Germany, Bohemia, and Hungary, Visited in 1837. Vol. II

by G. R. Gleig

The character of Russians had never sat upon us very easily. We were constantly afraid lest some one should address us in the Russian language, and we fancied that a demand for our passports, which might come at any moment, must inevitably convict us of an imposture. Seeing, therefore, that Golden Traum wore a singularly modest air, we resumed, on entering it, our proper lineage, and never laid it aside again till we reached home. Now, there happened to be in the village a bouerman, who had served under Blucher at Waterloo, and had seen, during the period of the occupation of Paris, a good deal of the English army. This man no sooner learned that two Englishmen were arrived, than he not only came himself, but brought all his neighbours to pay their respects to us. There was first the schoolmaster, a stout short man, highly impressed with the idea of his own dignity, and a determined smoker. There was the miller, the smith, the butcher, the sexton,—everybody, in short, who had a groschen or two to spend, and a stock of curiosity to be gratified. Nor did they come alone. Their wives and children followed them en masse, till the tap-room was crowded. What could we do? To devour our fish in the sight of the multitude, without offering to share it with them, might have impressed them with an unfavourable opinion of our country, while to afford even a morsel to each individual present, would have required thrice the amount cooked and even caught. We therefore adopted a middle course, seldom either a wise or a fortunate one, but in the present instance the only course within our reach. We distributed the trout among the parties who had occupied seats at our table; and won the hearts of the old soldier and his wife, the miller and his wife, the blacksmith and his wife, with all their children; who, seeing their mothers begin to eat, set up such a clamour that we were fain to hand over for their use all the bones, with such portions of flesh as chanced to adhere to them. Then followed sundry small flasks of schnaps, some cans of beer, and two or three bottles of sour country wine; under the influence of which the tap-room became, ere long, a scene of extraordinary hilarity. The old soldier raved about the "guten Anglesisch soldaden," and pronounced "der Hertoch von Wellington," worthy to take rank with Blucher himself. This, of course, drew from me sundry compliments to the valour and discipline of the Prussian army, till in a few minutes we were sworn brothers. "The French! what could the French do, or indeed all the world besides, against the English and Prussians united, who between them had restored peace to Europe, and dethroned Buonaparte;" but I am not quite sure that we decided the question by whom the battle of Waterloo was won,—a matter concerning which my friend appeared to be sensitive, and I, in the consciousness of having fact to fall back upon, felt altogether indifferent.

For an hour or two the scene was highly diverting, though I cannot say that it had the effect of confirming me in my opinions touching the constitutional sobriety of the German people. The good folks round me drank like fishes, and I must do the women the justice to observe, that in this sort of exercise they were by no means less alert than their husbands. The method of proceeding was this:—To some eight or ten persons a couple of liqueur glasses were allotted. These being filled, a sip was taken out of each, by the individuals who appeared to preside over the destinies of the bottle; they were then handed round, and drank in portions till drained dry. No time was, however, lost in replenishing them, so that the fire was both brisk and well sustained. Neither were the courtesies of civilised life omitted. At each separate sip the party sipping pledged the whole company; so that on a moderate computation, I had my health drunk that night at least a hundred and fifty times.

Ten o'clock struck, but the joyous rout exhibited no symptoms of moving; eleven came, and still they sat. This was rather too much of a good thing; for we must needs be a-foot by five in the morning, and we could not lie down till the chamber should be cleared. At last the schoolmaster, through the haze which his beer, and schnaps, and tobacco-smoke, had drawn around him, discovered that I was yawning with some vehemence, and looking tired. He accordingly rose, and suggested an adjournment; but his proposition was scouted. They must have one bottle more, and they had it; another, and they had that too; till I began to fear that they meant to favour us, as I recollect long ago favouring a delicate friend of mine at College,—that is, to sit up with us till the hour of march arrived, and then give us a convoy. But the memory of my poor friend's first letter, in which he described the misery of a mail-coach journey to Bristol, after a sleepless night, put me on my guard. I hinted that we had all better get to bed, and my hint was immediately taken. They went away in the best humour possible, after repeatedly shaking us by the hands, and wishing us all manner of prosperity, both abroad and at home.

I should flatter the good landlady at Golden Traum, if I were to say, that her beds were either clean or comfortable. In fact, we did not venture to undress; and we were up punctual to the moment which over-night we had fixed upon as convenient for starting. Again, however, the linen which we had committed to the care of the washerwoman, was to seek, and our journey, much to our chagrin, was delayed till past seven. Meanwhile, we got from the hostess as much information respecting her neighbourhood as she had to communicate. The appearance of the village had struck us, on entering, as singular. The houses, instead of wood, which is the material commonly used in the construction of German villages, were all built of brick, and they looked quite new. Moreover, there was no church; but only the ruins of some walls and a tower standing. On inquiring into the cause of all this, we learned, that four years ago, during the heat of the summer, when everything in the fields was parched up, and the very rivers dry, some woodmen incautiously set fire to the brushwood in a neighbouring forest, and all the efforts to extinguish it proved fruitless. The flame spread for miles around, consuming heath, dry grass, corn, and even trees, nor did the town of Golden Traum escape. It was burned to the ground, as well as all the detached cottages near it. From the effects of this disastrous conflagration, it had not yet, and probably never would, recover. Some houses were, indeed, built; and built of materials which seemed better suited to withstand a similar visitation, should it occur; but there were no funds wherewith to restore the church, and the lord of the manor was a great deal too poor to undertake such an enterprise. "An application has, indeed, been made," continued our informant, "to the authorities at Berlin, and we hope some time or another to have a new church; for we miss the bells sadly on feast-days, and it is a pleasant thing once a week to meet all one's neighbours, and see how they are dressed. But for the present, our pastor performs divine service in a room upstairs, and is not troubled with a crowded congregation."

It had rained hard during the night, and showers still continued to fall early in the morning, a circumstance which reconciled us, not a little, to our compulsory halt of two hours beyond our time. But by seven, the clouds dispersed, and our linen being restored and packed in our knapsacks, we begged to have the bill. It amounted to no more, in spite of all the beer and schnaps of the previous evening, than one dollar and four groschens. Here, then, we were relieved altogether from the apprehensions under which, up to that moment, we had laboured. Our point, to-night, was Hernhut, whence, with a little management, and some extra pressure, we expected to reach Schandau in one day; and we had still five dollars, and a little more, in our purse.

From Golden Traum to Hernhut, we were recommended to pass by way of Marklissa and Bernstadt, the former a manufacturing place of some note in Prussian Silesia, the latter one of the frontier-towns of Saxony. We followed those directions faithfully, and erring only once, to be put right again immediately by a very civil woman, we soon left our last night's quarters far behind. But we did not succeed in reaching our proposed point of destination. Fatigue gained the mastery over us while we were yet three hours' march from Hernhut, and at seven in the evening, we came reluctantly to the conclusion, that a halt in Bernstadt was necessary.

There had occurred no incident during our march that deserves to be recorded; neither had we passed any object that struck us as remarkable. The scenery, far more tame than we had been accustomed to in Bohemia, drew forth small admiration, and in Marklissa, a bustling, but irregularly-built town, we made no delay. In like manner, I may say of Bernstadt, that it contains little, which can, in any way, interest a stranger. A church, with a remarkably tall spire, is its chief ornament; and the inn, in the market-place, where we put up, was a fair one. A stroll through the streets, therefore, as well as a ramble in the churchyard, hardly compensated for the labour of effecting it; and we returned to supper at eight o'clock, well-disposed to cut the day as short as possible. But we were now in Saxony, and the Saxon police thought fit to convince us, that, however negligent their brother-officials in Austria and Prussia might be, they were not to be caught napping. I was sound asleep, when about twelve o'clock, a loud rapping at the chamber-door awoke me. I demanded the cause of so ill-timed an interruption, and was informed that the gendarmes had come to obtain a sight of our passport, and that I must get up and show it. The reader will easily believe that I obeyed this mandate, not quite in the placid temper of mind which is habitual to me. In fact, I was exceedingly angry, as I had reason to be; for we came in at seven, the police were perfectly aware of our arrival, and supposing that the national prosperity of Saxony had depended on us, there was ample time to ascertain that we were neither spies nor incendiaries, between that hour and bed-time. I, therefore, poured out upon the intruder,—the landlord of the inn,—a tolerable volley of abuse, and desired him to retail it all, in better German, to the gendarme below. In spite of my wrath, I could not keep my gravity, when after having desired him to deliver such a message to the policeman as an angry man is apt to convey, indicating, I am afraid, a wish, on my part, that the official would remove to less comfortable quarters than Bernstadt, the host, with all possible gravity replied, "Goot." There was no resisting this, and I laughed heartily.

The passport was correct enough, and the gendarme, after listening to sundry warm expostulations, delivered, not through the medium of the host, but directly by myself, stammered out some excuse on the score of duty, and hinted that they were obliged to be constantly on the alert, in consequence of the frequent inundation of fugitive Poles into the country. Alas, the poor Poles! Defeated in their attempt to free themselves from the yoke of the stranger, and driven to seek, in exile, the safety which is denied to them at home, they cannot find anywhere, throughout continental Europe, a resting-place for the soles of their feet. For even Saxony,—the child, a feeble one, doubtless,—but still a child, of the revolutionary mania of 1830,—is afraid to afford an asylum to men whose sole crime is, that they have struggled, or perhaps pined only in secret, to restore to their native land its place among the nations of Europe. I was not, of course, so imprudent as to take any notice of the gendarme's observation; but I thought within myself, that the government of a free country deserved little respect which could permit itself to be dragooned into the persecution of a body of men, from whom Saxony, at least, has sustained no injury.

The gendarme having departed, I returned to bed, and slept till six in the morning. We then breakfasted, and a little before nine, arrived at one of the most interesting places which the student of human nature will find in all Germany. Hernhut, in every sense of the term, a missionary settlement, offers to the eye of the curious and the reflecting, a spectacle as striking as can well be conceived. Here is no diversity of opinion on religious subjects, no indifference, real or pretended, to religion itself, no postponement of duty to convenience, no deference to police regulations which is not paid to a higher principle. Religion is in Hernhut, what law and custom are elsewhere, the main-spring of people's actions. They work and play, they associate together, or dwell apart, they go out and come in, rise up, and lie down; they perform every office of life strictly, or at least avowedly, under the sanction of the faith of which they are the professors. There may be hypocrisy in all this, though I could discover no traces of it, for human nature is a curious compound at the best; but at least there is a moral courage which commands our unqualified respect, inasmuch as everything is done without parade, without moroseness, without the utterance of a single expression which can convict them of a desire to be admired of men, far less of undervaluing or mistrusting the motives of others.

What the origin of the Hernhuters really is, seems to be a point as yet scarcely determined. Mosheim, in his Ecclesiastical History, speaks vaguely of them; and Dr. Maclaine, his English translator, has attributed to them practices and opinions which are quite contrary to fact. Confounding them with the Picards, whom John Ziska, the famous Hussite general, well-nigh exterminated, the latter speaks of them as practising all the absurd impurities of the Pre-Adamites, and he appeals for support to Stinstra's pastoral letter,—one of the most uncandid as well as impertinent productions that ever came from the pen even of an Anabaptist. For my own part, I see no reason to doubt that they are what they profess to be, the descendants of the Bohemian or Moravian brethren, whom the bigotry of the house of Austria drove from their homes, and of whom remnants are yet to be found, both in Poland and Hungary. Their church is episcopal in its constitution; their tenets agree with the Augsburg Confession of Faith; their ritual is plain and bare, almost like that of the Presbyterian church of Scotland; and their attention to psalmody very great. It has been much the practice of the surrounding townships, as well in Bohemia as in Silesia and Saxony, to speak slightingly of them. But a brief sojourn among them, sufficed to convince me that they were at least as honest as any of those by whom their honesty had been called in question.