This is not the place to attempt it, and were it, we should despair of saying any thing more on the natural beauties of Heidelberg; but we cannot resist quoting a few passages from a very popular article on Heidelberg in the Halle Year-Book.
After the author has described the view from the balcony of the castle, he says, "While in the youthful mind the sentiment of an infinite fulness of life springs up from those rich and wide prospects, the stiller and more secret charms of the environs of Heidelberg allure it to thoughtful and more intimate observations of nature. The dark shadowy paths of the casile gardens invite to solitary walks. Every where on all hands hidden glens lead away into the mountains, and winding pathways provoke to farther advances, and conduct to continually fresh discoveries of charming valleys and woods, new views in the distance, and more romantic places of repose. At one place we quit the view of the ruin and the plain, where serene but busy life displays itself; a few steps forward, and the most profound solitude receives us; instead of the laughing fields and sloping vineyards, solemn thick beech woods, in which for hours we meet no trace of human existence, engulf us. We bury ourselves in the depths of the Odenwald--then suddenly we stand on the airy peak of the mountain, or a wide ravine rends itself out of the hill-side before us, and there again lies in our view the whole magnificence of the Rhine-plain at our feet! We see in the distance the ancient Worms, and the towers of Speir, and of Trifells, where King Richard sate in captivity; and yonder the ruins of the castle of Hambach; and in this one glance comes before us a vast fragment of history--the Niebelungen Lied, and the old holy Roman Empire, with its secular and spiritual Electors and Princes under the Emperor, and Luther before the Diet. And then sweep before us the Crusades; and then again the times in which the wild troops of Turenne came hither from behind that Rhine-stream, the French soldiers playing at ball, as they came, in the Dome of Speir, with the skulls of German kings; and finally, the latest scenes of the past, when upon that castle of Hambach the German and the French tricolour flapped on the same standard staff. And these histories which we have lived over again in this one view, are not yet dead and worn out, but still plant themselves in the very heart of the present, and intertwine themselves beneath our feet there, in many an intricate winding. A network of boundaries lies before us; every fresh glance falls on a fresh territory--upon a different race of the German people. There, towards the south, the ancient Swabia shadows itself forth; here, northward, Hesse divides itself from the Pfalz; there, beyond the river, contends the active French spirit against the strict old Bavarian discipline, and nourishes itself with its beloved traditions and daring hopes. Still farther off can we look into this very France itself, which for centuries has been so fatally disastrous to us. Those steam-vessels which cover the Rhine, and bear in them travellers of all nations, are ready to convey us upward to the foot of the Alps, or downward to the sea; and the busy and restless traffic, which moving between these points daily rushes to and fro, past us, there presses itself into the very centre of our field of vision."
The reader must pardon us that we have permitted ourselves to be seduced by the charms of nature to inweave here what might perhaps have found a place in one of the last chapters; where indeed we propose to consider what influence the student life has on the spirit and mind of the pupil of Minerva. He will allow us now to return to our present subject.
The more distant places the student seeks by means of a horse or carriage. The riding horses for hire are truly, for the most part, wretched jades. Even the means which the Renommist of Zachariæ used would prove unavailing here; and what he thus describes, on such Rosinantes as these could not come to pass.
A spur-stroke and a curse gave wings unto his horse.
The crack of ponderous whip, and rib-thumps, sans remorse,
Sent him all foaming on, till almost, in a minute,
The country lay behind him, the next, he was not in it.
A peculiar class of equipages are let out in the university cities, and are hired by the student partly on account of their cheapness, but more especially, because he can charioteer himself. He styles these little chaises with one horse, a one-span, or one-engine. With one of these he undertakes journeys which, especially on Sundays, stretch themselves as far as Mannheim, to the Hardt mountains, to the Melibocus, or even to Karlsruhe and Baden-Baden. The persecuted horse who drags these vehicles, knows the way from Mannheim and other places, much better than his temporary master; and when in dark nights a one-engine goes wrong or comes to any accident it is for the most part because his driver will not let him have his own way. Many a time the poor beasts are so weary that the student can no longer urge them forward with the whip, and is obliged to have recourse to stones that he picks from the road.
Water excursions are seldom undertaken, because the ill-constructed pleasure-boats do not allow him to guide them himself. The neighbourhood of so many beautiful countries incites the student to more extensive excursions, and he travels during the vacations, into Switzerland, the Rhine country, and other places, chiefly in company of a few friends. We may suppose it to be on some incident connected with one of these excursions that Uhland has founded his beautiful ballad of
[THE WIRTHIN'S DAUGHTER.]
Three students crossed over the Rhine-stream one day,
'Twas to a Frau Wirthin's they wended their way.