"Hanc tua Penelope lento tibi mittit Ulysse:Nil mihi rescribas attamen ipse veni;"
"Hanc tua Penelope lento tibi mittit Ulysse:Nil mihi rescribas attamen ipse veni;"
his eyes glistening as he recited the lines; he made me feel their beauty without understanding a word of their sense. "Strangest, and happiest of men!" I thought as I looked at him, "that after living seventy years in this world, can still have tears to spare for the sorrows of Penelope!" Well, our next resting place was Cologne.
MEDON.
You pause?—you have nothing to say of Cologne? No English traveller, except your professed tourists and guide-book makers, ever has; of the crowds who pass through the place, on their way up or down the Rhine, how few spend more than a night or a day there! their walk is between the Rheinberg and the cathedral; they look, perhaps, with a sneering curiosity at the shrine of the Three Kings; cut the usual jests on the Leda and the Cupid and Psyche;4glance at the St. Peter of Rubens; lounge on the bridge of boats; stock themselves with eau-de-Cologne, and then away! And yet this strange old city, which a bigoted priesthood, a jealous magistracy, and a variety of historical causes, have so long kept isolated in the midst of Europe, with its Roman origin, its classical associations, the wild gothic superstitions of which it has been the theatre; its legion of martyrs, its three kings and eleven thousand virgins, and the peculiarmanners and physiognomy of the people, strangely take the fancy. What has become of its three hundred and fifty churches, and its thirty thousand beggars?—Thirty thousand beggars! Was there ever such a splendid establishment of licensed laziness, and consecrated rags and wallets! What a magnificent idea does it give one of the inexhaustible charity, and the incalculable riches of the inhabitants! but the French came with their besom of purification and destruction; and lo! the churches were turned into arsenals, the convents into barracks; and from its old-accustomed haunts, "the genius of beggary was with sighing sent." I really believe, that were I again to visit Cologne, I would not be content with a mere superficial glance, as heretofore.
ALDA.
And you would do well. To confess the truth, our first impressions of the place were exceedingly disagreeable; it appeared a huge, rambling, gloomy old city, whose endless narrow dirty streets, and dull dingy-looking edifices, were any thing butinviting. Nor on a second and a third visit were we tempted to prolong our stay. Yet Cologne has since become most interesting to me from a friendship I formed with a Colonese, a descendant of one of the oldest families of the place. How she loved her old city!—how she worshipped every relic with the most poetical, if not the most pious veneration!—how she looked down upon Berlin with scorn, as an upstart city, "une ville ma chére, qui n'a ni histoire, ni antiquité." The cathedral she used to call "mon Berceau," and the three kings "mes trois pères." Her profound knowledge of general history, her minute acquaintance with the local antiquities, the peculiar customs, the wild legends, the solemn superstitions of her birth-place, added to the most lively imagination and admirable descriptive powers, were to me an inexhaustible source of delight and information. It appears that the people of Cologne have a distinct character, but little modified by intercourse with the surrounding country, and preserved by continual intermarriages among themselves. They have a dialect, and songs, and ballads, and music,peculiar to their city; and are remarkable for an original vein of racy humour, a revengeful spirit, an exceeding superstition, a blind attachment to their native customs, a very decided contempt for other people, and a surpassing hatred of all innovations. They never admitted the jurisdiction of the electors of Cologne, and, although the most bigoted people in the world, were generally at war with their archbishops. Even Napoleon could not make them comformable. The city is now attached to Prussia, but still retains most of its ancient privileges, and all its ancient spirit of insubordination and independence. When, in 1828, the king of Prussia wished to force upon them an unpopular magistrate, the whole city rose, and obliged the obnoxious president to resign; the government, armed with all its legal and military terrors, could do nothing against the determined spirit of this half-civilized, fearless, reckless, yet merry, good-humoured populace. A history of this grotesque revolution, which had the same duration as the celebratedtrois jours de Paris, and exhibitedin its progress and issue some of the most striking, most characteristic, most farcical scenes you can imagine, were worthy of a Colonese Walter Scott. How I wish I could give you some of my friend's rich graphic sketches and humorous pictures of popular manner! but I feel that their peculiar spirit would evaporate in my hands. The event is celebrated in their local history as "la Revolution du Carnaval:" and this reminds me of another peculiarity of Cologne. The carnival is still celebrated there with a degree of splendour and fantastic humour, exceeding even the festivities of Rome and Naples in the present day; but as the season of the carnival is not the season for flight with our English birds of passage, few have ever witnessed these extraordinary Saturnalia. Such is the general ignorance or indifference relative to Cologne, that I met the other day with a very accomplished man, and a lover of art, who had frequently visited the place, and yet he had never seen the Medusa.
MEDON.
Nor I, by this good light!—I never even heard of it!
ALDA.
And how shall I attempt to describe it? Unless I had the "large utterance of the early gods," or could pour forth a string of Greek or German compounds, I know not in what words I could do justice to the effect it produced upon me. This wondrous mask measures about two feet and a half in height;5the colossal features, and I may add, the colossal expression, grand without exaggeration—so awfully vast, and yet so gloriously beautiful; the full rich lips curled with disdain—the mighty wings overshadowing the knit and tortured brow—the madness in the large dilated eyes—the wreathing and recoiling snakes, came upon me like something supernatural, and impressed me at once with astonishment, horror, and admiration. I was quite unprepared for what I beheld. As Istood before it my mind seemed to elevate and enlarge itself to admit this new vision of grandeur. Nothing but the two Fates in the Elgin marbles, and the Torso of the Vatican, ever affected me with the same inexpressible sense of the sublime: and this is not a fragment of some grand mystery, of which the remainder has been "to night and chaos hurled;" it is entire, in admirable preservation, and the workmanship as perfect as the conception is magnificent. I know not if it would have affected another in the same manner. For me, the ghastly allegory of the Medusa has a peculiar fascination. I confess that I have never wholly understood it, nor have any of the usual explanations satisfied me; it appears to me, that the Greeks, in thus blending the extremes of loveliness and terror, had a meaning, a purpose, more than is dreamt of by our philosophy.
MEDON.
But, how came this wonderful relic to Cologne, of all places in the world?
ALDA.
It stopped there on its road to England.
MEDON.
By what perverse destiny?—was it avarice on our part, or force or fraud on that of others?
ALDA.
It was, as Desdemona says, "our wretched fortune:" but the story, with all its circumstances, does so much honour to human nature, that it has half reconciled me to our loss. You must have heard of Professor Wallraf of Cologne, one of the canons of the cathedral, who, with his professorship and his canonship together, may have possessed from five to seven hundred francs a year. He was one of those wonderful and universal scholars, of whom we read in former times—men who concentrated all their powers and passions, and intellectual faculties, in the acquirement and advancement of knowledge, without any selfish aim or object, and from the mere abstract love of science. Early in life this man formed theresolution to remove from his native city the reproach of self-satisfied ignorance and monastic prejudices, which had hitherto characterized it; and in the course of a long existence of labour and privation, as professor and teacher, he contrived to collect together books, manuscripts, pictures, gems, works of art, and objects of natural history, to an immense amount. In the year 1818, on recovering from a dangerous illness, he presented his whole collection to his native city; and the magistracy, in return, bestowed on him a pension of three thousand francs for the remainder of his life. He was then more than seventy. About the same time a dealer in antiquities arrived from Rome, bringing with him this divine Medusa, with various other busts and fragments: he was on his way to England, where he hoped to dispose of them. He asked for his whole collection twelve thousand francs, and refused to sell any part of it separately. The city refused to make the purchase, thinking it too dear, and Wallraf, in despair at the idea of this glorious relic being consigned to other lands, mortgagedhis yearly pension in order to raise the money, purchased the Medusa, presented it to the city, and then cheerfully resumed his accustomed life of self-denial and frugality. His only dread was lest he should die before the period was expired. He lived, however, to pay off his debt, and in three months afterwards he died.6Was not this admirable? The first time I saw the Medusa I did not know this anecdote; the second time, as I looked at it, I thought of Wallraf, and felt how much a moral interest can add to the charm of what is in itself most perfect.
MEDON.
I will certainly make a pilgrimage to this Medusa. She must be worth all the eleven thousand virgins together. What next?
ALDA.
Instead of embarking in the steam-boat, we posted along the left bank of the Rhine, spending a few days at Bonn, at Godesberg, and at Ehrenbreitstein; but I should tell you, as you allow meto diverge, that on my second journey, I owed much to a residence of some weeks at Bonn. There I became acquainted with the celebrated Schlegel, or I should rather say, M. le Chevalier de Schlegel, for I believe his titles and his "starry honours" are not indifferent to him; and in truth he wears them very gracefully. I was rather surprised to find in this sublime and eloquent critic, this awful scholar, whose comprehensive mind has grasped the whole universe of art, a most agreeable, lively, social being. Of the judgments passed on him in his own country, I know little, and understand less; I am not deep in German literary polemics. To me he was the author of the lectures on "Dramatic Literature," and the translator of Shakspeare, and, moreover, all that was amiable and polite: and was not this enough?
MEDON.
Enough for you, certainly; but, I believe that at this time Schlegel would rather found his fame on being one of the greatest oriental critics of the age, than on being the interpreter of the beauties of Calderon and Shakspeare.
ALDA.
I believe so; but for my own part, I would rather hear him talk of Romeo and Juliet, and of Madame de Staël, than of the Ramayana, the Bhagvat-Gita, or even the "eastern Con-fut-zee." This, of course, is only a proof of my own ignorance. Conversation may be compared to a lyre with seven chords—philosophy, art, poetry, politics, love, scandal, and the weather. There are some professors, who, like Paganini, "can discourse most eloquent music" upon one string only; and some who can grasp the whole instrument, and with a master's hand sound it from the top to the bottom of its compass. Now, Schlegel is one of the latter: he can thunder in the bass or caper in the treble; he can be a whole concert in himself. No man can trifle like him, nor, like him, blend in a few hours' converse, the critic, philologist, poet, philosopher, and man of the world—no man narrates more gracefully, nor more happily illustrates a casual thought. He told me many interesting things. "Do you know," said he one morning, as I was looking at a beautiful edition of Corinne, bound in red morocco, the giftof Madame de Staël; "do you know that I figure in that book?" I asked eagerly in what character? He bid me guess. I guessed playfully, the Comte d'Erfeuil. "No! no!" said he, laughing, "I am immortalized in the Prince Castel-Forte, the faithful, humble, unaspiring, friend of Corinne."
MEDON.
To any man but Schlegel, such an immortality were worth a life. Nay, there is no man, though his fame extended to the ends of the earth, whom the pen of Madame de Staël could not honour.
ALDA.
He seemed to think so, and I liked him for the self-complacency with which he twined her little myrtle leaf with his own palmy honours. Nor did he once refer to what I believe every body knows, her obligations to him in her De l'Allemagne.
MEDON.
Apropos—do tell me what is the general opinion of that book among the Germans themselves.
ALDA.
I think they do not judge it fairly. Some speak of it as eloquent, but superficial:7others denounce it altogether as a work full of mistakes and flippant, presumptuous criticism: others again affect to speak of it, and even of Madame de Staël herself, as things of another era, quite gone by and forgotten; this appeared to me too ridiculous. They forget, or do not know, whatweknow, that her De l'Allemagne was the first book which awakened in France and England a lively and general interest in German art and literature. It is now five-and-twenty years since it was published. The march of opinion, and criticism, and knowledge of every kind, has been so rapid, that much has become old which then was new; but this does not detract from its merit. Once or twice I tried to convince my German friends that they were exceedingly ungrateful in abusing Madame de Staël, but it was all in vain; so I sat swelling with indignation to hear my idol traduced, and called—O profanation!— "cette Staël."
MEDON.
But do you think the Germans could at all appreciate or understand such a phenomenon as Madame de Staël must have appeared in those days? She whisked through their skies like a meteor, before they could bring the telescope of their wits to a right focus for observation. How she must have made them open their eyes!—and you see in the correspondence between Goethe and Schiller whattheythought of her.
ALDA.
Yes, I know that with her lively egotism and Parisian volubility, she stunned Schiller and teased Goethe: but while our estimate ofmannermay be allowed to be relative and comparative, our estimate ofcharactershould be positive and abstract. Madame de Staël was in manner the Frenchwoman, accustomed to be the cynosure of a salon, but she was not ridiculous or egoiste in character. She was, to use Schlegel's expression, "femme grande et magnanime jusque dans les replis de son âme." The best proof is the very spirit in which she viewed Germany, in spite ofall her natural and national prejudices. To apply your own expression, she went forth, in the spirit of peace, and brought back, not only an olive leaf, but a whole tree, and it has flourished. She had a universal mind. I believe she never thought, and still lessmade, any one ridiculous in her life.8
At Bonn much of my time was spent in intimate and almost hourly intercourse with two friends, one of whom I have already mentioned to you—a rare creature!—the other, who was herself the daughter of a distinguished authoress,9was one of the most generally accomplished women I ever met with. Opposed to each other in the constitution of their minds—in all their views of literature and art, and all their experience of life—in their tastes, and habits, and feelings—yet mutually appreciating each other: both were distinguished by talents of the highest order and by great originality of character, and both were German, and very essentiallyGerman: English society and English education would never have produced two such women. Their conversation prepared me to form correct ideas of what I was to see and hear, and guarded me against the mistakes and hasty conclusions of vivacious travellers. AtBonn I also saw, for the first time, a specimen of the fresco painting, lately revived in Germany with such brilliant success. By command of the Prussian Board of Education the hall of the university of Bonn is to be painted in fresco, and the work has been entrusted to C. Hermann, Götzenberger, and Förster—all, I believe, pupils of Cornelius. The three sides of the hall are to represent the three faculties—Theology, Jurisprudence, and Philosophy; the first of these is finished, and here is an engraving of it. You see Theology is throned in the centre. The four evangelists, with St. Peter and St. Paul, stand on the steps of the throne; around her are the fathers and doctors of the church, and (which is the chief novelty of the composition) grouped together with a very liberal disregard to all religious differences; for there you see pope Gregory, and Ignatius Loyola, and St. Bernard, and Abelard, and Dante; and here we have Luther, and Melanchthon, and Calvin, and Wickliff, and Huss. On the opposite side of the hall, Philosophy, under which head are comprised all science, poetry, and art, is representedsurrounded by the great poets, philosophers, and artists, from Homer, Aristotle, and Phideas, down to Shakspeare, Raffaelle, Goethe, and Kant. Jurisprudence, which is not begun, is to occupy the third side. The cartoons pleased me better than the paintings, for the drawing and grouping are really fine; but the execution struck me as somewhat hard and mannered. I shall have much to say hereafter of the fresco painting in Germany; for the present, proceed we on our journey.
Tell me, had you a full moon while you were on the Rhine?
MEDON.
Truly, I forget.
ALDA.
Then you hadnot; for it would so have blended with your recollections, that as a circumstance it could not have been forgotten; and take my advice, when next you are off on your annual flight, consult the calendar, and propitiate the fairest of all the fair Existences of heaven to giveyou the light of her countenance. If you never took a solitary ramble, or, what is better, atête-à-têtedrive through the villages and vineyards between Bonn and Plittersdorf, when the moon hung over the Drachenfels, when the undulating outlines of the Seven Mountains seemed to dissolve into the skies, and the Rhine was spread out at their feet like a lake—so ample, and so still;—if you have never seen the stars shine through the ruined arch of the Rolandseck, and the height of Godesberg, with its single giant tower, stand out of the plain,—black, and frowning against the silvery distance, then you have not beheld one of the loveliest landscapes ever presented to a thoughtful worshipper of nature. There is a story, too, connected with the ruins of Godesberg:—one of those fine tragedies of real life, which distance all fiction. It is not so popular as the celebrated legend of the brave Roland, and his cloistered love; but it is at least as authentic. You know that, according to tradition, the castle of Godesberg was founded by Julian the Apostate; another, and a more interesting apostate, was the cause of its destruction.
Gerard10de Truchses, Count Waldbourg, who was archbishop and elector of Cologne in 1583, scandalized his see, and all the Roman Catholic powers, by turning Protestant. According to himself, his conversion was owing to "the goodness of God, who had revealed to him the darkness and the errors of popery;" but according to his enemies, it was owing to his love for the beautiful Agnes de Mansfeld, canoness of Gersheim; she was a daughter of one of the greatest Protestant houses in Germany; and her two brothers, bigoted Calvinists, and jealous of the honour of their family, conceived themselves insulted by the public homage which a Catholic priest, bound by his vows, dared to pay to their sister. They were yet more incensed on discovering that the love was mutual, and loudly threatened vengeance to both. Gerard renounced the Catholic faith, and the lovers were united. He was excommunicated and degraded, of course; but he insisted on his right to retain his secular dominions and privileges, and refused to resign the electorate, which the emperor,meantime, had awarded to Ernest of Bavaria, bishop of Liege. The contest became desperate. The whole of that beautiful and fertile plain, from the walls of Cologne to the Godesberg, grew "familiar with bloodshed as the morn with dew;" and Gerard displayed qualities which showed him more fitted to win and wear a bride, than to do honour to any priestly vows of sanctity and temperance. Attacked on all sides,—by his subjects, who had learned to detest him as an apostate, by the infuriated clergy, and by the Duke of Bavaria, who had brought an army to enforce his brother's claims,—he carried on the struggle for five years, and at last, reduced to extremity, threw himself, with a few faithful friends, into the castle of Godesberg. After a brave defence, the castle was stormed and taken by the Bavarians, who left it nearly in the state we now see it—a heap of ruins.
Gerard escaped with his wife, and fled to Holland, where Maurice, Prince of Orange, granted him an asylum. Thence he sent his beautiful and devoted wife to the court of Queen Elizabeth, toclaim a former promise of protection, and supplicate her aid, as the great support of the Protestant cause, for the recovery of his rights. He could not have chosen a more luckless ambassadress; for Agnes, though her beauty was somewhat impaired by the persecutions and anxieties which had followed her ill-fated union, was yet most lovely and stately, in all the pride of womanhood; and her misfortunes and her charms, as well as the peculiar circumstances of her marriage, excited the enthusiasm of all the English chivalry. Unhappily the Earl of Essex was among the first to espouse her cause with all the generous warmth of his character, and his visits to her were so frequent, and his admiration so indiscreet, that Elizabeth's jealousy was excited even to fury. Agnes was first driven from the court, and then ordered to quit the kingdom. She took refuge in the Netherlands, where she died soon afterwards; and Gerard, who never recovered his dominions, retired to Strasbourg, where he died. So ends this sad eventful history, which, methinks, would make a very pretty romance. The towerof Godesberg, lasting as their love and ruined as their fortunes, still remains one of the most striking monuments in that land, where almost every hill is crowned with its castle, and every castle has its tale of terror, or of love.11
Another beautiful picture, which, merely as a picture, has dwelt on my remembrance, was the city of Coblentz and the fort of Ehrenbreitstein, as viewed from the bridge of boats under a cloudless moon. The city, with its fantastic steeples and masses of building, relieved against the clear deep blue of the summer sky—the lights which sparkled in the windows reflected in the broad river, and the various forms and tall masts of the craft anchored above and opposite—the huge hill, with its tiara of fortifications, which, in the sunshine and in the broad day, had disappointed me by its formality, now seen under the soft moonlight, as its long lines of architecture and abrupt angles were projected in brightness or receded in shadow, had altogether a most sublime effect. Butapropostomoonlights and pictures—of all the enchanted and enchanting scenes ever lighted by the full round moon, give me Heidelberg! Not the Colosseum of Rome—neither in itself, nor yet in Lord Byron's description, and I have both by heart—can be more grand; and in moral interest, in poetical associations, in varying and wondrous beauty, the castle of Heidelberg has the advantage. In the course of many visits, Heidelberg became to me familiar as the face of a friend, and its remembrance still "haunts me as a passion." I have known it under every changeful aspect which the seasons, and the hours, and the changeful moods of my own mind, could lend it. I have seen it when the sun, rising over the Geisberg, first kindled the vapours as they floated away from the old towers, and when the ivy and the wreathed verdure on the walls sparkled with dewy light: and I have seen it when its huge black masses stood against the flaming sunset; and its enormous shadow, flung down the chasm beneath, made it night there, while daylight lingered around and above. I have seen it when mantled in all the bloom and foliage of summer,and when the dead leaves were heaped on the paths, and choked the entrance to many a favourite nook. I have seen it when crowds of gay visitors flitted along its ruined terraces,12and music sounded near; and with friends, whose presence endeared every pleasure; and I have walked alone round its desolate precincts, with no companions but my own sad and troubled thoughts. I have seen it when clothed in calm and glorious moonlight. I have seen it when the winds rushed shrieking through its sculptured halls, and when grey clouds came rolling down the mountains, folding it in their ample skirts from the view of the city below. And what have I seen to liken to it by night or by day, in storm or in calm, in summer or in winter! Then its historical and poetical associations—
MEDON.
There now!—will you not leave the picture,perfect as it is, and not for ever seek in every object something more than is there?
ALDA.
I do not seek it—I find it. You will say—I haveheardyou say—that Heidelberg wants no beauty unborrowed of the eye; but if history had not clothed it in recollections, fancy must have invested it in its own dreams. It is true, that it is a mere modern edifice compared with all the classic, and most of the gothic ruins; yet over Heidelberg there hangs a terror and a mystery peculiar to itself: for the mind which acquiesces in decay, recoils from destruction. Here ruin and desolation make mocks with luxurious art and gay magnificence. Here it is not the equal, gradual power of time, adorning and endearing what yet it spares not, which has wrought this devastation, but savage war and elemental rage. Twice blasted by the thunderbolt, three times consumed by fire, ten times ravaged, plundered, desecrated by foes, and at last dismantled and abandoned by its own princes, it is still strong to endure andmighty to resist all that time, and war, and the elements may do against it—and, mutilated rather than decayed, may still defy centuries. The very anomalies of architecture and fantastic incongruities of this fortress-palace, are to me a fascination. Here are startling and terrific contrasts. That huge round tower—the tower of Frederic the Victorious—now "deep trenched with thunder fires," looks as if built by the Titans or the Huns; and those delicate sculptures in the palace of Otho-Henry, as if the genius of Raffaelle or Correggio had breathed on the stone. What flowing grace of outline! what luxuriant life! what endless variety and invention in those half-defaced fragments! These are the work of Italian artists, whose very names have perished;—all traces of their existence and of their destinies so utterly lost, that one might almost believe, with the peasantry, that these exquisite remains are not the work of mortal hands, but of fairies and spirits of air, evoked to do the will of an enchanter. The old palatines, the lords of Heidelberg, were a magnificent and magnanimous race. Louis III., Frederic theVictorious, Frederic II., Otho-Henry, were all men who had stepped in advance of their age. They could think as well as fight, in days when fighting, not thinking, was the established fashion among potentates and people. A liberal and enlightened spirit, and a love of all the arts that humanise mankind, seem to have been hereditary in this princely family. Frederic I. lay under the suspicion of heresy and sorcery, in consequence of his tolerant opinions, and his love of mathematics and astronomy. His personal prowess, and the circumstance of his never having been vanquished in battle, gave rise to the report, that he was assisted by evil demons; and for years, both before and after his accession, he was under the ban of the secret tribunal. Heidelberg was the scene of some of the mysterious attacks on his life, but they were constantly frustrated by the fidelity of his friends, and the watchful love of his wife.
It was at Heidelberg this prince celebrated a festival, renowned in German history, and, for the age in which it occurred, most extraordinary. Heinvited to a banquet all the factious barons whom he had vanquished at Seckingen, and who had previously ravaged and laid waste great part of the palatinate. Among them were the Bishop of Metz and the Margrave of Baden. The repast was plentiful and luxurious, but there was no bread. The warrior guests looked round with surprise and inquiry. "Do you ask for bread?" said Frederic, sternly; "you, who have wasted the fruits of the earth, and destroyed those whose industry cultivates it? There is no bread. Eat and be satisfied; and learn henceforth mercy to those who put the bread into your mouths." A singular lesson from the lips of an iron-clad warrior of the middle ages.
It was Frederic II. and his nephew Otho-Henry, who enriched the library, then the first in Europe next to the Vatican, with treasures of learning, and who invited painters and sculptors from Italy to adorn their noble palace with the treasures of art. In less than one hundred years those beautiful creations were defaced or utterly destroyed, and all the memorials and records of their authorsare supposed to have perished at the time when the ruthless Tilly stormed the castle, and the archives and part of the library of precious MSS. were taken to litter his dragoons' horses, during a transient scarcity of straw.13—You groan!
MEDON.
The anecdote is not new to me; but I was thinking, at the moment, of a pretty phrase in the letters of the Prince de Ligne, "la guerre—c'est un malheur—mais c'est le plus beau des malheurs."
ALDA.
O if there be any thing more terrific, more disgusting, than war and its consequences, it is that perversion of all human intellect—that depravationof all human feeling—that contempt or misconception of every Christian precept, which has permitted the great, and the good, and the tenderhearted, to admire war as a splendid game—a part of the poetry of life—and to defend it as a glorious evil, which the very nature and passions of man have ever rendered, and will ever render, necessary and inevitable. Perhaps the idea of human suffering—though when we think of it in detail it makes the blood curdle—is not so bad as the general loss to humanity, the interruption to the progress of thought in the destruction of the works of wisdom or genius. Listen to this magnificent sentence out of the volume now lying open before me—"Who kills a man, kills a reasonable creature—God's image; but he who destroys a good book, kills reason itself. Many a man lives a burthen to the earth, but a good book is the precious life-blood of a master-spirit embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life. It is true, no age can restore a life, whereof perhaps there is no great loss: and revolutions of ages do not oft recover the loss ofrejected truth, for the want of which whole nations fare the worse; therefore we should be wary how we spill the seasoned life of man preserved and stored up in books."
MEDON.
"Methinks we do know the fine Roman hand." Milton, is it not?
ALDA.
Yes; and after this, think of Milton's Areopagitica, or his Paradise Lost, under the hoofs of Tilly's dragoon horses, or feeding the fishes in the Baltic! It might have happened had he written in Germany instead of England.
MEDON.
Do you forget that the cause of the thirty years war was a woman?
ALDA.
A woman and religion; the two best or worst things in the world, according as they are understoodand felt, used and abused. You allude to Elizabeth of Bohemia, who was to Heidelberg what Helen was to Troy?
One of the most interesting monuments of Heidelberg, at least to an English traveller, is the elegant triumphal arch raised by the palatine Frederic V. in honour of his bride—this very Elizabeth Stuart. I well remember with what self-complacency and enthusiasm our Chef walked about in a heavy rain, examining, dwelling upon every trace of this celebrated and unhappy woman. She had been educated at his country-seat, and one of the avenues of his magnificent park yet bears her name. On her fell a double portion of the miseries of her fated family. She had the beauty and the wit, the gay spirits, the elegant tastes, the kindly disposition, of her grandmother, Mary of Scotland. Her very virtues as a wife and a woman, not less than her pride and feminine prejudices, ruined herself, her husband, and her people. When Frederick hesitated to accept the crown of Bohemia, his high-hearted wife exclaimed—"Let me rather eat dry bread ata king's table than feast at the board of an elector;" and it seemed as if some avenging demon hovered in the air, to take her literally at her word, for she and her family lived to eat dry bread—aye, and to beg it before they ate it; but shewouldbe a queen. Blest as she was in love, in all good gifts of nature and fortune, in all means of happiness, a kingly crown was wanting to complete her felicity, and it was cemented to her brow with the blood of two millions of men. And who was to blame? Was not her mode of thinking the fashion of her time, the effect of her education? Who had
"Put in her tender heart the aspiring flameOf golden sovereignty?"
"Put in her tender heart the aspiring flameOf golden sovereignty?"
"Put in her tender heart the aspiring flame
Of golden sovereignty?"
For how many ages will you men exclaim against the mischiefs and miseries, caused by the influence of women; thus allowing the influence, yet taking no thought how to make that influence a means of good, instead of an instrument of evil!
Elizabeth had brought with her from England some luxurious tastes, as yet unknown in thepalatinate; she had been familiarized with the dramas of Shakspeare and Fletcher, and she had figured in the masques of Ben Jonson. To gratify her, Frederic added to the castle of Heidelberg the theatre and banqueting-room, and all that beautiful group of buildings at the western angle, the ruins of which are still called theEnglish palace. She had inherited from her grandmother, or had early imbibed from education, a love of nature and of amusements in the open air, and a passion for gardening; and it was to please her, and under her auspices, that Frederic planned those magnificent gardens, which were intended to unite within their bounds, all that nature could contribute or art devise; had they been completed, they would have rendered Heidelberg a pleasure-palace, fit for fairy-land. Nor were those designs unworthy of a prosperous and pacific sovereign, whose treasury was full, whose sway was just and mild, whose people had long enjoyed in tranquillity the fruits of their own industry. When I had the pleasure of spending a few days with the Schlossers, at their beautifulseat on the Necker, (Stift Neuburg,) I went over the ground with Madame de Schlosser, who had seen and studied the original plans. Her description of the magnitude and the sumptuous taste of these unfinished designs, while we stood together amid a wilderness of ruins, was a commentary on the vicissitudes of this world, worth fifty moral treatises, and as many sermons.
"For in the wreck ofISandWAS,Things incomplete and purposes betray'd,Make sadder transits o'er Truth's mystic glass,Than noblest objects utterly decay'd."
"For in the wreck ofISandWAS,Things incomplete and purposes betray'd,Make sadder transits o'er Truth's mystic glass,Than noblest objects utterly decay'd."
"For in the wreck ofISandWAS,
Things incomplete and purposes betray'd,
Make sadder transits o'er Truth's mystic glass,
Than noblest objects utterly decay'd."
Close to the ruins of poor Elizabeth's palace, there where the effigies of her handsome husband, and his bearded ancestor Louis V. look down from the ivy-mantled wall, you remember the beautiful terrace towards the west? It is still,—after four centuries of changes, of disasters, of desolation,—the garden of Clara. When Frederic the Victorious assumed the sovereignty, in a moment of danger and faction, he took, at the same time, a solemn vow never to marry, that the rights of his infant nephew, the son of the latepalatine, should not be prejudiced, nor the peace of the country endangered by a disputed succession. He kept his oath religiously, but at that very time he loved Clara Dettin de Wertheim, a young girl of plebeian origin, and a native of Augsburg, whose musical talents and melody of voice had raised her to a high situation in the court of the late princess palatine. Frederick, with the consent of his nephew, was united to Clara by a left-hand marriage, an expedient still in use in Germany, and, I believe, peculiar to its constitution; such a marriage is valid before God and man, yet the wife has no acknowledged rights, and the offspring no supposed existence. Clara is celebrated by the poets and chroniclers of her time, and appears to have been a very extraordinary being in her way. In that age of ignorance, she had devoted herself to study—she could sympathize in her husband's pursuits, and share the toils of government—she collected round her the wisest and most learned men of the time—she continued to cultivate the beautiful voice which had won the heart of Frederic, and her song and her lutewere always ready to soothe his cares. Tradition points out the spot where it is said she loved to meditate, and, looking down upon the little hamlet, on the declivity of the hill, to recall her own humble origin; that little hamlet, embowered in foliage, and the remembrance of Clara, have survived the glories of Heidelberg. Her descendants became princes of the empire, and still exist in the family of Lowenstein.
Then, for those who love the marvellous, there is the wild legend of the witch Jetta, who still flits among the ruins, and bathes her golden tresses in the Wolfsbrunnen; but why should I tell you of these tales—you, whose head is a sort of black-letter library?
MEDON.
True; but it is pleasant to have one's old recollections taken down from their shelves and dusted, and placed in a new light; only do not require, even if I again visit Heidelberg, that I should see it as you have beheld it, with your quick spirit of association, and clothed in the huesof your own individual mind. While you speak, it is not so much the places and objects you describe, as their reflection in your own fancy, which I see before me; and every different mind will reflect them under a different aspect. Then, where is truth? you say. If we want information as to mere facts—the situation of a town, the measurement of a church, the date of a ruin, the catalogue of a gallery—we can go to our dictionaries and ourguides des voyageurs. But if, besides form and outline, we must have colouring too, we should remember that every individual mind will paint the scene with its own proper hues; and if we judge of the mind and the objects it represents relatively to each other, we may come at the truth, not otherwise. I would ask nothing of a traveller, but accuracy and sincerity in the expression of his opinions and feelings. I have then a page out of the great book of human nature—the portrait of a particular mind; when that is fairly before me I have a standard by which to judge: I can draw my own inferences. Will you not allow that it is possible to visitHeidelberg, and to derive the most intense pleasure from its picturesque beauty, without dreaming over witches and warriors, palatines and princes? Can we not admire and appreciate the sculpture in the palace of Otho-Henry, without losing ourselves in vague, wondering reveries over the destinies of the sculptors?
ALDA.
Yes; but it is amusing, and not less instructive, to observe the manner in which the individual character and pursuits shall modify the impressions of external things; only we should be prepared for this, as the pilot makes allowance for the variation of the needle, and directs his course accordingly. It is a mistake to suppose that those who cannot see the imaginative aspect of things, see, therefore, the only true aspect; they only see one aspect of the truth.Vous étes orfêvre, Monsieur Josse, is as applicable to travellers as to every other species of egotist.
Once, in an excursion to the north, I fell into conversation with a Sussex farmer, one of thatrace of sturdy, rich, and independent English yeomen, of which I am afraid few specimens remain: he was quite a character in his way. I must sketch him for you; but only Miss Mitford could do him justice. His coat was of the finest broad-cloth; his shirt-frill, in which was stuck a huge agate pin, and his neckcloth, were both white as the snow; his good beaver shone in all its pristine gloss, and an enormous bunch of gold seals adorned his watch-chain; his voice was loud and dictatorial, and his language surprisingly good and flowing, though tinctured with a little coarseness and a few provincialisms. He had made up his mind about the Reform Bill—the Catholic Question—the Corn Laws—and about things in general, and things in particular; he had doubts about nothing: it was evident that he was accustomed to lay down the law in his own village—that he was the tyrant of his own fire-side—that his wife was "his horse, his ox, his ass, his any thing," while his sons went to college, and his daughters played on the piano. London was to him merely a vast congregation of pestilentialvapours—a receptacle of thieves, cut-throats and profligates—a place in which no sensible man, who had a care for his life, his health, or his pockets, would willingly set his foot; he thanked God that he never spent but two nights in the metropolis, and at intervals of twenty-seven years: the first night he had passed in the streets, in dread of fire and vermin; and on the last occasion, he had not ventured beyond Smithfield. What he did not know, was to him not worth knowing; and the wordFrench, which comprised all that was foreign, he used as a term, expressing the most unbounded abhorrence, pity, and contempt. I should add, that though rustic, and arrogant, and prejudiced, he was not vulgar. We were at an inn, on the borders of Leicestershire, through which we had both recently travelled; my farmer was enthusiastic in his admiration of the country. "A fine country, madam—a beautiful country—a splendid country!"
"Do you call it a fine country?" said I, absently, my head full of the Alps and Appenines, the Pyrenean, and the river Po.
"To be sure I do; and where would you see a finer?"
"I did not see any thing very picturesque," said I.
"Picturesque!" he repeated with some contempt; "I don't know whatyoucall picturesque; butIsay, give me a soil, that when you turn it up you have something for your pains; the fine soil makes the fine country, madam!"