THE BASTEI.
We left Kœnigstein early on a beautiful morning in our gondola, and in two hours we were housed in New Raden, at the foot of the Bastei. Having procured a guide, we commenced a laborious and steep zig-zag ascent towards the summit of the arch-lion of Saxon Switzerland. It required an hour or nearly so, to accomplish this task—each tourniquet of the ascent opening out more and more extended and splendid prospects. At length we got into the “regio petrea,” or stony region—sometimes winding round the bases of huge cliffs—sometimes squeezing through narrow fissures of the rock—and at others, crossing profound chasms over slender wooden bridges, or rather foot-paths. When almost despairing of gaining the summit before our strength was exhausted, we suddenly found ourselves on a small but level platform, on the highest pinnacle of the Bastei, and commanding a complete view, not only of the immense mass of splintered rocks around us, but of the whole country in every direction. In all my peregrinations round this globe, I never met with any locality or prospect similar to the one which burst on my astonished sight at this place!
I’ve travers’d many a mountain strand,
Abroad and in my native land;—
And it has been my fate to tread,
Where safety more than pleasure led—
But by my Halidome—
A scene so rude, so wild as this—
Or so sublime in barrenness,
Ne’er did my wandering footsteps press,
Where’er I chanc’d to roam!
We stood on the verge of a tremendous precipice, eight hundred feet in height, and overhanging the Elbe below. Though its brow is fringed with an iron ballustrade, I observed that very few ventured to look over the frightful bourne,
“Lest the brain turn and the deficient sight
Topple down headlong.”
In the opposite direction, rises one of the most singular scenes that ever opened on the human eye. The billows of an angry ocean suddenly converted into stone, while agitated by a furious hurricane, might convey some, but a very imperfect, idea of this astonishing locality. The fractured rocks, though all presenting the stratifications so often mentioned, and most of them still horizontal, assume almost every shape and form that imagination bodies forth in the autumnal clouds that range themselves along the western horizon, as the cortege of a setting sun, on a beautiful evening. Pyramids, cliffs, spires, columns, ruins, cupolas, turrets, battlements, castles, colossal statues and fantastic figures—of everything, in short, which a fertile fancy can conjure up in the animate or inanimate world.[86]
After the first emotions of surprize and astonishment have subsided, we begin to ask ourselves what convulsion of Nature could have produced this scene of devastation, destruction, and dislocation? Was it an earthquake?—a volcano?—or a deluge? Coupling this last idea with the acknowledged fact that all these fractured rocks were once a series of level and solid strata at the bottom of the ocean, the remarkable expression in Holy Writ rushed on the mind—“And the fountains of the great deep were broken up.” Whether this indescribable scene of disruption and dilapidation was produced by any one of those three causes, or by all in succession, must for ever remain a secret sealed from human ken,—but it is abundantly evident, from the vast masses of debris along the banks of the river, that the winds and rains are constantly disintegrating the softer materials of this “Mer de Pierres,” and carrying them down towards the stream of the Elbe, which acts its part in conveying them to the bed of the great Northern Ocean, there to form new deposits, preparatory to some other revolution in our planet, which may once more raise the bed of the sea into terra firma—and overwhelm our mountains and plains in unfathomable depths of the vast watery element!
Various paths are formed among the intricacies of the rocks here, and seats formed for contemplating
“Craggs, knolls, and mounds confusedly hurl’d,
The fragments of an earlier world.”
And few minds can dwell on such a scene without profound reflections on that Almighty Power whose operations are displayed here on such a stupendous scale.
The external or distant views from the Bastei are still more striking than those from the fortress of Kœnigstein—more varied in their character, and having Kœnigstein itself, and also Lilienstein, as most prominent features in the landscape. The rocky mounds in the same shape as the Lilienstein, which stand up in every direction, are all seats of legendary tales, nearly as numerous as those of the Rhine.
We were not a little surprized to find in this eyrie a very comfortable hotel—the romantic situation of which has no equal in Europe, or in the world. But we were still more astonished to find horses and carriages in the court-yard of the inn! We were, at first, inclined to disbelieve the evidence of our own senses: but soon discovered that the northern approach to the Bastei admits of a good carriage road, so that invalids or weakly tourists may ascend to the very edge of the plateau on the summit of the highest rock, without the slightest fatigue. Near the hotel, there is seen a gigantic excavation in the rock, five times the size of the Coliseum in Rome, and very much in the form of a huge natural amphitheatre, surrounded by a towering rocky wall, of immense height, which wall is crowned by a great variety of grotesque and colossal figures, bearing more or less resemblance to animals and artificial constructions. Here is a very loud and distinct echo, which adds to the interest of a scene quite unique on the face of this globe.
We descended by the same path by which we ascended, enjoying the prospects from various points, and bidding adieu to the most interesting spot we had ever visited.
ELBE to DRESDEN.
Our little gondola floated down the silver Elbe towards Dresden on a beautiful day, the right bank of the river still preserving its superiority of scenery over the left. Indeed I think the former bank little, if at all, inferior to even the best parts of the Rhine—besides the advantage of innumerable white villas, vineyards, gardens, and orchards, scattered from the summit of the hills down to the water’s edge.
PILLNITZ.
Passing the fortified town of Pirna a on the left, we arrived at the summer residence of the royal family at Pillnitz; but too late to avail ourselves of the permission given to foreigners to see, from a contiguous gallery, the regal banquet at dinner-hour. The lions had not only fed, but fled—perhaps to realize our nursery estimate of the felicity attendant on crowns and sceptres—
“The King was in his cabinet, counting out his money:
The Queen was in the drawing-room, eating bread and honey.”
I certainly feared that the faithful adhesion of Saxony to the fortunes of Napoleon, though it saved the “galleries” and “green vaults” of Dresden, had not tended to an overflow of the royal treasury—and I was quite sure that the battle of Leipsic and the Congress of Vienna had by no means enlarged the territories of the Saxon Monarch. As to the Queen, Boney’s inordinate love of bees must have greatly thinned the ranks of her majesty’s hives on the sunny banks of the Elbe, and diminished the supply of honey for the use of herself and maids of honour.[87] Be that as it may, I sincerely hope that no Saxon queen will ever be reduced from bread and honey to bread and cheese—for in that event, her majesty’s case would be hopeless.
We greatly regretted that we had not a glimpse at that magnificent lioness of Pillnitz, the Princess Amelia, sister to the monarch, and Playwriter to Germany in general. How she, as a Saxon princess, contrived to depict on the stage, “the domestic manners of the Germans,” as Mrs. Jameson very artfully terms her dramas, is beyond my comprehension, unless she imitated the Eastern Princes of former days, who went incog. among their subjects. Be this as it may, I confess I do not see any delineation of character in these plays that might not be picked up in the library, theatre, and drawing-room, by any clever girl of Princess Amelia’s calibre and talents. There is a clearer insight into domestic manners in one of Horace’s Odes or Satires (vide Sat. VIII.,) than in the whole of the Princess’s plays put together.