Your affectionate
Fanny.
Wiesbaden, Friday, September, 1841.
My dearest Harriet,
WIESBADEN. Walking along the little brook-side on the garden path under the trees towards the Sonnenberg, you may well imagine how vividly your image and that of Catherine Sedgwick were present to me. You took this walk together, and it was from her lively description of it that I knew, the moment I set my feet in the path, both where I was and where I was going. That walk is very pretty. I did not follow it to the end, because my children were with me, and it was too far for them; but yesterday I went to the ruin on horseback, and came home along the rough cart-road, on the hill on the other side of the valley, whence the views reminded me somewhat of the country round Lenox, in Massachusetts, though not perhaps of the prettiest part of the latter.
I have not yet in my travels seen anything much more picturesque than the prettiest parts of the American Berkshire; and upon the whole (castles, of course, excepted) was rather disappointed in the Rhine, which is not, I think, as beautiful a river as the Hudson. Knowing the powerful charm of affectionate association, and the halo which happiness throws over any place where we attain to something approaching it, I have sometimes suspected that my admiration of and delight in that Lenox and Stockbridge scenery was derived in some measure from those sources, and that the country round them is not in reality as beautiful as it always appears in my eyes and to my memory. But, comparing it now with scenery admired by the travelling taste of all Europe, I am satisfied that the American scenery I am so fond of is intrinsically lovely, and compares very favorably with everything I have seen hitherto on the Continent.
As for your friend Anne (my children's American nurse), coming up the Rhine she sat looking at the shores, her brown eyes growing rounder and rounder, and her handsome face full of as much good-humored contempt as it could express, every now and then exclaiming, "Well, to be sure, it's a pretty river, and it's well enough; but my! they hadn't need to make such a fuss about it." The fact is, that the noble breadth of the river forms one of its most striking features to a European, and this, you know, is no marvel to "us of the new world." Moreover, I suspect Anne does not consider the baronial castles "of much 'count," either; and, to confess the truth, I am rather disturbed at the little emotion produced in me by the romantic ruins and picturesque accompaniments of the Rhine. But it seems to me that I am losing much of my excitability; my imagination has become disgracefully tame, and I find myself here, where I have most desired to be, with a mind chiefly intent upon where, when, how, and on what my children can dine, and feelings principally occupied with the fact that I have no one with me to sympathize in any other thought or emotion if I should attempt to indulge in such.
We arrived at Coblentz one melting summer afternoon, and I walked up to the top of the fortress alone, and the setting of the sun over beyond the lands and rivers at my feet, and the uprising of the moon above, the bristling battlements behind me, filled me with delight; but I had no one to express it to.
This evening at Ehrenbreitstein, and the cathedral at Cologne, are my two events hitherto; the only two things that have stirred or affected me much. That cathedral is a whole liturgy in stone—eloquent, devout stone,—uttering so solemnly its great unfinished God-service of silent prayer and praise through all these centuries. I have seen many beautiful churches, but was never impressed by any as by this huge fragment of one.
My father, as I have written you, stayed behind, saying that he would follow us. He has not done so yet, and I do not expect that he will, for reasons which I will not repeat, as I gave them to you in a long letter which I wrote to you from Liège, which I heartily hope you have received.