The MONASTERY OF THE FRANCISCANS is really an object worth visiting ... if it be only to convince you of the comfort and happiness of ... not being a Franciscan monk. I went thither several times, and sauntered in the cloisters of the quadrangle.  An intelligent middle-aged woman—­a sort of housekeeper of the establishment—­who conversed with me pretty fluently in the French language, afforded me all the information which I was desirous of possessing.  She said she had nothing to do with the kitchen, or dormitories of the monks.  They cooked their own meat, and made their own beds.  You see these monks constantly walking about the streets, and even entering the hotels.  They live chiefly upon alms.  They are usually bare-headed, and bare-footed—­with the exception of sandals.  Their dress is a thick brown cloak, with a cowl hanging behind in a peaked point:  the whole made of the coarsest materials.  They have no beards—­and yet, altogether, they have a very squalid and dirty appearance.  It was towards eight o’clock, when I walked for the first time, in the cloisters; and there viewed, amongst other mural decorations, an oil painting—­in which several of their order are represented as undergoing martyrdom—­by hanging, and severing their limbs.  It was a horrid sight ... and yet the living was not very attractive.

Although placed in the very heart of the metropolis of their country, this Franciscan fraternity appears to be insensible of every comfort of society.  To their palate, nothing seems to be so sweet as the tainted morsel upon the trencher—­and to their ear, no sound more grateful than the melancholy echo, from the tread of their own cloister.  Every thing, which so much pleased and gratified me in the great Austrian monasteries of CHREMSMINSTER, ST. FLORIAN, MOLK, and GOTTWIC, would, in such an atmosphere, and in such a tenement as the Franciscan monastery here, have been chilled, decomposed, and converted into the very reverse of all former and cheerful impressions.  No walnut-tree shelved libraries:  no tier upon tier of clasp and knob-bound folios:  no saloon, where the sides are emblazoned by Salzburg marble; and no festive board, where the watchful seneschal never allows the elongated glass to remain five minutes unreplenished by Rhenish wine of the most exquisite flavour!  None of these, nor of any thing even remotely approximating to them, were to be witnessed, or partaken of, in the dreary abode of monachism which I have just described.

You will be glad to quit such a comfortless residence; and I am equally impatient with yourself to view more agreeable sights.  Having visited the tombs of departed royalty, let us now enter the abodes—­or rather PALACES—­of living imperial grandeur.  I have already told you that Vienna, on the first glance of the houses, looks like a city of palaces; those buildings, which are professedly palatial, being indeed of a glorious extent and magnificence.  And yet—­it seems