The Princes of Prussia have caused two of the ruined castles on the left bank to be repaired, and have made residences of them; but the destroyers of castles have done more for the picturesque than the restorers, for the ruins are out of all comparison more romantic objects than the perfect buildings. The amazing solidity with which they are built is proved by the facility with which they have been restored, besides which there is one that has continued perfect, and another which was allowed to go to decay only a few years ago, when the roof was taken off to save the expense of keeping it in repair.
We reached Mayence about nine o'clock. The next morning early I sallied forth, as usual, and poked about the town. I went into the cathedral, where there are a vast number of monuments, not very remarkable, of the Archbishops of Mayence—great men in their time. There was one tomb with which I was struck. It represents in the upper part the whole history of Christ, or at least, of His sufferings and death, in bas-relief, and underneath He is lying in His tomb, with figures at the head, the feet, and on one side, all as large as life, and by no means ill-done. A bronze statue of Gutenberg (for whom the invention of printing is claimed) was raised a few years ago by the town of Mayence; a fine figure enough, but they have inscribed upon the pedestal four of the most execrable Latin lines that ever were written, and if these are the best verses Mayence can produce, poets must be scarce in the town. If Gutenberg could come to life again he would be ashamed to see his types employed in recording such poetry as they have written in his praise. At eleven o'clock the railroad brought me in an hour to this place. This is an extremely pretty town; gay and prosperous in appearance, the streets are so wide, houses so handsome, and shops so smart. I soon found Francis Molyneux, with whom I dined. Mr. Koch, the Consul and banker, gave me a card which admitted me to a club, and I amused myself very well, looking about the town and gardens, and in the Bohemian glass shop. This morning I consulted Dr. Kop, a physician who lives at Hanau, and has a reputation in the country, about the waters. He advised me not to go to Wiesbaden, which he said was too strong for such a case as mine, but to drink the waters of Wildbad in Würtemberg. I had, however, already pretty well made up my mind not to drink any waters at present, but merely to hear what the medical authorities said on the subject, and reserve them for a future occasion.
Frankfort, June 24th.—Walked about the town, and went into the shops, where I cannot resist buying prints, Bohemian glass, and the deer's-horn things. Went to Mr. Bethmann's garden to see Dannecker's Ariadne, which is one of the great sights of this place. We (Francis Molyneux and I) found a French family, father, mother, and extremely pretty young daughter about sixteen, wanting to get in, and not able to make themselves understood, not speaking German. Francis Molyneux got the custos to come, and we entered. The first salle is furnished with a number of casts of gladiators and Apollos, which, however, so terrified the young innocent, who, it seems, has not been long out of a convent, that she started back, and nothing could get her into the museum. We passed on to the sanctum in which the Ariadne is placed, and the father went off to try and get his girl to pass through these formidable statues, but all in vain. I was amused with the naïveté with which he said, shrugging up his shoulders, 'Non, ma fille ne veut pas venir. Le fait est qu'elle n'a jamais rien vu de pareil.' The Ariadne statue is fine, the attitude easy and graceful, but the face is deficient in expression, and it has an impudent look.
FRANKFORT.
At three o'clock I got on the railroad, and went over to Mayence, to hear the military bands, which play every Friday. This is a great lounge, attended by all the people of the town, and many from Frankfort and Wiesbaden. I was delighted. The music is really magnificent. It was an Austrian band, about sixty or seventy in number, admirably conducted. The garden in which they play, just beyond the fortifications of the town, is very pretty, and the people sit at tables drinking chocolate or eating ice; the men mostly walking about and almost all smoking. There I fell in with Lord Westmoreland and Frederick FitzClarence from Wiesbaden, and we dined together afterwards, and at half-past eight returned home by railroad. This morning I have been wandering about and exploring. It is a fine town, and remarkable for the frequent intermixture of handsome modern houses with buildings of a very antique but generally decayed appearance; the place has a great look of well-doing, and one sees no beggars, and no miserable objects. I understand that there is a good system of relief for the poor, and no pauperism of the miserable and degraded character that shocks one so in England. Frankfort is not very gay or amusing. There is very little society; the rich people here live very quietly, and only display their wealth in occasional banquets, which are splendid, but long and tiresome. The old mother of the Rothschilds, the grandmother of the present generation, is here, living in the Jews' quarter in the old home of the family, which she will not be persuaded to quit. It is miserable-looking on the outside, but is said to be very different within. The old woman, who is ninety-four years old, drives about and goes constantly to the opera or play. The greatest man of the place is Count Münch-Bellinghausen, who has been for many years President of the Diet, and who, some think, will be one day Metternich's successor.
Wiesbaden, Monday, June 26th.—I dined with Strangways,[63] on Saturday; drove after dinner round the town and into the forest. Yesterday afternoon came here by railroad, very ugly country, but very pretty town. The weather was very fine, and a gayer sight I never saw than the crowd of people—eating, drinking, smoking, walking, listening to the band in the garden in front of the gambling palace (for such it is). I dined with Lord and Lady Frederick FitzClarence and Lord Westmoreland, and went to the Casino, or whatever they call it, in the evening. There play was going on (with crowds at the tables), as it does from morning till night, but the stakes appeared to be very small. The Grand Duke is residing here, and I saw his equipages returning from taking him and his suite to the theatre, evidently intended for an imitation of an English turn-out, but very poor and ridiculous. He is the richest of all the small German Sovereigns, and has got a very pretty territory. It is impossible not to be struck with the great appearance of ease and comfort in all these parts. I have seen no beggars, or hardly any, no miserable objects or wretched hovels. I asked Garg, the Master of the Hôtel de Russie at Frankfort, and a very intelligent man, and he told me the town was not so flourishing as it had been before they joined the Prussian League. However, all these places thrive without doubt by the immense number of travellers, especially English, who come to them. The inns are everywhere very superior to ours. Instead of the dirty, vulgar, noisy houses that most of our inns and hotels are, they are generally great and fine establishments, very clean, very well furnished, the service much better performed and incomparably cheaper. The town of Frankfort is divided between Protestants and Catholics, but the only religious squabbles or dissensions seem to have arisen among the English residents and the English clergyman. The dispute began about the management of the funds. A feud arose, two parties were formed, duels were fought, every sort of violence exhibited, volumes written on either side, and no end of trouble given to the legation here and the Foreign Office at home.
Wiesbaden, Wednesday, June 28th.—Lord Westmoreland agreed to go with me to Baden-Baden, if I would wait a day or two, so I agreed to do so. We went to the play on Monday evening, and found an extremely pretty theatre; a Mdlle. Herz, or some such name, the best actress at Berlin, appeared; the house was very thin. She reminded me of Rachel, and I should think she must be a very good actress, but as I did not understand a word, I can't pronounce confidently on her merits. I only know that her voice is sweet and expressive, her action graceful, her manner excellent; she is rather good-looking, and though I did not comprehend what was said, I got sufficiently interested in the action of the piece to sit out five acts without fatigue, which I have often not been able to do at pieces I do understand. Yesterday in the morning I followed a long walk through the garden, and through shrubberies and fields, to a village and ruined castle, about a mile and a half or two miles off. After breakfast went with Westmoreland and his son, and G. Berkeley, to the Duke's hunting-place at the top of a hill three miles off. A tolerable house, fitted up with memorials of the chase, and all over stags' horns. A grand view from it of the Rhine, and all the country as far as Darmstadt. Two magnificent bronze stags at the entrance.
THE MOTHER OF THE ROTHSCHILDS.
Mannheim, June 29th.—I went to Frankfort yesterday; went to see the Jews' street, the most curious part of the town. It is very narrow, the houses all of great antiquity, and not one new or modern in the whole street. This street exhibits a perfect specimen of a town of the fifteenth or sixteenth century. The houses are very lofty, a good deal ornamented, but they look dark and dirty, and as if their interior had undergone as little alteration as the exterior. Strange figures were loitering about the street, standing in the doorways or looking out of the windows. There was a man who might have presented himself on the stage in the character of Shylock, with the gaberdine and the beard; and old crones of the most miserable and squalid, but strange aspect. We had the good luck to see the old mother of the Rothschilds, and a curious contrast she presented. The house she inhabits appears not a bit better than any of the others; it is the same dark and decayed mansion. In this narrow gloomy street, and before this wretched tenement, a smart calèche was standing, fitted up with blue silk, and a footman in blue livery was at the door. Presently the door opened, and the old woman was seen descending a dark, narrow staircase, supported by her grand-daughter, the Baroness Charles Rothschild, whose carriage was also in waiting at the end of the street. Two footmen and some maids were in attendance to help the old lady into the carriage, and a number of the inhabitants collected opposite to see her get in. A more curious and striking contrast I never saw than the dress of the ladies, both the old and the young one, and their equipages and liveries, with the dilapidated locality in which the old woman persists in remaining. The family allow her 4,000l. a year, and they say she never in her life has been out of Frankfort, and never inhabited any other house than this, in which she is resolved to die. The street was formerly closed at both ends, and the Jews were confined to that quarter. The French took away the gates and they have never been replaced. The Jews now live in any part of the town they please. The Rothschilds, of whom there are several residing at Frankfort, are said to do a great deal of good both to Christians and Jews. There was very near being an émeute the other day, in consequence of the high price of corn; the poor people are starving, and can't buy bread at the price it now fetches. The Government is obliged to assist them; to buy wheat or bread, and sell it to the people at half-price.
I left Frankfort at half-past eleven, and got to Mayence just in time to dine at the table-d'hôte at the Hôtel d'Angleterre: one long table, half of which was occupied by the Austrian officers, who kept up an incessant fire of talk; the other half by casual visitors, not one of whom said a word. The jabber of the military men sounded strangely in my ears, and as the formidable gutturals jostled each other, I fancied it must have been very like the confusion of Babel, when every man began to speak in a different tongue. The oddest part of the dinner business was the master of the hotel sitting down to table with us, with an air of perfect, but not impudent familiarity; and at the same time acting the part of host by constantly getting up from his seat, going to inspect the dishes, and occasionally serving some of them himself. At half-past two the steamboat arrived, I went on board, and got here at half-past eight. The Rhine is very uninteresting in this part of its course, the banks flat, and the river often very narrow. The only town of any importance we passed was Worms, which is interesting from the historical recollections associated with it; but it has miserably fallen from the days when Charles V. and Luther met within its walls, while all Germany, in the highest state of excitement, was watching the progress of the conflict that was producing such mighty results. It is amusing, on board the steamer, to stop and exchange passengers, and we gave up some odds and ends of people at Worms, and got a whole school in return, some twenty specimens of the rising youth of Germany, and not bad ones on the whole—stout, active, intelligent-looking boys, with caps on their heads, very long hair, and satchels on their backs.