I took some pains to inquire what possible objection there could be to the poor people collecting a few dead leaves, or the rank wild grass which grows here and there all over the forest, and I was told that both of these by rotting are supposed to manure the trees, yet, as I have already stated, quantities of the largest timber are to be seen decaying in every direction.
In a crowded, populous country, all descriptions of property must be clearly distinguished and most sternly protected; but in a state of nature, or in districts so nearly approaching to it as many parts of Nassau, the same rule is not applicable—the same necessity does not exist; and under such circumstances, the punishment inflicted upon a child for tearing up wild grass with his hands most certainly is (and who can deny it?) greater than the offence.
It is with no hostile or bad feeling towards the Duke of Nassau that I mention these details: he is a personage much beloved in his duchy, and I believe with great reason is he respected there; yet his forest laws no one surely can admire; and though custom certainly has sanctioned them,—though the humble voice of those who have suffered under them has hitherto been too feeble to reach his ears,—and though those about his court and person are but little disposed to awaken his attention to such mean complaints,—yet no one can calmly see and foresee the state of political feeling in Germany without admitting that the most humble traveller (and why not an English one?) may render the Duke of Nassau a friendly service, by bringing into daylight, unveiled by flattery, an act of oppression in his government, which, while it has most probably escaped his attention, is seditiously hoarded up by his political enemies to form part of that fulcrum which they are secretly working at, in order to effect by it, if possible, his downfall. A grievance, like a wound, often only requires to be laid open to be cured; whereas if, deeply seated, it be concealed from view, like gunpowder imbedded in a rock, when once the spark does reach it, it explodes with a violence proportionate to the power which would vainly have attempted to smother it in the earth.
[NIEDER-SELTERS.]
Having in various countries drunk so much and heard so much of the celebrated refreshing Selters or Selzer water, I determined one lovely morning to exchange the pleasure of rambling about the woods of Schlangenbad for the self-imposed duty of visiting the brunnen of Nieder-Selters: accordingly, I managed to procure a carriage, and with three post-horses away I trotted, sitting as upright and as full of exuberant enjoyment as our great departed lexicographer in his hack chaise. The macadamized road on which I travelled, with the sight of men and boys sitting by its side, spitefully cracking with slight hammers little stones upon flat big ones, might easily have reminded me of old England; but five women, each carrying on her head sixteen large stone bottles of Schlangenbad water to wash the faces of the ladies of Schwalbach—the dress of three peasants with long pipes in their mouths—a little cart drawn by two cows—the Prince of Saxe Cobourg in a rough carriage pulled by horses without blinkers and in rope harness—an immense mastiff, driving before him to be slaughtered a calf not a week old, and scarcely as high as himself—all these trifling incidents, combined with the magnificent outline of wooded hills which towered above the road, constantly reminded me that I was still under the political roof and in the dominions of “The Duke.”
On arriving at Schwalbach, I learned that the remainder of the journey, which was to occupy six hours, was to be performed on roads which, in the English language, are termed so very properly “cross.” Accordingly, passing under the great barren hill appropriated to the Schwein-General of Langen-Schwalbach, we followed for some time the course of a green grassy valley, the herbage of which had just been cut for the second time; and then getting into a country much afflicted with hills, the horses were either straining to ascend them, or suffering equally severely in the descent. In many places the road was hardly as broad as the carriage, and as there was generally a precipice on one side, I might occasionally have felt a little nervous, had it not been for sundry jolts, happily just violent enough to prevent the mind thinking of anything else.
Passing the Eisenhammer, a water-mill lifting an immense hammer, which forges iron by its fall (a lion which the water-drinkers of Schwalbach generally visit), I proceeded through the village of Neuhof to Würges, where we changed horses and, what was still more important, bartered an old postilion for a young one. For a considerable time our road ascended, passing through woods and park-like plantations belonging to the Duke of Nassau’s hunting-seat “Die Platte;” at last we broke away from these coverts which had environed us, traversing a vast undulating unenclosed country, furrowed by ravines and deep valleys, many of which we descended and ascended. The principal crops were potatoes, barley, oats, rye, and wheat,—the three former being perfectly green, the two latter completely ripe; and as it happened, from some reason or other, that these sets of crops were generally sown on the same sort of land, it constantly occurred that the entire produce of some hills wore the green dress of spring, while other eminences were as wholly clothed in the rich dusky garments of autumn. The harvest, however, not having commenced, and the villages being, generally speaking, hidden in the ravines, the crops often seemed to be without owners. Descending, however, into valleys, we occasionally passed through several very large villages, which were generally paved, or rather studded with paving-stones; and as the carriage-wheels hopped from one to another, the sensation (being still too fresh in my memory) I had rather decline to describe: suffice it to say, that the painful excitation vividly expressed in my countenance must have formed an odd contrast with the dull, heavy, half-asleep faces, which, as if raised from the grave by the rattling of my springs as well as joints, just showed themselves at the windows, as if to scare me as I passed. From poverty, their thin mountain air and meagre food, the inhabitants of all these villages looked dreadfully wan, and really there was a want of animation among the young people, as well as the old, which it was quite distressing to witness; the streets seemed nearly deserted, while the mud houses, with their unpainted windows, appeared to be as dry and cheerless as their inmates; here and there were to be seen children, with hair resembling in colour and disorder a bunch of flax—but no youthful merriment, no playfulness—in short, they were evidently sapless chips off the old wooden blocks which were still gaping at me from the window-frames.
At one of these solemn villages the postilion stopped at a “gasthaus” to bait his horses. Odd as it may sound, it is nevertheless true, that German post-horses have seldom what we should term bridles. Snaffle-bits, ending with Ts instead of rings, being put into their mouths, are hooked (by these Ts) to iron billets in the head-pieces of common stable-halters, by which arrangement, to feed the animals, it is only necessary, without taking them from the carriage, to unhook one end of the bits, which immediately fall from their mouths; a slight trough, on four legs, is then placed before them, and the traveller generally continues, as I did, to sit in his carriage watching the horses voraciously eating up slices of black rye bread.
In England, there is no surer recipe known for making a pair of horses suddenly run away with one’s carriage, than by taking off their blinkers to allow them to see it; but though our method decidedly suits us the best, yet in Germany the whole system of managing horses from beginning to end is completely different from ours. Whether there is most of the horse in a German, or of the German in a horse, is a nice point on which people might argue a great deal; but the broad fact really is, that Germans live on more amicable terms with their horses, and understand their dispositions infinitely better, than the English: in short, they treat them as horses, while we act towards them, and drill them, as if they were men; and in case any one should doubt that Germans are better horsemasters than we are, I beg to remind them of what is perfectly well known to the British army—namely, that in the Peninsular war the cavalry horses of the German legion were absolutely fat, while those of our regiments were skin and bone.