Baden-Baden, July 29th (Saturday).— ... Met with old-fashioned civility in all quarters. This little town is a curious compound of rural life, German country-townishness, watering-place excitements, court stateliness, ancient mouldering towers, old houses and new, and a life and cheerfulness over all.... A bright reflection from the evening sky powdered with golden dust that distant vapoury plain, bounded by the chain of purple mountains. We quitted this spectacle with regret when it faded in the late twilight, struggling with the light of the moon.
Road to Homburg.—Sunday, July 30th.—We were continually reminded of the vales of our own country in this lovely winding valley, where seven times we crossed the clear stream over strong wooden bridges; but whenever in our travels the streams and vales of England have been most called to mind there has been something that marks a difference. Here it is chiefly observable in the large brown wood houses, and in the people—the shepherd and shepherdess gaiety of their dress, with a sort of antiquated stiffness. Groups of children in rustic flower-crowned hats were in several places collected round the otherwise solitary swine-herd.... The sound of the stream (if there be any sound) is a sweet, unwearied, and unwearying under-song, to detain the pious passenger, which he cannot but at times connect with the silent object of his worship.
Road to Schaffhausen.—A part of the way through the uncleared forest was pleasingly wild; juniper bushes, broom, and other woodland plants, among the moss and flowery turf. Before we had finished our last ascent, the postilion told us what a glorious sight we might have seen, in a few moments, had we been here early in the morning or on a fine evening; but, as it was mid-day, nothing was to be expected. That glorious sight which should have been was no less than the glittering prospect of the mountains of Switzerland. We did burst upon an extensive view; but the mountains were hidden; and of the Lake of Constance we saw no more than a vapoury substance where it lay among apparently low hills. This first sight of that country, so dear to the imagination, though then of no peculiar grandeur, affected me with various emotions. I remembered the shapeless wishes of my youth—wishes without hope—my brother's wanderings thirty years ago,[44] and the tales brought to me the following Christmas holidays at Forncett, and often repeated while we paced together on the gravel walk in the parsonage garden, by moon or star light.[45] ... The towers of Schaffhausen appear under the shelter of woody and vine-clad hills, but no greetings from the river Rhine, which is not visible from this approach, yet flowing close to the town.... But at the entrance of the old city gates you cannot but be roused, and say to yourself, "Here is something which I have not seen before, yet I hardly know what." The houses are grey, irregular, dull, overhanging, and clumsy; streets narrow and crooked—the walls of houses often half-covered with rudely-painted representations of the famous deeds of the defenders of this land of liberty.... In place of the splendour of faded aristocracy, so often traceable in the German towns, there is a character of ruggedness over all that we see.... Never shall I forget the first view of the stream of the Rhine from the bank, and between the side openings of the bridge—rapid in motion, bright, and green as liquid emeralds! and wherever the water dashed against tree, stone, or pillar of the bridge, the sparkling and the whiteness of the foam, melting into and blended with the green, can hardly be imagined by any one who has not seen the Rhine, or some other of the great rivers of the Continent, before they are sullied in their course.... The first visible indication of our approach to the cataracts was the sublime tossing of vapour above them, at the termination of a curved reach of the river. Upon the woody hill, above that tossing vapour and foam, we saw the old chateau, familiar to us in prints, though there represented in connection with the falls themselves; and now seen by us at the end of the rapid, yet majestic, sweep of the river; where the ever-springing tossing clouds are all that the eye beholds of the wonderful commotion. But an awful sound ascends from the concealed abyss; and it would almost seem like irreverent intrusion if a stranger, at his first approach to this spot, should not pause and listen before he pushes forward to seek the revelation of the mystery.... We were gloriously wetted and stunned and deafened by the waters of the Rhine. It is impossible even to remember (therefore, how should I enable any one to imagine?) the power of the dashing, and of the sounds, the breezes, the dancing dizzy sensations, and the exquisite beauty of the colours! The whole stream falls like liquid emeralds—a solid mass of translucent green hue; or, in some parts, the green appears through a thin covering of snow-like foam. Below, in the ferment and hurly-burly, drifting snow and masses resembling collected snow mixed with sparkling green billows. We walked upon the platform, as dizzy as if we had been on the deck of a ship in a storm. Mary returned with Mrs. Monkhouse to Schaffhausen, and William recrossed in a boat with Mr. Monkhouse and me, near the extremity of the river's first sweep, after its fall, where its bed (as is usual at the foot of all cataracts) is exceedingly widened, and larger in proportion to the weight of waters. The boat is trusted to the current, and the passage, though long, is rapid. At first, when seated in that small unresisting vessel, a sensation of helplessness and awe (it was not fear) overcame me, but that was soon over. From the centre of the stream the view of the cataract in its majesty of breadth is wonderfully sublime. Being landed, we found commodious seats, from which we could look round at leisure, and we remained till the evening darkness revealed two intermitting columns of fire, which ascended from a forge close to the cataract.
Monday, July 31st.—Hornberg.—After this, over the wide country to Villengen, a walled town upon the treeless waste, the way unvaried except by distant views of remnants of the forest, and towns or villages, shelterless, and at long distances from each other. They are very striking objects: they stand upon the waste in disconnection with everything else, and one is at a loss to conceive how any particular town came to be placed in this spot or that, nature having framed no allurement of valley shelter among the undulations of the wide expanse. Each town stands upon its site, as if it might have been wheeled thither. There is no sympathy, no bond of connection with surrounding fields, not a fence to be seen, no woods for shelter, only the dreary black patches and lines of forest, used probably for fuel, and often far fetched. In short, it is an unnatural-looking region. In comparison with the social intermixture of towns, villages, cottages, fruit-trees, corn and meadow land, which we had so often travelled through, the feeling was something like what one has in looking at a dead yet gaudy picture painted by an untutored artist, who first makes his country, then claps upon it, according to his fancy, such buildings as he thinks will adorn it.
Thursday, August 3rd.—Zurich.—At a little distance from Zurich we remarked a very fine oak tree. Under its shade stood a little building like an oratory, but as we were not among the Roman Catholics it puzzled us. In front of the tree was an elevated platform, resembling the Mount at Rydal, to be ascended by steps. The postilion told us the building was a Chapel whither condemned criminals retired to pray, and there had their hair cut off; and that the platform was the place of execution.
August 4th.—Lenzburg.... At six o'clock we caught a glimpse of the castle walls glittering in sunshine, a hopeful sign, and we set forward through the fog. The ruin stands at the brink of a more than perpendicular, an overhanging rock, on the top of a green hill, which rises abruptly from the town. The steepest parts are ascended by hundreds of stone steps, worn by age, often broken, and half-buried in turf and flowers. These steps brought us to a terrace bordered by neatly-trimmed vines; and we found ourselves suddenly in broad sunshine under the castle walls, elevated above an ocean of vapour, which was bounded on one side by the clear line of the Jura Mountains, and out of which rose at a distance what seemed an island, crested by another castle. We then ascended the loftiest of the towers, and the spectacle all around was magnificent, visionary—I was going to say endless, but on one side was the substantial barrier of the Jura. By degrees (the vapours settling or shifting) other castles were seen on island eminences; and the tops of bare or woody hills taking the same island form; while trees, resembling ships, appeared and disappeared, and rainbow lights (scarcely more visionary than the mimic islands) passed over, or for a moment rested on the breaking mists. On the other side the objects were more slowly developed. We looked long before we could distinguish the far-distant Alps, but by degrees discovered them, shining like silver among masses of clouds. The intervening wide space was a sea of vapour, but we stayed on the eminence till the sun had mastery of all beneath us, after a silent process of change and interchange—of concealing and revealing. I hope we were not ungrateful to the memory of past times when (standing on the summit of Helvellyn, Scaw Fell, Fairfield, or Skiddaw) we have felt as if the world itself could not present a more sublime spectacle....
Herzogenboschee.—At length we dropped asleep, but were soon roused by a fitful sound of gathering winds, heavy rain followed, and vivid flashes of lightning, with tremendous thunder. It was very awful. Mary and I were sitting together, alone, in the open street; a strange situation! yet we had no personal fear. Before the storm began, all the lights had been extinguished except one opposite to us, and another at an inn behind, where were turbulent noises of merriment, with singing and haranguing, in the style of our village politicians. These ceased; and, after the storm, lights appeared in different quarters; pell-mell rushed the fountain; then came a watchman with his dismal recitative song, or lay; the church clock telling the hours and the quarters, and house clocks with their silvery tone; one scream we heard from a human voice; but no person seemed to notice us, except a man who came out upon the wooden gallery of his house right above our heads, looked down this way and that, and especially towards the voitures.... The beating of the rain, and the rushing of that fountain were continuous, and with the periodical and the irregular sounds (among which the howling of a dog was not the least dismal), completed the wildness of the awful scene, and of our strange situation; sheltered from wet, yet in the midst of it—and exposed to intermitting blasts, though struggling with excessive heat—while flashes of lightning at intervals displayed the distant mountains, and the wide space between; at other times a blank gloom.
Berne.—The fountains of Berne are ornamented with statues of William Tell and other heroes. There is a beautiful order, a solidity, a gravity in this city which strikes at first sight, and never loses its effect. The houses are of one grey hue, and built of stone. They are large and sober, but not heavy or barbarously elbowing each other. On each side is a covered passage under the upper stories, as at Chester, only wider, much longer, and with more massy supporters.... In all quarters we noticed the orderly decency of the passengers, the handsome public buildings, with appropriate decorations symbolical of a love of liberty, of order, and good government, with an aristocratic stateliness, yet free from show or parade.... The green-tinted river flows below—wide, full, and impetuous. I saw the snows of the Alps burnished by the sun about half an hour before his setting. After that they were left to their wintry marble coldness, without a farewell gleam; yet suddenly the city and the cathedral tower and trees were singled out for favour by the sun among his glittering clouds, and gilded with the richest light. A few minutes, and that glory vanished. I stayed till evening gloom was gathering over the city, and over hill and dale, while the snowy tops of the Alps were still visible.
Sunday, August 6th.—Upon a spacious level adjoining the cathedral are walks planted with trees, among which we sauntered, and were much pleased with the great variety of persons amusing themselves in the same way; and how we wished that one, at least, of our party had the skill to sketch rapidly with the pencil, and appropriate colours, some of the groups or single figures passing before us, or seated in sun or shade. Old ladies appeared on this summer parade dressed in flycaps, such as were worn in England fifty years ago, and broad-flowered chintz or cotton gowns; the bourgeoises, in grave attire of black, with tight white sleeves, yet seldom without ornament of gold lacing, or chain and ear-rings, and on the head a pair of stiff transparent butterfly wings, spread out from behind a quarter of a yard on each side, which wings are to appearance as thin as gauze, but being made of horse-hair, are very durable, and the larger are even made of wire. Among these were seen peasants in shepherdess hats of straw, decorated with flowers and coloured ribands, pretty little girls in grandmother's attire, and ladies à la française. We noticed several parties composed of persons dressed after these various modes, that seemed to indicate very different habits and stations in society—the peasant and the lady, the petty shopkeeper and the wealthy tradesman's wife, side by side in friendly discourse. But it is impossible by words to give a notion of the enlivening effect of these little combinations, which are also interesting as evidences of a state of society worn out in England. Here you see formality and simplicity, antiquated stateliness and decent finery brought together, with a pervading spirit of comfortable equality in social pleasures.