bed-clothes: "You may shout till you are hoarse; I will not reply till you call me Montagu."
In Vienna is a large stearine manufactory; in fact, it was in Vienna that the discovery was made that common tallow could be transformed into a wax-like substance. But this substance was mutton fat, and was never deposited by bees as extracted from flowers. The Viennese laughingly point to the Palace, and call that the superior stearine factory, in which Herr Blogg goes in gross and a Bürger, and comes out refined and adelig; and Pumpernickel, the chiropodist, has been transformed from common tallow to noble wax—or something like it.
The old severe restrictions existed relative to the importation of foreign books. My father wanted to purchase the Memoirs of Baron Trenck. He went to a bookseller, who told him it was forbidden, and he could not sell it to him. But, said he, come into my back room, and smoke a cigar with me. My father consented, and presently, the book he wanted was thrust into his hand. The Baroness de Stael says of Vienna: "The representation of Don Carlos was forbidden in Vienna, because they would not tolerate his love for Elizabeth. In Schiller's Joan of Arc, they made Agnes Sorel the lawful wife of Charles the Seventh. The public library was forbidden to let the Esprit des Lois be read: and while all this constraint was practised, the romances of Crebillon circulated in everybody's hands; licentious works found entrance, and serious ones were suppressed."
As to the book shops—anything that was forbidden could be had from them, smuggled into the capital, and, unhappily, the worst literature of Germany and France. When my father was introduced into the back premises of the book shop, he saw what was the hateful stuff that was actually sold in Vienna, to the demoralization of the people, whereas philosophical works, and those in favour of liberal ideas, were kept under lock and key, and only cautiously disposed of. We cannot sufficiently trust the wholesome sense of the people to put away the scum of what is vile. Any attempt at repression only stimulated the desire for what is forbidden. Humanity is healthy at core.
Bohemia, if looked at from the moon, would appear very much like one of the vast craters that we see by means of the telescope on the lunar surface. It is completely ringed about with mountain
