REPORT OF MR. NELSON L. DERBY.
369
The great amount of building undertaken has called for numerous architects, and these were soon at hand; some came from Northern Germany, and brought with them the taste for Gothic art; others were favorers of the French school; but by far the most seem to have drawn their inspiration from study of the Italian works of the fifteenth century.
The close promixity of Venice—to be reached by rail in less than twenty-four hours—attracts crowds of young enthusiasts each winter, who, after study of the famous monuments, are rarely content to return home without a visit to the neighboring cities of Northern Italy,—Padua; Vicenza, the home of Palladio; Brescia, Bergamo, and, finally, Milan, where the famous passage or gallery of Victor Emanuel, by the architect Mengoni, has now nearly reached completion.
Leaving this point, and returning as far as Verona, the favorite home trip is by way of the Brenner pass and Munich, —the latter, fifteen or twenty years ago, the most famous architectural city of Germany, and still possessing numerous structures in ancient Grecian style, fresh and unimpaired by the ravages of time. Vienna has also one master of the Gre-
O
cian art, whose name is well known upon the continent (Hausen),—the same who has prepared the plans for the Parliament Building referred to above, and has erected many of the public structures of the new Vienna. He, and the other two architects employed in beautifying the old parade- grounds, have the first names in architecture in Vienna. Within a few years, the renowned Semper, formerly connected with the poly technical school at Zurich, has also taken up his abode here, and is now engaged with the erection of two large museums,—destined also to beautify the ring,—while, in Dresden, the new Eoyal Theatre, also by him, now well above the ground, has, without doubt, been seen and admired by many Americans who have been abroad within the last year.
The erection of so many public buildings in Vienna, in ornamental style, has affected the architecture of the better dwellings. No one ventures to build a dwelling-house today upon one of the newer streets of Vienna without attention to the requirements of beauty and taste; and the building laws have become so rigid that permission could, 47