[CHAPTER XII.]
On our first Sunday in Vienna we attended service at the Church of St. Augustine, the chief features of the service being the splendid robes of the priests, and the magnificent music—the instrumental portion, in addition to the organ, being the full orchestra from the opera-house, led by its leader, baton in hand, and giving some of the compositions of the great composers in a style that made the lofty arches of the old church to seem filled with heavenly melody. In this church is Canova's superb monument to the Archduchess Christiana, a marble pyramid thirty feet high, upon a broad marble pedestal, with two wide steps. In the centre of this pyramid, designed to represent the tomb, is a door, and grouped upon the steps, on their way towards it, are several life-sized allegorical figures, most exquisitely wrought. A female figure, in flowing drapery, bearing a flower-wreathed urn, with a child walking on either side of her, followed by another figure, Benevolence, supporting by the arm Old Age, a bent, decrepit, tottering old man leaning upon a staff, are the figures on one side; while upon the other reposes a lion, with an angel seated by his side, and half reclining upon his rugged mane. The white, flowing drapery of these figures is so beautifully wrought as to fairly rival reality, and the figure of Old Age, with tottering limbs, weary face, and relaxed muscles, a perfect masterpiece of art. The angel, reclining upon the lion, is a figure of exquisite beauty, while the grouping of the whole, and the natural positions of the figures, render the composition both apt and beautiful.
At the Capuchin Church we went down into the vault of the imperial family, under the guidance of a sandalled friar, torch in hand. Here rest the mortal remains of royalty, in seventy great metallic coffins or sarcophagi,—the oldest that of Ferdinand, 1610, and the most splendid being that of Joseph I., which has over two thousand pounds of silver about it, wrought into armorial bearings, crowns, death's heads, wreaths of flowers, and other designs. The rest are chiefly wrought from zinc into the forms of mortuary caskets, with appropriate designs.
While the group of visitors were tediously following the monotonous description of the friar, I unconsciously seated myself upon the end of one of these ornamented chests of human ashes, from which, when discovered, I was requested to rise by an indignant wave of the hand, and a look upon the friar's face that savored strongly of indignation, as he approached the spot with the party, and commenced his description. Then it was I discovered that I had been making my seat of the funeral casket of the Duke of Reichstadt, son of the great Napoleon; and near by we saw that of the Emperor Francis, his grandfather.
From this gloomy chamber of dead royalty, we were glad once more to emerge to the busy street and to close the day's sight-seeing by a visit to a musical festival given in an immense garden just outside the city, called, I think, the New World Garden. The occasion being the Virgin's birthday, there was an extra attraction; first there was the splendid Strauss band, about seventy pieces, led by Strauss himself; then two large military bands, and these played alternately, and such music! The Strauss waltzes and dance music were given with a "voluptuous swell," precision, and beauty that were enchanting to listen to. They were liquid billows of harmony, and as inspiriting to the feet of the dancers as a draught of nitrous oxide to the imagination. The voluptuous waltz ceased, the military band would then burst forth with grand march or quickstep that would make one's very pulses thrill, and when this closed, the other band gave an overture or grand musical composition, which concluded, the lively dance music of Strauss again burst forth with its exhilarating strains.
There were three or four thousand persons present strolling through the pleasant walks and shady alleys, or sitting at the tables near the music pavilions eating ices, drinking light wines or beer, chatting, and listening to the music. The price of admission to the regular concerts of the Strauss band here is about eighteen cents! But to this entertainment, which was an extra occasion, or a sort of a fête day, the enormous fee of nearly thirty cents was demanded! The excellence of the music as well as the cheapness of the entertainment, was marvellous to us Americans.
It is a pleasant excursion to the Schönbrunn, or summer palace, and the gardens connected with it, about three miles from Vienna. These gardens on fine Sunday afternoons are thronged with people from the city, strolling through their shady alleys and beautiful walks. The shrubbery and landscape gardening here are great curiosities; long, straight avenues are laid out, with the trees on each side trimmed like hedges to the height of thirty or forty feet, presenting a perspective of an avenue as smooth and unbroken as if sliced out of a solid mass of green, with a keen blade; then the masses of foliage are trimmed into niches for marble statues, graceful curves, and columns, and curious walks. The flower-gardens of the palace were beautiful, and the hot-houses rich in great palms and other tropical wonders; there were quite a number, some dozen or more, of these conservatories, each devoted to different varieties of plants, a description of which would be wearisome. As some of the royal family were at the palace we could not visit the interior, but passing through the gardens, we ascended to the Gloriette, a sort of open temple with a colonnade of pillars, situated upon rising ground, and commanding a fine view of Vienna and the surrounding country, including the battle-fields of Aspern and Wagram.
The Imperial Picture Gallery of Vienna is a collection of paintings worth a journey over the ocean to see—rich in the masterpieces of the old masters, and containing in all about two thousand pictures, which are arranged in different apartments according to the school of art to which they belong. Here, again, we were bewildered with a wealth of beauty: here one begins to realize what wonders the painter's brush is capable of; what laborious finishers the old masters were; how very little advance, if any at all, has been made in the art; what skill must have been used in the manufacture and laying on of colors which, after the lapse of two or three hundred years, are as fresh, bright and effective as if but yesterday applied to the canvas.