“The dead I knell, the living wake,
And the power of lightning break!”
which caused me to reflect on the vast degree to which all the minor uses and observances of the Church—which are nine-tenths of all their religion to the multitude—were only old heathen superstitious in new dresses. The bell was a spell against the demons of lightning in old Etrurian days; to this time the Tuscan peasant bears one in the darkening twilight-tide to drive away the witches flitting round: in him and them “those evening bells” inspired a deeper sentiment than poetry.
In a village, Rücker, finding the beer very good, bought a cask of it, which was put on board the little Neckar steamboat on which we returned to Heidelberg. And thus provided, the next evening he gave a “barty” up in the old castle, among the ruins by moonlight, where I “assisted,” and the lager was devoured, even to the last drop.
I soon grew tired of the family dinners with the Frau Inspectorinn and the Herr Inspector with the one tumbler of Neckar wine, which I was expected not to exceed; so I removed my dining to the “Court of Holland,” a first-class hotel, where O. and the other Americans met, and where the expectation was not that a man should by any means limit himself to one glass, but that, taking at least one to begin with, he should considerably exceed it. This hotel was kept by a man named Spitz, who looked his name to perfection.
“Er spitzt betrübt die Nase,”
as Scheffel wrote of him in his poem, Numero Acht, the scene of which is laid in the “Court of Holland.” Here a word about Scheffel. During the following semester he was for months a daily table-companion of mine at the Bremer-Eck, where a small circle of students—quorum pars fui—met every evening to sup and kneip, or to drink beer and smoke and sing until eleven. Little did I dream in those days that he would become the great popular poet of his time, or that I should ever translate his Gaudeamus. I owe the “Court of Holland” to this day for a dinner and a bottle of wine.
It is the only debt I owe, to my knowledge, to anybody on earth.
It was resolved among the Americans that we should all make a foot-excursion with knapsacks down the Rhine to Cologne. It was done. So we went gaily from town to town, visiting everything, making excursions inland now and then. We had a bottle or two of the best Johannisberg in the very Schloss itself—omne cum prætio—and meeting with such adventures as befell all wandering students in those old-fashioned, merry times. The Rhine was wild as yet, and not paved, swept, garnished and full of modern villas and adornment, as now. I had made, while in America, a manuscript book of the places and legends of and on the Rhine, with many drawings. This, and a small volume of Snow’s and Planché’s “Legends of the Rhine,” I carried with me. I was already well informed as to every village and old ruin or tower on the banks.
So we arrived at Cologne, and saw all the sights. The cathedral was not then finished, and the town still boasted its two-and-seventy stinks, as counted by Coleridge. Then we returned by steamer to Mainz, and thence footed it home.
Little by little I rather fell away from my American friends, and began to take to German or English associates, and especially to the company of two Englishmen. One was named Leonard Field, who is now a lawyer in Lincoln’s Inn Fields; the other was Ewan P. Colquhoun, a younger brother of Sir Patrick Colquhoun, whom I knew well, and as friend, in after years, until his recent death. I always, however, maintained a great intimacy with George Ward, of Boston, who became long after a banker and Baring’s agent in America. In one way and another these two twined into my life in after years, and led to my making many acquaintances or friends.