Vienna has the reputation of being the most profligate capital in Europe. Perhaps it is so. There is certainly, even to a stranger, no lack of temptation to every species of pleasure. But there is, besides, a degree of simplicity and confidence in the manners of the Viennese which I had believed peculiar to America, and inconsistent with the state of society in Europe. In the most public resorts, and at all hours of the day and evening, modest and respectable young women of the middle classes walk alone perfectly secure from molestation. They sit under the trees in these public gardens, eat ices at the cafés, walk home unattended, and no one seems to dream of impropriety. Whole families, too, spend the afternoon upon a seat in a thronged place of resort, their children playing about them, the father reading, and the mother sewing or knitting, quite unconscious of observation. The lower and middle classes live all summer, I am told, out of doors. It is never oppressively warm in this latitude, and their houses are deserted after three or four o’clock in the afternoon, and the whole population pours out to the different gardens on the Glacis, where till midnight, they seem perfectly happy in the enjoyment of the innocent and unexpensive pleasures which a wise government has provided for them.
The nobles and richer class pass their summer in the circle of rural villages near the city. They are nested about on the hills, and crowded with small and lovely rural villas more like the neighbourhood of Boston than anything I have seen in Europe.
Baden, where the Emperor passes much of his time, is called “the miniature Switzerland.” Its baths are excellent, its hills are cut into retired and charming walks, and from June till September it is one of the gayest of watering-places. It is about a two hours’ drive from the city, and omnibuses at a very low rate, run between at all times of the day. The Austrians seldom travel, and the reason is evident. They have everything for which others travel, at home.
LETTER XIV.
Vienna—The Palace of Liechtenstein.
The red-nosed German led on through the crowded Graben, jostling aside the Parisian-looking lady and her handsome Hungarian cavalier, the phlegmatic smoker and the bearded Turk, alike. We passed the imperial guard, the city gate, the lofty bridge over the trench (casting a look below at the flower-garden laid out in “the ditch” which encircles the wall), and entered upon the lovely Glacis—one step from the crowded street to the fresh greenness of a park.
Would you believe, as you walk up this shaded alley, that you are in the heart of the city still?
The Glacis is crossed, with its groups of fair children and shy maids, its creeping invalids, its solitude-seeking lovers, and its idling soldiers, and we again enter the crowded street. A half hour more, and the throng thins again, the country opens, and here you are, in front of the palace of Liechstenstein, the first noble of Austria. A modern building, of beautiful and light architecture, rises from its clustering trees: servants in handsome livery hang about the gates and lean against the pillars of the portico, and with an explanation from my lying valet, who evidently makes me out an ambassador at least, by the ceremony with which I am received, a grey servitor makes his appearance and opens the immense glass door leading from the side of the court.