IN THE HOTELS AND ON THE ROAD.

It is one thing to travel in a country, stopping only at the great hotels, and quite another to get off the highways, among the people, and live as they live. At the hotels, the aim is to give you the kind and quality of food you are accustomed to in your own land, to put you into a good bed, and charge you just as much as you will pay. It is my way, when I can, to get out of the beaten paths of travel, and mingle, if possible, with the natives of the country, and those, too, who are not in the habit of entertaining strangers, and soon learning that they are fair game to be plucked as long as they have any feathers.

More than half the guests in the Swiss hotels are Americans. The English complain—John is generally grumbling—that the Americans get the best rooms at the hotels, and that travelling on the continent is not half so agreeable. It was my misfortune to travel last week in the same compartment of the rail-car with an English clergyman and his wife [and, by the way, she called him hubby, for husband, whenever she spoke to him,—an appellation for the head of the house that was new to me, and not very agreeable]. He said he would write a letter to the Times,—that is an Englishman’s universal refuge when he thinks himself imposed upon in travel. “I sholl write to the Times about this country, and I sholl say that the cookin’ is exceedin’ly mean, the scenery very dull, and the travellin’ decidedly uncomfortable.” But he was as near being a fool as a man could well be, and be at large. His tongue ran incessantly, and he talked so loud that no other conversation could be had, and everybody must listen to his twaddle and complaints. “The ’ills were too ’igh” for him to think of climbin’ any of them, and not “’igh” enough to interest him in lookin’ at them; and on the whole he thought Switzerland a failure.

It is curious to observe how soon Americans are known to be such, anywhere in Europe. In England, a hotel waiter or a porter at a lodge or castle would know you to be an American, certainly the moment you spoke, and perhaps before. A woman said to me when I had said that I was an American, “You don’t speak like one.” When I pressed for an answer to the question, “What is the difference between my speech and others,” she replied, after much hesitation, “Why, I thought all your countrymen talked through the nose.”

That educated Americans, and all of them accustomed to good society at home, speak the English language with as much propriety and purity as the most cultivated Englishmen, is certainly true, and it may safely be added that the masses of the people in America, born to the manner, speak it far better. Small as England is, the dialects of the provinces are so diverse, that one is often sorely puzzled to understand a commonplace remark or inquiry. It was very amusing, too, to perceive that many slang phrases, or technical terms, that we had supposed to be of local origin and use in the United States, were as common in England as with us at home. “You’ll ’ave lots of time,” says the coachman. “I’ll pop out your luggage,” when he would tell us that it would be done instantly, said the conductor.

But the language is not more marked by its peculiarities than the manners. There are all sorts of people in every land. Some of each variety go abroad, so that we must expect to meet them, and it is very absurd to judge of a country by the few specimens you meet on the road. But while I am heartily ashamed of some of my own countrymen who are abroad, and make themselves ridiculous by an extravagance of independence that amounts to a contempt of every thing and everybody except themselves and their country, still I think that, as a whole, they are the best behaved people abroad. At the Baur du Lac Hotel, Zurich, day before yesterday, at breakfast, a German lady took her seat at the head of a long table, rested both elbows upon it, and taking a roll of bread eight inches long, held it in both hands, and without taking it from her lips, or taking her elbows down, she ate the whole of it from end to end. I sat next to her, on the corner, and saw it done. She then took another roll, a round one, and devoured that: all this while waiting for her coffee. What more she ate, or how, I did not see, having turned away in disgust. It is not probable that any woman from America would go through such an exercise at home or abroad.

Yesterday, in the rail-car in which I was riding, an English gentleman and family entered the compartment in which I was seated, the only passenger. There were four seats, two on each side of a little table, on which we could lay books or papers. Overhead were racks and pegs for bags and bundles. He piled his, and his wife’s, and his wife’s sister’s, on the top of the table, usurping the whole of it, and utterly ignoring the right of anybody else to any of it. Jonathan would put a thing in its place, and be ashamed to interfere with the convenience of his neighbor. John Bull looks out for number one. This selfishness extends to neglecting those little attentions to women, on which an American prides himself, and which makes it so easy for women in America to travel alone.

On the French and Swiss railroads has been introduced an improvement that may be commended to our directors. In every train there is a car with one compartment, marked on the outside, “For women unattended.” Into this carriage ladies who have no male escort enter, and are properly cared for by the conductor. They can travel in this way in seclusion and with entire safety; but after all it is quite probable that the women in America would be quite as willing to take their chances with the men; and, perhaps, the experiment, if tried, would be a failure. One thing the railway people might learn of us, and that is, to check the baggage. In place of it, here they give you a slip of paper with a number on it, and paste a corresponding slip on your trunk, which is some protection, but not so safe nor so convenient as our plan. In many respects the European railroad system is far, very far, superior to ours. Its safety is incomparably greater than ours. An accident is very rare. I have not heard of one since coming abroad. The connections are invariably made. The track is more solid and secure. The road is made for ages. There are grades of fare according to the accommodation. The first class is better than any of ours. The second is not equal to ours, and the third is inferior to the second.

CHAPTER XVIII.
CANTON APPENZELL—SWISS CUSTOMS.

Peasants of Eastern Switzerland.

You have never been in Trogen. You have never heard of Trogen. You do not know where on the map to look for Trogen, and you probably would not find it, if you looked for Trogen.

Trogen is one of the little villages in Canton Appenzell, in Switzerland. It is reached by carriage from St. Gall, a large town on the railroad from Zurich to Constance. As soon as you leave the line of the rail, you begin to ascend, and it is all the way up, up, up, till you get here. We passed a convent about half the way up, inhabited by nuns, who were once expelled from St. Gall. They have now a rich establishment, very secluded, and perfectly impenetrable in its interior mysteries. You can see the reception rooms and the chapel, and the grating that separates the nuns from you and all the world: that’s all,—no, not quite all; in the chapel they will show you a human skeleton, decked with magnificent jewelry, enough to adorn a princess; and this may teach you that the pomps and vanities of the world are wasted on one who is soon to be a bundle of bones.

When you reach the summit of the hill, a scene of extraordinary grandeur and loveliness lies around and below you. As far as the eye reaches, it is a succession of green, cultured, and peopled hills, often crowned with villages, but mostly marked by scattered dwellings in the midst of beautiful farms, white roads winding around and over the hills, and in the distance, through an opening, lies the lake of Constance, a picture of silver in a fair setting of emerald. Trogen is the largest of the villages; but there are three more in sight, Speicher, Wald, and Rechdobell, each with its single church tower; for the people are all Protestants, and all Lutherans. In this village and Speicher, close by, there is not one Roman Catholic family, and I believe that is a very unusual fact in this country, where there are nearly as many of the one as the other, and they are mingled closely in many of the cantons.

Here there is only one church, and that German. Service is held on Sunday at nine o’clock in the morning. The church is a well-built edifice of stone, about one hundred years old, with frescoed ceilings, representing the Ascension, Christ blessing the children, and other scenes not intelligible to me. The women sat by themselves and made three-fourths of the congregation. As each one came in, he or she stood in silent prayer, reverently bending; the women then sat down, the men remained standing. They stood patiently till the minister came in and opened the services, and they did not take their seats until the sermon was begun. On this occasion there was an unusual number of children present, as in one of the large schools there had been during the week past the death of a scholar, and now all the pupils came in procession, and took their seats together. All the men, who were relatives of the deceased, wore black bombazine gowns, swinging loosely on their backs, a badge of mourning. The service opened with a voluntary hymn by the children in the gallery, well sung. Then the pastor read a psalm, which was sung by the entire congregation,—there was no organ. I should think every one in the house had a voice, and used it with the spirit and the understanding also. Prayers were then read by the pastor, all the people standing. At the close, the minister announced his subject, and then the people—the men for the first time—sat down.

He was a young man, clothed in a black gown, with a blue silk or woollen ruffle about his neck. He read his text, “On earth peace, good-will toward men,” and, shutting the book, delivered his discourse without notes, with great ease, fluency, animation, and much eloquence. His manner was good, and the attention of the congregation was kept closely fixed. His leading idea was that peace is to be found only by union with God through Jesus Christ. And he pursued this thought beyond the experience of the individual to the wants of the community and the nation, insisting with great earnestness that wars come from the want of Christian love, that good-will which Christ came to bring, and he warned his people and the people of Switzerland, that now, as in ages past, their only hope for national unity and peace was in union with God, on whom alone they could depend.

At the close of the sermon he read prayers again, the people all standing. Then he proclaimed the names of certain parties intending marriage, and also he mentioned the names of any who had died during the past week. After a hymn had been sung, he descended from the pulpit. The people, still standing, bowed their heads reverently in silent prayer for a moment, and just then a man in the body of the church cried out an advertisement of an auction sale to take place in the neighborhood. The women now left the house, not a man sitting down, or moving from his place, till all the females, old and young, had reached the door. The minister next walked out, and the men followed. The service was over in one hour and a half. An hour-glass stood on the pulpit, but was not in use, as the large clock was in full sight, and the bell clanged every quarter of an hour, as it does day and night.

It was a kind and beautiful providence that turned my weary footsteps to this remote and unfrequented canton of Switzerland. Harper’s Hand-book, an invaluable guide for American travellers in Europe, has not even the name of the place in its index. Murray’s Hand-book, which all the English go by, says “it is but little visited by English travellers.” To get into it by any other than the easy road through the north-eastern passage, you must cross the high Alps and glaciers which bound it, and add as much to its picturesque beauty as they take from the comfort of travelling. But if you visit Constance,—where John Huss was tried and condemned and burnt at the stake,—it is easy to come to Appenzell.

And speaking of Constance leads me to that memorable spot, on the border of the lake that for a week past has been always under my eye, a spot that deserves a monument, a beacon to warn the church of the guilt and shame of religious bigotry and intolerance. It is almost like a judgment that the city itself, which for four years harbored the ecclesiastical council that murdered John Huss and Jerome of Prague, has now but one-fifth of the population that once inhabited it. As I stood on the place where it is said the martyr’s stake was planted, and remembered the glorious truths which he witnessed in the flames, I thought how little is the world improved even to this day, where the civil and ecclesiastical powers are still in the same hands. For as we travel in these European countries, the line that divides the Protestant from the Roman Catholic canton, or part of a canton, is just as clear as if a wall of adamant, high as the sky, were set up between. Even Murray’s Guide-book, which does not pretend to any religious opinions, speaking of the two parts of Canton Appenzell, says:

“A remarkable change greets the traveller on entering Roman Catholic Inner Rhoden, from Protestant Outer Rhoden. He exchanges cleanliness and industry for filth and beggary. What may be the cause of this is not a subject suitable for discussion here.”

Yet the moral philosopher, the philanthropist, the patriot, above all the Christian, even a Christian traveller, wishes to consider “the cause,” whether it is proper or not for a guide-book to discuss it. As travelling tends to promote liberality of sentiment, to enlarge one’s charity, and to convince even a strict adherent to his hereditary faith, that many, far from his way of thinking, are just as sure of heaven as he is, so travelling opens one’s eyes to the effect of the different systems of religion upon the social, temporal, political, as well as moral condition of men. And I have been amazed to find how powerful is this effect upon mere men of the world, men who have never given a thought before to the influence of one religion rather than another on the face of society. Even the guide-books call attention to the shameful fact that “filth and beggary” are the distinguishing features of a part of one country that differs from the rest only in being Roman Catholic. The same laws, the same climate, the same facilities for acquiring the means of living, and just as much soap and water in one as the other, but the thrift and the neatness of one are in brilliant contrast with the poverty and nastiness of its neighbor.

Female Costumes in Appenzell.

The customs of the canton are somewhat peculiar. I was informed that they still adhere to the use of the pillory for the punishment of petty offences, and the machine stands by the wayside, with a hole for the neck, a padlock, and a chain. But I did not see any thing of the kind. Nor did I see the bone-house, in any churchyard, where it is said the bones are deposited of those who have been buried a certain number of years, and who must then give place to others. Their bones are taken up, properly labelled and laid away on shelves in the bone-house, so that their friends can get them, or any part of them, when wanted. As the graveyards are usually small, and no attention is paid to the relationship of the parties buried side by side, it is quite likely that, after the lapse of thirty or forty years, there would be no objection to this arrangement, which strikes us as exceedingly unpleasant, if not positively revolting.

Every evening at half-past eight o’clock the church bell is rung, and all the children must immediately go home. If they are abroad after that, they are taken into custody by the patrol of the streets, and either delivered to their parents, or, if frequent offenders, they are kept in durance overnight. This is an admirable regulation, which I commend to imitation in free America. It is adopted here in a pure democracy, and works admirably well. In the cities it would be a great moral life preserver, worth millions of dollars and as many souls, that would be saved by the plan.

At eleven o’clock the watchman sings a set of phrases in a clear, loud voice, which often disturbs me as he shouts, just under my window, “Put out lights, cover up your fires, lock your doors, say your prayers, and go to bed.”

I learned here a bridal custom of this region, so sensible and proper, that I shall mention it for the benefit of the young folks. The custom of making gifts to the bride prevails here, as everywhere, but it is better regulated. The bride makes out a written list of things that she will require in beginning to keep house, especially those things that are over and above what would naturally be furnished by her parents. This list is taken by her friends, and one of them says, “I will give her this,” and marks that as provided for; another will give her that, and sometimes two or three or more will combine and furnish a more expensive present than any one would give alone. After the wedding, the couple usually start off on an excursion, and on their return they find their dwelling filled with these presents, each marked with the giver’s name.

These people are very fond of athletic sports and exercises, games that call forth prodigious strength, and make the inhabitants of this canton famous for their skill and power. Every holiday, and many a Sunday, is given up to wrestling and boxing. They are like the Scotch in hurling a heavy weight. They will throw a stone of 50 or 100 pounds. A man some fifty years ago threw a stone ten feet that weighed 184 pounds. But their great sport is shooting for a prize. They are splendid shots. Shooting matches are held every year in the villages, and sometimes they are matches between the people of the whole canton, and again of the whole country. As we travel we see the targets standing at the foot of a hill, and buildings that are put up for the purpose of accommodating the companies that are formed for the encouragement of this national accomplishment.

So ignorant was I of the forms of government existing in this part of the world, I did not know that six out of the twenty-two cantons, or states, of Switzerland are purely democratic in their government. It is true that this is modified, in a measure, by their confederation with the others, and that they have delegated to their general government the power of declaring war, coining money, and regulating a system of mails. And, by the way, postage is cheap in Switzerland: five centimes, or one cent of our money, conveying a letter anywhere within the country, and, in all the villages and cities, delivering it at the residence of the receiver. These several cantons are, in other matters, independent of each other; and, in times long past, have had fearfully bloody wars among themselves. They are at peace now, but from father to son is handed down the story of the wars.

This canton, containing a population of about 50,000, is a simple democracy, and as primitive and pure as ever could have existed in the earliest days of Greece or Rome, before an oligarchy or a monarchy was known. Here the people, all the males over eighteen years old, actually assemble, personally, and in one place, to choose the necessary officers, and to make their own laws. This popular meeting is held annually, in April, and on Sunday always.

On that day there is no preaching in any church in the canton, except the one where the election is held. All the ministers come with the people. At the close of the morning service, the election is opened by prayer, and then the people proceed to the discharge of this serious duty, the act of their individual sovereignty. Every man wears a sword by his side, a token of his being a freeman; for, centuries ago, when serfdom prevailed, only freemen could vote, and they wore swords. Now, all wear swords on election day, for all are free.

The canton is not so large but that they can all come and return on the same day, and, for the most part, they come on foot. It is expected that they will all come. And where the power of voting is equally distributed in this way, and every man feels that he is an equal part of the government, there is little danger of any one’s staying away who is physically able to come. They meet sometimes in one place, and sometimes in another, but mostly in this village of Trogen, on the public square. Here a platform is erected, and the officers chosen last year conduct the proceedings. The landeman, or chief, presides, and the clerk announces the name of any one nominated for public office. All in favor hold up their right hands. All opposed then do the same. If there is any doubt, a count would be resorted to, but that is never necessary. Office is not sought with any great rapacity, and the people are not divided into parties fighting for the spoils. The several officers thus elected are charged with the execution of the laws. A council is appointed, which meets from time to time, in the state-house here, and consults in regard to the internal affairs of the canton. If any new legislation is necessary, they frame the law, put it into print, and a copy of it is then placed in every house in the entire canton. It is not yet a law; it is thus distributed that the people, who are the law-makers, may examine it, talk it over among themselves, and make up their minds as to its expediency. If it is of importance sufficiently pressing to require immediate action, a meeting of the people may be held four weeks after the law has been proposed; but generally this is avoided by having the measures submitted to the annual assembly in April. Then the law is submitted to the mass meeting, and they vote for or against it, by the uplifted hand. As ample time has been given to the people to discuss the matter, there is no call for long speeches, nor would they be tolerated by an assembly that was bound to break up and get home the same night. And the laws thus adopted are put in force by the magistrates appointed by the popular vote, and often at the same time that the laws themselves are adopted.

Among the principal cares of such officers must be the construction and repairs of the highways. Oh that our American people would send a commissioner of their country pathmasters over here! Within the last four years two of these cantons have built a road along the eastern side of Lake Lucerne that would do honor to Napoleon in the days of his mightiest power. For miles it is cut into the edge of solid rock, which makes the bed of the road, and a parapet; sometimes it is a tunnel, and once a tunnel with windows looking out on the lake. All are made by the voluntary, self-imposed taxation of a hard-working people. And so far as I can judge or learn, this community, so governed, is as orderly and happy as any other. Whatever good government can do for a people is done for this, and the people do it for themselves. Switzerland is an enlightened country, and probably as moral a people as any other. By law every child is required to attend school from three to four hours every day till he is twelve years old, and a certain number of hours every week afterwards till he is sixteen. This makes education a necessity, unless the children are incompetent to learn. And there is an enthusiasm on the subject of education surprising even to an American. The various grades of schools meet the wants of all, and fit the young for any department of life’s great work. In this village the cantonal college, or high school, is located. Any parent may send his son here from any part of the canton, and he is educated at a trifling expense. Young men go from this school, at once, into mercantile employment in Asia, in France, England and America. And there are pupils in it from India, from Smyrna, from South America, Mexico, and New York. I heard a tramping in the street last evening, and, looking out of my window, saw a host of boys marching by. I learned, by inquiry, that they were a school of one hundred and twenty, making a pedestrian tour through a part of their native country, Switzerland. Accompanied by their teachers, they thus walk day after day, getting health and knowledge and fun, for they make play of it as they go. Early this morning I was awakened by hearing them again. They had been lodged, how I know not, at the inns in the village, and now at three o’clock, A.M. (for I looked at my watch), they were up and off. Just then they struck up one of their merry songs, and serenaded the sleeping villagers as they took their leave. And even now, while I am writing these lines, I am called to the window to look out again, and here is a large school of girls, some of them small, and others young ladies grown, making a pedestrian tour. Both of these companies are three or four days’ journey from their homes. They will be absent, perhaps, a week or a fortnight. And they will be wiser, healthier, and happier for the little tour.

I mention these pleasant incidents to show the interest which teachers, parents, and pupils must take in the business of education, when the school is thus made a part of the pleasure, as well as the labor, of the young. Nor is the moral culture of the young neglected. Far, very far from it. These schools are not godless schools. Religious instruction is not legislated out of education in this country. In this canton they are nearly all Protestants. But in St. Gall, where they are nearly equally divided, the Romanists have their own schools, and the Protestants have theirs, both supported by the same system, and working harmoniously, so far as any co-operation is required, but kept distinct in the matter of instruction.

If the treatment of women, of the higher or lower order of creation, is a fair test of the civilization of a country, this Switzerland will rank very low. Good roads are considered an evidence of a high standard of civilization, and very justly; yet there must be some exceptions, for here in Switzerland, where they harness the cows and make them draw heavy loads, the roads are first-rate, smooth as a floor, and solid in all weathers.

Probably this glorious land that I am now rejoicing in, can find some excuse for the sin and shame of making the cows and women do so much of the hard and heavy work; and they may pretend that the women like it, and the cows are all the better for it. But it strikes me that nature has required certain duties of the gentler sex, that are so incompatible with the severer labors of the country, that they may be fairly excused from a service that requires the greater strength which God has given to men and oxen. In the beautiful city of Zurich, the most enlightened, cultivated, and refined city in the interior of Switzerland, where the most learned of her sons are educated, the city of Zuingle and Lavater and Pestalozzi,—and that boasts a monument to Nagel, a university, and polytechnic institute,—in that fair city I met a team, composed of a horse and cow, harnessed side by side, drawing a heavy load, the driver walking by the side of the cow, whose side was in welts, raised by the stout whip which he carried, and used mainly on her to make her keep up with the horse. It is more common still to see a single cow in harness drawing a load, and a yoke of oxen is a sight that I have very rarely seen in travelling here. Whether the males are more generally sold for beef or not I cannot learn; but it does not appear to any one here that it is out of the way to make this use of the cows. And I was rather pleased than otherwise, in conversation with a great and good philanthropist and reformer, to find that he professed to be ignorant of the fact that cows were put to such service, and when I assured him that I saw one in harness going by his door that day, he said it must have been an ox!

And to understand why it is that women work so much in the fields, we must see what is the principal employment of the people. I have seen forty women at work in the same field here, and not a man among them. No sort of work on the farm is considered too heavy for the women. How could it be, when at Boulogne we had crossed the British Channel, and landed in France, women rushed on board the steamer to carry our baggage ashore! And here the women dig the fields, when a plough would do the work far better and more quickly. They carry out manure, or drive a cow that drags a load of it, and spread it on the soil. They mow. They rake and pitch hay. They plant and sow, and reap and pull, and manage the farm as they would do if the men were all off at war. And where are the men?

They are not idle, nor dissipated, nor away from home. They are at work, and in the house, not tending the baby, nor baking the bread, nor washing the clothes; but they are industrious, and what are they at? The Swiss are a frugal, saving, thriving people. The amount of arable land is not enough to meet their wants. They are a manufacturing, not an agricultural people, though they export cattle, butter, and cheese. Watches, jewelry, muslins, embroidery, and carved wood-work, are the principal articles of manufacture for export, and these, with a few other branches, employ the most of the men; for the work is done in the country very largely. The city of Geneva sells 75,000 watches yearly; but as you are riding in a diligence among the mountains, a man will step out from a little cottage and hand a neat, small package to the postilion, who puts it carefully into a place prepared for such deposits. It is the works of watches, or some jewelry, which the man has made in his own house, and is now sending to his employer in Geneva. In the retired village where I am now writing, so secluded that if a man should commit a murder and come here to live, the New York detectives would never find him, even here the cellars of small houses are filled with machinery to weave Swiss muslins, and to embroider it exquisitely. The buyers from the Broadway stores have learned where to come, and boxes are lying in front of my window directed to Stewart, and to Arnold and others in New York. The places where this delicate work is done are damp and unhealthy; but unless it is done in a damp room the gossamer thread becomes so brittle that it breaks in weaving.

And all through the mountainous parts the carving of wood is the great business of the people. Saw-mills are run to cut up the trees to be made into ornamental articles for sale, and these extend from mantel clock cases worth $1,000 to some gimcrack not worth a cent. The centre tables and chairs, the game pieces and desks, knives and forks, and whatnots, are far too numerous to mention; but they display a degree of skill and taste in execution that would do no discredit to Greece or Italy in the days when sculpture was their glory. And all this mechanical work is done by men, and men only.

The tendency of things is always to extremes, and here in the working-classes, and nearly all are in those classes in Switzerland, the men have pushed the women too largely out of doors, usurping employments that women might follow with success, while the men should take upon themselves the labors that are too heavy for their wives. But Switzerland itself is an exceptional country. It has no fair chance in the world as a nation; and so large a part of its surface is impracticable for the use of man, and it has become so great a resort for foreign tourists, they are expected to spend all the money they can afford in the works of art which the natives produce.

Walking out with a young German friend, who did not understand a word of the English language, I saw at a little distance an enclosure, neat gravel walks and shrubbery, with flowers showing through the iron railing that surrounded it. I asked what the enclosure was, and the answer, in German, struck me pleasingly: “Gottesacker.”

I had never heard the word for graveyard before in German, though the English of it, “God’s Acre,” is familiar, and has often been the theme of poetry and prose. Gottes Acker is the acre or piece of ground that belongs not to man of all the land in the earth that he claims as his own, but is the Lord’s. And why is it his? The earth is the Lord’s, and the fulness. The mountains and the valleys, the plains also, and all that are therein. Why is this small enclosure, a petty piece of ground in the midst of a wide, magnificent domain, alone called God’s?

Yes, it is his, because all who inhabit this place have gone to him. We walked into the sacred enclosure, for the gate was open, inviting the passer-by to come in. The paths were neatly gravelled, and the plots surrounded with flowering shrubs, and the graves not raised above the ground as ours often are, but levelled, and each grave bordered with boxwood and planted with flowers. Few were marked with a headstone, but most of them had a staff set up in form of a cross, and on it a plate with a brief inscription. The centre of the graveyard was laid off in a circle, planted with trees and furnished with seats, where friends could sit in the shade, and meditate among the graves of departed friends.

“And is Gottesacker the only word for this place in your German tongue?” I asked.

“It is also called Friedhof.”

Fried means peace, and Hof is the yard or a court of a house, and Friedhof is “the Court of Peace.” This was another beautiful and fitting name. It speaks for itself, and sweetly expresses the feeling of this place. It is peace, all peace here. The battles of life are fought, and there is no strife in this court of peace. The struggles, cares, anxieties, rivalries, jealousies, fears, all that disquiet, harass, fret, and annoy, all, all are buried here. The tramp of a million men in arms awakens no sleeper here. The church itself may be rent and torn and shaken to its base, but its members in this court of peace are not distressed. These hearts that once panted, burned, and bled in the race, the stripes and sorrows of the world, are all at peace now. Blessed is the rest that cannot be broken till the trumpet calls.

“That is a beautiful word,” I said; “and does your language furnish any other than these two, Gottesacker and Friedhof.”

“Yes, we sometimes speak of it as Todtengarten.”

The Garden of the Dead! And so they plant flowers among the graves, and along the walks, and make the rural village graveyard an attractive, not a repulsive spot, a garden where friends, members of the same family, are at rest. Jesus was laid in a garden when he was dead. His members slept with him, and will blossom in the Paradise above, where the flowers never fade.

Long before Abraham asked a burying-place to put his dead out of sight, the living had their funeral rites and ceremonies. And it is wonderful how widely they differ, in different parts of the world. There is, doubtless, a great difference in the customs of the various cantons of Switzerland, for though the whole twenty-two of them would not make a state larger than New Jersey, they have a costume, or dress, peculiar to each, and many of their habits are equally singular. If the weather will permit, it is customary here to defer the funeral until Sunday, even if the person dies on Monday; and thus it often occurs that there are two or three on the same day, and sometimes more. In a population of three thousand, all belonging to one church, and the funerals being held in it, the number is frequently more than one or two at the same hour. The average number of deaths is about ninety in a year. Last Sunday there were three funerals here. The friends of the several deceased met in front of the respective houses where the dead were lying. None but the relatives enter the house. The three funerals were to be attended at the village church, and all at the same hour, as early as nine in the morning. The body is placed in a plain deal coffin, sometimes, but rarely, painted. And the custom of the country forbids the rich to have a coffin more elegant than the poor; the idea being that death abolishes all distinctions, and a plain coffin is good enough to be hid away in the ground. At the hour, the coffin with the dead is brought out of the house, and on a bier is borne on the shoulders of the nearest male relatives or friends. One of these funerals was that of an aged mother. She left eight sons and two daughters; six of the sons were grown men, and they bore their mother on their shoulders to the grave. The three processions met near the church, and the three coffins were then borne in the order of the ages of the deceased, to the church, but not into it. The body is never taken into the church. But when the relatives and friends have entered, the body is carried by the bearers immediately into the Gottesacker, God’s Acre, the graveyard, which usually adjoins the church. It is there buried, while none are present except those who do the work. I stood at a little distance while this melancholy service was performed. It was not pleasing to me that the dead should be thus put away unwept. And another custom was equally unpleasant to me. The graves are arranged in regular order, without any distinction of families, and as each person in the place dies, he is buried in the grave next to the one who was buried before him. It may have been a neighbor with whom he was at enmity, but now in death they sleep side by side, and know it not. Families are separated by the grave, as well as by death, and no two of them, unless they die together, may be laid together in the grave. This is surprising when we notice the remarkable attention they bestow on the Garden of the Dead. For when the dead are buried, the friends come, day after day, and adorn the grave with flowers, and surround it with a border of green, and water it with their tears of love.

While the body is thus cared for by the bearers, the funeral service is proceeding in the church. This is similar to the service in our own country, the prayers and selections of Scripture being read, and a sermon preached, the same discourse answering, of course, for all who are buried on the same day. At the funeral, all the men in attendance wear a black mantle, of bombazine or serge, which they may get, for a trifle, of the undertaker, who keeps them for hire. Persons of property have them of their own, to wear only on funeral occasions, but the most of the people hire them when wanted, and thus every man at the funeral appears as a mourner. All the women dress in black when attending a funeral, and they never go to church in any other than a black dress. This is a very peculiar custom, but is invariably followed by all the people of this country. Not a light-colored dress appears in the great congregation on the Sabbath-day, or at a funeral.

If I have not already spoken to you of the cultivation, refinement, and manners of the intelligent, wealthy, and “upper” classes of the people, I say that a very erroneous and unjust opinion has been formed on this point, by travellers whose observations have been confined to hotels and highways, their only intercourse with men who make it their business to get as much as possible out of all who fall into their hands. It has been my pleasure this summer to meet in social life among the Swiss some of the pleasantest, most intelligent, and agreeable women and men that will be found in any country. Their manners and minds, as well as their persons, would grace any assembly, and they appeared to be only the fitting representatives of the best circles of society in this remarkable land. They admire their own country. Patriotism burns as brightly among these mountains as on our own shores. And when it was mentioned that I might write a book on Switzerland, a beautiful and accomplished lady bade me be careful, or she would make another and set me right if I failed to do justice to her beloved Switzerland. I could only say to her, in reply, that the threat was a temptation to error. But any one who becomes familiar with the inner life of this people, will find as much to admire and esteem as in any European country.

CHAPTER XIX.
GERMAN WATERING-PLACES—BINGEN ON THE RHINE.

A GERMAN watering-place, with its nauseous springs, its inviting groves and garden and shady walks and rustic seats and bowers, its conversation house, and sweet, clean beds and airy rooms and quiet halls, was in our way, and a Sabbath was just ahead of us. So we would rest there according to the commandment.

I have been left alone, or with my little party only, in a wayside inn, among the Swiss valleys, and have seen troops of travellers, some of them with white cravats and straight coat collars, go on their way of a bright, glad, summer Sabbath morning, when it seemed to me the mountains looked down with a divine benediction and invited us to sit all day under their shadows and worship toward the holy hill of Zion. And a Sabbath in a wilderness, alone, is well spent, if the soul is at peace, and the wearied limbs of a pilgrim are suffered also to have rest.

If a land impregnated with salt is cursed, this region ought to be barren; but it is not. It is a rich, picturesque, rolling country, and a beautiful river flows through its waving harvest-fields, just now white for the sickle. Sometimes a bold cliff stands majestically on the river-side, and an old feudal castle hangs on the summit, where once the lord of the domain held high revel and strong rule, a robber on land and a pirate on the river he would be called now, since his race has run out, and kings who do the same things that he did are reckoned as the lawful plunderers as well as rulers of the people. So the robber told Alexander, and the king couldn’t see it, but it was true nevertheless.

They make salt curiously in these parts. The water is pumped up from springs or wells into troughs, which are raised on scaffolding thirty or more feet high; and below these troughs a solid mass of brush is piled, a wall some ten feet thick, standing on a reservoir; this brush wall reaches hundreds and thousands of feet along, according to the extent of the works employed. The pumps are moved by water-power, and slowly and steadily, ceaselessly, day and night, they raise the water into the troughs above, through which it trickles upon this brush and drops down, down, down into the basins below; this exposes the water to the action of the air and rapidly evaporates it; so that what runs through the heap and finally reaches the reservoir below is exceedingly strong, and by completing the process with boiling is readily converted into salt.

The vicinity of these works is a healthful resort for invalids, who find the atmosphere more highly charged with saline particles than the shores of the sea itself. In the neighborhood of the mighty wall of wood are boarding-houses, as at the sea-shore, and in the pleasant, shady side the ladies sit with their needle-work or books in hand, inhaling the invigorating air, and enjoying the quietest, coolest, and most bracing climate in hot weather, and on the outskirts of the fashionable world. On the bank of the river we found a place to stay, and from it made excursions into the regions beyond. A rock, rising one thousand feet perpendicularly from the water, held on its giddy summit the tottering remnants of the fortress of one of the petty tyrants of the olden time, and a circuit of five or six miles, in a broiling day, brought us by a path that no wheels can traverse to the height. Tradition tells of the last of the barons who held his court in these walls; how his daughter was loved and wooed by his rival chieftain, whose castle still stands erect across the river a few miles below and in full view of this; how the “cruel father” refused to give his daughter to his foe, and the lover lured her by the arts of love to aid him in his daring scheme to capture her father’s castle and compel him to surrender her in exchange for his liberty and his home; how the stratagem succeeded, and the circumvented parent threw himself headlong from the rampart into the frightful abyss, and the lovers, after destroying the stronghold, removed to their castle below, and became the ancestors of a distinguished family of an unpronounceable German name. All this tradition tells, and to write it all out would be perhaps worth the while of some one who has nothing better to do.

Our next stopping-place was Homburg, one of the more modern, but the most brilliant of the watering-places in Europe. Like some of our own cities, it has rapidly rushed into notoriety; that is just the word for the reputation it has made for itself, and by which it has made its fortunes and ruined the fortunes of thousands who have sought its hospitalities.

A very few years ago a wide waste of marshy meadows, swamps we would call them, lay around and over the spot that now gathers and holds for the season the fashion and style and rank of the gayest European capitals,—the largest and most distinguished circle of “the upper classes” to be found at any fashionable resort in the world. It is a city of hotels, and these on a scale of elegance that is not surpassed. But between these hotels and the waters of health that first drew the crowds hither, are these original meadows, now covered with young woods, and intersected by numberless walks and drives, in which a stranger might easily be lost, and left to wander hours and hours without finding his way out. Beyond these shaded groves we come to the springs, several, with various properties, very kindly arranged to meet the many maladies of man, and all of them sufficiently disagreeable to be medicinal. Neatness, order, elegance reign everywhere. Around the springs, through the avenues overhung with venerable trees, along the rows of beautiful lodging-houses and residences of those who permanently pass the summer here, the quietness of private life rests with a grace and charm quite rare in a great watering-place. This gives to Homburg such an attraction that thousands of the quietest class of people in the world love to come here for refreshment and repose. They need not go into the Kursaal, though that word means cure-hall or cure-house. I would call it Kursaal, or curse-all, because it is the curse of all who are drawn into its vortex.

It is a palace. In its extent, its proportions, and appointments, it is fit for a royal residence, all the arts of ornamentation being exhausted to make it a splendid temple of pleasure, instead of a hospital or asylum for the sick and suffering. This palace, with its broad piazzas looking upon beautiful gardens, where elegant women are sitting under the shade, with their books or fancy needle-work, while a German band fills the soft and fragrant atmosphere with delicious waves of music; this palace, with its concert-rooms and ball-rooms and reading-rooms, filled with all the choicest periodicals of all nations, which studious old men are diligently pondering; this palace, so still, so beautiful, so gorgeous in its decorations, and so well fitted to bear the inscription which Ptolemy Soter put upon his library at Alexandria, “The Medicine of the Soul,”—this palace was also the great gambling-house in Europe.

A grand saloon that stretches across the house holds two long tables, around which are seated thirty or forty men and women, intent, silent, more statue than life-like. With your eyes closed you would scarcely be conscious that any one was in the room. The clicking of gold and silver on the table, the few words of the manager as he decides a point, an occasional deep-drawn sigh as pent-up emotion finds escape, with now and then an involuntary exclamation, evidently out of order and quite disagreeable to all concerned,—these are the only interruptions to the solemn, painful stillness of the Homburg gaming-table. I have heard that something more startling than an oath or a groan sometimes has interrupted the current of the play, and that a gambler, in a paroxysm of rage and despair, has blown out his brains at the table. But such incidents are not of every-day occurrence. Besides, people who play here have not many brains to blow out. They are not insane. But as a class, they are below the average of the human family in intellectual force, because they stake their money with the knowledge that the chances are not even, are always against them, and in favor of the bank, or managers of the table. In playing roulette, or rouge et noir, the two games which are constantly going on, a bystander sees that the taker draws in more than he shoves out, and that the tendency of things is steadily in favor of the bank, while chance favors the victims just often enough to keep up the hope that they will make a grand hit by and by and make up all their losses. Yet the game is so transparently in the hands of the managers, that one wonders any one can be so big a fool as to lose all his money in such hopeless ventures. The bank sets up a certain amount of money every day, as the capital for that day, and stories are told of some heavy gambler now and then breaking the bank, but that means only that by a fortunate run he has cleaned out what was set up for the time, and to-morrow it is all right again with the same or a larger capital. But these stories are mostly fictitious, set afloat by the bank itself, which, by pretending to be broken, encourages the idea that it is just as apt to lose money as those who are playing against it.

Some of these people are historic characters. One of them here now is the brother of the Viceroy of Egypt, and he plays heavily, but stops when he has had excitement enough. A fatalist by profession, he takes his chances as decrees, and consoles himself with other pleasures when these go against him. A German princess, who is the model of all the virtues at home, gratifies a darling passion during the summer months by wasting half her income in this gambling-house. American travellers are the most cautious of all the company; but now and then a dissipated youngster takes a plunge into swifter ruin in the waters of this terrible stream. Most pitiable it is to see fair women, and sometimes women that are known to be exemplary in society beyond the sea, trying it just once, tempting luck; and if they lose they usually stop after the first loss, but if they win they try again, and so on, until they lose all they have about them and can borrow of their friends.

A few hours’ ride across the country brought us to Kreusnach. The name of this watering-place had never reached me before, and it added one more to the many springs or spas with which Germany abounds. An army of servants rushed out to the carriage, as we drew up to the door of the Hotel Hollande, and in good English proffered their services to take us and our luggage in. The luggage we leave on the carriage until the rooms and the terms are found agreeable, and as we could have a handsome parlor and bedroom adjoining, on the front of the house, second floor, for one thaler, or six francs ($1.20) a day, we were not long in deciding that this was the place to stay in.

The salt springs of this region have long been known, but only of late have the wonderful medicinal properties of the waters been understood. Now some sixty thousand persons come here annually, and the number is increasing. The people, waking up to the idea that they have a fountain of wealth as well as of health in the bubbling spring, have erected a cure-house on an island in the river Nahe, and hotels and lodging-houses have sprung up along the stream; a regimen has been prescribed, by which the greatest good of the healing waters may be had, but it is left to the choice of the visitor whether he will follow the rules or disobey them, and go away no better than he came.

At Kissingen it is not so. In that delightful little town, where royal blood comes to be purified, and nobles as well as commons gather in great numbers every year, they are so jealous of the honor of their waters, that no visitor is permitted to tarry in the place who will not comply with the rules of eating and drinking and bodily exercise which are prescribed by the medical authorities. These rules are simple and wholesome, and it will do you good to take the course, but if you will not, they take their course with you, which is to send you out of town forthwith, lest you should lose your health by your imprudence, and so bring discredit on the Kissingen waters. Fancy such a law as that at Saratoga! It is said that more sick people go away from the springs than come, but this is not to be affirmed of Kissingen, beautiful Kissingen, the cheapest and prettiest of the health-giving spas of Germany. A clergyman in Paris told me that he spends a month in Kissingen every summer, fifty dollars paying all his expenses,—going, staying, and coming home!

You can live nearly,—not quite,—as cheaply here at Kreusnach. The band, a fine German band, discourses sweet music in the park near the spring, at six o’clock in the morning; we drink,—faugh! yes, we drink the salt and horrid water and return to breakfast at eight, after a promenade in the groves; at eleven a bath is to be taken in the hotel, to which the water is carried in barrels and emptied into a reservoir, from which it is led into the baths; it is artificially warmed to the temperature of the blood; it is strengthened by the addition of the strong, boiled salt water that remains uncrystallized at the salt-works in the vicinity; and this water, sold for this purpose, brings more money, by a third, than the salt itself. This drinking and bathing are good for scrofulous and all cutaneous complaints; for bad livers, that is, for those whose livers are bad; for dyspeptics, rheumatic people, and all kindred ailments. Indeed, these German springs are a pretty sure cure for almost any of the ordinary, perhaps extraordinary, ills of the flesh, because the climate is good, the mountain air is bracing, and the regimen requires a fair amount of temperance and exercise; and he must be in a very bad way who will not get well under the simple, exhilarating, purifying, and strengthening influences of this kind of life.

Here in Kreusnach we meet with men and women from the most distant parts of the Continent, attracted by the fame of this salt water. A Russian gentleman and wife, with an infant child, on whose account they came, had travelled six weeks in a sledge to St. Petersburg. Their children had died of scrofula, and they brought this live one over that vast tract of country, through northern cold, that its system in infancy might be renovated by this modern Bethesda. The Princess of Mecklenberg is here now, and last Sunday she proposed to attend the English Church service. The good rector heard of her intention, and thought it his duty to call and pay his respects. Unhappily he could not speak a word of German, and when he attempted to introduce himself at the door of the Princess’ lodgings, the servant understood him to be the postman, and brought him the letters ready to go to the post-office. His call was only deference to rank, and there was no need of it, except as every sinner needs a pastor’s care, and the Princess took no notice of it.

At a cell in the hill-side near the spring, whey is dispensed to those who daily drink it for the whey-cure. It has a great repute. So has the grape-cure in August and September. Either of them is just as good as the salt-water-cure, and that is good beyond a doubt. I have great faith in any kind of doctoring that includes rest from business, with moderate eating and drinking, and plenty of exercise in the open air. Give the waters the credit of it, or the whey, or the grapes, or the doctors, it makes no difference what or who has the credit, if you have the cure.

But stop this everlasting rushing after the world that is perishing, and wait a little while at Kreusnach, or Kissingen, or one of a dozen places I could name. Here take your ease. Eat, drink, and be happy. Bathe your weary limbs in these youth-renewing waters. Walk out among these surrounding forests and hills. There stands the ruined Castle of Rheingraffenstein, on a crag that overhangs the Nahe; wind your way up one side, and when you have rested on the height, pick your way down the other side to a garden on the banks of the river; there refresh again; then in one of the little boats be rowed down to Ebernburg, the site of an ancient castle, which has now been remodelled into a hotel; but the relics of Luther and other Reformers who once were sheltered here are still preserved, as well as the balls with which the French blew the old towers off the hill into the waters below. Rusty swords, spears, chains, and old keys are laid in heaps, as some slight index of the good time coming, when spears and swords shall be turned into ploughs and pruning-knives.

Where the Nahe flows into the Rhine, there or about there, stands Bingen, and no amount of pretty poetry that has been said or sung about “Bingen on the Rhine” can make it any thing but a dull, dry, flat, dusty village, and horribly disagreeable at noon on a scorching hot day, such as this. We footed it half a mile from the station under a blazing sun, as there was no way to ride, and found a cool shade, while waiting for the steamboat to come up the river. The sight was romantic and picturesque. In the water, a little way above us, stand the ruins of Bishop Hatto’s tower, the story of which is too familiar to be told again. He had hoarded corn in a time of famine, and the rats pursued him for his wickedness. He fled to this tower in the river. The rats swam out to it, ran up the walls, found their way in, and cleaned the Bishop’s bones for him. Southey has done the story into a ballad.

On the Rhine.

The Castle of Ehrenfels is on the side of the hill across the river, and the Rudesheimer vineyards on the hill-sides furnish that celebrated variety. All the Rhine wines are named from the castle, chateau, or neighborhood where they are made. The flavor depends more on the soil than on the art with which the wine is made. The process is substantially the same in all the vineyards, but the flavor of the liquor is decidedly different. The hill-sides are so steep, and the rains are sometimes so heavy, that the soil is often carried down into the bed of the rivers. It can then be recovered only by scooping it from the bottom, and carrying it up in baskets. This is done every year. We might fear it would be spoiled by being carried into the river, but the loss of strength is not enough to alter the nature of the original. Some of the brands are famous, and the prices vary accordingly; but the cheapness of these wines here on the ground, compared with New York, makes one readily believe that the importation of wines must be among the most money-making of all kinds of business. Vinegar and water is quite as good a drink as much of this wine, and a little sugar added makes it better. Prince Metternich owns the famous Johannisberg vineyard, a little farther on, of seventy acres, of which many and fabulous tales are told of the small quantity and great prices of the wine, of the celebrated men who have owned the vineyard, and how very costly the wine becomes by age. But I will not weary you with them. The river itself is identified with the history of Europe. Taking its rise in the St. Gothard Pass in Switzerland, it receives tributaries all the way down, yet it is a small and comparatively insignificant stream. But kings have often fought for it, and it was the late French Emperor’s highest ambition to water his horses in the Rhine.

The art of printing makes Mayence immortal, and here we stopped to look at the monument to Guttenberg, its inventor, a grand statue by Thorvaldsen. It is the fate of few inventors to get their due in their lifetime; some of them want bread, and the public will not give them even a stone till long after they have been starved to death. It was the fate of Guttenberg to struggle hard for years against rival claimants to the credit and the profit of his invention, and so incredulous is the world of the truth,—though ready enough to believe a lie,—that his existence was called in question, and his name has been pronounced a myth. And to this day there are people who think that Faust, who is popularly reported to be the—or in league with the—devil, had more to do with the black art invention than Guttenberg. They, that is Guttenberg and Faust, were in partnership for a while, but that was long after the real inventor had made the art a success, and the claims of Faust and his son-in-law Schoffer, both of whom were willing to be credited with the invention, have now given way to the light of evidence, and Guttenberg holds his own against the field. It is in legal proof that as early as 1438 Guttenberg was at work with his press and movable types. In 1450 he formed a partnership with Faust to carry on the business of printing, and he died in 1468. In a book published at Mayence in 1505, Johan Schoffer states “that the admirable art of printing was invented in Mentz (Mayence), in 1450, by the ingenious Johan Guttenberg, and was subsequently improved and handed down to posterity by the capital and labor of Johan Faust and Peter Schoffer.” The writer of this was the son of Peter Schoffer. He is mistaken in the date, for it is easily proved that Guttenberg was printing many years before 1450, which was the date not of the invention, but of his entering into partnership with Faust.

As I stood in front of this monument to a man whose genius and industry gave to the world this great boon, the statue itself appeared to be sublimely eloquent, as if from those lips, representatives of the lips long since returned to dust, was now going forth the streams of wisdom and knowledge and power that make up the rivers of happiness and usefulness in the art of printing as it has blessed mankind for four centuries, and will continue to flow with increasing volume to the end of time. Perhaps somebody else would have invented the art if he had not. It may be that God would have made another man whose brain would be the womb from which this grand invention would have sprung. But there stands the man who first began to print with movable types, and from his beginning the work has gone forward, widening in its reach and power, and is yet only in the infancy of its career. If he could have anticipated even the present extent of its influence, what mighty emotions would have swelled his heart! And as I look upon this image of him, I feel that beyond any other mere man who has ever lived in the annals of time, he is entitled to stand pre-eminent as the benefactor of the human race. And it is worth remarking that scarcely any art has made so little real improvement for the last three hundred years, as the art of type-making. The types were as clear cut, and the impression just as perfect then as now. We do work faster and cheaper, but not better.

I walked into the cathedral and fell to musing among the ruinous tombs; a few children were gathered in one corner and a priest was engaged in giving them instruction; the setting sun was lighting up the colored arches and naves of red sandstone, giving a peculiar effect to the shabby temple, but there was nothing here to divert my thoughts from the statue, the man, and the work commemorated. It was glory enough for one city to have been the birthplace of such an art. Pilgrims will come hither with increasing reverence in far distant years. And I hope they will have a cooler day than I had. The mercury is now at 96 in the shade.

CHAPTER XX.
PILGRIMAGE TO AIX-LA-CHAPELLE.

Aix-la-Chapelle.

IT is now nigh upon a thousand years since King Otto ordered the tomb of Charlemagne to be opened. The floor of the cathedral of Aix-la-Chapelle was broken up, the sacred mausoleum that cherished the remains of the mightiest of emperors was entered; and there he sat in the chamber of death, as in a hall of state, on a marble chair, in the vestments of his imperial office, a sword at his side, a crown on his head, and a Bible in his hand!

Charlemagne was born in this place in the year 742. The cathedral is his monument, and under the central dome is a slab in the floor with the simple inscription, “Carolo Magno.” The cathedral was adorned with the richest marbles the world could furnish, and the highest art of the age was lavished in its structure and ornament. The windows reach from the roof nearly to the ground, and with their rich decorations give a peculiar beauty to the interior. The city has again and again been ravaged by enemies; other buildings have been razed to their foundations, but this has steadily stood in the midst of war and fires and centuries of decay and change. Long has it been the shrine of Roman worship, for Pope Leo consecrated it in 804; and thus, a thousand years and more, it has been gathering treasures of wealth, of association, and interest. It is now the most sacred shrine in the north, and, indeed, it is not likely that any spot this side of Rome has half so much to excite the veneration of the faithful.

Perhaps Rome herself has not more holy relics. This is a bold supposition. But the list of sacred things here collected is so long and so wonderful, and the estimate in which they are held is so high, that the city fairly lays claims to the first rank among the favored. Therefore pilgrimages are made to these shrines as to the Holy City itself.

My pilgrimage hither was accidental, or, rather, providential. As I came into it at the close of a summer’s day, the streets were thronged with men and women, moving up and down, apparently without an object, swaying like the waves of the sea, and I asked if this was the usual crowd on the streets of an evening. It was at the height of the season for visitors to its famous fountains of water; for long before it was a shrine for pilgrims coming to pray, it was known for its mineral springs and their remarkable healing virtues. What more could be desired than a charm to cure diseases both of the bodies and the souls of strangers. The old pagan Romans knew the efficacy of these waters; and through all the centuries, since their rule, the city has been a fashionable watering-place. It was once the seat of empire, and the palace of Charlemagne, whose name invests it with more than romantic interest, has now passed away. Yet the city is frequented annually by thousands from distant parts, drawn here by the well-established reputation of the springs. It was, therefore, natural for me to ask if these crowds were the usual concourse of people on the streets of a summer evening.

The answer to my inquiry indicated as much surprise as the disciples exhibited when they said, “Art thou only a stranger in Jerusalem, and hast not known the things which are come to pass there in these days?”

I was told that it was the last day but one of the pilgrimage to the holy relics, and that this was the grand eve of the procession, the most remarkable pageant that is ever to be seen in these parts of the world. Of course this led to further inquiries, and I found myself suddenly and accidentally participating in one of the most extraordinary spectacles that I had ever seen or heard of. It will be a long story, but you must read it.

How the many precious relics came to be collected here I cannot learn; but the antiquity and wealth of the cathedral, and the vast power wielded for centuries by the Catholic emperors who were here crowned, would easily make this spot the nucleus around which superstition and faith would rally all their strength. So it came to pass in the lapse of time that the number and value of the offerings which popes and kings and others made to this shrine became immense, and no money would now be considered an equivalent for the priceless treasures. Here is a list of them, to be read with all the faith you can summon:—

THE RELICS OF AIX-LA-CHAPELLE.

A. The superior relics,

known under the popular name of the “great” relics.

These superior relics are shown every seventh year only, or exceptionally to crowned heads on their special demand.

B. The inferior relics are

C. The principal works of art in the treasure of the cathedral.

D. Relics and other remarkable objects of the other churches of the town.

a. In the parish church of St. Adalbert.

b. In the church of St. Theresa.

c. In the parish church of St. John the Baptist at Burtschied, near Aix-la-Chapelle.

Several hundred years ago it was the custom to expose these relics every year in the month of July; but it was found that in some stormy war times the precious things were in danger of being carried off, and it was ordered that once in seven years they should be exhibited to the believers. It was the year and the day of the septennial demonstration when the Sultan of Turkey and I arrived at Aix-la-Chapelle. The unbelieving Mohammedan did not stay and see the show, but I did.

It was now dark; but I walked around the cathedral. All the streets leading to it were thronged with people, and through the crowds it was hard to thread one’s way. At the door, which I finally reached, the people were coming out, and the guards informed me that the only entrance was on the other side. It was a long way, and not very pleasant; but at last I gained the court, where the blessed pilgrims were permitted to enter. Two lines of men, women, and children, in single file, stretching far away into the darkness and into some remote part of the city, were marching steadily into the cathedral, saying their prayers aloud as they walked slowly, devout in their appearance, and full of anxiety to get a sight of the precious treasures within. The prayers they were repeating are prepared for this service, and have reference to the sacred relics whose sovereign virtues they are now hoping to enjoy. When the remains of President Lincoln were for one day and night exposed in the City Hall of New York, the public were admitted to view them, and the line extended some miles up town, and marched steadily into the park all night long. Except that procession of gazers, I never saw a crowd intent on such a sight to equal the number of these pilgrims. It was impossible to enter the cathedral under these circumstances, and I was told that by coming early the next morning I could be admitted alone. But the next morning the gates were closed against all comers, and preparations were on foot for the grand septennial procession of the relics. The court and the streets leading to it were filled with rude benches, and thousands were seated where they could look with reverential awe on the cathedral in which these holy things were preserved. From the multitude there was rising on the air, like the sound of many waters, the voice of prayer. Away up one of the towers was a gallery passing around it, and on that gallery a procession of priests was making a frequent circuit, while the crowd gazed upwards with evident edification, as the holy utensils and the cross were borne aloft between them and heaven. There in the sun they sat, and thousands stood gazing and praying, the perfect embodiment of superstition, and the easy dupes of a cunning priesthood. They were of the lowest class of the population, if we could judge correctly by their dress and appearance. Yet were they orderly and devout, and only when some special spectacle led them all to rush to get the best place was there any need of the many guards who were on hand at all times to prevent disorder.

The grand procession was to emerge from the cathedral at two o’clock P.M. Then all these relics were to be carried in pomp in the hands and on the shoulders of the prelates through the streets of the city. “Good places to see the procession” were advertised for sale on the walls of the houses, and selecting one whose windows looked out upon the court of the cathedral and near its great door, I entered and hired half of one of the windows, taking a ticket that was to secure my seat when I returned.

Thus sure of the wonderful privilege of seeing the wealth of holy things which had brought these thousands here, I went off, and “assisted” in a demonstration with the Sultan of Turkey. He was on his way home from England, and was expected to reach Aix-la-Chapelle in the evening. But in consequence of delays on the road he did not arrive until five o’clock in the morning. He was then escorted to the palace, a modest mansion which the King of Prussia occupies when he is here, a rare event. When the Sultan had taken a brief rest and breakfast, he was to depart for Coblenz at ten A.M., and the better part of the city turned out to see him as he rode through the streets to the railroad. He is a much better-looking man than his predecessor on the Ottoman throne, whom I saw in Constantinople some years ago. This man is stout, short, grave, with heavy black beard, and very Turk in his appearance. His visit to the west is regarded by his subjects as a part of the great work he is supposed by them to have on his hands,—the government of the world. To this day the most of them believe that France and England simply obeyed his orders when they came to the aid of the Sultan, and that he has now been out west to look after his provinces there.

In front of the palace and all along the streets dense masses of people pressed to get a sight; two Romish priests stood by me, and were intensely curious to see the Turk. After a dozen carriages with his suite had passed, the state coach, with two fat horses and one very fat coachman,—coach, horses, and coachman covered with gold lace and trimmings,—came along with the solitary Sultan inside. The people sent up a very faint cheer, but he took no more notice of it than he would if the dogs had barked; looked stolidly down into the coach and rode out of sight.

At one P.M. I returned to my hired window. The crowd was vastly increased, dense masses of humanity filling every inch of space in sight of the line of march. But the court of the cathedral had been cleared, and a strong bar, guarded by soldiers, forbade the ingress of the multitude. The house where I was to enter was opposite to the door of the baptistery, and the whole court which was to be the scene of the great display was in full view from my window. I was early on the ground, and when I took possession of the humble chamber was the only person in it. To get to it I had to pass through the bedroom of the house, and in that was a double bed, two or three single beds, and a crib, in which the whole family slept side by side. Presently three Romish priests and two women entered, having also previously engaged places in this eligible apartment. The priests appeared to be intelligent men, and we conversed freely in French. They told me they had come from Holland to see the holy relics, and to participate in the solemnities of the occasion, and were then going to make a tour in Germany. The women were travelling in company. Presently one of the priests took out his prayer-book, and, retiring to one side of the room, entered upon his devotions. One of the women called my attention to him, and, giving me a wink of the eye, put up her finger to the side of her nose, and expressed the greatest possible contempt of the man at prayer. She was very lively, sometimes put her foot on the table, slapped her sister on the back heartily, drank three glasses of beer, which the priests paid for, and said it was goot.

A band of musicians arrived, and took their stand in the court. Officers in black dress with staves appeared. The crowd pressed more and more densely on the bar, and in the struggle to get nearer, I feared some would be crushed to death. In years past, there have been many disasters of that kind here. Roofs of houses, overloaded, have sunk down with their living burden. And as far as my eyes could see, the picturesque multitude swarmed and heaved. Many in blue blouses; women with red shawls over their heads; and every color was seen in their variegated costumes, yet none but the commonest of the common people were there.

At two o’clock, a few horsemen rode into the crowd and opened a passage for the procession soon to emerge from the church. Where the people were to retire, how they could be compressed into a smaller space, it was impossible to see. Walls on all sides, but down the streets they had to go, and, as they were pressed against the houses, fright was on the faces of many; children were held up overhead to save them from being crushed; closer and closer they were stowed away; women put up their hands imploringly, but the horses tramped among them, and a way was at last cleared through the solid mass of human beings. It was not yet time for the procession to come out: this was only to let the officiating ecclesiastics, and servants bearing vestments, and boys in white with banners to pass in. But the time wore on, and at last the bells began to ring, a cannon was fired, a strong sensation swayed the waiting multitude, there was a sound of martial music, there was the roar of the voices of the crowds who could not restrain their feelings, the door of the cathedral opened, and the great pageant began.

In front marched a band of boys in white raiment, with banners in their hands; a few Capuchin monks came next, in the coarse costume of their order; then followed a company of ecclesiastics, in white robes, with prayer-books in their hands, reading aloud as they walked; a large number in red and gold embroidered robes followed; a choir of young men singing; a brass band, making fine music; and then, wonderful to behold! in the midst of all this pomp appeared the dignitaries of the church, gorgeously attired, and bearing in succession the various relics which have already been named. They were enclosed in glass, some of them, and others were in magnificent chests of gold and silver, borne aloft on the shoulders of six men each, and surrounded with the richest trappings, as if the wealth of the universe might well be lavished on such precious treasures as these. The sacred procession was greeted everywhere as it proceeded with the prayers of the people, kneeling while it passed them. It took its way up into the city, through various streets by a prescribed route, in the midst of living masses of people, the windows and roofs filled with anxious spectators, who might never see the like again, and thousands of whom had come from afar, and had never seen it before. The march was about an hour long, and then they returned to the same court. But the procession was now largely increased. Two hundred “sisters,” of some order, had joined in, dressed in white, and perhaps as many of another order, in black; companies of infirm old men and women, as if from some asylum, and hundreds of lads in uniform, bearing flags, and four of them in white, with branches of lilies and green leaves in their hands. The procession entered the court, and, opening to the right and left, filled the area; the holy relics were borne into the midst, while the vast company lifted up their voices in singing, the band played, the bells rung, the cannon roared. It was a mighty choir in the open air, under the walls of a cathedral that had stood there a thousand years; the vast multitude were hushed to silence to hear the music of this holy band of monks and priests and women and children, and while the whole atmosphere was full of song, the pageant passed into the temple.

My companions at the windows, the priests and their women, took leave of me, as they were in haste to take the railroad for Cologne. I stepped down into the court, and on the heels of the procession entered the cathedral. The relics were deposited in the holy places; the great golden chests were placed in front of the altar, and high mass was celebrated with the splendor of ceremonial becoming this great occasion.

When the procession was finished, the holy relics in their several repositories for another seven years, and mass duly celebrated, I returned to the hotel to dinner. About twenty persons were at the table. On my right sat a party of French people, gentlemen and ladies, and the fun they made of what they had seen on the street was immense. They ridiculed as ludicrous in the extreme, and as the very height of absurdity and nonsense, the idea that the clothes and sponge and garments worn two thousand years ago, and constantly exposed to air and all the chances and changes of these eighteen centuries, should be here to-day in good condition; and, of course, the priests and church came in for a good share of denunciation. In front of me, and on my left, was an English-speaking party, the central and principal personage in the group being an English priest. His garb was that of Rome, and his conversation was becoming his garb; but whether he had ever been received into the full communion of Holy Mother, or was only aping her manners and wearing her vestments, it is impossible to say. It makes little difference, however. He was disgusted by the infidelity of these French people, and, supposing none at the table understood the English, he went on to say that it was highly improper to come into a foreign country and ridicule the customs and faith of the people. “For my part,” said he, “I think they are very stupid, as well as very ill-bred, to make such remarks at a public table where there are others who hold these relics in high honor as memorials of their holy religion.” The ladies of the party joined him fully in these sentiments, and, to my surprise, I soon discovered that the two ladies between whom he was sitting, and whom he always addressed as “My dear,” were both Americans, and evidently destined to become, if they had not already, excellent Romans. All of them, and the party was six or seven in number, had been gazing on the same spectacle that I had seen with mingled indignation and pity, and these enlightened, cultivated English and American people received the whole exposition as a glorious manifestation to their eyes of the veritable objects that were used at the time and in the midst of the scenes of the sufferings and death of our blessed Lord, and, therefore, justly to be held in reverence by all the faithful in all coming time.

Pictures of the relics were for sale in all the shops, and I bought a few as souvenirs of my pilgrimage. Particularly I sought for a good representation of that one which is first on the list and first in the admiration of the people. As the Virgin Mother Mary is held in higher honor by all good Catholics than the Son of God himself, so they likewise venerate with a deeper reverence the linen garment that she wore than the cloth which was around the loins of the Saviour on the cross. Having found two or three good copies of this peculiar garment, my curiosity was gratified to see the style which the ladies of Judea wore it in the year of our Lord 1 and onwards. Fashions change, and with the ladies they change more frequently than among the other sex. But the Virgin’s “linen garment” is exactly in the form and pattern of those in use in modern times. It has short sleeves, reaching but a little over the shoulder; it has a lace frill or something of the sort around the neck, with a place for drawing strings in front. It looks, in fact, like any other shirt with the sleeves cut off.

Now, just imagine, if you can, a company of fine-looking men, fifty or sixty years old, in gorgeous costume, with the symbols of priesthood and the pomp of kings, marching through the streets of a city, and bearing aloft, for the admiration of a gaping multitude, an old shirt. That is the mildest way of putting it! That the Virgin Mary ever had it on, there is not the slightest possible reason to suppose. That such garments were then worn is contradicted by our knowledge of the costume of the Orientals of the present and former times. But to argue the question is as absurd as to believe in the shirt. Faith in these relics comes not by reason or argument, but is hereditary, blind, morbid, and against the senses. To doubt is fatal, and nobody here doubts. They believe in the holy linen of Mary, her girdle, the rope, the sponge, Bartholomew’s hair, Thomas’ teeth, Simeon’s arm, St. Catherine’s oil, Stephen’s rib, Peter’s chain, and the child Jesus’ crib. If they believe in these things, what will they not believe? And English and American men and women come here and profess their faith in the whole!

Pilgrimages to this shrine have been made for the last six or seven hundred years. The number of believers crowding in at one time has sometimes been so great that it was found necessary to shut the gates of the city in order to prevent the increase. Every pilgrim was expected to pay a penny, and in one year these amounted to 80,000 florins, or 1,600,000 pence. In that year 142,000 persons were present in one day. In that period the numbers were so great that separate quarters of the town were assigned to different nationalities, and they were allowed to see the relics in their turn. They approached the relics on their knees, and in regular order, each bearing a pure wax candle. Great preparations were required to feed these multitudes, and it is not to be wondered at that it was found too much of a job to have this thing going on every year. Once in seven is certainly quite often enough. But the same forms and ceremonies of opening and displaying the treasures have been preserved from age to age. The exhibition begins July 10th and terminates July 24th. The rush became so great at one time that it was determined to dispense with the farce. But the inhabitants of the city, who, like the Diana smiths, make great gains out of the pilgrims, raised such a clamor that the show was resumed; and it is now as fixed in the routine of religious rites in this Protestant country of Prussia as the toting of the Pope on men’s shoulders at Christmas in Rome. Once in seven years the people flock hither for two weeks in July, and on the 24th the grand procession takes place.

But if the sight of these relics does the souls of the pilgrims no good, you may rest assured that the waters of these fountains will prove a Siloam to you if you have gout, rheumatism, or any cutaneous disease. Perhaps it is not well for me to prescribe without knowing the peculiar symptoms of your case; but for so many centuries have these waters been flowing for the healing of the people, that I have great faith in their secret virtues. Over the principal fountain is a temple, and from it extends a covered walk. The visitors take the water early in the morning, and, as it is too hot to drink off at once, they walk up and down, glass in hand, sipping as they go. Near by is the garden where, under shade-trees and by the side of fountains, they sit and chat, or listen to sweet music which the band discourses. As I was lounging here, a young Englishman was helped in by his sisters, and he was placed near me, so that I heard all their conversation concerning his progress toward being cured. Then a lady on two crutches hobbled in, and, arranging herself as comfortably as her evident lameness would permit, sought a little rest from pain. An elderly man with his leg in splinters had two servants to hold him up, and his condition seemed to suggest that the waters were sought even for the benefit of broken limbs. The variety of diseases is not so great perhaps as at other springs; but the gouty, the lame, and the halt, seem to lie around among these orange-trees, flowery shrubs, gravel walks, and cool shades. But by far the greater part of the visitors to the springs come for pleasure only. There is a large Kurhaus, in which are rooms for concerts and balls, for reading and conversation, and in the court a beautiful garden, into which subscribers are admitted. There the ladies take their work or their book, and, around little tables on which is a cup of tea or glass of light wine, they spend the afternoon, the gentlemen smoking if they please, and an orchestra of splendid performers playing. It is a scene of social and elegant ease, the dolce far niente to perfection, with really more enjoyment in it than is often to be found where people have nothing to do. There is no gambling here, and that drives off a class of men and women that infest every watering-place where gaming-tables are licensed. The company is therefore select, compared with the Badens and Homburg. And the baths are splendid. They are furnished at all the hotels, and there are establishments specially fitted up for them. Into one of these I went to enjoy the luxury. Each bath has a dressing-room adjoining it, out of which when ready you go down four or five stone steps into a large cemented bath, while the water from two large pipes is pouring in. On a stone bench at one end of the bath you sit down till the water comes up to your chin, and then it ceases to flow. At first the smell of sulphur is strong; but this ceases to be disagreeable. The temperature is perfect, the water abundant, plenty of towels, and a sheet besides, and the price is about 25 cents. I enjoyed it exceedingly, and commend it before all other bathing establishments this side of Turkey.

The antiquary finds much to interest him in this old town. It is something to be where Charlemagne was born and buried, and to see the works of his mighty hand; to visit the town-house, a tower of which still bears the name of Granus, a brother of Nero, who is said to have built it, and to have founded the city 124 years after Christ. In this house is a great hall, where for many successive centuries the Emperors of Germany were crowned. In front of it is a statue of Charlemagne, and the priests carry a silver bust of him in their septennial procession, with a bit of his skull in the top of it.

CHAPTER XXI.
FRANKFORT.

WITH faces at last fairly turned towards Russia, we stopped to rest for a day at the old town of Frankfort—the Ford of the Franks. Towards evening I wandered out to an old graveyard.

Like some in our own cities, it had ceased to be used for interments, and its walks and shade and vacant squares had become places of recreation for the children of the town. The gates were never shut, and, indeed, the walls were broken, so that it was a public square for the living rather than a quiet resting-place for the dead. A party of little folks were amusing themselves with children’s plays, and I paused in my solitary stroll to see them go through the old-time game of “Oats, peas, beans, and barley grow,” the same that our children from generation to generation play with so much zest on the grass or the carpet at home. It was pleasant to know that the young ones, in another language, were singing the same simple song that millions on the other side of the sea have sung and will sing in their childish glee. It was a queer place for children to make a playground. Our children would not fancy it. The Germans have more pleasing associations with the burial-places of their dead than we have. They indulge in cheerful sentimentalism more than we do, in this direction. These old graves are covered with flowering shrubs; some of them are cared for by the children or friends of the sleepers who have been here so many years that their names might be forgotten but for the tombstones. I read the inscriptions on many, and sought and found names familiar in history.

One grave was covered with wreaths and flowers. Yet it was an old grave, and evidently some special interest attached to it. I drew near and read in German,—

“The Grave of the Mother of Goethe. Born Feb.

19, 1731. Died Sept. 13, 1808.”

It was her request that this inscription should be put upon her headstone. The mother’s pride is in it, but so beautiful and so just! No man of this century has wrought himself more thoroughly into the German mind, and only one writer has led captive more minds in the world at large, than Johan Wolfgang Von Goethe, whose mother lies under this brick wall, with deep shade-trees hanging over her grave, and fresh flowers lying on it, though she was laid here sixty years ago. “From my dear little mother,” said the poet in one of his poems, “I derive my happy disposition and my love of story-telling.” And she said of herself, “Order and quiet are my characteristics. I despatch at once what I have to do, the most disagreeable always first, and I gulp down the devil without looking at him. I always seek out what is good in people, and leave what is bad to Him who made mankind, and knows how to round off the angles.”

If this saying of Goethe’s mother could be told in all the world as a memorial of her, it is quite likely it would do as much for the good of mankind as all that her son ever wrote, though he was the prince of German poets, and the master intellect of the age.

His coffin lies in the Duke’s vault at Weimar, or did when I was there, by the side of Schiller, and not by the side of the Duke, as royal etiquette forbade, even in the grave, such common dust as that of these two great poets to be laid along with that of royal clay. Yet the Duke is more honored by having had the friendship of the poets than by his crown or kingdom.

Twelve years after the birth of Goethe’s mother, in 1743, a Jew was born in Frankfort, whose name and power in the world are quite as great as that of the poet. It is a question for the debating societies, whether money or mind rules in this age; but there is little doubt that the Rothschilds have been more of a power in Europe during the present century than Goethe and all the poets put together. This man was named Anselm. He had five daughters and five sons: all of the sons becoming bankers like the father, and establishing themselves in various cities, London, Paris, Vienna, and Frankfort, came to control the finances of Europe, and to wield an influence before which the conquerors of kingdoms were often compelled to bow. They furnish one good lesson that is rarely mentioned or thought of: the father and five sons, and their children, have continued in one firm,—the five brothers were at one time the firm,—and, thus standing by one another, have been strong and prosperous; in this particular, Jews as they are, they set an example for Christians to follow. So great is their wealth and credit, that when the revolutions of 1848 in Europe instantly robbed them of forty millions of dollars, it did not disturb them, nor the confidence of the world in their stability. Kings and emperors are their guests as well as their customers; and this summer, one of them on the banks of Lake Leman, and another at his palace in Paris, has entertained royalty in right regal style. To us sovereigns in our own right, this is nothing very remarkable; but here, in the land of kings and princes, it is a matter always of wonderment, and it is also just a little detriment to dignity, when a crowned head condescends to eat off the plate of anybody but a brother of blue blood.

This old city of Frankfort has had its ancestral pride sadly humbled in being swallowed by all-devouring Prussia. A lady said to me, “I hate the Prussians; I know it is not very Christian, but I do hate them; and I believe the royal family will be poisoned yet!” This venerable city was once the capital of the German empire, the seat of its Congress; here the German emperors were elected, for successive generations. The glory that invests a spot so sacred has now departed; and the firm policy of Bismark, and the unification of Germany, have reduced the proud old town to one of the many second-rate cities of Europe. A city, now-a-days, cannot live on the past. Trade and travel will not obey traditions. Frankfort still holds a financial importance that is fast passing away; and more people will linger here for a day to see the marble Ariadne, by Danneker, than to visit the “Hall of the Cæsars,” where the portraits of the emperors are hung.

We left by rail at nine in the morning. The cars were large, convenient, and elegant. For first-class passengers they were divided into apartments for six, and were lined with red plush. The second class were quite as good, but lined with drab; and the chief difference was in the price, which, being high in the first class, makes the company more select. In all the cars smoking is allowed, unless notice is posted on the outside to the contrary. In our compartment, which was one of the interdicted, there were three ladies and as many men, only one of them a smoker; and he kept on, regardless of the notice and the company. The third-class cars had plain board seats with no backs; but they were clean, and very decent-looking people rode in them. A fourth class were like our cattle cars, only not so good, for ours are well ventilated, whereas these were close, and were filled with dirty people, standing up, and getting what air they could through one or two little windows. Yet these people were generally smoking, their poverty compelling them to ride like cattle, but not prevailing to make them give up tobacco.

We passed through large pine forests. Wind-mills were frequent, as they are in flat countries, where no waterfall power can be had. Women were at work repairing the railroads; showing that here woman has her “rights,” as the women reformers call the privilege of doing any thing that men do. Of course they are degraded, as they will be with us just as fast as public sentiment allows them to assume the duties that do not belong to their sex. The waiting-rooms at the stations are restaurants also, and beer is guzzled incessantly. Little children drink beer with their parents.

Vast tracts of level country are on our right and left. Not a hill is in sight. The scenery is uninterrupted prairie. Passengers are informed, by notice posted in the cars, that they can have a dinner served at certain stations ahead, and that the conductors will send on the order by telegraph without charge. At all the stations cake and beer are passed along by waiters at the windows of the cars, and you may take in the dishes if you please, and leave them at the next station.

Frankfort-on-the-Oder is a venerable town of 37,000 inhabitants, memorable as the scene of a great battle in 1759, when Frederick the Great was defeated by the Russians and Austrians. We crossed the Oder at Castion, the bridge being strongly fortified, as if war were imminent or guns relied on as the best peace preservers. Immense tracts of peat-beds are on the route, and women are at work wheeling heavy loads of it just cut out, and men cutting it, the women being made to do the hardest work.

Frankfort Dinner-Table.

At Krewz we stopped for dinner. We had sent forward our names by telegraph, and were curious to see what was the result. It proved to be a good soup, a stew of beef and potatoes, roast veal with stewed prunes, and the usual condiments, but no dessert or wine, unless extra. The tables for dinner were set out on the platform, under shade, and every thing neat and clean, and the table furniture good. Beautiful gardens are around the railroad stations: large peonies and lilacs, seringas and roses, and other flowers like our own, in full bloom. We met an excursion train with two or three hundred people, who had left the cars at a way-station to get water; and as our train came between them and theirs, they were thrown into the greatest alarm and confusion, lest they should be left behind. The cottages of the peasantry are very neat and comfortable; no signs of great poverty, no beggars at the stations. I have scarcely been solicited by a beggar in Germany. As we are going north, the country appears less fertile: there is more grass and less grain; few fruit-trees, some apples, cherries, and pears; poplar trees, sycamores, and some willows are seen. We have ceased to see forests on the line of the road: we pass another peat-bed, and a dozen women are working it, one man overseeing them.

At Nakal twenty peasants were standing, each with a staff in hand, as if they had just arrived from a journey on foot, and were waiting for a train to take them on to the seaboard to emigrate. They were swarthy, stout, and well clad. They will all be voters soon on the other side of the sea.

Two hundred miles from Berlin, on our way to Warsaw, we came to Bromberg. We had marked it down as the half-way place, and here we were to pass the night. We found an elegant railroad station; porters from three hotels, with plates on their hats, begged the pleasure of our company at their respective houses. The Englischer Hof had the honor of taking us in, and we were hospitably and comfortably cared for. This city was once in Poland. When the kingdom was carved and partitioned, this fell to Prussia. But Polish names predominate upon the signs, and the Polish language still prevails. Its trade is in wool and iron and steel, by canal connecting it with Oder and Wexsel. We went to the top of a hill near the hotel, and found beautiful walks and seats, commanding fine views of the town. The churches are both Protestant and Catholic. We were near a cemetery, and all the tombstones had their inscriptions in Hebrew. It was a Jewish burial-place. Adjoining it was a dead-house, into which every dead person of this people is brought, and washed, and ceremonially prepared for the grave. A young man showed us over the apartments. He seemed to be the solitary dweller in this gloomy house. A fine monument in the grove near by is in memory of the good citizen who had given the grounds, and embellished them, as a resort for the people.

Only in Germany have we had bolsters in shape of a wedge, hard, and designed to be laid with the edge under the shoulders, making an inclined plane, from which one is slipping down all the time. The old feather-bed comforter on top is now dispensed with; but in place of it is a quilt inside of a sheet, like a bag to hold it, and a very uncomfortable thing to manage. It requires a deal of patience to put up with the curious ways of other people; but when one gets used to them, they are just as well as his own.

We were to take an early start, and the servant was so anxious to do his whole duty, that he called us, as Samuel the prophet was called, three times in the course of the night, and finally succeeded in getting us out an hour too soon. But that was better than to be an hour too late, and so we had breakfast, and were off again by the rail at six in the morning. By eight we were at the frontier of Poland, now Russia. Our passports were demanded, and our baggage searched. Even the little bags were taken out of the cars and examined. The only article sought for was tobacco, and nobody ever found a bit of that in any luggage of mine. At the station signs of progress were evident. Carts drawn by oxen were loaded with brick, each brick twice as large as one of ours. Large iron pipes for aqueducts were lying around. A photographic apparatus, of a pattern quite novel to me, was in use, taking views of the works going on. The names of all the passengers were copied from their passports into a register; the passports were returned to their several owners, then each passenger was asked if he had his passport, and, the formality being over, we were allowed to proceed after an hour’s detention.

We are now travelling in Poland. We soon pass miserable dwellings, half under ground, and with stagnant water about them, giving every appearance of unhealthiness and wretchedness. Yet the country was better tilled than in Northern Germany. We are now on the Vistula. At one of the stations we saw a meeting of friends, men kissing each other; young people stooped down, and old men kissed them on the back of their heads. Elegant parks and gardens surrounded the villa of the Princess Racziwill. For centuries it has been the residence of the titled and rich.

At half-past three P.M. we arrived at Warsaw. All the passengers, as they left the cars, were required to give up their passports again; were led into a room where all ingress and egress was cut off; here to each person was given a receipt for his passport, and he was required to give the name of the house at which he intended to stay, also to state when he expected to leave. He was then allowed to go. At the door a metal check was handed him, having on it the number of the hack in which he would ride; and thus, with a deep conviction that we are at last in a country where we are to be looked after, we were taken to our hotel.

CHAPTER XXII.
WARSAW.

ON the banks of the Danube, but just where the story does not say, and when it is quite uncertain, lived three brothers, whose names were Lekh, Teckh, and Russ. They were of the Slavonian race. Ambitious to found distinct dynasties of their own, they set off on their travels. Presently three eagles appeared, flying in as many directions, and the brothers instantly agreed to follow the birds and the example. Russ went after one of the eagles, and the region he went into he called Russia; Teckh went to Bohemia, whose people were anciently called Teckhs; and Lekh, led by a white eagle, came to Poland. The people adopted the white eagle as their national emblem, and they were called Polekhs, or Polaks, and in Shakespeare the people of Poland are Polaks. In some parts of this country the Poles are yet called Lekhs. The great importance of this recondite history is not very apparent; but it is enough to intimate that the origin of nations is often involved in obscurity, and this is specially true of these northern peoples.

The history of Poland, through its early centuries down to 1772, is one of the most romantic in the “book of time.” With the coming of the Jesuits into Poland came trouble, as trouble always comes with those pests of the human race. War with Russia followed, and the Polish territory east of the Dnieper, or Little Russia, was subjected to the Czar; and by and by, when the kingdom of Poland lay at the mercy of three surrounding powers, it was “partitioned” between Russia and Prussia and Austria. This was but the beginning of her trials. Never conquered, though always overcome, fighting for independent existence again and again, she has in her death-struggles shown a tenacity of life that has commanded the admiring sympathy of mankind. Three times she has been divided among these devouring kingdoms; and at the settlement of 1815, after the battle of Waterloo, when a new map of Europe was made, it was decided that a part of Poland, Galicia, should belong to Austria, Posen to Prussia, and the large part which Napoleon had made into the Duchy of Warsaw, should be a constitutional monarchy under the Russian Emperor as King. In 1830 the Poles made another insurrection, and when crushed they were deprived of their constitution, their language was proscribed, and the last vestige of their nationality was beaten out.

There is a savage wickedness in this cutting up of nations, that does not touch the moral sentiment of the world as it ought. To murder a man is something palpable, and so obviously damnable. But to blot a nation out of being, to strike down the life of a people and bury it out of sight for ever, this is what has been done for poor Poland, and we have only to drop a tear over her grave, enter a protest in the name of human rights, and pass on. The most extensive portion of ancient Poland is under Russia, the most populous in the grasp of Austria, and the most commercial is held by Prussia. Warsaw is the unwilling serf of Russia. The present Emperor has sought to gild the chains that bind this people; but the iron chafes them, and will. He restored their language and schools; a council of state was formed; all the local officers were Poles. But nothing will satisfy a noble race but to be their own masters: in 1863 Warsaw was again in insurrection; the men rushed to arms, the women to the altars; the streets ran blood, the weak sank under the strong, and the end came.

The city of Warsaw has nearly 200,000 inhabitants. It is a well-built town, modern in its appearance, with many of its streets straight, and having large and handsome houses. It stands on the Vistula. It is more gay and attractive than you would expect to find it, under the heel of an oppressor, and after years of fruitless struggle with a crushing power. On every hand we see the signs of the ruler’s presence, in the persons of his armed deputies, the soldiers of Russia, who are here to keep order in Warsaw. In our hotel, the dining-room is always occupied by soldiers, who are eating and drinking, especially drinking. “Sherry cobblers” in quart tumblers are in front of them, and they are sucking at them diligently. Venice, under Austrian rule, was not more vigilantly guarded than Warsaw is at this day, after a subjugation that has been endured for forty years! It will take two or three generations to make Poland contented under foreign rule, and then the hereditary love of nationality will remain, and rise to the surface whenever it gets a chance for demonstration.

The city has a very unfinished appearance: there are splendid public edifices near by others that seem only begun, or neglected in the midst of building. Revolutions and the fears of revolution have made its prosperity precarious, and the inhabitants lack the highest stimulus to enterprise and exertion, the hope of permanent possession and enjoyment. The splendid government houses are in many cases the palaces of the old Polish nobility, now decayed or extinct families. Many of the former owners, who once rolled in hereditary wealth, have long since been exiled to the desolate wilds of Siberia, and their places will never know them again. A pall, like a perpetual cloud, is on the face of Poland, and by degrees the spirit of liberty will be extinguished. The language and rule of Russia will become universal. There is no hope in the future for the nationality of Poland.

In 1863 a spy of the Russian government was stopping at the Hôtel de l’Europe in Warsaw, where we are now writing; and, his business being suspected, the patriotic Poles, who are not likely to abide the presence of such a fellow if they know him, took the liberty of murdering him in his bed. The Russian government seized the house, shut it up, and for some years it has stood closed, a monument and a warning. Russia will not allow her spies to be murdered without visiting her vengeance on the house itself in which the murder is committed. As this hotel was formerly the palace of one of the noble Polish families, and the only hotel of large proportions, it was a serious injury to the city as well as to the proprietors. And I do not apprehend that the Poles will be any more gentle in their treatment of Russian spies, because their largest tavern was shut up half a dozen years.

Out of my window I see a soldier standing with his back against the wall; he has a soldier’s cap and long cloak reaching nearly to the ground; he has been there five or six hours, marching now and then a few rods and returning to his post: five soldiers come and stand in front of him, one of them takes off the cloak and puts it on his own shoulders, and, stepping into his place, mounts guard; and this process is continued and repeated all over the city, day and night, year after year. Thousands of Russian soldiers are thus quartered on the city continually: lazy, intemperate, and licentious, they are a moral pestilence; using their power to compel the subject people to submit to their insolence, and corrupting by their example and association those with whom they come into contact.

With this admixture of foreign and native people, it is impossible to discriminate between them; but a more unmannerly set of people I have never met at public places than they are here. The servants have no manners but bad manners. They enter your private room without knocking; they are grouty in their address, sulky in their answers, and generally disagreeable. The same may be said of the officers of the hotel: disobliging, inattentive. The women appeared to be lively in each other’s company, but the men of Warsaw are grave and thoughtful.

We rode in the afternoon through the beautiful parks and meadows and groves where the Russian military exercises are held, and through the Botanical Gardens, and to the Observatory, for the pursuit of science has not been arrested by the revolutions that have overturned the government; and then we came to Lazienki, a splendid rural palace, built by King Stanislaus Augustus Poniatowski. Here the Emperor of Russia has his temporary abode when he visits Warsaw, which, by the way, he does not often, for his presence is not specially agreeable to the people. Beautiful villas are scattered through the park, the residences of persons connected with the court; fountains play, a beautiful stream flows by, and a monument to Sobieski, John III. of Poland, stands conspicuous, the sight of which is said to have led the Emperor Nicholas, in 1850, after the war in Hungary, to make the remark: “The two kings of Poland that committed the gravest error are John III. and myself; for we both saved the Austrian monarchy.” It is hard to say whether such reflections are sound or not; the rise and fall of kingdoms are all in the plans of Infinite Wisdom, and what to us seems exceedingly desirable may be the height of folly in the eye of Him who reads the future. It is certainly not human wisdom that has spared Austria or Turkey and sacrificed Poland, but the end may yet be well.

It was dark when we returned to the city. A feeble attempt at illumination was going on in some of the public buildings. Dim lights were hung along some of the walls, and now and then a private house had an extra lamp or two in its windows! We inquired the cause of this miserable imitation of rejoicing, this abortive demonstration. The telegraph had brought the intelligence that to-day an unsuccessful attempt had been made to assassinate the Emperor Alexander. The illumination was thus very satisfactorily and exactly explained. The assassination was attempted by a Polander, and Poland would have madly rejoiced if it had been a success. I was at a loss to know whether the illumination signified joy at the Emperor’s escape from death or joy that his death had been so nearly accomplished. The melancholy exhibition of lights was just enough to suggest the two conflicting sentiments; and if the Russian soldiers and officials and dependants did their duty in hanging out the lamps, the inhabitants of Warsaw almost without exception will go to bed regretting that the shot of the assassin did not lodge in the heart of the Emperor whom they regard as their oppressor.

The streets of Warsaw are badly paved; riding in some of them is a protracted punishment. They are badly lighted, and it is not unusual for an ordinance to be in force requiring every one going out after dark to carry a light, under pain of arrest.

The first drunken person I saw in the streets of a city on the Continent of Europe was here. In the southern capitals, as of Spain and Italy, and even of France, there was gayety, but not intemperance. I had not been long in the city before I saw a woman lying on the pavement dead drunk. And nobody seemed to heed the spectacle, always and everywhere disgusting as the most shameful exhibition of fallen humanity. They have their favorite vices in the south of Europe, but this of drunkenness is not one of them. The use of wine, light wine, is not the cause of the sobriety of the people, though it is a fact beyond all denial that the wine-growing countries are the most temperate countries in the world. Yet they are not temperate because they have wine to drink. They would be just as temperate, and perhaps more so, if they had no wine. They are temperate because the climate does not invite them to the stimulus of alcohol. That’s all. It is not their virtue, nor their wine, that makes them so. They are not tempted to drink strong drink. As soon as we get into these northern countries we find the people making free use of distilled liquors and getting drunk: and intemperance is the prevailing vice of the clime, as licentiousness is the vice of the south of Europe. Climate is to be considered in all our studies of the habits of a people, and it must be allowed its proper effect when we are estimating the virtues and vices of our fellow-men. Climate is no excuse for wrong-doing, but it helps to know why people fall into one or another class of sins.

On Sunday, after searching in vain to find the English service which was said to be performed in an evangelical chapel by a clergyman of the Church of England, we went to the Lutheran Church. Its dome, rising from an open square, is a prominent object in the city. The building itself is a rotunda, and very large. The yard was filled with all sorts of carriages, wagons, droskies, and carts, with horses of various grades, by which the people had come in from the surrounding country. Some of these vehicles were the rudest kind of rustic wagons, and being covered with mud, and filled with straw as the only seat, having no springs, and long and narrow, indicated that the roads were bad, and that the people had encountered some difficulties in getting to the house of God. It is rare to see such a show of teams about a city church. It was all the more interesting in Warsaw, in the heart of the old kingdom of Poland.

I entered the porch, and it was crowded by people unable to get into the thronged church. Looking over their heads, I saw three successive galleries rising above each other; and, following the winding staircase in the vestibule, we reached the first, and, unable to get admission there, we mounted to the second, which was also full, and then to the third, where there was plenty of room. A singularly imposing spectacle was presented. The vast audience-room was a perfect circle; the three galleries sweeping completely around to the pulpit and organ behind it. The pews on the ground floor were occupied by a class of persons by their dress and manner more elevated in rank than the others. The pew doors were kept locked, until the sermon was to be commenced, when they were opened, and the crowd in the porch were permitted to take those not occupied by their owners. The first gallery pews were filled with plainer people. The second gallery had a set of worshippers whose coarse and humble attire indicated the harder worked and poorer people; but their dress was cleanly, and an air of comfort pervaded the whole assembly. The third gallery, into which I found access, was not seated, and the few persons in it stood at the front. It was a sublime spectacle, this crowded sanctuary, perhaps three thousand people, worshipping in a strange tongue, and all animated with the spirit of the hour. Behind the pulpit was a life-size statue of the Saviour on the cross. In front of it four immense candles, each four feet high, were burning. These candles and statue would lead us to suppose that the Lutheran was not wholly reformed, and that some relics of Romanism still lingered. The minister read a hymn, and around the organ a large choir of young men and boys, no females in it, stood up and sang,—the whole assembly, men and women,—with the organ, singing with a mighty noise. The sermon followed. The Polish is not one of the tongues with which I am familiar, and I shall not undertake to pass an opinion upon the eloquence or the orthodoxy of the discourse. But the clear rich tones of the preacher’s voice fell upon attentive ears, and the earnestness of his manner spoke well for him, though I could not understand a word.

At the door, as I came out, there was a row of mendicants, not asking alms, but willing and expecting to receive the charities of those who passed, and they were remembered by many. It was an inoffensive way of begging. Whoever gave was moved to do a good thing without being importuned.

The principal streets of the city had as many people in them, going to and from church, as you would see in New York, and so widely do the fashions of Paris prevail in the west and east and north, that the fashionable people of Warsaw, riding or walking, looked to be the same sort of people that one meets in cities with which he is more familiar.

I walked into the Jewish quarter of the town. Their Sabbath was yesterday; but to-day is one of their feast-days, and they were all out of doors, “a peculiar people” everywhere. The men wore long frock-coats reaching to the ground. Their dwellings were mostly mean and low; but we saw women going in and out of them dressed in rich silks, with splendid velvet mantillas, and they were doubtless as well off for this world as their people seem to be in all countries where they have a chance to live and trade. They have the best hospital in Warsaw. They retain their nationality, the expression of countenance, the curve of the nose, the faculty of making and keeping money wherever they go. And they are strangely hated in the Christian world since they crucified the Lord of Glory, as the serpent has been among men since he tempted the woman in Eden. Of the five or six millions of people in Poland, nearly one million are Jews. This is a large proportion, perhaps larger than any other country in Europe.

There are only about 300,000 Protestants in Poland, and when you learn that of the Russian or Greek church there are but five or six thousand, out of the five or six millions, you will see one grand reason why Poland will never be submissive to the rule of Russia. Their religions are at war. Poland is intensely bigoted in its Romanism. In the public square we see a statue of the Virgin Mary, with an iron railing around it; flowers in pots are kept before it, lamps by night are burning in its presence, tumblers of oil with lighted wicks in them, and an old woman to light them as often as the wind blows them out, and here the people are constantly coming and throwing themselves down on the stones and saying their prayers: one young man was so earnest in his devotions, that he prayed with a loud voice, regardless of those around him, as if he knew the statue was quite deaf and could hear no common prayer. In 1863, the frightened people rushed to this image, when they saw that the insurrection was not to be successful, and the Russian troops charged upon the praying multitude of men and women and scattered them on their knees.

Before one of the churches two crosses are erected, to commemorate the union of Poland and Russia. Tradition says that they also mark the scene of the strangest duel that was ever heard of,—two brothers being jealous of each other on account of their own sister’s love, fought here and slew each other. The province of “Little Russia” lies between Russia proper and Poland, and for the possession of it the two kingdoms have fought till it has sometimes been thought they would devour each other.

As I saw people going into a court-yard I followed them, into a little chapel, where a corpse was lying in state. It was of an old man; thirty or forty candles were burning around him, but he was raised on a platform so high that his face could not be seen. Leaving him, I came out and met a funeral procession. The body was borne in a hearse, surmounted with a gorgeous crimson canopy, and drawn by six horses richly caparisoned and led by six grooms. The Emperor could not have desired a more ostentatious funeral; all hats were removed as the procession passed, and this practice, which prevails on the Continent generally, and especially in France, is a beautiful and becoming tribute of respect, which I would be glad to see prevalent at home. They uncover their heads when the King passes by; and what monarch is mightier than he to whom the stateliest head must bow.

Ours were the only English names on the register of the hotel, the largest in the city; we called at another hotel, and not an English name was there, and during the three days we were in Warsaw we did not hear a word of our tongue, except when we spoke ourselves. We were not, however, as much disturbed by this as the lady was in Paris, who was out of all patience and spirits hearing nothing but French day after day. One morning she heard a cock crowing, and exclaimed, “Thank God, there’s somebody who speaks English.”

Polish Peasants.

CHAPTER XXIII.
FROM WARSAW TO ST. PETERSBURG.

WE were to leave Warsaw in the course of the forenoon. At half-past eight we came downstairs, and found the breakfast-room closed, and nobody up in the house who could provide the morning repast. As time was precious, we went out to another hotel, and it was still closed; when at nine o’clock we succeeded in getting in, there was no one stirring but the landlord himself, and he managed to get breakfast for us with his own hands. Returning to our own hotel we called for the bill, and found the prices for rooms and board one-third more than we were assured they would be, by the same man who now made the charges. I mention all these little things to show the ways of the world we are travelling in. We do not remember any country, nor any hotel, where we were more systematically imposed on, and where we got so little for so much, as at the Hôtel l’Europe, the largest and most pretentious house in Poland.

We rode from the hotel across the Vistula, over a new and splendid bridge, and found the railroad station a mile beyond. It is put at this safe and very inconvenient distance from the town to be secure against sudden outbreaks of popular violence. The people are of the excitable order, and this road is the grand route between Warsaw and St. Petersburg, over which their Russian masters come to govern the Poles. The young man selling tickets was civil, and he was the first man who had spoken civilly to us since we entered unhappy Poland. The Russian officials at the station were all civil. Before we could purchase our tickets our passports were examined, and a “ticket of leave” was given us, for which we paid thirty copakes, about twenty cents. We paid a cent for the baggage check. The cars were splendid; the first and second class had spring seats, cushioned, with racks for parcels; and the second class was quite as good as the first in France or Germany. The passengers were very few; the train, the only one for the day, had but three cars, and none were full. We had an apartment for six entirely to ourselves, two of us.

We rush out into a vast prairie country, very sparsely inhabited, but well cultivated; large herds of cattle were grazing on the plains; pine groves were frequent; the north side of trees was torn by winter storms; houses were thatched with straw, and appeared to be miserable abodes for the poor inhabitants; they became poorer as we went north, sometimes partly under ground. They are now more scattered; fewer villages; but they are doubtless more frequent off the line of railroad, which may be laid through parts of the country less settled than others. The peasants in their rude working clothes had a wretched look, and the women were all barefooted. We passed a village that seemed to be Jewish, the men and boys being clad in long coats, such as we saw on the Jews in Warsaw. Once in every half-mile, on the road, was a neat house for the railroad man, whose duty it is to see that the road is in perfect order. These houses are numbered in order, over the whole route; they are of brick or stone, small, warm, and substantial, with a little ornament. The idea is excellent. A man thus provided for is impelled by his highest interests to be vigilant and faithful; and it would be strange, indeed, if the road were ever suffered to be out of order for a moment with such care. The road is solid, a single track with frequent turnouts, and the cars run smoothly. At every cross-road for wagons a man stands keeping guard. Accidents must be very rare on a road so managed.

We stop at Lapy, on the river Narev, for dinner; they give us good soup, stewed veal, and potatoes, and a ball of forced meat, and charge us about fifty cents, two or three times as much as it was worth, but they do not expect to entertain you twice; certainly we do not expect to dine at Lapy again.

At Bialystok, the next station, a lady left the cars and was met by a young man, perhaps her son, in military dress; they kissed each other four times, and he then kissed her hand, and the salutations were completed. Many Jewish women were out to-day, which is one of their feasts; the cross-roads were thronged with Jews, who seemed to be gathering there to see the cars passing; they were not allowed on the track or on the side of the railroad, but must keep themselves on the wagon-roads, where they crossed the track. This town of Bialystok is quite an important place of 16,000 people, on the borders of the old kingdom, and in the cutting up of the country it has sometimes been Prussia, sometimes Russia, and aforetime Poland. It is now Russia, of course. We come on to Grodno, with its 20,000 inhabitants, which is a large town in Russia proper, and we feel a pleasant relief in being within the bounds of the empire itself, though even this was once in Poland, and the residence of some of her kings. Here sat the diets, or congress, of Poland, and even that most celebrated of all of them, the diet of 1793, which gave its consent to the partition of Poland. Here, too, the last king of Poland, Stanislaus Augustus Poniatowski, laid down his sceptre. We find the Jews, in great numbers, out on a holiday; the grand-high-priest, with his gorgeous breastplate on, with long hair, as if it had never been cut and he were a Nazarene from his birth. We are now travelling in Lithuania, once a duchy, whose duke married the Queen of Poland, by name Hedwiga, in 1386. This union made Poland powerful to resist the Tartars and the Dukes of Moscow, and to maintain the independence of the kingdom for a long series of years. The union of Lithuania and Poland continued until the third partition in 1795. The country appears poorer as we advance; the soil is less fertile; there is more sandy and barren waste. Pines and firs and white birches are the trees we see now; the houses of the peasants are low and poor; we have long since ceased to see improvements about the railroad stations; we are getting into regions of less civilization. As far as the eye reaches away to the horizon, no hills are in sight. It was across these wide plains that the great French captain led his hosts to invade Russia, sixty years ago! We shall be frequently on the track of that army’s awful march, and its disastrous retreat. We have come to Kowno, where the rivers Vilia and Niemen meet. Here the French army crossed the Niemen, June 23, 1812, on their way to Moscow, and a gentle rise of ground, on the bank, is still called Napoleon’s Hill. It was a mighty host when it was here in June. All the annals of war and of the world furnish no parallel to the story of that campaign; it was an epitome of Napoleon’s whole career. But it is rare that marble is so modest as the monument which the Russians have set up at Kowno to commemorate the miserable failure of Napoleon’s stupendous plan of subjugating Russia. In the centre of the market-place they have set up a stone bearing this significant inscription,—

“In 1812, Russia was invaded by an army numbering 700,000 men. The army recrossed the frontier, numbering 70,000.”

When Napoleon entered Wilna on his fatal march to Moscow, he occupied the same rooms in the episcopal palace that the Emperor Alexander had hastily vacated the day before. We shall not have the same apartments, but we are here at the same season of the year; it was June 28, 1812, when the French army took possession of Wilna, the Russians having evacuated it in the night.

We had been riding eleven hours steadily, yet the cars were so comfortable, the road so smooth, and the motion so easy and gentle, that we had suffered little fatigue. The scenery had been improving. The country was more uneven, rolling, and actually rising sometimes to the dignity of hills, until we were able and obliged to pass through a tunnel, being our first experience of the kind in some days, so level had been the regions through which we had travelled. Wilna is surrounded by hills, and enjoys a river flowing out of the valley, and the ravines are filled with birch and larches, giving something of the life and beauty of verdure, which is quite inspiring in this latitude. In the fourteenth century the people here were pagans, and a fire was kept burning day and night at the foot of one of the castle-crowned hills. The ruins of the castle, which was reared in 1323, are still visible on the summit. What a history of war, famine, and fire these intervening centuries have seen. Thirty thousand inhabitants were destroyed by famine in one year, 1710, and five years afterwards nearly the whole town was burned. The people are still impatient of the Russian yoke. They are always ready for an outbreak. In 1831, they tried and failed; and in 1862 they made a desperate effort, and the leaders of the movement were summarily hung or shot.

The beauties of travel in Russia begin to be seen even in the dark. We are in the station, in the midst of a crowd of people, who seem to be talking all the languages of Babel; such a jargon does the Russian, Polish, and German make, when all are spoken at the same time by an impatient multitude. We are to wait an hour for the train to leave, and that will bring it near to midnight. If we spend the night here, there is no train until to-morrow night at the same hour, and we shall therefore be as badly off when it comes. It is better to go on and make a night of it. Twelve hours will bring us to St. Petersburg, and then we can rest. There are no sleeping cars. We must sit up or lounge the best way we can. It is now eleven o’clock and is getting to be dark. But we are so far north that the days are long, and the night will be very short. At midnight we curl up in the corner of the seat, and the train starts as we go to sleep. At two o’clock in the morning we awake, and it is broad daylight! At three we enter Dunaberg, a large town of small houses; 27,000 inhabitants: the most of the buildings are of wood, and only one story high, like the little farm-houses scattered over the country. It is well fortified, though it is hardly worth fighting about. John the Terrible captured Dunaberg in 1577, and the Swedes took it in 1600. The railroad station-house towers above the dwellings, that look like ant-hills scattered around. We stop a few minutes only, and push on through vast quantities of charcoal and railroad fuel collected here, and pine forest succeed, and white birch-trees, and over a flat, uninteresting country. The sun rose between four and five o’clock, and at a wayside station we were refreshed with a cup of coffee. The night was over, and the shortest I ever spent with my clothes on. We now pass tilled fields, and at one time we counted twenty villages of low, small houses in sight at one time, as we rushed along. The grain is well up, and with a warm summer will come to maturity. Wide tracts of land are destitute of vegetation; and with the evidences of want of agricultural knowledge, and the brevity of the summer, it is easy to see that these crowded villages may be pinched for want of food in a bad season. These famines have sometimes reached the cities, and the sufferings of Moscow in 1600 were not exceeded by the horrors of Jerusalem besieged by Titus. One hundred and twenty-seven thousand dead bodies remained for some days unburied in the streets, and 500,000 perished.

The peasants are astir in the early morning at their work in the fields. They are decently clad, and have the appearance of being “comfortable;” they and their houses indicating that they have time and inclination to take care of themselves. They are no longer serfs. This term is not the same as slave. The serf was sold with the land on which he worked, not away from it, or without it. So long ago as 1597, a decree was issued forbidding peasants to leave the lands on which they were at that time employed. This made every working-man a fixture on the land of the landholder. At a date even earlier than this, they were forbidden to leave except at stated periods, but the complete attachment by statute of the husbandmen to the soil did not take place until the sixteenth century. This continued to be the established order of things until the accession of Alexander II. to the throne in 1856. The serfdom of Russia was not absolute slavery. It did not subject the man to the unrestricted will of the master. The peasant remained the tiller of the same soil, and changed his master only when the soil changed owners. But the grievance was inexpressibly great. In some cases it worked extraordinary results. The serf sometimes by energy and ability became a man of wealth and power. But he was under a social ban that kept him down as color depresses the black man. The reign of the present Emperor has been marked by the introduction of great and beneficent reforms. Railways were begun, and a new impulse given to trade at home and foreign commerce. The manumission of the serfs had long been discussed, but an opposition from the nobility had been too formidable to make it safe. In 1838, some of the nobles petitioned for the abolition. In 1859, the nobles of Lithuania offered to free their serfs. A general plan was then devised for the whole empire, and by a decree of March 3, 1861, about twenty-three millions of people were raised to the enjoyment of civil rights. A certain amount of land, varying in different districts from two and a half to ten acres, was allotted to each peasant. He is allowed to acquire more land by purchase. A board of arbitrators, in different parts of the country, regulate the price and terms of payment to the original owners. The government advances the purchase-money to the peasant in the form of a five per cent bond, and this the proprietor receives for his land, and the government takes the payment of the peasant by instalments, through a series of years. The districts, or towns, being made responsible for this repayment to the government, a wholesome restraint is put upon the inhabitants, by which they are kept within bounds until this debt is paid. Thus the entire population is made interested in the accomplishment of the great work. The nobles who were the proprietors of the soil, receive government bonds bearing interest, and thus derive a fixed income, while each peasant becomes an independent landed proprietor. The change has been effected with no convulsion, and is gradually becoming a settled and peaceful state of things. A few outbreaks occurred at the time, chiefly from want of understanding the plan, and on the whole it has worked well.

This beneficent reform has been effected without passion, and with the intelligent approbation of the masters who were by a single decree deprived of 23,000,000 of bondmen. The original owners of the soil are not reduced to poverty by the emancipation of their men. The men are not turned loose upon the world without means to earn their living, and without incentives to industry. The government is not made to bear the expense of supporting them, or of finding work for them to do. The emancipated man is at once put into a position to earn his living where he has always lived. The master is left with a large surplus of soil, which he may cultivate with hired labor, which must be abundant, when the peasants have but small farms of their own, which are easily and chiefly tilled by the women. And this work has been accomplished with so much moderation, wisdom, and justice, as to compel the approbation of every enlightened judgment and conscience. It is in most aspects of the case a model plan of emancipation.

It seems strange to me that this rapid travel is hurrying me on to St. Petersburg! The cathedral and churches of Pskof are before us, and we stop for breakfast. We enter the breakfast-room and find the dishes laid; each one helps himself to whatever he wishes, and pays for what he takes; not a word being necessary, except to learn the price of the food.

A lady and gentleman were walking up and down on the platform, both smoking. We are coming to a city where smoking in the streets is prohibited by law. The peculiar garb of the rustic Russian is seen on the men around the station. They wear long woollen coats, reaching nearly to the ground. A girdle is about the middle. The hat is a low-crowned beaver, and rapidly expanding toward the top.

CHAPTER XXIV
ST. PETERSBURG.

WE were in Russia, at Warsaw. At that point in the journey we were put through a searching process, and the result having satisfied the officials that we were not of the dangerous classes, and had no designs upon the life of the Emperor, or the emancipation of Poland, we had been allowed to enter. And now that we had come to St. Petersburg, there was no need of overhauling us again, for we had been certified to already. We were as free on arriving at the capital as if we had come to New York.

At the station-house we were reminded at once that we were in a strange land, by the peculiar costume of the porters and drivers, who were as numerous and noisy as at home. They wore low-crown hats, with bevelled rims; long coats reaching to the feet, and a belt about their loins. They were as clamorous for hire as in more civilized countries, but they pulled and hauled less. It was easy to see that the hand of government was upon this most ungovernable class of men. We found the same kind of omnibuses that run in our own streets, and on the one inscribed with the name of the hotel to which we were bound we took our seats, and were soon riding over the roughest paved streets that ever disgraced a city. For a long series of years St. Petersburg was unpaved. At length an imperial decree was issued that every vehicle coming into the city should bring a certain number of stones to be left for paving. If each carriage had dumped its load, without regard to size or order, just where it happened, the result would have been about the same as we found and felt the state of the streets to be, as we were bounced and tumbled on our way to the Hôtel de France.

SCENE AT RAILWAY STATION.

The manager of the hotel bade us welcome in good English. We were grimed with the dust of thirty hours’ steady railroad travel, and the luxury of a bath was more enjoyable than bed or board. The Russian is a very different bath from the Turkish, where to the preliminaries of warm air to set the system into a perspiration is added the thorough and plentiful scrubbing with hot water, poured on mercilessly. The Russian is the vapor bath only, and its effect is to open all the pores of the skin, to empty them completely as the streams of perspiration gush from every little mouth, and to incite a pleasurable languor, when all sense of weariness, soreness, or stiffness is gradually steamed away. The Russian dinner that followed was of the best: soup, fish, cutlet, roast beef, partridges, vegetables, and varied dessert. Wines or not, as you choose to order.

To see a city whose language is not one of your accomplishments, you must have a guide, a commissionaire, a valet de place. Now we knew precious little of the Russ. We had picked up a little Polish—mark, I do not say polish—at Warsaw, and had startled the natives by sudden outbreaks in what we supposed to be perfectly proper language, but which only served to awaken their pity or make them laugh; but the Russian is another thing, and not expecting to spend a winter here, nor to study the literature of the country, we had given no time to the language. We must have some one to be our mouth to the people, somebody who could answer a thousand questions out of his own stores of information, or serve as our interpreter when we attempted to get it out of others.

In the city of St. Petersburg resides an old Englishman whose name is Russel. He has an understanding with the hotel men that whenever a guide is wanted by travellers, he is to be sent for, and at our intimation he made his appearance, and very respectfully offered his services to make us familiar with the lions of the town. Mr. Russel is a venerable man in years, having completed his threescore and ten some time since. Half a century of these years he has dwelt in this capital of the Russian empire, and toiled in this interesting service of expounding its wonders to the visitors from other countries. Mr. Russel has become so familiar with the objects of interest in his adopted city, that he imagines his strangers to be equally familiar with them, and in no need of being enlightened. He is so far gone in the loss of his faculties, if he ever had any great quantity to lose, that a question must be proposed to him often and in many forms, before he comprehends it, and when he answers, you are not sure that he understood you, or that he knows any thing about the matter. He never speaks except when he is spoken to, unless to tell you something you knew before, or that was not worth knowing. He would pass the most important and interesting buildings or monuments or historic places in the city, and not mention them, unless you asked him,—“What’s that?” Yet he was very English. He dropped the H invariably. He exaspirated his vowels most unmercifully. Pointing to the tombs of the kings and royal family, he said: “That’s the hare to the throne; that’s his haunt, and there’s his huncle.” In a picture-gallery we came to Danae, and he was kind enough to say, “That’s a woman, I believe,” and there was not much room for doubt on the subject; and in a group of mythological sculpture he remarked for our information, “That’s Jupiter,—these is all gods.”

This was the intelligent man who was to make us acquainted with the city of St. Petersburg. If you are to be told only what he could tell me, it would not be worth while to read any further. But we have eyes and ears of our own, and already the barbaric splendor of this northern capital is breaking upon us. You shall have our first impressions and our last, for we have made two visits here, and have become familiar with the city, if not in love with it. It is not a city to go into raptures over. Perhaps it will become beautiful one day. But nothing in it is finished. Streets with palaces on them are still disfigured with insignificant and miserable dwellings. Palaces are not completed. Wealth has been lavished, but nothing is done. It resembles our own capital in this, that its public buildings are far apart, and the city is not half built up.

In the year 1703, Peter the Great began to build a city, to be called after his own name. He selected a miserable site on the banks of the Neva, and here he gathered a host of Russians, Tartars, Kalmucks, and Fins, and set them at this stupendous work. We expect to grow as the people want houses to live in. Peter built a city, and then looked for people to come and find it. The little cottage that he built for himself on the shore is still standing where he placed it, and the tools with which he worked, with his own industrious and skilful hands. For several successive years, 40,000 men were annually raised by draft, as for an army, to come from distant parts of the empire and build. The nobility of Russia came and caused residences to be reared for them, when they saw that Moscow was no longer to be the capital. Peter died, and Catharine I. did not push on the work with energy. Her successor, Peter II., loved Moscow more, and died there. Anne, the empress, adopted Petersburg as her residence, and it flourished under her reign. Catharine strove hard to defend it from the inroads of the river, but it lies so low that no art can avert inundations. It lies in the midst of waters, a vast morass. Canals easily traverse its bosom. Bridges and islands and quays are part of the streets and squares of the city. The houses are too many for the inhabitants. The thoroughfares are never thronged. You may walk long streets and scarcely meet a person. Half a million is the number of its inhabitants, but there is room for many more.

The contrasts are more sudden and striking than in other capitals. The rich are very rich; the poor are very poor. Society is rigid in its laws. The nobles have no sympathies with the serf, though a serf no longer. Caste is stronger in Russia than in England.

But I am impatient to be out in the town, sight-seeing. It is a very hot day, and I asked Russel if they often had such hot weather in June. “Well,” he said, “sometimes it is ’ot as this, and sometimes not so ’ot: it depends very much on the weather;” and with this profound observation he led the way into the city.

It was but a step from our lodgings, under the arch that divides and connects the state apartments into the grand square in front of the Winter Palace, the residence of the Emperor of Russia.

But before us rises a red granite column, the grandeur and beauty of which instantly fix the eye. A single stone, eighty-four feet high and fifty feet in circumference,—the loftiest single shaft of modern times, only less in height than Pompey’s Pillar,—stands in the midst of the square, surmounted by an angel and the cross. The pedestal bears a brief inscription, but it tells the whole story,—“Grateful Russia to Alexander I.” Originally this stone was cut out of the mountain, 104 feet long, and the order was to make the loftiest monolith in the world; but from fear that it was too long to stand firmly on its base, which was fourteen feet in diameter, it was shortened to its present length. With incredible labor it was erected upon a pedestal twenty-five feet high, and there, polished, it stands, perhaps the most splendid shaft that now presses upon the earth. It seemed to grow as I gazed upon it. And daily as I caught sight of it from other parts of the city, or as I drove into the magnificent area of which it is the central figure, its simple majesty and exceeding beauty impressed me more and more. What vast labor it cost to bring this block from the mountains of Finland, and plant it perpendicularly on the banks of the Neva, in the heart of the city!

In the Admiralty Square is a more famous statue, and one of which we have heard from childhood; pictures of it had made it so familiar that it seemed an old acquaintance,—Peter the Great, the founder of the city, its inventor and builder, is on horseback, riding up a rock, to the verge of which he has come, when he reins in his steed and sits looking upon the river and the city he has raised upon its banks. The horse is rearing, and the immense weight rests upon his hinder legs and the tail, which touches a huge serpent, coiled at the horse’s feet. This is deservedly reckoned one of the finest equestrian statues, and it honors the most extraordinary man of his age.

Two boys were together crowned as Czars of Russia, at Moscow, by the Greek patriarch, on the 15th of June, 1682. They were brothers, and one of them soon yielded to the superior energy of the other, and resigning his share of the government, left Peter the sole sovereign of an empire but little above the range of barbarism. This Peter, who became Peter the Great, was then but seventeen years old. He was far in advance of every one, and his reign marks the era of Russia’s rise to greatness among the nations. Yet this man never rose to the conception of what must be a nation’s true glory. His ideas all ran in the line of material grandeur, and not in the direction of moral and mental progress. He was a born mechanic, and he built a nation. He thought to build a people just as he built the city that bears his name. His superstitious nobles considered it wicked for him to go abroad, but he had heard of the arts of civilization, that made France and Holland and England glorious in the world, and he determined to see for himself what it was that made them so. He laid aside his imperial purple (if he ever had any), and travelled into distant lands. Sometimes he concealed his royal person in the garb of a common workman, and wrought in the shops with his own hands. I have seen many specimens of his handicraft that would do credit to any artisan who earned his bread by his industry and skill. He was a capital ship carpenter. Russia was in want of a navy. Peter learned how to build ships, and made a navy for Russia. In foreign countries he studied every thing, but learned nothing truly great in the art of government. Going into the courts of Westminster with a friend one day, in London, and seeing many men with wigs, he asked who they were.

“They are lawyers,” said his friend.

“Lawyers!” he exclaimed; “why, I have only two lawyers in my dominions, and I mean to hang one as soon as I return.”

In all that he saw in England and Holland, where he spent most of his time abroad, he never learned that mind makes nations great; that intelligence is the security of national progress and prosperity, and that the people, even under despotic governments, have the power to help themselves if their rulers will give them a chance. But he came back with the idea of making his empire greater by making it broader, and he took the sword as the instrument of success. He was partially successful. After a reign of half a century, he died and left his empire on the highway to civilization and glory. It is wonderful that Russia has made so little progress since his death in 1725. Yet no monarch ever reigned who descended to such minute details in legislating for his people. Inured to hardships himself, and possessed with the idea that nothing was invincible which his will was set to overcome, he undertook to force his subjects into sudden and astounding reforms, from which they revolted. He could not make them see with his eyes, nor work with his hands. He made his clergy shave their faces, and the enemies of his innovations called him the antichrist. No man ever lived who impressed himself more indelibly upon a people than Peter the Great. His name is held in honor second only to the Divine. The relics of his handiwork are preserved with religious care. Every museum has some specimen of his genius and industry, and the lapse of a hundred and fifty years since these things were made by imperial fingers invests them with interest approaching reverential awe.

But the greatest of all his works, and one that is the most characteristic of the man, is the city of St. Petersburg itself. Why he selected such a site for it, it is impossible to say, unless its very unfitness and apparent impracticability developed that faculty for which he was so remarkable, and impelled him to undertake what to others was an impossibility. From the summit of a monument, or the dome of St. Isaac’s Cathedral, the city seems to float in the waters. And this would not be a fatal objection to the site if it stood in such relations to the rest of the empire or the world as to make it important to fix it here. But it does not. Winter shuts it out from communication with the sea about half the time.

As we were walking on the most thronged of the thoroughfares in St. Petersburg, the Nevski Perspective, a well-dressed gentleman paused, and, turning toward a church which he was passing, took off his hat and offered a silent prayer. What at first appeared the eccentricity of a single individual, or excessive devotion, I soon perceived was the practice of many, and indeed a custom of the country. In passing a church, of course one passes an altar; and it may be, and indeed is, out of sight, but the devout believer recognizes the fact by a token of reverence, slight perhaps, but nevertheless sincere. Women hurrying by with baskets of market stuff were often willing to put down their burdens before the cross and pass a moment in thoughts of their Saviour.

I went into the church, the Kazan Cathedral, with a colonnade in feeble imitation of St. Peter’s at Rome. The Greek religion is as nearly like the Romish as this church is like St. Peter’s: it is a copy after it, and a good ways after it, but still so near that it amounts to the same thing. They do not make unto themselves graven images, because that is forbidden by the second commandment; but they do make the likeness of things in heaven and earth, although that is forbidden, and they do bow down and worship these likenesses, or pay apparently the same honors to a picture of the Virgin that the Romanist does to a statue. The distinction is without a difference. But when I entered the cathedral, I saw a sight that never met my eye in Rome or any Roman Catholic city. In the middle of the day, and on a week-day too, respectably appearing, well-dressed gentlemen were standing or kneeling before the altar offering their devotions. Women were there numerously, and the poor, whose garb denoted their poverty; and these classes are largely represented in Romish churches everywhere; but the Greek religion had such hold upon the people of another set, as to excite remark. The same lavish expenditure upon the churches is to be seen here as in Italy and Spain, though the architecture is far from being so effective as that which prevails in Spain and Italy. This church was built sixty years ago, at an expense of three millions of dollars then. A colonnade inside in four rows extends from the centre pillars supporting the dome, which is 230 feet above the floor, and from the three great doors. These columns are fifty-six in number, each one a single stone, thirty-five feet high, with bronze Corinthian capitals. In the midst of the main door the name of God is recorded with precious stones, and a miraculous painting of the Virgin blazes with gold and jewels of untold value. And in the midst of this temple of religion, sacred to the worship of the Prince of Peace, hung trophies of victories over France, Turkey, and Persia.

But this church is not the wonder of the city. You must go with us to the Isaac Cathedral, whose gilded dome has attracted our eye from every part of the city, and whose glittering cross above the crescent we have studied with an opera-glass, again and again, at a distance. Peter the Great built a church of wood just here, and Catharine another when the first was destroyed, but that gave way to this glorious pile, which was forty years in building, and was completed in 1858. It is far more imposing in its external appearance than St. Peter’s. Its proportions are perfect and stupendous. Like all other Greek churches, it is four square and in the form of the Greek cross. A grand entrance on each side is approached by a broad flight of red granite steps, vast blocks of stone from the quarries of Finland. Each flight of steps is surmounted by a peristyle, each pillar of which is sixty feet high, one solid, polished, red granite column! Above them, thirty pillars support the central cupola, and on the crown of this vast hovering cupola is a miniature of the temple below, a beautiful finish to the whole, on the summit of which stands the shining cross.

Within, the splendor is amazing. Think of columns of solid malachite fifty feet high! A bit of this stone is a gem to be set in gold for an ornament on a lady’s dress. But here it is in lofty pillars, and steps for altars, with lesser pillars of lapis lazuli standing near. The worship is in the form and manner of the Greek Church, and is strikingly Oriental, more so than that we see in the Church of Rome. Men and women not merely bow and kneel and cross themselves, touching their fingers to their foreheads and breasts, but they prostrate themselves with their faces on the cold stone floor, and lie there as if dead. Women thus lying in a heap looked more like a bundle of rags or old clothes, than human beings worshipping the Almighty. Others brought candles and lighted them, to be burned before the images, that is, the pictures of the Virgin Mary and the Holy Child. Some of the people lighted the candles themselves, repeating a prayer; the verger lighted them for others, and presented them to the Virgin as he proceeded with the service.

One woman brought a napkin or some cloth embroidered, and gave it to the verger, who opened a golden door into the Virgin’s panel, and placing the offering in it, locked it again. This was as truly idolatrous as any worship you would see in Romish churches, and wherein it differs from offerings to idols in pagan temples I do not see.

A collection was now taken up, by assistants going around with bags, and gathering from the multitude standing before the altar. Every one seemed to put in something, and their alms and prayers went together.

Three priests were officiating. One went about swinging a censer with burning incense. A choir of men-singers stood near the altar and made the responses with great power and singular sweetness of tone. The sacristan came to us and offered to show us the sacred things in the temple, and when we objected that the service was in progress, and we did not wish to be sight-seeing at such a time, he assured us it was all right, and we need not stand upon ceremony. He led us to the holy places, and pointed out the sacred relics, which were useful to him in extracting a fee from the stranger, and that is the only miracle they are able to work. If they do this every day, and often enough every day, they will be held in honor as long as the temple stands.

In the course of our wanderings under the lead of the sacristan, we found ourselves behind the veil, or the hanging curtain which was opened for the priests to go out and in during the service. Fearful of intrusion, we were about to retire, when one of the priests came from his place, and invited us into the apartment where he was standing, and responding as his associate read the service. The inmost shrine, perhaps it may be called the Holy of Holies, is in a round temple, whose dome is held by eight pillars of solid malachite, and the walls and floors are of polished marbles of various colors. The steps by which we ascend to it are of polished porphyry.

The freedom with which a stranger was admitted “behind the scenes” in the midst of the service was surprising to me, and I had an opportunity not expected, of coming into contact with the priests and ministers of the Greek religion, while in their service. The priests are a very inferior order of men; very unlearned, of low extraction, and in their appearance and manners what you would expect after such a statement. They are obliged to be married once, and if the wife die, they are not allowed to marry a second time, but the widower continues to serve at the altar as before. It is said that the priests are very watchful of the health of their wives, on the principle that a good thing which cannot be replaced must be preserved with the greatest care. This is better than the celibacy of Romish priests, which is offensive to nature and good morals, a curse to the church and the world. You cannot be long in any country where the Romish priests abound without hearing of their bad morals, but the reputation of the priests in the Russo-Greek Church is better. In their religious services, the most effective part is the singing, and indeed the praying is intoning, which is a drawling kind of singing, now coming into use in the ritualistic churches, which are only feeble imitations of the Romish and Greek. Boys are employed in the choirs, and for some parts of the service, the solos particularly, they get the deepest bass voices that can be hired, and sometimes they render the sublime passages with great effect. I have said the men, as well as the women, appear to be religious in Russia. And it struck me as very strange to see a fine-looking, full-grown man coming in at noonday into a church, bringing a little wax candle, walking up to a shrine over which is a picture of the Virgin, kneeling before it, bowing his head to the floor, crossing himself again and again, lighting his candle and sticking it into a hole prepared for the purpose, and once more prostrating himself to kiss the pavement, and then retire! This lighting of candles is an emblem of life, and is designed to keep the spiritual nature of man continually in view. The Russians have no religious ceremonies without this symbol of the Spirit. It is fast finding its way into the churches of England and America that copy after these Oriental customs, without apprehending their meaning.

Nothing in the mode of worship distinguishes the Greek from the Roman Catholic. I would not speak with confidence, but it appeared to me that the people were more deeply religious than they are in Roman Catholic countries. It is not, as with the people in Italy and Spain, and more especially in France, merely a matter of form to be gone through with, and that the end of it. In the Romish cathedrals, it was rare that I could get into sympathy with the worshippers so as to feel devotional in a service foreign from that with which I was familiar. For anywhere on earth where men are worshipping God in their way and we are present, from curiosity, or any other motive, I would desire also to be a worshipper, and offer among strangers the incense of a loving heart, touched with a sense of sin, and longing for divine favor. There is no danger of becoming an idolater by worshipping the only living and true God in the midst of idolaters. The soul goes out to him who heareth prayer for those who are bowing down to stocks and stones. And he whom they ignorantly worship I would find in their temples, for the way to him is through the open door in the side of his crucified Son. But the Roman Catholics do not get so near to God as these Greek Christians do, for the former seem to be so much engrossed with saints and the mother of Jesus, that they lose the joy and blessedness of coming right to Christ, who is in the Father, and by whom they are saved.

The Russians keep Lent very rigidly, and are also careful to fast every Wednesday and Friday. They have four great fasts in the year: Lent, Peter’s fast, Conception fast, and St. Philip’s fast. The children are taught the catechism of the Greek Church. The Sabbath is not observed with any more regard to rest and worship than it is in France or Italy. They make long pilgrimages to monasteries and holy places. There are no pews or seats in the churches; all stand, the rich and poor, the emperor and empress, high and low alike on a level in the presence of God. When the Emperor was assailed in the park by an assassin, a few years ago, and escaped the blow aimed at his life, he rode directly to this Isaac Cathedral, and here in the midst of the thronging multitude, gave thanks for his deliverance from sudden death. The language of the church service is the Slavonic, and it is quite as unintelligible to the masses as the ora pro nobis and the rest of the Latin to the Roman Catholics in our country. The whole service is quite as imposing as the Romish, with processions and banners and sonorous responses. Religious services are often celebrated in private houses to cast out evil spirits; and always the fortieth day after a person’s death is observed in memory and improvement of the event. In one corner of every room that you enter from the street is the image of the Virgin, and you are expected always to remove your hat on coming in; at first, it seems to be required as a token of respect to the persons in the house, but it is solely to honor the Virgin in the corner. The Russians are a very superstitious people, and they believe in houses haunted with good and evil spirits, especially the evil, and the constant presence of a pictured Mary is a protection; at least they think so.

A RAINY DAY IN A RUSSIAN CITY.

CHAPTER XXV.
RUSSIAN ART, CUSTOMS, AND MANNERS.

I HAD always supposed the Winter Palace of the Emperor was an edifice prepared with some special reference to the climate of this northern country. It is called the Winter Palace only because the Emperor has, as a matter of course, other palaces in the country in which to spend the summer. This is a vast structure on the very border of the river Neva, and in the midst of the city. It is built of brown stone, and makes some pretence to architectural elegance.

It, the palace, has five thousand inhabitants! I confess that those figures of speech seem to be very large, and it is a wonder how so many people can find employment in the service of one household. But the ways of royalty are not readily comprehended by mortals of common clay, and perhaps if we knew how many servants there are who have servants to wait upon them, how all these have families of their own, and these are all to be fed and lodged within these walls, we may begin to understand that one house may become a village, and quite populous also.

But if this number of dependents exceeds that of any other palace in Europe, as it probably does, it is safe to say that it is the most gorgeously decorated and furnished. Whatever extravagance the wit of man could devise to adorn a house has been lavished here, and the result is what might be expected,—a great display without that quiet elegance which distinguishes true from meretricious art. The Russian is between the Eastern and Western. The Russian is not a barbarous people, nor yet thoroughly civilized. On the borders of the two, he delights in the barbaric splendor of the Orientals, and has not yet reached the point where simplicity imparts the highest charm to elegance and grandeur. This accounts for the architecture of Russian palaces and temples. More emphatically it shows itself in the immense amount of gold which overlays every thing they wish to adorn. Even the domes of their churches blaze in gold, so that each one looks like a rising sun.

The crown jewels of Russia are the chief object of interest in the Winter Palace, for it is dreadfully tiresome to be led over miles of polished floors to look through room upon room, in endless mazes lost, seeing the same things substantially everywhere, and hearing the same story over and over again about the kings and queens that slept here and died there; though, as it was built since 1840, there is little or no historic interest about it. But the crown jewels are worth seeing. One loves to look at a diamond worth a million, though he cannot use it for a button. The Orloff diamond is as famous as the Koh-i-noor, and was, perhaps, at one time part of the same stone. Its history is romantic. It was once the eye of an idol in a temple in India, and being plucked out and stolen by a soldier, it passed through many hands till Count Orloff bought it and gave it to the Empress of Russia. It cost the Count or the Empress about three hundred thousand dollars. It weighs 194 carats, being eight carats more than the Koh-i-noor weighed when it came from India. The Orloff is the largest of the crown jewels in Europe. The imperial crown itself is radiant with the most magnificent gems, forty or more in number, and the crown of the Empress contains the most beautiful mass of diamonds known to be set together; a hundred of them at least. Some of the richest are precious stones presented to Russia by sovereigns in the East who would conciliate this mighty power. And what are they good for, when gathered into such a treasury? They are the playthings of royalty; baubles that delight the eye, pure carbon that is sold by the ton for a few dollars, but in the form of a diamond, it has a value scarcely to be reckoned, when they lie around in such heaps as we see them here.

The Hermitage is a palace near to the other, in which are the Russian galleries of art. If it was surprising to find in Madrid the most valuable collection of paintings in Europe, it was not less astonishing to find in Russia such magnificent pictures and so large a number of those that deserve admiration. For many years past the government has been spending large sums of money in the purchase of pictures. It has had and has its agents in Italy, and in every picture mart in Europe, ready to pay any price for “an old master.”

And it has shown its good sense in this, that when it cannot compass the original, it gets the best possible copy, and hangs it on its walls, with its story fairly told. This is the true way to cultivate the taste, and instruct the intellect of the nation in art. Catharine the Great built a pavilion on the end of the Winter Palace, to which she might retire from the cares of State, and here she drew around her the wits of the age. She called it the Hermitage, and that it might be a real refuge, into which royalty and its stiltedness could not intrude, she made a curious code of laws to govern the company that she here assembled.

The Hermitage is now the Royal Museum, and its grandeur and extent are unequalled. It is 515 feet long and 375 feet wide. The roof of this vast hall is supported by sixteen columns, each one a single block of granite from Finland, with Corinthian capitals of Carara marble. Successive stories on the same scale are filled with statues and pictures, and curious works of art, in which the genius and skill of all schools and nations are represented. Even to mention them would take up more of your time than would be proper for me to consume, and I let them pass unnoticed. I was even more interested in Peter the Great’s gallery, where his turning-lathes and other tools that he used with his own hands are preserved; and what is even more remarkable, the instruments that he manufactured for himself, from a telescope to a walking-stick. His iron staff that he carried about with him would not be credited as genuine, were it not that a wooden rod tells of his gigantic stature, and thus makes it quite probable that he could walk with a rod of iron.

Art-culture in Russia has advanced to a far higher point than we would expect to find. The painting and sculpture of Russia in the Paris exhibition astonished the outside world, and the galleries in the Hermitage devoted to native art are marvellously illustrated with splendid achievements of the chisel and pencil.

In all countries I am more interested in studying the condition of the masses than the “upper classes.” In all countries the rich and the titled, the “well-to-do in the world,” can take care of themselves, and they are substantially the same kind of people in all civilized lands. The nobles of England, of France, of Germany, of Russia, have plenty to eat and to drink and they know wherewithal they are to be clothed, and when one is travelling in their country, he has no need to ask whether or not they are enjoying themselves after their own fashion, and have any need of human sympathy. But when we pass through a Russian town with a thousand huts in it, all about the same size, and not one aspiring to the dignity of a respectable American farm-house, and see vast tracts of land well tilled, but not a house nor a man in sight, then I wonder how the people live in these parts; what do they eat and drink, and do they have enough? Are they contented and happy, or do they hunger and pine, and drag out a miserable sort of life of it, here in these far-away lands?

In the agricultural districts of Russia, not very far away from the chief cities, a laborer gets for a day’s work his food and about fifty copeks, or, of our money, about forty cents a day. A mechanic gets about one rouble, which is a hundred copeks, or about eighty cents of our money, for a day’s work, and he finds his own food. In the winter season beef is sold in St. Petersburg for ten or twelve cents a pound, and in summer it is as low as eight cents. This will enable you to compare the rate of wages with the price of food, and to see that there is not so great a difference in the cost, to the poor, of living in that country and ours, as might at first be supposed.

The rent of the hotel at which I am staying in St. Petersburg—and it is one of the largest in the kingdom—is about fifteen thousand dollars per annum, and that is about seven per cent on the valuation of the property.

The food of the peasantry is largely composed of cabbage soup, which is a great article among them, and they consume it day after day, year in and year out, and are always fond of it. This is one of the pleasantest compensations of Providence, that people may continue to be fond of a dish that they have to eat every day. Their bread is black, and they have some meat, for it is not costly, and on the whole they are comfortably fed. So they are decently clothed. Their dress has the appearance of warmth and comfort, too much for the hot weather that is now raging; but they have so much cold and so little heat, that they do not care to make a change for the brief summer. A poor peasant swelters in a jacket of sheepskin with the wool on it, or wears a fur collar if he can afford it, and sticks to it under a blazing hot sun, as well as in midwinter.

STREET SCENE IN A RUSSIAN CITY.

A peculiar custom is observed in Russia that I never noticed elsewhere. You are expected always to take off your overcoat on entering the house to make a call, of business or pleasure. Even when you call at the bank, to draw or deposit your money, a liveried servant in the hall conducts you to an anteroom, where you lay aside your overcoat and hat, and then enter the business-room as if you were to be presented to the lady of the mansion. My bankers here are Wynken & Co., at the end of the iron bridge over the Neva, and, upon entering, I was shown to a seat, and my letter of credit taken by a clerk to one of the firm, who immediately came out from his office, and after a few complimentary inquiries, asked me what he could do for me, and in a few minutes the business was done.

A despot is the Emperor of Russia. We have come to associate only a bad meaning with the word despot. It had not such a sense as we liberty worshippers give it. Now it means a tyrant, a hard master, one who has unlimited power and uses it to oppress. Despotes is the Greek word for master in the New Testament, and sometimes the Lord himself is spoken of and addressed under this name. The apostle Paul says: “Let as many servants as are under the yoke, count their own despots worthy of all honor.” And again: “they that have believing despots;” and again, he commands servants to be obedient unto their own despots. So Peter tells them to be subject to their own despots. And good old Simeon cries; “Despotes, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace.” And Peter speaks of those who deny the despotes that bought them; and in Rev. vi. 10, we read: “Plow long, O despotes, holy and true,” &c. These quotations show us the good sense in which the word was once used; and now, when we speak of a despotic government, we do not understand that it is necessarily an oppressive government, but one in which the power is concentrated in the hands of one man, who can use it at his pleasure, unrestrained by constitution or legislature.

Justice is administered under laws the issue of the sovereign will, and liable to be repealed at his pleasure. Trial by jury is of recent introduction, and may be considered as an experiment. In the court-room I inquired of an intelligent gentleman how it was working. He said, quite well; and then related the following incident to show how the royal will comes in, even to the smallest affairs of private citizens: An officer under the government promised to give a certain place of profit to a man, who was soon surprised to find that it was given to another. Such mishaps are not unusual in milder governments, I believe. But the disappointed office-seeker sought the man who had promised it to him, and slapped his face in open court, charging him with a breach of faith. He was arraigned and tried by jury for the assault and battery, and the jury brought in a verdict of not guilty, or more accurately,—“Served him right.” The verdict was received with great applause. The Emperor gave the office-seeker and the office-holder also, the striker and the struck, appointments in distant parts of the empire, where neither of them wanted to go or to stay, and thus he punished them both: one for breaking his word, and the other for breaking the peace. There is a vein of humor in such administration of justice.

“The bookkeeper of a mercantile house in Thorn was arrested in the Russian town of Rieszawa, by the burgomaster of that place, on a perfectly unfounded charge of an intention to smuggle. Although the bookkeeper succeeded in establishing his respectability, he was thrown into a dirty prison cell, and kept there twenty-four hours. His principal, of course, complained of this most unjustifiable treatment, and has lately received an official communication that the burgomaster has also been imprisoned twenty-four hours, and in the same prison in which he had shut up the unhappy bookkeeper.”

M. Andreoli, a Russian writer, who was exiled some years ago to Siberia, is now contributing to the Revue Moderne, under the title of “Souvenirs de Sibérie,” his recollections not only of Siberian but also of Russian life. In the last number of the Revue he tells a story, the end of which belongs to the present reign, the beginning to the reign of Paul, of whose period it is strikingly characteristic. The Emperor’s favorite was at that time a young French actress, of whom he was madly jealous. One evening, at a ball, he noticed that a young man named Labanoff was paying her a great deal of attention. He did not lose his temper, but at the end of the ball gave orders that Labanoff should be arrested and thrown into the citadel. He only intended to keep him there a few days, “to make him more serious,” after which he proposed to reprimand him and to appoint him to an office which had been solicited for him. Labanoff, however, was forgotten. At the death of Nicholas, Alexander II., then full of magnanimity, liberated all the prisoners in the citadel, without exception. In a vaulted tomb, in which it was impossible to stand upright, and which was not more than two yards long, an old man was found, almost bent double, and incapable of answering when he was spoken to. This was Labanoff. The Emperor Paul had been succeeded by the Emperor Alexander I., and afterwards by the Emperor Nicholas; he had been in the dungeon more than fifty years. When he was taken out he could not bear the light, and, by a strange phenomenon, his movements had become automatic. He could hardly hold himself up, and he had become so accustomed to move about within the limits of his narrow cell that he could not take more than two steps forwards without turning round, as though he had struck against a wall, and taking two steps backwards, and so on alternately. He lived for only a week after his liberation.

We often read such facts as these, and they are sad and awful illustrations of what unlimited power may be left to do. Recently there have been horrible stories of cruelties inflicted by the agents of the Russian government, but they are not worse than have sometimes been perpetrated in the name of liberty and justice in other and more enlightened countries.

Look on the map of Asia and see that vast country of Siberia, a part of the colossal empire of Russia. The tales that are told of the exiles of Siberia have formed a large part of the sensational literature of other days. In that lone, distant, cold, inhospitable clime, is the region where for many long years this government has sent its prisoners of state, and many others who have incurred the despotic displeasure. Banished for life is to all intents and purposes death. The wife of the exile, if not allowed to go with him and share his sorrows in a wretched land, is free to be married again. His property goes to his heirs as if he were dead. He has not even his own name in Siberia, but is known by the number that he receives when he enters upon his new estate.

It is terrible to think that one imperfect man holds in his own hand such power. The mere possession of it tempts to evil. And limit it as we may, divide it among many, apply checks and balances, there will yet be abuses under all systems of human government. Even our own boasted democratic republican form has its defects. We have made ignorance and vice too mighty in our popular elections, and have come to know that no despot is more irresponsible than the many-headed monster of a corrupt and unthinking multitude.

Taking a boat on the Neva and being rowed across to the Academy of Science, we made an interesting visit to the Zoological Museum, which has some things of interest far beyond that of any other museum in the world. Here we have something more than fossils, we have the veritable meat of the mammoth and mastodon and elephant, and perhaps they may all belong to one and the same animal. But the Siberian rivers have furnished ice-tombs in which these beasts have been buried for centuries, and when they are brought to light by the change in the course of the streams, or by accidental discovery, they are certainly the most interesting of all the remains of extinct races. The great mammoth in this museum was found in 1799, on the banks of the river Lena in Siberia, and the flesh was so fresh upon it that the beasts and birds of prey were ready to devour it as soon as it was exposed.

The chief interest in this Russian collection lies in the actual skin and hair and flesh of these animals so remarkably preserved. Here is a rhinoceros, but of a species now extinct, with its head almost entirely covered with the original skin, and its feet also, the fine hair being still visible. The seals and otters, sharks and sea-horses, sword-fish and alligators, lions, tigers, bears, elks, and mooses; birds of countless kinds,—make up an assortment wonderful in its extent and variety, and the more interesting as the pursuit of science has led to the gathering of splendid specimens from the tropical regions, to be contrasted with the aboriginal growth of these Arctic climes.

It was the edge of evening as we returned from this expedition, and the declining sun was flooding the river and the eastern shore with golden glory. We were tired; the evening was cool and refreshing; the scene was beautiful, indeed exciting, as other boats and barges and steamers swept by us and ships and schooners swung listlessly in the stream.

The Winter Palace and the Hermitage, the Alexander Column, the Admiralty Buildings, and other splendid edifices were on the western bank, the fortress and arsenal and academy on the east, and the domes of the Isaac and Kazan Cathedrals hung like suns in the sky. We seemed to be far away from home, and lost in an enchanted sea. We rowed along under the stern of a vessel and read her name, “Favorite, Arbroath;” it sounded Scotchy, and hailing a sailor leaning over the ship’s side, I asked him, “where’s Arbroath?”

“Aboot twelve miles from Dundee,” he said.

“And what brings you here?”

“The ship,” he answered, and then added that the cargo was fire-brick, made in England, and brought here for the Russians, who make great use of it in their stoves. He did not like the Russians, he said, and hoped he should never have to come there again.

Our boatman landed us on the western shore, and as we walked up and down the river enjoying the evening breeze, he soon passed us with another company in his boat, and taking off his cap saluted us as old customers with a grace that would do credit to a Paris waterman.

It was half-past nine o’clock when we saw the last rays of the sun on the spire of the arsenal church, and we then went home. It is now eleven o’clock at night, and I am writing by the light from the window opening into a court. It would be easy to write all night without a candle.

A Russian Porter.

CHAPTER XXVI.
FROM ST. PETERSBURG TO MOSCOW.

MY roughest railroad ride in Europe was from St. Petersburg to Moscow. It did not improve the road to be told, as I was, that it was built by American engineers; but it did jolt me so naturally that I felt at home as soon as we were under way. And there was a slight infusion of a familiar morality in the excuse made for the present condition of the road, that the managers of it under the government were seeking to buy it, and were letting it run down that they might get it at a lower figure!

A great throng of friends were at the station to take leave of the passengers about to set off for Moscow. It is a ride of about twenty hours; hardly a journey to call for as much leave-taking as with us demands a voyage over sea. The journey of four hundred miles includes the whole night and part of two days, and only one train a day, with no good place to stop for the night, so that we are literally shut up to the necessity of going through at once. The arrangements for sleeping are of the rudest kind. Into the cars the passengers brought pillows and blankets, preparing to make themselves as comfortable as circumstances would permit. The fare through was $15, and my little trunk of less than fifty pounds weight was $1.50 extra. As soon as we were off, a man decorated with three medals entered with an armful of newspapers for sale, and as many bought them and read them as in a car going out of New York or Boston. It was a good sign. Small thanks are due to the government from the press, however. It is subjected to the strictest censorship. No foreign papers are allowed to come into the country, unless they are subscribed for by permission, and then they are interdicted if any thing dangerous to the existing order of things is in them. Nothing unfriendly to good morals is allowed to be printed, and an excellent regulation requires the examination and approval of all plays before they can be put upon the stage. These barbarians of the north will not have the luxury of the “dirty drama” which is so fascinating to the highly cultivated Parisians and New Yorkers.

A lady and gentleman entered the car as we were just starting, and could not get a double seat; it was a long car like our own, with seats on each side of the passage. They could find separate seats, but they were to ride all night, and of course desired to sit side by side. They sought to make exchanges, but in vain. Seeing their distress, my son and I agreed to separate and surrender our places to them. Their gratitude was equal to their surprise. “We were French, they were sure.” Not at all. “Ah no, we were English.” By no means. “And pray, would we tell them of what nation?” Americans: and they were nearly overcome with pleasure, and poured out their grateful acknowledgments.

At Lubanskaia we stopped to dine, and you will be more amused by reading the names of some of the places we touched in passing, than by the names of the dishes we had for dinner. Thus we passed through Kolpinskaia, Sablinskaia, Ouschkinskaia, Babinskaia, Tehondoskaia, Volkhooskaia, Guadskaia, Mainvisheskaia, Bourgurnskaia, Borooenskaia, Okouloviskaia, Zarebchenkeskaia, Kaloschkooskaia, Ostaschkooskaia, Reschchilkooskaia, Paadsulnelchookaia; but I am getting a headache in copying them out of the time-table, and will spare you. Wales is nothing to Russia for hard names.

The station-houses are well built, and refreshment rooms well supplied; so that you get comfortable meals on the route.

At Tver we crossed the Volga, and here we had the first sight of that famous river. It is at this point downward navigable for steamers, and we might step on board of one and steam away two thousand miles to Astrachan! Tver is a place of remarkable historical interest, which lingers around the cathedral and the monastery in which a bishop was murdered by order of John the Terrible, though his death was reported as occasioned by the fumes of a stove.

As night drew on we learned that one car in the long train was fitted up for sleeping, and we were glad to pay a couple of roubles apiece for the chance of a horizontal nap. Toward midnight the process of reconstruction commenced. The long car is divided into four compartments, each eight feet square; across each side is swung a shelf, the seats below are converted into berths, and two more are made up on the floor; a pillow of homœopathic proportions is assigned to each passenger, and unless a man is afraid it will get into his ear he takes it. By a ladder of seven steps I ascended to the topmost perch, and there sought to rest. Alas! the search was vain. My refuge in sleeplessness is to old-time hymns, and Watts often composes me to slumber as his cradle lullaby did when the best of mothers sang it in my infancy. But now the only lines that haunted me were these, and perfectly descriptive of my present experience,—

“So when a raging fever burns,

We shift from side to side by turns;

And ’tis a poor relief we gain,

To change the place and keep the pain.”

For half a dozen Russians sat together in this little chamber; all smoking, all laughing, all talking, and in that jargon of a language worse to hear than any other that ever crashed upon my auricular nerves. There was no railroad law to be invoked to stop them. We were two, they were six. They wanted to smoke and talk all night; we were invalids, fighting for a wink of sleep. As the night wore on, they grew more earnest. At frequent stops by the way they rushed out and returned fortified with strong drink; the smoke, the breaths, the smells, the talk became intolerable. I put my woe-begone visage over the edge of the shelf, and arresting their attention by a groan, asked if any of them spoke the French language? A military officer in uniform rose and said he did. Then in tearful accents I said, “You behold two American travellers who have paid for these luxurious couches to get a little rest in their weary travels. If you gentlemen are to keep up this discourse, sleep is as impossible as if we were under the tortures of the Inquisition; is it too much to hope that you will soon suffer this discourse of yours to come to an end for the night, to be renewed at some future day.” Before my speech was finished he had begun to laugh, and assuring me of his regret that we had been disturbed, he represented to his friends the wishes of two Amerikaners, and they soon turned in.

In the morning, looking down from the shelf, I counted thirty-two stumps of cigars lying on the floor, in one quarter, and at least a hundred must have been consumed in that one compartment.

At half-past seven we stopped for coffee. A forlorn-looking set of men and women crept out for fresh air and refreshment. They had been badly stayed with, all of them. But the longest night has its morning, and so had this. The coffee was good; we paid five times as much for it as it was worth, even there, but we were comforted with the beverage. At one end of the car was a wash-bowl and water, and over it a notice: “Towel, 5 copakes; soap, 15 copakes,”—so for about 20 cents you could have the use of everybody’s towel and soap!

The face of the country improves as we get on. More trees, more hills, more culture, and signs of thrift on every hand.

Into the car came a venerable ecclesiastic of the Greek type. A heavy gold cross was suspended from his neck and hung on his broad breast; and his gray hair rested in curls on his shoulders. The scarlet and gold on his robes attracted the eye of the stranger, but he seemed to challenge no special attention from the people with whom he came in contact. We called him the Patriarch Nicon at once, for he came in upon us as at Krukova, which is the station where we would stop, if we had time to make a visit at the Monastery of New Jerusalem, or Voskresenski, which, being interpreted, meaneth Resurrection. This monastery was founded in 1657 by the Patriarch Nicon, whose story is told by Dean Stanley in his lectures on the Greek Church, and condensed into the travel books in the hands of wanderers in these wilds.

At this village of the Resurrection, Nicon, a patriarch of the Greek Church, was wont to stop in his journeys through the country, and in 1655 he built a church here, and the Czar of all the Russias did him the honor to come to its consecration and name it the New Jerusalem. Nicon obtained a model of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre at old Jerusalem, and he made one like it here. He found hills and vales and brooks like those in the Holy Land, and gave them names to correspond, which they bear to this day, though two hundred years have since gone by. The river Istra became Jordan, and he made a little one for Kedron, and called a village at a distance Nazareth, and one nearer by was Bethany; and with these sacred associations he gathered around him the odor of sanctity, and with it came dreams of power and glory, such as priests are apt to have when they leave the service of God and substitute their own imaginings for the teachings of his word. The Czar saw what he was at, and soon let him down from his Jerusalem. The Patriarch began to claim civil as well as sacerdotal power. Just as the Bishop of Rome became a king as well as priest, so Nicon would sway a sceptre as well as a shepherd’s crook. He put stringent laws upon his inferior clergy, and they became restive under his authority. He rode into town on an ass in profane imitation of Christ, and the people could not see the sense of being compelled to cast their garments in the way of him who was so unlike the meek and lowly Jesus whom they would have loved to honor. His tyranny drove them to revolt, and many sects sprang up which even now continue to maintain their existence in the empire and in a certain hostility to the regular Greek Church of the empire. Nicon grew more and more despotic, as his enemies grew formidable in numbers and power. He seized in the houses of the nobles, wherever he could find them, all pictures not painted in the style that pleased his royal will. In all his dealings with them he claimed the authority of the sovereign. He was fast becoming the pope of the north. At last the Emperor, no longer willing to acknowledge the lordly assumptions of this proud subject, refused to honor his festivals with the royal presence, or to recognize the Patriarch as spiritual father. Nicon was enraged at this slight, and thinking to humble the Czar, threw off his robes of office, resigned his crozier, and retired to his monastery at Resurrection. The sepulchre would have been a more fitting place for retirement. Hither he supposed the Czar would hasten, and with apologies, penitence, and tears beseech him to return and resume his reign. He reckoned without his host. The Czar could make and unmake such ecclesiastics, and he put another man in his place, and left poor Nicon to chew the cud of regret in his ignominious solitude. He stood it six years, and then sent word to the Czar that, after long fasting and prayer, he had been honored with a vision of the prophet Jonah, in a dream, who had told him it was his duty to resume his seat on the patriarchal throne of Moscow. But the Czar could not see it. Jonah said nothing to him about it, and he had an idea that unhappy Nicon might, indeed, have had a great many dreams of the same kind, but that Jonah was not the man to make patriarchs for him. He called a council of Eastern patriarchs, presided in the midst of it himself, and this council came very naturally to the decision that Nicon should be degraded and banished to a monastery in Novgorod. The next Czar who came to the throne pardoned Nicon, who soon after died.

Such was the sad career of a great genius, whose brief reign was signalized by the aggrandizement of the Russian Church, for he magnified five patriarchates,—Constantinople, Antioch, Alexandria, Jerusalem, and Moscow. And now his remains are lying in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, which he built, in the chapel of Melchisedek, at the foot of the Golgotha, and over his tomb hang the heavy chains which, to mortify his body, he wore around his person, while he put heavier chains on the souls of those whom he reduced beneath his ghostly power.

I think there is a lesson in the life and death of such a man, and that we may read in it the workings of human ambition and pride, even under the garments of holy offices; we see the conflict between church and state, whenever they are allied, and the doom that awaits the men who pervert the institutions of religion to their own glory and the oppression of others.

We are now approaching Moscow. Two thousand miles by rail we have come. The whole region over which we are now passing seems to be one dead level of lowly toiling, dreary living, without one sign of such enterprising life and energy as we would find in France or England, not to speak of that young world in the West, to which freedom seems to have taken her flight.

The train is moving slowly into town. We have come to Moscow. We are at the gates of the Kremlin!

CHAPTER XXVII.
THE KREMLIN AND THE BELLS OF MOSCOW.

M. BILLOT is a Swiss landlord, who keeps a good hotel in Moscow. He has a charming wife and family around him, a well-trained corps of servants, and makes his house a home for American and English guests. It is something for a weary traveller to find a home when he gets to Moscow.

I have but one fault to find with Moscow’s bed and board. Mind, it is not a complaint against mine host, M. Billot. It is the fault of the city, that it is full of fleas. We charged upon them with a flea powder, the second night of our sojourn there, but the powder about M. Billot’s pillows was as troublesome as the fleas.

We had heard of this house and landlord; for the Swiss go into all the countries of Europe, and some others, to keep the hotels. We found a connected line of them all through Spain, and in Italy, and they commend travellers to each other, as old neighbors ought to do. So, when we arrived at Moscow, we gave our baggage to M. Billot’s man, he put us into a carriage, and away we were whirled over the roughest roads that we had ever endured in a city. Moscow seemed to be too small for its people, as the people appeared to be too sparse for St. Petersburg. The streets were thronged with people in the pursuit of business, and their market-places presented the liveliest scenes imaginable.

THE KREMLIN.

Frequent churches and shrines arrest us as we pass, for every Christian crosses himself before each of them; even the coachman in front of us drops his whip from his right hand, and makes the sacred sign on his breast, as he drives by the holy place. Some stand before it and humbly bow themselves at a great distance from the altar.

Our way was winding, through streets that had no aim apparently, for after the city committed suicide in 1813, on the coming of Napoleon, it was rebuilt in haste, without plan or purpose, but to get shelter for living and trade. But the city was spread out to a greater extent, and gradually houses of more architectural taste arose, with gardens about them, even in town. Here and there rises a splendid palace in the midst of the white cottages of humble neighbors, and the three hundred and seventy churches are interspersed, with their green or gilded cupolas and shining stars. We pass long rows of uniformly painted houses that belong to some public institution, and then we break in upon a wide square where the people seem to be gathered for some special purpose, and out of this square the streets extend on every side. Then we come to the high banks of the river Moskva, which flows through the midst of the city, and on either side of it are splendid edifices crowning the hills that rise from its side. The map of the city makes it appear circular. The circumvallation is twenty miles in extent, and within this are two concentric lines of fortification, rendered necessary perhaps for defence, as this remarkable city is the outpost of civilization on the borders of barbarism.