Aix-la-Chapelle, August 4, 1867,
Hôtel de Belle Vue.
Dear Madame: I drop you a few lines, to return my sincere thanks for having so effectually called my attention to the baths and waters of this celebrated city. I find that all you said and promised has been fully realized; and when, hereafter, any one will dare tell me that your amiable sex is accustomed to draw upon its imagination for its facts, or at least to color extravagantly what has proved pleasing, I shall point to your recommendation of these waters as a sufficient refutation, or at any rate a most noted and brilliant exception to the remark.
The baths are all you said, and more; they are really superb, and just what I needed. In fact, I consider it a special providence that I met you in Brussels, or otherwise I should have gone to Paris instead of Aix. Already I am quite relieved, and in another week I expect to be as young and supple as ever. I am at the Belle Vue, but, after taking one bath at the Kaiserbad, I have taken the rest at the Rosebad; the latter are fully equal to the former in sumptuousness, and the attendance is probably better. I expect to return to Paris before or about the 15th inst., and if I can be of any service to you in Europe or America, you may freely command me.
Though I have not yet taken any excursion to the country, I have visited the relics and curiosities of the grand old cathedral, and also the Hôtel de Ville. This is one of the oldest cities in Europe, and its inhabitants say with pride, “After Rome, Aix-la-Chapelle!” The city with its monuments carries us back a thousand years to the brilliant days of Charlemagne, who was a giant not only morally and intellectually, but physically, for he was over seven feet two inches tall. Best regards and blessing to your family, and compliments to the dean. Yours truly,
M. J. Spalding,
Archbishop of Baltimore.
[AMBROSIA]
A LEGEND OF AUGSBURG.
We were talking of our travels, my friend Archer and I, and of the lessons travelling brings to those who go a little out of Murray’s beaten track. And especially, so we were pleased to think, these lessons might be learnt in little out-of-the-way nooks, hidden centres of ignored life, none the less busy for that, and none the less full of exciting life-dramas. I was telling him of Pavia—for my wanderings had led me chiefly through Italy—of the desolate, enchanted look of the wall-enclosed court-yards round the gloomy and picturesque palaces; of the lonely walk on the former ramparts, now planted with fine horse-chestnuts; of the many tapestries of romance I had woven in my mind about the silent-looking houses and the dark-eyed maidens I occasionally met in the streets. It was while Pavia was in Austrian hands that I passed through it, and perhaps the military occupation tended to make the sleepy city still more sombre and dull. Yet what additional elements of romance that circumstance contributed! For it was not impossible that some fair, mild German, with his dreamy sentimentality, yet fresh from college, might have been drawn to feel a holy, wondering love for the bright southern beauty whose childhood had been fostered in indignant hatred of his land and race; and between these two how many complications of pathetic interest might we not imagine, how many shades of feeling and degrees of circumstances might we not conjure up! “But,” said Archer, interrupting my fine flow of language about the joys and sorrows of the town of the Certosa, “you know Italy, strictly speaking, is rather the land of passion than of romance. Could you think of an Italian ‘Gretchen’? The one character most like her, the Cenci, is so different despite the likeness! Religion seems more spiritual in Germany; in Italy they do as the Greeks of old, put their own human feelings into heavenly representatives and then pay homage to them, thinking unconsciously that they are honoring supernatural attributes. There is too much earthliness about their ideal—in fact, I do not believe they have an ideal at all.”
“Come, come,” I answered, “you are too hard on the southern temperament. You do not know Italy well enough to speak with authority on the subject. After all, as long as their way of feeling religion does them good, the Italians are quite as well off, spiritually, as your Teutonic ideals. I am not sure but what I prefer warmth and impulse to passive tenderness, however reliable the latter may be throughout a lifetime. But this question of the relative merits of various races will always be an open one, and no one wishes to leave it so more than the church herself, for she wisely sees how much the glory of God gains through this blending of various natures in his service.”