SCHWALBACH.
The wizzard of Nassau—the knight of the “Bubbles,” has wrought a real modern miracle—the transmutation of water into wine, or rather into nectar.
“The conscious Brunnens saw their god and blushed.”
Every spring in the Duchy has danced more merrily, and bubbled more briskly to the beams of the rising sun, since the children of Albion have swarmed round the living fountains, in search of health or amusement. Well may Dr. Fenner say—“cette reputation est due surtout aux Anglais. La plume caustique de Head a puissament contribué à nous faire-faire une connaissance plus intime avec cette nation.” The pen of Sir Francis may be likened to the bath of Schlangenbad—
“Nullum tetigit quod non ornavit.”
By “ornavit” I do not mean the embellishment which is sometimes synonymous with exaggerations or distortions; but merely that charm which the pen of genius can throw round the most common subjects. Schwalbach is still as it was, in a deep narrow valley—and invisible till we are within a few hundred yards of it. The houses, though more generally painted, and greatly increased in number since the time of the “Old Man,” are still as though they had been shaken in a bag and scattered through the ravine, without the slightest regard to order or regularity. Sir Francis could find no shops in his time—now he would find a bazaar! The town is still somewhat in the form of a Y or a fork, at the end of one prong of which is the Stahl-brunnen—while the other prong, or rather prongs, boasts of two hygeian fountains—the Wein-brunnen and the Paulinen-brunnen. The Wein-brunnen is the most powerful—the Stahl-brunnen is the most palatable—and the Pauline is the most fashionable. The climate of this place, according to the testimony of Dr. Fenner, supported by that of Sir F. Head and others, is very pleasant and salubrious. On the hills we have cool breezes—in the valley shelter from cold winds—in the woods, ample shade beneath umbrageous foliage, when the sun is powerful and the heat oppressive.
When the “bad humours” of the spa-going invalids have been washed away by copious libations at Aix-la-Chapelle, Ems, and Wisbaden—when the gouty and misshapen limbs have shrunk into “the lean and slippered pantaloon,” beneath the powerful influence of the Kochbrunnen, the Ragoczy, and the Sprudel—when the purple nose of the alderman has faded into the pale proboscis—when the turgid liver, the tumid spleen, and the over-fed corporation have receded within the normal boundaries of a double-reefed waistcoat—when the knotty and contracted joints of rheumatic gout have taken their departure, leaving a legacy of the crutches—when—
“Wrapp’d in his robe, white Lepra hides his stains,
Robb’d of his strength, but unsubdued his pains”—