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SEEING EUROPE WITH FAMOUS AUTHORS, VOLUME V
GERMANY, AUSTRIA-HUNGARY, AND SWITZERLAND, PART ONE
Selected and Edited, with Introductions, etc., by
FRANCIS W. HALSEY
Editor of "Great Epochs in American History"
Associate Editor of "The World's Famous Orations"
and of "The Best of the World's Classics," etc.
IN TEN VOLUMES
ILLUSTRATED
1914
[Illustration: BERLIN: PANORAMA FROM THE TOWER OF THE TOWN HALL]
INTRODUCTION TO VOLUMES V AND VI
Germany, Austria-Hungary and Switzerland
The tourist's direct route to Germany is by ships that go to the two
great German ports--Bremen and Hamburg, whence fast steamer trains
proceed to Berlin and other interior cities. One may also land at
Antwerp or Rotterdam, and proceed thence by fast train into Germany.
Either of these routes continued takes one to Austria. Ships by the
Mediterranean route landing at Genoa or Trieste, provide another way for
reaching either country. In order to reach Switzerland, the tourist has
many well-worn routes available.
As with England and France, so with Germany--our earliest information
comes from a Roman writer, Julius Caesar; but in the case of Germany,
this information has been greatly amplified by a later and noble
treatise from the pen of Tacitus. Tacitus paints a splendid picture of
the domestic virtues and personal valor of these tribes, holding them
up as examples that might well be useful to his countrymen. Caesar found
many Teutonic tribes, not only in the Rhine Valley, but well established
in lands further west and already Gallic.
By the third century, German tribes had formed themselves into
federations--the Franks, Alemanni, Frisians and Saxons. The Rhine
Valley, after long subjection to the Romans, had acquired houses,
temples, fortresses and roads such as the Romans always built. Caesar
had found many evidences of an advanced state of society. Antiquarians
of our day, exploring German graves, discover signs of it in splendid
weapons of war and domestic utensils buried with the dead. Monolithic
sarcophagi have been found which give eloquent testimony of the
absorption by them of Roman culture. Western Germany, in fact, had
become, in the third century, a well-ordered and civilized land.
Christianity was well established there. In general the country compared
favorably with Roman England, but it was less advanced than Roman Gaul.
Centers of that Romanized German civilization, that were destined ever
afterward to remain important centers of German life, are Augsburg,
Strasburg, Worms, Speyer, Bonn and Cologne.
It was after the formation of the tribal federations that the great
migratory movement from Germany set in. This gave to Gaul a powerful
race in the Franks, from whom came Clovis and the other Merovingians; to
Gaul also it gave Burgundians, and to England perhaps the strongest
element in her future stock of men--the Saxons. Further east soon set in
another world-famous migration, which threatened at times to dominate
all Teutonic people--the Goths, Huns and Vandals of the Black and
Caspian Sea regions. Thence they prest on to Italy and Spain, where the
Goths founded and long maintained new and thriving states on the ruins
of the old.
Surviving these migrations, and serving to restore something like order
to Central Europe, there now rose into power in France, under Clovis and
Charlemagne, and spread their sway far across the Rhine, the great
Merovingian and Carlovingian dynasties. Charlemagne's empire came to
embrace in central Europe a region extending east of the Rhine as far as
Hungary, and from north to south from the German ocean to the Alps. When
Charlemagne, in 800, received from the Pope that imperial crown, which
was to pass in continuous line to his successors for a thousand years,
Germany and France were component parts of the same state, a condition
never again to exist, except in part, and briefly, under Napoleon.
The tangled and attenuated thread of German history from Charlemagne's
time until now can not be unfolded here, but it makes one of the great
chronicles in human history, with its Conrads and Henrys, its
Maximilian, its Barbarossa, its Charles V., its Thirty Years' War, its
great Frederick of Prussia, its struggle with Napoleon, its rise through
Prussia under Bismarck, its war of 1870 with France, its new Empire,
different alike in structure and in reality from the one called Holy and
called Roman, and the wonderful commercial and industrial progress of
our century.
Out of Charlemagne's empire came the empire of Austria. Before his time,
the history of the Austro-Hungarian lands is one of early tribal life,
followed by conquest under the later Roman emperors, and then the
migratory movements of its own people and of other people across its
territory, between the days of Attila and the Merovingians. Its very
name (Oesterreich) indicates its origin as a frontier territory, an
outpost in the east for the great empire Charlemagne had built up. Not
until the sixteenth century did Austria become a power of first rank in
Europe. Hapsburgs had long ruled it, as they still do, and as they have
done for more than six centuries, but the greatest of all their
additions to power and dominion came through Mary of Burgundy, who,
seeking refuge from Louis XI. of France, after her father's death,
married Maximilian of Austria. Out of that marriage came, in two
generations, possession by Austria of the Netherlands, through Mary's
grandson, Charles V., Holy Roman emperor and king of Spain. For years
afterward, the Hapsburgs remained the most illustrious house in Europe.
The empire's later fortunes are a story of grim struggle with
Protestants, Frederick the Great, the Ottoman Turks, Napoleon, the
revolutionists of 1848, and Prussia.
The story of Switzerland in its beginnings is not unlike that of other
European lands north of Italy. The Romans civilized the country--built
houses, fortresses and roads. Roman roads crossed the Alps, one of them
going, as it still goes, over the Great St. Bernard. Then came the
invaders--Burgundians, Alemanni, Ostrogoths and Huns. North Switzerland
became the permanent home of Alemanni, or Germans, whose descendants
still survive there, around Zürich. Burgundians settled in the western
part which still remains French in speech, and a part of it French
politically, including Chamouni and half of Mont Blanc. Ostrogoths
founded homes in the southern parts, and descendants of theirs still
remain there, speaking Italian, or a sort of surviving Latin called
Romansch.
After these immigrations most parts of the country were subdued by the
Merovingian Franks, by whom Christianity was introduced and monasteries
founded. With the break-up of Charlemagne's empire, a part of
Switzerland was added to a German duchy, and another part to Burgundy.
Its later history is a long and moving record of grim struggles by a
brave and valiant people. In our day the Swiss have become industrially
one of the world's successful races, and their country the one in which
wealth is probably more equally distributed than anywhere else in
Europe, if not in America.
F.W.H.
CONTENTS OF VOLUME V
Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Switzerland--Part One
I. THE RHINE VALLEY
INTRODUCTION TO VOLS. V AND VI--By the Editor
IN HISTORY AND ROMANCE--By Victor Hugo
FROM BONN TO MAYENCE--By Bayard Taylor
COLOGNE--By Victor Hugo
ROUND ABOUT COBLENZ--By Lady Blanche Murphy
BINGEN AND MAYENCE--By Victor Hugo
FRANKFORT-ON-MAIN--By Bayard Taylor
HEIDELBERG--By Bayard Taylor
STRASBURG--By Harriet Beecher Stowe
FREIBURG AND THE BLACK FOREST--By Bayard Taylor
II. NUREMBERG
AS A MEDIEVAL CITY--By Cecil Headlam
ITS CHURCHES AND THE CITADEL--By Thomas Frognall Dibdin
NUREMBERG TO-DAY--By Cecil Headlarn
WALLS AND OTHER FORTIFICATIONS--By Cecil Headlam
ALBERT DÜRER--By Cecil Headlam
III. OTHER BAVARIAN CITIES
MUNICH--By Bayard Taylor
AUGSBURG--By Thomas Frognall Dibdin
RATISBON--By Thomas Frognall Dibdin
IV. BERLIN AND ELSEWHERE
A LOOK AT THE GERMAN CAPITAL--By Theophile Gautier
CHARLOTTENBURG--By Harriet Beecher Stowe
LEIPZIG AND DRESDEN--By Bayard Taylor
WEIMAR IN GOETHE'S DAY--By Madame De Staël
ULM--By Thomas Frognall Dibdin
AIX-LA-CHAPELLE AND CHARLEMAGNE'S TOMB--By Victor Hugo
THE HANSEATIC LEAGUE--By James Howell
HAMBURG--By Theophile Gautier
SCHLESWIG--By Theophile Gautier
LÜBECK--By Theophile Gautier
HELIGOLAND--By William George Black
V. VIENNA
FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF THE CAPITAL--By Bayard Taylor
ST. STEPHEN'S CATHEDRAL--By Thomas Frognall Dibdin
THE BELVEDERE PALACE--By Thomas Frognall Dibdin
SCHÖNBRUNN AND THE PRATER--By Thomas Frognall Dibdin
VI. HUNGARY
A GLANCE AT THE COUNTRY--By H. Tornai de Kövër
BUDAPEST--By H. Tornai de Kövër
(_Hungary continued in Vol. VI_)
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
VOLUME V
A PANORAMA OF BERLIN FROM THE TOWN HALL
COLOGNE CATHEDRAL
COLOGNE CATHEDRAL BEFORE THE SPIRES WERE COMPLETED
BINGEN-ON-THE RHINE
NUREMBERG CASTLE
STOLZENFELS CASTLE ON THE RHINE
WIESBADEN
STRASBURG CATHEDRAL
STRASBURG
FRAUENKIRCHE, MUNICH
DOOR OF STRASBURG CATHEDRAL
STRASBURG CLOCK
GOETHE'S HOUSE, WEIMAR
SCHILLER'S HOUSE, WEIMAR
BERLIN: UNTER DEN LINDEN
BERLIN: THE BRANDENBURG GATE
BERLIN: THE ROYAL CASTLE AND EMPEROR WILLIAM BRIDGE
BERLIN: THE WHITE HALL IN THE ROYAL CASTLE
BERLIN: THE NATIONAL GALLERY AND FREDERICK'S BRIDGE
BERLIN: THE GENDARMENMARKT
THE COLUMN OF VICTORY, BERLIN
THE MAUSOLEUM AT CHARLOTTENBURG
THE NEW PALACE AT POTSDAM
THE CASTLE OF SANS SOUCI, POTSDAM
THE CATHEDRAL OF AIX-LA-CHAPELLE--TOMB OF CHARLEMAGNE
SCHÖNBRUNN, VIENNA
SALZBURG, AUSTRIA
[Illustration: COLOGNE CATHEDRAL]
[Illustration: COLOGNE CATHEDRAL (Before the spires were completed, as
shown in a photograph taken in 1877)]
[Illustration: BINGEN ON THE RHINE]
[Illustration: NUREMBERG CASTLE]
[Illustration: STOLZENFELS CASTLE ON THE RHINE]
[Illustration: WIESBADEN]
[Illustration: STRASSBURG CATHEDRAL]
[Illustration: STRASSBURG AND THE CATHEDRAL]
[Illustration: THE FRAUENKIRCHE, MUNICH]
[Illustration: THE DOOR OF STRASSBURG CATHEDRAL]
[Illustration: THE STRASSBURG CLOCK]
[Illustration: GOETHE'S HOUSE IN WEIMAR]
[Illustration: SCHILLER'S HOUSE IN WEIMAR]
I
THE RHINE VALLEY
IN HISTORY AND ROMANCE[A]
BY VICTOR HUGO
Of all rivers, I prefer the Rhine. It is now a year, when passing the
bridge of boats at Kehl, since I first saw it. I remember that I felt a
certain respect, a sort of adoration, for this old, this classic stream.
I never think of rivers--those great works of Nature, which are also
great in History--without emotion.
I remember the Rhone at Valserine; I saw it in 1825, in a pleasant
excursion to Switzerland, which is one of the sweet, happy recollections
of my early life. I remember with what noise, with what ferocious
bellowing, the Rhone precipitated itself into the gulf while the frail
bridge upon which I was standing was shaking beneath my feet. Ah well!
since that time, the Rhone brings to my mind the idea of a tiger--the
Rhine, that of a lion.
The evening on which I saw the Rhine for the first time, I was imprest
with the same idea. For several minutes I stood contemplating this proud
and noble river--violent, but not furious; wild, but still majestic. It
was swollen, and was magnificent in appearance, and was washing with its
yellow mane, or, as Boileau says, its "slimy beard," the bridge of
boats. Its two banks were lost in the twilight, and tho its roaring was
loud, still there was tranquillity.
The Rhine is unique: it combines the qualities of every river. Like the
Rhone, it is rapid; broad like the Loire; encased, like the Meuse;
serpentine, like the Seine; limpid and green, like the Somme;
historical, like the Tiber; royal like the Danube; mysterious, like the
Nile; spangled with gold, like an American river; and like a river of
Asia, abounding with fantoms and fables.
From historical records we find that the first people who took
possession of the banks of the Rhine were the half-savage Celts, who
were afterward named Gauls by the Romans. When Rome was in its glory,
Caesar crossed the Rhine, and shortly afterward the whole of the river
was under the jurisdiction of his empire. When the Twenty-second Legion
returned from the siege of Jerusalem, Titus sent it to the banks of the
Rhine, where it continued the work of Martius Agrippa. After Trajan and
Hadrian came Julian, who erected a fortress upon the confluence of the
Rhine and the Moselle; then Valentinian, who built a number of castles.
Thus, in a few centuries, Roman colonies, like an immense chain, linked
the whole of the Rhine.
At length the time arrived when Rome was to assume another aspect. The
incursions of the northern hordes were eventually too frequent and too
powerful for Rome; so, about the sixth century, the banks of the Rhine
were strewed with Roman ruins, as at present with feudal ones.
Charlemagne cleared away the rubbish, built fortresses, and opposed the
German hordes; but, notwithstanding all that he did, notwithstanding his
desire to do more, Rome died, and the physiognomy of the Rhine was
changed.
The sixteenth century approached; in the fourteenth the Rhine witnessed
the invention of artillery; and on its bank, at Strassburg, a
printing-office was first established. In 1400 the famous cannon,
fourteen feet in length, was cast at Cologne; and in 1472 Vindelin de
Spire printed his Bible. A new world was making its appearance; and,
strange to say, it was upon the banks of the Rhine that those two
mysterious tools with which God unceasingly works out the civilization
of man--the catapult and the book--war and thought--took a new form.
The Rhine, in the destinies of Europe, has a sort of providential
signification. It is the great moat which divides the north from the
south. The Rhine for thirty ages, has seen the forms and reflected the
shadows of almost all the warriors who tilled the old continent with
that share which they call sword. Caesar crossed the Rhine in going from
the south; Attila crossed it when descending from the north. It was here
that Clovis gained the battle of Tolbiac; and that Charlemagne and
Napoleon figured. Frederick Barbarossa, Rudolph of Hapsburg, and
Frederick the First, were great, victorious, and formidable when here.
For the thinker, who is conversant with history, two great eagles are
perpetually hovering ever the Rhine--that of the Roman legions, and the
eagle of the French regiments.
The Rhine--that noble flood, which the Romans named "Superb," bore at
one time upon its surface bridges of boats, over which the armies of
Italy, Spain, and France poured into Germany, and which, at a later
date, were made use of by the hordes of barbarians when rushing into the
ancient Roman world; at another, on its surface it floated peaceably the
fir-trees of Murg and of Saint Gall, the porphyry and the marble of
Bâle, the salt of Karlshall, the leather of Stromberg, the quicksilver
of Lansberg, the wine of Johannisberg, the slates of Coab, the cloth and
earthenware of Wallendar, the silks and linens of Cologne. It
majestically performs its double function of flood of war and flood of
peace, having, without interruption, upon the ranges of hills which
embank the most notable portion of its course, oak-trees on one side and
vine-trees on the other--signifying strength and joy.
[Footnote A: From "The Rhine." Translated by D.M. Aird.]
FROM BONN TO MAYENCE[A]
BY BAYARD TAYLOR
I was glad when we were really in motion on the swift Rhine, and nearing
the chain of mountains that rose up before us. We passed Godesberg on
the right, while on our left was the group of the seven mountains which
extend back from the Drachenfels to the Wolkenberg, or "Castle of the
Clouds." Here we begin to enter the enchanted land. The Rhine sweeps
around the foot of the Drachenfels, while, opposite, the precipitous
rock of Rolandseck, crowned with the castle of the faithful knight,
looks down upon the beautiful island of Nonnenwerth, the white walls of
the convent still gleaming through the trees as they did when the
warrior's weary eyes looked upon them for the last time. I shall never
forget the enthusiasm with which I saw this scene in the bright, warm
sunlight, the rough crags softened in the haze which filled the
atmosphere, and the wild mountains springing up in the midst of
vineyards and crowned with crumbling towers filled with the memories of
a thousand years.
After passing Andernach we saw in the distance the highlands of the
middle Rhine--which rise above Coblentz, guarding the entrance to its
scenery--and the mountains of the Moselle. They parted as we approached;
from the foot shot up the spires of Coblentz, and the battlements of
Ehrenbreitstein, crowning the mountain opposite, grew larger and
broader. The air was slightly hazy, and the clouds seemed laboring among
the distant mountains to raise a storm. As we came opposite the mouth of
the Moselle and under the shadow of the mighty fortress, I gazed up with
awe at its massive walls. Apart from its magnitude and almost
impregnable situation on a perpendicular rock, it is filled with the
recollections of history and hallowed by the voice of poetry. The scene
went past like a panorama, the bridge of boats opened, the city glided
behind us, and we entered the highlands again.
Above Coblentz almost every mountain has a ruin and a legend. One feels
everywhere the spirit of the past, and its stirring recollections come
back upon the mind with irresistible force. I sat upon the deck the
whole afternoon as mountains, towns and castles passed by on either
side, watching them with a feeling of the most enthusiastic enjoyment.
Every place was familiar to me in memory, and they seemed like friends I
had long communed with in spirit and now met face to face. The English
tourists with whom the deck was covered seemed interested too, but in a
different manner. With Murray's Handbook open in their hands, they sat
and read about the very towns and towers they were passing, scarcely
lifting their eyes to the real scenes, except now and then to observe
that it was "very nice."
As we passed Boppart, I sought out the inn of the "Star," mentioned in
"Hyperion;" there was a maiden sitting on the steps who might have been
Paul Flemming's fair boat-woman. The clouds which had here gathered
among the hills now came over the river, and the rain cleared the deck
of its crowd of admiring tourists. As we were approaching Lorelei Berg,
I did not go below, and so enjoyed some of the finest scenery on the
Rhine alone. The mountains approach each other at this point, and the
Lorelei rock rises up for four hundred and forty feet from the water.
This is the haunt of the water nymph Lorelei, whose song charmed the ear
of the boatman while his bark was dashed to pieces on the rocks below.
It is also celebrated for its remarkable echo. As we passed between the
rocks, a guard, who has a little house on the roadside, blew a flourish
on his bugle, which was instantly answered by a blast from the rocky
battlements of Lorelei.
The sun came out of the clouds as we passed Oberwesel, with its tall
round tower, and the light shining through the ruined arches of
Schonberg castle made broad bars of light and shade in the still misty
air. A rainbow sprang up out of the Rhine and lay brightly on the
mountain-side, coloring vineyard and crag in the most singular beauty,
while its second reflection faintly arched like a glory above the high
summits in the bed of the river were the seven countesses of Schonberg
turned into seven rocks for their cruelty and hard-heartedness toward
the knights whom their beauty had made captive. In front, at a little
distance, was the castle of Pfalz, in the middle of the river, and from
the heights above Caub frowned the crumbling citadel of Gutenfels.
Imagine all this, and tell me if it is not a picture whose memory should
last a lifetime.
We came at last to Bingen, the southern gate of the highlands. Here, on
an island in the middle of the stream, is the old mouse-tower where
Bishop Hatto of Mayence was eaten up by the rats for his wicked deeds.
Passing Rüdesheim and Geisenheim--celebrated for their wines--at sunset,
we watched the varied shore in the growing darkness, till like a line of
stars across the water we saw before us the bridge of Mayence.
[Footnote A: From "Views Afoot." Published by G.P. Putnam's Sons.]
COLOGNE[A]
BY VICTOR HUGO.
The sun had set when we reached Cologne. I gave my luggage to a porter,
with orders to carry it to a hotel at Duez, a little town on the
opposite side of the Rhine; and directed my steps toward the cathedral.
Rather than ask my way, I wandered up and down the narrow streets, which
night had all but obscured. At last I entered a gateway leading to a
court, and came out on an open square--dark and deserted. A magnificent
spectacle now presented itself. Before me, in the fantastic light of a
twilight sky, rose, in the midst of a group of low houses, an enormous
black mass, studded with pinnacles and belfries. A little farther was
another, not quite so broad as the first, but higher; a kind of square
fortress, flanked at its angles with four long detached towers, having
on its summit something resembling a huge feather. On approaching, I
discovered that it was the cathedral of Cologne.
What appeared like a large feather was a crane, to which sheets of lead
were appended, and which, from its workable appearance, indicated to
passers-by that this unfinished temple may one day be completed; and
that the dream of Engelbert de Berg, which was realized under Conrad de
Hochsteden, may, in an age or two, be the greatest cathedral in the
world. This incomplete Iliad sees Homers in futurity. The church was
shut. I surveyed the steeples, and was startled at their dimensions.
What I had taken for towers are the projections of the buttresses. Tho
only the first story is completed, the building is already nearly as
high as the towers of Notre Dame at Paris. Should the spire, according
to the plan, be placed upon this monstrous trunk, Strasburg would be,
comparatively speaking, small by its side.[B] It has always struck me
that nothing resembles ruin more than an unfinished edifice. Briars,
saxifrages, and pellitories--indeed, all weeds that root themselves in
the crevices and at the base of old buildings--have besieged these
venerable walls. Man only constructs what Nature in time destroys.
All was quiet; there was no one near to break the prevailing silence. I
approached the façade, as near as the gate would permit me, and heard
the countless shrubs gently rustling in the night breeze. A light which
appeared at a neighboring window, cast its rays upon a group of
exquisite statues--angels and saints, reading or preaching, with a large
open book before them. Admirable prologue for a church, which is nothing
else than the Word made marble, brass or stone! Swallows have fearlessly
taken up their abode here, and their simple yet curious masonry
contrasts strangely with the architecture of the building. This was my
first visit to the cathedral of Cologne. The dome of Cologne, when seen
by day, appeared to me to have lost a little of its sublimity; it no
longer had what I call the twilight grandeur that the evening lends to
huge objects; and I must say that the cathedral of Beauvais, which is
scarcely known, is not inferior, either in size or in detail, to the
cathedral of Cologne.
The Hôtel-de-Ville, situated near the cathedral, is one of those
singular edifices which have been built at different times, and which
consist of all styles of architecture seen in ancient buildings. The
mode in which these edifices have been built forms rather an interesting
study. Nothing is regular--no fixt plan has been drawn out--all has been
built as necessity required. Thus the Hôtel-de-Ville, which has,
probably, some Roman cave near its foundation, was, in 1250, only a
structure similar to those of our edifices built with pillars. For the
convenience of the night-watchman, and in order to sound the alarum, a
steeple was required, and in the fourteenth century a tower was built.
Under Maximilian a taste for elegant structures was everywhere spread,
and the bishops of Cologne, deeming it essential to dress their
city-house in new raiment, engaged an Italian architect, a pupil,
probably, of old Michael Angelo, and a French sculptor, who adjusted on
the blackened façade of the thirteenth century a triumphant and
magnificent porch. A few years expired, and they stood sadly in want of
a promenade by the side of the Registry. A back court was built, and
galleries erected, which were sumptuously enlivened by heraldry and
bas-reliefs. These I had the pleasure of seeing; but, in a few years, no
person will have the same gratification, for, without anything being
done to prevent it, they are fast falling into ruins. At last, under
Charles the Fifth, a large room for sales and for the assemblies of the
citizens was required, and a tasteful building of stone and brick was
added. I went up to the belfry; and under a gloomy sky, which harmonized
with the edifice and with my thoughts, I saw at my feet the whole of
this admirable town.
From Thurmchen to Bayenthurme, the town, which extends upward of a
league on the banks of the river, displays a whole host of windows and
façades. In the midst of roofs, turrets and gables, the summits of
twenty-four churches strike the eye, all of different styles, and each
church, from its grandeur, worthy of the name of cathedral. If we
examine the town in detail, all is stir, all is life. The bridge is
crowded with passengers and carriages; the river is covered with sails.
Here and there clumps of trees caress, as it were, the houses blackened
by time; and the old stone hotels of the fifteenth century, with their
long frieze of sculptured flowers, fruit and leaves, upon which the
dove, when tired, rests itself, relieve the monotony of the slate roofs
and brick fronts which surround them.
Round this great town--mercantile from its industry, military from its
position, marine from its river--is a vast plain that borders Germany,
which the Rhine crosses at different places, and is crowned on the
northeast by historic eminences--that wonderful nest of legends and
traditions, called the "Seven Mountains." Thus Holland and its commerce,
Germany and its poetry--like the two great aspects of the human mind,
the positive and the ideal--shed their light upon the horizon of
Cologne; a city of business and of meditation.
After descending from the belfry, I stopt in the yard before a handsome
porch of the Renaissance, the second story of which is formed of a
series of small triumphal arches, with inscriptions. The first is
dedicated to Caesar; the second to Augustus; the third to Agrippa, the
founder of Cologne; the fourth to Constantine, the Christian emperor;
the fifth to Justinian, the great legislator; and the sixth to
Maximilian. Upon the façade, the poetic sculpture has chased three
bas-reliefs, representing the three lion-combatants, Milo of Crotona,
Pepin-le-Bref, and Daniel. At the two extremities he has placed Milo of
Crotona, attacking the lions by strength of body; and Daniel subduing
the lions by the power of mind. Between these is Pepin-le-Bref,
conquering his ferocious antagonist with that mixture of moral and
physical strength which distinguishes the soldier. Between pure strength
and pure thought, is courage; between the athlete and the prophet--the
hero.
Pepin, sword in hand, has plunged his left arm, which is enveloped in
his mantle, into the mouth of the lion; the animal stands, with extended
claws, in that attitude which in heraldry represents the lion rampant.
Pepin attacks it bravely and vanquishes. Daniel is standing motionless,
his arms by his side, and his eyes lifted up to Heaven, the lions
lovingly rolling at his feet. As for Milo of Crotona, he defends himself
against the lion, which is in the act of devouring him. His blind
presumption has put too much faith in muscle, in corporeal strength.
These three bas-reliefs contain a world of meaning; the last produces a
powerful effect. It is Nature avenging herself on the man whose only
faith is in brute force....
In the evening, as the stars were shining, I took a walk upon the side
of the river opposite to Cologne. Before me was the whole town, with its
innumerable steeples figuring in detail upon the pale western sky. To my
left rose, like the giant of Cologne, the high spire of St. Martin's,
with its two towers; and, almost in front, the somber apsed cathedral,
with its many sharp-pointed spires, resembling a monstrous hedgehog, the
crane forming the tail, and near the base two lights, which appeared
like two eyes sparkling with fire. Nothing disturbed the stillness of
the night but the rustling of the waters at my feet, the heavy tramp of
a horse's hoofs upon the bridge, and the sound of a blacksmith's hammer.
A long stream of fire that issued from the forge caused the adjoining
windows to sparkle; then, as if hastening to its opposite element,
disappeared in the water.
[Footnote A: From "The Rhine." Translated by D.M. Aird.]
[Footnote B: One of the illustrations that accompany this volume shows
the spires in their completed state.]
ROUND ABOUT COBLENZ[A]
BY LADY BLANCHE MURPHY
Coblenz is the place which many years ago gave me my first associations
with the Rhine. From a neighboring town we often drove to Coblenz, and
the wide, calm flow of the river, the low, massive bridge of boats and
the commonplace outskirts of a busy city contributed to make up a very
different picture from that of the poetic "castled" Rhine of German song
and English ballad. The old town has, however, many beauties, tho its
military character looks out through most of them, and reminds us that
the Mosel city (for it originally stood only on that river, and then
crept up to the Rhine), tho a point of union in Nature, has been for
ages, so far as mankind was concerned, a point of defense and watching.
The great fortress, a German Gibraltar, hangs over the river and sets
its teeth in the face of the opposite shore; all the foreign element in
the town is due to the deposits made there by troubles in other
countries, revolution and war sending their exiles, émigrés and
prisoners. The history of the town is only a long military record, from
the days of the archbishops of Trèves, to whom it was subject....
There is the old "German house" by the bank of the Mosel, a building
little altered outwardly since the fourteenth century, now used as a
food-magazine for the troops. The church of St. Castor commemorates a
holy hermit who lived and preached to the heathen in the eighth century,
and also covers the grave and monument of the founder of the "Mouse" at
Wellmich, the warlike Kuno of Falkenstein, Archbishop of Trèves. The
Exchange, once a court of justice, has changed less startlingly, and its
proportions are much the same as of old; and besides these there are
other buildings worth noticing, tho not so old, and rather distinguished
by the men who lived and died there, or were born there, such as
Metternich, than by architectural beauties. Such houses there are in
every old city. They do not invite you to go in and admire them; every
tourist you meet does not ask you how you liked them or whether you saw
them. They are homes, and sealed to you as such, but they are the shell
of the real life of the country; and they have somehow a charm and a
fascination that no public building or show-place can have. Goethe, who
turned his life-experiences into poetry, has told us something of one
such house not far from Coblenz, in the village of Ehrenbreitstein,
beneath the fortress, and which in familiar Coblenz parlance goes by the
name of "The Valley"--the house of Sophie de Laroche. The village is
also Clement Brentano's birthplace.
The oldest of German cities, Trèves (or in German Trier), is not too far
to visit on our way up the Mosel Valley, whose Celtic inhabitants of old
gave the Roman legions so much trouble. But Rome ended by conquering,
by means of her civilization as well as by her arms, and Augusta
Trevirorum, tho claiming a far higher antiquity than Rome herself,
and still bearing an inscription to that effect on the old
council-house--now called the Red House and used as a hotel--became, as
Ausonius condescendingly remarked, a second Rome, adorned with baths,
gardens, temples, theaters and all that went to make up an imperial
capital. As in Venice everything precious seems to have come from
Constantinople, so in Trier most things worthy of note date from the
days of the Romans; tho, to tell the truth, few of the actual buildings
do, no matter how classic is their look. The style of the Empire
outlived its sway, and doubtless symbolized to the inhabitants their
traditions of a higher standard of civilization.
The Porta Nigra, for instance--called Simeon's Gate at present--dates
really from the days of the first Merovingian kings, but it looks like a
piece of the Colosseum, with its rows of arches in massive red
sandstone, the stones held together by iron clamps, and its low,
immensely strong double gateway, reminding one of the triumphal arches
in the Forum at Rome. The history of the transformation of this gateway
is curious. First a fortified city gate, standing in a correspondingly
fortified wall, it became a dilapidated granary and storehouse in the
Middle Ages, when one of the archbishops gave leave to Simeon, a
wandering hermit from Syracuse in Sicily, to take up his abode there;
and another turned it into a church dedicated to this saint, tho of this
change few traces remain. Finally, it has become a national museum of
antiquities. The amphitheater is a genuine Roman work, wonderfully well
preserved; and genuine enough were the Roman games it has witnessed,
for, if we are to believe tradition, a thousand Frankish prisoners of
war were here given in one day to the wild beasts by the Emperor
Constantine. Christian emperors beautified the basilica that stood where
the cathedral now is, and the latter itself has some basilica-like
points about it, tho, being the work of fifteen centuries, it bears the
stamp of successive styles upon its face....
The Mosel has but few tributary streams of importance; its own course is
as winding, as wild and as romantic as that of the Rhine itself. The
most interesting part of the very varied scenery of this river is not
the castles, the antique towns, the dense woods or the teeming vineyards
lining rocks where a chamois could hardly stand--all this it has in
common with the Rhine--but the volcanic region of the Eifel, the lakes
in ancient craters, the tossed masses of lava and tufa, the great wastes
strewn with dark boulders, the rifts that are called valleys and are
like the Iceland gorges, the poor, starved villages and the
extraordinary rusticity, not to say coarseness, of the inhabitants. This
grotesque, interesting country--unique, I believe, on the continent of
Europe--lies in a small triangle between the Mosel, the Belgian frontier
and the Schiefer hills of the Lower Rhine; it goes by the names of the
High Eifel, with the High Acht, the Kellberg and the Nurburg; the upper
(Vorder) Eifel, with Gerolstein, a ruined castle, and Daun, a pretty
village; and the Snow-Eifel (Schnee Eifel), contracted by the speech of
the country into Schneifel.
The last is the most curious, the most dreary, the least visited. Walls
of sharp rocks rise up over eight hundred feet high round some of its
sunken lakes--one is called the Powder Lake--and the level above this
abyss stretches out in moors and desolate downs, peopled with herds of
lean sheep, and marked here and there by sepulchral, gibbet-looking
signposts, shaped like a rough T and set in a heap of loose stones. It
is a great contrast to turn aside from this landscape and look on the
smiling villages and pretty wooded scenery of the valley of the Mosel
proper; the long lines of handsome, healthy women washing their linen on
the banks; the old ferryboats crossing by the help of antique
chain-and-rope contrivances; the groves of old trees, with broken walls
and rude shrines, reminding one of Southern Italy and her olives and
ilexes; and the picturesque houses, in Kochem, in Daun, in Travbach, in
Bernkastel, which, however untiring one may be as a sightseer, hardly
warrant one as a writer to describe and re-describe their beauties.
Klüsserath, however, we must mention, because its straggling figure has
given rise to a local proverb--"As long as Klüsserath;" and Neumagen,
because of the legend of Constantine, who is said to have seen the cross
of victory in the heavens at this place, as well as at Sinzig on the
Rhine, and, as the more famous legend tells us, at the Pons Milvium over
the Tiber.
The last glance we take at the beauties of this neighborhood is from the
mouth of the torrent-river Eltz as it dashes into the Eifel, washing the
rock on which stands the castle of Eltz. The building and the family are
an exception in the history of these lands; both exist to this day, and
are prosperous and undaunted, notwithstanding all the efforts of
enemies, time and circumstances to the contrary. The strongly-turreted
wall runs from the castle till it loses itself in the rock, and the
building has a home-like inhabited, complete look; which, in virtue of
the quaint irregularity and magnificent natural position of the castle,
standing guard over the foaming Eltz, does not take from its romantic
appearance, as preservation or restoration too often does.
Not far from Coblenz, and past the island of Nonnenwerth, is the old
tenth-century castle of Sayn, which stood until the Thirty Years' War,
and below it, quiet, comfortable, large, but unpretending, lies the new
house of the family of Sayn-Wittgenstein, built in the year 1848. As we
push our way down the Rhine we soon come to the little peaceful town of
Neuwied, a sanctuary for persecuted Flemings and others of the Low
Countries, gathered here by the local sovereign, Count Frederick III.
The little brook that gives its name to the village runs softly into the
Rhine under a rustic bridge and amid murmuring rushes, while beyond it
the valley gets narrower, rocks begin to rise over the Rhine banks, and
we come to Andernach.
Andernach is the Rocky Gate of the Rhine, and if its scenery were not
enough, its history, dating from Roman times, would make it interesting.
However, of its relics we can only mention, in passing, the parish
church with its four towers, all of tufa, the dungeons under the
council-house, significantly called the "Jew's bath," and the old
sixteenth-century contrivances for loading Rhine boats with the
millstones in which the town still drives a fair trade. At the mouth of
the Brohl we meet the volcanic region again, and farther up the valley
through which this stream winds come upon the retired little
watering-place of Tönnistein, a favorite goal of the Dutch, with its
steel waters; and Wassenach, with what we may well call its dust-baths,
stretching for miles inland, up hills full of old craters, and leaving
us only at the entrance of the beech-woods that have grown up in these
cauldron-like valleys and fringe the blue Laachersee, the lake of
legends and of fairies. One of these Schlegel has versified in the "Lay
of the Sunken Castle," with the piteous tale of the spirits imprisoned;
and Simrock tells us in rhyme of the merman who sits waiting for a
mortal bride; while Wolfgang Müller sings of the "Castle under the
Lake," where at night ghostly torches are lighted and ghostly revels are
held, the story of which so fascinates the fisherman's boy who has heard
of these doings from his grandmother that as he watches the enchanted
waters one night his fancy plays him a cruel trick, and he plunges in to
join the revellers and learn the truth.
Local tradition says that Count Henry II. and his wife Adelaide, walking
here by night, saw the whole lake lighted up from within in uncanny
fashion, and founded a monastery in order to counteract the spell. This
deserted but scarcely ruined building still exists, and contains the
grave of the founder; the twelfth-century decoration, rich and detailed,
is almost whole in the oldest part of the monastery. The far-famed
German tale of Genovefa of Brabant is here localized, and Henry's son
Siegfried assigned to the princess as a husband, while the neighboring
grotto of Hochstein is shown as her place of refuge. On our way back to
the Rocky Gate we pass through the singular little town of Niedermendig,
an hour's distance from the lake--a place built wholly of dark gray
lava, standing in a region where lava-ridges seam the earth like the
bones of antediluvian monsters, but are made more profitable by being
quarried into millstones. There is something here that brings part of
Wales to the remembrance of the few who have seen those dreary
slate-villages--dark, damp, but naked, for moss and weeds do not thrive
on this dampness as they do on the decay of other stones--which dot the
moorland of Wales. The fences are slate; the gateposts are slate; the
stiles are of slate; the very "sticks" up which the climbing roses are
trained are of slate; churches, schools, houses, stables are all of one
dark iron-blue shade; floors and roofs are alike; hearth-stones and
threshold-stones, and grave-stones all of the same material. It is
curious and depressing. This volcanic region of the Rhine, however, has
so many unexpected beauties strewn pell-mell in the midst of stony
barrenness that it also bears some likeness to Naples and Ischia, where
beauty of color, and even of vegetation, alternate surprisingly with
tracts of parched and rocky wilderness pierced with holes whence gas and
steam are always rising.
[Footnote A: From "Down the Rhine."]
BINGEN AND MAYENCE[A]
BY VICTOR HUGO
Bingen is an exceedingly pretty place, having at once the somber look of
an ancient town, and the cheering aspect of a new one. From the days of
Consul Drusus to those of the Emperor Charlemagne, from Charlemagne to
Archbishop Willigis, from Willigis to the merchant Montemagno, and from
Montemagno to the visionary Holzhausen, the town gradually increased in
the number of its houses, as the dew gathers drop by drop in the cup of
a lily. Excuse this comparison; for, tho flowery, it has truth to back
it, and faithfully illustrates the mode in which a town near the conflux
of two rivers is constructed. The irregularity of the houses--in fact
everything, tends to make Bingen a kind of antithesis, both with respect
to buildings and the scenery which surrounds them. The town, bounded on
the left by Nahe, and by the Rhine on the right, develops itself in a
triangular form near a Gothic church, which is backed by a Roman
citadel. In this citadel, which bears the date of the first century, and
has long been the haunt of bandits, there is a garden; and in the
church, which is of the fifteenth century, is the tomb of Barthélemy de
Holzhausen. In the direction of Mayence, the famed Paradise Plain opens
upon the Ringau; and in that of Coblentz, the dark mountains of Leyen
seem to frown on the surrounding scenery. Here Nature smiles like a
lovely woman extended unadorned on the greensward; there, like a
slumbering giant, she excites a feeling of awe.
The more we examine this beautiful place, the more the antithesis is
multiplied under our looks and thoughts. It assumes a thousand different
forms; and as the Nahe flows through the arches of the stone bridge,
upon the parapet of which the lion of Hesse turns its back to the eagle
of Prussia, the green arm of the Rhine seizes suddenly the fair and
indolent stream, and plunges it into the Bingerloch.
To sit down toward the evening on the summit of the Klopp--to see the
town at its base, with an immense horizon on all sides, the mountains
overshadowing all--to see the slated roofs smoking, the shadows
lengthening, and the scenery breathing to life the verses of Virgil--to
respire at once the wind which rustles the leaves, the breeze of the
flood, and the gale of the mountain--is an exquisite and inexpressible
pleasure, full of secret enjoyment, which is veiled by the grandeur of
the spectacle, by the intensity of contemplation. At the windows of
huts, young women, their eyes fixt upon their work, are gaily singing;
among the weeds that grow round the ruins birds whistle and pair; barks
are crossing the river, and the sound of oars splashing in the water,
and unfurling of sails, reaches our ears. The washerwomen of the Rhine
spread their clothes on the bushes; and those of the Nahe, their legs
and feet naked, beat their linen upon floating rafts, and laugh at some
poor artist as he sketches Ehrenfels.
The sun sets, night comes on, the slated roofs of the houses appear as
one, the mountains congregate and take the aspect of an immense dark
body; and the washerwomen, with bundles on their heads, return
cheerfully to their cabins; the noise subsides, the voices are hushed; a
faint light, resembling the reflections of the other world upon the
countenance of a dying man, is for a short time observable on the
Ehrenfels; then all is dark, except the tower of Hatto, which, tho
scarcely seen in the day, makes its appearance at night, amid a light
smoke and the reverberation of the forge....
Mayence and Frankfort, like Versailles and Paris, may, at the present
time, be called one town. In the middle ages there was a distance of
eight leagues between them, which was then considered a long journey;
now, an hour and a quarter will suffice to transport you from one to the
other. The buildings of Frankfort and Mayence, like those of Liège, have
been devastated by modern good taste, and old and venerable edifices are
rapidly disappearing, giving place to frightful groups of white houses.
I expected to be able to see, at Mayence, Martinsburg, which, up to the
seventeenth century, was the feudal residence of the ecclesiastical
electors; but the French made a hospital of it, which was afterward
razed to the ground to make room for the Porte Franc; the merchant's
hotel, built in 1317 by the famed League, and which was splendidly
decorated with the statues of seven electors, and surmounted by two
colossal figures, bearing the crown of the empire, also shared the same
fate. Mayence possesses that which marks its antiquity--a venerable
cathedral, which was commenced in 978, and finished in 1009. Part of
this superb structure was burned in 1190, and since that period has,
from century to century, undergone some change.
I explored its interior, and was struck with awe on beholding
innumerable tombs, bearing dates as far back as the eighteenth century.
Under the galleries of the cloister I observed an obscure monument, a
bas-relief of the fourteenth century, and tried, in vain, to guess the
enigma. On one side are two men in chains, wildness in their looks, and
despair in their attitudes; on the other, an emperor, accompanied by a
bishop, and surrounded by a number of people, triumphing. Is it
Barbarossa? Is it Louis of Bavaria? Does it speak of the revolt of 1160,
or of the war between Mayence and Frankfort in 1332? I could not tell,
and therefore passed by.