In the neighborhood of Schleswig are great saline ponds, communicating with the sea. I paced the high-road, remarking the play of light upon this grayish water, and the surface crisped by the wind; occasionally I extended my walk as far as the chateau metamorphosed into a barrack, and the public gardens, a miniature St. Cloud, with its cascade, its dolphins, and its other aquatic monsters all standing idle. A very good sinecure is that of a Triton in a Louis Quinze basin! I should ask nothing better myself.
From "A Winter in Russia." By arrangement with, and by permission of, the publishers, Henry Holt & Co. Copyright, 1874.
[LÜBECK] [[A]]
BY THÉOPHILE GAUTIER
In the evening the train carried me to Lübeck, across magnificent cultivated lands, filled with summer-houses, which lave their feet in the brown water, overhung by spreading willows. This German Venice has its canal, the Brenta, whose villas, tho not built by Sanmichele or Palladio, none the less make a fine show against the fresh green of their surroundings.
On arriving at Lübeck, a special omnibus received me and my luggage, and I was soon set down at the hotel. The city seemed picturesque as I caught a glimpse of it through the darkness by the vague light of lanterns; and in the morning, as I opened my chamber-window, I perceived at once I had not been mistaken.
The opposite house had a truly German aspect. It was extremely high and overtopped by an old-fashioned denticulated gable. At each one of the seven stories of the house, iron cross-bars spread themselves out into clusters of iron-work, supporting the building, and serving at once for use and ornament, in accordance with an excellent principle in architecture, at the present day too much neglected. It is not by concealing the framework, but by making it distinct, that we obtain more character.
This house was not the only one of its kind, as I was able to convince myself on walking a few steps out of doors. The actual Lübeck is still to the eye the Lübeck of the Middle Ages, the old capital of the Hanseatic League.[[B]] All the drama of modern life is enacted in the old theater whose scenery remains the same, its drop-scene even not repainted. What a pleasure it is to be walking thus amid the outward life of the past, and to contemplate the same dwellings which long-vanished generations have inhabited! Without doubt, the living man has a right to model his shell in accordance with his own habits, his tastes, and his manners; but it can not be denied that a new city is far less attractive than an old one.