The life of the Viennese in the Prater is a pretty faithful image of their own government, a despotic government, no doubt, but which, for all that, has only one aim--the welfare and material prosperity of the country. Differing from other states, and notably from France, whose administration, constantly libelled and insulted, takes its revenge by making the ‘governed’ its enemy, the public powers in Austria, subject to no control, assiduously endeavour to be the protector and the guide of the people. That protection is accepted with joy; and if despotism is now and again constrained to show its teeth, its dictates are, as it were, carried out in the family circle and with the lesser or greater consent of the calm and thoughtful people itself. Consequently, the alien, watching them under those magnificently umbrageous pleasure resorts, and beholding the emperor, his family, and his ministers mingling with the crowd, unprotected either by guards or escorts, is tempted to envy them such a genuine and solid happiness. During the period of the Congress the Prater became more brilliant than it had ever been before. Vienna was so full of strangers, coming from all countries to be the eyewitnesses of an assembly supposed to be the fitting termination to an epoch replete with prodigious events, that the number of carriages had incredibly increased. There was an infinite variety of dresses, Hungarian, Polish, and Oriental, an infinite number of uniforms whose wearers hailed from every part of Europe, and who dazzled the sight with their splendour. Masses of people, driving, riding, and walking under the still warm rays of an autumn sun, imparted to the beautiful spot even more than its ordinary animation. What struck me most, at the first sight, was the great number of carriages of the same shape and colour, and all drawn by two or four horses. It was simply the result of another exquisitely courteous attention of the emperor, who made it a point that the sovereigns and the members of their suites should be provided solely from the imperial stables, and as such ordered three hundred conveyances of an identical form to be built and to be held, day and night, at the disposal of his guests.