CHAPTER XXXIV.

VIENNA IN 1844[26]

Improvements in Vienna.—­Palladian style—­Music.—­Theatres.—­Sir
Robert Gordon.—­Prince Metternich.—­Armen
Ball.—­Dancing.—­Strauss.—­Austrian Policy.

Vienna has been more improved and embellished within the last few years than during the previous quarter of a century.  The Graben and the Kohlmarket have been joined, and many old projecting houses have been taken down, and replaced by new tenements, with the facades put back, so as to facilitate the thoroughfare.  Until very lately, almost every public building and private palace in Vienna was in the Frenchified style of the last century, when each petty prince in Germany wished to have a miniature Versailles in his village capital.  All the new edifices are in the Palladian style; which is suitable, not only to the climate, but to the narrow streets, where Greek architecture would be lost for want of space, and where the great height of the houses gives mass to this (the Palladian) style, without the necessity of any considerable perspective.  The circumstance of many of the architects here being Italian, may probably, in some measure, account for the general adoption of this style.  It is singular, that although Vienna possesses in St. Stephen’s one of the most beautiful specimens of Gothic architecture, not a single edifice in this taste of recent date is to be seen, although a revival of it is noticeable in several other parts of Germany.

Music is one of the necessaries of existence in Vienna, and the internal consumption is apparently as great as ever:  there is now-a-days no Mozart or Haydn to supply imperishable fabrics for the markets of the world; but the orchestras are as good as ever.  The Sinfonia-Eroica of Beethoven catching my eye in a programme, I failed not to renew my homage to this prince of sweet and glorious sounds, and was loyally indignant on hearing a fellow-countryman say, that, though rich in harmony, he was poor in melody.  No; Beethoven’s wealth is boundless; his riches embarrass him; he is the sultan of melody:  while others dally with their beauties to satiety, he wanders from grace to grace, scarce pausing to enjoy.  Is it possible to hear his symphonies without recognizing in them the germs of innumerable modern melodies, the precious metal which others beat out, wherewith to plate their baser compositions,—­exhaustless materials for the use of his successors, like those noble temples which antiquity has raised in the East, to become, in the sequel, the quarries from which whole cities of lowlier dwellings are constructed?