[THE OLD PROTESTANT CHURCH.]
The old Protestant Church, at the lower extremity of Langen-Schwalbach, has not been preached in for about three years; and being locked up, I had to call for admission at a house in the centre of the town. The man was not at home, but his wife (very busily employed in dressing, against its will, a squalling infant) pointed to the key, which I gravely took from a nail over her head. This venerable building stands, or rather totters, on a small eminence close to the road—long rents in its walls, and the ruinous, decayed state of the mortar, sufficiently denoting its great antiquity. The roof and spire are still covered with slates, which seem fluttering as if about to take their departure. The churchyard continues in the valley to be the only Christian receptacle for the dead; and within its narrow limits, Catholics, Lutherans, and Calvinists end their worldly differences by soundly sleeping together, side by side. Here and there a tree is seen standing at the head of a Protestant’s grave; but though the twig was exclusively planted there, yet its branches, like knowledge, have gradually extended themselves, until they now wave and droop alike over those who, thus joined in death, had, nevertheless, lived in paltry opposition to each other. The rank grass also grows with equal luxuriance over all, as if the turf, like the trees, was anxious to level all human animosities, and to become the winding-sheet or covering of Christian fraternities which ought never to have disputed.
In various parts of the cemetery I observed several worn-out, wooden, triangular monuments on the totter; while others were lying prostrate on the grass—the “hic jacet” being exactly as applicable to each of themselves as to that departed being, whose life and death they had vainly presumed to commemorate. Although the inscriptions recorded by these frail historians were scarcely legible, yet roses and annual flowers, blooming on the grave, plainly showed that there was still in existence some friendly hand, some foot, some heart, that moved with kindly recollection towards the dead. Upon several recent graves of children there were placed, instead of tombstones, the wreaths of artificial flowers, which, during their funeral, had either rested upon the coffin, or had been carried in the hands of parents and friends. The sun and rain—the wind and storm—had blanched the artificial bloom from the red roses, and, of course, had sullied the purity of the white ones; yet this worthless finery, lying upon the newly-moved earth, had probably witnessed unaffected feelings, to which the cold, white marble monument is often a stranger. The little heap of perishable wreaths, so lightly piled one upon the other, was the act, the tribute, the effusion of the moment; it was all the mother had had to record her feelings; it was what she had left behind her, as she tore herself away; and though it could not, I own, be compared to a monument sculptured by an artist, yet, resting above the coffin, it had one intrinsic value, at least—it had been left there by a friend!
At one corner of the churchyard, there was a grave which was only just completed. The living labourer had retired from it; the dead tenant had not yet arrived; but the moment I looked into it, I could not help feeling how any one of our body-snatchers would have rubbed his rough hands, and what rude raptures he would have enjoyed, at observing that the lid of the coffin would be deposited scarcely a foot and a half below the sod. However, in the little duchy of Nassau, human corpses have not yet become coin current in the realm; and whatever may be a man’s troubles during his life, at Langen-Schwalbach he may truly say he will, at least, find rest in the grave.
I know it is very wrong—I know that one is always blamed for bringing before the mind of wealthy people any truth which is at all disagreeable to them; yet on the brink of this grave I could not help feeling how very much one ought to detest the polite Paris and London fashion of smartening up us old people with the teeth and hair of the dead? It always seems to me so unfair, for us who have had our day—who have ourselves been young—to attempt, when we grow old, to deprive the rising generation of the advantage of that contrast which so naturally enhances their beauties. The spring of life, to be justly appreciated and admired, requires to be compared with the snow and storms of winter, and if by chicanery you hide the latter, the sunshine of the former loses a great portion of its beauty. In naked, savage life, there exists no picture on which I have so repeatedly gazed with calm pleasure, as that of the daughter supporting the trembling, dilapidated fabric of the being to whom she owes her birth; indeed, it is as impossible for man to withhold the respect and pity which is due to age whenever it be seen labouring under its real infirmities, as it is for him to contain his admiration of the natural loveliness of youth. The parent and child, thus contrasted, render to each other services of which both appear to be insensible; for the mother does not seem aware how the shattered outlines of her faded frame heighten the robust, blooming beauties of her child, who, in her turn, seems equally unconscious how beautifully and eloquently her figure explains and pleads for the helpless decrepitude of age! In the Babel confusion of our fashionable world, this beautifully arranged contrast of nature, the effect of which no one who has ever seen it can forget, does not exist. Before the hair has grown really grey—before time has imparted to it even its autumnal tint, it is artfully replaced by dark flowing locks, obtained by every revolting contrivance. The grave itself is attacked—our living dowagers of the present day do not hesitate to borrow their youthful ornaments even from the dead—and to such a horrid extreme has fashion encouraged this unnatural propensity, that even the carcase of the soldier, who has fallen in a foreign land, and who,
“—————leaving in battle no blot on his name,
Looks proudly to heaven from the death-bed of fame,”
has not been respected!
One would think that the ribands and honours on his breast, flapping in the wind, would have scared even the vulture from such prey; but no! the orders which the London dentist has received must, he pleads, be punctually executed; and it is a revolting fact, but too well known to “the trade,” that many, and many, and many a set of teeth which bit the dust of Waterloo, by an untimely resurrection, appeared again on earth, smiling lasciviously at Almack’s ball! So much for what is termed fashion.
After rambling about the churchyard for some minutes, occasionally spelling at an inscription, and sometimes looking at (not picking) a sepulchral flower, I walked to the church-door, and turning round its old-fashioned key, which ever since I had received it had been dangling in my hand, the lock started back, and then, as if I had said “Open Sesame!” the door opened.
On looking before me, my first impression was that my head was swimming! for the old gallery, hanging like the gardens of Babylon, seemed to be writhing; the four-and-twenty pews were leaning sideways; the aisle, or approach to the altar, covered with heaps of rubbish, was an undulating line, and an immense sepulchral flag-stone had actually been lifted up at one side, as if the corpse, finding the church deserted, had resolutely burst from his grave, and had wrenched himself once again into daylight. The pulpit was out of its perpendicular; some pictures, loosely hanging against the wall, had turned away their faces; and a couple of planks were resting diagonally against the altar, as if they had fallen from the roof. I really rubbed my eyes, fancying that they were disordered; however, the confusion I witnessed was real, and as nearly as possible as I have described it. Still, however, there was no dampness in the church, and it was, I thought, a remarkable proof of the dryness of the light mountain air of Langen-Schwalbach, that the sepulchral wreaths of artificial flowers which were hanging around on the walls were as starched and stiff as on the day they were placed there.