Germany, Bohemia, and Hungary, Visited in 1837. Vol. II

by G. R. Gleig

"What do you mean?" replied I; "if by honest industry you acquire a fortune, you may purchase land, and take a settled station in society. The army is open to you, and the church;—what would you have?"

"I would have what you possess in England," answered he; "room to breathe freely; and a fair field in which to struggle even for the honours of life. The army is open to us, doubtless; but in the army, unless I be of noble descent, I cannot hope to rise above the rank of a captain, at the highest. The church is good for those who are willing to submit to its restraints, and play the hypocrite. I may purchase land, too, doubtless, as you say; but its possession will not confer upon me any, even of the ideal advantages, which are claimed and conceded to the penniless aristocrat. With us the line of nobility is so distinct and broad, that no human being can, unless the accident of birth have placed him on the sunny side of the hedge, overstep it. But this is not all. The nobles not only engross all places of trust, and profit, and honour, but they do not bear their just proportion in the burdens of the state. They pay hardly any taxes; whereas we of the cannaille are very heavily laden with them."

I saw from the tone of my fellow-traveller's discourse that he was exceedingly discontented, and I ventured to ask whether the sentiments to which he gave utterance, were generally entertained in Bohemia?

"By all orders and degrees of men," was his answer. "Even the nobles are dissatisfied, because the king holds his court at Vienna; and for the rest of us, you may depend upon it that we feel our degradation acutely."

"If it be as you represent," said I, "how comes it that there never occurs anything like an attempt to wrest by force from the government what it will not concede to reason?"

We were passing through a small town, or rather village, at the moment, and my companion bid me look out. I did so, and saw two or three groups of cuirassiers lounging about the street.

"These are the emperor's sureties for our good behaviour," observed he, with a smile; "twelve or fourteen thousand men at Prague,—three or four thousand at Königgratz,—a regiment at Tabor,—and squadrons scattered, as you see, through all the villages. Our poor peasants would hardly think of uttering a complaint in such a presence; and our nobles don't care to argue points with men who wear the sword."

I could only shrug up my shoulders, for I saw that he was, at least, so far in the right, that troops swarmed everywhere; and, without encouraging him to brood over his own misfortunes, whether real or imaginary, I was content to thank heaven that I had myself been born in a land where such grounds of complaint are unknown.

We stopped to dine at Leutomischl, a small, but prettily-situated town, with a schloss, or chateau, of which the style of architecture is exceedingly striking. It occupies the brow of a rising ground, just over the principal street; and with its profusion of minarets, reminded us rather of some Oriental palace, than of the residence of a Bohemian noble. But we had no time to examine it in detail; for even a German extra post has its appointed season of movement; and our conducteur, though abundantly civil, could not postpone it. Neither did there occur any other incident of which it is worth while to take notice, till, at six on the following morning, Brünn, the capital of Moravia, received us within its walls.

There is not much in this city, independently of the historical associations which are connected with it, that is likely to detain the traveller many days, or to draw from him, after he has quitted it, a lengthened description of what he may have seen. It is built along the ascent of a steep hill, of which the summit is crowned by the cathedral, a pile distinguished, like the more antique of the Slavonian churches in general, by the great altitude of its nave. It is surrounded by a belt of suburbs, at once more regular in their construction, and much more populous than the town itself. To the north lies the hill of Spielberg, surmounted by a modern and unfinished redoubt, which having taken the place of the ancient citadel, is, and for many years back has been, used chiefly as a state prison. It was here that, during the reign of the Emperor Francis I., the unfortunate Silvio Pellico spent his long and dismal season of captivity. Here, too, Trenck, the famous leader of the Pandours, in the war of succession, suffered imprisonment. Here Mack, long suspected of treachery, underwent a severer punishment than his incapacity deserved; and here still linger captives from various provinces, whose offence, for the most part, is, that they pine to be free. This system of shutting men up in prison, without trial, or the pretence of trial, is very shocking. But I was glad to learn from the few who ventured to speak in a whisper, that the tenants of the dungeons of Spielberg are less numerous now than they used to be, and the time is not, in all probability, distant, when the practice of filling them at the caprice of a minister will be discontinued altogether.