I certainly feared that the faithful adhesion of Saxony to the fortunes of Napoleon, though it saved the “galleries” and “green vaults” of Dresden, had not tended to an overflow of the royal treasury—and I was quite sure that the battle of Leipsic and the Congress of Vienna had by no means enlarged the territories of the Saxon Monarch. As to the Queen, Boney’s inordinate love of bees must have greatly thinned the ranks of her majesty’s hives on the sunny banks of the Elbe, and diminished the supply of honey for the use of herself and maids of honour.[87] Be that as it may, I sincerely hope that no Saxon queen will ever be reduced from bread and honey to bread and cheese—for in that event, her majesty’s case would be hopeless.
We greatly regretted that we had not a glimpse at that magnificent lioness of Pillnitz, the Princess Amelia, sister to the monarch, and Playwriter to Germany in general. How she, as a Saxon princess, contrived to depict on the stage, “the domestic manners of the Germans,” as Mrs. Jameson very artfully terms her dramas, is beyond my comprehension, unless she imitated the Eastern Princes of former days, who went incog. among their subjects. Be this as it may, I confess I do not see any delineation of character in these plays that might not be picked up in the library, theatre, and drawing-room, by any clever girl of Princess Amelia’s calibre and talents. There is a clearer insight into domestic manners in one of Horace’s Odes or Satires (vide Sat. VIII.,) than in the whole of the Princess’s plays put together.
DRESDEN.
We approached this city on a beautiful evening—its numerous spires and domes, its raised terraces, shaded promenades, broad river, and handsome bridge, making a favourable impression on the stranger’s mind. The bridge, though said to be the finest in Germany, would make a sorry figure alongside of our Waterloo—and it bears on its centre arch a memorial that is not likely ever to appear on any bridge that crosses the Thames—the marks of a blow-up by a French General. The memorial, however, is not very complimentary to the Gallic soldiers, who performed the exploit to prevent the allies from running—after them! I wish the bridge regulation over the Elbe was enforced on all bridges, and even streets—viz. that of compelling passengers to take the right-hand side, by which they avoid jostlings or collisions. The new town, on the right bank, is the unfashionable one—the old one, the reverse—though the streets of the latter are narrow, the houses high, and very dull as well as unadorned.
You have scarcely descended from the bridge on the left bank, when you find yourself entangled between a palace, a church, a theatre, and a minister’s huge hotel, or rather bureau. Here I observed what I had hitherto scouted—an “iter ad astra”—a royal road to heaven. From the windows of the palace a royal arch strides across the street, and enters the Catholic church, high up, near the regal box or pew over the altar!—On the opposite side rises the theatre. Thus Religion sits calmly, but proudly, between Comedy and Carousel; and the same musical corps which “swell the notes of praise” in the solemn anthem of morning mass, fill the air with the dulcet notes of Terpsichore, in the evening Opera. Such easy transitions would excite some remark in holy England—though there is nothing, after all, in these double duties of the vocal train—“vox et pretærea nihil.” But the sight of an English king going every Sunday to mass would astonish his Protestant subjects. Not so in Dresden. The Saxons are just as much Protestants as the British are; yet they take no umbrage at their monarch preferring the Romish to the reformed ritual!! Would that such peaceable and charitable sentiments were universal in the world!
The palace itself is the most strange, straggling, and sombre mass or rather chaos of state prisons that ever monarch inhabited—unless it is he of the Tartarian regions. It runs up the side of one street—down that of another—cuts a third in two—swallows up a fourth in toto—and then scatters itself into squares, courts, platzes, galleries, museums, &c. from which a stranger would find no small difficulty in extricating himself, except by the aid of Ariadne’s clue, or a rope-yarn longer than any that was ever spun by a Greenwich pensioner. No wonder that their majesties take their annual departure from this gloomy abode most punctually on the first day of May, to enjoy the pure air and romantic prospects of Pillnitz and the Bastei.
The picture-galleries here have procured for Dresden the title of “the Florence of Germany.” I think the “Green Vaults,” and “Porcelain Manufactories,” entitle it to the additional appellations of “Royal Toy-shop of Saxony,” and “China-Warehouse of Europe.”
As good Protestants we first went to the cathedral—but as service was over we climbed to the summit of the dome, and there we had a most complete panoramic view of Dresden and the surrounding country, renewing our acquaintance with our old friends Kœnigstein and Lilienstein, which stand proudly forth as gigantic guardians of an enchanted land. The dome of the cathedral is the first spot which a stranger should visit, as it is the only place which spreads everything before him, as on a map, and all in their just proportions and distances. The city of Dresden is by no means extensive, even when including the old and new town; but the surrounding and distant country presents scenery of great variety and beauty. The southern views take in Saxon Switzerland—the northern, the fertile plains and vales that stretch away towards Leipzig and Berlin. It is from this elevated position that the great field of battle between Napoleon and the allies (26th and 27th of August 1814) now smiles in peace and cultivation, instead of being bristled with cannon, and strewed with human sacrifices at the altar of Mars. The fortifications are now levelled to the ground, or converted into beautiful shaded walks, gardens, and groves, that lead out to meet a laughing landscape in every direction. One, and only one, melancholy object arrests the wandering eye of the delighted observer—the monument of Moreau, on the spot where he fell by the side of the Emperor Alexander. A plain free-stone block commemorates at once, the death of the “hero Moreau,” and the last victory of Napoleon! From that moment, the star of this “child of destiny” began to fade in lustre, and descend from its meridian. The battle of Culm and the disastrous defeat at Leipzig completed the liberation of Germany; whilst the struggles in France and Belgium afterwards, were only the pangs of a dying giant!
It appeared that Fortune had, in Napoleon’s case, determined to wipe the stain of fickleness from her character; but that she became exhausted by, or, almost ashamed of, pouring incessant favours on a man, whose talents were as brilliant as his ambition was boundless; and whose philanthropy was so weak that the blood of the whole human race would scarcely have satiated his thirst of power, while the faintest hope of attaining or retaining it remained!—a man without moderation in prosperity, magnanimity in adversity, fidelity in matrimony, philosophy in exile, or religion in death.[88] He expired in the crater of an extinct volcano—a suitable sepulchre for one who had grown up amid revolution, storms, political earthquakes, and the thunders of war. His ashes, which reposed in peace during twenty years, have been exhumed from the grave, and cast like a fire-brand upon a huge pile of the most inflammable and destructive combustibles that were ever amassed for the explosion of another moral volcano!