UQ 



A U S T R I A. 





Public in- 

 itrucliou. 



Bodily ap- 

 pearance 

 of the 



horrencc. Drunkenness scarcely ever appears in 

 public, as in our streets ; and when it does, it is not 

 in the frightful and hideous form of rage and fury, 

 but a mixture of mirth and infantine folly, such as is 

 described by Anaereon. If religion is to be judged 

 by its fruits on the character, therefore, it will sure- 

 ly require an uncommon share of hatred to popery to 

 reconcile us to the belief that that of the Austrian 

 is a very bad one. 



The great objection to the religious system of this 

 fine principality, is its expensiveness. The church 

 draws very nearly one-eleventh of the gross produce 

 of the land, and a good deal more than one-fifth of 

 the gross rental of the province. The rental, or 

 portion, which is paid to the superiors of the lands 

 by the peasants, who possess them in property, but 

 pay heavy feus to those superiors, amounts to nearly 

 five millions sterling annually ; and the ecclesiastical 

 establishment costs one million, or nearly six times as 

 much as that of Scotland, of which the population 

 and revenues are nearly upon a par with those of 

 Austria ! 



Intimately connected with the religion of every 

 country must he its public instruction in morals and 

 science. There are in Austria 1151 primary or ele- 

 mentary schools, in which reading, writing, the prin- 

 ciples of Christianity, and the common rules of arith- 

 metic, are taught. There are 22 normal, and 14> 

 principal schools for the learned languages, mathe- 

 matics, belles lettres, and such branches as are usual- 

 ly taught in our academies, five gymnasia or colleges, 

 and one university, viz. that of Vienna. This last is 

 celebrated for its anatomical and medical school. The 

 funds for the maintenance of these establishments are 

 principally supplied by a land-tax, similar to our as- 

 sessment for parochial schools ; but there are also 

 other funds of considerable amount, arising from 

 the portion of the revenues of suppressed convents 

 and monasteries, which have lately been appropriated 

 to this purpose. In general the Austrians are much 

 upon a par with the rest of the south of Catholic 

 Germany in point of education ; but they are great- 

 ly behind the Protestants of the north, and even of 

 those of Swabia and the Palatinate. On looking 

 into their churches, however, on Sundays, calendars 

 and prayer books are seen in almost every one's hands, 

 so that reading is universally understood. They pay 

 too little attention to history, geography, and the 

 state of the world around them, and seem to care for 

 nothing beyond the limits of their own province. 

 Many peasants of the better classes gravely asked us, 

 " On which side of Russia was England ? and, How 

 many days sailing London was distant from France ?" 

 On shewing them the map of Europe, they could 

 not conceive why the French armies should get ea- 

 sier access to them than to us, or how it could hap- 

 pen that so trifling a spot as Britain should subsidise 

 Russia and Austria, and set the power of the conti- 

 nent at defiance. This sort of ignorance, however, 

 is not peculiar to the Austrians ; it is found among 

 the common ranks in some degree everywhere, ex- 

 cepting in Great Britain and the west of France. 



The Austrians are, generally speaking, a hand- 

 some and athletic race, composed principally of Ger- 



.-'.ustrians, manic materials, but mixed with the productions of 



Hungary, Italy, and Bohemia: hence the darker com- Aujtrii. 

 plexion and blacker eyes, the bolder features and the f~~ 



more animated expression of the Austrian than of 

 the Westphalian, Saxon, Prussian, or Franconian j 

 and, probably, that beauty of face and person which 

 is perhaps incompatible with successive uniformity of 

 parentage, and which we find most perceptible among 

 nations composed of mingled tribes. How different 

 is the aspect of an English assembly from that of a 

 Bengalee or a Chinese ? In like manner the Austrian 

 form and countenance are probably improved by 1 1 ; - - 

 frequent intermarriages of the natives with their 

 neighbours; and they partake of all the charms of va- 

 riety, and of the interesting novelty of what we may 

 almost call an harmonious contrast. In a family, of 

 which the father is the son of a Croatian officer, who 

 settled in Austria in his youth, and the mother an 

 Upper Austrian lady r , we saw the Grecian profile 

 and ey*-brows in the face of the eldest daughter, and 

 opposite to her, at table, the mild blue eyes, fair com- 

 plexion, and gigantic well spread chest of a genuin- 

 son of Hermann, in the figure of her brother. Of 

 six children, the shape and expression of countenance 

 were, in like manner, singularly divided, or rather 

 moulded, as by a finer medium than that of either 

 parent, into something resembling both indeed, but 

 greatly superior to either. The family in question 

 was uncommonly handsome, and probably more so 

 than that of any indigenous Austrian pair. 



Analogous to their naturalconstitutions and varieties Manners 

 of form, are the manners o the Austrian population, of tho 

 They may justly be called a sensual people, in the -^ ustr!Zn '- 

 same manner as the aggregate of the European po- 

 pulation deserves that title; i. e. they shew every 

 inclination to gratify the propensities by which they 

 are most powerfully solicited. They are as fond of 

 dancing, noise, and gallantry, as the French ; they 

 have no more objection to a good dinner and a bottle 

 of wine than an Englishman ; no Italian can be more 

 passionately enamoured of music ; no Neapolitan of 

 high sounding titles, of finery in clothes and equi- 

 pages, or of religious parade ; and no school-boy of 

 play in every possible shape. This variety of tastes 

 for pleasure may probably arise from the cause to 

 which we have alluded : it has certainly stamped 

 upon this people the impression of a sensual nation. 

 But what holds true of few other nations, is strictly 

 just when applied to the Austrian : they can rush 

 from the ball or the banquet into the field of battle, 

 and seem to enjoy the terrors of war no less than the 

 pleasures which it destroys. Their sensuality never 

 unmans or enervates them. Their heart3 are as unsus- 

 ceptible of fear as they are alive to delight ; and na. 

 tare seems to have given them the faculty of being 

 contented in every place and emergency, whether in 

 the comic theatre or the scene of blood, and whether 

 running to their nuptials or to their graves. Nor is 

 this equanimity the child either of phlegmatic indif- 

 ference, or philosophical calculation : It is the effect 

 of a constitutional felicity upon a people who have 

 rarely felt either political oppression or religious per- 

 secution. The great mass of the population seem to 

 be much at their ease : their houses are large and 

 commodious ; their lands fertile, and comparatively 

 well cultivated ; their cattle, horses, and domestic 



