[XANTEN.]
This is a small town, near the Rhine, without much appearance of prosperity, but neater than most of the others around it. Several narrow streets open into a wide and pleasant market-place, in the centre of which an old but flourishing elm has its branches carefully extended by a circular railing, to form an arbour over benches. A cathedral, that proves the town to have been once more considerable, is on the north side of this place; a fine building, which, shewn by the moon of a summer midnight, when only the bell of the adjoining convent calling the monks to prayers, and the waving of the aged tree, were to be heard, presented a scene before the windows of our inn, that fully recompensed for its want of accommodation.
There were also humbler reasons towards contentment; for the people of the house were extremely desirous to afford it; and the landlord was an orator in French, of which and his address he was pleasantly vain. He received us with an air of humour, mingled with his complaisance, and hoped, that, "as Monsieur was Anglois, he should surprise him with his vin extraordinaire, all the Rhenish wine being adulterated by the Dutch, before they sent it to England. His house could not be fine, because he had little money; but he had an excellent cook, otherwise it could not be expected that the prebendaries of the cathedral would dine at it, every day, and become, as they were, vraiment, Monsieur, gros comme vous me voyez!"
There are in this small town several monasteries and one convent of noble canonesses, of which last the members are few, and the revenues very great. The interior of the cathedral is nearly as grand as the outside; and mass is performed in it with more solemnity than in many, which have larger institutions.
We left Xanten, the next morning, in high spirits, expecting to reach Cologne, which was little more than fifty miles distant, before night, though the landlord and the postmaster hinted, that we should go no further than Neuss. This was our first use of the German post, the slowness of which, though it has been so often described, we had not estimated. The day was intensely hot, and the road, unsheltered by trees, lay over deep sands, that reflected the rays. The refreshing forests of yesterday we now severely regretted, and watched impatiently to catch a freer air from the summit of every hill on the way. The postillion would permit his horses to do little more than walk, and every step threw up heaps of dust into the chaise. It had been so often said by travellers, that money has as little effect in such cases as intreaties, or threats, that we supposed this slowness irremediable, which was really intended only to produce an offer of what we would willingly have given.
[RHEINBERG.]
In something more than three hours, we reached Rheinberg, distant about nine miles; a place often mentioned in the military history of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and which we had supposed would at least gratify us by the shew of magnificent ruins, together with some remains of its former importance. It is a wretched place of one dirty street, and three or four hundred mean houses, surrounded by a decayed wall that never was grand, and half filled by inhabitants, whose indolence, while it is probably more to be pitied than blamed, accounts for the sullenness and wretchedness of their appearance. Not one symptom of labour, or comfort, was to be perceived in the whole town. The men seemed, for the most part, to be standing at their doors, in unbuckled shoes and woollen caps. What few women we saw were brown, without the appearance of health, which their leanness and dirtiness prevented. Some small shops of hucksters' wares were the only signs of trade.
The inn, that seemed to be the best, was such as might be expected in a remote village, in a cross road in England. The landlord was standing before the door in his cap, and remained there some time after we had found the way into a sitting room, and from thence, for want of attendance, into a kitchen; where two women, without stockings, were watching over some sort of cookery in earthen jugs. We were supplied, at length, with bread, butter and sour wine, and did not suffer ourselves to consider this as any specimen of German towns, because Rheinberg was not a station of the post; a delusion, the spirit of which continued through several weeks, for we were always finding reasons to believe, that the wretchedness of present places and persons was produced by some circumstances, which would not operate in other districts.
This is the condition of a town, which, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, was thought important enough to be five times attacked by large armies. Farnese, the Spanish commander, was diverted from his attempt upon it, by the necessity of relieving Zutphen, then besieged by the Earl of Leicester: in 1589, the Marquis of Varambon invested it, for the Spaniards, by order of the Prince of Parma; but it was relieved by our Colonel Vere, who, after a long battle, completely defeated the Spanish army. In 1599, when it was attacked by Mendoza, a magazine caught fire. The governor, his family, and a part of the garrison were buried in the ruins of a tower, and the explosion sunk several vessels in the Rhine; after which, the remainder of the garrison surrendered the place. The Prince of Orange retook it in 1633. Four years afterwards, the Spaniards attempted to surprise it in the night; but the Deputy Governor and others, who perceived that the garrison could not be immediately collected, passed the walls, and, pretending to be deserters, mingled with the enemy, whom they persuaded to delay the attack for a few minutes. The troops within were in the mean time prepared for their defence, and succeeded in it; but the Governor, with two officers and fifteen soldiers who had accompanied him, being discovered, were killed. All these contests were for a place not belonging to either party, being in the electorate of Cologne, but which was valuable to both, for its neighbourhood to their frontiers.