Man, therefore, is the most living manifestation of the beautiful, and he is also the being that most thirsts for the enjoyment of it. He looks for it everywhere—in the splendour of the heavens, over the expanse of the sea, on the high mountain-sides, in the mysterious shadows of the forests, and in the solitude of the valleys, when the dying sun casts languidly over them its violet light. At night, when man and beast rest after the fatigues of the day, and silence and quiet begin, he feels a tender harmony, delicate and mysterious, as the memory of the days of innocence, or as the hope of a future life. The harmony of night is, as it were, the breath of sleeping nature.
Look, now, into what a labyrinth I have been dragged by the music I heard at St Stephen's! The campanile of this cathedral is pointed and very high; it can be seen from all parts of the city. One sees at once that it is the campanile of the ecclesia major. I wished to see it. The cathedral is always the first thing that attracts the stranger's curiosity when he arrives in a place, because therein is expressed the religious sentiment of the people who have built it, which is the first of all sentiments, and then follows that of the citizen. First the cathedral was made by the people of old, and then the town-hall, and in the same order I also look at them and think of them. I wished to see it, therefore; but being at a distance, I stopped a cab and said to the driver that I wanted to go there. Bravo! and without knowing a bit of German! I told him in three languages—in Italian, in French, and in Latin (macaronic, of course); but it was dense darkness to him. I pointed with my hand to the campanile in the distance, and this time he understood! He answered, "Ja, ja," and whipping up his horses, off he went for some time; but as we never arrived, I again pointed to the campanile. "Ja, ja," and on we went, but away from the place I indicated. Then I stopped him, paid him, and got out. On the venture, I jumped into an omnibus, just to leave the man, who was going who knows where, returned to the centre, and got out at Oberring. There I found a friend, who took me in a short time on foot to St Stephen's, where I heard that wonderful music, the remembrance of which still excites me to ecstasy. This does not often happen to me, but it does sometimes.
CANOVA'S MARIA CHRISTINA.
From there—that is, not from my ecstasies, but from St Stephen's—I went to the Church of the Augustins, where Canova's famous monument in honour of Maria Christina is. As to its being beautiful, I say nothing, but an artist who was with me extolled it to the seventh heaven; though to me, with the music of St Stephen's still in my ears, it seemed that Canova in other works had arrived at greater perfection, both as regards general conception and as regards sentiment of truth. But, I repeat, it may have been the music that made it seem to me—and I say so in all reverence—a little conventional. I was there in Vienna, however, to form part of the jury on the sculpture of to-day, and not to criticise the art of the past; so that a little want of appreciation or a judgment too lightly given may be forgiven me. For the matter of that, Canova is Canova, and the braying of donkeys, as the proverb says, does not reach heaven.
CHAPTER XXII.
THE PALACE OF THE EXHIBITION AT VIENNA—WHY, WITH MY ATTRIBUTES OF PRESIDENT, I WAS IN SUCH HASTE—MICHAEL ANGELO AND GARIBALDI—A VIENNESE CABMAN—THE CAMERINI MONUMENT—DUKE CAMERINI—AN ANECDOTE OF HIS LIFE—STATUE OF MICHAEL ANGELO IN THE FUTURE—THE CENTENARY FESTIVAL OF MICHAEL ANGELO—SIGNORA ADELINA PATTI—A GREEDY YOUNG MAN OF LITTLE JUDGMENT—THE FAVARD MONUMENT.
The Palace of the Exhibition was built on the Prater. It cost twenty millions of florins (fifty millions of lire), without counting, be it remembered, the sum expended by other nations on their special buildings. It is not my intention to describe this immense edifice, and all the smaller ones around it, in that large and most delightful Prater. I will not even speak of the Exhibition, excepting only as regards my department—that of sculpture.
Without expectations or merits on my part I was elected President of the department in sculpture; and this honour was most prized by me, because it enabled me to hasten on the work in our section with all the alacrity compatible with the number and importance of the works submitted to our judgment; and this, indeed, was not a trifling matter, for, between statues and groups, there were two hundred and fifteen, without counting large and small busts. There was a great deal of German sculpture; but with few exceptions, it was somewhat hard and conventional. Ours, with some honourable exceptions,—and amongst them Monteverde's group of Jenner, fine in the choice of subject, well grouped, and admirably modelled—and a few other works,—were like the usual old woman's tale, trivial in conception and ungainly in form. It is painful to say so, but the French sculpture at this Exhibition surpassed, and more than surpassed, ours; and if it proved possible to divide the number of medals between the French and us, it is due to the condescension of the French members of the jury, Dubois and Masson, to the Germans, and to my obstinacy in upholding our art as much as I possibly could.