THE CHARM OF VIENNA.
THE- farewell eulogy of Vienna uttered by Mark Twain before leaving that city is not undeserved. Indeed, one might go much further and say that it is well deserved. If we take the capitals of Europe to-day we must, after weighing the claims of each, put Vienna first as combining more than any other the advantages which appeal to a cultivated-man. Rome is of course unique, the "city of the soul" for all time, where a man may never weary of exploring and of meditating on things human and divine. But as an every-day residence, Rome is a different place from the wonderful position she occupies as a world-city. Her climate is trying for a con- siderable part of the year ; and though her death-rate has been immensely decreased by modern improvements, one would scarcely go there for health. Her intellectual life is not at a high level, her fashionable salons have the note of a superficial and routine frivolity. There is not a good theatre in Rome, the opera flourishes there for only a few weeks, the music generally is not striking. As for Paris, we all want to go there now and then, and we should many of us agree with Lord Dufferin that it is, in a sense, a sacred city of art and literature and esprit, with a generally diffused intelligence which probably excels that of any city, Athens excepted, that has ever existed. Paris is also unique, but do we want to live there always 1 Is there not too much excitement, too much noise, is not the world too much with us We may say the same of London, with the added dis- advantage that the huge size of the latter and its incredible areas of "mean streets" exert a depressing effect on the mind. Berlin and Madrid are out of the question ; nobody would care to settle in either ; and St. Petersburg is even more impossible. The smaller capitals are far more captivating, especially those two most charming cities, Stockholm and Copenhagen, both home-like but both beautiful. But we think, if a modern cultivated man looked all round the various cities of Europe, he would be inclined to fix on Vienna as combining the greatest variety of charm and interest, and as being the most desirable of European capitals.
Both history and Nature have contributed to Vienna's charm. It is an old city ; Marcus Aurelius died there. It has been a Kaiserstadt or "Imperial city" for centuries. It is no upstart like Berlin ; it has a certain grandeur, if not that of Rome, then that of Milan or Ravenna. The seat of empire, it has also for centuries been a great ecclesiastical centre, as pro- claimed by its glorious church of St. Stephen. It has wit- nessed one of the crowning episodes in European history, when John Sobieski raised the siege and finally delivered Western Christendom from the Turkish horde. One may stand to-day on the Calemberg and trace out the lines of that tremendous fight when gazg down on the city at one's feet. Whatever one may think of certain phases of Austrian politics, even though one goes the length of FreeMan's somewhat pedantic diatribes against Austria, one must admit to oneself as one surveys the city that there is nothing mean here, that an element of grandeur shines through and redeems Vienna from that ever-besetting weakness of our age,—the commonplace. Nature has done as much for Vienna as history. With the exception of the country towards Moravia, one cannot quit Vienna without finding beauty on every side. From Budapest, from Linz, above all from Trieste when one passes over the Semmering, it is all beautiful. Such suburbs can be found in no other European city. Within half a dozen miles of the Graben you can be in lovely sylvan solitudes. On the Semmering route you can be in a charming hotel several thousands of feet above the sea, surrounded by forests of pines and birches, within two and a half hours ; you will hear no sounds but those of Nature, you will breathe an atmosphere every breath of which is luxury, and you will find the most delicious mountain water in Europe. The pretty villas one finds nestling amid trees and at the edges of luxuriant plantations as one rolls into Vienna by train can scarcely be matched for beauty of situation in any city of the world. We admit that the distance of the Danube is a disadvantage. Most people expect to find it coursing through Vienna, and are disappointed. You get out of your large Danube steamer if you approach the city by water, and enter a crowded little boat, which takes you up the canal to Franz Josef's Quai, and you find that the only piece of water in Vienna is a mere canal. But if you have plenty of time for that spacious and noble park, the Prater, and choose to explore its wilder and more remote recesses, you can come almost plump on the Danube, and note the effect of the proximity of the noblest park and the noblest river in Western Europe.
If Vienna is interesting by reason of history and scenery, its charm is certainly enhanced by its varied and stately archi- tnture. Haussmannised Paris looked very billliant a genera: tion ago, but it is a little faded and rather monotonous today But Vienna is varied ; she has many specimens of noble archi- tecture to show, and her new thoroughfares and squares show them with an effect almost, if not quite, unrivalled. What finer municipal building than her palatial Rathhaus has ever been reared, alike as to details and general effect One thinks of the Mansion House and the dingy building where the London County Council is housed, and blushes. Even the Manchester or Birmingham municipal buildings are shabby and common- place after this. The Reichsrath building is perhaps not so successful, yet its fine Greek lines and general treatment please us the more we examine them. The Votive Church is the most perfect and successful of modern Gothic buildings, and the fine square in which it stands is worthy of it. The Hofburg Theatre is so magnificent that it is impossible to mention any other theatre in the world alongside it ; such a collection of marbles in such perfect taste cannot be found elsewhere ; the Paris Opera House is merely gaudy and meretricious when compared with this superb temple of art. How massive, too, is the new Hofburg Palace right in the centre of the Kaiserstadt, symbol of the Empire, and at the same time a reminder, sad enough, of the tragic fate of the woman for whom it was mainly designed. Where else in Europe can such a collection of splendid buildings be found l Where can you find elsewhere such noble piles as are here devoted, alongside these grand edifices, to private apartments, cafes, beautiful shops with brit-h-bmc and vertu ? It is an education to live among such places. And then the immense spaces and the perpetual greenery ; the Rathhaus is embowered in trees, the bees are humming among the limes in the very heart of the old Imperial city. If we walk through the Hofburg into the old city Clustering round the Graben, we shall see within a tiny crowded space the brightest shops (and even philosophers cannot despise shop-windows) erected in some of the most original specimens of street architecture in the world. No one who has seen the recent architectural additions to the Rothensturm-strasse, for instance, and who has compared them with analogous buildings in London, Paris, or Berlin, will doubt this. Vienna has combined in her new street architecture the picturesque element of the Middle Ages with the brightness and profuse adornment and con- venience of modern times.
And if we turn to things of the mind and soul, how wondrously is the charm of Vienna raised. The glorious picture gallery, a jewel in so noble a casket, with its great groups of Titians and Carpaccios, its specimens of Giorgione, of Velazquez, its Vandycks and Rubenses ; the Opera House, first in the world, where all the year round, save for one month, you hear the finest opera, sung by the best artists, in the greatest comfort and at the most moderate prices. The military bands which play in warm weather in the Prater are the very best of their kind, and there is always good music going on in every part of Vienna. The Volks-Theater, too, is an almost unique institution which one would be only too glad to see reproduced in London. One feels one is in a city of art, of culture, of refinement, German, it is true, but with a careless and gracious ease rather foreign to North Germany, and while German, still a meeting-place for East and West. No man endowed with what our ancestors called " sensi- bility" can fail to find perpetual charm in Vienna, though he may, it is true, find the climate a little trying. But perfection is not for mortals, and one takes the varied delights of Vienna with a grateful heart.
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