I spent some time, the evening before, studying the face of the cliff we were to ascend, to discover the path; but I could only trace its zigzag beginning. When we came to the base of the rock, we found a way cut, a narrow path, most of the distance hewn out of the rock, winding upward along the face of the precipice. The view, as one rises, is of the break-neck description. The way is really safe enough, even on mule-back, ascending; but one would be foolhardy to ride down. We met a lady on the summit who was about to be carried down on a chair; and she seemed quite to like the mode of conveyance: she had harnessed her husband in temporarily for one of the bearers, which made it still more jolly for her. When we started, a cloud of mist hung over the edge of the rocks. As we rose, it descended to meet us, and sunk below, hiding the valley and its houses, which had looked like Swiss toys from our height. When we reached the summit, the mist came boiling up after us, rising like a thick wall to the sky, and hiding all that great mountain range, the Vallais Alps, from which we had come, and which we hoped to see from this point. Fortunately, there were no clouds on the other side, and we looked down into a magnificent rocky basin, encircled by broken and overtopping crags and snow-fields, at the bottom of which was a green lake. It is one of the wildest of scenes.
An hour from the summit, we came to a green Alp, where a herd of cows were feeding; and in the midst of it were three or four dirty chalets, where pigs, chickens, cattle, and animals constructed very much like human beings, lived; yet I have nothing to say against these chalets, for we had excellent cream there. We had, on the way down, fine views of the snowy Altels, the Rinderhorn, the Finster-Aarhorn, a deep valley which enormous precipices guard, but which avalanches nevertheless invade, and, farther on, of the Blumlisalp, with its summit of crystalline whiteness. The descent to Kandersteg is very rapid, and in a rain slippery. This village is a resort for artists for its splendid views of the range we had crossed: it stands at the gate of the mountains. From there to the Lake of Thun is a delightful drive,—a rich country, with handsome cottages and a charming landscape, even if the pyramidal Niesen did not lift up its seven thousand feet on the edge of the lake. So, through a smiling land, and in the sunshine after the rain, we come to Spiez, and find ourselves at a little hotel on the slope, overlooking town and lake and mountains.
Spiez is not large: indeed, its few houses are nearly all picturesquely grouped upon a narrow rib of land which is thrust into the lake on purpose to make the loveliest picture in the world. There is the old castle, with its many slim spires and its square-peaked roofed tower; the slender-steepled church; a fringe of old houses below on the lake, one overhanging towards the point; and the promontory, finished by a willow drooping to the water. Beyond, in hazy light, over the lucid green of the lake, are mountains whose masses of rock seem soft and sculptured. To the right, at the foot of the lake, tower the great snowy mountains, the cone of the Schreckhorn, the square top of the Eiger, the Jungfrau, just showing over the hills, and the Blumlisalp rising into heaven clear and silvery.
What can one do in such a spot, but swim in the lake, lie on the shore, and watch the passing steamers and the changing light on the mountains? Down at the wharf, when the small boats put off for the steamer, one can well entertain himself. The small boat is an enormous thing, after all, and propelled by two long, heavy sweeps, one of which is pulled, and the other pushed. The laboring oar is, of course, pulled by a woman; while her husband stands up in the stern of the boat, and gently dips the other in a gallant fashion. There is a boy there, whom I cannot make out,—a short, square boy, with tasseled skull-cap, and a face that never changes its expression, and never has any expression to change; he may be older than these hills; he looks old enough to be his own father: and there is a girl, his counterpart, who might be, judging her age by her face, the mother of both of them. These solemn old-young people are quite busy doing nothing about the wharf, and appear to be afflicted with an undue sense of the responsibility of life. There is a beer-garden here, where several sober couples sit seriously drinking their beer. There are some horrid old women, with the parchment skin and the disagreeable necks. Alone, in a window of the castle, sits a lady at her work, who might be the countess; only, I am sorry, there is no countess, nothing but a frau, in that old feudal dwelling. And there is a foreigner, thinking how queer it all is. And while he sits there, the melodious bell in the church-tower rings its evening song.
We left Switzerland, as we entered it, in a rain,—a kind of double baptism that may have been necessary, and was certainly not too heavy a price to pay for the privileges of the wonderful country. The wind blew freshly, and swept a shower over the deck of the little steamboat, on board of which we stepped from the shabby little pier and town of Romanshorn. After the other Swiss lakes, Constance is tame, except at the southern end, beyond which rise the Appenzell range and the wooded peaks of the Bavarian hills. Through the dash of rain, and under the promise of a magnificent rainbow,—rainbows don't mean anything in Switzerland, and have no office as weather-prophets, except to assure you, that, as it rains to-day, so it will rain tomorrow,—we skirted the lower bend of the lake,—and at twilight sailed into the little harbor of Lindau, through the narrow entrance between the piers, on one of which is a small lighthouse, and on the other sits upright a gigantic stone lion,—a fine enough figure of a Bavarian lion, but with a comical, wide-awake, and expectant expression of countenance, as if he might bark right out at any minute, and become a dog. Yet in the moonlight, shortly afterward, the lion looked very grand and stately, as he sat regarding the softly plashing waves, and the high, drifting clouds, and the old Roman tower by the bridge which connects the Island of Lindau with the mainland, and thinking perhaps, if stone lions ever do think, of the time when Roman galleys sailed on Lake Constance, and when Lindau was an imperial town with a thriving trade.
On board the little steamer was an American, accompanied by two ladies, and traveling, I thought, for their gratification, who was very anxious to get on faster than he was able to do,—though why any one should desire to go fast in Europe I do not know. One easily falls into the habit of the country, to take things easily, to go when the slow German fates will, and not to worry one's self beforehand about times and connections. But the American was in a fever of impatience, desirous, if possible, to get on that night. I knew he was from the Land of the Free by a phrase I heard him use in the cars: he said, “I'll bet a dollar.” Yet I must flatter myself that Americans do not always thus betray themselves. I happened, on the Isle of Wight, to hear a bland landlord “blow up” his glib-tongued son because the latter had not driven a stiffer bargain with us for the hire of a carriage round the island.
“Didn't you know they were Americans?” asks the irate father. “I knew it at once.”
“No,” replies young hopeful: “they didn't say GUESS once.”
And straightway the fawning-innkeeper returns to us, professing, with his butter-lips, the greatest admiration of all Americans, and the intensest anxiety to serve them, and all for pure good-will. The English are even more bloodthirsty at sight of a travelere than the Swiss, and twice as obsequious. But to return to our American. He had all the railway timetables that he could procure; and he was busily studying them, with the design of “getting on.” I heard him say to his companions, as he ransacked his pockets, that he was a mass of hotel-bills and timetables. He confided to me afterward, that his wife and her friend had got it into their heads that they must go both to Vienna and Berlin. Was Berlin much out of the way in going from Vienna to Paris? He said they told him it was n't. At any rate, he must get round at such a date: he had no time to spare. Then, besides the slowness of getting on, there were the trunks. He lost a trunk in Switzerland, and consumed a whole day in looking it up. While the steamboat lay at the wharf at Rorschach, two stout porters came on board, and shouldered his baggage to take it ashore. To his remonstrances in English they paid no heed; and it was some time before they could be made to understand that the trunks were to go on to Lindau. “There,” said he, “I should have lost my trunks. Nobody understands what I tell them: I can't get any information.” Especially was he unable to get any information as to how to “get on.” I confess that the restless American almost put me into a fidget, and revived the American desire to “get on,” to take the fast trains, make all the connections,—in short, in the handsome language of the great West, to “put her through.” When I last saw our traveler, he was getting his luggage through the custom-house, still undecided whether to push on that night at eleven o'clock. But I forgot all about him and his hurry when, shortly after, we sat at the table-d'hote at the hotel, and the sedate Germans lit their cigars, some of them before they had finished eating, and sat smoking as if there were plenty of leisure for everything in this world.
After a slow ride, of nearly eight hours, in what, in Germany, is called an express train, through a rain and clouds that hid from our view the Tyrol and the Swabian mountains, over a rolling, pleasant country, past pretty little railway station-houses, covered with vines, gay with flowers in the windows, and surrounded with beds of flowers, past switchmen in flaming scarlet jackets, who stand at the switches and raise the hand to the temple, and keep it there, in a military salute, as we go by, we come into old Augsburg, whose Confession is not so fresh in our minds as it ought to be. Portions of the ancient wall remain, and many of the towers; and there are archways, picturesquely opening from street to street, under several of which we drive on our way to the Three Moors, a stately hostelry and one of the oldest in Germany.
It stood here in the year 1500; and the room is still shown, unchanged since then, in which the rich Count Fugger entertained Charles V. The chambers are nearly all immense. That in which we are lodged is large enough for Queen Victoria; indeed, I am glad to say that her sleeping-room at St. Cloud was not half so spacious. One feels either like a count, or very lonesome, to sit down in a lofty chamber, say thirty-five feet square, with little furniture, and historical and tragical life-size figures staring at one from the wall-paper. One fears that they may come down in the deep night, and stand at the bedside,—those narrow, canopied beds there in the distance, like the marble couches in the cathedral. It must be a fearful thing to be a royal person, and dwell in a palace, with resounding rooms and naked, waxed, inlaid floors. At the Three Moors one sees a visitors' book, begun in 1800, which contains the names of many noble and great people, as well as poets and doctors and titled ladies, and much sentimental writing in French. It is my impression, from an inspection of the book, that we are the first untitled visitors.
The traveler cannot but like Augsburg at once, for its quaint houses, colored so diversely and yet harmoniously. Remains of its former brilliancy yet exist in the frescoes on the outside of the buildings, some of which are still bright in color, though partially defaced. Those on the House of Fugger have been restored, and are very brave pictures. These frescoes give great animation and life to the appearance of a street, and I am glad to see a taste for them reviving. Augsburg must have been very gay with them two and three hundred years ago, when, also, it was the home of beautiful women of the middle class, who married princes. We went to see the house in which lived the beautiful Agnes Bernauer, daughter of a barber, who married Duke Albert III. of Bavaria. The house was nought, as old Samuel Pepys would say, only a high stone building, in a block of such; but it is enough to make a house attractive for centuries if a pretty woman once looks out of its latticed windows, as I have no doubt Agnes often did when the duke and his retinue rode by in clanking armor.
But there is no lack of reminders of old times. The cathedral, which was begun before the Christian era could express its age with four figures, has two fine portals, with quaint carving, and bronze doors of very old work, whereon the story of Eve and the serpent is literally given,—a representation of great theological, if of small artistic value. And there is the old clock and watch tower, which for eight hundred years has enabled the Augsburgers to keep the time of day and to look out over the plain for the approach of an enemy. The city is full of fine bronze fountains some of them of very elaborate design, and adding a convenience and a beauty to the town which American cities wholly want. In one quarter of the town is the Fuggerei, a little city by itself, surrounded by its own wall, the gates of which are shut at night, with narrow streets and neat little houses. It was built by Hans Jacob Fugger the Rich, as long ago as 1519, and is still inhabited by indigent Roman-Catholic families, according to the intention of its founder. In the windows were lovely flowers. I saw in the street several of those mysterious, short, old women,—so old and yet so little, all body and hardly any legs, who appear to have grown down into the ground with advancing years.
It happened to be a rainy day, and cold, on the 30th of July, when we left Augsburg; and the flat fields through which we passed were uninviting under the gray light. Large flocks of geese were feeding on the windy plains, tended by boys and women, who are the living fences of this country. I no longer wonder at the number of feather-beds at the inns, under which we are apparently expected to sleep even in the warmest nights. Shepherds with the regulation crooks also were watching herds of sheep. Here and there a cluster of red-roofed houses were huddled together into a village, and in all directions rose tapering spires. Especially we marked the steeple of Blenheim, where Jack Churchill won the name for his magnificent country-seat, early in the eighteenth century. All this plain where the silly geese feed has been marched over and fought over by armies time and again. We effect the passage of, the Danube without difficulty, and on to Harburg, a little town of little red houses, inhabited principally by Jews, huddled under a rocky ridge, upon the summit of which is a picturesque medieval castle, with many towers and turrets, in as perfect preservation as when feudal flags floated over it. And so on, slowly, with long stops at many stations, to give opportunity, I suppose, for the honest passengers to take in supplies of beer and sausages, to Nuremberg.
Nuremberg, or Nurnberg, was built, I believe, about the beginning of time. At least, in an old black-letter history of the city which I have seen, illustrated with powerful wood-cuts, the first representation is that of the creation of the world, which is immediately followed by another of Nuremberg. No one who visits it is likely to dispute its antiquity. “Nobody ever goes to Nuremberg but Americans,” said a cynical British officer at Chamouny; “but they always go there. I never saw an American who had n't been or was not going to Nuremberg.” Well, I suppose they wish to see the oldest-looking, and, next to a true Briton on his travels, the oddest thing on the Continent. The city lives in the past still, and on its memories, keeping its old walls and moat entire, and nearly fourscore wall-towers, in stern array. But grass grows in the moat, fruit trees thrive there, and vines clamber on the walls. One wanders about in the queer streets with the feeling of being transported back to the Middle Ages; but it is difficult to reproduce the impression on paper. Who can describe the narrow and intricate ways; the odd houses with many little gables; great roofs breaking out from eaves to ridgepole, with dozens of dormer-windows; hanging balconies of stone, carved and figure-beset, ornamented and frescoed fronts; the archways, leading into queer courts and alleys, and out again into broad streets; the towers and fantastic steeples; and the many old bridges, with obelisks and memorials of triumphal entries of conquerors and princes?
The city, as I said, lives upon the memory of what it has been, and trades upon relics of its former fame. What it would have been without Albrecht Durer, and Adam Kraft the stone-mason, and Peter Vischer the bronze-worker, and Viet Stoss who carved in wood, and Hans Sachs the shoemaker and poet-minstrel, it is difficult to say. Their statues are set up in the streets; their works still live in the churches and city buildings,—pictures, and groups in stone and wood; and their statues, in all sorts of carving, are reproduced, big and little, in all the shop-windows, for sale. So, literally, the city is full of the memory of them; and the business of the city, aside from its manufactory of endless, curious toys, seems to consist in reproducing them and their immortal works to sell to strangers.
Other cities project new things, and grow with a modern impetus: Nuremberg lives in the past, and traffics on its ancient reputation. Of course, we went to see the houses where these old worthies lived, and the works of art they have left behind them,—things seen and described by everybody. The stone carving about the church portals and on side buttresses is inexpressibly quaint and naive. The subjects are sacred; and with the sacred is mingled the comic, here as at Augsburg, where over one portal of the cathedral, with saints and angels, monkeys climb and gibber. A favorite subject is that of our Lord praying in the Garden, while the apostles, who could not watch one hour, are sleeping in various attitudes of stony comicality. All the stone-cutters seem to have tried their chisels on this group, and there are dozens of them. The wise and foolish virgins also stand at the church doors in time-stained stone,—the one with a perked-up air of conscious virtue, and the other with a penitent dejection that seems to merit better treatment. Over the great portal of St. Lawrence—a magnificent structure, with lofty twin spires and glorious rosewindow is carved “The Last Judgment.” Underneath, the dead are climbing out of their stone coffins; above sits the Judge, with the attending angels. On the right hand go away the stiff, prim saints, in flowing robes, and with palms and harps, up steps into heaven, through a narrow door which St. Peter opens for them; while on the left depart the wicked, with wry faces and distorted forms, down into the stone flames, towards which the Devil is dragging them by their stony hair.
The interior of the Church of St. Lawrence is richer than any other I remember, with its magnificent pillars of dark red stone, rising and foliating out to form the roof; its splendid windows of stained glass, glowing with sacred story; a high gallery of stone entirely round the choir, and beautiful statuary on every column. Here, too, is the famous Sacrament House of honest old Adam Kraft, the most exquisite thing I ever saw in stone. The color is light gray; and it rises beside one of the dark, massive pillars, sixty-four feet, growing to a point, which then strikes the arch of the roof, and there curls up like a vine to avoid it. The base is supported by the kneeling figures of Adam Kraft and two fellow-workmen, who labored on it for four years. Above is the Last Supper, Christ blessing little children, and other beautiful tableaux in stone. The Gothic spire grows up and around these, now and then throwing out graceful tendrils, like a vine, and seeming to be rather a living plant than inanimate stone. The faithful artist evidently had this feeling for it; for, as it grew under his hands, he found that it would strike the roof, or he must sacrifice something of its graceful proportion. So his loving and daring genius suggested the happy design of letting it grow to its curving, graceful completeness.
He who travels by a German railway needs patience and a full haversack. Time is of no value. The rate of speed of the trains is so slow, that one sometimes has a desire to get out and walk, and the stoppages at the stations seem eternal; but then we must remember that it is a long distance to the bottom of a great mug of beer. We left Lindau on one of the usual trains at half-past five in the morning, and reached Augsburg at one o'clock in the afternoon: the distance cannot be more than a hundred miles. That is quicker than by diligence, and one has leisure to see the country as he jogs along. There is nothing more sedate than a German train in motion; nothing can stand so dead still as a German train at a station. But there are express trains.
We were on one from Augsburg to Nuremberg, and I think must have run twenty miles an hour. The fare on the express trains is one fifth higher than on the others. The cars are all comfortable; and the officials, who wear a good deal of uniform, are much more civil and obliging than officials in a country where they do not wear uniforms. So, not swiftly, but safely and in good-humor, we rode to the capital of Bavaria.
I saw yesterday, on the 31st of August, in the English Garden, dead leaves whirling down to the ground, a too evident sign that the summer weather is going. Indeed, it has been sour, chilly weather for a week now, raining a little every day, and with a very autumn feeling in the air. The nightly concerts in the beer-gardens must have shivering listeners, if the bands do not, as many of them do, play within doors. The line of droschke drivers, in front of the post-office colonnade, hide the red facings of their coats under long overcoats, and stand in cold expectancy beside their blanketed horses, which must need twice the quantity of black-bread in this chilly air; for the horses here eat bread, like people. I see the drivers every day slicing up the black loaves, and feeding them, taking now and then a mouthful themselves, wetting it down with a pull from the mug of beer that stands within reach. And lastly (I am still speaking of the weather), the gay military officers come abroad in long cloaks, to some extent concealing their manly forms and smart uniforms, which I am sure they would not do, except under the pressure of necessity.
Yet I think this raw weather is not to continue. It is only a rough visit from the Tyrol, which will give place to kinder influences. We came up here from hot Switzerland at the end of July, expecting to find Munich a furnace. It will be dreadful in Munich everybody said. So we left Luzerne, where it was warm, not daring to stay till the expected rival sun, Victoria of England, should make the heat overpowering. But the first week of August in Munich it was delicious weather,—clear, sparkling, bracing air, with no chill in it and no languor in it, just as you would say it ought to be on a high, gravelly plain, seventeen hundred feet above the sea. Then came a week of what the Muncheners call hot weather, with the thermometer up to eighty degrees Fahrenheit, and the white wide streets and gray buildings in a glare of light; since then, weather of the most uncertain sort.
Munich needs the sunlight. Not that it cannot better spare it than grimy London; for its prevailing color is light gray, and its many-tinted and frescoed fronts go far to relieve the most cheerless day. Yet Munich attempts to be an architectural reproduction of classic times; and, in order to achieve any success in this direction, it is necessary to have the blue heavens and golden sunshine of Greece. The old portion of the city has some remains of the Gothic, and abounds in archways and rambling alleys, that suddenly become broad streets and then again contract to the width of an alderman, and portions of the old wall and city gates; old feudal towers stand in the market-place, and faded frescoes on old clock-faces and over archways speak of other days of splendor.
But the Munich of to-day is as if built to order,—raised in a day by the command of one man. It was the old King Ludwig I., whose flower-wreathed bust stands in these days in the vestibule of the Glyptothek, in token of his recent death, who gave the impulse for all this, though some of the best buildings and streets in the city have been completed by his successors. The new city is laid out on a magnificent scale of distances, with wide streets, fine, open squares, plenty of room for gardens, both public and private; and the art buildings and art monuments are well distributed; in fact, many a stately building stands in such isolation that it seems to ask every passer what it was put there for. Then, again, some of the new adornments lack fitness of location or purpose. At the end of the broad, monotonous Ludwig Strasse, and yet not at the end, for the road runs straight on into the flat country between rows of slender trees, stands the Siegesthor, or Gate of Victory, an imitation of the Constantine arch at Rome. It is surmounted by a splendid group in bronze, by Schwanthaler, Bavaria in her war-chariot, drawn by four lions; and it is in itself, both in its proportions and its numerous sculptural figures and bas-reliefs, a fine recognition of the valor “of the Bavarian army,” to whom it is erected. Yet it is so dwarfed by its situation, that it seems to have been placed in the middle of the street as an obstruction. A walk runs on each side of it. The Propylaeum, another magnificent gateway, thrown across the handsome Brienner Strasse, beyond the Glyptothek, is an imitation of that on the Acropolis at Athens. It has fine Doric columns on the outside, and Ionic within, and the pediment groups are bas-reliefs, by Schwanthaler, representing scenes in modern Greek history. The passageways for carriages are through the side arches; and thus the “sidewalk” runs into the center of the street, and foot-passers must twice cross the carriage-drive in going through the gate. Such things as these give one the feeling that art has been forced beyond use in Munich; and it is increased when one wanders through the new churches, palaces, galleries, and finds frescoes so prodigally crowded out of the way, and only occasionally opened rooms so overloaded with them, and not always of the best, as to sacrifice all effect, and leave one with the sense that some demon of unrest has driven painters and sculptors and plasterers, night and day, to adorn the city at a stroke; at least, to cover it with paint and bedeck it with marbles, and to do it at once, leaving nothing for the sweet growth and blossoming of time.
You see, it is easy to grumble, and especially in a cheerful, open, light, and smiling city, crammed with works Of art, ancient and modern, its architecture a study of all styles, and its foaming beer, said by antiquarians to be a good deal better than the mead drunk in Odin's halls, only seven and a half kreuzers the quart. Munich has so much, that it, of course, contains much that can be criticised. The long, wide Ludwig Strasse is a street of palaces,—a street built up by the old king, and regarded by him with great pride. But all the buildings are in the Romanesque style,—a repetition of one another to a monotonous degree: only at the lower end are there any shops or shop-windows, and a more dreary promenade need not be imagined. It has neither shade nor fountains; and on a hot day you can see how the sun would pour into it, and blind the passers. But few ever walk there at any time. A street that leads nowhere, and has no gay windows, does not attract. Toward the lower end, in the Odeon Platz, is the equestrian statue of Ludwig, a royally commanding figure, with a page on either side. The street is closed (so that it flows off on either side into streets of handsome shops) by the Feldherrnhalle, Hall of the Generals, an imitation of the beautiful Loggia dei Lanzi, at Florence, that as yet contains only two statues, which seem lost in it. Here at noon, with parade of infantry, comes a military band to play for half an hour; and there are always plenty of idlers to listen to them. In the high arcade a colony of doves is domesticated; and I like to watch them circling about and wheeling round the spires of the over-decorated Theatine church opposite, and perching on the heads of the statues on the facade.
The royal palace, near by, is a huddle of buildings and courts, that I think nobody can describe or understand, built at different times and in imitation of many styles. The front, toward the Hof Garden, a grassless square of small trees, with open arcades on two sides for shops, and partially decorated with frescoes of landscapes and historical subjects, is “a building of festive halls,” a facade eight hundred feet long, in the revived Italian style, and with a fine Ionic porch. The color is the royal, dirty yellow.
On the Max Joseph Platz, which has a bronze statue of King Max, a seated figure, and some elaborate bas-reliefs, is another front of the palace, the Konigsbau, an imitation, not fully carried out, of the Pitti Palace, at Florence. Between these is the old Residenz, adorned with fountain groups and statues in bronze. On another side are the church and theater of the Residenz. The interior of this court chapel is dazzling in appearance: the pillars are, I think, imitation of variegated marble; the sides are imitation of the same; the vaulting is covered with rich frescoes on gold ground. The whole effect is rich, but it is not at all sacred. Indeed, there is no church in Munich, except the old cathedral, the Frauenkirche, with its high Gothic arches, stained windows, and dusty old carvings, that gives one at all the sort of feeling that it is supposed a church should give. The court chapel interior is boastingly said to resemble St. Mark's, in Venice.
You see how far imitation of the classic and Italian is carried here in Munich; so, as I said, the buildings need the southern sunlight. Fortunately, they get the right quality much of the time. The Glyptothek, a Grecian structure of one story, erected to hold the treasures of classic sculpture that King Ludwig collected, has a beautiful Ionic porch and pediment. On the outside are niches filled with statues. In the pure sunshine and under a deep blue sky, its white marble glows with an almost ethereal beauty. Opposite stands another successful imitation of the Grecian style of architecture,—a building with a Corinthian porch, also of white marble. These, with the Propylaeum, before mentioned, come out wonderfully against a blue sky. A few squares distant is the Pinakothek, with its treasures of old pictures, and beyond it the New Pinakothek, containing works of modern artists. Its exterior is decorated with frescoes, from designs by Kaulbach: these certainly appear best in a sparkling light; though I am bound to say that no light can make very much of them.
Yet Munich is not all imitation. Its finest street, the Maximilian, built by the late king of that name, is of a novel and wholly modern style of architecture, not an imitation, though it may remind some of the new portions of Paris. It runs for three quarters of a mile, beginning with the postoffice and its colonnades, with frescoes on one side, and the Hof Theater, with its pediment frescoes, the largest opera-house in Germany, I believe; with stately buildings adorned with statues, and elegant shops, down to the swift-flowing Isar, which is spanned by a handsome bridge; or rather by two bridges, for the Isar is partly turned from its bed above, and made to turn wheels, and drive machinery. At the lower end the street expands into a handsome platz, with young shade trees, plats of grass, and gay beds of flowers. I look out on it as I write; and I see across the Isar the college building begun by Maximilian for the education of government officers; and I see that it is still unfinished, indeed, a staring mass of brick, with unsightly scaffolding and gaping windows. Money was left to complete it; but the young king, who does not care for architecture, keeps only a mason or two on the brick-work, and an artist on the exterior frescoes. At this rate, the Cologne Cathedral will be finished and decay before this is built. On either side of it, on the elevated bank of the river, stretch beautiful grounds, with green lawns, fine trees, and well-kept walks.
Not to mention the English Garden, in speaking of the outside aspects of the city, would be a great oversight. It was laid out originally by the munificent American, Count Rumford, and is called English, I suppose, because it is not in the artificial Continental style. Paris has nothing to compare with it for natural beauty,—Paris, which cannot let a tree grow, but must clip it down to suit French taste. It is a noble park four miles in length, and perhaps a quarter of that in width,—a park of splendid old trees, grand, sweeping avenues, open glades of free-growing grass, with delicious, shady walks, charming drives and rivers of water. For the Isar is trained to flow through it in two rapid streams, under bridges and over rapids, and by willow-hung banks. There is not wanting even a lake; and there is, I am sorry to say, a temple on a mound, quite in the classic style, from which one can see the sun set behind the many spires of Munich. At the Chinese Tower two military bands play every Saturday evening in the summer; and thither the carriages drive, and the promenaders assemble there, between five and six o'clock; and while the bands play, the Germans drink beer, and smoke cigars, and the fashionably attired young men walk round and round the circle, and the smart young soldiers exhibit their handsome uniforms, and stride about with clanking swords.
We felicitated ourselves that we should have no lack of music when we came to Munich. I think we have not; though the opera has only just begun, and it is the vacation of the Conservatoire. There are first the military bands: there is continually a parade somewhere, and the streets are full of military music, and finely executed too. Then of beer-gardens there is literally no end, and there are nightly concerts in them. There are two brothers Hunn, each with his band, who, like the ancient Huns, have taken the city; and its gardens are given over to their unending waltzes, polkas, and opera medleys. Then there is the church music on Sundays and holidays, which is largely of a military character; at least, has the aid of drums and trumpets, and the whole band of brass. For the first few days of our stay here we had rooms near the Maximilian Platz and the Karl's Thor. I think there was some sort of a yearly fair in progress, for the great platz was filled with temporary booths: a circus had set itself up there, and there were innumerable side-shows and lottery-stands; and I believe that each little shanty and puppet-show had its band or fraction of a band, for there was never heard such a tooting and blowing and scraping, such a pounding and dinning and slang-whanging, since the day of stopping work on the Tower of Babel. The circus band confined itself mostly to one tune; and as it went all day long, and late into the night, we got to know it quite well; at least, the bass notes of it, for the lighter tones came to us indistinctly. You know that blurt, blurt, thump, thump, dissolute sort of caravan tune. That was it.
The English Cafe was not far off, and there the Hunns and others also made night melodious. The whole air was one throb and thrump. The only refuge from it was to go into one of the gardens, and give yourself over to one band. And so it was possible to have delightful music, and see the honest Germans drink beer, and gossip in friendly fellowship and with occasional hilarity. But music we had, early and late. We expected quiet in our present quarters. The first morning, at six o'clock, we were startled by the resonant notes of a military band, that set the echoes flying between the houses, and a regiment of cavalry went clanking down the street. But that is a not unwelcome morning serenade and reveille. Not so agreeable is the young man next door, who gives hilarious concerts to his friends, and sings and bangs his piano all day Sunday; nor the screaming young woman opposite. Yet it is something to be in an atmosphere of music.
This morning I was awakened early by the strains of a military band. It was a clear, sparkling morning, the air full of life, and yet the sun showing its warm, southern side. As the mounted musicians went by, the square was quite filled with the clang of drum and trumpet, which became fainter and fainter, and at length was lost on the ear beyond the Isar, but preserved the perfection of time and the precision of execution for which the military bands of the city are remarkable. After the band came a brave array of officers in bright uniform, upon horses that pranced and curveted in the sunshine; and the regiment of cavalry followed, rank on rank of splendidly mounted men, who ride as if born to the saddle. The clatter of hoofs on the pavement, the jangle of bit and saber, the occasional word of command, the onward sweep of the well-trained cavalcade, continued for a long time, as if the lovely morning had brought all the cavalry in the city out of barracks. But this is an almost daily sight in Munich. One regiment after another goes over the river to the drill-ground. In the hot mornings I used quite to pity the troopers who rode away in the glare in scorching brazen helmets and breastplates. But only a portion of the regiments dress in that absurd manner. The most wear a simple uniform, and look very soldierly. The horses are almost invariably fine animals, and I have not seen such riders in Europe. Indeed, everybody in Munich who rides at all rides well. Either most of the horsemen have served in the cavalry, or horsemanship, that noble art “to witch the world,” is in high repute here.
Speaking of soldiers, Munich is full of them. There are huge caserns in every part of the city, crowded with troops. This little kingdom of Bavaria has a hundred and twenty thousand troops of the line. Every man is obliged to serve in the army continuously three years; and every man between the ages of twenty-one and forty-five must go with his regiment into camp or barrack several weeks in each year, no matter if the harvest rots in the field, or the customers desert the uncared-for shop. The service takes three of the best years of a young man's life. Most of the soldiers in Munich are young one meets hundreds of mere boys in the uniform of officers. I think every seventh man you meet is a soldier. There must be between fifteen and twenty thousand troops quartered in the city now. The young officers are everywhere, lounging in the cafes, smoking and sipping coffee, on all the public promenades, in the gardens, the theaters, the churches. And most of them are fine-looking fellows, good figures in elegantly fitting and tasteful uniforms; but they do like to show their handsome forms and hear their sword-scabbards rattle on the pavement as they stride by. The beer-gardens are full of the common soldiers, who empty no end of quart mugs in alternate pulls from the same earthen jug, with the utmost jollity and good fellowship. On the street, salutes between officers and men are perpetual, punctiliously given and returned,—the hand raised to the temple, and held there for a second. A young gallant, lounging down the Theatiner or the Maximilian Strasse, in his shining and snug uniform, white kids, and polished boots, with jangling spurs and the long sword clanking on the walk, raising his hand ever and anon in condescending salute to a lower in rank, or with affable grace to an equal, is a sight worth beholding, and for which one cannot be too grateful. We have not all been created with the natural shape for soldiers, but we have eyes given us that we may behold them.
Bavaria fought, you know, on the wrong side at Sadowa; but the result of the war left her in confederation with Prussia. The company is getting to be very distasteful, for Austria is at present more liberal than Prussia. Under Prussia one must either be a soldier or a slave, the democrats of Munich say. Bavaria has the most liberal constitution in Germany, except that of Wurtemberg, and the people are jealous of any curtailment of liberty. It seems odd that anybody should look to the house of Hapsburg for liberality. The attitude of Prussia compels all the little states to keep up armies, which eat up their substance, and burden the people with taxes. This is the more to be regretted now, when Bavaria is undergoing a peaceful revolution, and throwing off the trammels of galling customs in other respects.
The 1st of September saw go into complete effect the laws enacted in 1867, which have inaugurated the greatest changes in business and social life, and mark an era in the progress of the people worthy of fetes and commemorative bronzes. We heard the other night at the opera-house “William Tell” unmutilated. For many years this liberty-breathing opera was not permitted to be given in Bavaria, except with all the life of it cut out. It was first presented entire by order of young King Ludwig, who, they say, was induced to command its unmutilated reproduction at the solicitation of Richard Wagner, who used to be, and very likely is now, a “Red,” and was banished from Saxony in 1848 for fighting on the people's side of a barricade in Dresden. It is the fashion to say of the young king, that he pays no heed to the business of the kingdom. You hear that the handsome boy cares only for music and horseback exercise: he plays much on the violin, and rides away into the forest attended by only one groom, and is gone for days together. He has composed an opera, which has not yet been put on the stage. People, when they speak of him, tap their foreheads with one finger. But I don't believe it. The same liberality that induced him, years ago, to restore “William Tell” to the stage has characterized the government under him ever since.
Formerly no one could engage in any trade or business in Bavaria without previous examination before, and permission from, a magistrate. If a boy wished to be a baker, for instance, he had first to serve four years of apprenticeship. If then he wished to set up business for himself, he must get permission, after passing an examination. This permission could rarely be obtained; for the magistrate usually decided that there were already as many bakers as the town needed. His only other resource was to buy out an existing business, and this usually costs a good deal. When he petitioned for the privilege of starting a bakery, all the bakers protested. And he could not even buy out a stand, and carry it on, without strict examination as to qualifications. This was the case in every trade. And to make matters worse, a master workman could not employ a journeyman out of his shop; so that, if a journeyman could not get a regular situation, he had no work. Then there were endless restrictions upon the manufacture and sale of articles: one person could make only one article, or one portion of an article; one might manufacture shoes for women, but not for men; he might make an article in the shop and sell it, but could not sell it if any one else made it outside, or vice versa.
Nearly all this mass of useless restriction on trades and business, which palsied all effort in Bavaria, is removed. Persons are free to enter into any business they like. The system of apprenticeship continues, but so modified as not to be oppressive; and all trades are left to regulate themselves by natural competition. Already Munich has felt the benefit of the removal of these restrictions, which for nearly a year has been anticipated, in a growth of population and increased business.
But the social change is still more important. The restrictions upon marriage were a serious injury to the state. If Hans wished to marry, and felt himself adequate to the burdens and responsibilities of the double state, and the honest fraulein was quite willing to undertake its trials and risks with him, it was not at all enough that in the moonlighted beergarden, while the band played, and they peeled the stinging radish, and ate the Switzer cheese, and drank from one mug, she allowed his arm to steal around her stout waist. All this love and fitness went for nothing in the eyes of the magistrate, who referred the application for permission to marry to his associate advisers, and they inquired into the applicant's circumstances; and if, in their opinion, he was not worth enough money to support a wife properly, permission was refused for him to try. The consequence was late marriages, and fewer than there ought to be, and other ill results. Now the matrimonial gates are lifted high, and the young man has not to ask permission of any snuffy old magistrate to marry. I do not hear that the consent of the maidens is more difficult to obtain than formerly.
No city of its size is more prolific of pictures than Munich. I do not know how all its artists manage to live, but many of them count upon the American public. I hear everywhere that the Americans like this, and do not like that; and I am sorry to say that some artists, who have done better things, paint professedly to suit Americans, and not to express their own conceptions of beauty. There is one who is now quite devoted to dashing off rather lamp-blacky moonlights, because, he says, the Americans fancy that sort of thing. I see one of his smirchy pictures hanging in a shop window, awaiting the advent of the citizen of the United States. I trust that no word of mine will injure the sale of the moonlights. There are some excellent figure-painters here, and one can still buy good modern pictures for reasonable prices.