Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family: or, A Residence in Belgrade and Travels in the Highlands and Woodlands of the Interior, during the years 1843 and 1844.Paton, A. A. (Andrew Archibald)
History
Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family: or, A Residence in Belgrade and Travels in the Highlands and Woodlands of the Interior, during the years 1843 and 1844.
Paton, A. A. (Andrew Archibald)
Serbia -- Description and travel
CHAPTER XXXV.
Concluding Observations on Austria and her Prospects.
The heterogeneousness of the inhabitants of London and Paris is from
the influx of foreigners; but the odd mixture of German, Italian,
Slaavic, and I know not how many other races in Vienna, is almost all
generated within the limits of the monarchy. Masses, rubbing against
each other, get their asperities smoothed in the contact; but the
characteristics of various nationalities remain in Vienna in
considerable strength, and do not seem likely soon to disappear by any
process of attrition. There goes the German--honest, good-natured, and
laborious; the Hungarian--proud, insolent, lazy, hospitable, generous,
and sincere; and the plausible Slaav--his eye, twinkling with the
prospect of seizing, by a knowledge of human nature, what others
attain by slower means.
How curious again, is the meeting of nations that labour and enjoy! In
Paris, the Germans and the English are more numerous than any other
foreigners. The former toil, drudge, save their littles to make a
meikle. The latter, whatever they may be at home, are, in Paris,
generally loungers and consumers of the fruits of the earth. The
Hungarian's errand in Vienna is to spend money: the Italian's to make
it. The Hungarian, A.B., is one of the squirearchy of his country,
whose name is legion, or a military man, whiling away his furlough
amid the excitements of a gay capital. The Italian, C.D., is a
painter, a sculptor, a musician, or an employe; and there is scarcely
to be found an idle man among the twenty thousand of his
fellow-countrymen, who inhabit the metropolis.
The Hungarian nobility, of the higher class, are, in appearance and
habits, completely identified with their German brethren; but it is in
the middle nobility that we recognize the swarthy complexion, the
haughty air and features, more or less of a Mongolian cast. The
Hungarians and native Germans are mutually proud of each other, and
mutually dislike each other. I never knew a Hungarian who was not in
his heart pleased with the idea, that the King of Hungary was also an
emperor, whose lands, broad and wide, occupied so large a space in the
map of Europe; and I never knew an Austrian proper, who was not proud
of Hungary and the Hungarians, in spite of all their defects. The
Hungarian of the above description herds with his fellow-countrymen,
and preserves, to the end of his stay, his character of foreigner;
visits assiduously places of public resort, preferring the theatre and
ball-room to the museum or picture-gallery.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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