THE CAPITALS OF EUROPE.
IN his speech the other day on the conclusion of Sir Walter Besant's lecture on "The Educational Aspect of the History of London" the Bishop of London took exception to the lecturer's rather too ideal estimate of historic London as "the definer, maintainer, and defender of popular liberty in this country," and asserted that the power of London was rather due, as Bishop Stubbs has said, to the fact that it was always the purse, seldom the head, never the heart of England. There is truth in both statements. London was unquestionably the mainstay of liberty after William the Conqueror's invasion, though her motives may have been mixed, but the charter con- ceded to London proves conclusively that she was then a champion of local liberty. In the Commonwealth wars London stood for the Parliamentary cause, and in the last century "Wilkes and Liberty" found no more energetic defender than London. In saying this we must, of course, define " London " as meaning the old historic city, not the huge province of bricks and mortar of to-day. We should say that London now occupies her unique position owing to her money power more than to any other cause. As the financial centre of the 'United Kingdom, the seat of the Bank of England, the pivot of world- finance, London has reached her greatness of to-day. We can at once see this by imagining the outcome of a very improbable occurrence,—viz., either an internal revolution or an invasion. It would undoubtedly be a serious fact should the news be flashed that Leeds, or Manchester, or Newcastle was in the hands of either enemies or rebels ; but what would be the sensation in England and through- out the world if it were known that Downing Street and the Bank of England were occupied either by foreign troops or by a revolutionary Committee ? The test would show how largely the immense financial power of London gives her the great position she fills. It is not the miles of suburban streets that are of importance, but the one square mile of the City and a fraction of old Westminster.
But is not this power of the purse true also of other European capitals ? Bishop Creighton spoke of Paris as though its eminence were due to the fact that it is the home of ideas, the greatest modern fountain of intel- lectual life. That Paris is and has for two centuries been by far the greatest intellectual centre in the world is, of course, true ; but she is a great money centre also ; she has the power of the purse. She contains the Ministry of Finance and the Bank of France, and she consequently wields a supreme power in France quite apart from the fact that she is the greatest artistic and literary centre in the world, and that, politically, she often stands out as the representative of all France, as she did in 1793, in 1830, in 1848, and in 1870. Take from Paris the power of the purse, transfer the Bank of France and the haute finance to Lyons or Toulouse, and we should find (if the transference could be made permanent) that Paris had declined greatly in the esteem of France and of the world. While Paris is a grade below London in its power as a financial centre, Berlin is perhaps a grade below Paris ; not because it is not a very influential centre of finance, but because it shares that position with Frankfort, which still, though no longer a capital, main- tains its old reputation, and will probably continue to do so. But the creation of the German Empire has rapidly raised Berlin from the position of a dull and sordid provincial town to that of one of the greatest capitals of ancient or modern times,—a capital with- out charm, but with a sense of power and a certain machined and massive order. If Berlin has no charm, Vienna has many charms both for the historic student and the observer of social and racial contrasts. The fact of Austria-Hungary being a dual State renders the finance of Vienna less interesting and important to one- half the Empire than would be the case if it were a centralised State ; but in Cisleithan Austria the position of Vienna as a financial centre, no less than as the seat of government, is felt everywhere. When we turn to Rome we see a capital which was not created because of its wealth or population ; for Milan is far richer than Rome, and Naples is much more populous. Here the in- fluence to which we have been referring is, therefore, far less pronounced, even if it exists at all ; but the position of Rome as the capital of two great world-orders of civilisation is so unique that it may almost be removed from the category of ordinary capitals. It is still far more the "city of the soul" than even the centre of the Catholic world ; and it is far more the capital of the Catholic world than it is the seat of the Italian secular Government. We suspect, however, that the expansion of modern Rome does to some degree give it a certain power over the financial affairs of Italy, and therefore over the general life of the Italians. Of the great capitals, it remains to note St. Petersburg, intensely modern, intensely imperial, intensely artificial, but no doubt also wielding the power of the purse as the centre of the complex and growing finance of the Russian Empire.
Of these capitals of the Great Powers of Europe we may say that they divide themselves into two classes. London, Paris, Berlin, and St. Petersburg look beyond Europe, and influence and concern themselves in different ways with the life of the world. Vienna and Rome are, on the other hand, concerned with European matters,— Rome mainly, Vienna entirely. We do not now allude, of course, to Papal Rome, which is more international in its relations than any capital, and which literally surveys the world from China to Peru ; we refer merely to the secular capital. While London is very far from cosmo- politan in the actual personnel of its enormous popula- tion as, e.g., New York is, yet the cosmopolitan influence is more felt in the City and in political circles than in any of the other capitals. The incessant influx of news from every part of the world, all day long —from a South American city, an Indian jungle, a mining camp in the Arctic Circle, or a swamp in Africa unknown but yesterday to mankind—this mass of intelligence reflected in the newspapers, discussed in clubs, governing the operations of a money power greater than any in history, gives an air of intense world-movement to a city the mass of whose people are probably singularly limited in the range of their ideas and interests. The Parisian workman is more open to ideas than his London brother, but, in spite of her forward Colonial policy, the political and commercial life of Paris has not the width and variety of that of London. Vastness and complexity are the characteristics of London, intensity and dramatic interest those of Paris. One still hears the echoes of the Re- volution along the quais and in the Place de la Con- corde and the Tuileries Gardens ; the soil is volcanic, every da.y has its mutterings and surprises. Paris is still, in spite of change, the capital of fashion and pleasure, as it is the Mecca. of men of letters ; but the superficial observer knows little of the immense array of skilled industry, of the perpetual toil which lies behind those brilliant shop-fronts. Since the decline of Athens there has never been such a concentration of eager intelligence as in Paris ; and since the decline of Rome there has never been such a concentration of calm and well-informed solidity of character and ordered resources as in London. Berlin makes on one a wholly different impression from either London or Paris. It is still provincial, it has no history ; and large and rich and growing as it is, one cannot feel for it any affection or deep interest. It has the philistinism of London without its great past, its wide outlook, its many-sided life. It has imitated the architecture and street effects of Paris without importing its esprit, its sthetic and spiritual influence. One feels that Berlin is, after all, only one of a dozen great German cities, and in some respects one of the least attractive of them. Considering its physical disadvantages, it is won- derful that so much has been made of Berlin ; but however great and rich it may become as the visible embodiment of German power and industry, it can never take rank among those capitals of the world which we cannot afford not to see. Much the same judgment may be passed on St. Petersburg, which is even more artificial than Berlin. It has scarcely grown in the ordinary way ; it has been deliberately made, like Washington, but it has not the sylvan or climatic charms of Washington. It is the giant work of barbarians, splendid but bizarre, its moral and social atmosphere as cold as its awful winter. It has never been, and can never be, the true centre of Russian life, for Holy Moscow is the true citadel of Russia, the central point in the Slavonic imagination. St. Petersburg is the city of police, of a vast officialism with the widest direct outlook in the world, of a showy society and an imported architecture. Possibly it may cease one day to be the capital of Russia, and its palaces and fortresses may sink in the bogs which surround its glorious river,— the one splendid natural feature of Peter's artificial capital.
Some well-known lines contrast the railber-nest of Berlin with the Saiser-stadt of Vienna, and the part relating to Vienna is just. Here we have a proud, imperial city, rather disdainful of trade, aristocratic and easy-going, conscious of a long past, its rulers still animated with the conviction that they are the successors of Charle- magne and Otto, looking on Berlin as parvenu, on London as merely commercial, on Paris as half crazy. Excepting in the domain of music, Vienna is not a home of art and culture, but it is a, centre of dignity and grace, and a. certain calm air of superiority, which, however, does not offend. It is content to look on while other places explore and write and toil and push and strain ; it stands on its rank, it can never forget its sixteen quarterings and its claims to high estate. Vienna is most interesting, perhaps, as the meeting-place between East and West ; where the fine gentleman rubs shoulders in the afternoon lounge along the Graben with the Bosnian peasant. The guardian of Europe's ancient order, the centre of a great and most interesting Empire, the city of leisure and of a pride so lofty that it does not know itself to be pride at all,—Vienna is both a charming city and an important political centre, as she will continue to be, no matter what is the fate of the Austrian Empire. What shall we say of Rome ? What can be said ? She is the world-city of the ages, and it is improbable that any conceivable combination of advantages can ever produce a rival to her supreme charms. But it is not in the fact that she is the seat of government, and that she has been arraying her ancient form in modern Parisian finery, that her charm lies. The dark, narrow Corso has a secret for us not to be found in the spacious Via Cavour ; and Monte Citorio, with its jobbing Deputies, will not lure one from the Forum. We must look to the most utilitarian reasons for any interest we may feel in the Rome of to-day ; to health statistics, to sanitary reform, to building laws. These seem prosaic when done under our eyes, but the same things are full of poetry when done in the time of Augustus or Trajan. Let us rid ourselves of the illusions of time, and admit that to have driven out dirt, brigandage, and pestilence, and to have diminished crime, is a not unworthy monument to- the glory of Rome as a modern capital.
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