ALDA.
A woman and religion; the two best or worst things in the world, according as they are understood and felt, used and abused. You allude to Elizabeth of Bohemia, who was to Heidelberg what Helen was to Troy?
One of the most interesting monuments of Heidelberg, at least to an English traveller, is the elegant triumphal arch raised by the palatine Frederic V. in honour of his bride—this very Elizabeth Stuart. I well remember with what self-complacency and enthusiasm our Chef walked about in a heavy rain, examining, dwelling upon every trace of this celebrated and unhappy woman. She had been educated at his country-seat, and one of the avenues of his magnificent park yet bears her name. On her fell a double portion of the miseries of her fated family. She had the beauty and the wit, the gay spirits, the elegant tastes, the kindly disposition, of her grandmother, Mary of Scotland. Her very virtues as a wife and a woman, not less than her pride and feminine prejudices, ruined herself, her husband, and her people. When Frederick hesitated to accept the crown of Bohemia, his high-hearted wife exclaimed—"Let me rather eat dry bread at a king's table than feast at the board of an elector;" and it seemed as if some avenging demon hovered in the air, to take her literally at her word, for she and her family lived to eat dry bread—aye, and to beg it before they ate it; but she would be a queen. Blest as she was in love, in all good gifts of nature and fortune, in all means of happiness, a kingly crown was wanting to complete her felicity, and it was cemented to her brow with the blood of two millions of men. And who was to blame? Was not her mode of thinking the fashion of her time, the effect of her education? Who had
"Put in her tender heart the aspiring flame
Of golden sovereignty?"
For how many ages will you men exclaim against the mischiefs and miseries, caused by the influence of women; thus allowing the influence, yet taking no thought how to make that influence a means of good, instead of an instrument of evil!
Elizabeth had brought with her from England some luxurious tastes, as yet unknown in the palatinate; she had been familiarized with the dramas of Shakspeare and Fletcher, and she had figured in the masques of Ben Jonson. To gratify her, Frederic added to the castle of Heidelberg the theatre and banqueting-room, and all that beautiful group of buildings at the western angle, the ruins of which are still called the English palace. She had inherited from her grandmother, or had early imbibed from education, a love of nature and of amusements in the open air, and a passion for gardening; and it was to please her, and under her auspices, that Frederic planned those magnificent gardens, which were intended to unite within their bounds, all that nature could contribute or art devise; had they been completed, they would have rendered Heidelberg a pleasure-palace, fit for fairy-land. Nor were those designs unworthy of a prosperous and pacific sovereign, whose treasury was full, whose sway was just and mild, whose people had long enjoyed in tranquillity the fruits of their own industry. When I had the pleasure of spending a few days with the Schlossers, at their beautiful seat on the Necker, (Stift Neuburg,) I went over the ground with Madame de Schlosser, who had seen and studied the original plans. Her description of the magnitude and the sumptuous taste of these unfinished designs, while we stood together amid a wilderness of ruins, was a commentary on the vicissitudes of this world, worth fifty moral treatises, and as many sermons.
"For in the wreck of IS and WAS,
Things incomplete and purposes betray'd,
Make sadder transits o'er Truth's mystic glass,