We took a carriage, and drove through the grounds to a new classical little palace, that crowns an eminence at their other extremity, a distance of a mile or two. We went through this building, which is a little in the style of the Trianons, at Versailles; smaller than Le Grand Trianon, and larger than Le Petit Trianon. This display of royal houses, after all, struck us as a little dis portioned to the diminutive size and poverty of the country. The last is nothing but a maison de plaisance, and is well enough if it did not bring taxation with it; nor do I know that it did. Most of the sovereigns have large private fortunes, which they are entitled to use the same as others, and which are well used in fostering elegant tastes in their subjects.
There is a watering-place near the latter house, and preparations were making for the King to dine there, with a party of his own choosing. This reminded us of our own dinner, which had been ordered at six, and we returned to eat it. While sitting at a window, waiting the service, a carriage that drove up attracted my attention. It was a large and rather elegant post chariot, as much ornamented as comported with the road, and having a rich blazonry. A single female was in it, with a maid and valet in the rumble. The lady was in a cap, and, as her equipage drove up, appeared to be netting. I have frequently met German families travelling along the highway in this sociable manner, apparently as much at home as when they were under the domestic roof. This lady, however, had so little luggage, that I was induced to enquire who it might be. She was a Princess of Hechingen, a neighbouring state, that had just trotted over probably to take tea with some of her cousins of Wurtemberg.
These quasi kingdoms are so diminutive that this sort of intercourse is very practicable, and (a pure conjecture) it may be that German etiquette, so notoriously stiff and absurd, has been invented to prevent the intercourse from becoming too familiar. The mediatising system, however, has greatly augmented the distances between the capitals, though, owing to some accidental influence, there is still here and there a prince, that might be spared, whose territories have been encircled, without having been absolutely absorbed, by those who have been gainers by the change. Bavaria has risen to be a kingdom of four millions of souls, in this manner; and the Dukes of Wurtemberg have become kings, though on a more humble scale, through the liberality or policy of Napoleon. The kingdom of the latter contains the two independent principalities of Hohenzollern (spared on account of some family alliances, I believe) in its bosom. One of the princes of the latter family is married to a Mademoiselle Murat, a niece of Joachim.
After dinner we went again to the garden, where we accidentally were witnesses of the return of the royal party from their pic-nic. The King drove the Queen in a pony phaeton, at the usual pace of monarchs, or just as fast as the little animals could put foot to the ground. He was a large and well-whiskered man, with a strong family likeness to the English princes. The attendants were two mounted grooms, in scarlet liveries. A cadet, a dark, Italian-looking personage, came soon after in full uniform, driving himself, also, in a sort of barouche. After a short time we were benefited by the appearance of the cooks and scullions, who passed in a fourgon, that contained the remnants and the utensils. Soon after we got a glimpse of the Queen and three or four of the daughters, at a balcony of the palace, the lady of the net-work being among them. They all appeared to be fine women.
At the inn I heard with regret that Sir Walter Scott, had passed but two days before. He was represented as being extremely ill; so much so, indeed, as to refuse to quit his carriage, where he kept himself as much as possible out of view.
We left Stuttgart early the following morning, and as the carriage wound up the mountain that overlooks the town, I thought the place one of singular incongruities. The hill-sides are in vineyards; the palace, in excellent keeping, was warm and sunny; while the old feudal-looking towers of the castle, rudely recalled the mind to ancient Germany, and the Swissish habitations summoned up the images of winter, snows, and shivering February. Still I question, if a place so sheltered ever endures much cold. The town appears to have been built in the nook it occupies, expressly to save fuel.
We met the Neckar again, after crossing a range of wooded mountain, and at Tubingen we once more found a city, a university, the remains of feodality, redoutes, pipes, and other German appliances. Here we breakfasted, and received a visit from a young countryman, whose parents, Germans, I believe, had sent him hither to be educated. He will, probably return with a good knowledge of Greek, perfect master of metaphysics and the pipe, extravagant in his political opinions, a sceptic in religion, and with some such ideas of the poetry of thought, as a New England dancing-master has of the poetry of motion, or a teacher of psalmody, of the art of music. After all, this is better than sending a boy to England, whence he would come back with the notions of Sir William Blackstone to help to overturn or pervert his own institutions, and his memory crammed with second-hand anecdotes of lords and ladies. We labour under great embarrassments on this point of education, for it is not easy to obtain it, suited equally to the right, and to our own peculiar circumstances, either at home or abroad. At home we want science, research, labour, tone, manners, and time; abroad we get the accumulated prejudices that have arisen from a factitious state of things; or, what is perhaps worse, their reaction, the servility of castes, or the truculence of revolution.
About a post beyond Tubingen, a noble ruin of a castle of the middle ages appeared in the distance, crowning the summit of a high conical eminence. These were the finest remains we had seen in a long time, and viewed from the road, they were a beautiful object, for half an hour. This was the castle of Hohenzollern, erected about the year 980, and the cradle of the House of Brandenburg. This family, some pretend, was derived from the ancient Dukes of Alsace, which, if true would give it the same origin as those of Austria and Baden; but it is usual, and probably much safer, to say that the Counts of Hohenzollern were its founders. We must all stop somewhere short of Adam.
I was musing on the chances that have raised a cadet, or a younger branch, of the old feudal counts who had once occupied this hold, to the fifth throne in Europe, when we entered an irregular and straggling village of some 3000 souls, that was not, by any means, as well built as one of our own towns of the same size. A sign over a door, such as would be occupied by a thriving trader with us, with "Department of War" on it, induced me to open my eyes, and look about me. We were in Hechingen, the capital of Hohenzollern-Hechingen, an independent state, with a prince of its own; who is the head of his family, in one sense, and its tail in another; there being, besides the King of Prussia, a Prince of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen adjoining, who is his junior in rank, and his better in power; having some 40 or 50,000 subjects, while he of Hechingen has but 15,000. On ascending a hill in the place itself, we passed an unfinished house, all front, that stood on the street, with no grounds of any beauty near it, and which certainly was not as large, nor nearly as well constructed, as one of our own principal country-houses. This building, we were told, was intended for the town residence of the heir-apparent, who is married to a daughter of Eugene Beauharnois, and of course to a niece of the King of Bavaria.
All this was an epitome of royalty I had never before witnessed. The Saxon duchies, and Bayreuth and Anspach, now merged in Bavaria, had been the subjects of curious contemplation to us, but they were all the possessions of potentates compared to this principality. I inquired for the abode of the prince, which could not well be far off, without being out of his own dominions. It lay behind a wood a mile distant, and was not visible from the inn where we stopped. Here was a capital mistake; had the old castle, which was but half a mile from the village, been kept up, and it seemed to be in good condition for a ruin, with the title of Count of Hohenzollern and the war and state departments been put in one of the towers, no one could have laughed at the pretension, let him try as hard as he pleased; but—