THE GERMANS.
I have been but two days wholly among the Germans, but I had previously met many of them in England, Italy and Switzerland. They are seen to the best advantage at home. Their uniform courtesy (save in the detestable habit of smoking where others cannot help being annoyed by their fumes), indicates not merely good nature but genuine kindness of heart. I have not seen a German quarreling or scolding anywhere in Europe. The deference of members of the same family to each other's happiness in cars, hotels and steamboats has that quiet, unconscious manner which distinguishes a habit from a holiday ornament. The entire absence of pretense, of stateliness, of a desire to be thought a personage and not a mere person, is scarcely more universal in Switzerland than here. But in fact I have found Aristocracy a chronic disease nowhere but in Great Britain. In France, there is absolutely nothing of it; there are monarchists in that country—monarchists from tradition, from conviction, from policy, or from class interest—but of Aristocracy scarcely a trace is left. Your Paris boot-black will make you a low bow in acknowledgment of a franc, but he has not a trace of the abjectness of a London waiter, and would evidently decline the honor of being kicked by a Duke. In Italy, there is little manhood but no class-worship; her millions of beggars will not abase themselves one whit lower before a Prince than before anyone else from whom they hope to worm a copper. The Swiss are freemen, and wear the fact unconsciously but palpably on their brows and beaming from their eyes. The Germans submit passively to arbitrary power which they see not how successfully to resist, but they render to rank or dignity no more homage than is necessary—their souls are still free, and their manners evince a simplicity and frankness which might shame or at least instruct America. On the Rhine, the steamboats are so small and shabby, without state-rooms, berth-rooms, or even an upper deck—that the passengers are necessarily at all times under each other's observation, and, as the fare is high, and twice as much in the main as in the forward cabin, it may be fairly presumed that among those who pay the higher charge are none of the poorest class—no mere laborers for wages. Yet in this main cabin well-dressed young ladies would take out their home-prepared dinner and eat it at their own good time without seeking the company and countenance of others, or troubling themselves to see who was observing. A Lowell factory-girl would consider this entirely out of character, and a New-York milliner would be shocked at the idea of it.
The Germans are a patient, long-suffering race. Of their Forty Millions outside of Austria, probably less than an eighth at all approve or even acquiesce in the despotic policy in which their rulers are leagued, and which has rendered Germany for the present a mere outpost of Russia—an unfinished Poland. These people are intelligent as well as brave—they see and feel, yet endure and forbear. Perhaps their course is wiser than that which hot impatience would prompt—nay, I believe it is. If they can patiently suffer on without losing heart until France shall have extricated herself from the toils of her treacherous misrulers, they may then resume their rights almost without a blow. And whenever a new 1848 shall dawn upon them, they will have learned to improve its opportunities and avoid its weaknesses and blunders. Heaven speed its auspicious coming!
XXXIV.
BELGIUM.
Paris, Saturday, July 19, 1851.
From Cologne westward by Railroad to the Western frontier (near Verviers) of Rhenish Prussia, and thus of Germany, is 65 miles. For most of the way the country is flat and fertile, and in good part devoted to Grazing, though considerable Wheat is grown. The farming is not remarkably good, and the general aspect befits a region which for two thousand years has been too often the arena of fierce and bloody conflict between the armies of great nations. Cologne itself, though a place of no natural strength, has been fortified to an extent and at an evident cost beyond all American conception. All over this part of Europe, and to a less degree throughout Italy, the amount of expenditure on walls and forts, bastions, ditches, batteries, &c. is incalculably great. I cannot doubt that any nation, by wisely expending half so much in systematic efforts to educate, employ steadily and reward amply its poorer classes, would have been strengthened and ensured against invasion far more than it could be by walls like precipices and a belt of fortresses as impregnable as Gibraltar. But this wisdom is slowly learned by rulers, and is not yet very widely appreciated. Whenever it shall be, "Othello's occupation" will be gone, not for Othello only, but for all who would live by the sword.
For some miles before it reaches the frontier, and for a much larger distance after entering Belgium, the Railroad passes through a decidedly broken, hilly, up-and-down country, most unlike the popular conception of Flanders or Belgium. Precipices of naked rock are not unfrequent and the region is wisely given up mainly to Wood and Grass, the former engrossing most of the hill-sides and the latter flourishing in the valleys. This Railroad has more tunnels in the course of fifty miles than I ever before met with—I think not less than a dozen—while the grading and bridging must have been very expensive. Such a country is of course prolific in running streams, on which many small and some larger manufacturing towns and villages are located. At length, it ascends a considerable inclined plane at Liege, once a very popular, powerful and still a handsome and important manufacturing town with 60,000 inhabitants; and here the beautiful and magnificently fertile table lands of Belgium spread out like a vast prairie before the traveler. In fact, the peasant cultivators are so commonly located in villages, leaving long stretches of the rarely fenced though well cultivated plain without a habitation, that the resemblance to level prairies which have been planted and sown is more striking than would be imagined. But the growing crops are too cleanly and carefully weeded and too uniformly good to protract the illusion. Sometimes hundreds of acres are unbrokenly covered with Wheat, which has the largest area of any one staple; but more commonly a breadth of this is succeeded by one of Rye, that by one of Potatoes, then Wheat again, then Clover, then Rye, then Wheat, then Potatoes, then Clover or other grass, and so on. I never before saw so extensive and uniformly thrifty a growth of Potatoes, while acres upon acres of Beets, also in regular rows and kept carefully free from weeds, present at this season a beautiful appearance. I apprehend that not half so much attention has been given in our country to the growth of this and the kindred roots as would have been richly rewarded. Of course, it is idle to sow Beets on any but rich land, with a generous depth of soil and the most thorough cultivation, but with such cultivation the red lands of New-Jersey and the intervales of our rivers might be profitably and extensively devoted to the Beet culture and to that of the larger Turnips. I have seen nothing in Europe that made a better appearance or promised a more bountiful return than the large tracts of Belgium and the neighboring district of France sown to Beets.
Indian Corn and the Vine are scarcely, or not at all seen in Belgium. Beggars are not abundant; but women are required to labor quite extensively in the fields. The habitations of the poor are less wretched than those of Italy, but not equal to those of the fertile portion of Switzerland. Irrigation is quite extensively practised, but is far from universal. The few cattle kept in the wholly arable and thoroughly cultivated portion of the country are seldom allowed to range, because of the lack of fences, but are kept up and fed throughout the year. Women cutting grass in all by-places, and carrying it home by back-loads to feed their stock, is a common spectacle throughout central Europe. Trees sometimes line the roads and streams, or irrigating canals, and sometimes have a piece of ground allotted them whereon to grow at random, but are rather scarce throughout this region, and I think I saw square miles entirely devoid of them. Fruit-trees are clearly too scarce, though Cherries in abundance were offered for sale as we passed. On the whole, Belgium is not only a fertile but a prosperous country.
At Liege, the Railroad we traversed leaves its westerly for a north-west course, running past Tirlemont to Malines (Mechlin) and thence to Antwerp; but we took a sharp turn to the south-west of Malines in order to reach Brussels, which, though the capital and the largest city of Belgium, is barely a point or stopping-place on a right line, while Liege, Namur, Ghent and Bruges are each the point of junction of two or more completed roads. Brussels has slept while this network has been woven over the country, and will awake to discover herself shorn of her trade and sinking into insignificance if she does not immediately bestir herself. Her location is a fine one, on a ground which rises very gradually from the great plain to a modest hill southward, and she is among the best built of modern cities. But already she is off the direct line from either London or Paris to Germany; I would have saved many miles by avoiding her and taking the road due west from Liege to Namur, Charleroi and Mons, where it intersects the Brussels line; and soon the great bulk of the travel will do so if it does not already. Railroads are reckless Radicals and are destined by turns to make and to mar the fortunes of many great emporiums.