Vienna and the Austrians - With Some Account of a Journey Through Swabia, Bavaria, the Tyrol, and the Salzbourg #271576

We have certainly not improved, within the last century and a quarter, in the art of imagining or of fabricating a grave and princely dress for a grave and princely ceremony. No robes of' modern days can compare with the gold and crimson waves that floated round these noble knights. Even the er mined robes of our peers must yield in dignity of outline to the draperies of the Golden Fleece. The material is crimson velvet, richly embroidered with gold, and lined with white satin; but it is in the majestic and flowing forms into which the robe and the cloak worn over it throw themselves, that the superiority consists. Had John Kemble seen an installation of knights of the Golden Fleece, he would most certainly have got up a piece to which the ceremony should have been incidental. He would have worn its robes and its cap too, so as to have done more justice to them than my pen can do. For the cap is by no means to be omitted in the his tory of this magnificent costume: it is of the same dark and massive material as the dress, with a sin gular drapery descending from it, that if suffered to fall to its full extent would reach the knees. It is in the management of this strange appendage to the head-dress that the greatest difference is perceptible in the bearing and deportment of the different indi viduals that constitute this noble body. The jewels,64 vienna.