i 2i what at home he has neither seen nor read -—- everything by far superior! However irrefutable this assertion is, it may perhaps appear too severe, and we will therefore cast a deeper glance on our press with regard to the department ,,illustration“! Let me be permitted to examine some of the sign·boards in the chief public places of Vienna. How few native pictures do we meet with in proportion to the number of foreign ones! Where do you behold one of our great regents or heroes of the times of yore? Where do you find the grand features of the history of our native country? whilst you need only advance a few steps and you will be sure to behold on almost every sign-board the features of our enemies -—- however memorable they may be in their own countries. It will perhaps be replied. They are perceptible, because they find more purchasers ·—-· that is the very circumstance to be regretted; for from the merchants shop thousands of representations which ought to be strangers to us, are transplanted to the places for public amusement or to the walls of the citizen, to the room of the peasant -—- and thus the seed of patriotism is sown by the press! It would be unjust to attribute the fault to the print-seller; the native press docs not supply him with anything superior, it is supplanted by foreign productions. It would be still more unjust to reproach the majority of the public with inditference to its native treasures of art; for if we observe pieture—galleries and scientilic collections on the days on which the public is admitted, we shall {ind there a number of persons not less surprising in proportion than in Paris at the Louvre, in London at the British Museum, or in Rome at the Vatican. And we might even remark with equal justice, that these last named institutions have not been more active in the publication of their works of art by means of the ennobled press than we. But let us make the beginning: let us multiply our historical and artistical medals, and let us furnish them at a price, that the walls of the rooms of the citizens and peasants may by degrees become ornamented with the representations of noble and patriotic deeds, so that the pictures of foreign heroes may be in
