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 skewing 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 manic materials, but mixed with the productions of Hungary, Italy, and Bohemia: hence the darker com plexion and blacker eyes, the bolder features and the more animated expression of the Austrian than of the Westphalian, Saxon, Prussian, or Franconian ; 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 the 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, we saw the Grecian profile and ey2-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 genuine 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 of form, are the manners oŁ the Austrian population. They may justly be called a sensual people, in the same manner as the aggregate of the European po pulation deserves that title; i. e. they spew 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 hearts are as unsus ceptible of fear as they are alive to delight; and na. ture 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 animals, well fed and judiciously managed; and their country better supplied with roads, bridges, salutary municipal regulations, (and these, too, pretty well executed,) than any other province in Germany. From a long enjoyment of those advantages, and a consciousness of them, the general appearance of con tentment and happiness which occurred in this fine province, as often as we visited it, in spite even of war and its attendan. calamities, may be in some measure derived. That the national character is agreeable to a stranger to contemplate it, is certain ; and therefore he willingly dwells on any peculiarity which may rescue his speculations from the charge of a tedious and impertinent minuteness, while he describes the manners of a district, which, lying nearly in the centre of Europe, and having frequently made a figure in our history as the point of union of a powerful mo narchy, might be supposed to be abundantly familiar to us in all its aspects.