encountered a table-d'hôte acquaintance who had been to Berchtesgaden and the König See, driven through the salt-mine, and had had altogether a perfect expedition on this day, when we had not had the courage to set off. Never mind! we had enjoyed our day.
We thought it wisest the next morning to renounce the König See, and pursue our way to Ischl by the Stell-wagen. We were fortunate enough to secure two places in the coupé, and I enjoyed greatly the quiet outlook, from my comfortable corner, on the changing landscape – green valley and hill and mountain; here and there a picturesque Tyrolese village, and once or twice a fine lake.
The greatest charm of charming Ischl is the crystal Traun, surely the purest of streams. Away again early the next morning in the coupé of the Stell-wagen, through a country more and more beautiful – high, woody mountains sloping steeply down to narrow, fertile, green valleys, the road winding amongst them so as to show a perpetual variety of graceful outlines where the sloping mountains met in the distance before us. As we approached the Gmunden See the masses became grander and more rocky, and the valley opened wider. It was Sunday, and when we left the Stell-wagen we found quite a crowd in Sunday clothes standing round the place of embarkation for the steamboat that was to take us along the lake. Gmunden is another pretty place at the head of the lake, but apart from this one advantage inferior to Ischl. We got on to the slowest of railways here, getting down at the station near the falls of the Traun, where we dined at the pleasant inn, and fed our eyes on the clear river again hurrying over the rocks. Behind the great fall there is a sort of inner chamber, where the water rushes perpetually over a stone altar. At the station, as we waited for the train, it began to rain, and the good-natured looking woman asked us to take shelter in her little station-house – a single room not more than eight feet square, where she lived with her husband and two little girls all the year round. The good couple looked more contented than half the well-lodged people in the world. He used to be a drozchky driver; and after that life of uncertain gains, which had many days quite penniless and therefore dinnerless, he found his present position quite a pleasant lot.
On to Linz, when the train came, gradually losing sight of the Tyrolean mountains and entering the great plain of the Danube. Our voyage the next day in the steamboat was unfortunate: we had incessant rain till we had passed all the finest parts of the banks. But when we had landed, the sun shone out brilliantly, and so our entrance into Vienna, through the long suburb, with perpetual shops and odd names (Prschka, for example, which a German in our omnibus thought not at all remarkable for consonants!) was quite cheerful. We made our way through the city and across the bridge to the Weissen Ross, which was full; so we went to the Drei Rosen, which received us. The sunshine was transient; it began to rain again when we went out to look at St. Stephen's, but the delight of seeing that glorious building could not be marred by a little rain. The tower of this church is worth going to Vienna to see.
The aspect of the city is that of an inferior Paris; the shops have an elegance that one sees nowhere else in Germany; the streets are clean, the houses tall and stately. The next morning we had a view of the town from the Belvedere Terrace; St. Stephen's sending its exquisite tower aloft from among an almost level forest of houses and inconspicuous churches. It is a magnificent collection of pictures at the Belvedere; but we were so unfortunate as only to be able to see them once, the gallery being shut up on the Wednesday; and so, many pictures have faded from my memory, even of those which I had time to distinguish. Titian's Danae was one that delighted us; besides this I remember Giorgione's Lucrezia Borgia, with the cruel, cruel eyes; the remarkable head of Christ; a proud Italian face in a red garment, I think by Correggio; and two heads by Denner, the most wonderful of all his wonderful heads that I have seen. There is an Ecce Homo by Titian which is thought highly of, and is splendid in composition and color, but the Christ is abject, the Pontius Pilate vulgar: amazing that they could have been painted by the same man who conceived and executed the Christo della Moneta! There are huge Veroneses, too, splendid and interesting.
The Liechtenstein collection we saw twice, and that remains with me much more distinctly – the room full of Rubens's history of Decius, more magnificent even than he usually is in color; then his glorious Assumption of the Virgin, and opposite to it the portraits of his two boys; the portrait of his lovely wife going to the bath with brown drapery round her; and the fine portraits by Vandyke, especially the pale, delicate face of Wallenstein, with blue eyes and pale auburn locks.
Another great pleasure we had at Vienna – next after the sight of St. Stephen's and the pictures – was a visit to Hyrtl, the anatomist, who showed us some of his wonderful preparations, showing the vascular and nervous systems in the lungs, liver, kidneys, and intestinal canal of various animals. He told us the deeply interesting story of the loss of his fortune in the Vienna revolution of '48. He was compelled by the revolutionists to attend on the wounded for three days' running. When at last he came to his house to change his clothes he found nothing but four bare walls! His fortune in Government bonds was burned along with the house, as well as all his precious collection of anatomical preparations, etc. He told us that since that great shock his nerves have been so susceptible that he sheds tears at the most trifling events, and has a depression of spirits which often keeps him silent for days. He only received a very slight sum from Government in compensation for his loss.
One evening we strolled in the Volksgarten and saw the "Theseus killing the Centaur," by Canova, which stands in a temple built for its reception. But the garden to be best remembered by us was that at Schönbrunn, a labyrinth of stately avenues with their terminal fountains. We amused ourselves for some time with the menagerie here, the lions especially, who lay in dignified sleepiness till the approach of feeding-time made them open eager eyes and pace impatiently about their dens.
We set off from Vienna in the evening with a family of Wallachians as our companions, one of whom, an elderly man, could speak no German, and began to address G. in Wallachian, as if that were the common language of all the earth. We managed to sleep enough for a night's rest, in spite of intense heat and our cramped positions, and arrived in very good condition at Prague in the fine morning.
Out we went after breakfast, that we might see as much as possible of the grand old city in one day; and our morning was occupied chiefly in walking about and getting views of striking exteriors. The most interesting things we saw were the Jewish burial-ground (the Alter Friedhof) and the old synagogue. The Friedhof is unique – with a wild growth of grass and shrubs and trees, and a multitude of quaint tombs in all sorts of positions, looking like the fragments of a great building, or as if they had been shaken by an earthquake. We saw a lovely dark-eyed Jewish child here, which we were glad to kiss in all its dirt. Then came the sombre old synagogue, with its smoked groins, and lamp forever burning. An intelligent Jew was our cicerone, and read us some Hebrew out of the precious old book of the law.
After dinner we took a carriage and went across the wonderful bridge of St. Jean Nepomuck, with its avenue of statues, towards the Radschin – an ugly, straight-lined building, but grand in effect from its magnificent site, on the summit of an eminence crowded with old, massive buildings. The view from this eminence is one of the most impressive in the world – perhaps as much from one's associations with Prague as from its visible grandeur and antiquity. The cathedral close to the Radschin is a melancholy object on the outside – left with unfinished sides like scars. The interior is rich, but sadly confused in its ornamentation, like so many of the grand old churches – hideous altars of bastard style disgracing exquisite Gothic columns – cruellest of all in St. Stephen's at Vienna!
We got our view from a Damen Stift5 (for ladies of family), founded by Maria Theresa, whose blond beauty looked down on us from a striking portrait. Close in front of us, sloping downwards, was a pleasant orchard; then came the river, with its long, long bridge and grand gateway; then the sober-colored city, with its surrounding plain and distant hills. In the evening we went to the theatre – a shabby, ugly building – and heard Spohr's Jessonda.
Dresden, 1858.
The
Charitable Institution for Ladies.
