From Ratisbon to Budapest
Berlin to Bagdad! How these words, during the past few years, have stirred the chancelleries of Europe and how they have echoed and reëchoed throughout the civilized world! How they evoke Macchiavellian schemes of rival powers for territorial expansion and recall prolonged diplomatic struggles and countless sanguinary battles for military and commercial supremacy! How they tell of a welter of intrigue, of ambitions foiled, of treaties violated, of nations plunged into the miseries and horrors of the most frightful and most destructive of wars!
No portion of the world’s surface in the entire history of humanity has witnessed so many and so great revolutions as has that narrow strip which connects what was once the palm-embowered capital of Harun-al-Rashid, near the reputed birthplace of our race, with the once proud metropolis of the Hohenzollerns in far distant Niflheim. Across this restricted belt have swept Babylonians and Assyrians, Persians and Greeks, Saracens and Mongols in their careers of rapine and conquest. And across it surged the countless hordes of Huns and Goths, Turks and Tartars, during that protracted migration of nations from the arid steppes of Asia to the fertile plains of Europe. And across it, too, at the head of their victorious armies, forced their way all projectors of world domination from Ashurbanipal and Alexander to Timur and Napoleon.
As a boy no part of the world possessed a greater fascination for me than Babylonia and Assyria. This was, probably, because the first book I ever read contained wonderful stories of the Garden of Eden; of Babylon and its marvelous hanging gardens; of Nineveh and its magnificent temples and palaces; of the Tigris and the Euphrates whose waters were made to irrigate the vast and fecund plain of Mesopotamia, the cradle of civilization. So profound, indeed, was the impression made on me by the reading of this volume that one of the great desires of my life was one day to be able to visit the land whose history had so fascinated my youthful mind and whose people had played so conspicuous a rôle in the drama of human progress.
After many years, when the realization of my dreams seemed no longer possible, events so shaped themselves that I finally found myself, almost as if by enchantment, in a comfortable hotel on the famous Unter den Linden in Berlin making final arrangements for my long journey to
Romantic Bagdad, name to childhood dear,
Where the sorcerer gloomed, the genii dwelt,
And Love and Worth to good Al Rashid knelt.
Had I been in haste and been disposed to follow the most direct route, I should have taken the Orient Express which would have delivered me forty-nine hours later in the famed City of Constantine on the picturesque Bosphorus. But that would have been too prosaic and would have prevented me from feasting my eyes on many things which, during previous visits to Europe had given me special pleasure.
Chief among these was that supreme performance of pictorial art, Raphael’s Madonna of San Sisto in the Royal Art Gallery of Dresden. Although I had many times spent hours in silent contemplation of this masterpiece of the great Umbrian artist, I now felt a greater desire than ever to behold again this matchless creation of genius and feel myself again under the spell of its serene beauty and gaze once more on what has been called “the supernatural put into color and form”—“Christianity in miniature”—what Goethe sings of as
Model for mothers—queen of woman—
A magic brush has, by enchantment,
Fixed her there.
Could one have had before one’s mind during long months in many lands a more elevating or a more inspiring image than that of her whom Wordsworth has so truly characterized as
Our tainted nature’s solitary boast?
From Dresden I went to Ratisbon which, according to a venerable tradition, occupies the site of a town founded by the Celts long centuries before the Christian era and which subsequently became known as Castra Regina, an outpost of the Roman empire on its long northern frontier. In few places of Germany is there more to engage the lovers of historic and legendary lore than this ancient city.
The most conspicuous object is the noble Gothic Cathedral with its delicate crocketed spires. As in the case of the cathedral of Cologne, full six centuries elapsed from the laying of the cornerstone to the completion of the towers of this imposing building. And as in the marvelous church of the Certosa di Pavia the architectural and artistic decoration of this magnificent temple passed from father to son. To these rarely gifted artisans and designers one can apply the words of Longfellow about the Cathedral of Strassburg: