Charles Lever, His Life in His Letters, Vol. I

by Charles James Lever

* It is strange that Lever considered this a remarkable
phenomenon. The economical custom he refers to was not
uncommon in many provincial towns—in Ireland at any rate—
up to a very recent date.—E. D.

Cassel is the most beautifully built and most beautifully situated town that I know of. Besides having a very excellent Opera, it boasts of one of the best museums in Germany, and of a very respectable Gallery of Painting and Sculpture. These form two sides of a great open platz or square; the Palace fills up the third side, and the fourth has merely a large iron railing, and affords a most magnificent view of a richly-wooded landscape, the background formed by the lofty mountains of Thuringia. In the middle of this railing a large gateway opens upon a broad flight of stone steps which lead down to a handsomely planted park. Following the windings of a silvery river which flows between banks adorned with blossoming shrubs and flowers, the scene brought to my mind the beautiful lines of Shelley:—

“And on that stream whose inconstant bosom
Was plank’t under boughs of embowering blossom,
With golden and green light slanting through
Their heaven of many a tangled hue,
Broad water-lilies lay tremulously,
And starry river-buds glimmered by,
And around them the soft stream did glide and dance
With a motion of sweet sound and radiance.”

At last we came in sight of Wilhelmshöhe, the country palace of the Electors of Hesse; but here, alas! the old Dutch taste in gardening prevails,—

“Grove nods to grove,
Each alley has its brother.”

Wherever you turn your eyes, some deity in lead or marble meets you, who, from its agile attitude, seems in the act of taking flight at your approach. But the great wonder of the place is the famous jet d’eau, which is said to be 200 feet in height. To see this all Cassel assembles every Sunday on foot or in carriages; but though the effect of the water rushing over the rocks and forming hundreds of small cataracts is undoubtedly fine, yet the illusion is destroyed by arriving before the commencement of the exhibition, and seeing Hessian Cockneys watching some dry canal with patient anxiety and filling the empty vase of some basking Amphion. However, the scene was a gay one; and the splendid carriage of the Elector, who sat, in all the glory of a rich uniform and with moustaches à la Prusse, smoking most cavalierly, beside a lady (not his Duchess), was at once characteristic of the country and the individual.

After stopping in Cassel for three days, which passed most agreeably, we took flight, and at the end of a forty miles’ excursion—

“In our stage-coach waggon trotting in,
We made our entrance to the U-
Nivewity of Gottingen.”

It was a fine night in the month of June, and the moon was shining brightly upon the towers and steeples of Gottingen, as the heavy diligence, thundering over the pavement of the main street, drew up within the port-cocher of Der Hof von England. We alighted, and entered a long low room in which about forty young men, evidently students, were seated at supper. At the head of the table sat the host himself, doling out soup from a vessel the proportions of which had well-nigh led me to suspect that I had mistaken the University town, and was actually in company with the Heidelberg Tun.

We soon retired to our beds, but arose early in the morning and found, to our surprise, that even then—it was but six o’clock—the streets were crowded with students hastening to and from the various lecture-rooms, their long braided frock-coats and moustaches giving them a military air strangely at variance with their spectacled noses and lounging gait.