LONDON TO WEST PRUSSIA.
Northward and eastward the eyes of Englishmen are turning, straining to catch a glimpse of the white sails of their country’s ships, to discern the streaks of smoke which tell of far-off steamers, or to hear the echo at least of their thundering cannon. And many, too, not content to wait for tidings, are hurrying towards the scenes of action, if haply they may witness or sooner learn what the fortune of war may bring. Due east from the northern part of our island the Baltic fleet is now manœuvring; but from London the speediest route is through Belgium, and along the German railways, till the traveller reaches Stettin. Thence he can skirt the Baltic landwards by Königsberg as far as Memel, beyond which it will scarcely be safe to venture; or he can, by ship or boat, from the mouths of the Stettiner Haaf, prosecute his recognisance on the waters of the east sea itself.
But as mere ever-moving couriers, few, even in these exciting times, will travel. Most men will stop now and then, look about them, ask questions, gather information, reflect between whiles, and thus add interest at once and extract instruction from the countries they pass through. Especially they will observe what bears upon their individual professions, pursuits, or favourite studies; and thus, almost without effort, will gather new materials, to be used up in the details of ordinary life, when, the warlike curiosity being gratified, they return again to the welcome routine of home or domestic duties.
Such has been our own case, in a recent run from London through Stettin into Western Prussia, in less genial weather than now prevails; and it may interest our readers to make the journey with us, by anticipation, at their own firesides, while the trunks and passports are preparing for their own real journey.
On the 27th of January, at eight in the morning, a huge pyramid of luggage blocked up the London station of the South-eastern Railway. Troops of boys hovered about, some true Cockney lads, and others half-Frenchified, with an occasional usher fussing about the boxes. “Do you see that mountain, sir?” said the superintendent to us. “All school traps, sir.” “Two hundred boys at least?” we interposed, interrogatively. “No; only fifty. Fill a steamer, sir, itself.” However, the master contrived to get all put right, the mountain vanished into the waggons, the whistle blew, and we were off. The boys gave a hearty hurra as we left the station, which they repeated, time after time, at every fresh start we made, from station to station. At Dover the boat was waiting, the day fine, the wind in our favour, the sea moderately smooth, and by 11.40 we were on our way to Calais. Alas for the brave boys! The last cheer was given as they bade adieu to the cliffs of Dover. Melancholy came over them by degrees. It was painful to see how home-sick they became. From the bottom of their stomachs they regretted leaving their native land, and, heart-sore, chopfallen, and sorely begrimed as to their smart caps and jackets, they paraded, two hours after, before the customhouse at Calais, like the broken relics of a defeated army. M. Henequin was importing the half-yearly draft of Cockney boys to his school at Guines; and we recommend such of our readers as are curious in sea-comforts respectfully to decline the companionship of M. Henequin and his troop, should they at any future time lucklessly stumble upon them on the gangway of a steamer.
At Calais the patriotic and Protestant Englishman, who visits the cathedral of Nôtre Dame, will particularly admire a huge modern painting, which is supposed to adorn the north transept, and will have no difficulty in interpreting the meaning looks of the gaping peasantry when he reads underneath—“Calais taken from the English in 1558, andrestored to Catholicity.”
The Pas de Calais—at least that portion of the department of that name through which the railway runs—at once tells the Englishman that he is in a new country. Low, wet, and marshy, like the seaward part of Holland, it is parcelled out, drained, and fenced by numberless ditches. Wandering over its tame and, in winter at least, most uninviting surface, the eye finds only occasional rows of small pollard willows to rest upon, as if the scavengers of the land had all gone home to dinner, and in the mean time had planted their brooms in readiness along the sides of the ditches they were employed to scour.
But passing St Omer and approaching Hazebrook, the land lifts itself above the sea marshes, becomes strong and loamy, and fitted for every agricultural purpose. Arrived at Lille, the traveller is already in the heart of the most fertile portion of northern France. Twin fortresses of great strength, Lille and Valenciennes, are also twin centres of what, in certain points of view, is the most wonderful industry of France. The sugar beet finds here a favourite soil and climate, and a rural and industrial population suited to the favourable prosecution of the beet-sugar manufacture. Though long before suggested and tried in Germany, this manufacture is purely French in its economical origin. The Continental System of the first Napoleon raised colonial produce to a fabulous price. At six francs a pound colonial sugar was within the reach of few. The high price tempted many to cast about for means of producing sugar at home, and a great stimulus was given to this research by the magnificent premium of a million of francs offered by the Emperor to the successful discoverer of a permanent source of supply from plants of native growth. Of the many plants tried, the beet proved the most promising; but it required twenty years of struggles and failures, and conquering of difficulties, to place the new industry on a comparatively independent basis. Twenty years more has enabled it to compete successfully with colonial sugar, and to pay an equal tax into the French exchequer. From France and Belgium the industry returned to its native Germany, and has since spread far into the interior of Russia. The total produce of this kind of sugar on the continent of Europe has now reached the enormous quantity of three hundred and sixty millions of pounds, of which France produces about one hundred and fifty millions in three hundred and thirty-four manufactories.
It is a pleasant excursion on a fine day in autumn, when the beet flourishes still green in the fields, and the roots are nearly ripe for pulling, to drive out from Lille, as we did some years ago, among the country farmers ten or twelve miles around. The land is so rich and promising, and on the whole so well tilled—and yet in the hands of good English or Scotch farmers might, we fancy, be made to yield so much more, and to look so much nicer, and drier, and cleaner, that we enjoy at once the gratification which in its present condition it is sure to yield us, while we pleasantly flatter ourselves at the same time with the thoughts of what we could make it. That it is not badly cultivated the practical man will infer from the average produce of sugar beet being estimated about Lille at sixteen, and about Valenciennes at nineteen tons an acre. At the same time, that much improvement is possible he will gather from the fact that, though often strong and but little undulating, the land is still unconscious of thorough drainage, and of the benefits which underground tiles and broken stones have so liberally conferred upon us.
The adjoining provinces of Hainault and Brabant—which the traveller leaves to the right on his way to Ghent and Brussels—are the seat of the sugar manufacture in Belgium. There the average yield of beetroot is said to be from eighteen to twenty-four tons an acre, the land in general being excellent, while the total produce of beet-sugar in Belgium is ten millions of pounds. In Belgium, as in France, the home-growth of sugar is equal to about one-half of the home consumption.
Late in the evening we found ourselves in Brussels, and the following morning—though wet and dirty—we were visiting, as strangers do, the numerous churches. It was Sunday; and as in the face of nature we had seen in the Pas de Calais that we were in a foreign country, so to-day the appearance of the streets told us at every step that we were among a foreign people. The shops open everywhere, and more than usually frequented; the universal holiday sparkling upon every face; the frequent priests in gowns, bands, and broadbrims to be met with on the streets; the crowding to morning mass at St Gudule’s and St Jacques’; the pious indifference of the apparently devout congregations; the huddling together and intermixture among them of all classes and costumes; the mechanical crossings and genuflections even in the remotest corners, where only the tinkling of the bells was faintly heard; the easy air of superiority, and lazy movements and mumbling of the officiating clergy at the altar; and the happy contentment pictured on every face as the crowd streamed from the door when the service was ended;—all these things spoke of a foreign people and a foreign church. The evening theatres and Sunday amusements told equally of foreign ideas and foreign habits; while the old town-hall and the other quaint buildings which the English traveller regards at every new visit with new pleasure, kept constantly before his eyes that he was in a foreign city.
The characteristic of Belgium among foreign countries is, that, with the exception of Spain, it is probably the most completely Roman Catholic sovereignty in Europe. To this almost exclusive devotion to the Roman Church the peculiarities to which we have referred are mainly to be ascribed. Of its population, which by the last census was 4,337,000, not less than 4,327,000 were Roman Catholics, and only 7,368 Protestants. The total expense of the dominant Church to the state, which pays all the clergy, is 4,366,000 francs, or about a franc a-head for each member of the Church. It has besides private revenues of various kinds for repairing churches, for charitable foundations, &c., amounting to 800,000 francs, making the total revenue about 5,000,000 of francs. This, divided among five thousand clergy of all ranks, gives less than one thousand francs as the average stipend. And when we add to this that the archbishop’s stipend is only £840, that of a bishop £580, and of a cathedral canon from £100 to £130, we should fancy the Church to be in money matters poor, and the clergy badly off. But in Protestant countries we understand very little of the system of fees and unseen payments in the Catholic Church, and we form probably a very erroneous idea of the real income and means of living of a Roman Catholic clergy when we conclude that, as a general rule, their main dependence is upon the known and avowed salaries they derive from the State or from other public sources.
While we are at home discussing with some little sectarian animosity the subject of State payments to Popish chaplains for our prisons and military hospitals, it is but fair to this most Catholic country to mention, that to the 7,368 Protestants the Belgian state-chest pays yearly 56,000 francs to eleven native pastors and six Church of England ministers, for salaries and other church expenses—being at the rate of eight francs for each Protestant in the kingdom. It allows also 7,900 francs to the Jews, or about seven francs a-head. For their religious liberality the reader will give such credit to the Belgian clergy as he may think they deserve.
Detained by unforeseen circumstances for a day in Brussels, we witnessed the honours paid to Prince Napoleon on his entry from Paris, and in the afternoon were on our way to Cologne. Passing Louvain and Tirlemont in the dark, we recognised the neighbourhood of Liege only by its coke-ovens and iron-works, and an hour before midnight reached Cologne.
Cologne, with thy sixty stinks still redolent, even a midnight entrance reveals to travelling olfactories thy odoriferous presence! As we jogged along to the Hotel Disch, enjoying alone a luxurious omnibus, the slumbering memory of long-familiar smells sprung up fresh in our nostrils, and awoke us to the full conviction that our railway conductor had made no mistake, and that we were really passing beneath the shadow of the magnificent cathedral of Cologne.
Early morning saw us pacing the nave of the gigantic pile, admiring anew its glorious windows, peering into its chapels, glancing hurriedly at its saintly pictures, turning away both eyes and ears from unwholesome-looking priests intoning the morning service, admiring the by-play called “private worship,” which was proceeding at the same moment in the northern aisle, and offending susceptible un-fee’d officials by indecent looks, as we stealthily paced the circumference of the lordly choir. No familiarity can reconcile an English Protestant to the mummeries of a worship performed before tawdry dolls by the light even of a dozen penny candles. And the paltriness appears the greater in a vast pile like this, which itself is but a feeble attempt to do something adequate to the greatness of Him who dwelleth not in temples made with hands. This feeling awoke within us in full force as we came, in our promenade round the church, upon a large side-chapel, with its Virgin dressed in lace, enclosed in a small glass cupboard, with votive offerings of waxen limbs and other objects hung up beside it, while three small candles in dirty sconces burned beneath. And before this trumpery exhibition knelt and prayed grave men and women, who had passed the middle of life; and young girls with warm hearts, who had still the world with all its lures and temptations before them. Pity that hearts so devout and so susceptible should be so badly directed—that the plain helps and comforts of Scripture should be set aside for the aggrandisement of a powerful craft!
Much had been done here by architects and masons since our former visit. Much money had been collected and expended, and many men are still at work on this vast building; and yet the stranger’s eye discovers from without only small changes to have been effected during the past ten years. Here and there, as he walks around it, a white pillar, or a less discoloured arch, tells him where the workmen have been busy; but the several portions of the work are so massive, and proceed of necessity so slowly, that the progress of years produces advances which seem almost microscopic when compared with the whole. While they satisfy us, however, that generations will still come and go, leaving the growing cathedral still immature, yet they give us at the same time a far grander idea both of the vastness of the work which has already been accomplished, and of the original greatness of the conception, which so many centuries have failed to embody fully in durable stone.
At eleven in the forenoon we had already crossed the Rhine to Deutz, had taken our seats on the Winden railway, and at the blowing of the official trumpet had begun to move along the rich flat land which here borders the Rhine. The walls and river-face of Cologne, now spread out before us, carried back our musings to the times of the historical grandeur of this ancient city. During the period of Roman greatness, emperors of the world were born and proclaimed within its walls; centuries later, a king of the Franks was chosen in Cologne; and still six hundred and fifty years later began that bright period of its commercial prosperity, which for three hundred years made it the most flourishing city of Northern Europe. Thirty thousand fighting men, from among its own armed citizens, could then march defiantly from its gates. Its whole population is now but ninety thousand, and its trade comparatively trifling.
But the cause of this decline interests an Englishman more than the actual decay. Commerce, it is true, had begun in the seventeenth century to find new channels, and this circumstance, had the city been merely abandoned to supineness, might have gradually affected its prosperity. But it was positive measures of repression that forced it to decline. It fell under the dominion of the Roman priesthood, which first drove out the Jews, afterwards banished the weavers, and finally, in 1618, expelled the Protestants. From this time, for nearly two hundred years, it became a nest of monks and beggars, till at the Revolution the French changed everything, drove out the two thousand five hundred city clergy, seized their revenues, and turned to other uses their two hundred religious buildings. Hand over Liverpool or London to the same clerical dominion, and the same depressing consequences would most certainly follow.
High over walls and houses, as we fly along the railway, towers the cathedral, with its ancient crane still erect on its unfinished tower. Who designed this huge building? Alas! centuries before his work is complete, the name of the architect is lost. Six hundred years ago the work was begun, but the glory of God is the plea on which it has been prosecuted, and upon that altar the humble designer has sacrificed his fame!
And as it fades from the sight, memory recalls another scene which, four centuries ago, was witnessed beneath the shadow of this great pile. In a small upper room, with rude appliances, and a scanty store of materials, two men are seen curiously putting together the letters of a movable alphabet, arranging them into the form of tiny pages, and with slow deliberation impressing them, page by page, on the anxiously moistened paper. The younger of the two is William Caxton, the father of English printing. Here he learned the then young art which has since rendered him famous in his native land. How would William Caxton admire, could he now for a moment be carried into the printing-office of a metropolitan journal, and see with what marvellous speed and certainty the operations he watched so anxiously at Cologne are now conducted.
But as the quick thoughts course through our mind, we rush as quickly along towards Dusseldorf. We have now left the country of hedgerows of timber and of visible fences, and divisions of the land. Open, flat, and rich, it stretches inward from the Rhine, often light, and sometimes sandy or gravelly; all cultivated on the flat, all neat and clean, but naked, at this season, both of animal and vegetable life. A few sheep sprinkled over one field, and a rare man or woman trudging along beside deep ditches, were the only symptoms of moving life we saw between Cologne and Dusseldorf; while pollard trees here and there, and long rows of unpollarded poplars by the highway-sides, where a village was near, as tamely represented the vegetable ornaments which beautify an English landscape.
Following the Rhine for twenty miles farther, the line turns to the right, and we pass through the coal district which supplies the soft coke by which the locomotives are fed, and the dirty-looking coal to which the neighbouring region owes so much of its industrial prosperity. Iron furnaces, coal-pits, and chemical manufactories, remind us, as we pass Oberhausen, of the denser peopled and more smoke-blackened coal-fields of northern and western England, while all the appointments we see around them speak of an economy in management somewhat different from our own. No heaps of waste and burning coal indicate the approach to a colliery, nor columns of black smoke vomiting waste fuel into the tainted air, nor wheels and ropes rattling and busily revolving in the open day, nor troops of blackened men and boys lifting their heads to gaze, as the train skims swiftly by. Fine buildings cover in and conceal the openings to the pits with all their gear; and it is not quite obvious whether climate and profit compel this system, or whether it is the general habits of the people which thus manifest themselves. Cattle are kept under cover nearly all the year through; thoughts are very much kept under cover, even in so-called constitutional Prussia and Hanover; and the operations of the coal-pit may be boxed in and hidden from the vulgar gaze, merely as the consequence of a precautionary habit.
Dordmund, with its fortifications, and its associations with the famous “Vehm-gericht,” stands in the middle of this coal-field. Several borings in progress on the flats of black land, which stretch away from its old walls, exhibited the living influence of railway communication in changing the surface even of old countries, in opening up long-neglected resources, and in imparting new energy to half-dormant populations. Through the fertile Hellweg we sped along, leaving Dordmund behind us, and through the region of Westphalian hams, till the dark wet night overtook us. But, easy and comfortable in our luxurious carriages, we only quitted the train at Hanover that we might spend a morning in a city with which England has had so many relations.
From the moment the Englishman enters a Continental railway carriage, and especially if he is proceeding into Germany, two things strike him: First, the extreme luxury, roominess, and comfort of the carriages; and, second, the universal propensity to the use of tobacco. The second-class carriages are generally fully equal in their fitting and provisions for ease to our British first-class, while the German first-class carriages surprise us by the numerous little thoughtful appliances they exhibit to the wants and fancies of their temporary occupants. This seems rather a contradiction to an Englishman, who flatters himself that the wordcomfortis indigenous to his own country, and who actually sees, go where he will, that in its domestic arrangements an English house and houshold is the most comfortable in the world. This discordance between the practice of home and foreign countries, is probably to be traced to the difference of general habits and tendencies. To an Englishman, home is the place which is dearer than any other. In it he spends his time chiefly. He makes his home, therefore, and likes to see it made, the most comfortable place of all. To him a public conveyance or a public place of resort is no permanent temptation. He comes back always the happier, and he counts generally how soon he may get back again to his home. But on the Continent it is generally different. Home has few comforts or attractions, chiefly because habit has led to the custom of dining, of supping, of sipping coffee and punch, of drinking wine, and of smoking, in public. The public places of resort are made comfortable and luxurious to invite these visits. People look for and provide more comfort abroad than at home; and thus into their railway carriages, which, like other public places, are really smoking-shops, they carry the luxurious appliances which they deny themselves at home.
In Germany there is thus an excuse for travelling in second-class carriages, because of their excellence, which we do not possess in England. This custom, in consequence, is very general, not only among natives, but among foreigners also. “On the Continent,” says Professor Silliman, in a book of travels he has lately published, “and particularly in Germany, we have generally taken the second-class carriages. They are in all respects desirable, and few persons, except the nobility, travel in those of the first class, which appear to possess no advantage except the aristocratic one of partial exclusion of other classes by the higher price.” There is, perhaps, a little advantage in point of comfort; but the second-class carriages are certainly in this respect quite equal to the average of the railway cars in the United States. As to our second-class carriages in England, they are, adds Professor Silliman, “made very uncomfortable. They have no cushions, but simply naked board seats. The backs are high and perpendicular.” But in these arrangements the learned Professor was not aware that our railway directors patriotically study the conservation of our domestic habits. Were the carriages made too comfortable, people might prefer them to their own easy-chairs and sofas at home, and thus might be tempted to frequent them too much and too often for the general good. As to ourselves, we have always taken first-class tickets in our German tour, chiefly because in this way we could, in most cases, secure to ourselves a carriage in which we could avoid, for our lungs and our clothes, the contamination of the perpetual tobacco. In West Prussia, it is true, we were told that nobody but “prinzen und narren” (princes and fools) travelled first class; but even with the risk of such nicknames we continued our plan.
“On ne fume pas ici,” you see stuck up on a rare Belgian carriage in a long train; and in Prussia a ticket with the words, “Für nicht rauchende,” is in like manner suspended to a carriage in most of the trains on the main lines. But if this select carriage be full, you must take your place among thefumeursor therauchende; and should you there be fortunate enough to escape the torments of living smoke, you have the still more detestable odours to endure, the after-smells which linger wherever tobacco-smokers have been. We have lately perceived symptoms of the introduction of this custom into our English railway carriages. We trust that no desire to increase the home revenue in these war times will induce even our most patriotic railway directors to shut their eyes to the growth of so annoying a nuisance.
A morning in Hanover is agreeably spent. Like other German cities, it has derived an impulse from the railway, and new streets and magnificent buildings already connect the station with the older parts of the town. But it is in these old streets and their quaint buildings that the greatest enjoyment awaits the sight-seer. The dress and manners of the people, especially in the markets, their habits and tastes, as indicated by the articles everywhere exposed for sale, and especially the quaint old Gothic and curiously-ornamented houses, which range their gables here and there along the streets—these attractions interest even the keenest lovers of progress. Old-world times come up on the memory with all their associations, and by dint of contrast awaken trains of thought not the less pleasant that they are totally different from those which railways and their accompaniments are continually suggesting to us.
Among these quaint old houses, that in which Leibnitz lived is in itself one of the most attractive, and in its associations by far the most interesting. Elevated from the din of the main street (Schmiede strasse) on which it is situated, the philosopher is said to have studied in the garret which looks out from the upper part of the gable, and there to have arrived at those results of thought which have given both his name and his monument a place in the annals of the city, which none of its kings can boast of. It is honourable to one of these kings, Ernest Augustus, that he bought the old house, and caused it to be kept from disrepair, and to the citizens of Hanover that in 1790 they erected a simple monument to the memory of the philosopher, consisting of a bust on a marble pedestal. This now stands on a slight mound of earth on one side of Waterloo Place, surrounded by a humble railing. Few strangers visit the city who have not heard of the man, and who do not feel gratified to have seen his likeness in his bust. Fewer, whose love of books has carried them to the royal library, have not in silence looked, and with a melancholy interest, on the chair in which he sat when the death-stroke came upon him, and at the book which he was still holding in his hand when the sudden summons came.
Bursting its old boundaries, like Hamburg, Brunswick, Breslau, and many other fortified cities, the walls and ditches and towers of Hanover are gradually disappearing. Some of the last of the ditches we saw in the act of being filled up; and the progress of the arts of peace will henceforth, it is to be hoped, save its modern inhabitants from the frequent sufferings which besieging armies have in former times inflicted. Traversed by the river Leine, which, at a short distance from the town, becomes navigable from the junction of the Ihme, they have now facilities for communication in every direction; the mercantile class of the city is every year becoming more influential; and as education is beginning to spread among the masses—a thing which is far from being unnecessary—a more rapid advancement of the neighbourhood, both in commerce and agriculture, may hereafter be anticipated.
To the south west of Hanover, at the distance of a few miles, appear the terminating hills of the Deister, from which sloping grounds, densely peopled and generally fertile, extend almost to the city. Rich clay-soils on this side are fruitful in varied crops; but, stretching away from its very walls on the other side, are sand, moor, and heath, the flat and inhospitable beginnings of the far-extending Luneburg heath. Away over these flat, black, and sandy moors we sped in the afternoon to Brunswick. The brief stoppage of the train gave us time to walk through some of the clean streets of this city, and to admire its richness in picturesque gable-fronted buildings, many of them three centuries old. We commend it to the leisurely traveller as worthy of a more protracted visit; and if he is cunning in malt liquor, we entreat him to indulge his palate with a glass of the so-called “Brunswicker mumme,” the real substantial black-strap for which Brunswick is famous.
Daylight scarcely served to bring us to Magdeburg. We hurried past Wolfenbüttel, famous for its library and its relics of Luther; and as we glided into the station of the celebrated fortress-city, we could form little idea either of the fertility of the river banks on which it stands, or of the strength of the fortifications from which Magdeburg derives its place in history. Within the walls it resembles Hanover and Brunswick in the mixture of old and new, plain and picturesque, common and quaint, which its streets present. Here are the simple remarks which a day’s stroll through the city suggested recently to Madame Pfeiffer:—
“Magdeburg is a mixed pattern of houses of ancient, medieval, and modern dates. Particularly remarkable in this respect is the principal street, the “Broadway,” which runs through the whole of the town. Here we can see houses dating their origin from the most ancient times; houses that have stood proof against sieges and sackings; houses of all colours and forms; some sporting peaked gables, on which stone figures may still be seen; others covered from roof to basement with arabesques; and in one instance I could even detect the remains of frescoes. In the very midst of these relics of antiquity would appear a house built in the newest style. I do not remember ever having seen a street which produced so remarkable an impression on me. The finest building is unquestionably the venerable cathedral. In Italy I had already seen numbers of the most beautiful churches, yet I remained standing in mute admiration before this masterpiece of Gothic architecture.”[30]
This cathedral is worthy of all the admiration which Madame Pfeiffer expresses. The glitter of the Roman Catholic worship is now foreign to it, but the dignity of the pile remains. The city is Protestant, and fondly it ought to cherish its purer worship, for in the same quaint streets Luther sang as a poor scholar for charity, and at the doors of the rich men of the time, to enable him to prosecute his learning.
But without the walls Magdeburg is equally attractive to one who has just escaped from the sands and peaty flats of the Luneburg heath. Situated where the Elbe widens, with its citadel planted on one of the river islands, the city walls are skirted on either hand by fertile plains, rich in corn and other produce. Still flat, however, unenclosed, without hedgerows, clumps of trees, straying cattle, and the numerous rural peculiarities which give life and variety and interest to an English landscape, almost a single glance suffices to take in all they exhibit of the picturesque, and to satisfy the merely superficial tourist. But there is attraction in these flat plains, nevertheless, and an economical interest, which may induce even the railway traveller to stay and inspect them. Fitted by its free and open nature for the growth of root crops, these alluvial shores of the Elbe have become the centre of a husbandry of which little is known as yet in England. In Murray’sHandbook, the traveller is informed that “much chicory is cultivated in this district;” and this is one of the roots for the growth of which the soil is specially adapted. The culture was in former years more extensive than at present; but there are still five or six thousand acres devoted to the raising of this crop. The yield in dried chicory from this extent of land is from twenty to thirty millions of pounds. It is largely exported to England and America through Hamburg—that which we receive from this port being chiefly from the Magdeburg chicory manufactories.
But the growth of the sugar beet, and the extraction of beet-sugar, are superseding the chicory trade, and are gradually assuming the first place both in the rural and manufacturing industry of Magdeburg and its neighbourhood. The largest producer of beet-sugar in the world is France; but the German Customs’ Union is the second in this respect, and Magdeburg is the principal centre of the German production. Like eager horses, skilfully jockeyed, and running neck and neck, theCisandTransRhenave sugar-extractors have for years back been struggling hard to get ahead of each other in the perfection of their methods, and the profit of their fields and manufactories; and many curious facts and difficulties have come out or been surmounted during this chemico-agricultural and chemico-manufacturing contest. For it is an interesting circumstance, that while chemistry was, on the one hand, aiding the farmer to grow large and profitable crops of roots, it was, at the same time, on the other, assisting the manufacturer more perfectly and profitably to extract the sugar from the roots when raised. But it is curious, at the same time, that in the advances thus made on either hand, the increased profits of the one party were found singularly to clash and interfere with the profits and processes of the other. Increase the size of your turnip by chemical applications, said agricultural chemistry, and you have a heavier crop to sell to the sugar-manufacturer. And the grower took the advice, and rejoiced in his augmenting profits. The practices of North British turnip-growers were introduced by British settlers, and their imitators, on the plains of Magdeburg; and root crops more like those which cover our British turnip-fields were seen, for the first time, on the banks of the Elbe.
Then up rose economical chemistry, on the other hand, and said, No, no, Mr Farmer, we don’t want, and we won’t buy, your larger roots. We cannot afford to purchase your gigantic beets, the offspring of your high manuring. The chemistry which enlarged the roots did not increase the quantity of sugar in proportion. “A ton of good big beets gives me less sugar,” says the extractor, “than a ton of your small ones; and therefore, if you will grow the big ones, I must have them at a less price in proportion. And, besides, your high manuring puts salt into the turnip, which prevents me from fully extracting all the sugar they do contain.” Thus chemistry, on the one side, was at issue with chemistry on the other, and the progress of a profitable scientific agriculture appeared to be arrested by that of a scientific and economical extraction of the sugar.
But difficulties to men of science are only things to be overcome. On the one hand, the farmer kept down the size of his roots. He sought to make up in number for the deficiency in size, while he applied his manure at such times in his rotation, and of such a quality, as to give him a slower-grown, more solid root, rather than a porous, light, rapidly forced, and less saccharine crop. And on the other hand, the chemical sugar-maker set his skill to work to devise means of more fully extracting the sugar still, and of overcoming the difficulties which the presence of salt in the juice had hitherto thrown in his way. And thus, by improving in different directions, the two interests are gradually ceasing to clash, and at the present moment a mutually advancing prosperity binds together more and more the chemical manufacturer and the chemical farmer on the alluvials of the Elbe.
We have already alluded to the importance of the beet-sugar industry to the continent of Europe. But the reader will see, from what we have just said, that it has a relative as well as a positive importance, very similar to that which the arts of brewing and distilling have in this country. It cannot flourish anywhere without causing the agriculture of the place to flourish along with it. A necessary condition to the establishment of a flourishing sugar-manufactory, is the existence of well-cultivated farms, and skilful farmers in the neighbourhood. The erection of such works, therefore, is a positive and direct means of promoting agriculture, by affording a tempting and constant market for an important part of the yearly produce. This is no doubt one of the reasons why the German governments have given so many encouragements of late years to the extension of this branch of manufacture, and why the astute government of Russia should have incited the nobles of the empire to exert themselves in its behalf in the various provinces of the Czar’s dominion. Russia, in consequence, possesses a greater number of beet-sugar works than any other country. Even as far as Odessa the culture has penetrated, and is now carried on.
Mr Oliphant, who recently visited the shores of the Black Sea, informs us that—
“Lately, in the neighbourhood of Odessa, the cultivation of beetroot, and extraction of sugar from it, was carried on to a considerable extent by the large landed proprietors of the adjoining provinces. Notwithstanding most praiseworthy exertions, these aristocratic beetroot growers were totally unable to make their speculation remunerative, and many of them must have been ruined had not the legislature stepped in and prohibited the sale of any other sugar. The consequence is, that the inhabitants are obliged to buy sugar at a hundred per cent higher than the price at which our colonial sugar could be imported into the country. It is some satisfaction to know that, notwithstanding this iniquitous regulation, combined with the system of forced labour, the beetroot growers are unable to cultivate with profit.”[31]
But the train is in motion, the trumpet has sounded, and we are off through the darkness, and along the slightly undulating flats, on our way to Berlin. We found ourselves in company with a pleasant Frenchmanen routefrom the embassy in London to the embassy in Berlin; and before our most unanimous deliberations on the affairs of the East had come to a close, we found ourselves at the end of our journey, and by 10P.M.had reached our quarters in the Hôtel de Russie.
Berlin, how many beauties and attractions dost thou present to the stranger who steps out for the first time from this hotel, and, walking a few yards, places himself in the centre of the Unter den Linden, with his back to the river and bridge. Leisurely he feasts his eyes as he turns, now to the right and now to the left, now gazing down the long vista which terminates at the Brandenburg gate, now turning towards the arsenal and the museum, and now farther round towards the cathedral and the royal palace. Architecture, sculpture, and the arts of decoration and design, all contribute their attractions; massing, grouping, and colouring, add their effects upon the intelligent eye, while the heart is touched by the mementoes of the past which here and there arrest his glance, the grateful homage to the departed which the monumental statuary exhibits, the love of country breathing from brief but frequent inscriptions, and over all the love and veneration of both king and people for the Great Frederick, the founder of the Prussian fortunes. Deeper than all the other sights which thus first arrest the stranger’s eye, the monument to Frederick and his times will touch and impress the sensitive stranger. On his war steed there he rides, the iron man, the observed of all eyes, surrounded, it is true, by the generals who rose to fame beneath his banner, but not less conspicuously by the statesmen who led his civil armies, by the poets and great writers whom he esteemed and imitated, by the advancers of science in his time, and by those who ornamented his reign through the decorations of the fine arts,—all here find their place side by side, attendant upon the great monarch, at once giving and receiving lustre. It is a monument to the age rather than to the man—or, we might rather say, to the man and his age; and the lover of abstract art, and the worshipper of modern progress, will equally admire the design and execution of this interesting monument. We were touched by a feature in the inscription, which others have no doubt noticed as well as ourselves. The words of the whole inscription are: “To Frederick the Great, Frederick-William III., 1850, completed by Frederick-William IV., 1851.” Two kings emulous of the distinction of dedicating this monument to their illustrious predecessor! This scarcely expresses more highly the mutual veneration of both father and son for the national hero whose blood they boast of, than it bespeaks their pride in the work of art it was their happiness to be able to dedicate to his memory. How many will admire and cherish in it the genius of art, who will deplore and condemn the genius of war to which the great hero offered his most ardent and most costly sacrifices!
Yet the most deadly haters of war cannot but acknowledge that there is something sublime in the special features of Frederick’s character, which the letters recently published have disclosed. Oppressed by the anxieties consequent upon military disasters, and apprehensive of further defeats, in which he sees the possibility of himself being taken prisoner, he writes to his minister, and prescribes the course to be taken for the safety of the royal family in such an eventuality. And then, speaking of his own possible position, and of the compulsion which might be exercised upon him as a prisoner, he commands them to attend to no instructions or orders he may issue while detained a prisoner, and no longer to be regarded as a free agent. He is of a great mind who knows, can anticipate, and provide against the special or possible weaknesses of his bodily nature. And so Frederick, dreading what impatience for liberty or personal suffering might possibly force from him in such circumstances, lays upon his servants, while free, his heaviest commands to regard him no more than one dead, should he happen to become a prisoner, and to consider not his state or condition or written ordersthen, but solely the tenor and substance of what henowwrites, viewed in connection with the interests of his people and his country. How many men have lived to despise themselves for acts of weakness, of folly, or of vice, which in feeble hours they have committed! Here we have the philosophical hero providing for the possible contingency of such an hour of bodily weakness or mental imbecility casting its heavy shadows over him! There is in this trait something not only for descendants to be proud of, and for a people to venerate, but for strangers of other nations also to respect and admire.
The character of the society in Berlin is familiar to most travellers. To those who have access to diplomatic circles, the evening reunions in the hotels of the ambassadors are described as agreeable in a high degree. But of real Berlin hospitality in the houses of the Berlin aristocracy, or of the nobles whose domains are in the provinces, little is either to be seen or said. We had no leisure to seek anentréeto the houses of imperial and kingly representatives, then over head and ears in notes, rejoinders, protocols, and despatches, and teased every hour of the night by thundering couriers and impatient despatch-boxes. We had, indeed, occasion to experience, as we had long before done in St Petersburg, the kindness and affable attention of Lord Bloomfield, and were happy to find that his long residence abroad had not lessened his keen sympathy with English feeling, nor his contact with Prussian vacillation made him undecided as to the conduct and policy of England in the then approaching crisis.
But Berlin boasts a scientific society, to which it was our pride and happiness to obtain an easy introduction. Every one is acquainted with some of the numerous names which adorn the list of scientific men who form the educational staff of the University of Berlin, or who hold official situations of various kinds in the Prussian capital. No city in Germany can boast of so many men of real eminence as illustrators and discoverers in the several walks of science; and nowhere will you find a pleasanter, franker, happier, more unpretending, jolly, and good-natured a set of evening companions, over a bottle of good Rhine wine and apetit souper, than these same distinguished philosophers!
One of the most agreeable of the evening meetings at which the stranger may have the fortune to meet the greater part of the men of science in Berlin, is that of the Geographical Society. The President is the distinguished Carl Ritter, who was in the chair when we attended, and around him were many whom we had come to see. But on turning over the leaves of the book of travels of our friend Professor Silliman, of which we have already spoken, we find an account of the meeting of the same Society at which he was present two years before, which appears so exact a photograph of the one at which we assisted that we shall not scruple to quote his words.
“Several papers were read on geographical subjects, and different gentlemen were called upon to elucidate particular topics. Their course is, not only to illustrate topography, but all allied themes, including the different branches of natural history and of meteorology that are connected with the country under consideration. In this manner the discussions become fruitful of instruction and entertainment, and the interest is greatly enhanced.
“A supper followed in the great room of the Society. Among the eminent men present whose fame was known to us at home were Professor Ehrenberg, the philosopher of the microscopic world; the two brothers Rose; Gustav, of mineralogy, and Heinrich, of analytical chemistry; Dove, the meteorologist and physicist; Magnus, of electro-magnetism; Poggendorff, the editor of the well-known journal which bears his name; Mitscherlich, of general and applied chemistry, besides many others almost equally distinguished. We received a warm welcome to Berlin, and throughout the evening the most kind and cordial treatment.”[32]
We, too, had the pleasure of eating and drinking with all these great men. We had the satisfaction also, among the papers read, to hear one by our friend Professor Ehrenberg, on microscopic forms of life which exist in the bottom of the Atlantic, under the enormous pressure of a thousand feet of water. They are found in a fine calcareous mud or chalk which covers the sea-bottom, and which was fished up from this and still greater depths by Lieutenant Maury, of the United States’ coast survey. Ehrenberg, as a scientific man, enjoys the singular distinction, we might almost say felicity, not only of having discovered a new world, but of living to see it very widely explored, and of having himself been, and still being, its chief investigator. His microscope and his pencil are as obedient to him as ever, eye and hand as piercing, as steady, and as truthful as ever; and, to all appearance, microscopic investigation, and the classification of microscopic life, must assume a new phase under the guidance of some new genius, before Ehrenberg cease both himself to steer, and mainly to man and work, the ship which he built, and rigged, and launched, and for so many years has guided on its voyage of discovery.
Among the curiosities of the microscopic world which Ehrenberg has investigated, we may notice in this place, as likely to interest our readers, his singular suggestion in relation to the foundations of the city of Berlin. This city stands in the midst of an infertile flat plain, through which the river Spree wends its slow way, passing through the centre of the city itself. Beneath the present “streets of palaces and walks of state” exists a deep bog of black peat, through which sinkings and borings in search of water have frequently been carried. This peat, at the depth of fifty feet below the surface, swarms at this moment with infusorial life. Countless myriads of microscopic animals, at this great depth, beneath the pressure of the superincumbent earth and streets, live and die in the usual course of microscopic life. They move among each other, and wriggle, to human sense, invisible; so that the whole mass of peaty matter is in a state of constant and usually insensible movement. But in Berlin the houses crack at times, and yawn and suffer unaccountable damage, even where the foundations seem to have been laid with care. And this, our philosopher has conjectured, may be owing to the changes and motions of his invisible world—the sum of the almost infinite insensible efforts of the tiny forms producing at times, when they conspire in the same direction, the sensible and visible movements of the surface by which the houses that stand upon it are deranged! The conjecture is curious, the cause a singular one, but who shall say that it is inadequate to the effect?
Another among the names above mentioned—that of Mitscherlich—stands in relation to the crystalline forms of matter in a nearly similar relation to that which Ehrenberg occupies in regard to microscopic life. The discoverer, at an early period of his life, of what is called the doctrine of Isomorphism, he has lived to see his discovery assume a most important place in chemico-crystallographic science, and to branch out into various kindred lines of research; and at the same time has the happy satisfaction of feeling that he has himself always led the progress, and that he is acknowledged everywhere as still the principal advancer and head authority in the department of knowledge he was the first to open up.
But among the scientific men of Berlin, we must spare a few words for one who shines among them as the acknowledged chief—the veteran and venerable Alexander Von Humboldt. Here is Professor Silliman’s description of the old gentleman, as the American Professor saw him, by appointment, in the autumn of 1851:—
“I then introduced my son, and we were at once placed at our ease. His bright countenance expresses great benevolence, and from the fountains of his immense stores of knowledge a stream almost constant flowed for nearly an hour. He was not engrossing, but yielded to our prompting, whenever we suggested an inquiry, or alluded to any particular topic; for we did not wish to occupy the time with our own remarks any further than to draw him out. He has a perfect command of the best English, and speaks the language quite agreeably. There is no stateliness or reserve about him; and he is as affable as if he had no claims to superiority. His voice is exceedingly musical, and he is so animated and amiable that you feel at once as if he were an old friend. His person is not much above the middle size; he stoops a little, but less than most men at the age of eighty-two. He has no appearance of decrepitude; his eyes are brilliant, his complexion light; his features and person are round although not fat, his hair thin and white, his mind very active, and his language brilliant, and sparkling with bright thoughts. We retired greatly gratified, and the more so, as a man in his eighty-third year might soon pass away.”—Vol. ii. p. 318.
Two years more had passed away, when we were honoured with an audience of the distinguished philosopher during our stay in Berlin. Age sits lightly upon his active head. Still full of unrecorded facts and thoughts, he labours daily in committing them to the written page,—for the grave, he tells you, waits him early now, and he must finish what he has to do before he dies. And yet he is as full at the same time of the discoveries and new thoughts of others, and as eager as the youngest student of nature in gathering up fresh threads of knowledge, and in following the advances of the various departments of natural science. And in so doing it is a characteristic of his generous mind to estimate highly the labours of others, to encourage the young and aspiring investigator to whatever department of nature he may be devoted, and to aid him with his counsel, his influence, and his sympathy. We found him congratulating himself on the possession of a power with which few really scientific men are gifted—that of making science popular—of drawing to himself, and to the knowledge he had to diffuse, the regard and attention of the masses of the people in his own and other countries, by a clear method, and an agreeable and attractive style in writing. “To make discoveries plain and popular is, perhaps, more difficult,” he said to us, “than to make the discoveries themselves.” And the feeling of the present time seems very much to run in sympathy with this sentiment. The power of diffusing is a gift perhaps as high, and often far more valuable to the community, than the power of discovering, and it should be esteemed and honoured accordingly. He expressed himself as especially pleased that no less than four original translations of one of his late books have appeared in the English tongue. In a work so honoured by publishers’ regards, there must exist some rare and remarkable element of popularity which our scientific writers would do well to study.
Professor Silliman, in his description of Humboldt, scarcely seized the most salient and characteristic points of his personal appearance. Fifty commonplace men have “benevolent countenances, lively and simple manners, and persons which are round though not fat.” But look, gentle reader, at the picture of the venerable sage as it hangs there before us. What strikes you first? Is it not that lofty, towering, massive brow, which seems all too large, as it overarches his deep-sunk eyes, for the dimensions of the body and the general size of the head itself? And then, does not the character of the eye arrest you—the thinking, reflecting, observing eye—which, while it looks at you quietly and calmly, seems to be leisurely looking into you, and reflecting at the same time upon what you have said or suggested to his richly-stored mind? There is benevolence, it is true, in the mouth, and something of the satisfied consciousness of a well-spent life, the more grateful to feel that it is almost universally acknowledged. But there is tenacity of purpose in the massive chin, and indications of that rare perseverance which for so long a life has made him continuously, and without ceasing, augment the accumulated knowledge of his wide experience, and as continuously strive to spread it abroad.
The celebrity of Berlin among German cities depends in part upon its architectural and other decorations, but chiefly upon the scientific and literary men whom, during the last half-century, it has been the pride and policy of successive governments to attach to its young university. Where so many high-schools exist, as is the case in Germany, the resort of students can only be secured by the residence of teachers of greater genius and wider distinction. Fellowships and other pecuniary temptations do not invite young talent to the universities there as with us. Place a man of high reputation in a scientific chair in a puny university like Giessen, and students will flock to his prelections. Remove him to Berlin or Heidelberg, and all Germany will send its most ardent natures to sit at his feet in his new home. The love of knowledge carries them to college, the fame of its professors decides in which college they shall enrol themselves. To the sedulous choice of the best men from the various schools of Germany, and to great care in rearing and fostering the best of its own alumni, the university of Berlin owes its rapid growth in numbers and in reputation, and the city of Berlin the agreeable circle of distinguished philosophers, among whom the intellectual stranger finds at once a ready welcome and a great enjoyment.
Though Berlin is actually south of London, yet its inland position gives it a winter climate of much greater seventy. It derives, also, a peculiar character from the cold north wind which, descending from the frozen Baltic, sweeps across the flat country by which this sea is separated from Berlin. These winds gave to the air, during a portion of our stay, the feeling as if it was loaded with minute icicles, which impinged upon and stuck in the throat as the breath descended. The public statuary, and the plants in the public walks, were mostly done up in straw to keep them from injury; scarcely an evergreen was anywhere to be seen, and, as in Russia, our common ivy was cultivated in flowerpots, and preserved as a hothouse plant.
In our walks through the city, our attention was attracted one day by a sign-board announcing a “Cichorien fabrique und eichelcaffee handlung”—a chicory and acorn coffee-manufactory. As the latter beverage at least was a novelty to us, we entered the premises and explored the rude manufactory. Attending a huge revolving cylinder, something like a gas-retort, stood one unclean workman, while on the floor at his feet was a heap of dirty half-charred rubbish, which we learned was the roasted chicory. Watching another machine, from which streamed a tiny rivulet of coarse brown powder, stood a boy, who, with the master, completed the staff of the establishment. The one machine roasted and the other ground the materials, while place and people were of the untidiest kind. We saw and bought samples of both varieties of so-called coffee. The chicory, as the master told us without any reserve, was made up half of chicory and half of turnips, roasted and ground together. The latter admixture made it sweeter. The acorn coffee, made from acorns roasted and ground, was made, he said, and sold in large quantities. It was very cheap, was given especially to children, and was substituted for coffee in many public establishments for the young. This may be done with a medicinal rather than an economical view, as acorn coffee finds a place in the Prussian and other German pharmacopœias, and is considered to have a wholesome effect upon the blood, especially of scrofulous persons. It is, however, manufactured and used in many parts of Germany for the sole purpose of adulterating genuine coffee, and it has been imported into this country for the same purpose, chiefly, we believe, from Hamburg.
It is very interesting, in an economico-physiological point of view, to mark and trace the historical changes which take place in the diet and beverages of nations. The potato came from the west, and by diffusing itself over Europe has changed the daily diet, the yearly agriculture, and the social habits of whole kingdoms. Tea came from the east, and has equally changed the drinks, the tastes, the bodily habits and cravings, and we believe also very materially the intellectual character and general mental and bodily temperament, of probably a hundred millions of men, who now consume it in Europe and America. Coffee, coming in like manner from the east, has in some countries of Europe turned domestic life, we may say, literally out of doors. The coffee-house and living in public have in France and elsewhere superseded the domestic circle and the quiet amenities of the home hearth. And now, to succeed and supersede both coffee and tea, we are ourselves in the west now growing and manufacturing chicory, which in its turn is destined materially to alter the taste, and probably to change the constitution, and thus to affect the mental habits, dispositions, and tendencies of the people who consume it. In chemical composition, and consequent physiological action upon the system, this substance differs essentially from tea and coffee, and, whether for good or for evil, it must gradually produce a change of temperament which we cannot at present specially predict,—that is to say, if the consumption spread and increase as it has done in recent years. For, little comparatively as we have yet heard of this plant in England, the European consumption of chicory, mixed and unmixed, amounts already to not much less than one hundred millions of pounds.
Between Brussels and Berlin, when seen on a Sunday, much difference will strike the English traveller. He is now in a Protestant country; and though the bill-sticker announces balls and concerts, and open theatres for the evening, yet the Sunday mornings are quiet in the streets, and the bustle of business or of holiday pleasures in no offensive way obtrudes itself upon the attention. The tendency also, during the present reign, is to make the observance of the day more strict still, though there, of course, as at home, opposition shows itself, and diverse opinions prevail. Among the four hundred and sixty thousand inhabitants of Berlin, there are comparatively few Roman Catholics. Two churches and a chapel are all the places of public worship they possess; and hence the passing to and fro of priestly vestments as we walk the streets does not strike the eye here as it does in Brussels.
But at a time like this, politics are likely to be talked of in the military capital of Prussia quite as much as either religion or science. As to the Russian question, three main things, difficult to reconcile, embarrass the Prussian policy. The people hate Russia—barely tolerate the supposed sympathy of the court of Berlin with that of St Petersburg—and would not suffer the King to take part with the Czar. Then both court and people equally hate and distrust the French. They fear to be robbed of their Rhenish Provinces by a sudden incursion from France; and that, were Prussia once engaged in a struggle with Russia, the occasion would be too favourable for the French to resist. The life of Louis Napoleon is uncertain, his death would be followed by a revolution, and this very probably by war upon their neighbours. With England they would unite, but they cannot cordially do so with a country they talk of as fickle and faithless France. And as a third main element in the question comes the jealousy of Austria. Berlin and Vienna watch each the motions of the other. If the one were to commit itself, the course of the other would be clear; but so long as neither feels that it can heartily trust in France or safely defy Russia, a union between the two on a German basis, equally anti-Russian and anti-French, such as has recently been announced, seems the only safe solution possible. But cool reasoning on probabilities and situations is not to be expected from a Prussian more than from an Englishman—less, perhaps, from the former than the latter, since, in Prussia, patriotism is always associated with more or less of that military feeling and ardour with which a three years’ service in the army more or less inoculates all; and still less can it be expected from an unstable and wavering Prussian King, whom sympathy, more than duty, bends and binds.
Among the items in Berlin newspapers which daily amused us more than their politics, were the marriage advertisements which have their constant corner in theBerliner Intelligenz Blatt. Here is a bit of conceit. “A man in his thirtieth year wishes to marry. To ladies who possess a fortune of four to five thousand dollars or upwards, and who have no objections to become acquainted with persons of good character, I hereby give the opportunity to send in their addresses to,” &c. &c. Side by side with this we have—“An active and respectable widow, about thirty years of age, who has a secure pension, wishes to connect herself in marriage with a man of business, and requests in all negotiations the most inviolable secresy. Addresses to be sent,” &c. &c. Some of the ardent male candidates for connubial bliss put forth the melting plea that they want to marry, but have no female acquaintances; while the females, on the other hand, urge that they have no protectors, and in these piteous circumstances both sexes find an excuse for making their wishes known through the public prints.
But we linger, not unnaturally perhaps, but somewhat long for our narrative, in the city of Berlin. The passports are againviséd, however, and stowed away in our safest pocket, the trumpet sounds anew, and we are off to Stettin. Through flats and sands and moors as before, and occasional patches of pine forest, we pass for the most part of the way. Here and there a stretch of poor corn-land breaks upon the monotony, and occasional undulations of the surface confine the view. But no home-like fences divide the land, nor signs of comfort make up for the natural nakedness and repulsive aspect of the bleak-looking country. This character of the land and landscape prevails both east and west along the southern shores of the Baltic Sea, not only in Prussia, but in the Danish appendages of Holstein and Sleswick, and across to the mouth of the Elbe. Yet there are some so little experienced in the features of a fair landscape, or so patriotically blind, or so poetically disposed by nature, as to see beauties even in these unpromising countries, and to derive a pleasure from passing through them which the majority of travellers can scarcely appreciate. Madame Pfeiffer crossed this tract of country on her way from Hamburg through Holstein to Kiel, in which route we also remember sands and heaths somewhat less forbidding than those which intervene between Ungernsunde and Stettin. This matter-of-fact old lady, who was already beyond the age of poetry, thus speaks of what she saw and heard as she glided along—
“The whole distance of seventy miles was passed in three hours; a rapid journey, but agreeable only by its rapidity. The whole neighbourhood presents only widely-extended plains, turf bogs, and moorlands, sandy places and heaths, interspersed with a little meadow and arable land. From the nature of the soil, the water in the ditches and fields looked black as ink.”
And then, in the way of reflection, she adds—
“The little river Eider would have passed unnoticed by me, had not some of my fellow-passengers made a great feature of it. In the finest countries, I have found the natives far less enthusiastic about what was really grand and beautiful, than they were here in praise of what was neither the one nor the other. My neighbour, a very agreeable lady, was untiring in her laudation of her beautiful native land. In her eyes, the crippled wood was a splendid park, the waste moorland an inexhaustible field for contemplation, and every trifle a matter of real importance. In my heart I wished her joy of her fervid imagination; but, unfortunately, my colder nature would not catch the infection.”[33]
This region, so tiresome to the eye, is yet interesting to the student of the pre-historic condition of this vast flat region. Covered everywhere with a deep layer of drifted materials, which consist, for the most part, of sand, sometimes of gravel, and more rarely of clay, no rocks are seenin situfor thousands of square miles. But strewed, now on the surface, now at depths of two or three feet, and now beneath fifty or sixty feet of sand or gravel, lie countless blocks of foreign stone, of every size, from that of the fort to that of a small house. These the waters of the once larger Baltic brought down ages ago from the rocky cliffs of the Finnish and Bothnian gulfs. During that very recent geological epoch which immediately preceded the occupation of the country by living races, these flats of North Germany, as far south and east as the mountains of Silesia, were covered by the waters of the Baltic Sea. Yearly over this sea the northern ice drifted, bearing with it blocks of granite and other old rocks as it floated southward, dropping masses here and there by the way as the ice-ships melted before the summer sun. But in greater numbers they bore them to the shores on which the ice floes stranded and strewed them in heaps along the flanks of the Silesian hills. Hence now, when the land has risen above the sea, the huge stones so transported, age after age, are found at every step, if not on the very surface, yet always at some small depth beneath the sand, or gravel, or clay, or in the deep peat which covers so much of the wide area. And, piled up in heaps on the slopes of the Silesian mountains, at heights of nine hundred to twelve hundred feet, the traveller wonders to see the same distant-borne strangers, unlike any of the living rocks on which they rest, and which talk intelligibly to the geologist of their ancient homes in the frozen wilds of Scandinavia.
Admired by the students of pre-historic physical geography, these boulder-stones are prized and sought for by the inhabitants of this wide tract of rockless plains. Though hard and intractable beneath the chisel and hammer, these hard granitic and metamorphic masses are the only durable building materials which are within their reach. Hence all solid constructions are formed of them, and the houses of wood generally stand on a substratum of these more lasting stones. In this way the traveller sees them employed in town, village, and farm. Palace, fortress, and cottage are equally indebted to the antediluvian icebergs of the old-world Baltic. And thus near the ancient towns, and wherever frequent people live, few of the unmoved boulders catch the traveller’s eye as he rides over the unenclosed plains around them. But they occur singly, in groups, and in rapid succession, when he penetrates to the less-peopled interior, or explores the primeval forests, or where railway cuttings dip deeply into the drift, or clay-beds are worked for economical purposes, as we see them in the vicinity of Berlin.
Stettin, well known to our Baltic merchants and shipowners, and famed among the fortresses of Germany, stands near the mouth of the Oder—where the river, escaping from the long flats through which it has wound its slow way, is about to expand into a broad lake. This lake, called the Haaf, would in reality be a wide firth or arm of the sea, were it not that its mouth is blocked up by the islands of Usedom and Wollin, which leaves three channels for the escape of the waters of the Oder. The central channel, called the Swine, is the deepest and most used; but all are difficult and narrow, and easy of defence against attacks by sea. The Silesian commerce has its principal outlet by the Oder, which connects Stettin with Frankfort-on-the-Oder and with Breslau. Above the town of Stettin, for the two or three last miles, the river winds, and again and again returns upon itself, through the almost perfect flat—and even throws off several small arms, which flow to the Haaf through channels of their own, before the main stream passes the city. To look down upon these windings from the tower of the old palace, when the bright morning sun rests upon the valley, reminded us of the winding Forth, as it is seen by thousands yearly from the beautiful summits of our well-beloved Ochil Hills. Beyond this distance the whole valley on either side is hemmed in by a lofty natural embankment of sand and gravel, the ancient limits of the Haaf when the land was lower and its waters covered the whole flat. The embankment which thus girdles the valley, and skirts at a distance the river flanks, consists for the most part of a ridge of ancient downs, such as we see on our own sandy shores where sea-born winds blow often inland; which hide Flemish towns and steeples from the eyes of the passing sailor; and which in Holland occur far from the modern shores, telling how widely in former times the sea asserted her dominion. Through this amphitheatre of sandy ridges the river forces its way into the flat valley; and it is the natural strength which the ridge possesses on the right bank, where the town now stands, of which art has taken advantage in erecting the strong fortifications which make Stettin the key of Pomerania. In the city itself there is not much to see even in summer. At the time of our visit the river was frozen up, some inches of snow covered the ground, the people had already commenced the winter amusements to which snowy climates offer so many inducements, and a single day was enough to satisfy our taste for sight-seeing. The rumours of war here, as elsewhere, were agitating the Prussian population. The course that our Government might take naturally touched very nearly the interests of a city which, by its commerce, was concerned for the openness of the sea to its ships; which, as a fortress of the first class, was liable to bombardment and siege in the event of hostilities by land; and which, by its nearness to the Russian territory, was so likely to be assailed should war commence. House property in the city was said to have already fallen much in value, and commercial speculation for the time was in a great measure paralysed.
But we were bound for West Prussia. We had a desire to see the manners andmanègeupon an old Prussian barony, where an ancient schloss still overlooks lake, field, and forest, and a numerous peasantry, though not bound like serfs to the soil, still pay so many days of bodily toil for the house and land which they hold of the lord. By the Posen railway, therefore, we left Stettin, and in four hours reached Woldenburg, whence four hours more by extra post brought us to the village of Tütz. Here a welcome awaited us from our friends in the old palace, while a natural interest, not unmixed with a little wonder, recommended us to the kind consideration of the villagers. Many of these simple people had never before seen a real live John Bull, and could not help suspecting a connection of some sort between the visit of “die zwei Englander” and the rumours of war which even in this secluded spot were already agitating their minds.
The lands attached to the old schloss in which we found ourselves, were in former times very extensive. When there were Dukes of Brandenburg, the lord of the place, it is said, was wont to go to war with his neighbours; on one occasion, when taken prisoner, he was obliged to ransom himself by ceding to the duke a large forest, which is still the property of the Crown. But the castle has passed through several hands since, and the whole estate now includes only twenty thousand acres, worth in fee about £30,000. Of these, about nine thousand are in forest, chiefly pine, four thousand in lakes and bogs, four thousand in arable culture, and three thousand rented in farms. These divisions include a considerable quantity of pasture and meadow land, and on the edge of the forests the sheep find food in summer. The soil is generally light and sandy, with a bed of clay marl at a greater or less depth below. The custom of the Prussian proprietors is to farm their own land, and thus they have extensive establishments, and carry on various branches of rural economy. The timber is felled, and either sold on the spot to merchants who come from a distance to buy, or is split up into billets and sent to the large towns for firewood; or, where a shipping place is accessible, is sawn into balks (balken) suitable for the English market. The pines are principally Scotch firs (Pinus sylvaticus); and here and there at the outskirts, or in the open glades of the forest, are seen magnificent trees of this species throwing out picturesque old arms, such as at times arrest the eye and step of the traveller in our Scottish highlands. Such he may see, for instance, on the borders of Loch Tula—the straggling relics of what were great forests in the days of our forefathers.