But is there no drawback on this scene of sunshine? Do all experience the invigorating influence of returning health? No. Not one half! Do the hypochondriacs who resort to Wisbaden in shoals, throw off their load of mental despondency and bodily infirmities? Let Dr. Granville, who is not inclined to depreciate spas in general—and “Spas of Germany” in particular, decide the question.
“What a dreadful picture of human wretchedness the hypochondriac at Wiesbaden presents! He is sombre, thoughtful, or absent, in the midst of a laughing world. For ever brooding over his fate, his disease absorbs the whole of his attention. He disdains even the most trifling conversation with his fellow-creatures, and flies from those ephemeral acquaintances which are so easily formed at watering-places, exactly because one cares little how soon after they are forgotten. In fact, he would feel himself alone in the world, and never concern himself about those around him, did he not envy their healthy looks, their firmer muscles, and their sounder stomachs, which can sustain an indigestion with impunity!”
There are a great many others, besides hypochondriacs, who are destined to feel the melancholy effects of blighted hopes in these last resorts of suffering—and who turn their weary steps homewards, without the cheering expectations that gilded their journey to a foreign land!
But is there no risk of receiving, in exchange for dear-bought health, a moral contagion that poisons the springs of life, and saps the foundation of every virtue? Beneath the gilded domes of that splendid mansion—that palace of Plutus—that Cursaal, or Curst Hell—the dæmons of play exhibit their piles of glittering ore—those “irritamenta malorum—
“From night till morn, from morn till dewy eve,”
familiarizing the uninitiated eye to scenes of desperate speculation—imbuing the soul with the wicked thirst of gold unjustly acquired—of plunder, without fear of punishment—of robbery, without danger of the gallows! The atmosphere of this Pandemonium—for the devils are in legions here—is too infectious to be long resisted. The open manner in which the vice is practised by day, and by night—in the presence of multitudes of all ages, nations, and both sexes—on the sabbath of the Lord, as well as on the day of work—this legalization, not merely permission of a violation of morality, religion, and social order, which, in England, must skulk in holes and corners—the kind of social heroism with which the most destructive vicissitudes of fortune are borne by some of the hardened haunters of these splendid hells—these and various other circumstances combine to mask the hideous mien of the monster, and strip the crime itself of half its horrors, till, by daily presentation, it becomes at length endurable without terror, and embraced without remorse! The neophyte has no sooner wound up his courage to the staking of his piece of gold, than the spell of security is broken—the charm of serenity is dissolved—the flood-gate of the passions is thrown open—the “auri sacra fames” takes possession of the soul—and the dæmon of the night enrols one more name on the list of his victims!
The Spartan practice of exhibiting the drunken slave to disgust the rising generation with the vice of inebriety, was a doubtful experiment at best—but, in the present case, there can be no doubt at all as to its inapplicability. There is always seen a certain proportion of the fair sex round the gambling-tables—many of them playing with quite as much desperation as the men. It is melancholy to state that, we too often see delicate English females squeezing in between parded Jew and whiskered German, to stake their gold or silver on the gyrations of a ball or the colour of a card!
Here is an excellent normal school, where the wives, and daughters, and sons of our nobility and gentry can learn the rudiments—“and something more”—of heartless vice and headlong dissipation, without reference to sectarian creed, theological faith, or national religion;—while the children of the Protestant peasant and mechanic would be contaminated by the presence of Catholic or Dissenter in the same grammar-school, when acquiring the rudiments of reading and writing! If this be not “straining at gnats and swallowing camels,” I know not what is!
And here I may glance at a curious species of one-sided morality strictly enforced by the late Duke of Nassau—the prohibition of gambling in the “curst-hells,” among his own subjects; while free permission is given to all foreigners to rob and plunder each other at roulette and rouge et noir, in the open day—Sundays and Saturdays! When I said free permission, I was wrong. The license to gamble is sold to the bankers of each Cursaal (curst hell) for a large sum—which goes into the ducal treasury. I puzzled my brains, for a long time, in the attempt to discover the principle of this law, and at length found it, as far off as China. The geographers of that country represent the Celestial Empire as occupying nearly the whole of the dry land of this globe—the various other countries of Europe, Asia, Africa, and America, being located as small islands dotted in the ocean, and inhabited by barbarians. Now it is clear that the late Duke considered his Duchy of Nassau as the Celestial Empire of Europe, the other nations, as Russia, Prussia, Austria, Italy, Spain, England, America, &c. being mere barbarians, whose morals were not worth preserving—whose souls were not worth saving—and whose gold alone was worth gathering into the royal exchequer at Biberich![16]