Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 75, No. 463, May, 1854

by Various

But as the quick thoughts course through our mind, we rush as quickly along towards Dusseldorf. We have now left the country of hedgerows of timber and of visible fences, and divisions of the land. Open, flat, and rich, it stretches inward from the Rhine, often light, and sometimes sandy or gravelly; all cultivated on the flat, all neat and clean, but naked, at this season, both of animal and vegetable life. A few sheep sprinkled over one field, and a rare man or woman trudging along beside deep ditches, were the only symptoms of moving life we saw between Cologne and Dusseldorf; while pollard trees here and there, and long rows of unpollarded poplars by the highway-sides, where a village was near, as tamely represented the vegetable ornaments which beautify an English landscape.

Following the Rhine for twenty miles farther, the line turns to the right, and we pass through the coal district which supplies the soft coke by which the locomotives are fed, and the dirty-looking coal to which the neighbouring region owes so much of its industrial prosperity. Iron furnaces, coal-pits, and chemical manufactories, remind us, as we pass Oberhausen, of the denser peopled and more smoke-blackened coal-fields of northern and western England, while all the appointments we see around them speak of an economy in management somewhat different from our own. No heaps of waste and burning coal indicate the approach to a colliery, nor columns of black smoke vomiting waste fuel into the tainted air, nor wheels and ropes rattling and busily revolving in the open day, nor troops of blackened men and boys lifting their heads to gaze, as the train skims swiftly by. Fine buildings cover in and conceal the openings to the pits with all their gear; and it is not quite obvious whether climate and profit compel this system, or whether it is the general habits of the people which thus manifest themselves. Cattle are kept under cover nearly all the year through; thoughts are very much kept under cover, even in so-called constitutional Prussia and Hanover; and the operations of the coal-pit may be boxed in and hidden from the vulgar gaze, merely as the consequence of a precautionary habit.

Dordmund, with its fortifications, and its associations with the famous “Vehm-gericht,” stands in the middle of this coal-field. Several borings in progress on the flats of black land, which stretch away from its old walls, exhibited the living influence of railway communication in changing the surface even of old countries, in opening up long-neglected resources, and in imparting new energy to half-dormant populations. Through the fertile Hellweg we sped along, leaving Dordmund behind us, and through the region of Westphalian hams, till the dark wet night overtook us. But, easy and comfortable in our luxurious carriages, we only quitted the train at Hanover that we might spend a morning in a city with which England has had so many relations.

From the moment the Englishman enters a Continental railway carriage, and especially if he is proceeding into Germany, two things strike him: First, the extreme luxury, roominess, and comfort of the carriages; and, second, the universal propensity to the use of tobacco. The second-class carriages are generally fully equal in their fitting and provisions for ease to our British first-class, while the German first-class carriages surprise us by the numerous little thoughtful appliances they exhibit to the wants and fancies of their temporary occupants. This seems rather a contradiction to an Englishman, who flatters himself that the word comfort is indigenous to his own country, and who actually sees, go where he will, that in its domestic arrangements an English house and houshold is the most comfortable in the world. This discordance between the practice of home and foreign countries, is probably to be traced to the difference of general habits and tendencies. To an Englishman, home is the place which is dearer than any other. In it he spends his time chiefly. He makes his home, therefore, and likes to see it made, the most comfortable place of all. To him a public conveyance or a public place of resort is no permanent temptation. He comes back always the happier, and he counts generally how soon he may get back again to his home. But on the Continent it is generally different. Home has few comforts or attractions, chiefly because habit has led to the custom of dining, of supping, of sipping coffee and punch, of drinking wine, and of smoking, in public. The public places of resort are made comfortable and luxurious to invite these visits. People look for and provide more comfort abroad than at home; and thus into their railway carriages, which, like other public places, are really smoking-shops, they carry the luxurious appliances which they deny themselves at home.

In Germany there is thus an excuse for travelling in second-class carriages, because of their excellence, which we do not possess in England. This custom, in consequence, is very general, not only among natives, but among foreigners also. “On the Continent,” says Professor Silliman, in a book of travels he has lately published, “and particularly in Germany, we have generally taken the second-class carriages. They are in all respects desirable, and few persons, except the nobility, travel in those of the first class, which appear to possess no advantage except the aristocratic one of partial exclusion of other classes by the higher price.” There is, perhaps, a little advantage in point of comfort; but the second-class carriages are certainly in this respect quite equal to the average of the railway cars in the United States. As to our second-class carriages in England, they are, adds Professor Silliman, “made very uncomfortable. They have no cushions, but simply naked board seats. The backs are high and perpendicular.” But in these arrangements the learned Professor was not aware that our railway directors patriotically study the conservation of our domestic habits. Were the carriages made too comfortable, people might prefer them to their own easy-chairs and sofas at home, and thus might be tempted to frequent them too much and too often for the general good. As to ourselves, we have always taken first-class tickets in our German tour, chiefly because in this way we could, in most cases, secure to ourselves a carriage in which we could avoid, for our lungs and our clothes, the contamination of the perpetual tobacco. In West Prussia, it is true, we were told that nobody but “prinzen und narren” (princes and fools) travelled first class; but even with the risk of such nicknames we continued our plan.

“On ne fume pas ici,” you see stuck up on a rare Belgian carriage in a long train; and in Prussia a ticket with the words, “Für nicht rauchende,” is in like manner suspended to a carriage in most of the trains on the main lines. But if this select carriage be full, you must take your place among the fumeurs or the rauchende; and should you there be fortunate enough to escape the torments of living smoke, you have the still more detestable odours to endure, the after-smells which linger wherever tobacco-smokers have been. We have lately perceived symptoms of the introduction of this custom into our English railway carriages. We trust that no desire to increase the home revenue in these war times will induce even our most patriotic railway directors to shut their eyes to the growth of so annoying a nuisance.

A morning in Hanover is agreeably spent. Like other German cities, it has derived an impulse from the railway, and new streets and magnificent buildings already connect the station with the older parts of the town. But it is in these old streets and their quaint buildings that the greatest enjoyment awaits the sight-seer. The dress and manners of the people, especially in the markets, their habits and tastes, as indicated by the articles everywhere exposed for sale, and especially the quaint old Gothic and curiously-ornamented houses, which range their gables here and there along the streets—these attractions interest even the keenest lovers of progress. Old-world times come up on the memory with all their associations, and by dint of contrast awaken trains of thought not the less pleasant that they are totally different from those which railways and their accompaniments are continually suggesting to us.

Among these quaint old houses, that in which Leibnitz lived is in itself one of the most attractive, and in its associations by far the most interesting. Elevated from the din of the main street (Schmiede strasse) on which it is situated, the philosopher is said to have studied in the garret which looks out from the upper part of the gable, and there to have arrived at those results of thought which have given both his name and his monument a place in the annals of the city, which none of its kings can boast of. It is honourable to one of these kings, Ernest Augustus, that he bought the old house, and caused it to be kept from disrepair, and to the citizens of Hanover that in 1790 they erected a simple monument to the memory of the philosopher, consisting of a bust on a marble pedestal. This now stands on a slight mound of earth on one side of Waterloo Place, surrounded by a humble railing. Few strangers visit the city who have not heard of the man, and who do not feel gratified to have seen his likeness in his bust. Fewer, whose love of books has carried them to the royal library, have not in silence looked, and with a melancholy interest, on the chair in which he sat when the death-stroke came upon him, and at the book which he was still holding in his hand when the sudden summons came.

Bursting its old boundaries, like Hamburg, Brunswick, Breslau, and many other fortified cities, the walls and ditches and towers of Hanover are gradually disappearing. Some of the last of the ditches we saw in the act of being filled up; and the progress of the arts of peace will henceforth, it is to be hoped, save its modern inhabitants from the frequent sufferings which besieging armies have in former times inflicted. Traversed by the river Leine, which, at a short distance from the town, becomes navigable from the junction of the Ihme, they have now facilities for communication in every direction; the mercantile class of the city is every year becoming more influential; and as education is beginning to spread among the masses—a thing which is far from being unnecessary—a more rapid advancement of the neighbourhood, both in commerce and agriculture, may hereafter be anticipated.

To the south west of Hanover, at the distance of a few miles, appear the terminating hills of the Deister, from which sloping grounds, densely peopled and generally fertile, extend almost to the city. Rich clay-soils on this side are fruitful in varied crops; but, stretching away from its very walls on the other side, are sand, moor, and heath, the flat and inhospitable beginnings of the far-extending Luneburg heath. Away over these flat, black, and sandy moors we sped in the afternoon to Brunswick. The brief stoppage of the train gave us time to walk through some of the clean streets of this city, and to admire its richness in picturesque gable-fronted buildings, many of them three centuries old. We commend it to the leisurely traveller as worthy of a more protracted visit; and if he is cunning in malt liquor, we entreat him to indulge his palate with a glass of the so-called “Brunswicker mumme,” the real substantial black-strap for which Brunswick is famous.