George Ticknor, Life, letters and journals of George Ticknor
George Hillard, Ed.

[5] places. The first was the Synagogue of the German Jews, where service commences on Friday evening, on the first appearance of the evening star for the Sabbath, for it is ‘the evening and the morning’ that make their holy day. Their temple outside cannot be distinguished from any other building; within it had very crowded seats on the lower floor, filled with men who wore their hats; a rather neat gallery supported by Ionic pillars and closed by a gilded lattice for the women; and an enclosure something like a chancel for the priest and choir, who stood with their backs to the audience. A table was before them, and above the table a large black velvet hanging covered with Hebrew inscriptions, towards which the faces of the priest and assembly were alike turned. The room was an oval, and, on the whole, of good architecture. All the congregation had Hebrew books in their hands; the priest, dressed in black robes and a black cap, sang in Hebrew, and had one of the finest and richest voices I ever heard, which poured forth the Hebrew vowels in the grandest melody, to which the choir and congregation responded.

There was something very picturesque in the whole, though, of course, everything was unintelligible to us. After listening to it, therefore, a little while, we drove to a public garden in one of the suburbs, where Strauss—whose waltzes are danced alike in Calcutta, Boston, and Vienna—plays two evenings in the week, to the great delight of the multitudes who go to hear him and his perfectly drilled band. It was a beautifully warm, still, moonlight evening; and when we reached the garden, which was brilliantly lighted, we found about four hundred people, chiefly seated at small tables under the trees, taking supper or some other refreshment, and listening to the music. It was extremely pretty, and the whole had a fanciful, fairy-like look.

June 26.—. . . . I went to see Jarcke, and had some quite interesting conversation with him. He is, I find, a very important person here, filling the place that was formerly filled by the famous Gentz, and is, therefore, since the death of that distinguished person, a sort of right-hand man to Metternich. He is, however, a Prussian by birth, and was for some years Professor of History at Berlin; but he became a Catholic, and that rendered him a little uncomfortable at home and very valuable here, so he was brought, nothing loath, and established in Metternich's Chancery with a great salary. He denies being an absolutist in politics, and founds much of his governmental doctrine upon the sacred preservation of property and its rights; is very hard upon Von Raumer; thinks the English Ministry