Apropos, the plague is now raging in Transylvania; how little safe should we think ourselves at London, were a disorder so contagious known to be no farther distant than Derby? The distance is scarcely greater now from Vienna to the place of distress; yet I will not say we are in much danger to be sure, for that perpetual connection kept up between all the towns and counties of Great Britain is unknown in other nations, and we should be as many days going to Transylvania from here perhaps, as we should be hours running from Toddenham-court road to Derby.
Sheenburn is pretty, but it is no season for seeing pretty places. The streets of Vienna are not pretty at all, God knows; so narrow, so ill built, so crowded, many wares placed upon the ground where there is a little opening, seems a strange awkward disposition of things for sale; and the people cutting wood in the street makes one half wild when walking; it is hardly possible to pass another strange custom, borrowed from Italy I trust, of shutting up their shops in the middle of the day; it must tend, one would think, but little to the promotion of that commerce which the sovereign professes to encourage, and I see no excuse for it here which can be made from heat, gaiety, or devotion. Many families living in the same house, and at the entrance of the apartments belonging to each, a strong iron gate to separate the residence of one set from that of another, has likewise an odd melancholy look, like that of a prison or a nunnery. Nunneries, however, here are none; and if the old women turned out of those they have long dwelt in, are not provided with decent pensions, it must surely distress even the Emperor’s cold heart to see age driven from the refuges of disappointment, and forced to wander through the world with inexperience for its guide, while youth is no longer led, but thrust into temptation by such a sudden transition from utter retirement to open and busy life.
We have been this morning to look over his academy of painting, &c. His exhibition-room is neatly kept, and I dare say will prosper: the students are zealous and laborious, and earnestly desire the promulgation of science: their collection of models is meagre, but it will mend by degrees. Perhaps Joseph the IId. is the first European sovereign who, establishing a school for painting and sculpture, has insisted on the artists never exercising their skill upon any subject which could hurt any person’s delicacy;—an example well worthy honest praise and speedy imitation.
The very few charitable foundations established at Vienna by Imperial munificence are well managed; their paucity is accounted for by the recollection of many abuses consequent on the late Empress’s bounty; her son therefore took all the annuities away, which he thought her tenderness had been duped out of; but let it be remembered that when he rides or walks in a morning, he always takes with him a hundred ducats, out of which he never brings any home, but gives in private donations what he knows to be well bestowed, without the ostentation of affected generosity: it is not in rewards for past services perhaps, nor in public and stately institutions, as I am told here, that this prince’s liberalities are to be looked for; yet—
In Mis’ry’s darkest caverns known,
His useful care is ever nigh;
Where hopeless Anguish pours her groan,
And lonely Want retires to die.
To-morrow (23d of November) we venture to leave Vienna and proceed northwards, as I long to see the Dresden gallery. Here every thing appears to me a caricatura of London; the language like ours, but coarser; the plays like ours, but duller; the streets at night lighted up, not like ours now, but very like what they were thirty or forty years ago.