Through this gate, which is in the Dorotheen Stadt, after crossing the Square of Paris, we enter upon one of the handsomest streets in the world, and one bearing the most poetical of titles: “Unter-den-Linden,”—“Under the Lime Trees!”—there is something at once charming and imposing in the very sound. Nor is this appellation an empty fiction, for there stand the lime trees themselves, in two double rows with their delicate green leaves rustling in the breeze, forming a two-fold verdant allée, vigorous and fragrant, down the centre of the street, and into the very heart of the city. Unter-den-Linden itself is two thousand seven hundred and fifty-four feet in length, and one hundred and seventy-four in width; but it extends, under another title, for a much greater distance. This is the summer evening’s ramble of your true Berliner, and not a little proud and pompous he is as he parades himself and family beneath the leafy canopy; and here, in the snowy winters, when the city lies half buried in the snowdrift, the gaily dressed sleighs go skimming under the leafless branches, filling the bright cold air with the music of their bells.
As we proceed deeper into the city, we find gay shops and stately houses. A noble range of buildings appropriated to the foreign embassies rises upon the left hand, and is succeeded by the Royal Academy; while some distance beyond stands the University, an edifice of a rather sombre appearance, although graced with columns and pilasters of the Corinthian order. To enter it you traverse a spacious court-yard, and it may be that the nature of its contents impart a melancholy character to the building itself; for, on ascending its stone staircase, and wandering for a brief period among its bottles and cases, its wax models and human preserves, we find them of so unsightly and disgusting a character that we are happy to regain the echoing corridor which had led us into this huge, systematised charnel-house.
As we cross to the opposite side of the broad street, the Royal Library faces us; a massive temple of stored knowledge, polyglot and universal; while to the right of it, in the centre of a paved space of considerable extent, stands the Catholic church of St. Hedwig,
at once a model of Roman architecture, and the emblem of the liberty of faith.
Close at hand is the Opera-house, once already purified by fire, like so many of its companion edifices, and only lately rebuilt. Some idea may be formed of the extent of its interior from the fact that it affords accommodation for three thousand spectators. Our way lies onward still. What noble figure is this? Simple but commanding in character and attitude, it fixes your attention at once. Look at the superscription. Upon a scroll on its pedestal are the words “Frederick William III. to Field Marshal Prince Blucher of Wahlstatt, in the year 1826.” Yes! the impetuous soldier, figured in eternal bronze by the first sculptor of Prussia, Rauch himself, here claims and receives the admiration of his countrymen. Bare-headed stands the old warrior, but is duly crowned with laurels on every returning anniversary of the well remembered day, the 18th of June.
Leaving the sanctuary of the Christian Deity, the heathen temple of Terpsichore, and the effigy of the renowned soldier, thus grouped together, we traverse the fine road, and pause for a moment to look at a severe but elegant structure, erected, we are told, in exact imitation of a Roman castrum, or fortress, and therefore eminently in character with the purpose for which it is intended. The smart Prussian infantry are grouped about its pillared entrance, which is graced also by two statues of military celebrities—for this is the royal guard-house.
“Der Alter Fritz.” “Old Fred!” This is the familiar title bestowed upon a great monarch; and there is something in this nickname a thousand times more telling to the ear and heart of a Prussian than the stately appellation of “Frederick the Great.” The former is for their own hearts and homes, the latter for the world. And for the world also is the noble equestrian statue upon which we now gaze. It is a question whether a work of sterling genius does not speak as effectively to the eye of the uninitiated as to that of the most inveterate stickler for antecedents of grace and technicalities of beauty. This statue of Frederick of Prussia tells upon the sense at once, because it is true to art as established by ancient critics, but more so, because it is imitated nature, which art too often only presumes to be, reckoning too much upon fixed rules and time-honoured dogmas. It is noble and impressive, because it
is like; no antiquated Roman figure in toga and calcei, but the representation of the living man.
Das Zeughaus, or arsenal, which we now approach, is a massive quadrangular building, and the warlike character of its architectural decorations strikingly indicate the nature of its contents. We pass through the open gate into an inner court, and looking round upon the sombre walls which inclose us, see the fearful faces of dead and dying men, cut in stone, which the taste or caprice of the architect has considered their fittest ornament. There is something strangely original and attractive in the grotesque hideousness of these heads, agonised with pain, scowling in anger, or frightful with their upturned eyes in the rigidity of death, all bleached and shadowed as they are by the vicissitudes of the weather.
Within the arsenal we find walls of glistening steel, columns of lances, architectural and other devices worked out in dagger blades and pistol handles; while battered armour and faded draperies, in the shape of pennons and standards, storm and battle-tattered, help to make up trophies, and swing duskily in every corner.