And so you cannot coax yourself off to sleep? Why? Were you beguiled by their exquisite flavour into rashly smoking three or four of those potent Regalias, with which your friend, the rich stock-broker, professes to aid the digestion of his guests, after a lengthened sitting at his luxurious table? Or did the rounded arm and taper fingers of his fair wife, presiding over the mysteries of the silver urn, tempt you to indulgence in too frequent cups of Souchong? Perhaps you are endeavouring, in spite of yourself, to solve some knotty problem in politics, or love, or chess, or mathematics. Perhaps you have a considerable bill to take up to-morrow, with a very slim balance at your banker's. Perhaps you have a heart-ache; perhaps a head-ache. At any rate, your nerves and senses are painfully strained; and you feel as though you would give the world and all, for a lullaby that would serve its purpose. My good Sir, compose your mind. If you can't sleep and dream, as you desire—dream and sleep. Reverse, I say, the common order. And do not sneer at the suggestion, unless you prefer tossing about all night in vain. The process is not only not impossible;it is not half so difficult as you might suppose, presuming—as I have a right to presume, in regard to my reader—that your imagination is not hopelessly inert.
Some persons recommend to the restless and wide-awake the repetition of scraps from books, in prose or verse, just as though every one had a plenteous store of "elegant extracts" garnered up in his memory, and as though authors specially aimed at being somniferous. There are indeed not a few among them, who unavoidably achieve this distinction; and the advice might not really be bad, if you could con over—once would be sufficient—Mr. A.'s last pamphlet on political economy, or the Rev. Mr. B.'s last sermon. On the whole however, inasmuch as your favourite passages—should you know any of them by heart—may be the very opposite of soothing in their tendencies, this mode of wooing slumber can scarcely be pronounced successful.
You must commence, I say, by dreaming, if you would compel yourself gently to sleep; but before I proceed to introduce to you my list of available prescriptions in this line, I note one with which my readers may possibly be familiar, having learned it in their school-boy days. You will not now be told for the first time, that a drowsy sensation may be induced by musing upon—or dreaming of, which is the same thing—a field of tall and ripe barley, swept by fresh autumnal gales. The rise and fall of each bowed head, with its feathery and graceful spikes, combines well with the undulating motion of the whole and the variedplay of light and shade. The idea is otherwise expressed by the British Laureate in "The Poet's Song," one of his minor pieces; "and waves of shadow," says he, "went over the wheat." Nevertheless it is clear that he missed the proper application of the thought, for, in place of lulling the beholder to forgetful repose, the sight seems to have made him break out into a song so loud that wild swans paused to listen in their flight, larks fluttered down to earth, swallows gave up hunting bees, snakes slipped under sprays, wild hawks stared over sparrows stricken under their claws, and the very nightingales were set a-thinking. Truly a sad perversion this of a golden opportunity! But your rhymsters were ever a crazy race. When they deal with their fellows generally, we all know how they botch poor human nature. What, then, can be expected, when poets undertake to figure out one of themselves? Still, let us improve the occasion. Barley-fields or wheat-fields are well enough in their way; only, if you conjure up this image, I would advise you to season it with an abundance of red poppies intermingled with the legitimate crop, and a very careful attempt on your part to number these interlopers one by one, preparatory, if so it please you, to flipping off their heads. With due allowance, therefore, for its lack of novelty, this dream may be admitted into our collection.
And it may be proper to remark at the outset that, though the dreams whereof I propose to treat are sufficiently distinct in their kind, it is desirable, in thepractical use of them, to run them one into another—to fuse them unconsciously as it were, without being over-nice as to the point at which one ends and another begins. It is not requisite, however, for this reason, that they should all be packed into one paragraph, like a daily paper's report of one of Mr. Morrill's speeches on the Tariff, or a Secretary of the Treasury's Report. You shall have each dainty conceit served up in its own dish, so that, furthermore by the way, you can take them in such order as suits your own good pleasure. This view of the matter relieves me also from the necessity of formal arrangement. It is altogether unimportant which fancy comes uppermost. The main thing is to shut off all thought concerning the actualities of life, eschewing reference to your loves, your hates, your wrestlings with circumstance, your mental cares, your bodily ailments. I repeat it: you must dream, if you would sleep. Counting the breezy barley-field above mentioned as one, I believe I can supply you with a dozen subjects.
Your physical eye is closed, of course—your mind's eye being, on that account, all the more keenly alive to impression, and the better able to compass an unembarrassed range. Set it, then, upon a spiral stairway endless so far as I can imagine it, though you may perchance by looking earnestly upward discover whereto it leads, or by peering intently downward find out its base. But did I say a stairway? That was not what I meant; and dreamers, of all men, are at liberty to change or modify their views. I should have said aninclined plane. Let it be steep, smooth, slippery, broad enough to admit the passage of several figures simultaneously, and guarded by bannisters on either side. When, fatigued with the vain attempt to satisfy your doubts as to the safety of this strange structure, your curiosity craves enlightenment as to its uses, I pray you to observe how I would have it peopled. Sliding tumultuously adown the balustrades, lo and behold an innumerable throng of Cherubs in unbroken succession, coming whence and going whither you know not, but each the counterpart of his predecessors, and each flapping his little wings to maintain his balance, rendered precarious as it is by his inability to sit a-straddle. As for the inclined plane itself thus fantastically flanked, you soon perceive that it is thevia sacraof many an Ethardo, whom you have known in the flesh or in the spirit—Ethardo, the marvellous gymnast, who mounted and descended steep slopes at the Sydenham Crystal Palace, by trundling inflated balls beneath his feet. Up and down, down and up, some painfully and some skilfully pediculating, your Ethardi pass and repass each other, disorderly yet in order. Name them and salute them as they go by. You have probably more acquaintances among them than I; but I recognise Robinson Crusoe and Count Bismarck, Tarquinius Priscus and Horace Greeley, John Ruskin and Lucrezia Borgia, Mrs. Fry and Edgar Poe, Mr. Gladstone and Dion Boucicault, John Bright and Mrs. Grundy, Ben. Wade and Victor Hugo, Pio Nono and the Great Mogul. Note, too, the various materialmoulded into circular form, and blown up by way of ambulant footstool; now it is a crown, now a crozier, now a bag of gold, now a wind-bag, now a woman's heart, now a man's fame done up in a newspaper and properly puffed. Ring the changes upon these Ethardi and the motive power that each applies, O my wakeful friend; and at least you may lose sight of your own individuality. Or, take a slide down the banisters with the young Cherubs, and perchance you may touch bottom—in Lethe.
Not so? Let us proceed. There's a man at our Club, whose reputation is so solidly built up, though on an ethereal basis, that I never knew any one presume to question it. He is an absolute master of one accomplishment; unrivalled, and—to the best of my belief, though I can't vouch for the fact—unenvied. Admiring spectators gather round him and applaud; but, if he have ambitious imitators, they rehearse in secret. So far, he does well—ay, with consummate tact and unfailing certainty—what few men can do at all, unless once in a while at dreary intervals, and then by accident. Not to keep you in suspense, which is antagonistic to repose and slumber, this young paragon contrives to throw off his cigar-smoke from his lips, at will, in an unerring series of the most lovely rings or wreaths, which, as they float and rise in tremulous succession, strangely fascinate the looker-on. It may be that this feat is not much of an achievement, morally or physically or intellectually considered. It may be also that the Club does not do itself muchhonour, in setting so high a value on this performance. But what will you? In the palmy days of Greece, a man acquired a certain celebrity by his precision and address in throwing peas through a needle's eye—the peas being, I presume, much smaller or the needles much larger, than any with which we sow or make soup in these degenerate days. Still, so highly do I appreciate perseverance in the acquirement of any difficult art, that I purpose doing much more for my proficient in smoke, than was done for his man of peas by Philip of Macedon. That bushel of ammunition was a scurvy reward. I confer immortality, by thus registering a fact and hinting a name. And I do this from a sense of gratitude, wherein I trust that you will participate, so soon as you perceive the connection that may surely be traced, between the smoke thus artistically and gracefully jetted into air, and the drowsiness by which you would fain be possessed. Do but imagine a score of your acquaintances round a table, each an adept in this way, and each filling the atmosphere with coronet after coronet of vapour thrown up from meerschaum or cheroot. Whose are the most frequent, whose the most perfect, whose retain their form the longest? Watch the little circlets as they wave and tremble; and award the palm of merit fairly. Nay, even if you tell me that you are innocent of the weed and nauseated by its odour, none the less shall this fantasy be available. I saw once a ship-of-war firing a salute; and lo, from one of the guns went up to the pure sky, in magnified proportions,just such a wreath as those I have described, as delicate yet as clearly defined, and touched withal with a suspicion of prismatic colours as it caught the rays of the sun. An enthusiastic painter might have deemed it an invisible Fairy's aureole; a sentimental milliner would have set it down as the flounce of her unseen robe. Whether the gunner of this occasion had taken a lesson from my friend at the Club, I cannot pretend to decide; I only assure you that I witnessed the phenomenon. You have, therefore, but to multiply as well as magnify. Think of a squadron, a fleet, all the navies of the world, sailing slowly and majestically in unending circuit, as the custom is when they bombard some hapless fort. The saluting is continuous; the movement never ceases; but the big cannon are noiseless now and harmless. Space is joyous with the innumerable wreaths of bluish vapour; but the red slaughter and the accursed tumult of the sea-fight are not heard or seen. Ponder long and lazily, I counsel you, over the evolutions of the ships and the convolutions of the smoke. Those may lure you, possibly, into the Waters of Oblivion; these may spirit you away to the land of the Lotos-Eaters.
Another dream invites you; but it must be sketched with more reticence, and this for two reasons. In the first place, the subject has become identified with that portion of theatrical entertainments usually found to be the least soporific. In the second place, if your imagination were encouraged to free range hereupon, you might be foolish enough to connect its poetic motion and its charm with certain souvenirs of a certain fair friend of yours, whom it were wiser to forget if you desire to profit by this Mandragorean system. Briefly, then, I commend a Ballet, as not altogether unworthy of trial—but not, be it observed, that thing of gas lamps, and pink tights, and leers, andposes plastiques, over which young America goes into raptures. By no means. Picture to yourself a smooth sward beneath clustered pines, a tender moonlight, and Nymphs—not semi-nude as is the fashion of our day, neither affecting the contortions of the gymnast as in our modern caricature of dancing—but robed in swansdown, with nodding plumes and tasseled fuschias pendent, tripping it, if you will, on "light fantastic toe," yet through stately and solemn measures. You remember Giulio Romano's dance of Apollo and the Muses in the Pitti at Florence? Take that for your model; then place the figures to your liking. Nor forget to add an orchestra of Æolian harps. Let them hang among the pine-branches, and sigh forth Weber's Last Waltz, just to set the groups in motion. Then fail not in your breathings, O soft night-wind; foot it daintily, ye wildwood Nymphs—so may sleep steal gently upon the restless one, while yet his ear and eye are unsated!
Another dream: blue water again, though, this time, with a golden beach. It is calm; but the surf rolls in languidly, with low murmurous sound, as it will roll, be the sea's surface never so smooth, beyond the involuntary breakers. What graceful bends and curves are marked, for an instant, with frothy pencil, upon theshining sands! How they sparkle with evanescent light! How soon the tiny bubbles disappear! But you have watched all this, many and many a time; and stale indeed hereon were description and moralizing! Why, then, this present allusion? What is there in it, tending to lull the acuter sensibilities? What offers it of gently-soothing exercise to the overwrought and throbbing brain? This is the reply. Popular belief gives to every ninth or tenth wave, tumbling in upon the shore, supremacy over its fellows. It swells up into fuller volume. It sweeps landward with a more majestic force. This is the story; but I would have you test its correctness. Is it the ninth, or the tenth? So, lie down yonder upon the mass of dry sea-weed piled against the rocks, and count patiently a dozen, a score, a hundred, a thousand waves as they come in. You shall tell me, to-morrow morning, whether the ninth have it, or the tenth—whether there be any regularity at all.
Again: if we do not, like the Roman Augurs, watch and interpret the flight of birds as of good or evil omen, some of them—I mean some of the birds, not of the Augurs—may help us to become, for a while, independent of fate and fortune. Did you ever, for instance, sit at a window on a summer's evening, and take note how a flight of swallows skims the air? They are not very numerous, perhaps; but as they dart to and fro, and cross and recross before you, their number appears indefinite, and the zigzag peculiarity of their movements can only be verified by the closestpossible scrutiny. I have satisfied myself that the motion is regular, and that it describes an elongated figure of 8, traced as I am sure you have often traced it upon ice with the outer edge of your skates. Now, though I tell you this on the faith of my own personal observation, you are not bound to accept my word for it. Dream therefore that, while you are blending two ovals into one figure upon the frozen pond, swallows overhead are keeping time to your gyrations. The winter sport and the summer bird may be made to harmonize, as it is only in a dream; and close watching will enable you hereafter to support or disavow my theory.
Again: return, if you please, from air to water, for you have by no means exhausted the resources of this latter element, in the way of material for dreams. Are you an angler? Did you never drowse and doze over your rod, when "sitting in a pleasant shade," on a sultry afternoon, not a nibble disturbed the equanimity of your float? The mere thought were suggestive of a nap—suggestive, that is, to the indolently disposed, with whom however you may not be classed, seeing that your mind is in a state of unwholesome excitement, the which it is my business to allay. And so, I pray you, look deeper into this matter; pry down into the blue transparent depths, and mark the fish that swarm about your hook. Is it paste thereon, or a wriggling worm? Never mind; the bait is singularly attractive. To say nothing of the float gently bobbing ever and anon, and of the tell-tale ripples risingto the surface, you can see with your own eyes how victims dally with temptation; how they course to and fro, and round and round; how one eyes the bait, and another smells it, and another mumbles it; how one swims away, and presently returns, and with him his mate in size and colour. Are they over-fed or over-cautious, that they thus play round, but will not gorge? Does one egg on his brother to try the suspicious morsel, hoping himself to profit by his brother's experience? Is there so much resemblance to human foibles discernible down there, among these poor little inhabitants of the waters under the Earth? The question is worth studying out—especially by a sleepless man, who, while contemplating the forms, the motions, the manners, and the minds of fish, may unconsciously swallow the bait that is thus dropped before him.
It was my intention to devote a long and distinct paragraph to each of four other subjects, that appear to me no less adapted for the consideration of waking dreamers. These are, respectively, Ghosts, Labyrinths, Regattas, and the Eleven Thousand Virgins of Cologne. But it is well to leave something to the reader's perspicacity and inventive powers. Indeed, why should he not fancy—dream is the more appropriate term—that he himself has undertaken to complete these special paragraphs? Let his imaginary pen glide, swift and effortless, over his imaginary foolscap. Ten to one, he will fill in and elaborate my outlines, far better than I could work them out myself. For instance, I do but mention Ghosts; he might summon to his presence, and bid troop before him, hosts upon hosts of his friends or relatives, or of his chosen heroes and heroines in romance and history. He might clothe them in white or in grey; he might attire them in their ordinary habiliments; in short, he might parade them according to his own taste, without reference to mine, which whould be a clear point in his favour. Accidentally, I might call up some spirit that had vexed and thwarted him through life, for no man whose experience is worth remembering hath not had his enemies, hidden or revealed, and very few are the men, fewer the women, who have never disposed of a rival. My reader of the moment, invested with my functions, will of course evoke none but his familiars, the well-bred and well-behaved. Let me be grateful accordingly that, by transferring the responsibility to him, I escape the chance of bringing forward, innocently and inopportunely, some social Banquo. And so I pass on, with one single word of caution to my substitute in completing this paragraph: let him not convert his pen into a Pre-Raphaelitish paint-brush. Airy beings must be rather hinted than described. The realism of anatomical plates, applied to them, would spoil the reader's dreamin toto, and wake him up perhaps more hopelessly than ever.—As to Labyrinths, the course is obvious. Take a dozen of these quaint contrivances, and place them side by side, as Paulsen or Paul Morphy may place the sundry chess-boards whereat he isto play, simultaneously and blindfolded, an equivalent number of games. Pop, over the hedges and into the very core of each one, any personage against whom you have a grudge, or any one of the Ghosts just convened that may have been troublesome; and then challenge the incarcerated individuals to find their way out of limbo, by the gravelled pathways. Should one of the whole number emerge, through extraordinary good luck, quietly tip him back again over the hedge, or defy him to retrace his steps and regain the centre. You may enlarge this suggestion, I think, into a paragraph reasonably long.—The same with Regattas. I am almost sorry that I gave up to you so felicitous a topic; for all ages and all waters may be laid under contribution. From Noah's Ark shall float the commodore's broad pendant. The ocean shall be covered, so far as eye can range, with countless craft of every build and rig. And all shall glide about in quiet, inasmuch as oars shall be muffled, and steamers, having learned to consume their own smoke, shall be taught equally to swallow their hideous noises. The marshalling of the competitors and the order of the racing are left to your discretion; but there need be no lack of interest. Caiques from Stamboul and gondolas from Venice shall be frequent; and pirogues from the Malayan peninsula shall over-haul the three trim yacht-schooners that raced across the Atlantic from New-York. Here Cleopatra's barge shall be matched against an Esquimaux kayak; there a catamaran from Coringa shall bump the YaleCollege eight. If you cannot make something out of all this picturesque confusion, and if you cannot contrive to lose therein both yourself and the reader of your paragraph, the fault will be yours, not mine.—There remain the Eleven Thousand Virgins of Cologne. What are you to do with them? Simply this. Endow each one of them with personal attributes; let each have form and features, distinct from the others of her sisterhood. Is the task difficult? So much the better. After a cool thousand or so of these individual portraitures, you may begin to fumble in vain for separate identities. In fact, who knows whether you may not be compelled to take refuge hopelessly in sleep, the very mark at which both of us are aiming?
And now, the foregoing long and subdivided paragraph being brought at last to an end, it were disingenuous to shirk an admission, that the "who's who" is not so plainly discernible therein as it might be. You and I, and the reader and the writer, and the giver and recipient of advice, will be accused by the critic of being somewhat queerly mixed up. What, then? Are not vagueness and uncertainty of style specially appropriate to the circumstances? Who would thank us for precision? No, no; carry clearness, if you like, into your mathematical definitions; but leave us our mistiness when we treat of the mysterious. Nor, on the whole, am I otherwise than content with my suggested assumption of temporary and imaginary authorship, as one of the methods forquieting a fevered brain. How pleasant to dream that rival Publishers are contending for your manuscript poems; that rival Managers are waylaying you for a sight of your unwritten comedy! Besides, by adding authorship to the list that closed with the damsels of Cologne, the number is brought up to eleven, so that, when I wind up with my trump card, the promised dozen of dreams will be complete, and I shall be enabled to dispense with the "waves of shadow" on the wheat-field, which I acknowledged were not my original conception.
But am I too late in bringing forward my last and happiest idea?—though for that matter, when the tale of Mazeppa was concluded, "the King had been an hour asleep," and yet Mazeppa's story was told out ne'ertheless. For your immediate purpose therefore, or for use on your next sleepless night, I entrust you with the crowning opiate. Recollect that you are dreaming; and dream that all your intimates and relatives, all of whom you have ever heard or read with interest, men and women and children, people of every age and clime—imagine them, I say, all seated before you at a round table. How any table is to accommodate so vast a multitude, is their affair, and yours; the dreamer is never baulked by technical impediments. Have your eye upon them all at once—another little difficulty, to be overcome only by mortals in the incipient stage of somnolency. Or, if your mind's eye obstinately refuses to enlarge its orbit in this direction, so as to embrace such a vastand heterogeneous assemblage, gather, I beseech you, into one focus any such crowd as you habitually see. The Sunday audience of the Reverend Henry Ward Beecher will answer the purpose; or you may fancy yourself at one of the old Tammany Hall Meetings; or at the Opera, on a fashionable night; or in the Senate at Washington during the impeachment of Mr. Johnson. It matters not when and where; but the proceedings strike you as insufferably dull, and you give vent to your feelings in a yawn that may neither be suppressed nor concealed. Suddenly, moved by the same impulse and unable also to control or hide its effect, the jaw of every soul present is dropped to the lowermost, and all mouths are open in a universal yawn. It is not catching; it is caught. Beecher gapes, and the elect are gaping round him. Isaiah Rynders the same, and the same with his "unterrified" hearers. Parepa-Rosa stands open-mouthed in dumb show of singing, while humming-birds perched on chignons vibrate, as they vainly try to resist the irresistible. Gape the Republicans, and gape the Democrats, in response to the gaping Butler on his legs. There is, in Shakespeare's words—though his ignorant editors have transformed it into a "gap"—there is, I say, "a gape in Nature." Will you alone hold out: I can't believe it. You have yawned in concert, I am morally certain. Indeed, if, as these long-drawn prescriptions come to an end, you be not far on the road to forgetfulness, I can give you but one parting counsel. Nothing else can serve and save you—you must incontinently take morphine.
Doctor Pablo went back a lonely man, to his old mother, in France, after having passed twenty years in the Philippines.—English magazine.
Doctor Pablo went back a lonely man, to his old mother, in France, after having passed twenty years in the Philippines.—English magazine.
He did so. We can vouch thus much for the correctness ofHousehold Wordsof the 6th inst., whence the above-named quotation is copied. And as the subject of it is a remarkable personage, and this unexpected meeting with him in print has revived in us not a few pleasant recollections, we will take the liberty of informing our readers how we came to have personal knowledge of Don Pablo—for this, and not Doctor Pablo, was his cognomen, at least amongst his friends.
Embarking at Bombay, many a long year since, in the East India Company's steamerAtalanta, for passage up the Red Sea, we soon fell into acquaintance with a party of foreigners, partially isolated as they were from the crowd of Anglo-Indians—men, women, and children—returning by the over-land route to their native country. They (the foreigners) were five in number, two Frenchmen, two Dutchmen, and a Spaniard. Of the three last-mentioned we have small recollection. Of the Frenchmen, one was Don Pablo.
The other, who headed the whole party, was Monsieur Adolphe Barrot, a brother of Odilon and Ferdinand Barrot, whose names are familiar to those conversant with recent French history. He was at the time bound to Paris, on leave, from his post of Consul-General at Manilla. At an early period of his career he had been attached to the French Legation at Washington, or at least had travelled through this country. Subsequently, when Consul at Carthagena, he distinguished himself by his resolute and humane interposition on occasion of a certain revolutionary outbreak. After his return from the East, he served as French Minister to Naples and to Lisbon, and now, we believe, holds the same appointment at Brussels. Between this man of cultivated mind, polished manners, and companionable qualities, and Don Pablo, whose exterior smacked but little of intercourse with "the world," there was evidently a bond of no common sort. Blunt, earnest, truthful, with quick perceptions and impulses of the kindest nature, there was something very fresh and irresistibly attractive in the character of Don Pablo. We did not wonder at the intimacy. Opposites are drawn together. In friendly and social intercourse the time sped away.
At that period, the steamers bound from Bombay to Suez touched at Cosseir, a port two days' sail South of Suez, and about 150 miles East of Thebes on the Nile. The object was to land passengers who cared to cross the intervening Desert, as the quickest mode of gaining Upper Egypt. To Cosseir we were ourselves destined;our new friends being on their way direct to France,viâSuez, Cairo, and the Mediterranean, and having made none of the ordinary provision for the less-frequented route. But we plied them strongly with argument and entreaty, to divert them from their intended limited course; not forgetting the threat of ridicule in a Parisian drawing-room, where a man who had missed such a chance would never be able to hold up his head. Finally, they consented. After a voyage of sixteen days, the coaling process at Aden included, three groups of travellers landed at Cosseir. We had dealings with two of them.
For although we had persuaded Mr. Barrot, Don Pablo and their associates, to take our route, we could not precisely undertake to accompany them. We were to travel over the same ground, but not together; for we had engaged, ere we left Bombay, to join fortunes with a small party of veterans and valetudinarians who had made elaborate preparations for the journey, and were not sorry to have the aid of one who did not belong to either class, but who was perhaps for that very reason more competent than they themselves to take charge of their caravan. And then there was a lady, and a lady's maid, and a valet, and the thousand and one encumbrances that are incidental to such appendages. What scenes we had with the camel-drivers! What tons of baggage to be loaded! what irritations! what drollery! what delay! Landing early in the morning, the preparations for a start occupied us till a late hour in the afternoon; nor had we ever a morelaboursome time of it. Lightly cumbered, and with only a twentieth part of the fuss, Don Pablo and the others had preceded us; but as the same camping-places in this five days' journey are generally frequented, we hoped to see them from time to time. Fortune kindly ordained that we should join them permanently.
It was on a Saturday afternoon that we started from Cosseir, with a train "too numerous to mention." Night had fallen, ere we pitched our tents—the writer sharing that of Sir C. M. At day-light on the following morning, we strolled off to the French encampment; were again pressed to join its occupants; were again compelled reluctantly to refuse. Away they went. We returned to our own quarters, where to our horror, in place of hearing "boot and saddle" sounded, the edict was issued from my lady's tent, that there was to be no marching that day. Bah! how provoking! we could not ask for an honourable discharge; but how we longed to desert! Matters fell out, however, more pleasantly then we had a right to expect. Breakfast was served, with the elaborateness of afête champêtre, at eleven o'clock; and as the hostess gracefully poured out the coffee, the talk turned upon those who had sped onward. Presently, by a lucky chance, it occured to her, or to the nominal head of the party, that dawdling away a Sunday on a barren speck of Mahommedan sand was not in itself the essential duty of a plain Christian, nor specially agreeable to a man whose thoughts were keenly set upon the marvels of Luxor and Karnac. In short, it was mildly suggestedto us that, as the organization and first move of the caravan—the real and only difficulties—were accomplished, there would be nothing ungallant in leaving the party to its more orthodox or more leisurely progress. Our coyness may be imagined; but we consented at length to take this view of the matter, and at noon called up our camels. Soon were our trunks and slender stock of kettles and sauce-pans slung upon one; ourselves astride of a second; and on a third, the Arab driver, with whom there was no communicating but by signs. A twelve hours' ride brought us at midnight to the tent of our friends—they having luckily found one available at Cosseir. We raised the canvas from the pegs, and saluted Don Pablo with a "Here I am!" Many years have elapsed since that night, but we can fancy now that we hear his genial rejoinder, "I knew you'd come!" In less time than it takes to tell it, we had edged in our bedding upon the sand, and were one of the Seven—no, six—Sleepers.
Had not aHowadjiof this Western hemisphere made the Desert and the Nile so peculiarly his own, that it is presumption for a common pen to follow in his track, we might be tempted still further to ransack our memory for pleasant recollections of Don Pablo. Let it suffice to say, that with these pleasant companions we roughed it across the camel-track, in a style of discomfort and good humour rarely surpassed; explored the wonders of Thebes and the Tombs of the Kings; floated down to Cairo; clambered the Great Pyramid; smoked pipes with Pashas; and finally embarked at Alexandria,on the blue waters of the Mediterranean. The farewell was said at Syra, one of the islands of the Ægean. The "five we supped with yesternight" were bound to Malta and Marseilles—we to Athens and Constantinople. As we shook hands at parting with Don Pablo, he quietly remarked, with that cheerful gravity that so well became him, and in allusion to a young lady who had been our three days' acquaintance on board the steamer—"Adieu, mon cher; vous épouserez Mademoiselle."
We never saw Don Pablo, but once afterwards. Several months had elapsed. His prophecy had been fulfilled. The lady in question was on our arm, as in sauntering under the arcades of the Palais Royale in Paris, we met our old associate. There was a hearty greeting; but when we reminded him of his prediction and formally introduced him, we remember that he cut the colloquy abruptly short (as it then seemed to us), and turned away with an expression of face for which we were at a loss to account, being ignorant of all the details of his history. Did the memory of the Peninsula of Iala-Iala, and of the loving wife whom he had buried there, fall too suddenly and too sadly upon his sensitive and affectionate spirit?—We cannot say; but this was the beginning and the ending of our knowledge of Doctor Pablo, until we unexpectedly met him in print.
It is not very much of a walk from the Glen House up the Eastern face of Mount Washington—less than three hours at a leisurely pace will accomplish it; and on a fine day it would be next to impossible to lose one's-self, if alone. Half the distance or thereabouts, your track lies through a wood, acceptable enough as offering shelter from a July sun, but curtailing your views annoyingly. However, all things end; and if your range of sight be somewhat "cabined, cribbed, confined," at the start, you have no cause for complaint on that score after once emerging from covert, for the rocks, bleak, bare, and irregular, that are scattered all around, though large enough to compel a careful picking of the way between them by no means limit the vision. But the approach has been a hundred times described, and I will only say of it, at the risk of repetition, that he who comes up from the Glen House, and fails to turn his eye continually over his right shoulder, to dwell lovingly upon the near and noble outlines of Mounts Jefferson, Adams, and Madison, has no appreciation of this sort of scenery.
The morning had been superlatively fine, and troopsof mounted dames and damsels and cavaliers made the various pathways lively with their glee. But caprice is the rule of these high regions; and when I was within ten minutes of the summit, clouds of misty vapour came suddenly scudding up, whence I knew not, but shutting out a peep here and a vista there, as they caracolled in fantastic evolutions. Presently, to these kaleidoscopic effects succeeded a slight hailstorm—it was rain visibly beneath us, attended with thunder and lightning—but anon all was comparatively clear again, and from the congregated spectators went up many a genuine burst of enthusiastic admiration, as point after point opened out or was shut in by the scud.
The two rough stone buildings upon the small plateau that crowns the mountain, built for the accommodation of travellers, are called respectively the "Summit" and the "Tip-top" House. Once rivals, they now form a single establishment—one being used as a restaurant, the other as a dormitory. On this particular day, nearly a hundred persons must have refreshed themselves in the former—a dozen or fifteen in the latter; and I must own, it was not without a sense of relief that I saw the last of the descending parties set forth about 2 P. M., being myself of the select few about to take the chance of sunset and sunrise.
For the afternoon, then—for the interval of time was to be occupied—a guide was summoned, to show half-a-dozen of us the wonders of Tuckerman's Ravine,acul-de-sacbetween two great buttresses of Mount Washington, that prop it up towards the South and West. The sides of this ravine are very precipitous the head of it being formed of layers of rock, at an angle of about ninety-five degrees, over which a cascade precipitates itself, fed by the springs and melted snows above. In the bed of this hollow, to which the descent is sufficiently sharp to gratify the keenest amateur pedestrian, the accumulated snow of the winter, blown over from the impending heights, lies packed in such enormous masses that it seldom entirely disappears until the latter part of August. At the period of my visit, on Friday, the 29th of July, a huge portion thereof remained, and the famous "Snow-Arch" was not only visible but practicable. This natural curiosity is a cave channelled out from the vast snow bank as a passage for the descending waters, the roof of which, gradually melting away, leaves height and space for walking along this gallery as it were in the very bed of the torrent. You enter perforce, be it observed, where the stream emerges. The length was certainly not less than two hundred feet, the breadth of the tunnel perhaps forty or fifty. Of the thickness of the roof I cannot speak, not having essayed it; but the little knot of adventurers trusted that it would not cave-in whilst they were groping their difficult way, one after the other, wet-footed and in semi-obscurity, up-stream, from end to end of the arched way. The object of the exploration it would be difficult to define. It certainly was not scientific;it offered no rare beauties; it might have been very well imagined, without the trouble and subsequent risk—but it was an adventure, and it had its charm. Day-light appeared as we neared the waterfall—luckily not very full—which, as I have already said, comes down the head of the ravine and is the origin of the "Arch" itself. What next? The snow had separated bodily from the face of the rocks to the width of two or three feet, as you see ice fields in a thaw detach themselves from the land whereto they have been joined. We could therefore emerge, and clamber up the abrupt face of the rocks, though the first start was not inviting, inasmuch as we had to hoist ourselves up by unequal pressure upon soft snow on one side and hard rock on the other. The alternative was a return. This would have been inglorious; up we went. It was a rough business. The guide had been over the ground once before, this season—so he said, at least—but he "harked back" occasionally, as though not quite certain of his way. It seemed impossible to diverge either to the right or left, and so gain the comparatively easier slope. We were doomed to mount, in the hope of finding successive steps, inasmuch as a retracing of those taken was not for a moment to be thought of; descent in such cases is always far more dangerous and troublesome. It was fortunate that in crossing twice or thrice the waterfall itself, we were not pumped on to any serious extent. I was moistened only, being garnished with a Macintosh; and I have only two scarsnow left on my shins, the result of scraping too close an acquaintance with sundry rocks. The whole affair lasted between three and four hours. I cannot recommend it, save to very enthusiastic mountaineers, or toci-devant jeunes hommesanxious to test the effects of Time upon their powers of walking and of endurance.
Regaining the hurricane-deck of the Tip-top House—for the roof is the principal promenade, and often times assuredly deserves the name I give it, how gratefully, as the sun went down, stole the sense of ineffable grandeur over the somewhat wearied frame! It was a superb evening; and though it would not suit me to cull a leaf from the Guide-book, and tell all that is therein narrated, I must mention one particular wherein this locality is notable, if not quite unique. I think I remember something of the kind, but not so marked, at sunrise as seen from the summit of Etna; but not thus, on the Righi and Faulhorn in Switzerland, on the Pic du Midi de Bigorre in the Pyrenees, or on other peaks that I have climbed in the days of long ago, to salute the coming or speed the parting day. The nearest approach to it that I have seen, was at the Great Pyramid of Ghizeh. I allude to the wonderful distinctness and regularity with which the shadow of the great cone itself is traced, at sunset, striding over heights and lowlands, mound and lake—all the intervening surface, in fact, between the spectator and the far distant horizon—until it contracts almost to a point whereearth and sky merge into one. The sharpness of these converging parallel lines of shadow in that luminous atmosphere absolutely astounded me. They were as crisp, as clearly defined, as those that you may see in antique pictures of Jacob's Dream, leading ladder-wise from Heaven to the head of the slumbering Patriarch. Sunrise, next morning—for I was again favoured with clear weather and only sufficient frost to render the roof of the restaurant slightly slippery—sunrise, I say, reserved all this. The narrow lines, now on the Western horizon, broadened out and came upwards and forwards, as in the evening they had elongated and gone down. It was in truth a rare spectacle, not to be forgotten, and individualizes this natural observatory.
As for the view itself, it has been describedad nauseam, and I have only a few words to say about it. It happened, as it often does happen, that I fell in with an untravelled admirer of the prospect spread out before us, not charmed however with it more than I was myself. But he would persist in drawing from me an answer to the common question—"how does this compare with some of the famous points of view in the Swiss Alps?" Such tests I hold to be absurd, thanking my stars that I can unreservedly enjoy all fair things that are good of their kind. And so I told the inquirer this simple fact. If, in a mountainous country, varied, broken, studded with lakes, and rife with all the elements of the picturesque, you ascend some such superior elevation as this, you have,looking downwards, a striking panoramic scene, like this in its general features—more striking perhaps than beautiful, though this is all matter of taste. The difference lies herein. Here, you plunge your look downward, or sweep it over surrounding objects—and that's the end of it. In those other Alps, you add to the four or five or six thousand feet, below you, as much above—and it is thatupwardglance which takes in the marvels of glacier and snow-field and inaccessible peaks. My new acquaintance asked for no more comparisons, but let me enjoy myself in my own quiet way.
The walk down Mount Washington to Crawford's at the Great Notch, as I believe it is called, is rather a long affair. It must be ten miles, and parts of it are of the roughest. It took me four hours, in company with two intelligent and companionable young students of Harvard College, travelling (in the true way) a-foot, with knapsacks on their backs. But we hurried it too much, especially as the ridge over and along Mount Pleasant, and some of its fellows bearing Presidential names, abound in points of view worth dwelling on. Moreover I was foot-galled; and this reminds me that, inasmuch as I cannot to-day conclude my rambling reminiscences, I may as well wind up with a touch of information and of advice. The one is intended for the benefit of pedestrians who make excursions of this sort; the other for stay-at-homes in flat countries, who have no definite notion whatever of the ups and downs of hilly regions.
In the first place, then, you who walk are painfullyaware that a sore foot is almost a calamity, if it befall you whilsten route. Remedy there is none; be thankful that there is an infallible preventive, of whose unfailing excellence I can speak with unreserved commendation. On its simple merits I once averaged in Switzerland twenty-five miles a day, for thirty successive days; and this without gall or blister. Fool that I was, to neglect it, two or three weeks ago. Nothing is easier. Ere you start in the morning, soap or grease the naked foot thoroughly, and then draw the stocking over it. Wash off, with a dash of brandy in the water, on finishing your day's work. The play of the foot is the preservative against abrasion—a certain one, I assure you.
In the second place, if—passing your life amid prairies or savannahs—you are sometimes puzzled to comprehend allusions to buttresses, shoulders, ridges, peaks, cones, ravines, and the various terms in use among enthusiastic mountaineers, I think I can put you on a very simple explanatory track. Next time you lie in bed, with a few spare moments for reflection upon this grave topic, just turn on to your back and elevate one knee or both knees. The coverlid or sheet will immediately assume—I am serious in saying—a curiously correct semblance, I might almost term it a model in relief, of the face of any mountainous country. Laugh not, but try it. A slight movement on your part varies the form and outline and relative bearing of hill and vale, raises a pinnacle here, or there sinks a gorge precipitously steep. If I had themisfortune to be confined to bed by sickness—excluding gout, which might render the process impossible—I could thus, with the aid of a map and some tables of distances, design a passable fac-simile of the leading White Mountains themselves. Why Yankee ingenuity should not long ago have manufacturedpapier-machéplans thereof, in relief, altogether passes my comprehension. They would sell well as souvenirs of travel.
From the French.
How rapid is the progress of oblivion, with respect to those who are no more! How many a quadrille shall we see, this winter, exclusively made up from the ranks of inconsolable widows! Widows of this order exist only in the literature of the tombstone. In the world, and after the lapse of a certain period, there is but one sort of widows inconsolable—those who refuse to be comforted, because they can't get married again!
One of our most distinguished sculptors was summoned, a short time since, to the house of a young lady, connected by birth with a family of the highest grade in the aristocracy of wealth, and united in marriage to the heir of a title illustrious in the military annals of the Empire.
The union, formed under the happiest auspices, had been, alas! of short duration. Death, unpitying death, had ruptured it, by prematurely carrying off the young husband. The sculptor was summoned by the widow.
He traversed apartments silent and deserted, until he was introduced into a bed-room, and found himself in presence of a lady, young and beautiful, but habited in the deepest mourning, and with a face furrowed by tears.
"You are aware," said she, with a painful effort and a voice half choked by sobs, "You are aware of the blow which I have received?"
The artist bowed, with an air of respectful condolence.
"Sir," continued the widow, "I am anxious to have a funeral monument erected, in honour of the husband whom I have lost."
The artist bowed again.
"I wish that the monument should be superb, worthy of the man whose loss I weep, proportioned to the unending grief into which his loss has plunged me. I care not what it costs. I am rich, and I will willingly sacrifice all my fortune to do honour to the memory of an adored husband. I must have a temple—with columns—in marble—and in the middle—on a pedestal—his statue."
"I will do my best to fulfill your wishes, Madam," replied the artist; "but I had not the honour of acquaintance with the deceased, and a likeness of him is indispensable for the due execution of my work. Without doubt, you have his portrait?"
The widow raised her arm, and pointed despairingly to a splendid likeness by Amaury Duval.
"A most admirable picture!" observed the artist;"and the painter's name is sufficient guarantee for its striking resemblance to the original."
"Those are his very features, Sir; it is himself. It wants but life. Ah! Would that I could restore it to him at the cost of all my blood!"
"I will have this portrait carried to my studio, Madam, and I promise you that the marble shall reproduce it exactly."
The widow, at these words, sprung up, and at a single bound throwing herself towards the picture, with arms stretched out as though to defend it, exclaimed:
"Take away this portrait! carry off my only consolation! my sole remaining comfort! never! never!"
"But Madam, you will only be deprived of it for a short time, and—"
"Not an hour! not a minute! could I exist without his beloved image! Look you, Sir, I have had it placed here, in my own room, that my eyes might be fastened upon it, without ceasing, and through my tears. His portrait shall never leave this spot one single instant, and in contemplating that will I pass the remainder of a miserable and sorrowful existence."
"In that case, Madam, you will be compelled to permit me to take a copy of it. But do not be uneasy—I shall not have occasion to trouble your solitude for any length of time; one sketch—one sitting will suffice."
The widow agreed to this arrangement; she only insisted that the artist should come back the following day. She wanted him to set to work on the instant, so great was her longing to see the mausoleum erected. The sculptor, however, remarked that he had another work to finish first. This difficulty she sought to overcome by means of money.
"Impossible," replied the artist, "I have given my word; but do not distress yourself; I will apply to it so diligently, that the monument shall be finished in as short a time as any other sculptor would require, who could apply himself to it forthwith."
"You see my distress," said the widow; "you can make allowance for my impatience. Be speedy, then, and above all, be lavish of magnificence. Spare no expense; only let me have a masterpiece."
Several letters echoed these injunctions, during the few days immediately following the interview.
At the expiration of three months the artist called again. He found the widow still in weeds, but a little less pallid, and a little more coquettishly dressed in her mourning garb.
"Madam," said he, "I am entirely at your service."
"Ah! at last; this is fortunate," replied the widow, with a gracious smile.
"I have made my design, but I still want one sitting, for the likeness. Will you permit me to go into your bed-room?"
"Into my bed-room? For what?"
"To look at the portrait again."
"Oh! yes; have the goodness to walk into the drawing-room; you will find it there now."
"Ah!"
"Yes; it hangs better there; it is better lighted in the drawing-room, than in my own room."
"Would you like, Madam, to look at the design for the monument?"
"With pleasure. Oh! what a size! What profusion of decorations! Why, it is a palace, Sir, this tomb!"
"Did you not tell me, Madam, that nothing could be too magnificent? I have not considered the expense; and by the way, here is a memorandum of what the monument will cost you."
"Oh, Heavens!" exclaimed the widow, after having cast an eye over the total adding-up. "Why, this is enormous!"
"You begged me to spare no expense."
"Yes, no doubt, I desire to do things properly, but not exactly to make a fool of myself."
"This, at present, you see, is only a design; and there is time yet to cut it down."
"Well, then, suppose we were to leave out the temple, and the columns, and all the architectural part, and content ourselves with the statue? It seems to me that would be very appropriate."
"Certainly it would."
"So let it be, then—just the statue alone."
Shortly after this second visit, the sculptor fell desperately ill. He was compelled to give up work; but, on returning from a tour in Italy, prescribed by his physician, he presented himself once more before thewidow, who was then in the tenth month of her mourning. He found, this time, a few roses among the cypress, and some smiling colours playing over half-shaded grounds.
The artist brought with him a little model of his statue, done in plaster, and offering in miniature the idea of what his work was to be.
"What do you think of the likeness?" he inquired of the widow.
"It seems to me a little flattered; my husband was all very well, no doubt; but you are making him an Apollo!"
"Really? well, then, I can correct my work by the portrait."
"Don't take the trouble—a little more, or less like, what does it matter?"
"Excuse me, but I am particular about likenesses."
"If you absolutely must—"
"It is in the drawing-room, yonder, is it not? I'll go in there."
"It is not there any longer," replied the widow, ringing the bell.
"Baptiste," said she to the servant who came in, "bring down the portrait of your master."
"The portrait that you sent up to the garret, last week, Madam?"
"Yes."
At this moment the door opened, and a young man of distinguished air entered; his manners were easy andfamiliar, he kissed the fair widow's hand, and tenderly inquired after her health.
"Who in the world is this good man in plaster?" asked he, pointing with his finger to the statuette, which the artist had placed upon the mantel-piece.
"It is the model of a statue for my husband's tomb."
"You are having a statue of him made? The devil! it's very majestic!"
"Do you think so?"
"It is only great men who are thus cut out of marble, and at full length; it seems to me, too, that the deceased was a very ordinary personage."
"In fact, his bust would be sufficient."
"Just as you please, Madam," said the sculptor.
"Well, let it be a bust, that's—determined!"
Two months later, the artist, carrying the bust, encountered on the stairs a merry party. The widow, giving her hand to the elegant dandy who had caused the statue of the deceased to be cut down, was on his way to the Mayor's office, where she was about to take a second oath of conjugal fidelity.
If the bust had not been completed, it would willingly have been dispensed with. When, some time later, the artist called for his money, there was an outcry about the price; and it required very little less than a threat of legal proceedings, before the widow, consoled and remarried, concluded by resigning herself to pay for this funeral homage, reduced as it was, to the memory of her departed husband.
THE GENTLE ARLESIANS.
**With one exception, however, I gleaned nothing of information that is not already chronicled in the guide-books; and that one piece of information I only set down, because I think it contains a hint that may be made practically useful in certain enterprising circles of New York.
We were in the Arena at Arles. It was a splendid day—barring the Mistral, that windy nuisance, which, as it eddied through the antique and ample Roman corridors, brought to my recollection certain North-Westers experienced on a fine March day in Union Square. In fact, it was far too cold for sentimentalizing or tracing measurements. But the guardian, it seemed, had not latterly had much chance of exercising his vocation, and his tongue was too nimble to be frozen. And so at it he went. Only, being himself more interested in certain proceedings that had lately taken place within a boarded fence that now encloses the arena, than in historical or legendary lore, his subject was bymany centuries more fresh than the ruins whereon we stood, sunning ourselves and crouching out of the wind's way. Arles, it appeared, had been favoured with a bull fight, real Spanish matadors doing the beastly honours; but to the credit of the city, be it said, the spectacle was received with intense disapprobation. The gentle Provencals, whose tastes are more Italian than Spanish, could not brook the sport dear to their fair Empress who sets fashions in Paris. Indeed, the beauteous Eugénie, I fear, will hold them to be the merest milk-sops, for when the grand climax of a disembowelled horse was exhibited before them, the Arlesians, male and female—in place of shouts of triumphant approval—gave vent to loud cries of shame and execration, and in short hissed the Spanish heroes incontinently from the scene of their performance.
But what has all this to do with the future of New York, it may be asked by any reader of these rambling reminiscences. Stay, a moment; I am only at the commencement. I, too inquired if this were all. "By no means, Sir," was the reply. "We had then the realcourses aux taureaux, and excellent they were." Now I must own that my notions of this branch of the tauromachia were somewhat indistinct. I knew it was not precisely the same thing as buffalo-hunting on the prairies, or as a steeple-chase in Warwickshire or Yorkshire; but I could not have defined it to save my life. "Perhaps, Monsieur, has never seen one" was the next appropriate suggestion, and it led very naturally to my enlightenment. Briefly, then, after the torture of thequadrupeds, and the indignant dismissal of the Spanish matadors, the young gentlemen of the town took the place of the latter, and began a diversion, which must have been infinitely amusing, and which, I humbly submit, might be adopted on a different soil. A lively young bull was turned into the arena, and was followed by a number of lively youths, armed only with light staves whereon fluttered blood-red pennons. The fun consists in provoking the excitable animal by the red flags thrust before his face, and eluding the consequences by a run, a dodge, or a jump. The fence, which was a barrier for the bull, could easily be vaulted by a nimble-footed youth—and none but such would venture upon the field. There was just enough danger to make the game piquant; scarcely enough to make it objectionable. One indiscreet young fellow did indeed narrowly escape a catastrophe on the occasion described to me; but the fault was entirely his own. He had been breakfasting at some Arlesian Delmonico's, and had partially lost his wits before coming to the encounter, while retaining all his courage. Therefore it happened—and I only tell the story as it was told me—that the youth, when pursued by the bull, tripped and fell, and the horns of the brute were immediately thrust into the fullest part of his peg-top trousers. A great sensation among the spectators! The bull succeeded in raising and throwing over his head the object of his attack, but by no means in disentangling himself therefrom. His frantic efforts to bring about a summary toss were for some minutes unsuccessful; and thereader may conceive the mingled sense of the ludicrous and the fearful, that pervaded the assembly. Finally—for even French cassimere will give way in the end—he, the bull that is, achieved his aim, and threw his unconscious tormentor a summerset, being diverted from ulterior measures of vengeance by fresh attacks made upon him, while the crest-fallen hero of the adventure was promptly bundled over the paling. To sum up this sketch of the sport, in the humane and pithy words of the guardian of the Amphitheatre—"it does no harm whatever to the bull, and very little to the young gentleman."
Now then, Mr. Niblo; why should you not establish a Tauro-drome in the centre of civilization? The leaning of the day is toward athletic exercise. In England, at present, there is a run upon rifle-corps; and the boldest riders are all bent upon becoming the crackest shots. In New York, I have read since my absence in Europe, that the great English Eleven have begotten a very rage for cricket. An excellent move this; but then the climate is against it, and the summer is short, and the game is utterly incomprehensible to the gentler sex, who are always prompt to encourage the manly prowess of their admirers. Besides, for lack of a permanent Bude light of adequate strength, we have not yet achieved the desideratum of playing cricket during those special hours when the youth of a commercial community finds itself prone to relaxation. Thecourses aux taureauxmight just as well take place by gas-light and in a New York circus, as amid Romanruins and under the blaze of sunshine. The dandies of Broadway have the two main requisites for brilliant success in this suggested entertainment. Their pluck may not be doubted; and who that has seen them, agile and unwearied in the German or thevalse à deux temps, could question their ability to outfoot the fleetest bull that Andalusia itself could supply? I commend the matter then to the serious consideration of Managers in search of novelties, and to belles who would discover what stuff their beaux are made of.
AT NUREMBURG.
For these thirty-eight years past, theAlbionhath been protesting once a week, in the Latin tongue, that they who skip over the water change only their sky, not their mental existence. Nor did I ever doubt—indeed I ought to have faith therein—the truth of this motto, until I found myself yesterday in one of the streets of this old city of Nuremburg, with no promenaders at the moment save myself. There was not a man in sight, tiled with a black beaver chimney-pot; nor a woman redolent of the Rue de la Paix or Regent Street. Then it was that I incontinently asked myself if I were truly a Briton by birth and an Anglo-American by local ties; or whether I were not in fact a German burgher of the middle ages. I should scarcely have been surprised at sight of grave Albert Durerhimself coming round the corner, or at hearing Hans Sachs, the cobbler poet, trolling one of his six thousand ditties.
To say this, is simply to add the testimony of another witness to that which has set down Nuremburg as the city of all Europe least changed with changing times. The very little that has been done of late years in the way of repairing and rebuilding, within the walls, has been done in strict accordance with the prevalent mediæval style. The result is that—whereas elsewhere, when you stumble upon a private dwelling of moderate proportions showing plainly that it was built some two or three or four or five centuries ago, you congratulate yourself upon having discovered a curiosity (as such a one really would be in Paris, for instance)—here the difficult search would be for a house, modern and spruce. Not that a rectangularly-ornamented gable-end is the quintessence of architectural beauty, or that a basement front of low iron-barred windows suggests an agreeable or hospitable interior. By no means. If this were all, there would be considerable quaintness, and nought beyond. But it is otherwise. Some of the decorative bits that catch the eye right and left, are absolute gems in their way—whether oriel windows, or fantastic turrets, or figures and devices embossed and sculptured. Taste, generally for the Gothic, but diverging at a later date into the Renaissance style, seems to have run riot here in wilful playfulness.
Of the regular sights set down in the hand-books, and explored by conscientious Englishmen with theirMurrays under their arms, it would not be appropriate to speak at length. I may however indulge in an allusion to the different material, whereof are constructed two of the most highly-laboured marvels, here exhibited. Now the city itself is divided into two nearly equal parts by the small river Pegnitz, these parts bearing the names respectively of the principal church that stands in either. The one is dedicated to St. Sebald, the other to St. Lawrence. The former, as its chief curiosity, contains the shrine of its patron Saint, an elaborate and most exquisitely wrought fretwork canopy, about fifteen feet in height, beneath which repose his remains. The design is in a measure architectural, and Gothic of course; but the ornamentation is its great glory, though one is staggered somewhat at the irreverent juxtaposition of the twelve Apostles with Cupids and Mermaids, and at sundry Fathers of the Church disporting themselves amid clusters of fruit and bouquets of flowers. This monument of artistic skill was the work of Peter Vischer, one of the worthies of Nuremburg, and has been completed three hundred and forty years. The able worker, having dispensed with consistency in the admixture of Christian and Pagan accessories, as I have mentioned, was at least justified in introducing a figure of himself as one of the human animals; and a very fine statuette he makes, with chisel in hand and his working apron about him. Now mark, if you please, O attentive reader, this shrine of St. Sebald is entirely cast in bronze. To say that theeffect is beautiful, is too limited praise. It is harmonious; thoroughly satisfying to the eye; perfect.
Cross with me now, if you be not weary, one of the dozen picturesque bridges over the Pegnitz, and let us see what Adam Krafft, another great Nuremburger of that same age, has done in the same line of Gothic decoration for the Church of St. Lawrence. His work is a shrine, or I should rather say a repository for the sacramental wafer of the Roman Catholic rite. It is an open-work spire, tapering to the height of sixty feet, with an infinity of graceful detail, and rare sculptures in high and low relief. One fantasy is, I think, unique of its kind. The roof is a little too low to admit the crowning summit fairly; and the top, therefore, has been made to bend over. The effect—purposely designed, I cannot doubt—is odd; nor can I agree with the fantastic remark of Murray's Handbook, that it "has the air of a plant which is chocked in its further growth." Spires and plants are not endowed with equal pliability, and the idea of one of the former waving about, or nodding gracefully, suggests an immediate "stand from under." And this all the more in this instance, because—which brings me thus round-aboutedly to my main point—the material hereon employed is stone, a clean and white-toned stone, that looks as though its excellent carvings and mouldings had been completed only for the last Crystal Palace Exhibition. The apparent newness is downright provoking; and if Adam Krafft could peep at it from his honoured grave, he would never dream that he haslain therein three centuries and a half. Let me say further—having thus stumbled upon personalities—that he too made himself as durable as his work. And with more modesty than Master Peter Vischer above named, who moulded for himself a niche in his monument corresponding, in size and position, to the one assigned to the patron Saint, though being at the opposite end of the shrine, the glorifier and the glorified could not be taken into one glance and a comparison forced. There was more modesty, I say, in Adam Krafft's mode of travelling down the stream of Time as showman of his show, though he was not methinks without a dash ofcraft, as befits the bearer of his name. Down upon their marrow-bones (as the school boys have it) with rounded backs grope Adam and his two apprentices, the three backs forming a base of operations, or in plainer words upholding the sixty-feet structure, and doing for it that which is done beneath his rival's shrine by a snail at each of the four corners. Perhaps, after all, the sculptor-architect was wiser than the bronze-caster, in his mode of identifying himself with his work. Amid a multitude of figures and emblems, Peter Vischer, as well as St. Sebald, may be overlooked, for they are small in size; but you can scarcely avoid asking "who are these three?" when you note how lofty is the edifice that the large quasi-Atlases bear.
Enough, touching these minor differences. The essential one, whereof I intended to speak, is the material in which the pair wrought respectively. I have saidthat the bronze entirely satisfied my critical eye, which is tantamount to saying that it charmed me. Not so with the stone. It is obviously ill-adapted for detached ornamentation, needing the solid adjunct of buttress, window, wall, or pillar, just as ivy needs the oak, or (may I utter such a term?) lace the woman. Indeed, with all my admiration for sundry mediæval specimens of Gothic architecture, wherein I scarcely yield to John Ruskin himself, I confess that the famous Eleanor's Crosses in England never quite pleased me, because therein the tracery and dainty delicacies of the design are not backed by anything massive. The greater part of my readers will not agree with me. I am sorry, but can't help it. Only, I don't want to see any more open-work baskets in stone. Give me the most fantastical of Gothic devices, as many as you please, so long as they have something to cling to.
Finally, I have fallen quite in love with this quaint, irregular old place. Nor do I know how long I might have loitered, had not the inevitable disillusion come, as come it will over so many promising things and fair. Otherwise I might have gone back—in imagination—to those honest old times of Durer, Vischer, Krafft, and Company, and imagined myself a free burgher of a free city. But the spell was doubly broken. At the old castle—whereof some small apartments are unpretendingly fitted up for the King and Queen of Bavaria—there comes upon one, in another part thereof, a vision of certain instruments of torture, used undoubtedly in those good old times to keep the burghers submissive to their oligarchy of merchant princes. And again at the Rath-haus, or Hotel de Ville; the maidenly show-woman lighted us by lanthorn-light through a set of subterranean dungeons, too numerous to have been destined for offenders only against the criminal laws, too horrible to be sanctioned under our creed of comparative gentleness. And so, on the whole, I returned back to actual existence, and to all the boredom of Parliamentary conflicts and Presidential elections, with a certain sense of relief.