man Catholic Church. The Reformed Church, which embraces a very small minority of the people, is in a not very flourishing state. It is hardly possible to think of Austria without thinking of music. You seem to hear music everywhere; and whether it is the peasant's jodel on the Styrian Alps, or the zither in the wayside inn, or one of the excellent männersingverline in some public garden, or Strauss's famous band in the Vienna Volksgarten (we name these together as typically Austrian styles of music), you will detect the same excellent ear for time and tune, the same verve, the same variety and delicacy of expression. The lover of music will find unceasing enjoyment of the highest kind in the unrivalled musical performances in Vienna in the winter season. It not unfrequently happens that people become Protestants, and are married by Protestant rite with a view to divorce should the marriage turn out badly, meanwhile returning to the Roman Church! A minister in Vienna who positively refused to accept such "converts" was looked upon as a bigot by his fellow-Protestants; but we believe his example has created a healthier public opinion on the subject. Piety and zeal, however, have not deserted the Protestant Church, which is, perhaps, seen at its best in the scattered communities of upper Austria, and of Styria, the direct offspring of the Reformation of the sixteenth century. Crushed by severe persecution, Protestantism seemed wellnigh dead; but it had been kept alive by means of family tradition, or through the agency of carefully hidden Bibles; and on the publication of Joseph II.'s Act of Toleration, in 1782, it sprang into life again. Of later years Protestant churches have been remarkably active in philanthropic work. There is quite a cluster of charitable institutions at Gallneukirchen, near Linz, partly kept up by touching gifts, in money and in kind, from a very poor peasantry. The hospital is under the care of deaconesses, some of whom have been trained at Stuttgard; and it sends out sorely needed Protestant nurses to Vienna, to Meran, and to other towns. The home for orphans and neglected or deserted children receives "cases" from the great towns where the pressing needs of the poorer Protestants are poorly supplied. If a tourist should feel disposed to leave some token of good-will to a kindly people, he cannot do better than send a gift to Pfarrer L. Schwarz, Gallneukirchen, Ober-Oestreich. The money will be well used, for the institutions are managed with the strict economy of which Germans have the secret. The growth of charitable work is observable among all creeds and classes in Austria. It is accompanied by a certain sense of the obligation of voluntary work in the service of the poor. But it The want of room, especially in the must be confessed that charity often dwellings of the middle classes, is perhaps takes the unpleasant disguise of pure one reason why people live very much and simple amusement. The balls, theat-outside their houses. The number of rical performances, concerts, and open-air fêtes, which are the consequence of extraordinary disasters, such as floods, fires, and earthquakes, or of ordinary poverty and misfortune, are astonishingly numer ous. The drawback of living among such a musical people is that if you happen to live under the same roof with a singer or the player of an instrument you often hear more music than you care for. Few, indeed, are the privileged mortals who live in "self-contained "houses. The large majority have to content themselves with a "flat," or with part of one. However, a paternal municipal government mercifully forbids music after eleven P.M. This reminds us of a similar regulation, that of the so-called Sperrkreuzer. In the daytime the houses are open; and, except in the great mansions where hall-porters are kept standing at the entrance, the staircase is as public as the street. They have to be closed at ten P.M.; the gas is put out, and the hausmeister (house-porter) has the right of exacting ten kreuzer (about twopence) from each inmate returning after that hour. This will account to the stranger for the sudden emptying of places of public entertainment towards that hour. House-rent being very high in Vienna, the usual run of apartments leave much to be desired in the way of accommodation for children and servants. The front rooms may be bright and pleasant; but the back ones often look on small courts. We knew a poor lady's-maid who had to sew all day by gaslight, and a footman who slept behind a fine piece of tapestry in a niche on the front staircase. Stables are sometimes built partly underground; but, if well-ventilated, they are not bad. cafés is quite astonishing; and we knew of one childless young couple who kept no cook, and dined at a restaurant or at a friend's house every evening. A Viennese who is not kept forcibly at home by age, or by ill health, or by smallness of means, 66 S. I. DE ZUYLEN DE NYEVELT. From Blackwood's Magazine. "THE ELEGIE." "I will grind thee to paint, my Bride!" seldom thinks of spending an evening by tenants. The family servants, who are his or her own fireside. That, by the way, generally recruited from the latter class, is scarcely a suitable expression. The are as a rule faithful to their masters, who cheerful fire on the open hearth- so dear are kind to them, and provide for them in to English people is very rare indeed. old age. Even where this traditional bond Instead, there are the huge china stoves, does not exist, Austrian servants are sinfixtures in every house, which have the gularly willing, obliging, and industrious. advantage of keeping up an equal temper- They are seldom equal to the best English ature and not needing to be constantly fed. servants; but they are more pleasant to With perhaps a few exceptions among get on with. They are still so free from the very great people, the standard of thoughts of Democracy that they positively comfort is not nearly so high as in En- seem to enjoy serving their superiors, and gland; but, even with the great, there is the higher the rank of their herrschaft not that attention to detail which is carried the better they are pleased. There is to such a length in England. Of course, much mere eye-service " among them; life is easier and smoother, in many ways, but on leaving Austria one quite misses where people's tastes are simple. This is their pleasant manners, their respectful seen every year in the remarkable migra-“küss die hand," their quick obedience, tion to the country in May or in June. In and unfailing obligingness, and their wonsummer Vienna is well-nigh unbearable derful gratitude for small kindnesses which from the heat, dust, and smells; and every-in other countries are taken as matters of one who possibly can do so seeks some course or regarded as rights. Sommerfrische. Hence the deserted appearance which the beautiful Austrian capital offers to those travellers who are so unwise as to visit it in summer or in autumn. The neighborhood of Vienna, especially the small towns and villages on the Westbahn and Sudbahn, abound in villas of various pretensions; and all of them, according to English ideas, are scantily furnished. There are yet more modest establishments where apartments are let. However, the simplicity we have noticed enables the Viennese to put up with many inconveniences, and makes the yearly exodus possible. Those whose business does not oblige them to remain in the neighborhood of Vienna have a glorious choice of charming summer resorts all over Austria. Most members of the Adel go to their castles and country houses, or to those of their relations. They generally leave Vienna in May or in June, and do not return till December or January. There is not as much visiting at one another's houses as there is in England; and it is maliciously said that, in order to be able to spend three or four gay months every year in Vienna, many people live very economically in the country. Still, whilst there are fewer "house parties of mere acquaintances than in England, there are many large family gatherings, especially in old châteaux belonging to the heads of the great families. When a certain family meet in autumn at an uncle's schloss in Bohemia, there are about a hundred people in the house. There is still something patriarchal in such establishments, and an almost feudal connection between the landlord and his 66 Do you know how Schoenemann's This is the story. In the summer of '40, Emil Schoenemann, then quite a young man, returned from Leipsic, where he had been studying under Brockhoff, to his native village of Klettendorf-am-Rhein. He had already written his "Traum-Bilder," those delicious fugitive thoughts which Vieth's fine rendering has since made known all over Europe; and we can trace in this early composition the warm imagination, the aspirations towards the beautiful and the good, and the wide, vague hopes as yet unfulfilled, which mark the history of most artists. Schoenemann came back to the homely family, to the cottage-house with its low rooms, its tiny garden and orchard, to the beautiful Rhine country with its vineyards, wooded hills, and swiftly flowing river, purposing to spend the summer months in a profitable solitude. But his fame had preceded him. Every one knew of young Schoenemann's acad emy successes; Herr Postmeister and Herr Schulmeister held learned discussions on the subject of his musical genius, and Herr Schumacher, who had played the 'cello in trios with Emil's father, pre "When Schoenemann comes to us in the summer," he told the Graefin, "you should not fail to give the Contesse the advantages of his help. She has a charm dicted emphatically a great career for his old friend's son. But it was Harms, the organist, who did most to spread Schoenemann's glory round and about; for it was to Harms, his earliest master, that Emiling talent, to which I have at least done had sent in affectionate remembrance a manuscript copy of the "Traum-Bilder" the preceding Christmas. no harm; possibly even some little good. But I can take her no further. I have taught her all I know. Now Schoenemann in six weeks will do more for her than I could in six years." Harms became enthusiastic over this composition. All the winter it had been his constant theme for discourse. He The Graefin looked at him from blue had played portions on every piano in and sunken eyes. She had no interest in Klettendorf, and for miles around. He or opinion on the subject of music; it was could not see an instrument without sit-nothing to her whether Schoenemann or ting down to it, asked or unasked, to dem- Harms was her daughter's teacher. The onstrate the beautics of the "Bilder." He only subject which really interested her would play a few bars, then dash his hands was her own failing health; and as she down upon the notes in a rush of admira- looked and mused on August's ugly face tion which rendered his fingers powerless, and thick-set figure, where nevertheless and flinging himself round to face his strength and long life were so legibly audience, would call their attention in written, she grew bitter against the fate stammering words to the profundity of the which threatened to cut her off in the thought, the subtlety of the scoring, the height of her youth and beauty. She was originality of this or that phrase, until he thirty-four, and looked twenty-six, and her had roused excitement to a pitch nearly passionate love of life and amusement equalling his own. Then he would toss grew keener in proportion as she seemed back his already grizzling head with a destined to forego them. Yet she did dog-like shake, and begin the composition remember to say to her husband the next over again, to recommence the moment time she happened to see him, "That odd he had finished, lest inadvertently he Harms wants us to have young Schoeneshould have slurred over one of its thou- mann to give Marie music-lessons. It sand excellences. seems he is expected back in Klettendorf." Yet that Klettendorf took Schoenemann at Harms's estimate was due rather to the latter's faith, energy, and good-will, than to his skilful interpretation of his ex-pupil's work; poor Harms was but a mediocre pianist. It was reserved for Vieth to combine a just appreciation of Schoenemann's genius with a fine illustrative talent of his own. Naturally, if Harms had possessed such a talent, he would not have found himself at forty the obscure organist of a Rhine village. Among those persons to whom he had spoken of the young composer with most warmth were the Dittenheims. Graf Dittenheim owned Klettendorf and most of the land thereabouts; he possessed across the river at Godesberg a beautiful villa, generally occupied for a few months only during the summer season. But this year the family had been there since early March, the Graefin having been ordered away from the bitter winds of Berlin. Again, as on previous occasions, Harms was allowed to give piano-lessons to the only daughter, the little Contesse Marie. But he, with the simple, uncalculating generosity that distinguished him, wished her to have Schoenemann for a master instead. "So? Schoenemann?" said the Graf; "he is expected home, is he? I hear he is one of our coming men. By all means patronize him, if the little one would like it. I should be glad to help him for his father's sake. Poor Franz was a faithful servant, and a good musician himself. His touch on the violin was superb." Thus Harms obtained the wished-for permission to bring Emil to Bellavista, and present him to the family. But on the day fixed for this ceremony it happened that a funeral service was to be celebrated in the Hofkapelle in Bonn, and that the organist was taken ill. Harms was asked to supply his place; and in consequence, Schoenemann found himself on the way to Bellavista alone. It was June, gloriously sunny, three in the afternoon. It was a day for lying by woodland streams, listening to the small sounds of woodland life, seeing in fancy coy woodland nymphs peeping out from between the tree-boles. The road to Godesberg was long, dusty, and monotonous; most people would have found it insuperably dull; but Emil, who walked in the melodious company of his own thoughts, was raised far above dulness. Every impression received through the senses became music when it reached this young man's brain. The birds sang to him, and so did the breeze in the trees. The complaining cry of a gate which a woman opened to drive through some young calves, became a whole phrase in the tone-poem growing up in his soul. A band of little children, holding hands as they advanced towards him, introduced a new train of thought. He saw himself again just such a little child as one of these, running down the village street, and listening to the tune which his ironbound shoes rang out upon the cobbles. The whole of this walk, or rather the emotions which it set free, has been immortalized in the descriptive opening movement of Op. 37-so at least Vieth tells us, to whom Schoenemann confided much of his history and early experiences; the dreamy and delicious adagio was born of the rose garden, and the impulsive, passionate finale of the events that followed. But first I must describe to you this garden of Bellavista. The highroad ran right through it; or rather, there were two separate gardens, one on either hand. In the centre of the right-hand garden, fenced off from the highway by a wire rail and a laurel hedge, stood the house; a villa in the Italian style, that thus determined the foreign form its name should take. On the other side of the road, railed off in a similar manner, was a garden for pleasure only, extending from road to Rhine. And the view obtained from the windows of Bellavista, of rose, of myrtle, of broadbosomed river, of upland vineyard and wood beyond, fully justified the claim set forth in the name itself. Floating out from the two gardens, innumerable flower-perfumes blent themselves into one intoxicating whole, which was wafted far and wide, so that Schoenemann revelled in it long before he reached the open iron wicket that gave access to the house. The path wound first between walls of glossy laurel. Then you suddenly found yourself upon an open lawn, pierced with flower-beds resembling jewels in their gorgeous colorings and geometrical shapes. Here lay a ruby, formed of black and red and crimson roses, pinned closely down to the grass in circular pattern; there rose a clematis about a slender rod, which, massing its purple blossoms in an immense bouquet at the top, looked like a cluster of deep-hued amethysts and sapphires invisibly suspended a few feet above the ground. And scarlets, yellows and whites, yellows and scarlets, flashed and flamed and glimmered against the greenness on every side. Yonder lay the tubing which finished in the iron stand-piece of a movable fountain. It was playing now. Two broad rings of water, one above the other, revolved in contrary directions; and while the inner portion of each ring was of a glassy tenuity and smoothness, the outer edges broke up into a spray that scattered its myriad drops like diamonds in the sunshine. Continental gardens have a charm of which those who only know the green lawns and shady trees of England can form no idea. Those trees and lawns are beautiful indeed in their own peaceful way; but such a garden as Bellavista is a veritable land of enchantment, where warmth, color, perfume, and the aural coolness of plashing water, all woo the senses at once. Schoenemann found the door of the villa wide open like the gate. He stood on the threshold of a square hall, solemn and silent as a temple; and the Medicean Venus, who, from her pedestal of porphyry, was reflected at all her white and lovely length in the marble floor below, appeared like the goddess of the shrine. On either hand were doorways closed by heavy curtains, but there was no sight or sound of human life. Only the noise of water from a vase of roses overturned upon a sidetable, falling drop-wise into a self-formed pool on the pavement below. Only this, and the murmur of a bee, which had followed the young man in from the garden, broke the stillness. And when presently the water was all drained away, and the bee having found out the flowers settled down to enjoy them, the silence grew intense. Emil told himself he had come upon a fairy palace, of which the inhabitants had long ago been touched to sleep. He stood there upon the threshold, and savored a perfect enjoyment. He was not in the least embarrassed. The possessor of genius never is. He feels himself at all times and in all places far above external circumstances. Nature has crowned him king; and though a king may meet his equals, none stand above him. Now it is only the consciousness of a real or fancied inferiority that causes us to feel embar rassment. For some little time the young man remained quiescent, because the beauty, silence, and solitude of his surroundings pleased him; but when presently he noticed a doorway of which the curtains were not closed, he thought it natural to walk straightway in. He found himself in a large drawingroom, with a parqueted floor, an admirably painted ceiling, and walls hung with silk brocade. Three long windows looked out across the garden on to the Rhine, and a fourth window at the farther end of the room stood open on to a conservatory filled with tropical plants. There were flowers here, too, and the stronger fragrance of tuberose and gardenia effaced the remembrance of the roses outside. But the only object which appealed to Schoenemann's interest was a grand-piano placed at an angle to this conservatory door. There are men who go into a room and leave it again, having seen absolutely nothing of its contents. Others there are who will give not only a correct inventory of all the furniture, but an appraisement of every article at its just price. There are those who see only the pictures, and those who see only the books; and some among the latter cannot resist taking a book up from the table or down from the shelf, although they knew their immediate expulsion were to be the consequence. Schoenemann was affected in this way by musical instruments. He could not keep his fingers off them. Now he crossed over to the piano, opened it, and seated himself at the key-board with the same calmness and self-absorption as at the hired instrument in his Leipsic lodging, or at the wheezy old spinnet in the tiny living-room at home. He began to transmute back through his fingers, with the godlike faculty given to musicians alone, all the impressions of life and joy and beauty which his soul had received. At first with a certain hesitation, as his fingers sought the right chords - a hesitation still audible in the first eight bars, before comes the change of key the harmonies rose and swelled and flooded the room with sound until by that most unique and beautiful transition I write with my eyes upon the published score - he passed to the light scherzo movement, which paints so well nature's joyousness, and which yet, like nature, to those who know her best, reveals an undersong of pain. Cruder no doubt in places than in its now perfected form, the work which has appealed to so many thousands of feeling hearts ever since, must have possessed an extraordinary fascination on the day when it was first drawn warm and palpitating out of silence by the power of the musician's soul. The piano was placed so that the player faced the Rhine windows; and as Emil played, his gaze travelled across the river and rested on the clustering roofs of his own village; but rapt by the melodies he created, he was raised to an ideal world. He was unconscious of the instrument he played on, of the realities around him. Velvet curtains hung on either side of the conservatory door, fell in voluminous folds and lay on the floor in masses of drapery to delight a painter's heart. While Schoenemann played, one of these curtains was pulled gently aside, to reveal, hitherto concealed behind it, a very young girl. She had been sitting there reading, until the warmth of the day, the silence, and the enervating perfumes of the flowers had sent her to sleep. The book, a slim volume of Goethe's "Lieder," still lay open where it had slipped to her feet. If she had dreamed she was in heaven listening to the music of the spheres, she awoke to find the music was real; and she drew aside the curtain to perceive, with blue astonished eyes, a veritable flesh-and-blood young man, an entire stranger, seated at the piano before her. Schoenemann struck the final chords, and slowly released the notes one by one. The faint harmonies still delighted his ear, when his glance fell upon the young girl. He looked at her, not with surprise, but with interest that passed into a passionate pleasure. In a flash of light he caught a resemblance between her and the ideal woman he had vainly sought since boy. hood. The next moment real and ideal were inextricably blended, and he devoted himself body and soul to the worship of Marie von Dittenheim. If his very first words did not tell her what had happened to him, at least his eyes must have done so; for, leaning on the piano and blushing deeply, she murmured in broken phrases her thanks for his music, and her praise, while her mind swung like a pendulum between terror and joy. II. THAT evening Emil sought out Harms, and overflowed to him on the subject of the Contesse Marie. "She is the most beautiful creature I have ever met! Where were your eyes, Harms, not to have seen it? Wonderful man that you are! You have always spoken of her to me as a mere child. If I ever pictured her to myself at all, it was as a most ordinary young person. But she is holy as an angel, and exquisite as a Grecian statue into whom the gods have just breathed life. Just so must Galatea |