Yes! The roulette and the waltz are the veritable “normal schools of agitation” for the sons and daughters of the nobility and gentry of the—happy, pious, and Protestant England!
WILDBAD,
OR THE ELYSIAN FOUNTAIN OF THE BLACK FOREST.
The glowing description of this mineral spring, and the all but magical effects of its baths on the human frame, as given by Dr. Granville, have led hundreds of additional visitors to the sequestered valley of the Enz—some in quest of health, but many to satisfy curiosity, and test the picture which has been drawn in such flattering colours by the talented author of the “Spas of Germany.” The difficulties, however, which Dr. Granville experienced in his journey from Baden-Baden to Wildbad, must have deterred a great number of spa-tourists from visiting the Elysian fountain of the Black Forest. The journey occupied thirty hours, including one whole night on the road. We accomplished it in eight hours, by an excellent road, with the same pair of horses, and with ample leisure to lunch and rest midway. This route lies through some of the most beautiful, picturesque, and romantic scenery on the Continent. It is only thirty English miles, six or seven of which Dr. Granville pursued, when by some strange intelligence or mistake, he turned to the right, at Guernsbach, and went wrong all the rest of the way.
Sick of the frivolities and dissipations of Baden-Baden, we started at eight o’clock in the morning for Wildbad; and, wending our course up a steep acclivity, everywhere covered with pines, we passed the Mercurius Berg, with its altar dedicated to the god of thieves—
“Calidum quicquid placuit jocoso
condere furto”—
just as the Romans had left it, together with the frowning ruins of Eberstein, where thievery rose to the rank of robbery, and was christened under the high-sounding title of Feudalism! The higher we ascended, the denser became the woods, and the darker the road. There is something peculiarly sombre and solemn in the pineries of the Schwartswald, through many parts of which I had formerly journeyed. The vast extent of the forest, the great number and altitude of the hills and mountains, the gigantic growth and height of the trees, the darkness of the foliage, and the intensity of the silence, occasionally augmented rather than broken by the distant and scarcely audible stroke of the woodman’s axe, all combine to form a scene of solitude well adapted for contemplation and reflection.
After an hour’s labour, we gained an open space, when the eye has an opportunity of ranging over a sea of peaks and mountains to the South and East, all clothed in the dark green livery of the pine to their utmost summits. To the North and West the prospect was nearly as unlimited as from the Alte-Schloss, from Radstad and the Rhine up the valley of the Mourg to Guernsbach, which seemed like a white speck on the river at a prodigious depth below us. Down to this little town we cautiously slid, with drags on the wheels, winding in serpentine courses, often along the brinks of dangerous ravines, but every little vale or valley cultivated till the forest forbad the plough, the spade, and the scythe. The little town of Guernsbach, built on both sides of the Mourg, with a good bridge across, contains nearly two thousand inhabitants—almost all of whom live by the produce of the mountains, and a good number of the poorer classes in the woods themselves. Here the raftlets and rafts are seen descending to the Rhine, afterwards to aggregate into flotillas carrying hundreds of rowers, steerers, and navigators,—and conveying the Black Forest into the flats of Holland. But a little farther on, I shall take more notice of this immense traffic and source of wealth. The Castle of Eberstein and the church crown the heights over the town. Here Dr. Granville, instead of crossing the bridge, turned up along the banks of the Mourg, and had to go all the way to Stuttgardt, on his way to Wildbad.
From Guernsbach we ascended another lofty mountain to the romantic village of Laffenau. The prospect of the valley of the Mourg, with Guernsbach on its banks, and a sea of pine-clad heights in every direction, is most beautiful. Near Laffenau we have the “Teufels Muhle,” or Devil’s Mill, with its legendary tale—briefly as follows:—