Opposite to Wesel is Burick, the fortifications of which remain, and are probably intended to serve instead of the demolished works of the former place, being connected with it by a flying-bridge over the Rhine. A little lower are the remains of the old chateau of Furstemberg, on a hill where the ladies of the noble Cistercian nunnery of Furstemberg had once a delightful seat, now deserted for the society of Xanten.
Xanten, the first place at which we had stopped in Germany, and the last, for a long tract, which we had seen with pleasure, Xanten, now distinguishable, at a small distance from the river, by its spires, reminded us of the gay hopes we had formed on leaving it; with a new world spread out before us, for curiosity, and, as we thought, for admiration; yet did not render the remembrance of disappointment, as to the last respect, painful, for even the little information we had gained seemed to be worth the labour of acquiring it.
The exchange of indefinite for exact ideas is for ever desirable. Without this journey of eleven or twelve hundred miles we should have considered Germany, as its position in maps and description in books represent it, to be important, powerful and prosperous; or, even if it had been called wretched, the idea would have been indistinct, and the assertion, perhaps, not wholly credited. The greatest and, as it is reasonable to believe, the best part of Germany we have now seen, and, in whatever train of reasoning it is noticed, have an opinion how it should be valued. Those, who cannot guess at causes, may be sure of effects; and having seen, that there is little individual prosperity in Germany, little diffusion of intelligence, manners, or even of the means for comfort, few sources of independence, or honourable wealth, and no examples of the poverty, in which there may be pride, it was not less perceptible, that there can be no general importance, no weight in the balance of useful, that is, peaceful power, and no place, but that of an instrument, even in the desperate exercises of politics.
A respect for the persons of learning, or thought, who live, as the impertinence of high and the ignorance of low society forces them to live, in a strict and fastidious retirement, cannot alter the general estimation of the country, in any respect here considered; their conversation with each other has no influence upon the community; their works cannot have a present, though they will have a general and a permanent effect. The humbler classes, from whom prosperity should result in peace, and strength in war, give little of either to Germany; and man is very seldom negatively stationed; when not useful to his fellow-creatures, he is generally somewhat injurious. The substantial debasement of the German peasantry, that is, their want of ordinary intelligence, re-acts upon the means that produced it, and, continuing their inferiority, continues many injurious effects upon the rest of Europe.
That Germany should be thus essentially humble, perhaps, none would have ventured to foresee. The materialist could not have found it in the climate. The politician might hastily expect it from the arbitrary character of the governments, but must hesitate, when he recollects how France advanced in science and manufactures, under the dominion of Louis the Fourteenth, greatly more despotic than the usual administrations in Germany. Perhaps, the only solution for this difference of effects from apparently similar causes is, that the greater extent of his territory, as well as the better opportunities of his subjects for commerce, enabled Louis to gratify his taste for splendour, at the same time that they shewed his ambition a means of indulgence, by increasing the means of his people. Germany, frittered into several score of sovereignties, has no opulent power; no considerable income, remaining after the payment of its armies; few wealthy individuals. The Emperor, with fifty-six titles, does not gain a florin by his chief dignity; or Granvelle, the Minister of Charles the Fifth, would have been contradicted when he said so in the Chamber of Princes. The Elector Palatine is almost the only Prince, whose revenue is not absorbed by political, military and household establishments; and though, in an advanced state of society, or in opulent nations, what is called patronage is seldom necessary, and must, perhaps, be as injurious to the happiness as it is to the dignity of those who receive it, nothing is more certain than that there have been periods in the history of all countries, when the liberality of the Prince, or the more independent protection of beneficed institutions, was necessary to the existence of curiosity and knowledge. At such times, a large expenditure, if directed by taste, or even by vanity, afforded a slow recompense for the aggressions, that might support it, by spreading a desire of distinction for some intellectual accomplishment, as the claim to notice from the court; and the improvement of mind circulated, by more general encouragement, till every town and village had its men of science. Thus it was that the despotism of Louis the Fourteenth had a different effect from that of his contemporary German Princes, who, by no oppressions, could raise a sufficient income, to make their own expenditure the involuntary means of improving the intellectual condition of their people.
From the neighbourhood of Xanten, in which we were induced thus to estimate what had been gained, since we saw it last, and from a shore that gradually rises into the many woody heights around Calcar and Cleves, the Rhine speedily reaches Rees, a town on the right bank, built advantageously at an angle, made by a flexure of the river to the left.
We landed to view this place, and were soon persuaded, by the Dutch-like cleanliness and civility of the people at the inn, to remain there for the night, rather than to attempt reaching Emmerick.
Rees is near enough to Holland to have some of its advantages; and, whatever contempt it may be natural for English travellers, at the commencement of their tour, to feel for Dutch dullness and covetousness, nothing but some experience of Germany is necessary to make them rejoice in a return to the neatness, the civility, the comforts, quietness, and even the good humour and intelligence to be easily found in Holland. Such, at least, was the change, produced in our minds by a journey from Nimeguen to Friburg. The lower classes of the Dutch, and it is the conduct of such classes, that every where has the chief influence upon the comforts of others, are not only without the malignant sullenness of the Germans, and, therefore, ready to return you services for money, but are also much superior to them in intelligence and docility. Frequent opportunities of gain, and the habit of comparing them, sharpen intellects, which might otherwise never be exercised. In a commercial country, the humblest persons have opportunities of profiting by their qualifications; they are, therefore, in some degree, prepared for better conditions, and do not feel that angry envy of others, which arises from the consciousness of some irremediable distinction.
The inhabitants of Rees speak both Dutch and German; and it was pleasing to hear at the inn the sulky yaw of the latter exchanged for the civil Yaw well, Mynheer, of the Dutch. The town is built chiefly of brick, like those in Holland; the streets light; the market-place spacious, and the houses well preserved. It is of no great extent, but the space within the walls is filled, though this must have been sometimes partly cleared by the sieges, to which Rees was subject in the war of Philip the Second upon the Dutch. A few emigrants from Brussels and Maestricht were now sheltered in it; but there was no garrison and no other symptom of its neighbourhood to the scenes of hostilities, than the arrival of a Prussian commissary to collect hay and corn. We were cheered by the re-appearance of prosperity in a country, where it is so seldom to be seen, and passed a better evening in this little town, than in any other between Friburg and Holland.
In the morning, having no disgust to impel us, we were somewhat tardy in embarking; and the boatmen, who had found out the way of reviving our impatience, talked of the great distance of Holland, till they had us on board. Five or six well-looking villages presently appear after leaving Rees, the next port to which is Emmerick, once an Hanseatic town, and still a place of some dignity, from spires and towers, but certainly not of much commerce, for we could not see more than two vessels on the beach.