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

by G. R. Gleig

We lingered in this beautiful spot a good half-hour, and quitted it, at the termination of that period, "wiser and better men," at least for the moment. Altogether different from the Père La Chaise, or any other cemetery which I had ever visited before, it struck me as constituting the very beau ideal of a burying ground,—grave, yet not severe,—neat, yet free from every approach to gaudiness,—well kept, yet bearing about it no impress of the hands that trimmed it, and in its situation and arrangements perfect. Here are no clumsy pillars, nor urns, nor sarcophagi, no, nor even crosses. Flowers are utterly unknown, and garlands tabooed. But the arrangement of the pollarded limes, which both surround and intersect the square, is, as it ought to be in such a place, at once formal and appropriate, casting each of the gravel-walks into a pleasant shade, while between them all lies open. With respect, again, to the graves, these are distinguished from the general level of the ground only by the small, flat, hewn stone, which is laid over each, and they seem to be about four feet apart from one another. I observed that the Hernhuters seem, from the first formation of the cemetery, to have observed, in conducting their funerals, the same regularity which appears to prevail in all their daily proceedings. The first of their community who paid the debt of nature,—after the burying-ground was laid out, and the colony put upon its present footing,—lies under his stone, close to the angle which is formed by the meeting of the central walk and that which passes along the side of the hedge next the entrance. In like manner, I observed that, far to the rear of the two lines which enclose, as it were, the tombs of the Zinzendorfs, there are blank spaces, which will doubtless be filled up, as the course of time sweeps away generation after generation from their hopes and their fears, their anxieties, their pursuits, and their follies.

On quitting the grave-yard, our guide,—an intelligent old man,—conducted us towards a sort of observatory, from which, as it occupies the summit of the hill, a fine view of the surrounding country is to be obtained. The scene was altogether very pleasing; for cultivation is carried on everywhere to a great extent, and there is no lack either of ornamental wood, or human habitations,—while, far in the distance, the mountains of Silesia and Bohemia are seen, forming a noble back-ground to the panorama. Nor was the effect of music, heard at a distance, as happened with us to be the case, out of keeping with the character of the things around us. A band of strolling minstrels chanced to be wending their way through a village, in the bottom of the vale far beyond Hernhut, and the air which they were performing, borne back upon the light breeze, sounded very sweetly. In a word, our visit to the tombs of the Hernhuters, with all its accompaniments of sight and sound, affected us at the moment with feelings singularly delightful, of which the recollection still abides by us, as Moore beautifully describes the odour of the roses, lingering about the fragments of the broken vase, which once contained the roses themselves.

After inserting our names, according to established usage, in a book which is contained in the wooden tower of the observatory, we returned to the inn, and offered our guide money. He would not accept a groschen, though he had too much good sense and good taste, to affect indignation at what he could not but perceive was not designed for an insult. We prevailed upon him, however, to eat his luncheon with us, and found him both an intelligent companion, and willing to impart his information freely.

He told us, what future inquiries have since confirmed, that the Church of Hernhut has branches in very many lands. At Berlin, there is an establishment on a small scale, which is managed after the model of that in Silesia. London has also its little germ, somewhere, according to him, in the neighbourhood of Fulham; and in North America the settlements are numerous. But all look to Hernhut as to the fountain-head of their church, and all receive from the synod there, periodical admonitions and instructions.

So much for the more spiritual and intellectual portion of our entertainment,—and now a word or two concerning that which was neither. I must not forget to record, for the benefit of all true lovers of excellent beer and excellent bread, that they will not find better than at Hernhut in all Germany. The claret, which was also good, held, in our estimation, a very secondary place to the clear, brisk, pale ale, which the waiter poured out for us from certain elegantly-shaped, green glass bottles, and the bread we pronounced to be beyond all praise.

We quitted Hernhut about one o'clock, hoping, as the result proved, in the face of physical impossibilities, to reach Schandau that night. The idea was the more preposterous, that we knew perfectly well how far, by the line of the main road, the one place is divided from the other; but being told of a footpath over hill and vale, and having examined upon the map, the situations of the villages through which it led, we came to the conclusion that we should be able to compress the usual forty English miles into half that number. We were entirely mistaken in this rash inference; for, independently of the risks which we ran of losing the way,—a misfortune which, it must be confessed, more than once overtook us,—we ought to have recollected that even travellers on foot cannot proceed with the precision of an arrow's flight; inasmuch as standing corn is not to be trodden down, morasses must be avoided, and through woods and over mountains, paths are, for the most part, tortuous. Neither did it greatly surprise, however much it mortified us, to find, that on halting at a village in that part of Bohemia which pushes itself deep into the heart of Saxony, between Seibnitz and Hernhut, that we had accomplished scarcely one-fourth of our pilgrimage; and that, with scarce four hours of daylight before us, it was utterly hopeless to think of compassing the remaining three-fourths. Having ascertained, therefore, that good quarters were to be had at Schlukenau, a considerable town through which it would be necessary to pass, we made up our minds to halt there for the night; even though by doing so, we should leave ourselves twenty good miles to walk on the morrow.

We dined in a village inn, the landlord of which was a jolly old fellow; who, having an only daughter, married her to a bouerman in the place, and now the three generations,—for there was a family by the union, of course,—dwelt together very happily under the old man's roof. I mention this trifling circumstance because it enables me to give the substance of certain statistical details which were communicated to me, in the course of our walk, by the son-in-law. This latter, a remarkably athletic fine-looking fellow, who volunteered to give us a convoy, and direct us the nearest way to Schlukenau, had seen something of the world. He was in Strasburg in the year 1813, when a corps of English artillery manned the works, and he spoke in high admiration of the appearance and perfect discipline of the men. Now, however, he cultivated with excellent skill a farm of eighty or an hundred acres, of which he was the proprietor; and while he led me over his land, and pointed out with honest pride, the order in which it was kept, and the enormous crops which it produced, he very readily answered such questions as I put to him on the subject both of the Bohemian system of agriculture and of the profits arising out of it. Wheat, as, indeed, my own previous observation had shown me, is not much cultivated in Bohemia. Here and there, where the soil is particularly favourable for it, the seed is sown; but rye is the staple commodity, with which, indeed, the fields were loaded. Out of rye, as I need scarcely mention, the Germans manufacture, not only the bread that is commonly in use among them, but almost all their ardent spirits, of which I have tasted very little, but which, whenever I did taste it, seemed to be execrable. Oats they likewise rear for their horses, as well as barley for malting; but these grains bear no proportion, in point of abundance, to the rye crops.

When the rye is removed, they sow the ground with clover; not, as with us, that they may feed it off, and so enrich the soil while they extract something from it, but for the purpose of securing a supply of dry fodder for their cattle, which, all the winter over, and throughout a considerable portion of the spring and summer, are kept in their stalls. Then come potatoes, then a season of fallow; after which a good coat of manure, to be followed by rye again. Whenever flax is grown, and next to rye it is, both here and in Saxony, more cultivated than any other grain, fallows are more frequent; for flax, as every child knows, drains the soil of all its nutritious qualities.

The implements used in agricultural operations seem to be ruder, and far more inefficient, than among us. The plough is precisely such an instrument as I recollect to have seen represented in my Delphin edition of Virgil's Georgics when I was at school; and it is drawn indifferently by horses, bullocks, or heifers. Bullocks and heifers are, however, more commonly used than horses, though it is no unusual sight to see a horse and a heifer yoked together. There is no boy to drive; but the ploughman, as in Scotland, at once holds the stilts of the plough, and with his voice, and a long halter, guides the cattle. With respect to the harrows, I saw little difference between them and our English implements, except that those in Germany are lighter, and never have more than one horse or one bullock attached to them.

The rest of their tools, such as forks, rakes, mattocks, spades, &c., very much resemble our own; with this difference, in reference to the last, that in Germany much less iron is wasted upon them than upon similar articles in England. The blade of a German spade, which, by the way, is pointed, or, rather, semicircular in form, is composed of wood to within a few inches of the edge, and there is no iron at all upon the handle.