EINSIEDLN.
What is’t t’ us
Whether ’twas said by Trismegistus,
If it be nonsense, false, or mystic,
Or not intelligible, or sophistic?
’Tis not antiquity, nor author,
That makes truth truth.—Hudibras.
As you enter the Place of Einsiedln, there faces you on the east side, if orientation has been observed in the Church, the large and famous monastery of Our Lady of the Hermits. The first impression is good and pleasing. It is even something more: it is striking. There is plenty of space in the foreground; and the whole is well kept. In the centre of the extended front is the entrance to the church. To compare what is small with what is great, it reminds you of St. Peter’s at Rome, and its Piazza. As the Place rises from the point at which you enter it, throughout, up to the monastery, the elevation of the site of the building adds somewhat to its imposing effect. Rows of cell-like stalls, constructed in a stage of the rise, in a curve before the pile, increase its apparent height and size. There is an openness, and a breadth of sky, above, which give a sense of light, and space. As the structure dates from 1719, there is, as might have been expected, nothing in it, architecturally, worthy of notice.
The monastery, and the incidents of the pilgrimage made to its black-faced, and black-handed image of the Virgin, were what we had come to Einsiedln to see; and as there is nothing else in the place to see, we were soon in the church. The interior of the building is less pleasing than the exterior. White-wash, tawdry tinsel, and pictures, inferior even to what you might have expected, do not produce so good an effect as the space, simplicity, and weather-tinted stone of the outside. No service was then going on; but there were about a hundred people in the church, the greater part of whom were before the shrine of the image.
We again returned for vespers. The church, which is large, was then more than half full; and there was some crowding around the shrine.