Part 14
The women that run about the town, mean time, take the nearest way to be warm, wrapping themselves up in cloth clothes, like so many fishermen at the mouth of the Humber, and wear a sort of rug cap grossly unbecoming. But too great an attention to convenience disgusts as surely as too little; and while a Venetian wench apparently seeks only to captivate the contrary sex, these German girls as plainly proclaim their resolution not to sacrifice a grain of personal comfort for the pleasure of pleasing all the men alive.
How truly hateful are extremes of every thing each day’s experience convinces; from superstition and infidelity, down to the Fribble and the Brute, one’s heart abhors the folly of reversing wrong to look for right, which lives only in the middle way; and Solomon, the wisest man of any age or nation, places the sovereign good in mediocrity of every thing, moral, political, and religious.
With this good axiom of _nequid nimis_[48] in our mouths and minds, we should not perhaps have driven so very hard; but a less effort would have detained us longer from the finest object I almost ever saw; the sun rising between six and seven o’clock upon the plains of Munich, and discovering to our soothed sight a lovely champain country, such as might be called a flat I fear, by those who were not like us accustomed to a hilly one; but after four-and-twenty hours passed among the Alps, I feel sincerely rejoiced to quit the clouds and get upon a level with human creatures, leaving the goats and chamois to delight as they do in bounding from rock to rock, with an agility that amazes one.
Our weather continuing particularly fine, it was curious to watch one picturesque beauty changing for another as we drove along; for no sooner were the rich vineyards and small inclosures left behind, than large pasture lands filled with feeding or reposing cattle, cows, oxen, horses, fifty in a field perhaps, presented to our eyes an object they had not contemplated for two years before, and revived ideas of England, which had long lain buried under Italian fertility.
Instead of lying down to rest, having heard we had friends at the same inn, we ran with them to see the picture gallery, more for the sake of doing again what we had once done before at Paris with the same agreeable company, than with any hope of entertainment, which however upon trial was found by no means deficient. Had there been no more than the glow of colouring which results from the sight of so many Flemish pictures at once, it must have struck one forcibly; but the murder of the Innocents by Rubens, a great performance, gave me an opportunity of observing the different ways by which that great master, Guido Rheni, and Le Brun, lay hold of the human heart. The difference does not however appear to me inspired at all by what we term national character; for the inhabitants of Germany are reckoned slow to anger, and of phlegmatic dispositions, while a Frenchman is accounted light and airy in his ideas, an Italian fiery and revengeful. Yet Rubens’s principal figure follows the ruffian who has seized her child, and with a countenance at once exciting and expressive of horror, endeavours, and almost arrives at tearing both his eyes out. One actually sees the fellow struggling between his efforts to hold the infant fast, and yet rid himself of the mother, while blood and anguish apparently follow the impression her nails are making in the tenderest parts of his face. Guido, on the contrary, in one of the churches at Bologna, exhibits a beautiful young creature of no mean rank, elegant in her affliction, and lovely in her distress, sitting with folded arms upon the fore-ground, contemplating the cold corpse of her murdered baby; his nurse wringing her hands beside them, while crowds of distracted parents fill the perspective, and the executioners themselves appear to pay unwilling obedience to their inhuman king, who is seen animating them himself from the top of a distant tower.--Le Brun mean time, with more imagination and sublimity than either, makes even brute animals seem sensible, and shudder at a scene so dreadful; while the very horses who should bear the cruel prince over the theatre of his crimes, snort and tremble, and turning away with uncontrollable fury, refuse by trampling in their blood to violate such injured innocence!--Enough of this.
The patient German is seen in all they shew us, from the painting of Brughuel to the music of Haydn. A friend here who speaks good Italian shewed us a collection of rarities, among which was a picture formed of butterflies wings; and a set of boxes one within another, till my eyes were tired with trying to discern, and the patience of my companions was wearied with counting them, when the number passed seventy-three: this amusement has at least the grace of novelty to recommend it. I had not formed to myself an idea of such unmeaning, such tasteless, yet truly elaborate nicety of workmanship, as may be found in the Elector’s chapel, where every relic reposes in some frame, enamelled and adorned with a minuteness of attention and delicacy of manual operation that astonishes. The prodigious quantity of these gold or ivory figures, finished so as to require a man’s whole life to each of them, are of immense value in their way at least, and fill one’s mind with a sort of petty and frivolous wonder totally unexperienced till now, bringing to one’s recollection every hour Pope’s famous line--
Lo! what huge heaps of littleness around!
The contrast between this chapel and Cappella Borghese never left my fancy for a moment: but if the cost of these curious trifles caused my continued surprise, how was that surprise increased by observing the bed-chamber of the Elector; where they told us that no less than one hundred thousand pounds sterling were buried under loads of gold tissue, red velvet, and old-fashioned carved work, without the merit even of an attempt towards elegance or taste?
Nimphenbourg palace and gardens reminded me of English gardening forty years ago, while--
Grove nods at grove, each alley has a brother, And half the platform just reflects the other.
I do think I can recollect going with my parents and friends to see Lord Royston’s seat at Wrest, when we lived in Hertfordshire, in the year 1750; and it was just such a place as Nimphenbourg is at this day. Now for some just praise: every thing is kept so neat here, so clean, so sweet, so comfortably nice, that it is a real pleasure somehow either to go out in this town or stay at home: the public baths are delicious; the private rooms with boarded floors, all swept, and brushed, and dusted, that not a cobweb can be seen in Munich, except one kept for a rarity, with the Virgin and Child worked in it, and wrought to such an unrivalled pitch of delicate fineness, that till we held it up to the light no naked eye could discern the figures it contained, till a microscope soon discovered the skill and patience requisite to its production;--great pains indeed, and little effect! We have left the country where things were exactly the reverse,--great effect, and little pains! But it is the same in every thing.
The women’s scrupulous attention to keep their persons clear from dirt, makes their faces look doubly fair; their complexions have quite a lustre upon them, like some of our wenches in the West of England, whose transparent skins shew, by the motion of the blood beneath, an illuminated countenance that stands in the place of eye-language, and betrays the sentiments of the innocent heart with uncontrolable sincerity. These girls however will not be found to attract or retain lovers, like an Italian, whose black eyes and white teeth (though their possessor thinks no more of cleaning the last-named beauty than the first) tell her mind clearly, and with little pains again produce certain and strong effect. Our stiff gold-stuff cap here too, as round, as hard, and as heavy as an old Japan China bason, and not very unlike one, is by no means favourable to the face, as it is clapped close round the head, the hair combed all smooth out of sight, and a plaited border of lace to it made firm with double-sprigged wire; giving its wearer all the hardness and prim look of a Quaker, without that idea of simplicity which in their dress compensates for the absence of every ornament.
The gentlemen’s _maniere de s’ajuster_ is to me equally striking: an old nobleman who takes delight in shewing us the glories of his little court (where I have a notion he himself holds some honourable office) came to dine with us yesterday in a dressed coat of fine, clean, white broad-cloth, laced all down with gold, and lined with crimson sattin, of which likewise the waistcoat was made, and laced about with a narrower lace, but pretty broad too; so that I thought I saw the very coat my father went in to the old king’s birth-day five and thirty years ago. There is more stateliness too and ceremonious manners in the conversation of this gentleman, and the friends he introduced us to, than I have of late been accustomed to; and they fatigue one with long, dry, uninteresting narratives. The innkeepers are honest, but inflexible; the servants silent and sullen; the postillions slow and inattentive; and every thing exhibits the reverse of what we have left behind.
The treasures of this little Elector are prodigious, his jewels superb; the Electress’s pearls are superior in size and regularity to those at Loretto, but that distinguished by the name of the “Pearl of the Palatinate” is surely incomparable, and, as such, always carried to the election of a new Emperor, when each brings his finest possession in his hand, like the Princess of Babylon’s wooers,--which was perhaps meant by Voltaire as a joke upon the custom. This pearl is about the bigness and shape of a very fine filberd, the upper part or cap of it jet black, smooth and perfectly beautiful; _it is unique in the known world_.
Our Prince’s dinner here is announced by the sound of drums and trumpets, and he has always a concert playing while he dines: pomp is at this place indeed so artfully substituted instead of general consequence, that while one remains here one scarcely feels aware how little any one but his own courtiers can be thinking about the Elector of Bavaria; but ceremony is of most use where there is least importance, and glitter best hides the want of solidity.
From Munich to Saltzbourg nothing can exceed the beauties of the country; whole woods, and we may say forests, of ever-green timber, keep all idea of winter kindly at a distance: the road lies through these elegantly-varied thickets, which sometimes are formed of cedars, often of foxtailed pines, while a pale larch sometimes, and gloomy cypress, hinder the verdure from being too monotonous; here are likewise mingled among them some oak and beech of a majestic size. Nor do our prospects want that dignity which mountains alone can bestow; those which separate Bavaria from Hungary are high, and of considerable extent; a long range they are of bulky fortifications, behind which I am informed the country is far coarser than here.
The cathedral at Saltzbourg is modern, built upon the model of St. Peter’s at Rome, but on a small scale: one now sees how few the defects are of that astonishing pile, though brought close to one’s eye, by being stript of the awful magnitude that kept examination at a distance. The musical bells remind me of those at Bath, and every thing here seems, as at Bath, the work of this present century; but there is a Benedictine convent seated on the top of a hill above the town, of exceeding antiquity, founded before the conquest of England by William the Norman; under which lie its founder and protectors, the old Dukes of Bavaria; which they are happy to shew travellers, with the registered account of their young Prince _Adam_, who came over to our island with William, and gained a settlement: they were pleased when I proved to them, that his blood was not yet wholly extinct among us.
A fever hindered us here from looking at the salt-works, from which the city takes its name: but the water-works at Heelbrun pleased us for a moment; and I never saw beavers live so happily as with the Archbishop of Saltzbourg, who suffers, and even encourages, his tame ones to dig, and build, and amuse themselves their own way: he has fish too which eat out of his hand, and are not carp, but I do not know what they are; my want of language distracts me. These German streams appear to us particularly pellucid, and, by what I can gather from the people, this water never freezes. The taste of gardening seems just what ours was in England before Stowe was planned, and they divert you now with puppets moved by concealed machinery, as I recollect their doing at places round London, called the Spaniard at Hampstead and Don Saltero’s at Chelsea.
The Prince Archbishop’s income is from three to four hundred thousand a year I understand, and he spends it among his subjects, who half adore him. His chief delight is in brute animals they tell me, particularly horses, which engross so much of his attention that he keeps one hundred and seventeen for his own private and personal use, of various merits, beauties, and pedigrees; never surely was so elegant, so capital a stud! And he is singularly fond of a breed of fine silky-haired English setting-dogs, red and white, and very high upon their legs.
The country which carried us forward to Vienna is eminently fine, and fine in a way that is now once more grown new to me; no hedges here, no small inclosures at all; but rich land, lying like as in Dorsetshire, divided into arable and pasture grounds, clumped about with woods of ever-green. Such is the genius of this sovereign for English manners and English agriculture, that no conversation is said to be more welcome at his court than what relates to the sports or profits of the field in Britain; to which accounts he listens with good-humoured earnestness, and talks of a fine scenting day with the true taste of an English country gentleman.
On this day I first saw the Danube at Lintz, where, though but just burst from the spring, it is already so deep and strong that scarcely any wooden bridge is capable to resist it, and accordingly it did a few months ago overwhelm many cottages and fields, among which we passed. The inhabitants here call it _Donaw_ from its swiftness; and it deserves beside, any name expressive of that singular purity which distinguishes the German torrents.
The rivers of France, Italy, and England, give one no idea of that elemental perfection found in the fluids here; not a pebble, not a fish in these translucent streams, but may be discerned to a depth of twelve feet. As the water in Germany, so is the atmosphere in Italy, a medium so little obstructed by vapour I remember, that Vesuvius looked as near to Naples, from our window, as does lord Lisburne’s park from the little town of Exmouth opposite, a distance of about five miles I believe, and the other is near ten. Let me add, that this peculiarity brings every object forward with a certain degree of hardness not wholly pleasing to the eye. The prospects round Naples have another fault, resulting from too great perfection: the sky’s brilliant uniformity, and utter cloudlessness for many months together, takes away those broad masses of light and shade, with the volant shadows that cross our British hills, relieving the sight, and discriminating the landscape.
The scenery round Conway Castle in North Wales, with a thunder-storm rolling over the mountain; the sea strongly illuminated on one side, with the sun shining bright upon the verdure on the other; the lights dropping in patches about one; exhibits a variety, the which to equal will be very difficult, let us travel as far as we please.
Magnificence of a far different kind however claims our present attention--a convent and church shewn us at Molcke upon our way, the residence of eighteen friars who inhabit a stately palace it is confessed, while three immense courts precede your entrance to a splendid structure of enormous size, on which the finery bestowed amazed even me, who came from Rome; nor had entertained an idea of seeing such gilding, and carving, and profusion of expence, lavished on a place of religious retirement in our road to
VIENNA.
We entered the capital by night; but I fancied, perhaps from having been told so, that I saw something like a look of London round me. Apartments furnished wholly in the Paris taste take off that look a little; so do the public walks and drives which are formed etoile-wise, and moving slowly up and down the avenues, you see large stags, wild boars, &c. grazing at liberty: this is grander than our park, and graver than the Corso. Whenever they lay out a piece of water in this country, it is covered as in ours with swans, who have completely quitted the odoriferous Po for the clear and rapid Danube.
Vienna was not likely to strike one with its churches; yet the old cathedral is majestic, and by no means stript of those ornaments which, while one sect of Christians think it particularly pleasing in the sight of God to retain, is hardly warrantable in another sect, though wiser, to be over-hasty in tearing away. Here are however many devotional figures and chapels left in the streets I see, which, from the tales told in Austrian Lombardy, one had little reason to expect; but the emperor is tender even to the foibles of his Viennese subjects, while he shews little feeling to Italian misery. Men drawing carts along the roads and street afford, indeed, somewhat an awkward proof the government’s lenity when human creatures are levelled with the beasts of burden, and called _stott eisel_, or _stout asses_, as I understand, who by this information have learned that the frame which supports a picture is for the same reason called an _eisel_, as we call a thing to hang clothes on a _horse_. It is the genius of the German language to degrade all our English words somehow: they call a coach a _waggon_, and ask a lady if she will buy pomatum to _smear_ her hair with. Such is however the resemblance between their tongue and ours, that the Italians protest they cannot separate either the ideas or the words.
I must mention our going to the post-office with a Venetian friend to look for letters, where, after receiving some surly replies from the people who attended there, our laquais de place reminded my male companions that they should stand _uncovered_. Finding them however somewhat dilatory in their obedience, a rough fellow snatched the hat from one of their heads, saying, “_Don’t you know, Sir, that you are standing before the emperor’s officers?_”--“_I know_,” replied the prompt Italian, “_that we are come to a country where people wear their hats in the church, so need not wonder we are bid to take them off in the post-office_.” Well, where rulers are said or supposed to be tyrannical, it is rational that good provision should be made for arms; otherwise despotism dwindles into nugatory pompousness and airy show; Prospero’s empire in the enchanted island of Shakespeare is not more shadowy than the sight of princedom united with impotence of power:--such have I seen, but such is not the character of Keysar’s dominion. The arsenal here is the finest thing in the world I suppose; it grieved me to feel the ideas of London and Venice fade before it so; but the enormous size and solidity of the quadrangle, the quantity and disposition of the cannon, bombs, and mortars, filled my mind with enforced respect, and shook my nerves with the thought of what might follow such dreadful preparation.
Nothing can in fact be grander than the sight of the Austrian eagle, all made out in arms, eight ancient heroes sternly frowning round it. The choice has fallen on Cæsar, Pompey, Alexander, Scipio, Hannibal, Fabius Maximus, Cyrus, and Themistocles. I should have thought Pyrrhus worthier the company of all the rest than this last-named hero; but petty criticisms are much less worthy a place in Vienna’s arsenal, which impresses one with a very majestic idea of Imperial greatness.
On the first of November we tried at an excursion into Hungary, where we meant to have surveyed the Danube in all its dignity at Presburgh, and have heard Hayden at Estherhazie. But my being unluckily taken ill, prevented us from prosecuting our journey further than a wretched village, where I was laid up with a fever, and disappointed my company of much hoped-for entertainment. It was curious however to find one’s self within a few posts of the places one had read so much of; and the words _Route de Belgrade_ upon a finger-post gave me sensations of distance never felt before. The comfortable sight of a protestant chapel near me made much amends however. The officiating priests were of the Moravian sect it seems, and dear Mr. Hutton’s image rushed upon my mind. A burial passing by my windows, struck me as very extraordinary: not one follower or even bearer being dressed in black, but all with green robes trimmed with dark brown furs, not robes neither; but like long coats down to the men’s heels, cut in skirts, and trimmed up those skirts as well as round the bottom with fur.
It was a melancholy country that we passed through, very bleak and dismal, and I trust would not have mended upon us had we gone further. The few people one sees are all ignorant, and can all speak Latin--such as it is--very fluently. I have lived with many very knowing people who never could speak it with any fluency at all. Such is life!--and such is learning! I long to talk about the sheep and swine: they seem very worthy of observation; the latter large and finely shaped, of the old savage race; one fancies them like those Eumæus tended, and perhaps they are so; with tusks of singular beauty and whiteness, which the uniformly brown colour of the creature shews off to much advantage; amidst his dark curls, waving all over his high back and long sides, in the manner of a curl-pated baby in England, only that the last is commonly fair and blonde.
The sheep are spotted like our pigs, but prettier; black and yellow like a tortoise-shell cat, with horns as long as those of any he-goat I ever saw, but very different; these animals carrying them straight upright like an antelope, and they are of a spiral shape. Our mutton meantime is detestable; but here are incomparable fish, carp large as small Severn salmon, and they bring them to table cut in pounds, and the joul for a handsome dish. I only wonder one has never heard of any ancient or any modern gluttons driving away to Presburg or Buda, for the sake of eating a fine Danube carp.
With regard to men and women in Hungary, they are not thickly scattered, but their lamentations are loud; the emperor having resumed all the privileges granted them by Maria Theresa in the year 1740, or thereabouts, when distress drove her to shelter in that country, and has prohibited the importation of salt herrings which used to come duty free from Amsterdam, so that their fasts are rendered incommodious from the asperity of the soil, which produces very little vegetable food.
Ground squirrels are frequent in the forests here; but without Pennant’s Synopsis I never remember the Linnæan names of quadrupeds, so can get no information of the animal called a glutton in English, whose skin I see in every fur-shop, and who, I fancy, inhabits our Hungarian woods.
The Imperial collection of pictures here is really a magnificent repository of Italian taste, Flemish colouring, and Dutch exactness: in which the Baptist, by Giulio Romano, the crucifixion by Vandyke, and the physician holding up a bottle to the light by Gerard Douw, are great examples.