Letters of Felix Mendelssohn

Presburg, September 27th, 1830.

Dear Brother,

Peals of bells, drums and music, carriages on carriages, people hurrying in all directions, everywhere gay crowds, such is the general aspect around me, for to-morrow is to be the coronation of the King, which the whole city has been expecting since yesterday, and are now imploring that the sky may clear up, and wake bright and cheerful, for the grand ceremony which ought to have taken place yesterday was obliged to be deferred on account of the torrents of rain. This afternoon the sky is blue and beautiful, and the moon is now shining down tranquilly on the tumult of the city. To-morrow at a very early hour the Crown Prince is to take his oaths (as King of Hungary) in the large Market-place; he is then to go to church in grand procession, attended by a whole array of bishops and nobles of the realm, and afterwards rides up the Königsberg, which lies opposite my windows, in order to wave his sword towards the banks of the Danube and the four quarters of the globe, in token that he takes possession of his new realm.

This excursion has made me acquainted with a new country; for Hungary with her magnates, her high dignitaries, her Oriental luxury, and also her barbarism, is to be seen here, and the streets offer a spectacle which is to me both novel and striking. We really seem here to approach closer to the East; the miserably obtuse peasants or serfs; the troops of gipsies; the equipages and retainers of the nobles overloaded with gold and gems, (for the grandees themselves are only visible through the closed windows of their carriages); then the singularly bold national physiognomy, the yellow hue, the long moustaches, the soft foreign idiom—all this makes the most motley impression in the world.

Early yesterday I went alone through the streets. First came a long array of jovial officers, on spirited little horses; behind them a crew of gipsies, making music; succeeded by Vienna fashionables, with eye-glasses and kid gloves, conversing with a Capuchin monk; then a couple of uncivilized peasants in long white coats, their hats pressed down on their foreheads, and their straight black hair cut even all round, (they have reddish-brown complexions, a languid gait, and an indescribable expression of savage stupidity and indifference); then came a couple of sharp, acute-looking students of theology, in their long blue coats, walking arm-in-arm; Hungarian proprietors in their dark blue national costume; court servants; and numbers of carriages every moment arriving, covered with mud. I followed the crowd as they slowly moved on up the hill, and so at last I arrived at the dilapidated castle, which commands an extensive view of the whole city and the Danube. People were looking down on all sides from the ancient white walls, and from the towers and balconies; in every corner boys were scribbling their names on the walls for the benefit of posterity; in a small chamber (perhaps once on a time a chapel, or a sleeping-apartment) an ox was in the act of being roasted whole, and as it turned on the spit, the people shouted with delight; a succession of cannons bristled before the castle, destined to bellow forth their appropriate thunders at the coronation.

Below, on the Danube, which runs very rapidly here, darting with the speed of an arrow through the pontoon bridge, lay a new steamer, that had just arrived, laden with strangers; then the extensive view of the flat but wooded country, and meadows overflowed by the Danube; of the embankments and streets swarming with human beings, and mountains clothed with Hungarian vines—all this was not a little strange and foreign. Then the pleasant contrast of living in the same house with the best and most friendly people in the world, and finding novelty doubly interesting in their society. These were really among the happy days, dear brother, that a kind Providence so often and so richly bestows on me.