Page:Charles von Hügel (1903 memoir).djvu/39

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MEMORIAL ADDRESS
7

wherever she went. From her he inherited his beautiful, sympathetic exterior, his affability, and his serenity.

In the parental house he received a careful education, with his elder brother Clemens, who was afterwards Attaché to the Austrian Embassy in Brazil, and, later, Director of the Imperial Archives at Vienna. Charles studied law at Heidelberg, then entered the Austrian army and took his part as a brave soldier in the wars of independence. With the Austrian army he entered Paris, and was subsequently employed in a diplomatic mission which led him to the court of the King of Sweden. Here the desire for travel awoke in him, and he took advantage of the opportunity to become acquainted not only with Sweden, but also with Norway and Denmark. On his return he was employed in a military capacity[1] in the South of France and in Italy, and, eventually, as Military Attaché at Naples. In the year 1824 he went to Vienna, and shortly afterwards retired from the army with the rank of captain, and the decoration of the Army Cross[2]. In 1849 he received his majority.

Hügel left the army in order to strike out quite a new line of life, and to take up the study of horticulture and of natural science. At Hietzing, in the neighbourhood of Vienna, he established his beautiful home, a villa arranged according to his own taste, in the midst of gardens and pleasure-grounds which he called into existence, and which, under his constant care and personal superintendence, at once became famous. Here, with a success as great as his assiduity, he worked at the most diverse branches of horticulture. With his easily enkindled intellectual curiosity he soon interested himself in other branches of natural science, and made a profound study of them without ever

  1. In the 5th Regiment of Hussars ('The Prince Regent of England's Own'). A. v. H.
  2. Armeekreus: see List of Distinctions