But the night is chilly. Let us go into the Posthouse. There is comfort by the stove in the inner room, and the woman who has sat up to await our arrival brings an acceptable refreshment of coffee and cakes. Steaming coffee, with the true flavour; and not sixpence a cup, but six kreutzers. Then the driver blows his horn, and each one takes his allotted seat, to slumber if he can through another jolting stage.
Greifenberg, a town of three thousand inhabitants, on the Queiss, is proud of four things: manufacture of fine linen and damask, a griffin in its coat-of-arms, and a right royal word of the Great Frederick. Certain deputies having appeared before the monarch to thank him for his prompt and generous aid in restoring the town after a great fire in 1783—"For that am I here!" was his kingly reply.
About two miles distant is the Greifenstein, a basaltic hill, so named from a nest of young griffins found on the top of it at a date which no one can remember. It is now crowned by the ruins of a castle which was given by the Emperor Charles IV., in the fourteenth century, as a reward for service to the brave Silesian knight Schaffgotsch. Were it daylight we might see in the Romish church a vault which has been the burial-place of the Schaffgotsch family since 1546.
It was early morning when we came to Lauban, and changed carriages by the side of the grass-grown moat at a break in the old round-towered wall. The view from the adjacent Steinberg is described as equal in beauty to any other scene in Prussia. Unfortunately I had not time to judge for myself; but hope to go and see some future day. Perhaps, while waiting here, you will be reminded that Lauban was one of the Silesian towns which, on the 19th of August, 1836, held a jubilee to celebrate the three hundredth anniversary of the introduction of the potato into Europe by the famous circumnavigator Drake—as the promoters said. Of course potatoes cooked in many ways appeared plentifully at every table over half the province.
We reached Görlitz at eight, and for some reason, perhaps known to the driver, went through the streets in and out, up and down, across the Neisse to the Postamt in the new quarter, at a slow walking pace. I had three hours to wait for a train, and to improve the time, after comforting myself at the Goldenen Strauss, mounted to the top of the Peter and Paul church tower. Erected on a rocky eminence, rising steeply from the river, it commands a wide prospect. The town itself, a busy place of more than 18,000 inhabitants, closely packed, as in the olden time, around the church; spreading out beyond into broad, straight streets and squares, well-planted avenues, and pretty pleasure-grounds; and in this roomy border you see bleaching-greens, the barracks, the gymnasium, and observatory. From thence your eye wanders over the hills of Lusatia to the distant mountains—a fair region, showing a thousand slopes to the sun. About two miles distant the Landskrone rises from the valley of the Neisse—a conspicuous rocky hill bristling with trees. We got a glimpse of it from Schneekoppe; and now you will perhaps fancy it a watch-tower, midway between the Giant Mountains and the romantic highlands of Saxony.
The sight of that hill recalls the name of the "Teutonic philosopher"—Jacob Böhme. He was born at Alt-Seidenberg, about a mile from Görlitz, in 1575; and he relates that one day when employing himself as herdboy, to relieve the monotony of shoemaking, he discovered a cool bosky crevice on the Landskrone, and crept in for shelter from the heat of the sun. Inside, to his great surprise, he saw a wooden bowl, or vase, full of money, which he feared to touch, and went presently and told certain of his playmates of the discovery. With them he returned to the hill; but though they searched and searched again, they could never find the cleft, nor the wonderful hoard. A few years later, however, there came a cunning diviner, who, exploring with his rod, discovered the money and carried it off; and soon after perished miserably, for a curse had been declared on whomsoever should touch the gold.
Fate had other things in store for Jacob, and allured him from his last to write voluminous works on theosophy, wherein he discusses the most mysterious questions about the soul, its relations to God and the universe, and such like; and great became the poor shoemaker's repute among the learned. Some travelled from far to confer with him; some translated his books into French and English; some studied German that they might read them in the original; and even Isaac Newton used at times to divert his mind from laborious search after the laws of gravitation by perusal of Böhme's speculations. That Jacob was not a dreamer on all points is clear from what he used to pen for those who begged a scrap of his writing:
"Wem Zeit ist wie Ewigkeit,
Und Ewigkeit wie die Zeit,
Der ist befreit von allem Streit."[I]