To any one who has been living in secluded retirement, even for a short time, a visit to a populous city is a dram, causing an excitement of the mind, too often mistaken for its refreshment. Accordingly, on my arrival at Mainz, I must own, for a few minutes, I was gratified with every human being or animal that I met—at all the articles displayed in the shops—and for some time, in mental delirium, I revelled in the bustling scene before me. However, having business of some little importance to transact, I had occasion, more than once, to walk from one part of the town to another, until getting leg-weary, I began to feel that I was not suited to the scene before me; in short, that the crutches made by Nature for declining life, are quietness and retirement; I, therefore, longed to leave the sun-shiny scene before me, and to ascend once again to the clouds of Schlangenbad, from which I had so lately fallen.
With this object I had mounted my pony, who, much less sentimental than myself, would probably most willingly have expended the remainder of his existence in a city which, in less than three hours, had miraculously poured into his manger three feeds of heavy oats, and I was actually on the bridge of boats which crosses the Rhine, when, finding that the saddle was pressing upon his withers, I inquired where I could purchase any sort of substance to place between them, and being directed to a tailor celebrated for supplying all the government postilions with leather breaches, I soon succeeded in reaching a door, which corresponded with the street and number that had been given to me; however, on entering, I found nothing but a well staircase, pitch dark, with a rope instead of a hand rail.
At every landing-place, inquiring for the artist I was seeking, I was always told to go up higher; at last, when I reached the uppermost stratum of the building, I entered a room which seemed to be made of yellow leather, for on two sides buckskins were piled up to the ceiling; leather breeches, trowsers, drawers, gloves, &c., were hanging on the other walls, while the great table in the middle of the room was covered with skinny fragments of all shapes and sizes. In this new world which I had discovered, the only inhabitants consisted of a master and his son. The former was a mild tall man of about fifty, but a human being so very thin, I think, I never before beheld! He wore neither coat, waistcoat, neckcloth, nor shirt, but merely an elastic worsted dress (in fact, a Guernsey frock), which fitted him like his skin, the rest of his lean figure being concealed by a large, loose, coarse linen apron. The son, who was about twenty-two, was not bad looking, but “talis pater, talis filius,” he was just as thin as his father, and really, though I was anxious hastily to explain what I wanted, yet my eyes could not help wandering from father to son, and from son to father, perfectly unable to determine which was the thinnest; for though one does not expect to find very much power of body or mind among tailors of any country (nor indeed do they require it), yet really this pair of them seemed as if they had not strength enough united to make a pair of knee breeches for a skeleton.
Having gravely explained the simple object of my visit, I managed to grope my way down and round, and round and down, the well staircase, stopping only occasionally to feel my way, and to reflect with several degrees of pity on the poor thin beings I had left above me; and even when I got down to my pony (he had been waiting for me very patiently), I am sure we trotted nearly a couple of hundred yards before I could shake off the wan, spectre-like appearance of the old man, or the weak, slight, hectic-looking figure of the young one; and I finished by sentimentally settling in my own mind that the father was consumptive—that the son was a chip from the same block—and that they were both galloping, neck and neck, from their breeches-board to their graves, as hard as they could go.
These reflections were scarcely a quarter of a mile long, when I discovered that I had left my memorandum-book behind me, and so, instantly returning, I groped my way to the top of the identical staircase I had so lately descended. I was there told that the old gentleman and his son were at dinner, but, determining not to lose my notes, in I went—and I cannot describe one-hundredth part of the feelings which came over me, when I saw the two creatures upon whom I had wasted so much pity and fine sentiment, for there they sat before me on their shop-board, with an immense wash-hand basin, that had been full of common blue Orleans plums, which they were still munching with extraordinary avidity. A very small piece of bread was in each of their left hands, but the immense number of plum-stones on both sides of them betrayed the voracity with which they had been proceeding with their meal.
“Thin!—no wonder you are thin!” I muttered to myself; “no wonder that your chests and back bones seem to touch each other!”
Never before had I, among rational beings, witnessed such a repast, and it really seemed as if nothing could interrupt it, for all the time I was asking for what I wanted, both father and son were silently devouring these infernal plums; however, after remounting my pony, I could not help admitting that the picture was not without its tiny moral. Two German tailors had been cheerfully eating a vegetable dinner—so does the Italian who lives on macaroni;—so does the Irish labourer who lives on potatoes;—so do the French peasants who eat little but bread;—so do the millions who subsist in India on rice—in Africa on dates—in the South-Sea Islands and West Indies on the bread-tree and on yams; in fact, only a very small proportion of the inhabitants of this globe are carnivorous: yet, in England, we are so accustomed to the gouty luxury of meat, that it is now almost looked upon as a necessity; and though our poor, we must all confess, generally speaking, are religiously patient, yet so soon as the middle classes are driven from animal to vegetable diet, they carnivorously both believe and argue that they are in the world remarkable objects of distress—that their country is in distress—that “things cannot last;”—in short, pointing to an artificial scale of luxury, which they themselves have hung up in their own minds, or rather in their stomachs, they persist that vegetable diet is low diet—that being without roast beef is living below zero, and that molars, or teeth for grinding the roots and fruits of the earth, must have been given to mankind in general, and to the English nation in particular—by mistake.
After re-crossing the Rhine by the bridge of boats, the sun being oppressively hot, I joyfully bade adieu to the sultry dry city and garrison of Mainz. As I gradually ascended towards my home, I found the air becoming cooler and fresher, the herbage greener, and greener, the foliage of the beech-trees brighter and cleaner; everything in the valley seemed in peaceful silence to be welcoming my return; and when I came actually in sight of the hermitage of Schlangenbad, I could not help muttering to myself, “Hard features—hard life—lean pigs, and lovely nature, for ever!”