A July Holiday in Saxony, Bohemia, and Silesia

by Walter White

Bavarian art attracts and gratifies your eye as you alight. The station is an elegant structure in the Pompeiian style, ingeniously contrived for the purposes of the railway and post-office, and yet to preserve the architectural character. An impatient traveller might well beguile the time by admiring the proportions, the colouring, and the tasteful decorations along the colonnades. The building forms one side of a square in the newest quarter of the town.

A curious sign, the Kleebaum, caught my eye in the first street, and I trusted myself beneath it. The Kellner took my knapsack; asked if "that was all," and led me high up to a small homely-furnished room on the third floor, in which, however, the quality of cleanliness was not wanting, and that is what an Englishman cares most about. At dinner I treated myself to a pint of the Stein wine, for which the neighbourhood is famous, and am prepared to add my testimony as to its merits. The bottles have a jolly bacchanalian look about them, being globes somewhat flattened at the sides, and contain, when honest, a quart. The cost is from two to three florins a bottle; but a temperate guest is allowed to drink and pay for the half only, at his pleasure. With vineyards producing such wine around them, it is little wonder that the Prince-Bishops were always ready to fight for their good city of Würzburg. The Strangers' Book followed the dinner as a matter of course, and when the landlord saw that I signed my name as "from London," and heard me inquire for the residence of one of the Professors, he put off his natural manner and became obsequious: a change that gave me no pleasure.

There is more of life, more to interest the attention in Würzburg, than in some places which are much more frequented and talked of. The streets generally are narrow, and built in picturesque disregard of straight lines; now widening suddenly for a brief space, now diminishing and bending away in a new direction. And you saunter onwards, wondering at the panelled house-fronts with their profuse ornament: grotesque carvings of animals' heads, of clustering fruits in bold relief at the intersections; windows with quaint canopies and curiously-wrought gratings; fanciful door-heads and gables; in short, a variety of architectural conceits on which your eye will fondly linger. Now, at a corner, you come upon an ancient turret with conical roof, now a sculptured fountain, now images of the Virgin or some of the saints over the doors; and anon huge statues of the Bishops remind you of the men who built and prayed for Würzburg. So numerous are the churches erected to perpetuate their memory or adorn their inheritance, that you need not go many yards whenever you feel inclined to meditate in a "dim religious light."

You meet numbers of soldiers, for there is a citadel beyond the river, and water-bearers with their tall tubs slung on their backs going to or from the fountains, and now and then a peasant woman with conical hat and skirts the very opposite of the fashion; and except that nearly all the women you see are bareheaded, there is nothing else remarkable in costume.

Stroll to the river-side; what prodigious piles of firewood at one side of the quay, and what a busy fleet of barges moored on the other. The Main here is about as wide as the Thames at Richmond, and is spanned by a bridge quite in keeping with the city. At either end stands an arched gateway, with statues niched in the massive masonry, and saints above the rounded piers.

Cross the bridge, and mount the citadel-hill on the left bank, and you will have a surprise. The hill terminates in a craggy precipice, crowned by the stronghold and its defences, and you look down on shelfy gardens planted here and there among the rocks; and over the whole city. The river flows by in a bold curve, cutting off a small suburb from the main portion of the city, which spreads, crescent-formed, on the opposite shore. An imposing scene. Thirty-one towers, spires, domes, and steeples spring from the great masses and ridges of dark-red lofty roofs, and these are everywhere dotted with rows of little windows which resemble a half-opened eye. Indeed, the curved line of the tiles makes the resemblance so complete, that you can easily fancy the eyes are taking a sly peep at what is going on below, or winking at the sunbeams, as a prelude to falling asleep for the night.

The sun was dropping behind me in the west, and before me lay the city, looking glorious in the golden light. Row after row of the sleepy eyes caught the ray with a momentary twinkle; the gilded weathercocks flashed and glistened, and the reflection falling on the river made pathways of quivering light across the ripples.

Presently eight struck from the cathedral, and the clocks of all the churches followed, each with its own peculiar note. One or two solemn and sonorous, in imitation of the big bell; others shrill and saucy, as if they alone had the right to record the march of the silent footsteps; a few sedate, and one irresolute. Now here, now there, now yonder, as if the striking never would cease, and suggesting strange analogies between clocks and the race who wind them up.

Trees rise here and there among the houses, and form a green belt round the city, thickest in the gardens of the royal palace, a stately edifice comprising among its two hundred and eighty-four rooms the suite in which the Emperors used to lodge when on their way to be crowned at Frankfort. And beyond the trees begin the vines, acre after acre to the tops of the whole encircling rim of hills. Broad slopes teeming with wine and gladness of heart, but looking bald in the distance from want of trees. One of these hills—the Köppele, so named from a chapel on the summit—is a favourite resort of the inhabitants, who perhaps find in the view therefrom a sufficient reward for a long ascent, unrefreshed by shade or rustling leaves.

Seen from the hill, Würzburg is said to resemble Prague; not without reason, as I afterwards found. It would be, in my opinion, the more pleasing picture of the two, were its frame set off and beautified by patches of forest.