Around the clock in Europe

by Charles Fish Howell

And all is hushed and still;

O’er ruined wall and rafter

I clamber as I will.

Goethe’s “Castle on the Mountain.”

When the sun has gone down behind the Blue Alsatian Mountains and the last stain of color has faded from the skies of the Rhenish plain, when clock tower has answered clock tower and evening bell responded to evening bell from the mountain streams and mill wheels of the Odenwald to the busy squares of Mannheim, then the quiet and gentle valley of the Neckar takes on a peculiar peace and glory that is exquisite and marvelous, and Heidelberg and its lordly ruins seem set in a veritable fairy-ring of delicate charm and beauty. So tranquil and lovely is this region in the early evening that even the latest comer soon feels a comforting sense of having turned aside from out of the rush and fever of life into a singularly placid and protected corner of earth, a hushed and happy Vale of Tempe. This sense of rest and seclusion is one of Heidelberg’s strongest appeals—and her appeals, though few, are all emphatic. For there are no “sights” here, the castle excepted. The quaint old town is friendly and genial, though not more so than many others of this comfortable German father-land; nor is the serene Neckar so exceptional as to occasion pilgrimage.

Heidelberg’s appeals are to the mind, the heart, and the senses: the mind is inspired by her impressive achievements in learning; the heart is touched by her tragic history; and the senses are spellbound by the exceptional charm of her natural beauty. She is never so fair as in the early evening. With the soft fall of night each blemish fades away, and what remains to see and feel is altogether rare and lovely.

HEIDELBERG, FROM THE CASTLE TERRACE

When the valley clocks are booming nine with muffled strokes it is delightful to be up in the castle’s ruins, lounging on the Great Balcony of the crumbling Friedrich Palace, with a broad coping for a seat and the rustling ivy of the hollow walls for a pillow. Behind and about one is the vast, ruddy wreckage of the knightly halls and towers of this far-famed “Alhambra of Germany,” and fluttering plains of tree-tops are billowing upward on every hand to the dark heights of the Königsstuhl. On the opposite side of the valley, across the river, dense forests of oak and chestnut glitter in the moonlight, sweeping aloft to the summit of the storied Saints’ Mountain. Just below our balcony the clustered spires and steep roofs of the huddled old town house their fifty thousand happy people between the wooded hillsides and the shimmering Neckar that bands the middle distance, on its placid Rhine journey, like a silver ribbon on a velvet cloak. In its bright waters hills and trees are luminously mirrored, along with the inky, motionless shadows of its bridges and the sober reflections of shuttered house-fronts along its verge.

In the dewy coolness and still of evening the guardian oaks breathe a recurrent lullaby—now softly agitated, now as hushed and ghostly and motionless as the hills in which they are rooted; and one understands how such a soothing environment could have softened even the impetuous, fiery, war-loving young Körner to indite so gentle a benediction as his beautiful “Good Night”:—