Visits and Sketches at Home and Abroad, Vol. 1 (of 3) / With Tales and Miscellanies Now First Collected

by Mrs. Jameson

I.

MEDON—ALDA.

MEDON.

And so we are to have no "Sentimental Travels in Germany" on hot-pressed paper, illustrated with views taken on the spot?

ALDA.

No.

MEDON.

You have unloaded Time of his wallet only to deal out his "scraps of things past," his shreds of remembrance, in beggarly, indolent fashion, over your own fire-side? You are afraid of being termed an egotist; you, who within these ten minutes have assured me that not any opinion of any human being should prevent you from doing, saying, writing—any thing—

ALDA.

Finish the sentence—any thing, for truth's sake. But how is the cause of truth to be advanced by the insolent publication of a mass of crude thoughts and hasty observations picked up here and there, "as pigeons pick up peas," and which now lie safe within the clasps of those little green books? You need not look at them; they do not contain another Diary of an Ennuyée, thank Heaven! nor do I feel much inclined to play the Ennuyeuse in public.

MEDON.

"Take any form but that, and my firm nerves shall never tremble;" but with eyes to see, a heart to feel, a mind to observe, and a pen to record those observations, I do not perceive why you should not contribute one drop to that great ocean of thought which is weltering round the world!

ALDA.

If I could.

MEDON.

There are people, who when they travel open their eyes and their ears, (aye, and their mouths to some purpose,) and shut up their hearts and souls. I have heard such persons make it their boast, that they have returned to old England with all their old prejudices thick upon them; they have come back, to use their own phrase, "with no foreign ideas—just the same as they went:" they are much to be congratulated! I hope you are not one of these?

ALDA.

I hope not; it is this cold impervious pride which is the perdition of us English, and of England. I remember that in one of my several excursions on the Rhine, we had, on board the steamboat, an English family of high rank. There was the lordly papa, plain and shy, who never spoke to any one except his own family, and then only in the lowest whisper. There was the lady mamma, so truly lady-like, with fine-cut patrician features, and in her countenance a kind of passive hauteur, softened by an appearance of suffering, and ill-health. There were two daughters, proud, pale, fine-looking girls, dressed à ravir, with that indescribable air of high pretension, so elegantly impassive—so self-possessed—which some people call l'air distingué, but which, as extremes meet, I would rather call the refinement of vulgarity—the polish we see bestowed on debased material—the plating over the steel—the stucco over the brick-work!

MEDON.

Good; you can be severe then!

ALDA.

I spoke generally: bear witness to the general truth of the picture, for it will fit others as well as the personages I have brought before you, who are, indeed, but specimens of a species. This group, then, had designedly or instinctively entrenched themselves in a corner to the right of the steersman, within a fortification of tables and benches, so arranged as to forbid all approach within two or three yards; the young ladies had each their sketch-book, and wielded pencil and Indian rubber, I know not with what effect,—but I know that I never saw either countenance once relax or brighten, in the midst of the divine scenery through which we glided. Two female attendants, seated on the outer fortifications, formed a kind of piquet guard; and two footmen at the other end kept watch over the well-appointed carriages, and came and went as their attendance was required. No one else ventured to approach this aristocratic Olympus; the celestials within its precincts, though not exactly seated "on golden stools at golden tables," like the divinities in the song of the Parcæ,[ 1] showed as supreme, as godlike an indifference to the throng of mortals in the nether sphere: no word was exchanged during the whole day with any of the fifty or sixty human beings who were round them; nay, when the rain drove us down to the pavilion, even there, amid twelve or fourteen others, they contrived to keep themselves aloof from contact and conversation. In this fashion they probably pursued their tour, exchanging the interior of their travelling carriage for the interior of an hotel; and every where associating only with those of their own caste. What do they see of all that is to be seen? What can they know of what is to be known? What do they endure of what is to be endured? I can speak from experience—I have travelled in that same style. As they went, so they return; happily, or rather pitifully, unconscious of the narrow circle in which move their factitious enjoyments, their confined experience, their half-awakened sympathies! And I should tell you, that in the same steam-boat were two German girls, under the care of an elderly relative, I think an aunt, and a brother, who was a celebrated jurisconsulte and judge: their rank was equal to that of my countrywomen; their blood, perhaps, more purely noble, that is, older by some centuries; and their family more illustrious, by God knows how many quarterings; moreover, their father was a minister of state. Both these girls were beautiful;—fair, and fair-haired, with complexions on which "the rose stood ready with a blush;" and one, the youngest sister, was exquisitely lovely—in truth, she might have sat for one of Guido's angels. They walked up and down the deck, neither seeking nor avoiding the proximity of others. They accepted the telescopes which the gentlemen, particularly some young Englishmen, pressed on them when any distant or remarkable object came in view, and repaid the courtesy with a bright kindly smile; they were natural and easy, and did not deem it necessary to mount guard over their own dignity. Do you think I did not observe and feel the contrast?

MEDON.

If nations begin at last to understand each other's true interests—morally and politically, it will be through the agency of gifted men; but if ever they learn to love and sympathize with each other, it will be through the medium of you women. You smile, and shake your head; but in spite of a late example, which might seem to controvert this idea, I still think so;—our prejudices are stronger and bitterer than yours, because they are those which perverted reason builds up on a foundation of pride; but yours, which are generally those of fancy and association, soon melt away before your own kindly affections. More mobile, more impressible, more easily yielding to external circumstances, more easily lending yourselves to different manners and habits, more quick to perceive, more gentle to judge;—yes, it is to you we must look, to break down the outworks of prejudice—you, the advanced guard of humanity and civilization!

"The gentle race and dear,

By whom alone the world is glorified!"

Every feeling, well educated, generous, and truly refined woman, who travels, is as a dove sent out on a mission of peace; and should bring back at least an olive-leaf in her hand, if she bring nothing else. It is her part to soften the intercourse between rougher and stronger natures; to aid in the interfusion of the gentler sympathies; to speed the interchange of art and literature from pole to pole: not to pervert wit, and talent, and eloquence, and abuse the privileges of her sex, to sow the seeds of hatred where she might plant those of love—to embitter national discord and aversion, and disseminate individual prejudice and error.

ALDA.

Thank you! I need not say how entirely I agree with you.

MEDON.

Then tell me, what have you brought home? if but an olive-leaf, let us have it; come, unpack your budget. Have you collected store of anecdotes, private, literary, scandalous, abundantly interspersed with proper names of grand-dukes and little dukes, counts, barons, ministers, poets, authors, actors, and opera dancers?

ALDA.

Me?

MEDON.

Cry you mercy!—I did but jest, so do not look so indignant! But have you then traced the cause and consequences of that undercurrent of opinion which is slowly but surely sapping the foundations of empires? Have you heard the low booming of that mighty ocean which approaches, wave after wave, to break up the dikes and boundaries of ancient power?

ALDA.

I? no; how should I—skimming over the surface of society with perpetual sunshine and favouring airs—how should I sound the gulfs and shoals which lie below?

MEDON.

Have you, then, analysed that odd combination of poetry, metaphysics, and politics, which, like the three primeval colours, tinge in various tints and shades, simple and complex, all literature, morals, art, and even conversation, through Germany?

ALDA.

No, indeed!

MEDON.

Have you decided between the different systems of Jacobi and Schelling?

ALDA.

You know I am a poor philosopher; but when Schelling was introduced to me at Munich, I remember I looked up at him with inexpressible admiration, as one whose giant arm had cut through an isthmus, and whose giant mind had new modelled the opinions of minds as gigantic as his own.

MEDON.

Then you are of this new school, which reveals the union of faith and philosophy?

ALDA.

If I am, it is by instinct.

MEDON.

Well, to descend to your own peculiar sphere, have you satisfied yourself as to the moral and social position of the women in Germany?

ALDA.

No, indeed!—at least, not yet.

MEDON.

Have you examined and noted down the routine of the domestic education of their children? (we know something of the public and national systems.) Can you give some accurate notion of the ideas which generally prevail on this subject?

ALDA.

O no! you have mentioned things which would require a life to study. Merely to have thought upon them, to have glanced at them, gives me no right to discuss them, unless I could bring my observations to some tangible form, and derive from them some useful result.

MEDON.

Yet in this last journey you had an object—a purpose?

ALDA.

I had—a purpose which has long been revolving in my mind—an object never lost sight of;—but give me time!—time!

MEDON.

I see;—but are you prepared for consequences? Can you task your sensitive mind to stand reproach and ridicule? Remember your own story of Runckten the traveller, who, when about to commence his expedition into the desarts of Africa, prepared himself, by learning beforehand to digest poisons; to swallow without disgust reptiles, spiders, vermin——

ALDA.

"Thou hast the most unsavoury similes!"

MEDON.

Take a proverb then—"Bisogna coprirsi bene il viso innanzi di struzzicare il vespaio."

ALDA.

I will not hide my face; nor can I answer you in this jesting vein, for to me it is a serious thought. There is in the kindly feeling, the spontaneous sympathy of the public towards me, something which fills me with gratitude and respect, and tells me to respect myself; which I would not exchange for the greater éclat which hangs round greater names;—which I will not forfeit by writing one line from an unworthy motive; nor flatter, nor invite, by withholding one thought, opinion, or sentiment, which I believe to be true, and to which I can put the seal of my heart's conviction.

MEDON.

Good! I love a little enthusiasm now and then; so like Britomart in the enchanter's palace, the motto is,

"Be bold, be bold, and every where be bold!"

ALDA.

I should rather say, be gentle, be gentle, every where be gentle; and then we cannot be too bold.[ 2]

MEDON.

Well, then, I return once more to the charge. Have you been rambling about the world for these six months—yet learned nothing?

ALDA.

On the contrary.

MEDON.

Then what, in Heaven's name, have you learned?

ALDA.

Not much; but I have learned to sweep my mind of some ill-conditioned cobwebs. I have learned to consider my own acquired knowledge but as a torch flung into an abyss, making the darkness visible, and showing me the extent of my own ignorance.

MEDON.

Then give us—give me, at least—the benefit of your ignorance; only let it be all your own. I honour a profession of ignorance—if only for its rarity—in these all-knowing times. Let me tell you, the ignorance of a candid and not uncultivated mind is better than the second-hand wisdom of those who take all things for granted; who are the echoes of others' opinions, the utterers of others' words; who think they know, and who think they think: I am sick of them all. Come, refresh me with a little ignorance—and be serious.

ALDA.

You make me smile; after all, 'tis only going over old ground, and I know not what pleasure, what interest it can impart, beyond half an hour's amusement.

MEDON.

Sceptic! is that nothing? In this harsh, cold, working-day world, is half an hour's amusement nothing? Old ground!—as if you did not know the pleasure of going over old ground with a new companion to refresh half-faded recollections—to compare impressions—to correct old ideas and acquire new ones? O I can suck knowledge out of ignorance, as a weazel sucks eggs!—Begin.

ALDA.

Where shall I begin?

MEDON.

Where, but at the beginning? and then diverge as you will. Your first journey was one of mere amusement?

ALDA.

Merely, and it answered its purpose; we travelled à la milor Anglais—a partie carrée—a barouche hung on the most approved principle—double-cushioned—luxurious—rising and sinking on its springs like a swan on the wave—the pockets stuffed with new publications—maps and guides ad infinitum; English servants for comfort, foreign servants for use; a chess-board, backgammon tables—in short, surrounded with all that could render us entirely independent of the amusements we had come to seek, and of the people among whom we had come to visit.

MEDON.

Admirable—and English!

ALDA.

Yes, and pleasant. I thought, not without gratitude, of the contrast between present feelings and those of a former journey. To abandon oneself to the quickening influence of new objects without care or thought of to-morrow, with a mind awake in all its strength; with restored health and cheerfulness; with sensibility tamed, not dead; possessing one's soul in quiet; not seeking, nor yet shrinking from excitement; not self-engrossed, nor yet pining for sympathy; was not this much? Not so interesting, perhaps, as playing the Ennuyée; but, oh! you know not how sad it is to look upon the lovely through tearful eyes, and walk among the loving and the kind, wrapped as in a death-shroud; to carry into the midst of the most glorious scenes of nature, and the divinest creations of art, perceptions dimmed and troubled with sickness and anguish: to move in the morning with aching and reluctance—to faint in the evening with weariness and pain; to feel all change, all motion, a torment to the dying heart; all rest, all delay, a burthen to the impatient spirit; to shiver in the presence of joy, like a ghost in the sunshine, yet have no sympathy to spare for suffering. How could I remember that all this had been, and not bless the miracle-worker—Time? And apropos to the miracles of time—I had on this first journey, one source of amusement, which I am sorry I cannot share with you at full length; it was the near contemplation of a very singular character, of which I can only afford you a sketch. Our Chef de voyage, for so we chose to entitle him who was the planner and director of our excursion, was one of the most accomplished and most eccentric of human beings: even courtesy might have termed him old, at seventy; but old age and he were many miles asunder, and it seemed as though he had made some compact with Time, like that of Faust with the devil, and was not to surrender to his inevitable adversary till the very last moment. Years could not quench his vivacity, nor "stale his infinite variety." He had been one of the prince's wild companions in the days of Sheridan and Fox, and could play alternately blackguard and gentleman, and both in perfection; but the high-born gentleman ever prevailed. He had been heir to an enormous income, most of which had slipped through his fingers unknownst, as the Irish say, and had stood in the way of a coronet, which, somehow or other, had slipped over his head to light on that of his eldest son. He had lived a life which would have ruined twenty iron constitutions, and had suffered what might well have broken twenty hearts of common stuff; but his self-complacency was invulnerable, his animal spirits inexhaustible, his activity indefatigable. The eccentricities of this singular man have been matter of celebrity; but against each of these stories it would be easy to place some act of benevolence, some trait of lofty gentlemanly feeling, which would at least neutralize their effect. He often told me that he had early in life selected three models, after which to form his own conduct and character; namely, De Grammont, Hotspur, and Lord Herbert of Cherbury; and he certainly did unite, in a greater degree than he knew himself, the characteristics of all three. Such was our Chef, and thus led, thus appointed, away we posted on, from land to land, from city to city—

MEDON.

Stay—stay. This is galloping on at the rate of Lenora, and her phantom lover—

"Tramp, tramp across the land we go,

Splash, splash across the sea!"

Take me with you, and a little more leisurely.

ALDA.

I think Bruges was the first place which interested me, perhaps from its historical associations. Bruges, where monarchs kissed the hand to merchants, now emptied of its former splendour, reminded me of the improvident steward in scripture, that could not dig, and to beg was ashamed. It had an air of grave idleness and threadbare dignity; and its listless, thinly-scattered inhabitants looked as if they had gone astray among the wide streets and huge tenantless edifices. There is one thing here which you must see—the tomb of Charles the Bold, and his daughter, Mary of Burgundy. The tomb is of the most exquisite workmanship, composed of polished brass and enamelled escutcheons; and there the fiery father and the gentle daughter lie, side by side, in sculptured bronze, equally still, cold, and silent. I remember that I stood long gazing on the inscription, which made me smile, and made me think. There was no mention of defeat and massacre, disgraceful flight, or obscure death. "But," says the epitaph, after enumerating his titles, his exploits, and his virtues, "fortune, who had hitherto been his good lady, ungently turned her back upon him on such a day of such a year, and oppressed him"—an amusing instance of mingled courtesy and naïveté. Ghent was our next resting place. The aspect of Ghent, so familiarized to us of late by our travelled artists, made a strong impression upon me, and I used to walk about for hours together, looking at the strange picturesque old buildings coëval with the Spanish dominion, with their ornamented fronts and peaked roofs. There is much trade here, many flourishing manufactories, and the canals and quays often exhibited a lively scene of bustle, of which the form, at least, was new to us. The first exposition, or exhibition, of the newly-founded Royal Academy of the Netherlands was at this season open. You will allow it was a fair opportunity of judging of the present state of painting, in the self-same land, where she had once found, if not a temple, at least a home.

MEDON.

And learned to be homely—but the result?

ALDA.

I can scarce express the surprise I felt at the time, though it has since diminished on reflection. All the attempts at historical painting were bad, without exception. There was the usual assortment of Virgins, St. Cecilias, Cupids and Psyches, Zephyrs and Floras;—but such incomparable atrocities! There were some cabinet pictures in the same style in which their Flemish ancestors excelled—such as small interior conversation pieces, battle pieces, and flowers and fruit; some of these were really excellent, but the proportion of bad to good was certainly fifty to one.

MEDON.

Something like our own Royal Academy.

ALDA.

No; because with much which was quite as bad, quite as insipid, as coarse in taste, as stupidly presumptuous in attempt, and ridiculous in failure, as ever shocked me on the walls of Somerset House, there was nothing to be compared to the best pictures I have seen there. As I looked and listened to the remarks of the crowd around me, I perceived that the taste for art is even as low in the Netherlands as it is here and elsewhere.

MEDON.

And, surely, not from the want of models, nor from the want of facility in the means of studying them. You visited, of course, Schamp's collection?

ALDA.

Surely; there were miracles of art crowded together like goods in a counting-house, with wondrous economy of space, and more lamentable economy of light. Some were nailed against doors, inside and out, or suspended from screens and window-shutters. Here I saw Rubens' picture of Father Rutseli, the confessor of Albert and Isabella: one of those heads more suited to the crown than to the cowl—grand, sagacious, intellectual, with such a world of meaning in the eye, that one almost shrunk away from the expression. Here, too, I found that remarkable picture of Charles the First, painted by Lely during the king's imprisonment at Windsor—the only one for which he sat between his dethronement and his death: he is still melancholy and gentlemanlike, but not quite so dignified as on the canvass of Vandyke. This is the very picture that Horace Walpole mentions as lost or abstracted from the collection at Windsor. How it came into Schamp's collection, I could not learn. A very small head of an Italian girl by Correggio, or in his manner, hung close beside a Dutch girl by Mieris: equally exquisite as paintings, they gave me an opportunity of contrasting two styles, both founded in nature—but the nature, how different! the one all life, the other life and soul. Schamp's collection is liberally open to the public, as well as many others; if artists fail, it is not for want of models.

MEDON.

Perhaps for want of patronage? Yet I hear that the late king of the Netherlands sent several young artists to Italy at his own expense, and that the Prince of Orange was liberal and even munificent in his purchases—particularly of the old masters.

ALDA.

When I went to see the collection of the Prince of Orange at Brussels, I stepped from the room in which hung the glorious Vandykes, perhaps unequalled in the world, into the adjoining apartment, in which were two unfinished portraits disposed upon easels. They represented members of the prince's family; and were painted by a native artist of fashionable fame, and royally patronised. These were pointed out to my admiration as universally approved. What shall I say of them? Believe me, that they were contemptible beyond all terms of contempt! Can you tell me why the Prince of Orange should have sufficient taste to select and appropriate the finest specimens of art, and yet purchase and patronize the vilest daubs ever perpetrated by imbecility and presumption?

MEDON.

I know not, unless it be that in the former case he made use of others' eyes and judgment, and in the latter, of his own.

ALDA.

I might have anticipated the answer; but be that as it may, of all the galleries I saw in the Netherlands, the small but invaluable collection he had formed in his palace pleased me most. I remember a portrait of Sir Thomas More, by Holbein. A female head, by Leonardo da Vinci, said to be one of the mistresses of Francis I., but this is doubtful; that most magnificent group, Christ delivering the keys to St. Peter, by Rubens, once in England; about eight or ten Vandykes, masterpieces—for instance, Philip IV. and his minister Olivarez, and a Chevalier le Roy and his wife: all that you can imagine of chivalrous dignity, and lady-like grace. But there was one picture, a family group, by Gonsalez, which struck me more than all the rest put together. I had never seen any production of this painter, whose works are scarcely known out of Spain; and I looked upon this with equal astonishment and admiration. There was also a small, but most curious collection of pictures, of the ancient Flemish and German schools, which it is now the fashion to admire, and, what is worse, to imitate. The word fashion does not express the national enthusiasm on this subject which prevails in Germany. I can understand that these pictures are often most interesting as historic documents, and often admirable for their literal transcripts of nature and expression, but they can only possess comparative excellence and relative value; and where the feeling of ideal beauty and classic grace has been highly cultivated, the eye shrinks involuntarily from these hard, grotesque, and glaring productions of an age when genius was blindly groping amid the darkness of ignorance. To confess the truth, I was sometimes annoyed, and sometimes amused, by the cant I heard in Germany about those schools of painting which preceded Albert Durer. Perhaps I should not say cant—it is a vile expression; and in German affectation there is something so very peculiar—so poetical, so—so natural, if I might say so, that I would give it another name if I could find one. In this worship of their old painters, I really could sympathize sometimes, even when it most provoked me. Retzsch, whom I had the delight of knowing at Dresden, showed me a sketch, in which he had ridiculed this mania with the most exquisite humour: it represented the torso of an antique Apollo (emblematical of ideal grace), mutilated and half buried in the earth, and subject to every species of profanation; it serves as a stool for a German student, who, with his shirt-collar turned down, and his hair dishevelled, and his cap stuck on one side, à la Rafaelle, is intently copying a stiff, hard, sour-looking old Madonna, while Ignorance looks on, gaping with admiration. No one knows better than Retzsch the value of these ancient masters—no one has a more genuine feeling for all that is admirable in them; but no one feels more sensibly the gross perversion and exaggeration of the worship paid to them. I wish he would publish this good-humoured little bit of satire, which is too just and too graceful to be called a caricature.

I must tell you, however, that there were two most curious old pictures in the Orange Gallery, which arrested my attention, and of which I have retained a very distinct and vivid recollection; and that is more than I can say of many better pictures. They tell, in a striking manner, a very interesting story: the circumstances are said to have occurred about the year 985, but I cannot say that they rest on any very credible authority.

Of these two pictures, each exhibits two scenes. A certain nobleman, a favourite of the Emperor Otho, is condemned to death by his master on the false testimony of the Empress (a sort of Potiphar's wife), who has accused him of having tempted her to break her marriage vow. In the back-ground we see the unfortunate man led to judgment; he is in his shirt, bare-footed and bare-headed. His wife walks at his side, to whom he appears to be speaking earnestly, and endeavouring to persuade her of his innocence. A friar precedes them, and a crowd of people follow after. On the walls of the city stand the Emperor and his wicked Empress, looking down on the melancholy procession. In the foreground, we have the dead body of the victim, stretched upon the earth, and the executioner is in the act of delivering the head to his wife, who looks grim with despair. The severed head and flowing blood are painted with such a horrid and literal fidelity to nature, that it has been found advisable to cover this portion of the picture.

In the foreground of the second picture, the Emperor Otho is represented on his throne surrounded by his counsellors and courtiers. Before him kneels the widow of the Count: she has the ghastly head of her husband in her lap, and in her left-hand she holds firmly and unhurt the red-hot iron, the fiery ordeal by which she proves to the satisfaction of all present the innocence of her murdered lord. The Emperor looks thunderstruck; the Empress stands convicted, and is condemned to death; and in the back-ground, we have the catastrophe. She is bound to a stake, the fire is kindled, and she suffers the terrible penalty of her crime. These pictures, in subject and execution, might be termed tragico-comico-historical; but in spite of the harshness of the drawing, and the thousand defects of style and taste, they fix the attention by the vigour of the colouring and the expression of the heads, many of which are evidently from the life. The story is told in a very complete though very inartificial manner. The painter, Derick Steuerbout, was one of the very earliest of the Flemish masters, and lived about 1468, many years before Albert Durer and Holbein. I have heard that they were painted for the city of Lorraine, and until the invasion of the French, they remained undisturbed, and almost unnoticed, in the Hotel-de-Ville.

MEDON.

Does this collection of the Prince of Orange still exist at Brussels?

ALDA.

I am told that it does—that the whole palace, the furniture, the pictures, remain precisely as the prince and his family left them: that even down to the princess's work-box, and the portraits of her children which hang in her boudoir, nothing has been touched. This does not speak well for king Leopold's gallantry; and, in his place, I think I would have sent the private property of my rival after him.

MEDON.

So would not I, for this is not the age of chivalry, but of common sense. As to the pictures, the Belgians might plead that they were purchased with the public money, therefore justly public property. No, no; he should not have a picture of them—"If a Vandyke would save his soul, he should not; I'd keep them, by this hand!" that is, as long as I had a plausible excuse for keeping them; but the princess should have had her work-box and her children by the first courier. What more at Brussels?

ALDA.

I can recollect no more. The weather was sultry: we dressed, and dined, and ate ices, and drove up and down the Allée Verte, and saw I believe all that is to be seen—churches, palaces, hospitals, and so forth. We went from thence to Aix-la-Chapelle and Spa. As it was the height of the season, and both places were crowded with gay invalids, perhaps I ought to have been very much amused, but I confess I was ennuyée to death.

MEDON.

This I can hardly conceive; for though there might have been little to amuse one of your turn of mind, there should have been much to observe.

ALDA.

There might have been matter for observation, or ridicule, or reflexion, at the moment, but nothing that I remember with pleasure. Spa I disliked particularly. I believe I am not in my nature cold or stern; but there was something in the shallow, tawdry, vicious gaiety of this place, which disgusted me. In all watering-places extremes meet; sickness and suffering, youth and dissipation, beggary and riches, collect together; but Spa being a very small town, a mere village, the approximation is brought immediately under the eye at every hour, every moment; and the beauty of the scenery around only rendered it more disagreeable: to me, even the hill of Annette and Lubin was polluted. Our Chef de voyage, who had visited Spa fifty years before, when on his grand tour, walked about with great complacency, recalling his youthful pleasures, and the days when he used to gallant his beautiful cousin, the Duchess of Rutland, of divine memory. While the rest of the party were amused, I fell into my old, habit of thinking and observing, and my contemplations were not agreeable. But instead of dealing in these general remarks, I will sketch you one or two pictures which have dwelt upon my memory. We had a well-dressed laquais-de-place, whose honesty and good-humour rendered him an especial favourite. His wife being ill, I went to see her; to my great surprise he conducted me to a little mud hovel, worse than the worst Irish cabin I ever heard described, where his wife lay stretched upon some straw, covered with a rug, and a little neglected ragged child was crawling about the floor, and about her bed. It seems then, that, this poor man, who every day waited at our luxurious table, dressed in smiles, and must habitually have witnessed the wasteful expenditure of the rich, returned every night to his miserable home, if home it could be called, to feel the stings of want with double bitterness. He told me that he and his wife lived the greater part of the year upon water-gruel, and that the row of wretched cabins, of which his own formed one, was inhabited by those who, like himself, were dependent upon the rich, extravagant, and dissipated strangers for the little pittance which was to support them for a twelvemonth. Was not this a fearful contrast? I should tell you that the benevolence of our Chef rendered this poor couple independent of change or chance for the next year. My other picture is in a different style. You know that at Spa the theatre immediately joins the ball-room. As soon as the performances are over, the parterre is laid down with boards, and in a few minutes metamorphosed into a gambling saloon. One night curiosity led me to be a spectator at one of the rouge et noir tables. While I was there, a Flemish lady of rank, the Baroness B——, came in, hanging on the arm of a gentleman; she was not young, but still handsome. I had often met her in our walks, and had been struck by her fine eyes, and the amiable expression of her countenance. After one or two turns up and down the room, laughing and talking, she carelessly, and as if from a sudden thought, seated herself at the table. By degrees she became interested in the game, her stakes became deeper, her countenance became agitated, and her brow clouded. I left her playing. The next evening when I entered, I found her already seated at the table, as indeed I had anticipated. I watched her for some time with a painful interest. It was evident that she was not an habitual gambler, like several others at the same table, whose hard impassive features never varied with the variations of the game. There was one little old withered skeleton of a woman, like a death's head in artificial flowers, who stretched out her harpy claws upon the rouleaus of gold and silver, without moving a muscle or a wrinkle of her face,—with hardly an additional twinkle in her dull grey eye. Not so my poor baroness, who became every moment more agitated and more eager: her eyes sparkled with an unnatural keenness, her teeth became set, and her lips drawn away from them, wore, instead of the sweet smile which had at first attracted my attention, a grin of desperation. Gradually, as I looked at her, her countenance assumed so hideous, and, I may add, so vile an expression, that I could no longer endure the spectacle. I hastened from the room—more moved, more shocked than I can express; and often, since that time, her face has risen upon my day and night dreams like a horrid supernatural mask. Her husband, for this wretched woman was a wife and a mother, came to meet her a few days afterwards, and accompany her home; but I heard that in the interval she had attempted self-destruction, and failed.

MEDON.

The case is but too common; and even you, who are always seeking reasons and excuses for the delinquencies of your sex, would hardly find them here.

ALDA.

And unless I could know what were the previous habits and education of the victim, through what influences, blest or unblest, her mind had been trained, her moral existence built up—should I condemn? Who had taught this woman self-knowledge?—who had instructed her in the elements of her own being, and guarded her against her own excitable temperament?—what friendly voice had warned her ignorance?—what secret burden of misery—what joyless emptiness of heart—what fever of the nerves—what weariness of spirit—what "thankless husband or faithless lover" had driven her to the edge of the precipice? In this particular case I know that the husband bore the character of being both negligent and dissipated; and where was he,—what were his haunts and his amusements, while his wife staked with her gold, her honour, her reason, and her life? Tell me all this before we dare to pass judgment. O it is easy to compute what is done! and yet, who but the Being above us all, can know what is resisted?

MEDON.

You would plead then for a female gambler?

ALDA.

Why do you lay such an emphasis upon female gambler? In what respect is a female gambler worse than one of your sex? The case is more pitiable;—more rare—therefore, perhaps, more shocking; but why more hateful?

MEDON.

You pose me.

ALDA.

Then I will leave you to think;—or shall I go on? for at this rate we shall never arrive at the end of our journey. I was at Aix-la-Chapelle, was I not? Well, I spare you the relics of Charlemagne, and if you have any dear or splendid associations with that great name, spare your imagination the shock it may receive in the cathedral at Aix, and leave "Yarrow unvisited."[ 3] Luckily the theatre at Aix is beautiful, and there was a fine opera, and a very perfect orchestra; the singers tolerable. It was here I first heard the Don Juan and the Freyschutz performed in the German fashion, and with German words. The Freyschutz gave me unmixed pleasure. In the Don Juan I missed the recitative, and the soft Italian flow of syllables, from which the music had been divorced; so that the ear, long habituated to that marriage of sweet sounds, was disappointed; but to listen without pleasure and excitement was impossible. I remember that on looking round, after Donna Anna's song, I was surprised to see our Chef de voyage bathed in tears; but, no whit disconcerted, he merely wiped them away, saying, with a smile, "It is the very prettiest, softest thing to cry to one's self!" Afterwards, when we were in the carriage, he expressed his surprise that any man should be ashamed of tears. "For my own part," he added, "when I wish to enjoy the very high sublime of luxury, I dine alone, order a mutton cutlet, cuite à point, with a bottle of Burgundy on one side, and Ovid's epistle of Penelope to Ulysses on the other; and so I read, and eat, and cry to myself. And then he repeated with enthusiasm—

"Hanc tua Penelope lento tibi mittit Ulysse:
Nil mihi rescribas attamen ipse veni;"

his eyes glistening as he recited the lines; he made me feel their beauty without understanding a word of their sense. "Strangest, and happiest of men!" I thought as I looked at him, "that after living seventy years in this world, can still have tears to spare for the sorrows of Penelope!" Well, our next resting place was Cologne.

MEDON.

You pause?—you have nothing to say of Cologne? No English traveller, except your professed tourists and guide-book makers, ever has; of the crowds who pass through the place, on their way up or down the Rhine, how few spend more than a night or a day there! their walk is between the Rheinberg and the cathedral; they look, perhaps, with a sneering curiosity at the shrine of the Three Kings; cut the usual jests on the Leda and the Cupid and Psyche;[ 4] glance at the St. Peter of Rubens; lounge on the bridge of boats; stock themselves with eau-de-Cologne, and then away! And yet this strange old city, which a bigoted priesthood, a jealous magistracy, and a variety of historical causes, have so long kept isolated in the midst of Europe, with its Roman origin, its classical associations, the wild gothic superstitions of which it has been the theatre; its legion of martyrs, its three kings and eleven thousand virgins, and the peculiar manners and physiognomy of the people, strangely take the fancy. What has become of its three hundred and fifty churches, and its thirty thousand beggars?—Thirty thousand beggars! Was there ever such a splendid establishment of licensed laziness, and consecrated rags and wallets! What a magnificent idea does it give one of the inexhaustible charity, and the incalculable riches of the inhabitants! but the French came with their besom of purification and destruction; and lo! the churches were turned into arsenals, the convents into barracks; and from its old-accustomed haunts, "the genius of beggary was with sighing sent." I really believe, that were I again to visit Cologne, I would not be content with a mere superficial glance, as heretofore.

ALDA.

And you would do well. To confess the truth, our first impressions of the place were exceedingly disagreeable; it appeared a huge, rambling, gloomy old city, whose endless narrow dirty streets, and dull dingy-looking edifices, were any thing but inviting. Nor on a second and a third visit were we tempted to prolong our stay. Yet Cologne has since become most interesting to me from a friendship I formed with a Colonese, a descendant of one of the oldest families of the place. How she loved her old city!—how she worshipped every relic with the most poetical, if not the most pious veneration!—how she looked down upon Berlin with scorn, as an upstart city, "une ville ma chére, qui n'a ni histoire, ni antiquité." The cathedral she used to call "mon Berceau," and the three kings "mes trois pères." Her profound knowledge of general history, her minute acquaintance with the local antiquities, the peculiar customs, the wild legends, the solemn superstitions of her birth-place, added to the most lively imagination and admirable descriptive powers, were to me an inexhaustible source of delight and information. It appears that the people of Cologne have a distinct character, but little modified by intercourse with the surrounding country, and preserved by continual intermarriages among themselves. They have a dialect, and songs, and ballads, and music, peculiar to their city; and are remarkable for an original vein of racy humour, a revengeful spirit, an exceeding superstition, a blind attachment to their native customs, a very decided contempt for other people, and a surpassing hatred of all innovations. They never admitted the jurisdiction of the electors of Cologne, and, although the most bigoted people in the world, were generally at war with their archbishops. Even Napoleon could not make them comformable. The city is now attached to Prussia, but still retains most of its ancient privileges, and all its ancient spirit of insubordination and independence. When, in 1828, the king of Prussia wished to force upon them an unpopular magistrate, the whole city rose, and obliged the obnoxious president to resign; the government, armed with all its legal and military terrors, could do nothing against the determined spirit of this half-civilized, fearless, reckless, yet merry, good-humoured populace. A history of this grotesque revolution, which had the same duration as the celebrated trois jours de Paris, and exhibited in its progress and issue some of the most striking, most characteristic, most farcical scenes you can imagine, were worthy of a Colonese Walter Scott. How I wish I could give you some of my friend's rich graphic sketches and humorous pictures of popular manner! but I feel that their peculiar spirit would evaporate in my hands. The event is celebrated in their local history as "la Revolution du Carnaval:" and this reminds me of another peculiarity of Cologne. The carnival is still celebrated there with a degree of splendour and fantastic humour, exceeding even the festivities of Rome and Naples in the present day; but as the season of the carnival is not the season for flight with our English birds of passage, few have ever witnessed these extraordinary Saturnalia. Such is the general ignorance or indifference relative to Cologne, that I met the other day with a very accomplished man, and a lover of art, who had frequently visited the place, and yet he had never seen the Medusa.

MEDON.

Nor I, by this good light!—I never even heard of it!

ALDA.

And how shall I attempt to describe it? Unless I had the "large utterance of the early gods," or could pour forth a string of Greek or German compounds, I know not in what words I could do justice to the effect it produced upon me. This wondrous mask measures about two feet and a half in height;[ 5] the colossal features, and I may add, the colossal expression, grand without exaggeration—so awfully vast, and yet so gloriously beautiful; the full rich lips curled with disdain—the mighty wings overshadowing the knit and tortured brow—the madness in the large dilated eyes—the wreathing and recoiling snakes, came upon me like something supernatural, and impressed me at once with astonishment, horror, and admiration. I was quite unprepared for what I beheld. As I stood before it my mind seemed to elevate and enlarge itself to admit this new vision of grandeur. Nothing but the two Fates in the Elgin marbles, and the Torso of the Vatican, ever affected me with the same inexpressible sense of the sublime: and this is not a fragment of some grand mystery, of which the remainder has been "to night and chaos hurled;" it is entire, in admirable preservation, and the workmanship as perfect as the conception is magnificent. I know not if it would have affected another in the same manner. For me, the ghastly allegory of the Medusa has a peculiar fascination. I confess that I have never wholly understood it, nor have any of the usual explanations satisfied me; it appears to me, that the Greeks, in thus blending the extremes of loveliness and terror, had a meaning, a purpose, more than is dreamt of by our philosophy.

MEDON.

But, how came this wonderful relic to Cologne, of all places in the world?

ALDA.

It stopped there on its road to England.

MEDON.

By what perverse destiny?—was it avarice on our part, or force or fraud on that of others?

ALDA.

It was, as Desdemona says, "our wretched fortune:" but the story, with all its circumstances, does so much honour to human nature, that it has half reconciled me to our loss. You must have heard of Professor Wallraf of Cologne, one of the canons of the cathedral, who, with his professorship and his canonship together, may have possessed from five to seven hundred francs a year. He was one of those wonderful and universal scholars, of whom we read in former times—men who concentrated all their powers and passions, and intellectual faculties, in the acquirement and advancement of knowledge, without any selfish aim or object, and from the mere abstract love of science. Early in life this man formed the resolution to remove from his native city the reproach of self-satisfied ignorance and monastic prejudices, which had hitherto characterized it; and in the course of a long existence of labour and privation, as professor and teacher, he contrived to collect together books, manuscripts, pictures, gems, works of art, and objects of natural history, to an immense amount. In the year 1818, on recovering from a dangerous illness, he presented his whole collection to his native city; and the magistracy, in return, bestowed on him a pension of three thousand francs for the remainder of his life. He was then more than seventy. About the same time a dealer in antiquities arrived from Rome, bringing with him this divine Medusa, with various other busts and fragments: he was on his way to England, where he hoped to dispose of them. He asked for his whole collection twelve thousand francs, and refused to sell any part of it separately. The city refused to make the purchase, thinking it too dear, and Wallraf, in despair at the idea of this glorious relic being consigned to other lands, mortgaged his yearly pension in order to raise the money, purchased the Medusa, presented it to the city, and then cheerfully resumed his accustomed life of self-denial and frugality. His only dread was lest he should die before the period was expired. He lived, however, to pay off his debt, and in three months afterwards he died.[ 6] Was not this admirable? The first time I saw the Medusa I did not know this anecdote; the second time, as I looked at it, I thought of Wallraf, and felt how much a moral interest can add to the charm of what is in itself most perfect.

MEDON.

I will certainly make a pilgrimage to this Medusa. She must be worth all the eleven thousand virgins together. What next?

ALDA.

Instead of embarking in the steam-boat, we posted along the left bank of the Rhine, spending a few days at Bonn, at Godesberg, and at Ehrenbreitstein; but I should tell you, as you allow me to diverge, that on my second journey, I owed much to a residence of some weeks at Bonn. There I became acquainted with the celebrated Schlegel, or I should rather say, M. le Chevalier de Schlegel, for I believe his titles and his "starry honours" are not indifferent to him; and in truth he wears them very gracefully. I was rather surprised to find in this sublime and eloquent critic, this awful scholar, whose comprehensive mind has grasped the whole universe of art, a most agreeable, lively, social being. Of the judgments passed on him in his own country, I know little, and understand less; I am not deep in German literary polemics. To me he was the author of the lectures on "Dramatic Literature," and the translator of Shakspeare, and, moreover, all that was amiable and polite: and was not this enough?

MEDON.

Enough for you, certainly; but, I believe that at this time Schlegel would rather found his fame on being one of the greatest oriental critics of the age, than on being the interpreter of the beauties of Calderon and Shakspeare.

ALDA.

I believe so; but for my own part, I would rather hear him talk of Romeo and Juliet, and of Madame de Staël, than of the Ramayana, the Bhagvat-Gita, or even the "eastern Con-fut-zee." This, of course, is only a proof of my own ignorance. Conversation may be compared to a lyre with seven chords—philosophy, art, poetry, politics, love, scandal, and the weather. There are some professors, who, like Paganini, "can discourse most eloquent music" upon one string only; and some who can grasp the whole instrument, and with a master's hand sound it from the top to the bottom of its compass. Now, Schlegel is one of the latter: he can thunder in the bass or caper in the treble; he can be a whole concert in himself. No man can trifle like him, nor, like him, blend in a few hours' converse, the critic, philologist, poet, philosopher, and man of the world—no man narrates more gracefully, nor more happily illustrates a casual thought. He told me many interesting things. "Do you know," said he one morning, as I was looking at a beautiful edition of Corinne, bound in red morocco, the gift of Madame de Staël; "do you know that I figure in that book?" I asked eagerly in what character? He bid me guess. I guessed playfully, the Comte d'Erfeuil. "No! no!" said he, laughing, "I am immortalized in the Prince Castel-Forte, the faithful, humble, unaspiring, friend of Corinne."

MEDON.

To any man but Schlegel, such an immortality were worth a life. Nay, there is no man, though his fame extended to the ends of the earth, whom the pen of Madame de Staël could not honour.

ALDA.

He seemed to think so, and I liked him for the self-complacency with which he twined her little myrtle leaf with his own palmy honours. Nor did he once refer to what I believe every body knows, her obligations to him in her De l'Allemagne.

MEDON.

Apropos—do tell me what is the general opinion of that book among the Germans themselves.

ALDA.

I think they do not judge it fairly. Some speak of it as eloquent, but superficial:[ 7] others denounce it altogether as a work full of mistakes and flippant, presumptuous criticism: others again affect to speak of it, and even of Madame de Staël herself, as things of another era, quite gone by and forgotten; this appeared to me too ridiculous. They forget, or do not know, what we know, that her De l'Allemagne was the first book which awakened in France and England a lively and general interest in German art and literature. It is now five-and-twenty years since it was published. The march of opinion, and criticism, and knowledge of every kind, has been so rapid, that much has become old which then was new; but this does not detract from its merit. Once or twice I tried to convince my German friends that they were exceedingly ungrateful in abusing Madame de Staël, but it was all in vain; so I sat swelling with indignation to hear my idol traduced, and called—O profanation!— "cette Staël."

MEDON.

But do you think the Germans could at all appreciate or understand such a phenomenon as Madame de Staël must have appeared in those days? She whisked through their skies like a meteor, before they could bring the telescope of their wits to a right focus for observation. How she must have made them open their eyes!—and you see in the correspondence between Goethe and Schiller what they thought of her.

ALDA.

Yes, I know that with her lively egotism and Parisian volubility, she stunned Schiller and teased Goethe: but while our estimate of manner may be allowed to be relative and comparative, our estimate of character should be positive and abstract. Madame de Staël was in manner the Frenchwoman, accustomed to be the cynosure of a salon, but she was not ridiculous or egoiste in character. She was, to use Schlegel's expression, "femme grande et magnanime jusque dans les replis de son âme." The best proof is the very spirit in which she viewed Germany, in spite of all her natural and national prejudices. To apply your own expression, she went forth, in the spirit of peace, and brought back, not only an olive leaf, but a whole tree, and it has flourished. She had a universal mind. I believe she never thought, and still less made, any one ridiculous in her life.[ 8]

At Bonn much of my time was spent in intimate and almost hourly intercourse with two friends, one of whom I have already mentioned to you—a rare creature!—the other, who was herself the daughter of a distinguished authoress,[ 9] was one of the most generally accomplished women I ever met with. Opposed to each other in the constitution of their minds—in all their views of literature and art, and all their experience of life—in their tastes, and habits, and feelings—yet mutually appreciating each other: both were distinguished by talents of the highest order and by great originality of character, and both were German, and very essentially German: English society and English education would never have produced two such women. Their conversation prepared me to form correct ideas of what I was to see and hear, and guarded me against the mistakes and hasty conclusions of vivacious travellers. At Bonn I also saw, for the first time, a specimen of the fresco painting, lately revived in Germany with such brilliant success. By command of the Prussian Board of Education the hall of the university of Bonn is to be painted in fresco, and the work has been entrusted to C. Hermann, Götzenberger, and Förster—all, I believe, pupils of Cornelius. The three sides of the hall are to represent the three faculties—Theology, Jurisprudence, and Philosophy; the first of these is finished, and here is an engraving of it. You see Theology is throned in the centre. The four evangelists, with St. Peter and St. Paul, stand on the steps of the throne; around her are the fathers and doctors of the church, and (which is the chief novelty of the composition) grouped together with a very liberal disregard to all religious differences; for there you see pope Gregory, and Ignatius Loyola, and St. Bernard, and Abelard, and Dante; and here we have Luther, and Melanchthon, and Calvin, and Wickliff, and Huss. On the opposite side of the hall, Philosophy, under which head are comprised all science, poetry, and art, is represented surrounded by the great poets, philosophers, and artists, from Homer, Aristotle, and Phideas, down to Shakspeare, Raffaelle, Goethe, and Kant. Jurisprudence, which is not begun, is to occupy the third side. The cartoons pleased me better than the paintings, for the drawing and grouping are really fine; but the execution struck me as somewhat hard and mannered. I shall have much to say hereafter of the fresco painting in Germany; for the present, proceed we on our journey.

Tell me, had you a full moon while you were on the Rhine?

MEDON.

Truly, I forget.

ALDA.

Then you had not; for it would so have blended with your recollections, that as a circumstance it could not have been forgotten; and take my advice, when next you are off on your annual flight, consult the calendar, and propitiate the fairest of all the fair Existences of heaven to give you the light of her countenance. If you never took a solitary ramble, or, what is better, a tête-à-tête drive through the villages and vineyards between Bonn and Plittersdorf, when the moon hung over the Drachenfels, when the undulating outlines of the Seven Mountains seemed to dissolve into the skies, and the Rhine was spread out at their feet like a lake—so ample, and so still;—if you have never seen the stars shine through the ruined arch of the Rolandseck, and the height of Godesberg, with its single giant tower, stand out of the plain,—black, and frowning against the silvery distance, then you have not beheld one of the loveliest landscapes ever presented to a thoughtful worshipper of nature. There is a story, too, connected with the ruins of Godesberg:—one of those fine tragedies of real life, which distance all fiction. It is not so popular as the celebrated legend of the brave Roland, and his cloistered love; but it is at least as authentic. You know that, according to tradition, the castle of Godesberg was founded by Julian the Apostate; another, and a more interesting apostate, was the cause of its destruction.

Gerard[ 10] de Truchses, Count Waldbourg, who was archbishop and elector of Cologne in 1583, scandalized his see, and all the Roman Catholic powers, by turning Protestant. According to himself, his conversion was owing to "the goodness of God, who had revealed to him the darkness and the errors of popery;" but according to his enemies, it was owing to his love for the beautiful Agnes de Mansfeld, canoness of Gersheim; she was a daughter of one of the greatest Protestant houses in Germany; and her two brothers, bigoted Calvinists, and jealous of the honour of their family, conceived themselves insulted by the public homage which a Catholic priest, bound by his vows, dared to pay to their sister. They were yet more incensed on discovering that the love was mutual, and loudly threatened vengeance to both. Gerard renounced the Catholic faith, and the lovers were united. He was excommunicated and degraded, of course; but he insisted on his right to retain his secular dominions and privileges, and refused to resign the electorate, which the emperor, meantime, had awarded to Ernest of Bavaria, bishop of Liege. The contest became desperate. The whole of that beautiful and fertile plain, from the walls of Cologne to the Godesberg, grew "familiar with bloodshed as the morn with dew;" and Gerard displayed qualities which showed him more fitted to win and wear a bride, than to do honour to any priestly vows of sanctity and temperance. Attacked on all sides,—by his subjects, who had learned to detest him as an apostate, by the infuriated clergy, and by the Duke of Bavaria, who had brought an army to enforce his brother's claims,—he carried on the struggle for five years, and at last, reduced to extremity, threw himself, with a few faithful friends, into the castle of Godesberg. After a brave defence, the castle was stormed and taken by the Bavarians, who left it nearly in the state we now see it—a heap of ruins.

Gerard escaped with his wife, and fled to Holland, where Maurice, Prince of Orange, granted him an asylum. Thence he sent his beautiful and devoted wife to the court of Queen Elizabeth, to claim a former promise of protection, and supplicate her aid, as the great support of the Protestant cause, for the recovery of his rights. He could not have chosen a more luckless ambassadress; for Agnes, though her beauty was somewhat impaired by the persecutions and anxieties which had followed her ill-fated union, was yet most lovely and stately, in all the pride of womanhood; and her misfortunes and her charms, as well as the peculiar circumstances of her marriage, excited the enthusiasm of all the English chivalry. Unhappily the Earl of Essex was among the first to espouse her cause with all the generous warmth of his character, and his visits to her were so frequent, and his admiration so indiscreet, that Elizabeth's jealousy was excited even to fury. Agnes was first driven from the court, and then ordered to quit the kingdom. She took refuge in the Netherlands, where she died soon afterwards; and Gerard, who never recovered his dominions, retired to Strasbourg, where he died. So ends this sad eventful history, which, methinks, would make a very pretty romance. The tower of Godesberg, lasting as their love and ruined as their fortunes, still remains one of the most striking monuments in that land, where almost every hill is crowned with its castle, and every castle has its tale of terror, or of love.[ 11]

Another beautiful picture, which, merely as a picture, has dwelt on my remembrance, was the city of Coblentz and the fort of Ehrenbreitstein, as viewed from the bridge of boats under a cloudless moon. The city, with its fantastic steeples and masses of building, relieved against the clear deep blue of the summer sky—the lights which sparkled in the windows reflected in the broad river, and the various forms and tall masts of the craft anchored above and opposite—the huge hill, with its tiara of fortifications, which, in the sunshine and in the broad day, had disappointed me by its formality, now seen under the soft moonlight, as its long lines of architecture and abrupt angles were projected in brightness or receded in shadow, had altogether a most sublime effect. But apropos to moonlights and pictures—of all the enchanted and enchanting scenes ever lighted by the full round moon, give me Heidelberg! Not the Colosseum of Rome—neither in itself, nor yet in Lord Byron's description, and I have both by heart—can be more grand; and in moral interest, in poetical associations, in varying and wondrous beauty, the castle of Heidelberg has the advantage. In the course of many visits, Heidelberg became to me familiar as the face of a friend, and its remembrance still "haunts me as a passion." I have known it under every changeful aspect which the seasons, and the hours, and the changeful moods of my own mind, could lend it. I have seen it when the sun, rising over the Geisberg, first kindled the vapours as they floated away from the old towers, and when the ivy and the wreathed verdure on the walls sparkled with dewy light: and I have seen it when its huge black masses stood against the flaming sunset; and its enormous shadow, flung down the chasm beneath, made it night there, while daylight lingered around and above. I have seen it when mantled in all the bloom and foliage of summer, and when the dead leaves were heaped on the paths, and choked the entrance to many a favourite nook. I have seen it when crowds of gay visitors flitted along its ruined terraces,[ 12] and music sounded near; and with friends, whose presence endeared every pleasure; and I have walked alone round its desolate precincts, with no companions but my own sad and troubled thoughts. I have seen it when clothed in calm and glorious moonlight. I have seen it when the winds rushed shrieking through its sculptured halls, and when grey clouds came rolling down the mountains, folding it in their ample skirts from the view of the city below. And what have I seen to liken to it by night or by day, in storm or in calm, in summer or in winter! Then its historical and poetical associations—

MEDON.

There now!—will you not leave the picture, perfect as it is, and not for ever seek in every object something more than is there?

ALDA.

I do not seek it—I find it. You will say—I have heard you say—that Heidelberg wants no beauty unborrowed of the eye; but if history had not clothed it in recollections, fancy must have invested it in its own dreams. It is true, that it is a mere modern edifice compared with all the classic, and most of the gothic ruins; yet over Heidelberg there hangs a terror and a mystery peculiar to itself: for the mind which acquiesces in decay, recoils from destruction. Here ruin and desolation make mocks with luxurious art and gay magnificence. Here it is not the equal, gradual power of time, adorning and endearing what yet it spares not, which has wrought this devastation, but savage war and elemental rage. Twice blasted by the thunderbolt, three times consumed by fire, ten times ravaged, plundered, desecrated by foes, and at last dismantled and abandoned by its own princes, it is still strong to endure and mighty to resist all that time, and war, and the elements may do against it—and, mutilated rather than decayed, may still defy centuries. The very anomalies of architecture and fantastic incongruities of this fortress-palace, are to me a fascination. Here are startling and terrific contrasts. That huge round tower—the tower of Frederic the Victorious—now "deep trenched with thunder fires," looks as if built by the Titans or the Huns; and those delicate sculptures in the palace of Otho-Henry, as if the genius of Raffaelle or Correggio had breathed on the stone. What flowing grace of outline! what luxuriant life! what endless variety and invention in those half-defaced fragments! These are the work of Italian artists, whose very names have perished;—all traces of their existence and of their destinies so utterly lost, that one might almost believe, with the peasantry, that these exquisite remains are not the work of mortal hands, but of fairies and spirits of air, evoked to do the will of an enchanter. The old palatines, the lords of Heidelberg, were a magnificent and magnanimous race. Louis III., Frederic the Victorious, Frederic II., Otho-Henry, were all men who had stepped in advance of their age. They could think as well as fight, in days when fighting, not thinking, was the established fashion among potentates and people. A liberal and enlightened spirit, and a love of all the arts that humanise mankind, seem to have been hereditary in this princely family. Frederic I. lay under the suspicion of heresy and sorcery, in consequence of his tolerant opinions, and his love of mathematics and astronomy. His personal prowess, and the circumstance of his never having been vanquished in battle, gave rise to the report, that he was assisted by evil demons; and for years, both before and after his accession, he was under the ban of the secret tribunal. Heidelberg was the scene of some of the mysterious attacks on his life, but they were constantly frustrated by the fidelity of his friends, and the watchful love of his wife.

It was at Heidelberg this prince celebrated a festival, renowned in German history, and, for the age in which it occurred, most extraordinary. He invited to a banquet all the factious barons whom he had vanquished at Seckingen, and who had previously ravaged and laid waste great part of the palatinate. Among them were the Bishop of Metz and the Margrave of Baden. The repast was plentiful and luxurious, but there was no bread. The warrior guests looked round with surprise and inquiry. "Do you ask for bread?" said Frederic, sternly; "you, who have wasted the fruits of the earth, and destroyed those whose industry cultivates it? There is no bread. Eat and be satisfied; and learn henceforth mercy to those who put the bread into your mouths." A singular lesson from the lips of an iron-clad warrior of the middle ages.

It was Frederic II. and his nephew Otho-Henry, who enriched the library, then the first in Europe next to the Vatican, with treasures of learning, and who invited painters and sculptors from Italy to adorn their noble palace with the treasures of art. In less than one hundred years those beautiful creations were defaced or utterly destroyed, and all the memorials and records of their authors are supposed to have perished at the time when the ruthless Tilly stormed the castle, and the archives and part of the library of precious MSS. were taken to litter his dragoons' horses, during a transient scarcity of straw.[ 13]—You groan!

MEDON.

The anecdote is not new to me; but I was thinking, at the moment, of a pretty phrase in the letters of the Prince de Ligne, "la guerre—c'est un malheur—mais c'est le plus beau des malheurs."

ALDA.

O if there be any thing more terrific, more disgusting, than war and its consequences, it is that perversion of all human intellect—that depravation of all human feeling—that contempt or misconception of every Christian precept, which has permitted the great, and the good, and the tenderhearted, to admire war as a splendid game—a part of the poetry of life—and to defend it as a glorious evil, which the very nature and passions of man have ever rendered, and will ever render, necessary and inevitable. Perhaps the idea of human suffering—though when we think of it in detail it makes the blood curdle—is not so bad as the general loss to humanity, the interruption to the progress of thought in the destruction of the works of wisdom or genius. Listen to this magnificent sentence out of the volume now lying open before me—"Who kills a man, kills a reasonable creature—God's image; but he who destroys a good book, kills reason itself. Many a man lives a burthen to the earth, but a good book is the precious life-blood of a master-spirit embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life. It is true, no age can restore a life, whereof perhaps there is no great loss: and revolutions of ages do not oft recover the loss of rejected truth, for the want of which whole nations fare the worse; therefore we should be wary how we spill the seasoned life of man preserved and stored up in books."

MEDON.

"Methinks we do know the fine Roman hand." Milton, is it not?

ALDA.

Yes; and after this, think of Milton's Areopagitica, or his Paradise Lost, under the hoofs of Tilly's dragoon horses, or feeding the fishes in the Baltic! It might have happened had he written in Germany instead of England.

MEDON.

Do you forget that the cause of the thirty years war was a woman?

ALDA.

A woman and religion; the two best or worst things in the world, according as they are understood and felt, used and abused. You allude to Elizabeth of Bohemia, who was to Heidelberg what Helen was to Troy?

One of the most interesting monuments of Heidelberg, at least to an English traveller, is the elegant triumphal arch raised by the palatine Frederic V. in honour of his bride—this very Elizabeth Stuart. I well remember with what self-complacency and enthusiasm our Chef walked about in a heavy rain, examining, dwelling upon every trace of this celebrated and unhappy woman. She had been educated at his country-seat, and one of the avenues of his magnificent park yet bears her name. On her fell a double portion of the miseries of her fated family. She had the beauty and the wit, the gay spirits, the elegant tastes, the kindly disposition, of her grandmother, Mary of Scotland. Her very virtues as a wife and a woman, not less than her pride and feminine prejudices, ruined herself, her husband, and her people. When Frederick hesitated to accept the crown of Bohemia, his high-hearted wife exclaimed—"Let me rather eat dry bread at a king's table than feast at the board of an elector;" and it seemed as if some avenging demon hovered in the air, to take her literally at her word, for she and her family lived to eat dry bread—aye, and to beg it before they ate it; but she would be a queen. Blest as she was in love, in all good gifts of nature and fortune, in all means of happiness, a kingly crown was wanting to complete her felicity, and it was cemented to her brow with the blood of two millions of men. And who was to blame? Was not her mode of thinking the fashion of her time, the effect of her education? Who had

"Put in her tender heart the aspiring flame

Of golden sovereignty?"

For how many ages will you men exclaim against the mischiefs and miseries, caused by the influence of women; thus allowing the influence, yet taking no thought how to make that influence a means of good, instead of an instrument of evil!

Elizabeth had brought with her from England some luxurious tastes, as yet unknown in the palatinate; she had been familiarized with the dramas of Shakspeare and Fletcher, and she had figured in the masques of Ben Jonson. To gratify her, Frederic added to the castle of Heidelberg the theatre and banqueting-room, and all that beautiful group of buildings at the western angle, the ruins of which are still called the English palace. She had inherited from her grandmother, or had early imbibed from education, a love of nature and of amusements in the open air, and a passion for gardening; and it was to please her, and under her auspices, that Frederic planned those magnificent gardens, which were intended to unite within their bounds, all that nature could contribute or art devise; had they been completed, they would have rendered Heidelberg a pleasure-palace, fit for fairy-land. Nor were those designs unworthy of a prosperous and pacific sovereign, whose treasury was full, whose sway was just and mild, whose people had long enjoyed in tranquillity the fruits of their own industry. When I had the pleasure of spending a few days with the Schlossers, at their beautiful seat on the Necker, (Stift Neuburg,) I went over the ground with Madame de Schlosser, who had seen and studied the original plans. Her description of the magnitude and the sumptuous taste of these unfinished designs, while we stood together amid a wilderness of ruins, was a commentary on the vicissitudes of this world, worth fifty moral treatises, and as many sermons.

"For in the wreck of IS and WAS,

Things incomplete and purposes betray'd,

Make sadder transits o'er Truth's mystic glass,

Than noblest objects utterly decay'd."

Close to the ruins of poor Elizabeth's palace, there where the effigies of her handsome husband, and his bearded ancestor Louis V. look down from the ivy-mantled wall, you remember the beautiful terrace towards the west? It is still,—after four centuries of changes, of disasters, of desolation,—the garden of Clara. When Frederic the Victorious assumed the sovereignty, in a moment of danger and faction, he took, at the same time, a solemn vow never to marry, that the rights of his infant nephew, the son of the late palatine, should not be prejudiced, nor the peace of the country endangered by a disputed succession. He kept his oath religiously, but at that very time he loved Clara Dettin de Wertheim, a young girl of plebeian origin, and a native of Augsburg, whose musical talents and melody of voice had raised her to a high situation in the court of the late princess palatine. Frederick, with the consent of his nephew, was united to Clara by a left-hand marriage, an expedient still in use in Germany, and, I believe, peculiar to its constitution; such a marriage is valid before God and man, yet the wife has no acknowledged rights, and the offspring no supposed existence. Clara is celebrated by the poets and chroniclers of her time, and appears to have been a very extraordinary being in her way. In that age of ignorance, she had devoted herself to study—she could sympathize in her husband's pursuits, and share the toils of government—she collected round her the wisest and most learned men of the time—she continued to cultivate the beautiful voice which had won the heart of Frederic, and her song and her lute were always ready to soothe his cares. Tradition points out the spot where it is said she loved to meditate, and, looking down upon the little hamlet, on the declivity of the hill, to recall her own humble origin; that little hamlet, embowered in foliage, and the remembrance of Clara, have survived the glories of Heidelberg. Her descendants became princes of the empire, and still exist in the family of Lowenstein.

Then, for those who love the marvellous, there is the wild legend of the witch Jetta, who still flits among the ruins, and bathes her golden tresses in the Wolfsbrunnen; but why should I tell you of these tales—you, whose head is a sort of black-letter library?

MEDON.

True; but it is pleasant to have one's old recollections taken down from their shelves and dusted, and placed in a new light; only do not require, even if I again visit Heidelberg, that I should see it as you have beheld it, with your quick spirit of association, and clothed in the hues of your own individual mind. While you speak, it is not so much the places and objects you describe, as their reflection in your own fancy, which I see before me; and every different mind will reflect them under a different aspect. Then, where is truth? you say. If we want information as to mere facts—the situation of a town, the measurement of a church, the date of a ruin, the catalogue of a gallery—we can go to our dictionaries and our guides des voyageurs. But if, besides form and outline, we must have colouring too, we should remember that every individual mind will paint the scene with its own proper hues; and if we judge of the mind and the objects it represents relatively to each other, we may come at the truth, not otherwise. I would ask nothing of a traveller, but accuracy and sincerity in the expression of his opinions and feelings. I have then a page out of the great book of human nature—the portrait of a particular mind; when that is fairly before me I have a standard by which to judge: I can draw my own inferences. Will you not allow that it is possible to visit Heidelberg, and to derive the most intense pleasure from its picturesque beauty, without dreaming over witches and warriors, palatines and princes? Can we not admire and appreciate the sculpture in the palace of Otho-Henry, without losing ourselves in vague, wondering reveries over the destinies of the sculptors?

ALDA.

Yes; but it is amusing, and not less instructive, to observe the manner in which the individual character and pursuits shall modify the impressions of external things; only we should be prepared for this, as the pilot makes allowance for the variation of the needle, and directs his course accordingly. It is a mistake to suppose that those who cannot see the imaginative aspect of things, see, therefore, the only true aspect; they only see one aspect of the truth. Vous étes orfêvre, Monsieur Josse, is as applicable to travellers as to every other species of egotist.

Once, in an excursion to the north, I fell into conversation with a Sussex farmer, one of that race of sturdy, rich, and independent English yeomen, of which I am afraid few specimens remain: he was quite a character in his way. I must sketch him for you; but only Miss Mitford could do him justice. His coat was of the finest broad-cloth; his shirt-frill, in which was stuck a huge agate pin, and his neckcloth, were both white as the snow; his good beaver shone in all its pristine gloss, and an enormous bunch of gold seals adorned his watch-chain; his voice was loud and dictatorial, and his language surprisingly good and flowing, though tinctured with a little coarseness and a few provincialisms. He had made up his mind about the Reform Bill—the Catholic Question—the Corn Laws—and about things in general, and things in particular; he had doubts about nothing: it was evident that he was accustomed to lay down the law in his own village—that he was the tyrant of his own fire-side—that his wife was "his horse, his ox, his ass, his any thing," while his sons went to college, and his daughters played on the piano. London was to him merely a vast congregation of pestilential vapours—a receptacle of thieves, cut-throats and profligates—a place in which no sensible man, who had a care for his life, his health, or his pockets, would willingly set his foot; he thanked God that he never spent but two nights in the metropolis, and at intervals of twenty-seven years: the first night he had passed in the streets, in dread of fire and vermin; and on the last occasion, he had not ventured beyond Smithfield. What he did not know, was to him not worth knowing; and the word French, which comprised all that was foreign, he used as a term, expressing the most unbounded abhorrence, pity, and contempt. I should add, that though rustic, and arrogant, and prejudiced, he was not vulgar. We were at an inn, on the borders of Leicestershire, through which we had both recently travelled; my farmer was enthusiastic in his admiration of the country. "A fine country, madam—a beautiful country—a splendid country!"

"Do you call it a fine country?" said I, absently, my head full of the Alps and Appenines, the Pyrenean, and the river Po.

"To be sure I do; and where would you see a finer?"

"I did not see any thing very picturesque," said I.

"Picturesque!" he repeated with some contempt; "I don't know what you call picturesque; but I say, give me a soil, that when you turn it up you have something for your pains; the fine soil makes the fine country, madam!"

SKETCHES OF ART, LITERATURE AND CHARACTER.

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