CURRENT LITERATURE.
Journal of a Residence at Vienna and Berlin in the Winter, 1805-6. By the late Henry Reeve, M.D. Published by his Son. (Longraans.)— Dr. Reeve was in Vienna just before Austerlitz, and gives a very graphic picture of the state of things in that city. His account of the morals of the place is not flattering. "No city," he says, "can present such scenes of affected sanctity and real licentiousness." And he speaks of the manners of the upper class as being, in some respects, as gross as their morals were depraved. This is his portrait of Napoleon His countenance struck me as very remarkable, fuller, broader, and fatter than I had expected to have seen it, and his person stouter and older than usually represented. He has the usual marks of the sanguine-melancholic temperament, dark hair, dark small eyes, rather fixed than animated, and a very piercing countenance; the forehead high, nose somewhat Grecian rather than aquiline, the cheekbone and chin rather prominent." His picture of Fichte is not so creditable to his intelligence,—but physics are commonly impatient of metaphysics. Dr. Reeve had also the good-fortune to see there Haydn, Beethoven, and Meyerbeer. It is curious to find him complaining of the dearness of a hotel, where be was charged 4s. 6d. per day for two rooms. "Praeteritos referat si Jupiter annos !" It is interesting to read that the contribution demanded by the French after Austerlitz was not more than one hundred million francs, just a fiftieth part of what the Germans got out of France when their tarn came.
Previous page
