MATTHEW WOODS.
[Among the object-lessons which the cities of Europe have for Americans there is none more evident and impressive than the beauty and cleanliness of the streets of many of these municipalities, as compared with those of the land beyond the ocean. Dr. Woods, in his “Rambles of a Physician,” draws a striking picture of the aspect of the principal street of Berlin, which we reproduce for the benefit of our readers.]
To-day I have been riding on tramways through wide, smooth, perfectly clean streets, lined on each side by magnificent houses, mostly with their fronts a complete net-work of graceful carvings. In building here the custom is to use rough stones, and when the house is erected, carve over it the development of some legend, the illustrations of some classic tale, or it may be, the story of the rise and progress of the builder, or the man for whom it is being built; or, perhaps, simply a reproduction in stone of some Pompeiian wall decoration, so that merely a stroll through the streets, or a ride on a car, exhibits sights that I imagine are seldom if ever seen outside of Germany. To write down all worthy of perpetual remembrance and praise, during a walk through its splendid ways, would require much time, and I will therefore only say that amid a profusion of ornamentation, you seldom see anything meaningless or incapable of pointing a moral or adorning a tale.
The street wherein I write, what words could record its splendors! From the happy moment I passed the Royal National Gallery, with its great front covered with the commanding pictures by Cornelius, with background of gold, and crossed the handsome bridge, Schloss Brücke, ornamented with colossal marble statues, full of action and life, that spans the lovely embanked Spree, until now, with a charming park and the Cathedral at my back, the University in front, on my left, in the middle of the street Rauch’s wonderful statue of Frederick the Great, said to be the grandest monument in Europe, and by my side the plain palace of the Emperor, I have been amazed; words cannot describe the splendor of the place. The tops of the houses—cornices—are lined with marble figures larger than life; the pediments are alive with men, women, children, and horses, in high relief; and along the sidewalks are sitting and standing celebrities in stone, whose very pedestals contain enough to employ the admiration for weeks; and yet this is but the approach to the famous street that, beginning at the castle of the Kaiser, ends in the Brandenburg Gate,—I am merely within the Garden of Eden, with long vistas of prospective bliss extending interminably before.
I stand for a few moments in front of Rauch’s stupendous statue of Fritz surrounded by his friends. I use the word “stupendous” not in reference to its size, although it is enormous, but to its effect. It occupies a position in the middle of the street, in front of the plain two-story-and-a-half castle of Kaiser William, now in his ninetieth year, and well. Where is there another avenue in the world that would not be obstructed by this massive group? The Monuments—clustered around a granite pedestal twenty-five feet high, on which is placed an equestrian statue of Frederick the Great—are bronze groups, life size, of the leading generals and statesmen during the Seven Years’ War, standing or mounted on horses as they lived, in animated discussion or thought, forming a glorious aureole around their chief. From where I stand I count nineteen people and four horses, all apparently endowed with immortal life; besides these, on this side (there are three others like it) are cannon, armor, trumpets, helmets, muskets, and trees, which, although of metal, to say of them that they look real would be short of the truth; they exceed reality, at least as we ordinary beings understand that most complimented word. I would venture to say that outside of Prussian Germany models for these magnificent figures could not be found, and that a sculptor producing such would have to create them himself; and yet these are the men of the streets of Frankfort, Weimar, and Berlin, as splendid-looking fellows as the sun ever shone upon,—the very street-sweepers even exhibiting a bearing and dignity commanding respect.
The subject is too prolific in suggestions; I cannot proceed. It is also too great for my limited time, especially as other attractions are luring me on. What a street! what shops! filled with wonders in metal and precious stones. What bronzes and jewels! Why do we never see such exquisite productions in our palatial stores? Lingerers around shop-windows find a paradise in this promenade; but here is an “Arcade,” the stone sides carved to the lofty cornices, arches of glass stretching across the way from eave to eave, the street paved in mosaic, and here and there in recesses clusters of exotics and palms. What wares are exhibited in this virtuoso’s Eden! I stand in front of the window, lost in thought, until tired with the contemplation of unspeakable things.
Seeing a shrubbery and seats, I sit down by a little table for repose, when in a moment, from some invisible source overhead, like the orchestra in Wilhelm Meister, there bursts forth the most bewitching music. I am in heaven. I hear the hosannas of the celestial hosts. The shops are where the redeemed work for love of men.
The people passing to and fro know nothing of accounts, nor the perplexities of trade. They have ceased from their troubles—are at home—at rest. I am brought to eat ambrosia and drink the nectar and hear the music of the gods, and yet I am but a novice in this celestial city, and wait for the loving hands that shall lead me to the friends gone before....
I have made the tour of “Unter den Linden,” and am sitting here just long enough to collect my wandering thoughts before moving on. I feel as if I had been the victim of one of De Quincey’s dreams, and wait the awakening that will release me from its spell. As I recline here at my leisure, with a sandstone fountain making music at my feet, and grapevines and beeches embowering me about, I get a good view of the famous Brandenburg Gate and the statue of Victory, with her chariot and four, on the top. As I look on the magnificent group from where I am on the Thiergarten side, Victory has her back to me, her horses galloping with full speed towards the palace of the king. I had supposed, from pictures I had seen, that she was driving towards the park. I cannot have been mistaken. If so, why was such a ponderous mass turned around?
While endeavoring to explain to myself what seemed so strange, a young man took a seat by my side. Addressing him, “How is it? Isn’t Victory reversed?” “Ja wohl!” he replies. How assuring the affix “wohl” in the hearty German expression of assent! It is the abracadabra that drives out fear, and fills up the great gulf between the stranger and yourself, enabling your sympathies to run over and interchange. Long live the noble people that always say, “Yes, well,” and never, “Yes, ill.”
“Ja wohl!” he replies. “Why?” “Well, you see,”—I knew by the expression lighting up his face that he was going to tell me of something that pleased,—“it was before the last struggle that Victory was driving her horses in the direction of Paris. The war came. The French were victors, and carried off our statue as a trophy to flatter their vanity and decorate their capital at the same time. Good, but in ’70 it was our turn. The whipped became whippers. We beat the French and brought our Victory home, replanted her on her original site, with her back to Frankreich, her face looking proudly towards the Fatherland, as if she were glad and happy to be at home.”
[Here we pass over pages of description of what was to be seen in the galleries and churches, to come again to the traveller’s out-door impressions.]
In the first place, the climate, to my surprise, is perfect. I am sitting here at noon in August—smothering with us—in an atmosphere exhilarating and cool; men are passing with light overcoats, as if they were a trifle anxious to anticipate the September winds, and this is what the weather has been since leaving Erin, where it was, to my surprise, too dry and warm. Remember, that all I say about countries and people is only what I have felt and seen. Every evening I wear a light overcoat, and find it about right. In the second place, there is no dust in Berlin, simply because the streets, which are better—all of them—than the concrete around the Philadelphia City Hall, are never allowed to get dirty; are flooded with water and dried every morning, and kept so. Nothing objectionable is permitted to remain on them for a moment. Clean, uniformed men—and handsome, gentlemanly-looking fellows they are, too—are constantly moving along with enclosed wheelbarrows, shovels, and brooms, removing whatever may offend; even their instruments for cleaning are designed artistically and free from soil. I can imagine the wheelbarrows attractive as flower receptacles at large gatherings, so graceful are they. You would tie bows on the shovels and hang them on the wall.
With these whatever is offensive on the streets is at once emptied into cast-iron receptacles, in themselves ornamental, arranged along the thoroughfares, and which are emptied before daybreak every day. The streets, as I said before, are many of them flooded with water daily, then dried with enormous squilgees (that’s what they are called on shipboard),—that is, a band of rubber fitted into a socket of wood, something like what, with us, careful housewives use to dry windows, except that these are a yard wide, and one sweep of them over a wet street leaves a band its width as dry as a board and as clean as a dinner plate. In order to do this, of course the streets have to be absolutely smooth,—as they are, not the slightest indentation being visible. Then neatly-painted and handsomely-designed water-carts traverse every street a number of times daily, ejecting showers of misty spray; a work of supererogation, you say, to prevent any particle of dust that may be left from getting into the air. It is actually true that a child with a cambric dress could roll in the middle of any crowded thoroughfare with as much security from soil as if occupying a chair in a summer boarding-house.
The cleanliness and order exceeds even that of England or Scotland, than which, until you come to Germany, you think nothing can exceed. If, for example, a gentleman in lighting a cigar throws a match on the street, it is picked up; a leaf from a tree, a bit of paper from a store, a blade of grass, all are at once removed, and by men, too, that are Germans; that is,—clean, respectful, reputable, and intelligent. Even in the business avenues, and around the wholesale stores, the pavements and streets are as clean as the white steps of the homes of Philadelphia. Most of the streets are as wide as our Broad Street, some wider; as, for example, Unter den Linden.
That you may see for yourself this noble highway of the capital, allow me to conduct you across. “When I speak of horses imagine that you see them.” Just suppose we are crossing together, and because of the many vehicles and people on horseback, I will take you by the hand, so. We have been admiring the trees and flowers in front of Prince Blücher’s palace, one of a series of palaces on each side of the street near the Brandenburg Gate; they stand back from the pavements, and have extensive flower-gardens in front, the only separation between these and the very wide pavement being a low hedge of delicate, almost thornless, magenta roses. You remember—or did I tell you?—with what genial pride the old gardener, yesterday, told us that this same was a perpetual bloomer,—summer and winter,—that it was a German creation,—the development of its efflorescent peculiarity having been begun away back; but that he himself it was, by crossing it with Rosa centifolia, that had added the apex to the temple of its perfection,—namely, duplication of petals, diminution of stamen, heliotropism,—turning its face towards the sun, by which acquired habit the winter bloom has become as profuse as that of summer.
Well, we have been looking over this two-foot-high blooming hedge-row, and have decided to cross to the gardens on the other side; so now hold my hand and fear not, for life is sacred in the Fatherland, and we are under the protection of the police. You see that the gardens in front of the palaces used by the nobility and foreign ministers are about as wide as Broad Street, the pavement for the public forty feet more. We leave this and cross a strip as wide as an ordinary avenue, paved with square blocks,—this is exclusively for wagons, drays, and all vehicles of trade,—then a row of trees; after this we cross a band about the same width, but as smooth and as hard as granite; this is for pleasure-carriages only; then another row of trees; then a road the width of an ordinary street, which is neither concrete nor Belgian blocks, but a mixture of loam and sand, soft enough to be easy for horses’ feet, and damp enough to keep it from being converted into clouds of dust; this is used by equestrians only, and a beautiful sight the lady and gentleman riders present every afternoon on their way to the park. We cross this soft way, and are in a wide promenade, perhaps eighty feet broad, arched over with the branches of lofty oaks, chestnuts, butternuts, lindens, beeches, and the like,—originally lindens only, hence the name “Under the Lindens,”—with elegant seats arranged along its entire length, on one of which we will sit down and rest, for we are half-way across the avenue, or rather series of avenues, which up here is flanked with lofty palaces and gardens of delight. On one side you go to, on the other you come from, the park. The lower part of this multiple avenue, instead of palaces and gardens, has the most magnificent residences, shops, and hotels that I have ever seen....
Germany seems one great family with no foreign help, where each member recognizes and respects the position of the other, and are united in the training of their children and the development of their own minds; but not as though, like other people, they had to resolve to be good; this, as a matter of course; virtue appears to come to them by nature. Everything they do seems a pleasure rather than a task, as if they said that industry and thrift are essential to happiness, labor the prelude to enjoyment; besides, they are never in a hurry. They take an hour to drink a glass of beer, and talk of heaven, earth, and the waters under the earth while sipping it. The gesticulating German, outside of books, I have not yet seen; what they do they do well; they enjoy doing it, and they do it that it may be a joy to others, and it always is. This feeling enters into every service, from the making of a pin to the concocting of a new system of theology, or a free-and-easy way of getting to heaven; and then the universality of culture that prevails, thanks to the standing army and the omnipresent public schools,—they have private schools too, to be sure, but then these snob and denominational affairs, unlike with us, just as the public schools, are under strict governmental inspection, and their managers are not permitted to teach what they please, unless what they please is for the good of the pupils, the country, and the people at large. It is because of this national surveillance that the private schools of Germany are said to be as good as those under the direct control of the government.
Familiarizing the pupil with music and the natural sciences is an important part of German education, especially the study of animal organisms, “birds, beasts, and reptiles,” as we used to say of Goldsmith’s “Animated Nature.” As an illustration at hand, since sitting here in front of a garden near the Kaiser’s palace, putting upon record the above traits, a workman watering a lawn noticed me looking up for a moment, just as he had enveloped the top of a lofty spruce with spray. Of course, as the sun was shining, and each particle of water becoming a prism, the disintegration of the white rays of light resulted in a rainbow, curved partially around the trees. I look at it, racking my memory at the same time for the word I need; he sees I observe it and am pleased; he nods, and says, “Schön” (beautiful); I reply, “Very.” In a few moments, dragging the hose towards me, throwing the water over a weeping birch, and making another rainbow, he points towards it. “Our Herr Professor Helmholtz,” pointing towards the University, “says there are but three prismatic colors, and yet I can now see seven, can’t you?—red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet; and I suppose a Frenchman could see seventy, for it is said that they can see colors where other people only see shades.” He continues to water the grass, and I, having found my missing link, to write.
[Dr. Woods next describes what is to be seen within the German beer-gardens,—the music, the decorum, the absence of intoxication, the intelligence manifested in conversation. Then to out-door life again.]
Other traits. Houses have curtains on the outside of windows as well as on the inside, and windows are nearly always double, with a space of about four inches between. They open outward and inward, instead of up and down; when closed, all noise is shut out. Indeed, there is no noise on even the busiest streets, which are so smooth that no sounds are heard but those of horses’ feet; no screaming of papers or wares of any sort is permitted, and no chimes! Then, again, people in the most ordinary circumstances have fine lace curtains and beautifully woven fabrics hanging around in graceful festoons, portières, statuary, pictures, flowers, birds, and books; often the most beautiful things in the way of prints are pinned frameless on the walls; there are beautiful marquetry floors, but no carpets.
Again, the orchards throughout the country are without protecting walls, just as farms are. At each corner a stone marks the division, and when ploughing, a couple of reversed furrows from stone to stone serves both as a division and promenade, and crops are not only grown to this line of demarcation, but grow over it, so that at a distance there is no division at all. I have seen branches bent to the ground with ripe fruit, and children walking under them to buy from an old woman or man across the way, never apparently even thinking of molesting what is not theirs. This is one of the things that fill you with wonder. In Weimar, between the Goethe House and the principal school, a long branch loaded with red apples hung over the way, almost touching my head, and yet it was under this that hundreds of children passed daily to and from school.
A pleasant custom in Berlin, as in London, is window-gardening—windows constructed so on purpose, the glass projecting a couple of feet beyond the side of the house, forming attractive ferneries, wherein are contained various sorts of cryptogami, as well as flowers in bloom, needing but little attention, as the moisture evaporating from the soil, etc., having no way of escaping, is taken up by the leaves. Also at the entrance to houses I have noticed beautiful dwarf apple-trees, with glossy leaves, and bearing an abundance of diminutive fruit. On one of these little trees, yesterday, I counted fifty-three ripe apples. These on the pavement day and night, and just the height of a boy’s hand in passing, notwithstanding what I had observed about fenceless orchards, made me suspect them apples of Sodom, or they certainly would have been plucked. To satisfy curiosity, I called on a florist having some for sale, and found that they tasted as good as they looked. I have concluded, therefore, that if Adam and Eve had been Germans there would have been no Fall; and I know no race doing more towards having Eden restored than these same people.