the ponds with ice, great mischief is done to the fish, if air-holes are not imme- diately opened. If this is not done, the fish swarm to the surface, and even if they are not suffocated, they "burn" their fins against the ice. A scarcity of water, also, in case of a dry suiTimer, causes great destruction in the ponds. The intendants of the ponds require, of course, at all times, to know how much water there may be, and poles marked with feet and inches are therefore fixed in each pond. A lew inches too much may easily occasion inundations to the neighbouring fields, and then the damage must be made good by the owner of the pond. Immense swarms of herons, wild ducks, and other waterfowl, frequent these ponds, and the consequence is, that all the surrounding pea- santry become practised marksmen. The birds are particularly watchful for the time when the water is to be let out of a pond, on which occa- sion they fail not to feast upon the frogs and upon such fish as may happen to have remained in the mud. These, however, they are not left in undisturbed possession of; for it is custom- ary, when the owner of the pond has secured the main tribute by means of nets, to abandon what is left to the peasants. The pond inspect- ors give the signal for the scramble as soon as the noble's boxes are thought to be sufficiently filled. . The signal is for the inspectors to cry out Horzi hurzi (It burns, it burns); whereupon the crowd rush with loud cries into the mud, and drive the geese and herons from their prey. The peasants obtain a good deal of fish in this way, and preserve a considerable quantity for the winter, by smoking them. The geese and herons are by no means the only plunderers of these ponds, in which otters and beavers likcAvise abound, though less now than formerly. On the following morning we started for Krummau, the most famous of all the castles • the neighbouring country, and certainly one the most interesting of all the princely man sions of the Austrian monarchy, with a depend nt_ lordship of fifteen German square mile."', "fty thousand inhabitants. The dukedom ;ummau is one of those half-sovereignties ich there have at all times been several emia, as the dukedom of Friedland, which given to Wallenstein; the dukedom of Reichstadt, with which Napoleon's son was in 54 KOHL'S AUSTRIA. vested; and the dukedom of Randnitz, which belongs to the Prince of Lobkowilz. You enter the first courtyard by crossing a drawbridge, and passing through a massive stone gateway. The castle ditch was formerly occupied by a number of bears, but these have of late years disappeared. In the second court- yard stands the guardhouse of the Schwarzen- berg grenadiers of the body guard, a corps of forty men, in splendid uniforms, all in the prince's pay, and commanded by an officer who holds the rank of captain. In this courtyard I paid my respects to one of the officers of the castle, and told him I wished to see as much as possi- ble of the place. He asked me, with a smile, how many weeks I inteaded to devote to the in- spection; and I soon found, particularly after I had had a glance at the archives, that the ques- tion implied by no means an exaggeration. From the second I passed into a third, a fourth, a fifth, and a sixth courtyard. The castle looks as if no part had ever been pulled down during the whole time that it has been successively held by the Rosenbergs, ihe Eggen'bergs, and the Schwarzenbergs The whole summit of the hill on which it stands is covered by a labyrinth of turrets, walls, and other buildings, in every imaginable style of architecture, with noble suites of rooms, such as we are accustomed to look for only in impe- rial palaces, and little poking holes, fit only for the rock-built nest to some robber chief of the feudal tiraVs. That the oldest part of the old buildings must be very old indeed, may be in- ferred from the simfjle fact, that the most modern portion, the New Castle, as it is called, is men- tioned under that name, in the archives, as much as three hundred and fifty years ago. Our first visit in the interior was to the pic- ture-gallery, in which are prescribed the num- berless portraits of the various members of the three noble families to whom the castle has suc- cessively belonged. What a family party they would make, if they could all step from their canvass and join in a merry festival! There would be ample room in the castle for all of them; but there is only one of them to whom it is still given to wander through the old halls and M corridors, and this is Bertha Von Rosenberg, the celebrated White Lady of Neuhaus, of -whom a portrait may here be seen as large as life. This Bertha, or Brichta, Avas married to a Lichtenstein, a family with which the Rosen- bergs, like their successors the Schwarzenbergs, often arrahged matrimonial alliances, even be- fore the bride and bridegroom had been fairly emancipated from the cradle. There are still such things as family sympathies and antipa- thies among the great houses in Austria, as there were in the earliest times of which a re- cord has been preserved, and some of the family feuds that have been retained to the present day trace their origin to the middle ages. Now^ this Lichtenstein, the husband of Bertha, w# a monster, and treated his gentle Avife little better than Bluebeard did his. Often in the morning, it is said. Bertha's pillow was found soaked with her tears, and sometimes even with her blood. Before her marriage she is supposed to have been as fond of the pleasure? of the world as most young ladies, but when it pleased Heaven to release her from her tyrant, she retired to the castle of her brother the Lord of Rosenberg, who about the same time had lost his wife, and with whom she lived thence- forth as apious widow and a notable housekeeper. Her chief delight was to do acts of kindness to the poor, whom she was in the habit of calling together on certain days, for the purpose of en- tertaining them with a sweet dish {duke rates it is called in the archives of the castle), and which still continues to be distributed. Attempts have more than once been made to substitute a money distribution, but the peasants have al- wa3'S stoutly resisted such an innovation, which jl^ey are afraid "Bertha might take amiss." It It is only in more recent times that black has been adopted in Bohem.ia, from France and Ger- many, as a mark of mourning. Bertha, like all widows of her time, wore white, Avhich she con- tinued to wear till death, when she was buried in her white widoAv's weeds. To this she owed her name of the White Lady, by which she' was knoAvn during her life, and under Avhich she is now almost worshipped as a saint. The people of the surrounding country firml)' believe that she continues to wander through the castles then belonging to the house of Rosenberg, that she looks about to see Avhether the houses are kept in good order, and whether the poor receive their duke inus regularly. In general, in these her wanderings, she is invisible to every eye, but sometimes she is seen, a circumstance always supposed to announce some great calamity to the famil}^ On such occasions the country people whisper timidly into each other's cars — BricJda z' Rosemberka kkodi (Bertha von Rosen- berg is wandering about), and a death in the family is then confidently looked for. At Schloss Wittingau there is a corridor, and at Neuhaus another, which Bertha is supposed to have par- ticularly selected for her nocturnal promenade; and few of the inmates are hardy enough to' A'isit either of these haunted passages, except under good escort, and with a sufficient illumi- nation. To be sure, by daylight, they most of them speak of the whole story in a very rational manner, as a popular fable; but I have my doubts Avhether even the heads of the family re- main altogether unaffected Avhen the whisper flics about that Bertha has shown herself again to mortal eyes. There are three portraits of the White Lady, one at each of the three castles of Neuhaus, Wittingau, and Krumraau, and the three pic- tures are so exactly alike that two of them are evidently copies, but at each castle the people maintain that they possess the original. Her countenance is pale and meager, and her fea- tures full of melancholy, but with a remarkably sweet expression. Her whole person is enve- loped in a white garment. My guide was the captain of the body-guard, who, as we passed from one suite of rooms to another, apologized for his imperfect knowledge of the great labyrinth of masonry, by telling me he had only been a year in the house. The present head of the house of Schwarzenberg is a ^■oung man,* Avho has abandoned all these + He wds tiorn in 1799, and ia, consequently, about 44 yeart Of a.zc.— Tr. m KOHL'S AUSTRIA. 55 stately chambers of a bygone time, and has had a set of rooms fitted up for him with modern simplicity and comfort, in a corner of tlie great house. Then why, will you say, is not the rest of the place turned to account, and made habit- able for those, of whom there are so many, to whom the shelter of a roof would be a blessing] Why, you see, my good friend, a large useless house is indispensable to the proper dignity of a great family, and the terms of the entailment do not allow a single corner of the mansion to be neglected. If you wish to have a proper notion of the . importance of the lords of the castle in former days, you must go and have a look at the ar- mory, where you will find the whole rows of trumpets and kettle-drums that were Avimt to mingle with the family revelry when a Rosen- berg was married. There you will see a collec- tion of the coins and medals struck at various times by the family. My companion assured me that the Rosenbergs were accustomed to keep ready at all times arms for twenty thou- sand men, and that the arms nowin the armory M'ould suifice for the equipment of nearly that number, provided the greater part would content themselves with halberds, partisans, and battle- axes. The subterranean dungeons of the castle have been carved out of the rock with an immense expenditure of labour. We -descended with torches as if we had been going down into a mine, and came to the main shaft, which was nothing else but a deep broad well, cut into the solid rock, down which the prisoners were let by means ;of ropes. We threw stones into the dark abyss, and heai'd them strike the bottom after a few seconds. We threw down some whisps of burning straw; but, even by these means, we were unable to obtain a view of the bottom. There are other dungeons, less horri- ble than the one described, but quite ugly enough in their M^ay; yet one of them served at one time as a lodging to the German emperor Venzeslaus, who was locked up there, in 1402, by Henry TV. of Rosenberg. The Henrys of Rosenberg seem, indeed, to have been sad fellows; for about one hundred years afterwards, another Henry of Rosenberg put three magistrates into one of these dungeons, for coming, in the name of the supreme tribunal of the country, to lay claim to a portion of his estate for the Lord of Schwamberg. The claim was founded on the Tv'ill of Henry's predecessor; but Henry denied the validity of the will, and made the magis- trates eat the documents with which they had come armed. Every particle — seals, signatures, and all — were they obliged to devour; and when they had finished their meal, they were set free, and, by way of accelerating their retreat, the dogs were let loose upon them. The castle contains a theatre, with a wardrobe sufficient for a dozen theatres; a riding-school; and an agricultural institution, which, every three years, turns out about thirty practical and scientific farmers, who are mostly appointed to offices about the Schwarzenberg estates. Then there are collections of natural history, a che- mical laboratory, the castle church, &c. English castles may be more comfortable to live in; but they have little of the interest that pertains to one of these ancient Austrian piles, where re- mote antiquity is seen connected with modern times by an uninteri-upted chain. At Krummau alone, with its legends and reminiscences, a moderately fertile writer might find materials for twenty r^ances. The steep rock on which the castle stands is separated by a deep ravine from the remainder of the roclcy plateau. Over this ravine runs a covered bridge, at the end of which you come suddenly upon a beautiful garden terrace, whence the view is ravishingly beautiful; the bold position of the castle, as it looks down upon the little town of Krummau at the foot of the hill, producing a most peculiar eflect. The Moldau forms almost a circle in the landscape; rushing, with great rapidity, by the fi)0t of the rock, and nearly surrounding the little town, in which the chief buildings all date from the time of the Rosenbergs; at whose cost the churches and convents were erected, as well as an old arsenal and an hospital, and a house which served as a retreat for the widowed lady of ihe castle, whenever a new lord entered into pos- session. Towai-ds evening, after having enjoyed the beauties of the garden, we retired into the castle to partake of the hospitality of the civil and ac- commodating officers of the establishment — the directors, foresters, stewards, &c. To those M-ho know how well these gentlemen live upon the possessions of the Austrian nobles, it will be less matter of surprise to hear of the handsome suites of rooms occupied upon this castellated rock by such functionaries as the director of the castle, or the captain of the body-guard. There are no less than fifty small gardens (or dcputat- g(irten) dependent on the park, and understood to belong to the officers oi the castle. These are so numerous, that they have a coffee-house within the walls for their own accommodation; indeed, so numerous are the emp/oi/es, of one sort br another, on the estates of the Schwarzen- berg, that the printed list of them forms a tole- rably thick octavo volume. A wood near Krummau is the only place in Bohemia where bears are yet to be found in a state of nature. They are preserved with some care, defended against poachers, and occasion- ally fed with horseflesh, though in general they reqtxire no other food than the berries and roots which they find in the forest. They are mostly harmless, and no one now living remembers the time when a human creature or tame animal was torn to pieces by them. The last man in the neighbourhood who had come into collision with the bears died lately. He was passing through the forest, and seeing a young cub tumbling about on a grassy glade, he took it into his head to carry the creature home. Soo;i, however, he saw to his horror that the mother had seen him, and was coming after him in full pursuit. He set his prize down immediately; but the mother, after having smelt and caressed her little one, for a few instants, resumed the chase. The poor fellow ran for his life, and was just in time to reach the entrance to a neighbouring farm, where he fell down sense- less; and wiien the servants came out to his 56 KOHL'S AUSTRIA. assistance, it was found that the anguish and terror of those few moments had been sufficient to whiten his hair. FROM BUDWEIS TO LINZ. Bndweis is completely a German city, though in Bohemia, and has the advantage of being the highest point to which any of the tributaries of the Elbe is navigable. Within twelve German miles of this point lies Linz on the Danube, and the approximation of two such important navi- gable rivers has at all times caused a very active commerce to be carried on between the two cities. This commerce has of late years been promoted by many improvements in the navi- gation of the Moldau; improvements for which the country stands mainly indebted to the ex- ertions of Mr. Lanna, a shipbuilder, whose tim- ber-yard at Budweis no stranger ought to leave unvisited. It was he who built the suspension- bridge at Prague, and it is owing to him that no less than seventy vessels so constructed as to suit the navigation of the Elbe and Moldau, arrive now every year at Budweis, and that there is even a reg-.^lar river communication kept up between the latter place and Hamburg. One of the consequences of the favourable geographical position of Budweis was, that one morning early, at five o'clock, I repaired to the office of the railroad, with the view of embark- ing my person in a train about to start for Linz. The Linz-Budweis railroad is the grandmother of all the railroads on the European continent; and, taking this into consideration, we must not deem it matter of surprise to find it manifesting occasionally some symptoms of the debility of old age. It was the coup d'essai of Baron von Gerstuer, who afterwards laid down rails in Russia, and died in America. He had great natural ditficulties to contend with in the moun- tainous region over which his road had to be carried. To overcome these difficulties he was obliged to make his railroad take so circuitous a route, that though the distance between the two towns, in a straight line, is not more than ten (German) miles, the railroad has a length of seventeen. After arriving at Linz, the rail- road is carried ten miles further to Gmunden, for I the convenience of the government salt- works at that place. The railroad from Budweis to Linz cost 1,700,000 florins. It consists of a single pair of rails, with arrangements at intermediate stations to enable two trains to pass each othei*. The rails are partly of Styrian, but chiefly of Bohe- mian, iron; partly cast and partly wrought. In many places they seem sadly in want of repair.' Some have been completely worn away, others have lost their nails, and stand up from the w-ooden sleepers to which they were originally fastened. Sometimes a very sensible jolt of the carriages reminds the passengers of a striking difference between the respective altitudes of two succeeding rails; at other times a drag must be put upon ihe wheels, to prevent the train from rattling down the hill at too rapid a pace. My journev was performed immediately alter rainy weather, Avhich had made the rails ex- tremely dirty and slipper)^; and I find, from a memorandum in my journal, that our wheels J occasionally sunk into the soft earth. It is evi- ^^ dent from all this, that this railroad must have been left in a very neglected condition; but its importance to the commerce of the Danube is so great, that the government will be obliged, before long, to step in, and, by a timely treat- ment, endeavour to save this grandmother rail- road from an untimely fate. The trains on this railioad are drawn by horses, and owing to the inequalities of the ground over which it passes, there is little like- .lihood that steam locomotives can ever be intro- duced there. One horse generally draws two or three carriages; but sometimes two or three horses are yoked on, in which case the train consists of six, seven, or even eight carriages. On an average, a horse is able to draw from seventy, to a hundred cwt., at a slow walk; the trains for 'passengers travel at a smart trot. , On . the common road, in this mountainous district, a horse cannot well draw more than twelve cwt. The rich kingdom of Bohemia has been sadly neglected by Nature with respect to salt, one of the necessaries of life. Every particle consumed within the kingdom comes from beyond the Danube; and this salt trade, one of the chief sup- ports of the railroad, has likewise led to an active commerce in other goods. Merchandise of various descriptions finds its way from Trieste and Southern Italy to Gmunden, to be forwarded by railroad to Bohemia. The terminus at Budweis is in the centre of the town close to the imperial salt-magazines, and to these magazines the travellers and the salt-bags must alike repair. It was, as I said, five o'clock in the morning when I made my appearance there, and I found our little one- horse trains ready to start, as they did almost immediately, at an easy trot, each having about fifty passengers in charge. The coachmen sat on their boxes smoking their pipes, and the draught was evidently so easy, that had the horses been in the habit of indulging in the poisonous weed, they too might have amused their leisure by "blowing a cloud" as they went along. On a railroad where the trains are drawn by horses you travel with less noise than you do either on one where 5^ou are hurried along by steam engines, or on a common road. I was, therefore, soon engaged in an agreeable conver- sation Avith my fellow-travellers, and we were able to discuss undisturbed every object that presented itself within the reach of our con- stantly varying horizon. At Leopoldschlag we reached the highest level of the road, and were there two thousand feet over the sea, and one thousand over the plain of Budweis. At this point likewise we quitted Bohemia to enter Austria, and soon perceived symptoms of our having arrived among a more industrious popu- lation than that we had left, though this part of the archduchy of Austria is far from being its most populous or best cultivated district. De- tached fannhouses become more numerous, and though the estates are still large, you see no longer so striking and painful a contrast, as in Bohemia, between the castle of the prince and the peasant's hut. Many of the peasants, on the contrary, have houses quite as comfortable as KOHL'S AUSTRIA. 57 castles, and most of them have a well-to-do look about them. The family of which one hears as much on the Austrian side, as one does of the Rospnliptjrs and Sfhvvarzenber2:s on the Bohemian side of the hills, is the family of the Starhemhersjs who, from time immemorial, have been menof mi?ht on the Danube, and, in the middle acres, were often involved in sanqruinar^' feuds with the Rosenberijs. At present, three rich Starhem- bcr^s dwell close together, — a prince, a general, and a count, — whose castles we had an oppor- tunily of admiring as we passed along. Many interesting and picturesque views pre- sent themselves on the road, though upon the whole it is much shut in by woods. Just before reaching Linz, however, as we were rolling down a zigzag line into the plain,a may'nificent prospect opened suddenly upon us. The plain of Linz, 'the picturesque banks of the Danube, and the distant Alps in the background, com- bined to form a glorious picture, and while we were yet descanting on iis beauties, we rolled onwards through the gates of Linz to the impe- rial salt-magazines, here, as at Budweis, the terminus of the road. UPPER AUSTRIA. LINZ.— THE CARPET MANUFACTORY. WnTJx, in the middle ages, an individual pre- sented himself before the eyes of his fellow- men, it was known immediately, by the colour and cut of his garments, to what rank he be- longed, and what was his vocation; but in our times, when superficially, that is, as far as the dress is concerned, all arc more or less equal, — although the real distinction of persons, ac- cording to position, dignity, and wealth, are as sharply defined as ever, — a traveller in a simple brown frock-coat, entering a Linz manufactory, may be taken for, — what may he not be taken for] particulctrly if his German accent sound somewhat foreign to the Austrian ear. He may be a Dr., a Professor, a Privy Councillor, or a military officer of high rank in civil costume — or an "■ Excellency" — or perhaps, what would perhaps not be among the least welcome, he may be a traveller for a great mercantile house, come to make large purchases. " Assuredly," thought I, as a crowd of obsequious persons met me on ftiy entrance into a noted carpet- manufactory, greeted me most courteously and expectingly, and hastened to display their wares, — "assuredly some such fancies are passing through their heads." I held it therefore to be my duty to explain to them, that in leaving my home, i had left behind neither kingdom, nor nabobship, nor lands containing 10,000 souls, nor a capital of 250,000 fr. rentes; but that I stood there simply a curious traveller, or, if they would have it so, a traveller desirous of information, without any design Avhatever of purchasing, or carrying off any thing more than could be conveyed by the eye and^^ar; where- upon, to my admiration, these people seemed to hold it no less their duty not to abate a particle of their hospitable Austrian obligingness, but rather to assist me the more zealously in view- ing their labours and productions. I was the more curious about them, as I knew how con- siderable a part the Linz fabrics play in the Austrian manufactories, and to what importance they have lately risen. As late as the year 1783, or 4, the Linz wool- len-manufactures were nearly the only ones of the kind in the Austrian states. They were founded, I believe, at the end of the seventeenth or the beginning of the eighteenth century, by a citizen of Linz, and are the oldest in Austria. This citizen made them over subsequently to the so-called Oriental Company, which had a privilege for the preparation of woollen stuffs of all kinds. The bad economy which reigned in the affiirs of the company, and the profuse expenditure in the erection of superb and un- necessarily large buildings, threatened the un- dertaking with ruin. To prevent the injury which the stoppage must have caused to the many individuals interested, the government look the business under their own management, reserving to themselves the privileges belbre granted to private persons. The interval be- tween 1740 and the total abolition of these privileges, may be considered to have been the period of the greatest splendour of the estab- lishment: ihere were emplo)red at times more than 20,05|0 workmen, spinnfers and weavers, in Bohemia; and in Linz alone not less than 2000. The great mind from which nearly all the new life in the Austrian body politic emanated, Joseph, abolished the privileges by which these 20,000 men profited, at the cost of many millions; and since that time, the w^'kmen, scattered over all parts of the monarchy, have founded manu- factories in Brunn, Vienna, and other cities, and have laid the foundation of the now consider- able woollen-factories of Lower Austria and Moravia. Since then, the Linz factories have declined, and their great barrack-like buildings stand par- tially empty, and seem awaiting another destina- tion. Two branches alone of the woollen manu- factory have again struck root and prosper: that of carpets, and the printing of woollen table- covers. So mtich taste is here displayed in these articles, the colours are so lively and so lasting, that the productions of the Linz manufactories have obtained considerable celebrity in the shop and the drawing-room. They have warehouses in Leipzig, Prague, Milan, Vienna, Pesth, &c., and exports have even been made to France and England. Their extraordinary cheapness will no doubt lead to a further demand for these goods. For five or six florins* a most artistical and magnificent bouquet of flowers may be pur- chased; while one of the quickly-fading produc- tions of the garden would cost double the money. Establishments for woollen printing are still rare in the world, and it is therefore the more cheer- ing to learn that the art has already been brought to such perfection here. It seems to me, how- ever, that they have been partly indebted for their progress to the influence of France; the designers, at least, are in part French, and the newest drawings are made from designs received from Paris, which city, in the invention of new shades, and in the arrangement of tasteful wreaths and groups of flowers, is certainly not to be excelled. The person, too, at the head of the carpet printing, is of French descent. The name of this man is Dufresne. He took the trouble to show me over the table-cover department; and, as I visit such establishments much more on account of the men than of their productions, he became to me, in a short time, * The Austrian florin is equal tn about two shillinss ster- lins. Tlie Kheiiish florin is worth rather 1888. Ten Aus- trian florius are equal to one pound, or lo twelve Rhenish florins. KOHL'S AUSTRIA. an object of much interest and respect. He halted in his gait, and in speaking of his infirm limb, related the history of his life. His father, a French emigrant, had sought refuge in Vienna, and there endeavoured to gain a livelihood by the establishment of a small cotton-prinling factory. An Austrian nobleman. Count X., a great friend to the French, lent him a small capital, and a corner of his house. The business turned out well, the father hoped for the re-esta- blishment of his worldly prosperity, and the son, who had been born subsequently to the flight of his parents from France, was destined for the military service; but Heaven willed it otherwise; his horse fell with him, his leg was broken, and thenceforward he made up his mind to follow his father's pursuit. Soon afterwards his father died, less wealthy than he had hoped to be, and the son found the business necessary to the maintenance of his mother. He studied how to improve it, and having one day met with some English woollen printing, he never rested till he had not only imitated, but surpassed it. Having thus grown up in adversity, and being endowed with an active spirit, he had made himself what he was when I saw him, " Imperial and Royal Inspector of woollen printing," with a good salary. The manufactory which I inspected in M. Dafresne's company was exceedingly well ar- ranged, clean, light, and in good order. In the large room where the colour setters were busied, I read on a board conspicuously placed these words written in chalk: "With God's aid." "You are surprised?" observed M. Dufresne, "but you will see this is the chief point. Our business is very laborious and difficult, and re- quires not only clever and thoughtful, but also diligent and conscientious workpeople. When I give a pattern to a colour setter, I give him also some direction how to proceed. He must listen and apply this cheerfully, but he must also consider well with what colour it will be best to begin and end, and give to these matters zeal and attention, as a painter would do; for I cannot attend to the detail, and must trust much to the conscientiousness of the workmen, who by a single careless step might occasion great da- mage. On their side they must have full confi- dence in me, and apply to me in all difficult points. All this is best obtained when a man keeps in mind the words you see written there. It is said that the inmost soul of all art is religion and the fear of God, and our work is a kind of art. I take no workman of whose character I am not certain; I pay far more heed to this than to their skill. And when I have taken one into my employ I observe him closely, and note whether he works in a pious spirit. Many a one have I dismissed solely on account of his want of conscientiousness, and I believe the chest of the imperial and royal manufactory has been the gainer by this policy. We begin in the morning with a short prayer, and those words are never effaced from the board. I have a de- sign ol' inscribing on a tablet over the door, those fine lines from Schiller's Song of the Bell: 'And when with good rtiscnurse aUendpd, The course of labour cheerful flows," &.C.' " Wenn sute Reden sie begleiten, So fliessi die Arbeii muaier fun, &,c." and I believe money so laid out will yield a good'interest. Now you see. sir, you know my way of thinking," added M. Dufresne, smiling and clapping me on the shoulder in a friendly manner, as I applauded what he had said, and he further entreated me to write my name in his pocket-book as a memorial. The manipulation of the wool is one of the prettiest operations that can be seen, and I think there must be more pleasure in working at car- pets in a manufactory animated by so good a spirit than in wearing out the finished product in dull company. The woikman has the large white woollen fabric spread out before him, and by it the design, the coloured drawing. The different tints are set singly with Avooden types, and the workman has soon the satisfaction of seeing the picture unfold itself with tolerable rapidity before him. There are about two hun- dred and forty different designs for covers in this establishment. 1'his number'may at first appear small, but the difficulty of working a new pattern is very great. A peculiar plan must be pursued with every one, and of course for every one a, new set of wooden types made. Some of the colours are set abruptly one by the other, and some are partially covered and gently shaded into each other. In this manner, with ten pots of colour, twenty or thirty tints are produced on the wool. It is particularly difficult to judge where the single colours may be best placed, in order to prepare the wooden types accordingly. The true life, spirit, tone and softness are given, to the colours by the hot vapour to which the fabric is afterwards exposed for a time. THE MADHOUSE. Near the A\oollen-manufactor\'', and like it, by the side of the Danubqi^stands this edifice, which was erected long since, although the city has but twenty-five thousand inhabitants. I was accompanied by the obliging overseer of the house, which, at the period of my visit, con- tained about eighty simply insane patients. — Among these were some that especially awaken- ed my sympathy. One was a painter, a Tyrolese, who had dis- tinguished himself in the war of freedom, and had received, in consequence, a small sum of money from the government. As he had shown, from his youth taste and talent for drawing, and had already studied it in some degree in Vienna,, he appropriated this money to the expenses of a journey to Italy. In Rome, however, on com- paring himself with the great living, and greater dead, masters, he became aware of the little he was likely to accomplish with the greatest exer- tion. His anxious labours, unsupported as it appeared by true genius, induced a degree of morbid excitement; his efforts could not satisfy him, and the masterpieces of art, which he saw I daily before him, appeared in his e^'es so many [ reproofs of his own incapacity. He was not a bad draughtsman, and had he stuck to the pencil, he might have become a good mathe- matical or architectural artist. Unfortunately he did not possess the prudence so many want, that of contenting himself with his own modest portion of talent, as God had given it him, and putting it to usury in the prescribed direction. KOHL'S AUSTRIA. In the exertion to become a distinpfuisheil paint- er, and reach a heiglit unattainable to hirii, he destroyed himself. In despair he lied from Rome and returned to his friends — a madman. He now fancies that oil-colours are baneful to him and full of poison. The sight of an oil- painting causes him the greatest suffering, and every thing that tends to remind him of brush or palette must be carefully kept out of his sight. He takes a pleasure in the use of the crayon and blacklead-pencil, and several of the patients have had their portraits sketched by him, very good likenesses, hanging up over their beds. I finind him occupied in drawing a pretty little landscape, and he himself assured me, with a friendly smile, that it was his peculiar misfor- tune to suffer so much frcmi oil-colours that he should die on the spot if he only smelt them. Rome, Raphael, and Correggio he had quite Air- gotten. In madness itself there is a kind of happiness and tranquillity; the condition that precedes it, the struggle between reason and frenzy, must be infinitely more terrible. What chambers of torture must the studios and gal- leries of Rome have been for this man! The becoming mad must be like an active conflagra- tion, but the being mad must resemble the con- dition of the burnt-out edifice, more fearful, perhaps, to the spectator, but far less frightful to the sufferer than the former convulsion. In another room a poor lunatic was busily rubbing a brass ring. He told us with great glee, that it was becoming brighter and brighter, and that the gold would soon appear. The director told us, he had been rubbing that ring for weeks together, and every day asserting the same thing; a prize in the lottery had been the original cause of his calamity. He had wasted his money in idle extravagance, and in a short time all was gone but a few hundred florins. These he made us^of to purchase fifty more shares. They came up all blanks, and the gulf of ruin he sawyawning before him deprived him of his reason. Since that time he has employed himself in polishing brass rings in the expecta- tion of their turning to gold. In all the Austrian lunatic asylums, we hear ■wonders of the Douche or cold water cure, and, i"n Linz, accordingly, we were told of a striking cure performed by the help of this remedy in the course of the preceding summer. A man labouring long under the deepest melancholy, and a prey to monomania of all kinds, which ended in periodical fits of perfect frenzy, was completely cured in the course of three weeks by the Douche, and dismissed to his fellows as a reasonable being. Here also, behind an iron grating, we saw some poor wretches whose madness had already cost the lives of several fellow-creatures. — Among them were some of whom it was doubt- ful whether their deeds should be atoned for on the scaffold, or their correction sought for in the madhouse. The story of one was particularly horrible. This person was a citizen of Linz, noted some ten years before for an unconquer- able dread of spectres and witches. In every strange noise, and every unusual appearance, he fancied the presence of supernatural influ- ences; even his own wife, if she appeared unexpectedly before him, was sometimes taken for a spectre. His wife was accustomed to laugh at and ridicule her husband for these puerile terrors. On onew-ild and stormy even- ing, when all the vanes and window shutters shook and rattled fearfully, she said to him, '• There you foolish man, some of your witches will certainly come to fetch you to-night." The night came on, and the unhappy man became more silent and terror-stricken. At a late hour one of the children awoke, and the mother, un- able to still it cried at last, " Sleep you witch's brat, or I'll kill you." These thoughtless words acted like an electric spark on the dark fancies that lay brooding in the troubled brain of the miserable man. Armed with a hatchet, he sprang to the cradle of the child, crj'ing, " Yes, yes, witch's child! Kill it! Witches are all around us and about us! I'll kill ye all." His weeping wife and shrieking children were all murdered one after the other, and then a poor maid-servant. He then barred all the doors and windows to keep out the evil spirits that might be without, and watched the whole night through, armed with his hatchet, by the bodies of the supposed witches. The sun was standing high in the heaven, when the neighbours saw him crossing the street bearing the corses of his children, dripping with their gore. He called out that they were witch's children, whom he was going to throw into the water. He was immediately seized as a furious and mischievous maniac, and has been ever since confined in the grated cell where we beheld him crouching before us in the straw. JESUIT SCHOOL. If the object of the Lunatic Asylum be the restoration of the crazed to reason, the Jesuit school may be held in some respects as one for rendering crazy those Avhom nature has made rational, at least if we share the opinions of many of the enlightened of our times with re- gard to the Jesuits. Linz possesses one of their schools, oddly enough installed in one of those celebrated towers or citadels which surround the city with their strong girdles. The Arch- duke Maximilian, who planned and built these towers, gave the Jesuits one of those first built, for an experiment, and at his own cost, on the Freiberg. The Maximilian towers are large, round buildings, with thick walls, as great a portion of them being sunk under ground as appears above it. Below the level of the soil they contain several stories, while above it they rise but a few feet, and these are partly covered with turf, so that from without, by the additional shelter of a gradually elevated wall, they are scarcely to be seen. The balls of the enemy must for the most part fly harmlessly over them, while their own, discharged from cannon rising but a kv,r inches from the sod of the bulwark, and hidden besides in deep hollows in the walls, must burst quite unexpectedly out of the grass. All ihe towers, to the number of seventeen or twenty, stand in a certain regular connection with one another, yet each is susceptible of in- dividual defence, if the chain were broken, and could pour its fire on an advancing enemy as well from one side as the other. Really, if the KOHL'S AUSTRIA. 61 illustrious and deeply experienced inventor were not known, one mjglit fancy this defensive sys- tem the invention of the Jesuits themselves. In these fortresses the fathers are now firmly established, after making such changes as their own wants and taste dictated. On the thick bomb-proof ground-walls they have reared two additional stories; the interior of tlic fortress is laid out cheerl'ully, the exterior vvasheil over with an agreeable red colour; every door bears the iuilials J. H. S., and every niche of the walls, where formerly cannon were lodged, is changed into a sleeping and sitting-room for the accommodation of the pupils or the superiors, attainable by elegant winding staircases running round the interior of the building. In addition to the towers a garden was bestowed on them, which is most diligently cultivated, and a second piece of ground on the foremost point of the Frei- berg, where they have built an elegant small church in the Gothic style. 'I'he most striking piece of furniture in this church is a magnificent throne-like seat with a canopj-, both so bedizened with gold, that one can scai'cely believe it destined for a place of prayer, and for those who should set a con- spicuous example lo the floclc, of humble de- votion to God. But so it is. "It is the throne of the superior," answered the Jesuit lay-brother, who was in the church, and of whom I had in- quired if this were destined for the emperor or any other illustrious person occasionally visit- ing thcin. The church is further decorated with several'new pictures, representing scenes from the life of a newlj'-canonized Jesuit of the name of Hieronymus; one, representing him with the sacramental chalice in his hand on the seashore, and obtaining for the Neapolitan fishermen a miraculous draught; another de- picting him, cross in hand, checking the fiery eruption of Vesuvius. These and other pic- tures were lighted, not by side-windows, but from the roof, according to the new fashion. When such objects are found covered with dust in an ancient half-ruined cloister, or in a picture-gallery, from a long mouldered pencil, one finds nothing amiss in it; but I cannot deny that it made a most disagreeable impression on me, to find them decorating the walls of a modern temple, and purporting to be the events of our own day. I do not think, however, that the Jesuits have made any great progress of late in Austria. Complaints are certainly heard that the nobles are too much devoted to them, but that they should ever obtain their former position is al- most impossible. All enlightened persons, of whom there are undoubtedly many in Austria, have decided against them; even the lower classes make zealous opposition, Neveriheless the Jesuits have begun to spin their strong yet subtle nets. They are most numerous in Gali- cia. In Hungary there are none at all; in the German provinces there are three "houses," one in Gratz, one in Linz, and one at Inspruck. They have acquired most inllucnce in the latter city. Not long ago the Gymnasium there was given up to them, and teaclwrs supplied from their body, and since that time many com- ' plaints have been heard, that it is no longer the ability of the pupils, but the rank and credit of their parents which decide their advance- ment. Each of the "houses" has a superior, a "min- ister," the superior's deputy and assistant, seve- ral priests (seculars), and some lay-brothers to cultivate the garden, attend to household aSairs, and be serviceable in many other ways. The superior of the Linz house was absent on a "journey of business" at the time of my visit. The minister was in the confessional chair, where I saw him with his features, concealed, listening to a kneeling penitent. I went after- wards, accompanied by a priest, who obligingly otlered his services, to see the interior of the building. We passed through the schoolrooms and others appropriated to the pupils of the institution. They live two and two together, (ia some of the rooms there were three,) agreeably to the principles of the Jesuits, that no member of their order shall be left without the company and assistance of another. No brother of the order ever receives permission to visit the city alone, he must always have another brother, his '■Soc.ius," with him. According to this regula- tion no Jesuit can ever be entangled in a dis- pute or strucrgle of any kind without being sure of help. Hence, wherever there is a Jesuit he is doubie-headed and four-armed, and beyond a doubt this is one of the most politic laws ia their code. Even the lay-brothers have also each of them his "Socius." They remind us of the Spartan legion, which was so unconquer- able, principally because it consisted entirely of pairs of fraternal friends Imked together for life and death. Two men so bound to each other, yield a much greater amount of power than two separate individuals; as two cannon-balls linked together by a chain produce a much more ter- rible effect than when fired singly. At present there are thirty Jesuits in the Linz house, nine of whom are priests, nine laj'-brethren, and the rest novices. They are nearly all Germans. "We are recruited piincipally from German- Bohemia," said my attendant priest, as we stepped out on the broad and beautiful plat- form of the tower to enjoy the magnificent prospect; "thence come the greater number of our pupils. We have reason to rejoice so far, but this is not to be compared with our pro- gress in Belgium. There not less than eighty- tour young, and several elderly men, entered our order in the course of last year. We have few or no Slavonians in our house. In Linz we have made no great progress, hitherto; indeed we possess nothing here but this house provi- sionally. The Florians have still the Gj-mna- sium. We are therefore here only provision- ally, and ad hiteriin, and educate our pupils ad interim" (is there no roguery concealed behind this udiiilerint? thought I,) "in the hope that in time a wider sphere of infiuence will be opened to us. W'e employ ourselves o(/ iw/cTiVn with the sciences, yet we think that if we form useful subjects, they must in time be made use of. The houses of our order in Austria do not form as yet an organized and individual pro- vince, but we hope it will soon talce that form. In Vienna we have not yet received permission to establish ourselves; the cause maybe the old prejudices against us, and a lurking remnant of belief in the disorders attributed to our order 62 KOHL'S AUSTRIA. but we hope that in the constantly increasing enlightenment of these times, these prejudices will die away. I have read all the books which have been written fur and against the Jesuits; for the order was always an object of great in- terest to me; and since I have myself belonged to it, I have been amazed at the unfounded ac- cusations and bitter persecutions to Avhich it has been exposed. God be praised, we have fallen on better times, and people have already begun to acknowledge their earlier injustice. When our order was dissolved, at the close of the last cen- tury% the canonization of not less than eighty dis- tinguished Jesuits then in progress was inter- rupted. In later times, seven of these canses have been taken up again, and brought to an end. By the two last popes (the present and his predeces- sor), seven Jesuits have been canonized, or pro- nounced blessed. Among these was the cele- brated Canisius, whose services in Germany Tiave been so great. At this moment another is about to be pronounced blessed, who suffered martyrdom on his mission to Poland. He was slain there by the barbarians in the middle of the eighteenth century. The cause has been long in hand; but as such matters are pro- ceeded in with great circumspection, their pro- gress is necessarily slow. The documents proving his purity of life, and his blessed and worthy end, are all forthcoming; but exact and authentic intelligence of the death of his "80- cius," who accompanied him on his mission and suffered with him, are yet wanting; and these, according to our laws, are absolutely ne- cessary to the canonization of a Jesuit. We hope, however, that these supplementary points will speedily be cleared up, when the Holy Father may follow the impulse of his heart, and bestow the crown of martyrdom upon this ex- cellent man." My Jesuit friend had pronounced the word hope, at least, four or five times, whence I should conclude that the Jesuits of our day are very full of this agreeable feeling. Often, however, as the Jesuit appeared, I had no fault to find with my companion; but as I looked on the turf-covered, bomb-proof, and cannon-bristling towers of Linz, and compared them with the smiling, decorated building, in holiday attire, of which the Jesuits have taken possession, I thought also how quickly such a smooth, friendly, and courteous man of peace might be metamor- phosed into a rude, hostile antagonist in times of strife and trouble, and how certaiidy we two friendly interlocutors would then find ourselves opposed to each other. From our lofty stand, we commanded an ex- tensive view over the Austria so rich in hope for the Jesuits. The city of Linz, with its black roofs, lay at our feet; and in the distance, on the magnificent plains of Lower Austria, gleam- ed the cloister of St. Florian. The noble Danube flowed, in its winding course, through this beau- tiful land to Vienna, attended, no doubt, by many a longing sigh of the Jesuits, Avaftcd towards the stately "■ Residenz." Towards the south, the plains swelled, by degrees, into hills and emi- nences, which lay like shadows in the foreground, backed by the sharply-defined and majestic Al- pine chain of Rhoetia and Noricum. PROVINCIAL MUSEUM. Among the many national museums and col- lections of provincial rarities, which have arisen within the last ten years in all parts of the Aus- trian monarchy, in Prague, Pesth, Gratz, Lay- bach, &c., one has taken root in Linz, whose object it is to collect and preserve in a separate museum all that can have reference to tlie his- tory and natural productions of Austria. For- merly, all such things found in any of the pro- vinces of the monarchy were sent without exception to Vienna. The provinces considered themselves as the lawful possessors of such curiosities, and looked upon their removal as little better than robbery. No doubt jealousy of the all-grasping capital caused the neglect of much that might have been collected. h\ fact, objects of this kind can only be properly esti- mated in the place of their nativity. Many have provincial value and significance alone, and are quite worthless and unnoted in an extensive general museum. Few citizens embrace the whole state in their patriotic sympathies; the interest of the greater part is limited to the nar- now circle of their homes. The Linz museum has now six rooms filled with antiquities, coins, petrifactions, fossils, stuffed animals, minerals, books, and industrial productions, and in the treatise published every year a light has been thrown on many a dark corner of Austrian history, which would proba- bly not have been done if the bureau for the advancement of such purposes had remained at Vienna. None of the antiquities I saw here interested me more than the shield of a Roman warrior, and a Roman brick. The shield was from the celebrated shield manufactor)'- which the Ro- mans had at the mouth of the Ens, and from which the greater part of the legions on the Danube were supplied with arms. The Aus- trians have at present for the supply of their Danube army, a similar manufactory in the city of Steyer, not far from the Ens, where pikes, guns, and pistols are the weapons now made instead of spears and shields. The brick at- tracted my attention from the traces of dust and of straw, and the mark of the workman's fingers, which were still visible on its surface. An ac- cidental pufi' of wind probably scattered the broken straw upon the brick while it was yet soft, the workman kneaded it in, and thus the memorial of the unheeded motion of a careless hand has remained undestroyed for centuries. In the invisible physical laboratory of the hu- man world trifles are often perpetuated from analogous causes. The Romans had their principal station on the ]>anube, at Linz (Lentium); and in fact it is a position that will continue to be occupied so long as the land is inhabited. The Danube here issues from a narrow mountain-pass, into a rich and beautiful plain, in which roads branch oft' in every directioji, and traverse the broad valley of the Traim, joining that of the Danube, in the neighbourhood of Linz. The division even of the country into the province above, and that below the Ens, is old and of Roman origin. The whole land was called Noricum ripense; all that KOHL'S AUSTRIA. lay below the Ens, the Romans called the lower towns and castles, and those above, the towns and casiles olJNoricum ripense. THE MONASTERY OF ST. FLORIAN. One morning, in company with a new ac- quaintance, I stepped into a utellwagen bound for Ebelsberg, a small market-toM'n at the mouth of the Ens. A thick morning vapour covered the whole valley. My companion had justly calcu- lated the movement of the foggy particles, and said to me alter a time, " We shall have a most beautiful day;" and in fact, as we approached the more elevated neighbourhood of Ebelsberg, we left the fog behind us, and had, as he had prophesied, the finest weather we could have de- sired. These public carriages (steUwagen) have been introduced in Linz within the last ten years, and now run in every direction from that city. Ten years ago, if a person wished to go from Linz to Steyer, and was at all in haste, he must have paid five florins, and given abundance of good words besides. Now he can go for about forty pence, and the vehicle makes the journey twice a day. My object was to visit the renowned convent of St. J'lorian, and also some of its peasants, so well known for their opulence. I left Ebels- berg, therefore, on foot, and striking into a by- road, proceeded deeper into the country. A little countryman who had bought a nook of land from the lords spiritual, and had therefore some business to settle with them, went with me, and we soon came in sight of the stately abbey which stands on a hill. The fields and meadows, the orchards, and all around, announced a sys- tem of careful cultivation. A storehouse, an apothecary's shop, a tavern, and an hospital, all attached to the abbey, lay at the foot of the hill. I praised the arrangement of all these to my peasant companion. " Ah," said he, ■" yes, yes, the holy fathers, they are clever fellows, they look after their atfairs, and keep things under their own eye." In the village stood two Avagons with four horses, each laden with six-and-twenty calves. The poor creatures lay with their legs bound, and their heads hanging down in a most painful position. Some had wounded them- selves against the iron work of the high wheels, 4)y the constant convulsive twitchings of the mouth. I suppose there was no society in the abbey for the prevention of cruelty to animals. I looked from the poor calves to the picture of the Madonna, which hung from the corner of the abbey tavern, and read beneath these words: " Blessed is the holy and immaculate concep- tion of the Virgin Marj'." I had heard much beforehand of the grandeur of the Austrian abbeys, standing like a magnifi- cent chain of palaces, mostly on the right side of the Danube as far as Vienna; but I must confess that when I trod the interior courtyards and chambers of St. Florian's cloistered palace, my expectations were far exceeded by the real- ity. The principal part is built in ?. most su- perb style, from a plan of the time of Charles the Sixth, and is almost finished. To be almost Jinishtd has been tlie destiny of almost all the stately erections of that ruler, who died ten years too soon, as the zeal for building in the Gothic style did by a hundred. However, in St. Florian's abbey, it is but little that is wanting. Few monarchs in Europe can boast of being so grandly lodged, whether in reference to the form or materials of their dwellings, as the " regular Augustine chapter of St. Florian in Upper Austria." On either side of the lofty en- trance, broad marble steps lead to the principal floor, and corridors above a hundred feet in breadth run round the various wings of the buildings that surround the four quadrangular inner courts. The corridors, as well as the outer passages, and the floor of the great hall, are elegantly paved with black and white mar- ble, and everywhere the cleanliness is so per- fect, that every atom of dust must be remorse- lessly pursued with brush and broom. As I paced these corridors, the water splashing in the midst of the courts, the rays of the sun play- ing through the countless arched passages, cast- ing rich lights and shades upon the polished marble beneath, I thought if the pleasure of a stranger in wandering here was so great, what must be that of the owners, the fatheis of St. Florian] In the corridors are the — little doors they should be. but they are lofty portals, lead- ing to the monks' cells, to the apartments of the prelate, to the emperor's hall, the library, the cattlinars chambers, and others. I was really somewhat embarrassed which door to attack first, for I was afraid of disturb- ing some personage of importance turn whither I would. At last, wiping the dust carefully from my feet, I chose a cell at random, and found, in the person of the father and professor Kurz, so celebrated throughout Austria, for his leaniing and historical works, the very best guide to lead me through this labyrinth that my good angel could have led me to. The great convents and abbeys in Austria have been, at all times, the nurses and cherish- ers of science and of art; in every one is to be found a museum of natural history, a noble library, and, generally, a picture gallery; and each boasts its celebrated names, either of those who have long departed from this world, and live only in the aflection and respect of posterity, or of those still living, and actively engaged in the service of their order. Of the latter class is the reverend Father Kurz, a kind and venerable old man of seventy-two, who now advanced to meet the intrusive stranger. He was for a long time professor of history ia the Gymnasium of Linz, and has written some learned works on Austrian history. At present, borne down by years and feeble health, he has retired to his cell, -where he busies himself with lighter literary labours, and the affairs of the convent. I found with him a couple of peasants, who had come to request his advice respecting a lawsuit, and a peasant-girl asking him for some medicine for her sick mother. I know not whether we. North German pro- testants entertain very just notions respecting the influence, the sphere of operation, or the busmess and manner of life of the monks of the great Austrian Augustine and Benedictine convents; nor whether our opinion of them may not be too unfavourable; and I shall there- KOHL'S AUSTRIA. fore permit myself a few remarks on the sub- ject. It would be highly unjust to consider such establishments, simply as the retreats of lazy monks, whose sole employments are praying and eating. On the contrary, the manifold rela- tions in M'hich such a convent stands to the ex- ternal world, and the great sphere of activity connecting it, with nearly every phase of life, have opened the way for the cares, die business, and the vexations of humanity, and paved ibr lliem an easy entrance to the cells of these monks; these, consequently, are busy men of the world, rather than feasting and praying an- chorites; and if they are worried somewhat more at their ease than other people, they have to bend like other Christians under the common burden. It is only a small minority of the mem- bers of such a house that are commonly resident within its walls. In St. Florian only twenty-one out of its ninety-two fathers were dwellers there at the time of my visit. The rest were almost constantly absent on difterent employments and missions, some as parish priests in their respect- ive parishes, some as instructors in schools, professors at the Gymnasia, or as stewards and overseers of the lands of the abbey, which must all be administered and overlooked. As teachers and professors, they must submit to examinations like other people, and as agri- culturists they are as responsible as others in similar employments. Those who remain in the convent are either the old and feeble, or those who have their employments in the abbey itself One is master of the household, and has the kitchen, the stable, &c. under his direction, another is master of the forest, a third, librarian and director of the museum. Some of the con- vents which possess observatories, have also their own astronomers, who, as professors of astronomy, teach the science in the convent. The observatory of Kremsminster has long been celebrated, and almost every person here can tell which father is now at the head of it. Even the old and feeble find much in their cells to interest them in the sayings and doings of the world without. They are the friends and patrons of many far and near, who visit them frequently to ask counsel and assistance. The prelates, — so are styled the heads of the great convents, — the prelates, if not princes by birth, live like princes, and have the usual alk .anent of business and iniluence, cares and crosses, that fall to the share of princes. They have their banquet-halls like them, but also their halls of audience and rooms for business, whence they overlook and direct the affairs of the con- vent. They are also frequently members of the provincial states, and hence, although monks, are entangled in some measure in the contest of politics. ^The whole range of great abbeys in the valley of the Danube may be looked upon as among the most distinguished pillars of the Austrian state edifice; and not only its suppcrt- ing pillars, but also the foundation and corner- stones of that edifice. These religious founda- tions, founded in the earliest ages of the Austrian sovereignty, were the very strongest elements in the formation of the future archduchy, fu the middle ages, the abbots of those convents often furnished the most considerable reinforcements to the Austrian armies, and at a later period, one of them contributed as large a sura as eighty or a hundred thousand liorins to the expenses of a war. At the commencement of the reign of Maria Theresa, she could obtain from the bank of Genoa the three millions she required, only on condition, that the Austrian abbeys would be her security. On almost every house-wall in Austria a St Florian is painted, emptying a pail of water over a burning house, as its protecting saint; pious verses are sometimes inscribed beneath, recom- mending the house to his guardianship, and sometimes verses any thing but pious, as the ■ following: " House and home trust I to Florian's name; If he protect it not, tiis be the shame." But of late, the signs and tokens of the Vienna and Trieste Fire Assurance Companies have made their appearance by the side of St. Florian, whose credit appears to sink as theirs rises. St. Florian was a heathen, and u Roman centurion in the time of Olim. Here in the camp by the Danube, his mind, bent on serious matters, and withdrawn from the frivolities of Rome, may have been duly prepared for the seed of the Christian religion; but how it fell, and how it germinated, the legend says not. Enough — Flo- rian became a zealous Christian, confessed and preached the new doctrine, and was in conse- quence condemned as a rebellious and frantic innovator by his general Aquilius, and beaten to death with clubs on the shores of the Danube. His body was thrown into the water, where it remained till the princess Valeria, the daughter of the emperor Dioclesian, withdrew from the embraces of the river nymphs the remains of a saint known and honoured as far as the Turkish frontier, and in the year 304, buried them in the place where now the abbey stands. His long acquaintance with the water nymphs of the Danube, it may be, which has rendered him so peculiarly fit for a fire extinguisher. "You may believe what you please of this story," said my guide to me, "but you will find it not only in black and white in our old chroni- cles, but also in bright colours in our picture- gallery, where we have the whole history re- presented in a series of twenty paintings." In the library of the convent there are forty thousand volumes. The hall is large and beau- tiful, a hall worthy of the muses, as is alwajjs the case in the Austrian convents of the first rank. Except Gottingen, I know no German university which has so splendid an apartment for this purpose as St. Fkirian's. With respect to the collection itself, it is naturally somewhat difierent. The chief part, of course, is com- posed of theology. The fathers are in full force, some of them in the splendid Paris editions.- Other branches of knowledge have not,however, been neglected. The censorship of the press affects this convent but little. For them there is no forbidden fruit, and the convents are exactly the fittest asylums for writings persecuted by the censor; works, which in any other library, or in a bookseller's shop, would be seized by the police, are frequently to be found in cloisters M'here such unquiet productions are held to be in the quietest place. The monks know how to KOHL'S AUSTRIA. 65 arrange these matters, only taking the precau- tion sometimes of placing such writings on the second row, behind others, or on the topmost shelves. The influence of these fine collections cannot be great, as they are the private property of the convents, and the books are never lent out. Nevertheless-, they are interesting wHth a view to the future; it is well to know where sucli literary materials are to be looked for; doubtless, the day will come when another Joseph will throw these noble halls open to the public, and declare their contents the property of the state. On this account I was glail to lind everywhere a goodly assemblage of our German historians, down to Luden, Menzel, and Pfister. The Monumenta Germanorum are also not wajiting. An historical-geographical work on Lower Austria, in thirty volumes, put me in a terrible fright. If this work, like Meidinger's Grammar, should arrive at a twentieth edition, one might cover a good portion of the three hundred (German) square miles of Lower Austria with the paper. If we were to use all the waste paper of this kind in Germany we might cover the whole surface of the globe, and perhaps paper up the sun besides. The Florian convent owns not less than seven hundred and eighty-seven houses and farms, or, as they express it here, so many "numbers," and yet it is only a "three-quarters" cloister. The greater number of the convents are only "half" or "quarter." Kremsminster is one of the few " entire cloisters." I never could learn from what measure these expressions of half and whole, &c., which are in constant use among the people, are taken, nor could the fathers them- selves give me any information. Perhaps it may be a mode of speech, remaining from the times M-hen the convents were rated for military contributions; Florian must then have paid fifty thousand florins, where Kremsminster paid eighty thousand. In those rimes, an archduke of Austria sometimes resided as a guest at St. Florian's, with four hundred andfitl:y horsemen and horses; the present emperors come much more modestly attended. The convent is in constant readiness for such visits. Here, and in all other Austrian convents, there is a suite of rooms called "the imperial apartments." The number of illustrious guests that have visited the Augustine lords spiritual, from the emperor Arnulph the child, down wards, is count- less — among them was Prince Eugene, the high- hearted conqueror of the Turks. He slept here, during his stay, on a splendid bedstead, at each of whose four corners a Turkish prisoner was chained in efligy. Pictures of the battles of Zenta, Mohacs, and Belgrade, adorned the walls, and every wax light in the antechamber, was borne by the figure of a Moor, carved in wood. All these are preserved as memorials to the present day. Pope Pius VL, on his memo- rable journey to Vienna, was entertained at St. Florian's Abbey, and from the balcony of his chamber, bestowed his blessing on not less than thirty thousand people. Emperors, princes, and popes, are not the only visitors: travelling students usually halt here in the vacations; some may always be fouhd in the rooms below, appropriated to their service. In one of them I found an enigmatical- looking piece of furniture, whose use I was at a loss to divine. My companion directed my at- tention, to an inscription on the front, which displayed the following spiritual reference to a stove: "Hoc in tumulo hiems arida oestatis ossa consumit." In almost all the conventual churches I found multitudes of redbreasts as regular inhabitants. In the sp!eijdid church of 8t. Florian, their plea- sant chirpings were the only praises to God I heard during my visit. The church servitor told me that, in the brooding season, their num- bers were so great, that the preacher's voice was often overpowered by their song. The sparrows keep to the outside of the roof; swallows come sometimes for years together, and then disap- pear again. Carlo Carlone was the architect of this church. This man's ear must have been well opened to the harmonies that lie in numbers, and grand proportions, for the height, breadth, and length of the church, the place and proportions of the windows, the stalls, corridors, and choir, the arches and pillars, form a whole so exquisitely symmetrical, that the musical impression, re- ceived on entering the place, is irresistible. The principal lines of the building are covered with the most solid, rich, and tasteful stuccoes. Round all the galleries, cornices, and ceilings, hundreds of angels are wreathed and grouped. Curtains, executed in the most masterly man- ner in plaster, hang in rich profusion over every door and passage; and the most beautiful gar- lands, wreaths of flowers, and arabesques, wind and droop in lavish abundance, and in the most graceful forms throughout. I must confess that I learnt, for the first time, here to know what sti>cco was, and what might be made of it. The church has three organs; the largest is in the background, opposite the high altar, and two smaller ones are in the choir. The largest, the mastenvork of an Austrian of the name of Christmann, has 5230 pipes, and the strongest of these, cast in the finest English tin, is thirty- two feet high, four feet and a half in circumfer- ence, and weighs five hundred weight. The " organ-basket," which supports the seat of the organist and the singers, displays the most beau- tiful and inimitable workmanship in carved wood. It has the figure of a giant basket, or balcony, formed of the thickestbush of acanthus- leaves. Below, the woodwork of this balcony is intermingled with that of the stalls and prayer- desks. The pillows of those seats and their canopy, consist partly of black fretted woods, and partly of speckled beech-wood, of which the massive blocks are in themselves curiosities. The whole range of stalls for the chapter exhibit the finest architectural drawing, and the greatest solidity of construction, and yet the minutiae are executed with a neatness and elegance such as are usually bestowed only on boxes destined for the reception of ladies' jewels or gentlemen's snuff. On a closer examination, every little knot and edge is found to be most artisncally and laboriously put together, and exquisitely polished. In one word, present arms and show honour due to the Austrian monks, all ye who so often contemn, without even knowing them. I must confess, that I desired nothing more than that 66 KOHL'S AUSTRIA. Father Kurz and the other gentlemen might ac- cept my farewell pressure of the hand as it was meant, as a tolven of tlie most sincere goodwill and esteem. VISIT TO THE HOUSE OF AN AUSTRIAN PEASANT. The peasants of Upper and Lower Austria have, with the exception of some of the peasants of Lombardy, certainly reached a higher degree of wealth and freedom than any other peasants in the Austrian empire. Those of Galicia, Bo- hemia, and Hungary, are, on the whole, still serfs; the inhabitant of Illyria and the Tyrol is poor. There are parts, indeed, of all these pro- vinces where the land is better cultivated, and the peasants more free and opulent. Hanna, in Moravia, is celebrated for this, so is Zips, in Hungary; Saxonland, in Transylvania; Eger- thal, in IJohemia; and many rich Alpine valleys, are also remarkable exceptions. Neither ought we to. pity or despise the peasants of other parts of the monarchy as mere slaves, without duly estimating many alleviating circumstances. To take them all in all, however, it is not less cer- tain that the peasants of the Danube, in refer- ence to mental cultivation, solidity of character; firmness of position, and a recognition of their rights as men, surpass the majority of their fellow-subjects, as far as they do in agricultural knowledge and opulence. Among the richest and best known are those in the neighbourhood of St. Florian's Abbey. Some of them, indeed, are so distinguished, as to have had the honour, more than once, of receiving their emperor, and one of these is the much-talked-of " Meier in der Tann." Accompanied by a guide from the Abbey, I made my way, by a narrow footpath, through beautiful woods, over luxuriant mea- dows, and through well-cultivated fields and orchards to the farms of this wealthy peasant. The Florian and Austrian peasants in general, although more those above than below the Ens, live more frequently in solitary farm-houses in the midst of their lands, than in villages. " The peasants have all a double name; in the first place, a famdy name which is inherited by their childreu, and secondly, one as possessor of the farm, which parses to their successors only. These ofllcial names are no doubt extremely old, as old perhaps as the farms themselves. "Lehner, in Fohrenbach." "Meier im leeren Busch." "Zehnter, nearGommering." "Meier inderTann." "TheSchildhuber." "TheDin- delhuber," and the entire name of such a peasant sounds quite long and stately; for example, "John Plass, Meier in der Tann," "Joseph Fira- berger, the Schildhuber." In ordinary life the designation from the land is mitch mo.-e usual than the family name. It is more usual to say "the Schildhuber was here to day," than "Jo- seph Fimbeiger was here." The women are generally called by the family name, but in a manner differing from ours. A feminine ter- mination is attached, as xVIaria Fiinbergerm. the Moserm, instead of Frau Fimbeiger, Frau Moser, as we should say. " Meier in der Tann, ah, he has a house like a castle," said every one to me, and in fact the majority of these great farmhouses are built like castles -with four wings forming a quadrangle. The foot-pas- senger enters the dwelling-house in one wing by a narrow doorway, and the loaded wagons enter at another through a wider gate, and drive into the inner court. The stabling, cartsheds, grana- ries, barns, &c., are in the other wings. The building has two stories and has a stately exte- rior. 'I'he house is well furnished with pious sentences over the doors, both within and with- out, and all the household utensils down to the plates, are garnished with verses and passages from the Bible. At the house of " Meier in der Tann," I found a flour-sack, speaking in the fir-st person, and where we less poetical North Ger- mans would have placed simply a stamp, or have contented ourselves with the name, Fritz Meier, the flour-sack had it: " Bp it known to pvpry man 1 belong 10 Meier iu itie Tann " The principal chamber in the house is called " Meier's room." It is the itsual place of assem- bly of the members of the family, and also the eating-room; here the women sit at their spin- ning in the winter, or at au}"^ other of the minor domestic occupations. Near it are the bed- chambers of the heads of the family and their children, and opposite, on the other side of the passage those of the maids and the men. " Meier in der Tann" has, moreover, his private room of business. On the second story were the best rooms for guests, and the store-rooms. In these " Sunday rooms" many have the portraits of their proge- nitors. Those of " Meier in der Tann," were all clothed from head to foot in raven-black, and looked like so many Venetian nobles. Here are always a number of beds with magnificent mountains of feathers and gay-coloured quilts, for any visitors who may happen to come. In these "Sunday rooms," in presses, chests, and drawers, the bridal finery, the treasures of linen, metal, and the holiday clothes of the wife, a black spencer, a black silk kiitel (so they call the best gown), and a pretty cap of otter-skin, surmounted by a star of pearls, are all stowed away, all things which in form and material re- mind us of Bavaria, whence there is little doubt this part of Austria was colonized. Then there is the kasfl (room) for fruit, in which are kept whole chests full of dried apples, pears, and plums; and a harness-room, where the abun- dance, order, and simple ornament, please more than all the brilliant show and rigid accuracy of a suite of royal stables. In many peasants' houses in this part of the country, there are not less than forty rooms. The most celebrated race of horses in all the countries between Munich and Vienna, south of the Danube, is the Finzgauer. These are large, magnificent animals, brought here as coUs, and reared on the fine meadows of the Danube.- They are used awhile for agricultural labours, and then sent to Vienna, where these huge ani- mals are met with in the service of the butchers and brewers. The stock of horned cattle on the Danube is constantly supplied from the mountain pastures, where the breeding of cattle is often the only KOHL'S AUSTRIA. 67 possible occupation. From Pinzgau, Pongau, and the Styrian Alps, the cattle descend to the plains to fill up the gaps made by death and the butcher, and which the smaller cattle production of the plains cannot sufficiently su])ply. The most remarkable of the arrangements for stall- fed animals are the pigsties. The lodgings for swine iji Austria are lofty spaces filled Avith long rows of chests, shut in on all sides, and left open at the top. Each of these chests is the dwell- ing-place of a pig. In general they are made of thick beams, but some of the richer fanners have them of solid smooth hewn blocks of free- stone.' Every pig has his food in his own stall. In this manner each animal enjoys constantly fresh air, and yet is closely enough shut up to gfrow fat at his leisure. This system of solitary confinement protects them from each other, and the greatest cleanliness is preserved among these unclean brutes. More perfect swinish ac- commodations, are not, I believe, to be found in Europe. Circe could have had no better for Ulysses and his companions. The cider presses in an Austrian farmhouse are also worth seeing. The vine is not culti- vated ill Upper Austria, but cider is made on a verj' large scale, and an intoxicating drink is prepared irom pears as well as apples. The fruit is first crushed under a large stone, put in mo- tion by a horse, and is then put into the presses to complete the operation. In a large household there are sometimes ten or twelve such presses. Little as we esteem diis acid beverage, it is here an absolute necessity, and " Zehnter im Gom- mering," or " Meier im leeren Busch" would lose all his men-servants to-morrow, if they did not get tlieir due portion of" apple wine." Fur- ther up the Danube, in the land of beer-drinking Bavarians, the use of cider declines. Lower down the river the sour Austrian wine comes into use, and further on the sweet Hungarian. "Meier in der Tann," including his children, has not less than forty people in his house. He related to me many anecdotes of the emperor Francis and the archduke Maximilian, who had often stopped at his house. His wife and chil- dren, in the mean time, were making dumplings for the morrou-^s holiday. Strict order and dis- cipline were kept in the house, and behind the picture of the Saviour, on the wall, I saw stuck up that educational auxiliary which we gene- rally hide behind the piece of furniture that re- peats to us daily and hourly, the most agreeable, or disagreeable, truths. As "Meier in der Tann" accompanied me over his farmyard, and showed me his abun- dance of good things, I said to him, " You sell this rich produce in the city, no doubt?" " Nay," was his answer, "why should I sell it in the city"! I can eat it myself; it is better so." I afterwards learnt that this was a usual answer of the wealthy Austrian peasants to such ques- tions. "I can use it myself, it's better so." Two blooming, goodhumoured children ac- companied us, and gave me a friendly "God be ■with you, God be with you," when -we reached the great trees surrounding the 3'ard (every one of tile yards, as usual, was surrounded with old trees); which I acknowledged in the same style, and returned to Edelsberg through all the rich lowlands, on which the rude, bleak mountain range casts down such black and envious looks. The richest peasant in Upper Austria is sup- posed to be Stedinger. I had occasion to visit him also, subsequently; but all these farms are as like each other as so many eggs. The personal service which the peasants are held to render to their superior lord, is trifling in real amount. It is, fur the most part, commuted for money. But the tithes, which are levied by the lords of the soil, the billeting of soldiers, the military conscription, to which the nobles are not subject, and the many imperial and seig- neurial taxes, press heavily on the peasants. As the land, however, is, on the whole, fertile, the people sober and diligent, and the law, despite its oppressive enactments, is administered in a spirit so favourable to the subject, that the em- peror Francis sometimes complained he could not obtain justice in his suits against his o-vvn peasants, agriculture, with 'all its disadvantages, is in the flourishing condition I have above described. An odd law prevails in this class — namely, that the farm descends to the youngest son in- stead of the eldest, on the death oi the father. It is supposed that by that time the elder sons are otherwise provided for, while the youngest may often need an inheritance. Witli us the more rational notion prevails that the eldest son, as the ablest and most natural guardian of the younger branches, must first be enabled to sup- ply efl'ectually the place of the parent. PUBLIC LIBRARY. ^ The water of the Danube is of the colour of aqua marine, that of the Rhine emerald green. The waters of the Danube are thick, those of the Rhine transparent; the colour of the former may probably be aflected by the slime it brings with it, and which is of a milky green as if a quantity of serpentine stone dust were mingled with the quartz sand. This slime is deposited in the cold baths which are erected along the banks of the river. The waters of the Danube seemed to me much colder than those of the other great rivers of Germany, and a bath in its green waters is certainly one of the most re- freshing enjoyments that can be oflfered to the wearied body. I had just come out of such a one, and was taking my last walk through the stress of Linz, when I came upon the Bibliotheci publica of the Lyceum, whereon stands the beautiful Greek inscription, -iv-xni; l:nfi~om these cold northern bcmndaries of their beautiful land. Here, if anywhere on earth, the mutability of matter and the course of events may be admired. The eyebrows of the Danube are now smoothed beneath the hatchet and the plough; the fields are smiling under the fairest and richest cuhivation, and of the forests only so much remains as the painter would desire to preserve, in order to enrich and elevate the softer expression of the meadow and the corn- field. The forehead of Germany and what was its extreme frontier, are now the core of a great monarchy; the rejected stone is become the foun- dation and corner-stone of the builduig, for here lies the cradle of the Austrian monarchy. Strangers from all lands now come to gaze on the cities that have arisen round the Roman camp-station on the now smooth Fruns Ger- nimiia;, and the subilued back of the wild Isther. Years ago, the English and North Germans heeded not the inconveniences of the Danube navigation; but now, that the establishment of steamboats has increased the facilities ten or twenty fold, the river is visited even by those that dwell near it. Monks now wander from their cloister and gaze on these new wonders. Students throng from all parts, for now even their slender .purses suffioe for a voyage down. the Danube; employes, whose short leave of ab- sence did not formerly permit such excursions, now take their places, with their wives and children, in the handsome cabins, and float up and down the Danube under the protection of the public at large. In these days of steam- boats, people have found feet who had none be- fore, some have got seven-league boots who possessed before but ordinary shoes, purses have become fuller, and days longer. At six o'clock in the morning, on the fifth of August, the bell of the steamboat the Archduke Stephen, summoned its passengers, specimens of all the above-mentioned classes of society, crowded together. There were Englishmen who spoke not one word of German, monks with shaven crowns, ladies with children, whiskered Hungarians, Vienna dandies with eye-glasses instead of eyes in tlieir heads, Berlin travellers with Donnerwelter in their mouths, and many others laden with cloaks and wraps, liats and bandboxes, parasols and umbrellas, sticks, pipes, chests, and trunks. It was just such weather as according to the imagination of the Romans must generally have prevailed in KOHLS AUSTRIA. " nebulnsa Ger mania." A thick fog hung like an impenetrable veil over the Alpine chain, and hid the black and gold arabesque borders of the towers of Linz. From out the fog distilled a fine rain, which gradually increased, till we were threatened with a day to encliant all the snails and ducks in the country. We poor passengers who thronged the decks of the Archduke Stephen as thickly as the wild ducks did the reedy inlets of the Danube, crept like snails in sunshine under our mantles and umbrellas, while those who could find a place, took shelter in the cabins. The ^eantiful changes of scenery afforded by the city of Linz and its environs, round which the Danube sweeps almost in a semicircle, passed unnoticed by; indeed, as far as I was personally concerned, I could discern objects onlj'so far as the circumference of my umbrella reached, from whose extremity fell a heavy shower of drops, and my companions were more anxious about the light of their cigars, than the light of travelling inspiration. We were all deplorably dull and out of tune; and foresaw not what was preparing for us overhead, nor what a day was before us. At the very beginning of our journey, as I stepped from the bridge that led to the vessel, I had the good fortune to get such a thrust in the side from the trunk of one of the passengers, that I thanked God in silence for the elastic strength of my ribs. I say the good fortune, because the punch was such a hearty one, that the man was not content with the usual excusez or pardon, Mimsieiir, with which we usually satisfy ourselves on such occasions, but came to me again after he had stowed away his box, seized my hand, begged my pardon a thousand times, and inquired most anxiously whether I was hurt. Thus, among so rnany strangers, I suddenly found a friend, whom I might not have acquired for hours by the observance of the conventional ceremonies which condemn us so long to silence, until some unexpected occur- rence l)rings us nearer to each other. My new acquaintance was a man of business; he had followed the Danube in all its windings, and had lived from his youth upon its banks. M'hile he sat by me I allowed the useful to take precedence of the beautiful for a time, and took a lesson from him on the constitution of the bed of the Danube, and the course of traffic on its waters, and so long as the rain continues I will share with the reader the information I acquired. The Danube,hemmed in by mountains, flows by Linz in an unbroken stream. Below the city it begins to expand, embracing many large and smaller islands, and dividing into many arms, one of which may be considered the main artery. Thus it continues till it reaches the celebrated whirlpool near Grein, where all its waters, uniting in one channel, (low on majestically for forty miles, till they have worked their way throuQ;h the mountains and narrow passes near the city of Krems, and coming to level ground again, divide, forming arms and islands beyond Vienna. The condition of the water in this varying and sometimes obstructed course, and its consequent practicability for trade and navi- gation is very various, and hence many pecu- liar words descriptive of it have been invented, which are not known on other rivers. The main stream, which must offer the prin- cipal course of navigation, is called the " Nan- fuhrt" and the steersmen, who must know it accurately, and some of whom are alwa3's on board of the steamboats, are named Naufiirch, or Nuu guides. Tiie Nau channel undergoes little or no change in the narrow passes, but ia the neighbourhood of the islands, the furious rapidity of the cnrrent changes it very often; sometimes an arm of the stream, navigable be- forp, will close, and another open that was for- mer!}' quite impracticable. The larger branches are called arms, but the smaller ones are de- nominated "Rnnze," and they are distinguished again as great or little " liunze." The little creeks and broader expanses, which are often found shut in between the sandbanks and the islands, or peninsulas, are called lakes. Among these lakes a constant change is taking place; sometimes they burst their boundary, the stag- nant water becomes current, and the lake is again a "Rimze.'" The subsiding matter con- tained in the Danube, is called " Bach;^ries" " Sfronifrries," or " Schutt," The sandbanks formed by this '■'■grie/i" are not called sandbanks, but " Hciufen" or heaps. If these banks are formed not of sand, but of rock, and remain under the surface of the water, they are named in the Danube language Kuo^eln, or bullets, per- haps from the rounded forms of all these rocks. If these " Haiifen" rise high out of the water, and are overgrown with wood, they are called Alien, or meadows. These meadows, when covered with aspens, alders, poplars maples, willows, and shrubs of all kinds, atford cover for innumerable game; even stags are found there, while the lakes and Runze are thronged with waterfowl, wild ducks and geese, herons, cranes, plovers, and especially a bird called "fisher" by the people of the country. These meadows are often inundated in the course of the year. When the land has obtained such a height that it can be subjected to regular cultivation, the formation of the Danube island is completed. But all thi'' s formations are sub- ject to constant change. Now a sandbank is formed where before it was deep water; no\5' the stream is gnawing at an island it slowly raised centuries before. Here a huufe is raised to an "Au" or meadow, and overgrown with brush, which, in the course of time, changes to a wood, there man is turning to profit the first turf, which he hopes will one day become arable land. Promontories, peninsulas, and natural dikes are thrown together by the waves on one side, while, on the other, they are wearing away and destroying others, and thus the wild river- god tosses about in his procrustean bed, which he finds now too narrow, and now too spacious. Such places, where the water is undermining the shore, are called Bruchircsliille, or break- banks, and here the beavers of the Danube have their especial dwelling. By the shore {am Vftr) means a narrower part of the river where" the banks approach, and there is a ferry. The pa'^sage down the Danube is the " Nab- fahrt," that against the stream is the " Naii- fahrt."* The expressions mountain and valley passage, which are in use on the Rhine, are not Evident corruptions of hinah and hinaul. KOHL'S AUSTRIA. known here. An Austrian sailor whom I ques- tioned about it, answered — "Mountain and valley passage! nay we know nothing about such things here. How is that possible] How can we get over mountains and through valleys." For the " Nal/fa/ir(" the beforenamed Nau pilots are recjiiired; but when they are going against the stream, several vessels are usually fastened together. We often see two or three large and several smaller vessels so chained together, and such a flotilla, with the necessary team, is called a Ge^enfuhr, or countercourse. These countercourses often require from thirty to forty horses, and sometimes more. On every horse a man is mounted, and the whole squadron is commanded by an old experienced out-rider, called the Wnghals or Sfan«;enreiler (daredevil or pole-rider), because his baton of office is a long pole, with which he makes signals, and sounds the river. The other riders are called the " Yodels." The commands issued by the pole-rider, or which are issued to him from the ship, ai'e immediately repeated by the whole corps of " Yiidels," in a wild cry. The words of command are generally shortened to mere interjections, as " //o/ ho.'" (Halt, halt,) or " Lasse ha!" (Let them go on.) Scarcely has the pole-rider, or steersman from the ship, sent the sound slowly through the air, than it is taken up by forty throats, and forty whips, and four times forty hoofs, are arrested or set in motion. . The horses ridden by the " Yodck" are gene- rally Pinzgauer horses, but are all called Traun horses along this part of the Danube, perhaps because the greater number of the articles ex- ported from Pinzgau, find their way to the Danube through Traun valley. The roads on the banks of the Danube are often very bad; the great meadows and reedy islands are mostly swampy, hence artificial towing-paths for the horses are very necessary. The roads are named " Leinpfad" by the Rhine, and here, the " Huffschlug" or " Treppehueg." These " Treppelwegi" are sometimes on one side of the river, and <- unetimes on the other, and then a frequent halting, and shipping over of the horses becomes unavoidable. For the long tracts of i)assage where the banks are not passable, or where the " Naufahri" is very dis- tant from them, the horses must go into the water, and it may therefore be easily imagined how dangerous a service they and their "Yodels" have to perform. The large vessels that navigate this part of the Danube, are called " Hohenaue?:" They carry two thousand hundred weight of goods. JXext to them in importance, are the Kehlheimers. The Hohenauers go only down the river, and though larger, are worse built than the Kehlhei- mers, which pass both up and down. Then again there are the Gamsels and Flatten, and the Zilkn (boats). The latter, which are at- tached to the larger Hohenaner and Kehlheimer, are called supplements (iicbenhei). Again those vessels used to convey the "Yodels" and their horses to the other side, have their peculiar name, "■Schwemmer." A complete reform, at present, awaits the whole of the Danube shipping; in fact, it has already begun. The introduction of steam- vessels compels all manner of improvement. I shall have occasion, hereafter, to mention how even the ordinary vessels for the navigation of the river have begun to be constructed on a better plan than formerly. The Danube boatmen have a peculiar termi- nology for all natural appearances, objects, and accidents. A calm is the wind's holiday, (uvwrf- feier). The ship is "geivappf," they say, when the waves strike the sides and fill it with water, if it be too heavily laden, or when it is too strongly impelled by the " Yodels." But a book might be filled with these things. Enough for the useful; turn we now to the agreeable. The rain, which, in the bottomless depths of our despair, we had expected was about to spoil' our pleasure entirely, had already ceased. On the wings of steam, we were rapidly borne through the region of rain, and came to a part where all looked cheerful again. A bright sun descended on our dewy fields of cloaks, and drank up the moisture that rested on them and on the ringlets of the ladies. Steyeregg, the castle of old Khuenringer; Lichtenberg, the seat of the Starhembergs and Schallenbergs; Tillys- burg, the old fortress bestowed on his veteran general, Tilly, by the emperor Ferdinand; and Spielberg, the seat of the knights of Spielberg, and afterwards of the lords of Weissenwolf, with many other beautiful castles and villages, were lost to us; only thus much the rain had allowed us to observe, that the site of many of these was admirably adapted for pillage on the river. Spielberg, for instance, lies, like a beaver-village, behind the bushy meadows in the middle of the islands, close to the interior harbour of a "Runze," and had, by means of it, two water-passages to the Danube, so that many a stratagem of the lords of Spielberg may have been suggested by the position. The Rhine, which in that portion of it flowing between Mainz and Bonn, is so often com- pared to this part of the Danube, has nothing of this wild island-rneadow scenery. Many admire tlie Rhine the more for this want; but I must confess, their presence lent an addi- tional charm to the Danube in my eyes. These castles, hidden in the reeds — these islands, tenanted by a solitary fisherman — these widely- spreading river-veins, losing themselves awhile in the wilderness, and then again emerging, bright and clear, from the woods, to unite once more with the great slream (an island has, in itself, something poetical, and is an object that can scarcely be repeated too often) — in a word, all this vehement motion, and the almost ante- diluvian events recorded of the Danube, opposed to the rich cultivation, the historical associa- tions, and the picturesque views on its banks, form a contrast wholly wanting to the Rhine. There the cultivation is more striking, almost too striking; on the Danube, Nature is wilder — many will add, too wild. St!^ Peter's, in the meadows, Abelsberg, and Pulgarn, were lost to us by the rain. At the mouth of the Ens, on the frontier line between the two Archduchies, where the fine weather re- gion began, that picture-gallery first became visible, to whiih the "Naufahrt" of the Danube represented the corridor, and the deck of the steamboat the rolling chair. The first piece which presented itself was KOHL'S AUSTRIA. 71 kfauthausen, opposite the mouth of the Ens, Phe place is extremely old, and lies close to the bore, with a ruinous, tower-like castle in its acinity. Tiie antique houses crowded together n a few narrow streets, give us double plea- ure: first, as alibrdins picturesque objects, and hen on account of the pleasant reflection, that ve are not obliged to live in them. Behind the own rise the hills containing the celebrated tone-quarries, from which a beautiful kind of jranite has been long obtained, though at the ;ost of much labour, for the use of the ca])ital. in old German church (St. Nicholas's) rears its lead in the midst, and a flying bridge in the [►eground conveys passengers in the old, trou- )lesome fashion, over the animated stream. The teamboat stopped just long enough to catch hese scanty features of the landscape, and to )ut a beautiful Hungarian countess, and her yet airer daughters, into a boat. I had been long ejoicing in the sunshine of their aspect, when hey vanished with the view of Mauthausen, vhose foreground they so much embellished, rhey were going to pay a visit of some days at riuirheim, as they informed me. At the mouth of the Ens, opposite Mauthau- en, there is not much to be seen, as the stream tself flows through a low foreland, its own brmation, into the Danube. But there is the nore to be thought about; for, considered either n an historical or geographical point of view, t is certainly the most important and interest- ng spot between Linz and Vienna. I had often eilected on the importance of this Ens-embou- hure, and asked myself why the Austrians had nade their lands to lie on either side of the Ens, ather than on either side of the Danube. Wah ny map of the Danube country betbre me, I •ondered on the subject, and came to this con- tusion. 'J'he Danube, this mighty navigable river has )een the great electric conductor for all those na- ions whom the course of events brought within ts territory. They clung to it as the main ar- ery of their life, and spread themselves from ts shores on either side, as their various rela- ions permitted. Thus Hungary formed itself m boih sides of the Danube, so did Austria, Javaria, and Swabia, like pearls on one string. \.bove and below the stream also, the various ribes settled on its tributaries, the Iller, the Inn, Vt archil up theTa ongitudinally by the Danube, into many portions; he tribes made these streams their boundaries, ind enclosed their territory as these natural divi- ions prescribed. Thus the Iller sepa