LETTER X.
If the water in Lake George were turned to meadow, and its numberless tall islands left standing as hills, it would be very like the natural scenery from Liege to Aix la Chapelle. The railroad follows the meadow level, and pierces these little mountains so continually, that it has been compared to a needle passing through the length of a corkscrew. Liege was a scene of Quentin Durward, you will remember, and at present is the gunsmithery of Europe, but it graces the lovely scenery around it, as a blacksmith in his apron would grace a ball-room, and I was not tempted to see much more of it than lay in the bottom of a bowl of soup. No bones of Charles the Bold, promised in the guide-book, nor tusk nor armour of the “Wild Boar of Ardennes.” Scott was never here, and his descriptions of town and castle were, of course, imaginary.
A river is much more of an acquaintance than a mountain, and I never see one for the first time, without a mental salutation, especially if I have heard of it before. The Vesdre would scarce be called a river in our country, but it is a lovely little stream, that has seen a world of romance, what with love and war, and it runs visibly dark from the closeness of the hill-sides to it, and with a more musical ripple (if you please,) for the spirits that haunt it. We got but a glimpse of the Meuse, crossing it at Liege, but we tracked the Vesdre for some distance by railroad. Of course it quite knocks a novel on the head to be dragged through its scenes by a locomotive, and if you care much for Quentin Durward, you had better not railroad it, from Brussels to the Rhine.
We were stopped an hour to show our credentials on the frontier of Prussia, and here (at Aix la Chapelle) I had intended to make a day’s halt. It rained in torrents, however. I pulled out my guide-book, and balanced long between staying dry in the rail-cars, and going wet to see the wonders. Here are to be seen the swaddling-clothes of our Saviour, the robe of the Virgin Mary, the shroud of John the Baptist, some of the manna of the Israelites in the wilderness, a lock of the Virgin’s hair, and the leathern girdle of the Saviour. Here, also, is to be seen (with more certainty) the tomb of Charlemagne. The church towers, which cover these marvellous sights, loomed up through the shower, but my usual philosophy of “making the most of to-day” gave way for once. Promising myself to see the wonders of Aix on my return, I ordered my baggage into the cars, and rolled away through the rain, to the fragrant-named city of Cologne.
I got my first glimpse of the Rhine through the window of an omnibus. From so prosaic a look-out, I may be excused for remarking, (what I might not have done, perhaps, from the embrasure of a ruined castle,) that it was a very ordinary looking river, with low banks, and of about the breadth of the Susquehannah at Owego. A party of beer-drinkers, bearded and piped, sitting under a bower of dried branches in front of a tavern, were all that I could see at the moment that looked either picturesque or poetical. This was on the way from the rail-road station to the Hotel at Cologne. As it was the only view I had of the Rhine that does not compel admiration, I seize the opportunity to disparage it.
In doing the curiosities of Cologne with a guide and a party, I found nothing not thrice told in the many books. Fortunately for the traveller, things newly seen are quite as enjoyable, though ever so far gone beyond a new description. I relished exceedingly my ramble through the narrow streets, and over the beautiful cathedral, and I puckered my lips with due wonder at the sight of the bones of the “Eleven Thousand Virgins” in the Convent of St. Ursula. Alas, that, of any thing loveable, such relics may have been a part! There was no choice, I thought, between the skulls—yet there must have been differences of beauty in the flesh that covered them.
I was lucky enough to bring the moonlight and my eyes to bear on the cathedral at the same moment—the half-filled horn of the Queen of Stars pouring upon the fine old towers, a light of beautiful tenderness, while I strolled around them once more in the evening. The cathedral of Cologne looks, indeed, a lovely confusion. And quite as lovely, I fancy, to eyes that have no knowledge of how window and pinnacle put their Gothic legs, ultimately, to the ground. I believe in Gothic. I am sure, that is to say, that these interlaced points and angles have a harmony in which lies architectural strength; and with this unexamined creed in my mind, like capital in bank, I give to impressions of beauty, unlimited credit. This is sometimes the kind of trust with which we admire poetry. There is many a strain of Byron’s, learned by heart for the music that it floats with, the meaning alone of which would not have immortalized it for a nameless poet.
“The castled crag of Drachenfels,”
for example. The noble Cathedral of Cologne, however, like others in Germany, stands knee-deep in common houses stuck against the wall—a pitiful economy that makes more of a blot on their national taste than all the “cologne” of “Jean Maria Farina” will ever wash away. And, apropos, it was easier to forget the proper sovereign of Cologne than the great prince of essences, and I stepped into his shop in passing, and breathed for once without a doubt, the atmosphere of the genuine “Farina.” It was a great warehouse of perfume—boxes and baskets piled up in pyramids of sweetness—the sight of so much, however, most effectually overpowering my desire for the single bottle. Luxuries, to be valuable in this world of small parcels, should be guardedly shown to the enjoyer.
After a little pondering upon the Rhine while sitting on one of the stone posts of the wharf, I started for a moonlight ramble through the streets. I felt somewhat lonely at that moment—in a city of 80,000 inhabitants without a soul to speak to—but I feel, now, as if there was a link of music between me and an unknown player at Cologne, for I stood under a window and listened to what seemed an improvisation upon the piano, but done by a hand that sought nothing from the instrument but melody in tune with sadness. Commonly, in listening long to music, one has to suspend his heart at intervals, and wait for a return to the chord from which the player has wandered; but in the varied and continuous harmonies of this unseen hand, there was no note or transition for which my mood was not instinctively ready. It was evidently a performer whose fingers syllabled his thoughts in music, and one, too, who had no listener but myself. The street was still, and all around seemed to be buried in sleep, not a light to be seen, except through the crack of the shutters which concealed the musician. A few minutes after twelve the sounds ceased and the light departed, but the music was apt and sweet enough to be remembered as an angel’s ministration.