more sundays abroad. Still on tramp toward the south, we came to Dresden, and there rested five days; but as they were week-days their experiences gave us no insight into the Sunday usages of the place, and I only allude to them because it would seem unbecoming to pass the capital of Saxony without a word; and because I feel morally convinced that of all the art-wonders collected in the Zwinger, Das GrÜne GewÖlbe, and in the picture gallery, all of which we visited, not any of them are visible to the public on Sunday. “Yesterday (Sunday), we rambled through a part of the city known as Lerchenfeld, in the suburb of St. Joseph, where the low life of Vienna is exhibited. It was a kind of fair. The way was lined with petty booths and stalls, furnished with fruit, pipes, and common pastry. Here were sold live rabbits and birds; there, paper clock-faces, engravings, songs, and figures of saints. In one part was a succession of places of public resort, like our tea-gardens in appearance, but devoted to the sale of other beverages; tea being here almost unknown, except as a medicine. From each of them there streamed the mingled sounds of obstreperous music and human voices, while in several there appeared to be a sort of conjuring exhibition in course of performance. Further on, there came from the opposite side of the way the screaming of a flageolet, heard far above its accompaniment of a violin and a couple of horns, to all of which the shuffling and scraping of many feet formed a sort of dull bass, as the dancers whirled round in their interminable waltz. Looking into the window of the building thus outrageously conspicuous, we saw a motley crowd of persons of both sexes, and in such a variety of costumes as scarcely any other city but Vienna could furnish; some of “Continuing our course, we were attracted into a side-street by a crowd, among whom stood conspicuous a brass musical band, and an old man in a semi-religious costume of black and white, bearing a large wooden crucifix in his hand. In anticipation of some religious ceremony, we waited awhile to watch its development. It was a funeral, and the whole procession soon formed itself in the following order:—First came the large crucifix, then a boy bearing a banner on which was painted the figure of the Virgin; then came six other boys, followed by the same number of girls, all neatly and cleanly dressed; and then the coffin, hung with scarlet drapery, adorned with flowers, and having a small silver crucifix at its head. We were told it was the funeral of a girl of thirteen. Close upon the coffin came the minister, or priest, clad in a black, loosish gown, and wearing a curiously crown-shaped cap, also black. Every head was uncovered as he and the coffin passed. Then came, as we imagined, the real mourners of the dead, followed by six exceedingly old women, mourners by profession, and immediately behind them the brass band which had first attracted our attention. The latter, as soon as the procession was fairly in motion, burst forth into a noisy, and by no means melancholy strain, and continued to play for some time; they suddenly ceased, and there was heard from some one at the head of the procession a Latin prayer, which was immediately echoed by the old women in the rear, in the same drowsy, monotonous tone in which the church responses are usually made. The scene was altogether curious and striking; the progress of the procession was everywhere marked by uncovered heads and signs of sympathy and respect; but in spite of its attempted solemnity, there was a holiday appearance about it which jarred sadly with its real character of grief and death.” I have given this description a front place because it is the worst thing I can say of Vienna, and in no other part of the city did I ever see its like. During a stay of twelve months, I lost no opportunity of enjoying all that the Viennese enjoyed, or of witnessing whatever The jewellers in Vienna are not such elderly apprentices as they are in Hamburg, Leipsic, and the majority of small towns in Germany. They dine at gast haÜse, and sleep in the independence of a separate lodging. They have, therefore, more liberty; but there are many trades in Vienna among whom the old usages still exist, by which they become a kind of vassals, living and sleeping under the patriarchal roof. All worked twelve hours a-day alike, from six till seven, including one hour for dinner. Various licences were, however, allowed; quarter-of-day or half-hour deductions were scarcely known; and I have myself spent the morning at a public execution, without suffering any loss in wages. This brings me to the Sunday work; and I say, unhesitatingly that, as a system, it does not exist. I never worked on the Sunday myself during my whole twelve months’ stay. I do not know that there was any law against it; but rest was felt to be a necessity after a week of seventy-two hours’ labour. It is not unusual, both in Germany and France, to engage new hands on the Sunday morning, because it is a leisure time, convenient to both master and workman; and I have sought for work at this time, and found the Herr in a silk dressing-gown, and white satin slippers with pink bows. I recollect visiting a working cabinet-maker’s on one Sunday morning, whose men slept on the premises, and found the workshop a perfect model of cleanliness and order: every tool in its place, and the whole swept and polished up; and was once invited, under the impression that, as an Englishman, I ought to know something of newspaper presses, to inspect those of the Imperial Printing Office, with the last number of the Wiener Zeitung in type; and this was on a Sunday morning—a time especially chosen on account of the absence of the workmen. My landlord, a master-man, would sometimes work in the Sunday morning when hard pressed; but, if he did, he took his revenge in the week. As we did not work, at what did we play? Perhaps there was a It was lawful in Vienna to bathe on Sunday; and this we did, with great delight, in the public baths upon the Danube. Or we strolled about the Glacis; attended the miniature review in the Hof-Burg; wandered out as far as Am-Spitz, by the long wooden bridge over the broad and melancholy river; or, what was better, sauntered in some one of the beautiful gardens of the Austrian nobility,—those of Schwargenberg, Lichtenstein, or in the Belvidere—thrown open to the public, not only on Sunday, but on every day in the week. As the day waned, music burst forth in many strains at once. There was a knot of artisans in our back room, who were learning the entire “Czar and Zimmerman,” and who were very vigorous about this hour. At seven, the theatres opened their doors, with something of our own rush and press, although there was a guard-house, and a whole company of grenadiers in the ante-room; but, once in the interior, all was order and decorum. There was, of course, a difference in tone and character between the city and the suburban theatres, inasmuch as the ices and coffee of the court playhouses found their parallel in the beer and hot sausages of the Joseph Stadt and An-der-Wieden; but the performances of all rarely occupied more than two, and never exceeded three hours; and there was an amount of quiet and propriety manifested during the entertainment, which said something for the authorities, but more for the people. As the night deepened, the ball-rooms and dancing-booths of Vienna,—the Sperl’s, Das Tanz Salon beim Schaf, and so downward to the dens of Lerchenfeld—grew furious in music, and hysterical in waltz. It was something fearful. It made your eyes twinkle, To return to out-of-door amusements. A visit to Schoenbrun was business for a whole afternoon; for we must perforce each time unravel the windings to the pure spring in the maze, with vague and mysterious ideas of some time or other falling upon the grave of the Duc de Reichstadt, there secretly buried, according to popular tradition. On rare occasions we spent the whole of Sunday in some more distant palatial domain, or suburban retreat. In Klosterneuburgh, with its good wine: in the BrÜhl, with its rugged steeps, its military memorials, and ruined castles; at the village of Bertholdsdorf, with its Turkish traditions; among the viny slopes of the Leopoldiberg, or the more distant and wilder tract of mingled rock and forest which encircle the Vale of Helen. Above all, there was Laxenberg,—an imperial pleasure-palace and garden, and a whole fairy-land in itself, peopled by the spirits of ancient knights and courtly dames. Some one of the Hapsburgs had built, many years ago, a knightly castle on a lake, and in it were stored dim suits of armour of Maximilian; a cabinet of Wallenstein; grim portraits of kings and warriors; swords, halbards, jewelled daggers, and antique curiosities innumerable; only rather prosaically completed by the exhibition of the every-day suit of the last Emperor of Austria, which, however affecting a spectacle for a simple-hearted Viennese—and they are mere babies in matters of royalty—irresistibly reminded We started from Vienna on a Sunday morning on board the steamboat Karl for Linz; and trudging thence on foot came on the following Saturday night into Salzburg, the queen of the Salzack. We rested here one happy Sunday: not so much in the town, which had its abundant curiosities, as in the pleasure gardens of the old Archbishops of Salzburg, at an easy stroll from it. This garden is pleasant enough in itself, but there are besides a number of water eccentricities in it such as I should think were in their peculiar fashion unequalled. Here blooms a cluster of beautiful flowers, covered as it were by a glass shade, but which turns out to be only water. There a miniature palace is in course of erection, with crowds of workmen in its different storeys, each man at his avocation with hammer and chisel, pulley and wheel, and the grave architect himself directing their labour. All this is set in motion by water, and is not a mere doll’s house, but a symmetrical model. Then we enter a subterranean grotto, with a roof of pendant stalactites, where the pleasant sound of falling waters and the melodious piping of birds fill all the air. There is a sly drollery too in some of the water performances, invented years ago by the grave Archbishops of Salzburg; for suddenly the stalactites are set dripping like a modern shower bath: and the gigantic stags at its entrance spout water from the very tips of their horns. The garden is not a Versailles, for there is nothing grand in any of its hydraulic The Sunday we spent in Munich was passed in the Kirche Unserer Lieben Frauen, with its self-supporting roof; in the English Garden; and at a lovely spot on a hill-side, in the environs of the city. During the week we were escorted by a friend to a sort of tea-gardens of some notoriety, but found it silent and deserted. Our friend apologised for its dulness, but exclaimed, in part explanation, “You should see it on Sunday!” It was evident that Sunday was a day of rest and enjoyment, and not a working day in Munich. My own impression of the Munichers was, that they drank too much beer every day in the week. Still tramping towards France, we passed one Sunday in Heidelberg, among all its romantic wonders; but as everybody knows, or ought to know, all about Heidelberg, I will not allow my enthusiasm to lead me into a description which would not be novel, and might probably be tedious. This was the last Sunday we spent on German ground. So far as Germany is concerned, you may look upon everything but museums, picture galleries, and the like, on Sunday; you may, as Luther says you ought, “dance on it, ride on it, play on it,—do anything”—but see that which is most likely to instruct you. You may visit tawdry shows, and inspect badly painted scenery; you may let off fireworks; gamble to your ruin; smoke the eyes out of your head, and dance the head off your shoulders; but you shall not, with few exceptions, look upon works of art, or the results of science in museums and picture galleries. Let it be said, however, that the general opportunities for acquiring correct and elevated taste are, on the whole, greater in Germany than in England; and that in many cities there is a profusion of exterior ornament, more especially in Munich, in the shape of the fresco paintings of the Palace Garden, on Isar Thor, and in the Basilica and churches generally, so that the eye is better educated in artistic combinations; and the same necessity does not exist for special art instruction with them as The remembrances I have of Paris Sundays decidedly possess a character of rest and recreation; of waking in the morning to a grateful sense of repose; of clean shirts and trimmed beards; and of delicious breakfasts at our CafÉ aux Quatres Mendiants, of coffee and white bread, instead of the bouillon and confiture of the atelier. Did we not work, then? Assuredly we did sometimes, when hard pressed; but the recollection of those few occasions is drowned in that of a flood of happy, tranquil Sundays. When we did work it was from eight till twelve, which made half a day, and this was the rate at which all overtime was reckoned. One hard taskmaster I remember, who, instead of paying us our dues, as is the custom on Saturday night, at the end of quinze jours, cajoled us to come and work under the promise of their payment on the Sunday morning. He failed us like a rogue; and we drudged on for another quinzaine, Sunday mornings included, in hopeful anticipation of the receipt of our wages. When we found that he slunk out of the way, without paying us a sou, we rebelled, sang the Marseillaise, demanded our wages, and never worked another Sunday. I am lost in my endeavours to define the mingled recollections of Sunday tranquillity, enjoyment, and frivolity during a stay of eighteen months in Paris. My thoughts run from the Madelaine to Minu-montant; from Versailles to the Funambule; from Diogenes’ lantern at St. Cloud to the blind man’s concert in the Palais Royal. Sometimes I wander over the plains of Auteuil and Passy; then suddenly find myself examining a paper-making machine in the Museum of Arts and Trades. Or I look over the vine fields from the heights of Montmorency at one moment, and the next am pacing the long galleries of the Louvre, or the classic chambers of the Palais des Beaux Arts. I have passed a Whitsunday morning at Versailles among the paintings; the afternoon at SÈvres among glass and porcelain; have won a game at dominoes after dinner in Paris; and have heard the last polka at the Salle Vivienne in the evening. Paris is a city of extremes; the young ThÉophile who works by my side, and is an ingenious fellow and a clever workman, you will meet next Sunday in the Louvre discoursing energetically on the comparative merits of the French and Italian schools of painting; yet this same ThÉophile shall be the Titi of the gallery of With the vivid impressions of many Sundays abroad upon my mind, I have been wondering whether, after all, the practices of the continental Sunday have anything to do with the opening of a museum or picture-gallery in London; and, after profound study, in the laborious course of which I have several times fallen asleep, I have come to the deliberate conclusion that there is no connection between the two things. In the first case, as regards Germany, seeing that they there almost sedulously close all that relates to art or science, and give full licence only to beer and tobacco, to music and dancing on the Sunday—where is the parallel? In the second, as regards France or Paris, although it must be admitted that there is unfortunately no comparison between the Louvre and the National Gallery, it can at least be claimed that there is no resemblance between the British Museum and the Bal des Chiens in the Rue St. HonorÉ. I take it that to preserve the English Sunday as a day of greater rest than French or German Sundays ever were, and to add to it such rational and instructive recreation, as a Museum or a Picture-Gallery, or a place of innocent recreation could supply, might be a good thing in the eyes of religious men; and I have not yet heard of any society or association in any part of the United Kingdom, which proposes to open a Sunday evening ball at the Pig and Tinderbox, or to grant licences to the theatrical performances at the Penny Gaff in the New Cut. |