After this there fell some very still and quiet days upon Mrs Laurie’s
cottage. Everything went on languidly; there was no heart to the work
which Menie touched with dreamy fingers; there was something subdued and
spiritless in her mother’s looks and movements; and even Jenny’s foot
rang less briskly upon her earthen floor. They did not know what ailed
them, nor what it was they looked for; but with a brooding stillness of
expectation, they waited for something, if it were tempest, earthquake,
or only a new glow of sunshine out of the kindly skies.
Was it a spirit? Asking so often, you make your cheek pale, Menie
Laurie; you make your eyelids droop heavy and leaden over your dim eyes.
Few people come here to break the solitude, and we all dwell with our
own thoughts, through these still days, alone.
“Menie, you are injuring yourself; we will take a long walk, and see
some people to-day,” said Mrs Laurie. “Come, it is quite mild—it will do
us both good; we will go to the manse to see Miss Johnston, and then to
Woodlands and Burnside. Put up your papers—we will take a holiday
to-day.”
Menie’s heavy eyes said faintly that she cared nothing about Miss
Johnston, about Woodlands or Burnside; but Menie put aside her papers
slowly, and prepared for the walk. They went out together, not saying
much, though each sought out, with labour and difficulty, something to
say. “I wonder what ails us?” said Menie, with a sigh. Her mother made
no answer. It was not easy to tell; and speaking of it would do more
harm than good.
A hazy day—the sky one faint unvaried colour, enveloped in a uniform
livery of cloud; a faint white mist spread upon the hills; small
invisible rain in the air, and the withered leaves heavily falling down
upon the sodden soil.
“This will not raise our spirits, mother,” said Menie, with a faint
smile; “better within doors, and at work, on a day like this.”
But why, with such a start and tremble, do you hear those steps upon the
path? Why be struck with such wild curiosity about them, although you
would not turn your head for a king’s ransom? Anybody may be coming—the
shepherd’s wife from Whinnyrig yonder, the poor crofter from the edge of
the peat-moss, or little Jessie’s mother bound for the universal
rural-shop at the Brigend. We are drawing near to the Brigend—already
the aromatic flavour of the peats warms the chill air with word of
household fires, and we see smoke rise beyond the ash-trees—the smoke of
our old family home, the kind hearth of Burnside.
Hush! whether it were hope or fear, is no matter; the steps have ceased;
vain this breathless listening to hear them again; go on through the
ash-trees, Menie Laurie—on through the simple gateway of this humble
rural world. By the fireside—in the cottage—with such simple joy as
friendly words and voices of children can give you—this is your life.
And only one—only one—this your mother—to watch your looks and
gestures—the falling and the rising of your tired heart. Wistful eyes
she turns upon you—tender cares. Look up to repay her, Menie; smile for
her comfort; you are all that remains to her, and she is all that
remains to you.
Look up; see how solemnly the ash-trees lift their old bleached arms to
heaven. Look up, Menie Laurie; but here, at our very ear, these
bewildering steps again!
Do not shrink; here has come the ordeal you have looked for many a day.
Well said your prophetic heart, that it drew near in the hush and
silence of this fated time. They stand there, arched and canopied, under
these familiar trees, the hamlet’s quiet houses receding behind
them—Burnside yonder, the limit of the scene, and the burn, the kindly
country voice, singing a quiet measure to keep them calm. An old man and
a young, learned with experiences of life: the elder, fresh and noble,
daring to meet the world with open face, aware of all the greatest
truths and mysteries of the wonderful existence which we call common
life, but nothing more; the younger, trained in a more painful school,
with his lesson of self-forgetting newly conned, with knowledge sadder
than his father’s, with a heart and conscience quivering still with
self-inflicted wounds—they stand there bareheaded under the cloudy
sky—not with the salutation of common respect, which might permit them
to pass on. A courtly natural grace about them both, makes their
attitude all the more remarkable. With blanched cheeks and failing eyes,
Menie Laurie’s face droops; she dares not look up, but waits, trembling
so greatly that she can scarcely stand, for what has to be said.
Mrs Laurie, with a sudden impulse of protection, draws her child’s arm
within her own—moves forward steadily, all her pride of mother and of
woman coming to her aid; bows to her right hand and her left; says she
is glad to see that this is really Mr Randall, and not the wraith her
simple Jenny had supposed; and, speaking thus in a voice which is but a
murmur of inarticulate sound to Menie, bows again, and would pass on.
But John Home of Crofthill lays his hand upon her sleeve. “You and me
have no outcast to settle. Leave the bairns to themselves.”
With a startled glance Mrs Laurie looks round her, at the old man’s face
of anxious friendliness, at the deep flush on Randall’s brow, and at her
own Menie’s drooping head. “Shall I leave you, Menie?” Menie makes no
answer—as pale and as cold as marble, with a giddy pain in her forehead,
unable to raise her swimming eyes—but she makes a great effort to
support herself, as her mother gradually looses her hand from her arm.
Passive, silent, her whole mind absorbed with the pain it takes to keep
herself erect, and guide her faltering steps along the road; but Randall
is by Menie’s side once more.
Father and mother have gone on, back towards the cottage; silently,
without a word, these parted hearts follow them side by side. If she had
any power left but what is wanted for her own support, she would wonder
why Randall does not speak. She does wonder, indeed, faintly, even
through her pain. With downcast eyes like hers, he walks beside her,
through this chill dewy air, between these rustling hedges, in a
conscious silence, which every moment becomes more overpowering, more
strange.
“Menie!” With a sudden start she acknowledges her name; but there is
nothing more.
“I said, when we parted, that you were disloyal to me and to Nature,”
said Randall, after another pause. “Menie, I have learned many a thing
since then. It was I that was disloyal to Nature—but never to you.”
Still no answer; this giddiness grows upon her, though she does not miss
a syllable of what he says.
“There is no question between us—none that does not fade like a vapour
before the sunlight I see. Menie, can you trust me again?”
She cannot answer—she can do nothing but falter and stumble upon this
darkening road. It grows like night to her. What is this she leans
upon—the arm of Randall Home?
Miss Janet sits in her shawl of state in Jenny’s kitchen—very curious
and full of anxiety. “Eh, woman, such a sair heart I had,” said Miss
Janet, “when wha should come, as fast up the road as if he kent I was
watching, but my ain bairn? He hasna been hame since July’s wedding; ye
wouldna think it o’ a grand lad like our Randall, and him sae clever,
and sae muckle thocht o’ in the world—but when he gaed owre his father’s
doorstane again, the puir laddie grat like a bairn. Will you look if
they’re coming, Jenny?—nae word o’ them? Eh, woman, what can make Miss
Menie sae ill at the like o’ him?”
“The like o’ him’s nae such great things,” said Jenny, with a little
snort. “I wouldna say but what Miss Menie has had far better in her
offer. She’s a self-willed thing—she’ll no take Jenny’s word; but weel I
wat, if she askit me——”
“Whisht, you’re no to say a word,” cried Miss Janet, coming in from the
door. “I see them on the road—I see them coming hame. Jenny, you’re no
to speak. Miss Menie and my Randall, they’re ae heart ance mair.”
And so it was—one heart, but not a heart at ease; the love-renewed still
owned a pang of terror. But day after day came out of the softening
heavens—hour after hour preached and expounded of the mellowed
nature—the soul which had learned to forget itself; other pictures rose
under Menie’s fingers—faces which looked you bravely in the face—eyes
that forgot to doubt and criticise. The clouds cleared from her
firmament in gusts and rapid evolutions, as before these brisk October
winds. One fear followed another, falling like the autumn leaves; a
warmer atmosphere crept into the cottage, a brighter sunshine filled its
homely rooms. Day by day, advancing steadily, the son drew farther in,
to his domestic place. The mother gave her welcome heartily; the
daughter, saying nothing, felt the more; and no one said a word of
grumbling, save perverse Jenny, who wept with joy the while, when
another year and another life lighted up into natural gladness the sweet
harmonious quiet of Menie Laurie’s heart.
MARATHON.
[_Note._—These lines were written shortly after a visit to the plain
of Marathon, and personal inspection of the ground. The historical
facts are taken from Herodotus; the mythological allusions, and
other incidental circumstances, from the two chapters of Pausanias
(Att. I., c. 15 & 32), where the paintings of the famous Portico of
the Stoics in Athens, and the district of Marathon, are described
with characteristic detail.]
1.
From high Pentelicus’ pine-clad height[24]
A voice of warning came,
That shook the silent autumn night
With fear to Media’s name.
Pan from his Marathonian cave[25]
Sent screams of midnight terror,
And darkling horror curled the wave
On the broad sea’s moonlit mirror.
Woe, Persia, woe! thou liest low, low!
Let the golden palaces groan!
Ye mothers weep for sons that shall sleep
In gore on Marathon!
2.
Where Indus and Hydaspes roll,
Where treeless deserts glow,
Where Scythians roam beneath the pole
O’er fields of hardened snow,
The great Darius rules; and now,
Thou little Greece, to thee
He comes; thou thin-soiled Athens, how
Shalt thou dare to be free?
There is a God that wields the rod
Above: by Him alone
The Greek shall be free, when the Mede shall flee
In shame from Marathon.
3.
He comes; and o’er the bright Ægean,
Where his masted army came,
The subject isles uplift the pæan
Of glory to his name.
Strong Naxos, strong Eretria yield;
His captains near the shore
Of Marathon’s fair and fateful field,
Where a tyrant marched before.[26]
And a traitor guide, the sea beside,
Now marks the land for his own,
Where the marshes red shall soon be the bed
Of the Mede in Marathon.
4.
Who shall number the host of the Mede?
Their high-tiered galleys ride
Like locust-bands with darkening speed
Across the groaning tide.
Who shall tell the many-hoofed tramp
That shakes the dusty plain?
Where the pride of the horse is the strength of his camp,
Shall the Mede forget to gain?
O fair is the pride of those turms as they ride,
To the eye of the morning shown!
But a god in the sky hath doomed them to lie
In dust on Marathon.
5.
Dauntless beside the sounding sea
The Athenian men reveal
Their steady strength. That they are free
They know; and inly feel
Their high election on that day
In foremost fight to stand,
And dash the enslaving yoke away
From all the Grecian land.
Their praise shall sound the world around,
Who shook the Persian throne,
When the shout of the free travelled over the sea
From famous Marathon.
6.
From dark Cithæron’s sacred slope
The small Platæan band
Bring hearts that swell with patriot hope
To wield a common brand
With Theseus’ sons at danger’s gates;
While spell-bound Sparta stands,
And for the pale moon’s changes waits
With stiff and stolid hands,
And hath no share in the glory rare
That Athens made her own,
When the long-haired Mede with fearful speed
Fell back from Marathon.
7.
“On, sons of the Greeks!” the war-cry rolls,
“The land that gave you birth,
Your wives, and all the dearest souls
That circle round each hearth;
The shrines upon a thousand hills,
The memory of your sires,
Nerve now with brass your resolute wills,
And fan your valorous fires!”
And on like a wave came the rush of the brave—
“Ye sons of the Greeks, on, on!”
And the Mede stept back from the eager attack
Of the Greek in Marathon.
8.
Hear’st thou the rattling of spears on the right?
See’st thou the gleam in the sky?
The gods come to aid the Greeks in the fight,
And the favouring heroes are nigh.
The lion’s hide I see in the sky,
And the knotted club so fell,
And kingly Theseus’ conquering eye,
And Macaria, nymph of the well.[27]
Purely, purely the fount did flow,
When the morn’s first radiance shone;
But eve shall know the crimson flow
Of its wave by Marathon.
9.
On, son of Cimon, bravely on!
And Aristides just!
Your names have made the field your own,
Your foes are in the dust.
The Lydian satrap spurs his steed,
The Persian’s bow is broken;
His purple pales; the vanquished Mede
Beholds the angry token
Of thundering Jove that rules above;
And the bubbling marshes moan[28]
With the trampled dead that have found their bed
In gore at Marathon.
10.
The ships have sailed from Marathon
On swift disaster’s wings;
And an evil dream hath fetched a groan
From the heart of the king of kings.
An eagle he saw, in the shades of night,
With a dove that bloodily strove;
And the weak hath vanquished the strong in fight—
The eagle hath fled from the dove.
Great Jove, that reigns in the starry plains,
To the heart of the king hath shown,
That the boastful parade of his pride was laid
In dust at Marathon.
11.
But through Pentelicus’ winding vales
The hymn triumphal runs,
And high-shrined Athens proudly hails
Her free-returning sons.
Chaste Pallas, from her ancient rock,
Her round shield’s beaming blaze
Rays down; her frequent worshippers flock,
And high the pæan raise,
How in deathless glory the famous story
Shall on the winds be blown,
That the long-haired Mede was driven with speed
By the Greeks from Marathon.
12.
And Greece shall be a hallowed name
While the sun shall climb the pole,
And Marathon fan strong freedom’s flame
In many a pilgrim soul.
And o’er that mound where heroes sleep,[29]
By the waste and reedy shore,
Full many a patriot eye shall weep,
Till Time shall be no more.
And the Bard shall brim with a holier hymn,
When he stands by that mound alone,
And feel no shrine on earth more divine
Than the dust of Marathon.
J. S. B.
LONDON TO WEST PRUSSIA.
Northward and eastward the eyes of Englishmen are turning, straining to
catch a glimpse of the white sails of their country’s ships, to discern
the streaks of smoke which tell of far-off steamers, or to hear the echo
at least of their thundering cannon. And many, too, not content to wait
for tidings, are hurrying towards the scenes of action, if haply they
may witness or sooner learn what the fortune of war may bring. Due east
from the northern part of our island the Baltic fleet is now manœuvring;
but from London the speediest route is through Belgium, and along the
German railways, till the traveller reaches Stettin. Thence he can skirt
the Baltic landwards by Königsberg as far as Memel, beyond which it will
scarcely be safe to venture; or he can, by ship or boat, from the mouths
of the Stettiner Haaf, prosecute his recognisance on the waters of the
east sea itself.
But as mere ever-moving couriers, few, even in these exciting times,
will travel. Most men will stop now and then, look about them, ask
questions, gather information, reflect between whiles, and thus add
interest at once and extract instruction from the countries they pass
through. Especially they will observe what bears upon their individual
professions, pursuits, or favourite studies; and thus, almost without
effort, will gather new materials, to be used up in the details of
ordinary life, when, the warlike curiosity being gratified, they return
again to the welcome routine of home or domestic duties.
Such has been our own case, in a recent run from London through Stettin
into Western Prussia, in less genial weather than now prevails; and it
may interest our readers to make the journey with us, by anticipation,
at their own firesides, while the trunks and passports are preparing for
their own real journey.
On the 27th of January, at eight in the morning, a huge pyramid of
luggage blocked up the London station of the South-eastern Railway.
Troops of boys hovered about, some true Cockney lads, and others
half-Frenchified, with an occasional usher fussing about the boxes. “Do
you see that mountain, sir?” said the superintendent to us. “All school
traps, sir.” “Two hundred boys at least?” we interposed,
interrogatively. “No; only fifty. Fill a steamer, sir, itself.” However,
the master contrived to get all put right, the mountain vanished into
the waggons, the whistle blew, and we were off. The boys gave a hearty
hurra as we left the station, which they repeated, time after time, at
every fresh start we made, from station to station. At Dover the boat
was waiting, the day fine, the wind in our favour, the sea moderately
smooth, and by 11.40 we were on our way to Calais. Alas for the brave
boys! The last cheer was given as they bade adieu to the cliffs of
Dover. Melancholy came over them by degrees. It was painful to see how
home-sick they became. From the bottom of their stomachs they regretted
leaving their native land, and, heart-sore, chopfallen, and sorely
begrimed as to their smart caps and jackets, they paraded, two hours
after, before the customhouse at Calais, like the broken relics of a
defeated army. M. Henequin was importing the half-yearly draft of
Cockney boys to his school at Guines; and we recommend such of our
readers as are curious in sea-comforts respectfully to decline the
companionship of M. Henequin and his troop, should they at any future
time lucklessly stumble upon them on the gangway of a steamer.
At Calais the patriotic and Protestant Englishman, who visits the
cathedral of Nôtre Dame, will particularly admire a huge modern
painting, which is supposed to adorn the north transept, and will have
no difficulty in interpreting the meaning looks of the gaping peasantry
when he reads underneath—“Calais taken from the English in 1558, and
_restored to Catholicity_.”
The Pas de Calais—at least that portion of the department of that name
through which the railway runs—at once tells the Englishman that he is
in a new country. Low, wet, and marshy, like the seaward part of
Holland, it is parcelled out, drained, and fenced by numberless ditches.
Wandering over its tame and, in winter at least, most uninviting
surface, the eye finds only occasional rows of small pollard willows to
rest upon, as if the scavengers of the land had all gone home to dinner,
and in the mean time had planted their brooms in readiness along the
sides of the ditches they were employed to scour.
But passing St Omer and approaching Hazebrook, the land lifts itself
above the sea marshes, becomes strong and loamy, and fitted for every
agricultural purpose. Arrived at Lille, the traveller is already in the
heart of the most fertile portion of northern France. Twin fortresses of
great strength, Lille and Valenciennes, are also twin centres of what,
in certain points of view, is the most wonderful industry of France. The
sugar beet finds here a favourite soil and climate, and a rural and
industrial population suited to the favourable prosecution of the
beet-sugar manufacture. Though long before suggested and tried in
Germany, this manufacture is purely French in its economical origin. The
Continental System of the first Napoleon raised colonial produce to a
fabulous price. At six francs a pound colonial sugar was within the
reach of few. The high price tempted many to cast about for means of
producing sugar at home, and a great stimulus was given to this research
by the magnificent premium of a million of francs offered by the Emperor
to the successful discoverer of a permanent source of supply from plants
of native growth. Of the many plants tried, the beet proved the most
promising; but it required twenty years of struggles and failures, and
conquering of difficulties, to place the new industry on a comparatively
independent basis. Twenty years more has enabled it to compete
successfully with colonial sugar, and to pay an equal tax into the
French exchequer. From France and Belgium the industry returned to its
native Germany, and has since spread far into the interior of Russia.
The total produce of this kind of sugar on the continent of Europe has
now reached the enormous quantity of three hundred and sixty millions of
pounds, of which France produces about one hundred and fifty millions in
three hundred and thirty-four manufactories.
It is a pleasant excursion on a fine day in autumn, when the beet
flourishes still green in the fields, and the roots are nearly ripe for
pulling, to drive out from Lille, as we did some years ago, among the
country farmers ten or twelve miles around. The land is so rich and
promising, and on the whole so well tilled—and yet in the hands of good
English or Scotch farmers might, we fancy, be made to yield so much
more, and to look so much nicer, and drier, and cleaner, that we enjoy
at once the gratification which in its present condition it is sure to
yield us, while we pleasantly flatter ourselves at the same time with
the thoughts of what we could make it. That it is not badly cultivated
the practical man will infer from the average produce of sugar beet
being estimated about Lille at sixteen, and about Valenciennes at
nineteen tons an acre. At the same time, that much improvement is
possible he will gather from the fact that, though often strong and but
little undulating, the land is still unconscious of thorough drainage,
and of the benefits which underground tiles and broken stones have so
liberally conferred upon us.
The adjoining provinces of Hainault and Brabant—which the traveller
leaves to the right on his way to Ghent and Brussels—are the seat of the
sugar manufacture in Belgium. There the average yield of beetroot is
said to be from eighteen to twenty-four tons an acre, the land in
general being excellent, while the total produce of beet-sugar in
Belgium is ten millions of pounds. In Belgium, as in France, the
home-growth of sugar is equal to about one-half of the home consumption.
Late in the evening we found ourselves in Brussels, and the following
morning—though wet and dirty—we were visiting, as strangers do, the
numerous churches. It was Sunday; and as in the face of nature we had
seen in the Pas de Calais that we were in a foreign country, so to-day
the appearance of the streets told us at every step that we were among a
foreign people. The shops open everywhere, and more than usually
frequented; the universal holiday sparkling upon every face; the
frequent priests in gowns, bands, and broadbrims to be met with on the
streets; the crowding to morning mass at St Gudule’s and St Jacques’;
the pious indifference of the apparently devout congregations; the
huddling together and intermixture among them of all classes and
costumes; the mechanical crossings and genuflections even in the
remotest corners, where only the tinkling of the bells was faintly
heard; the easy air of superiority, and lazy movements and mumbling of
the officiating clergy at the altar; and the happy contentment pictured
on every face as the crowd streamed from the door when the service was
ended;—all these things spoke of a foreign people and a foreign church.
The evening theatres and Sunday amusements told equally of foreign ideas
and foreign habits; while the old town-hall and the other quaint
buildings which the English traveller regards at every new visit with
new pleasure, kept constantly before his eyes that he was in a foreign
city.
The characteristic of Belgium among foreign countries is, that, with the
exception of Spain, it is probably the most completely Roman Catholic
sovereignty in Europe. To this almost exclusive devotion to the Roman
Church the peculiarities to which we have referred are mainly to be
ascribed. Of its population, which by the last census was 4,337,000, not
less than 4,327,000 were Roman Catholics, and only 7,368 Protestants.
The total expense of the dominant Church to the state, which pays all
the clergy, is 4,366,000 francs, or about a franc a-head for each member
of the Church. It has besides private revenues of various kinds for
repairing churches, for charitable foundations, &c., amounting to
800,000 francs, making the total revenue about 5,000,000 of francs.
This, divided among five thousand clergy of all ranks, gives less than
one thousand francs as the average stipend. And when we add to this that
the archbishop’s stipend is only £840, that of a bishop £580, and of a
cathedral canon from £100 to £130, we should fancy the Church to be in
money matters poor, and the clergy badly off. But in Protestant
countries we understand very little of the system of fees and unseen
payments in the Catholic Church, and we form probably a very erroneous
idea of the real income and means of living of a Roman Catholic clergy
when we conclude that, as a general rule, their main dependence is upon
the known and avowed salaries they derive from the State or from other
public sources.
While we are at home discussing with some little sectarian animosity the
subject of State payments to Popish chaplains for our prisons and
military hospitals, it is but fair to this most Catholic country to
mention, that to the 7,368 Protestants the Belgian state-chest pays
yearly 56,000 francs to eleven native pastors and six Church of England
ministers, for salaries and other church expenses—being at the rate of
eight francs for each Protestant in the kingdom. It allows also 7,900
francs to the Jews, or about seven francs a-head. For their religious
liberality the reader will give such credit to the Belgian clergy as he
may think they deserve.
Detained by unforeseen circumstances for a day in Brussels, we witnessed
the honours paid to Prince Napoleon on his entry from Paris, and in the
afternoon were on our way to Cologne. Passing Louvain and Tirlemont in
the dark, we recognised the neighbourhood of Liege only by its
coke-ovens and iron-works, and an hour before midnight reached Cologne.
Cologne, with thy sixty stinks still redolent, even a midnight entrance
reveals to travelling olfactories thy odoriferous presence! As we jogged
along to the Hotel Disch, enjoying alone a luxurious omnibus, the
slumbering memory of long-familiar smells sprung up fresh in our
nostrils, and awoke us to the full conviction that our railway conductor
had made no mistake, and that we were really passing beneath the shadow
of the magnificent cathedral of Cologne.
Early morning saw us pacing the nave of the gigantic pile, admiring anew
its glorious windows, peering into its chapels, glancing hurriedly at
its saintly pictures, turning away both eyes and ears from
unwholesome-looking priests intoning the morning service, admiring the
by-play called “private worship,” which was proceeding at the same
moment in the northern aisle, and offending susceptible un-fee’d
officials by indecent looks, as we stealthily paced the circumference of
the lordly choir. No familiarity can reconcile an English Protestant to
the mummeries of a worship performed before tawdry dolls by the light
even of a dozen penny candles. And the paltriness appears the greater in
a vast pile like this, which itself is but a feeble attempt to do
something adequate to the greatness of Him who dwelleth not in temples
made with hands. This feeling awoke within us in full force as we came,
in our promenade round the church, upon a large side-chapel, with its
Virgin dressed in lace, enclosed in a small glass cupboard, with votive
offerings of waxen limbs and other objects hung up beside it, while
three small candles in dirty sconces burned beneath. And before this
trumpery exhibition knelt and prayed grave men and women, who had passed
the middle of life; and young girls with warm hearts, who had still the
world with all its lures and temptations before them. Pity that hearts
so devout and so susceptible should be so badly directed—that the plain
helps and comforts of Scripture should be set aside for the
aggrandisement of a powerful craft!
Much had been done here by architects and masons since our former visit.
Much money had been collected and expended, and many men are still at
work on this vast building; and yet the stranger’s eye discovers from
without only small changes to have been effected during the past ten
years. Here and there, as he walks around it, a white pillar, or a less
discoloured arch, tells him where the workmen have been busy; but the
several portions of the work are so massive, and proceed of necessity so
slowly, that the progress of years produces advances which seem almost
microscopic when compared with the whole. While they satisfy us,
however, that generations will still come and go, leaving the growing
cathedral still immature, yet they give us at the same time a far
grander idea both of the vastness of the work which has already been
accomplished, and of the original greatness of the conception, which so
many centuries have failed to embody fully in durable stone.
At eleven in the forenoon we had already crossed the Rhine to Deutz, had
taken our seats on the Winden railway, and at the blowing of the
official trumpet had begun to move along the rich flat land which here
borders the Rhine. The walls and river-face of Cologne, now spread out
before us, carried back our musings to the times of the historical
grandeur of this ancient city. During the period of Roman greatness,
emperors of the world were born and proclaimed within its walls;
centuries later, a king of the Franks was chosen in Cologne; and still
six hundred and fifty years later began that bright period of its
commercial prosperity, which for three hundred years made it the most
flourishing city of Northern Europe. Thirty thousand fighting men, from
among its own armed citizens, could then march defiantly from its gates.
Its whole population is now but ninety thousand, and its trade
comparatively trifling.
But the cause of this decline interests an Englishman more than the
actual decay. Commerce, it is true, had begun in the seventeenth century
to find new channels, and this circumstance, had the city been merely
abandoned to supineness, might have gradually affected its prosperity.
But it was positive measures of repression that forced it to decline. It
fell under the dominion of the Roman priesthood, which first drove out
the Jews, afterwards banished the weavers, and finally, in 1618,
expelled the Protestants. From this time, for nearly two hundred years,
it became a nest of monks and beggars, till at the Revolution the French
changed everything, drove out the two thousand five hundred city clergy,
seized their revenues, and turned to other uses their two hundred
religious buildings. Hand over Liverpool or London to the same clerical
dominion, and the same depressing consequences would most certainly
follow.
High over walls and houses, as we fly along the railway, towers the
cathedral, with its ancient crane still erect on its unfinished tower.
Who designed this huge building? Alas! centuries before his work is
complete, the name of the architect is lost. Six hundred years ago the
work was begun, but the glory of God is the plea on which it has been
prosecuted, and upon that altar the humble designer has sacrificed his
fame!
And as it fades from the sight, memory recalls another scene which, four
centuries ago, was witnessed beneath the shadow of this great pile. In a
small upper room, with rude appliances, and a scanty store of materials,
two men are seen curiously putting together the letters of a movable
alphabet, arranging them into the form of tiny pages, and with slow
deliberation impressing them, page by page, on the anxiously moistened
paper. The younger of the two is William Caxton, the father of English
printing. Here he learned the then young art which has since rendered
him famous in his native land. How would William Caxton admire, could he
now for a moment be carried into the printing-office of a metropolitan
journal, and see with what marvellous speed and certainty the operations
he watched so anxiously at Cologne are now conducted.
But as the quick thoughts course through our mind, we rush as quickly
along towards Dusseldorf. We have now left the country of hedgerows of
timber and of visible fences, and divisions of the land. Open, flat, and
rich, it stretches inward from the Rhine, often light, and sometimes
sandy or gravelly; all cultivated on the flat, all neat and clean, but
naked, at this season, both of animal and vegetable life. A few sheep
sprinkled over one field, and a rare man or woman trudging along beside
deep ditches, were the only symptoms of moving life we saw between
Cologne and Dusseldorf; while pollard trees here and there, and long
rows of unpollarded poplars by the highway-sides, where a village was
near, as tamely represented the vegetable ornaments which beautify an
English landscape.
Following the Rhine for twenty miles farther, the line turns to the
right, and we pass through the coal district which supplies the soft
coke by which the locomotives are fed, and the dirty-looking coal to
which the neighbouring region owes so much of its industrial prosperity.
Iron furnaces, coal-pits, and chemical manufactories, remind us, as we
pass Oberhausen, of the denser peopled and more smoke-blackened
coal-fields of northern and western England, while all the appointments
we see around them speak of an economy in management somewhat different
from our own. No heaps of waste and burning coal indicate the approach
to a colliery, nor columns of black smoke vomiting waste fuel into the
tainted air, nor wheels and ropes rattling and busily revolving in the
open day, nor troops of blackened men and boys lifting their heads to
gaze, as the train skims swiftly by. Fine buildings cover in and conceal
the openings to the pits with all their gear; and it is not quite
obvious whether climate and profit compel this system, or whether it is
the general habits of the people which thus manifest themselves. Cattle
are kept under cover nearly all the year through; thoughts are very much
kept under cover, even in so-called constitutional Prussia and Hanover;
and the operations of the coal-pit may be boxed in and hidden from the
vulgar gaze, merely as the consequence of a precautionary habit.
Dordmund, with its fortifications, and its associations with the famous
“Vehm-gericht,” stands in the middle of this coal-field. Several borings
in progress on the flats of black land, which stretch away from its old
walls, exhibited the living influence of railway communication in
changing the surface even of old countries, in opening up long-neglected
resources, and in imparting new energy to half-dormant populations.
Through the fertile Hellweg we sped along, leaving Dordmund behind us,
and through the region of Westphalian hams, till the dark wet night
overtook us. But, easy and comfortable in our luxurious carriages, we
only quitted the train at Hanover that we might spend a morning in a
city with which England has had so many relations.
From the moment the Englishman enters a Continental railway carriage,
and especially if he is proceeding into Germany, two things strike him:
First, the extreme luxury, roominess, and comfort of the carriages; and,
second, the universal propensity to the use of tobacco. The second-class
carriages are generally fully equal in their fitting and provisions for
ease to our British first-class, while the German first-class carriages
surprise us by the numerous little thoughtful appliances they exhibit to
the wants and fancies of their temporary occupants. This seems rather a
contradiction to an Englishman, who flatters himself that the word
_comfort_ is indigenous to his own country, and who actually sees, go
where he will, that in its domestic arrangements an English house and
houshold is the most comfortable in the world. This discordance between
the practice of home and foreign countries, is probably to be traced to
the difference of general habits and tendencies. To an Englishman, home
is the place which is dearer than any other. In it he spends his time
chiefly. He makes his home, therefore, and likes to see it made, the
most comfortable place of all. To him a public conveyance or a public
place of resort is no permanent temptation. He comes back always the
happier, and he counts generally how soon he may get back again to his
home. But on the Continent it is generally different. Home has few
comforts or attractions, chiefly because habit has led to the custom of
dining, of supping, of sipping coffee and punch, of drinking wine, and
of smoking, in public. The public places of resort are made comfortable
and luxurious to invite these visits. People look for and provide more
comfort abroad than at home; and thus into their railway carriages,
which, like other public places, are really smoking-shops, they carry
the luxurious appliances which they deny themselves at home.
In Germany there is thus an excuse for travelling in second-class
carriages, because of their excellence, which we do not possess in
England. This custom, in consequence, is very general, not only among
natives, but among foreigners also. “On the Continent,” says Professor
Silliman, in a book of travels he has lately published, “and
particularly in Germany, we have generally taken the second-class
carriages. They are in all respects desirable, and few persons, except
the nobility, travel in those of the first class, which appear to
possess no advantage except the aristocratic one of partial exclusion of
other classes by the higher price.” There is, perhaps, a little
advantage in point of comfort; but the second-class carriages are
certainly in this respect quite equal to the average of the railway cars
in the United States. As to our second-class carriages in England, they
are, adds Professor Silliman, “made very uncomfortable. They have no
cushions, but simply naked board seats. The backs are high and
perpendicular.” But in these arrangements the learned Professor was not
aware that our railway directors patriotically study the conservation of
our domestic habits. Were the carriages made too comfortable, people
might prefer them to their own easy-chairs and sofas at home, and thus
might be tempted to frequent them too much and too often for the general
good. As to ourselves, we have always taken first-class tickets in our
German tour, chiefly because in this way we could, in most cases, secure
to ourselves a carriage in which we could avoid, for our lungs and our
clothes, the contamination of the perpetual tobacco. In West Prussia, it
is true, we were told that nobody but “prinzen und narren” (princes and
fools) travelled first class; but even with the risk of such nicknames
we continued our plan.
“On ne fume pas ici,” you see stuck up on a rare Belgian carriage in a
long train; and in Prussia a ticket with the words, “Für nicht
rauchende,” is in like manner suspended to a carriage in most of the
trains on the main lines. But if this select carriage be full, you must
take your place among the _fumeurs_ or the _rauchende_; and should you
there be fortunate enough to escape the torments of living smoke, you
have the still more detestable odours to endure, the after-smells which
linger wherever tobacco-smokers have been. We have lately perceived
symptoms of the introduction of this custom into our English railway
carriages. We trust that no desire to increase the home revenue in these
war times will induce even our most patriotic railway directors to shut
their eyes to the growth of so annoying a nuisance.
A morning in Hanover is agreeably spent. Like other German cities, it
has derived an impulse from the railway, and new streets and magnificent
buildings already connect the station with the older parts of the town.
But it is in these old streets and their quaint buildings that the
greatest enjoyment awaits the sight-seer. The dress and manners of the
people, especially in the markets, their habits and tastes, as indicated
by the articles everywhere exposed for sale, and especially the quaint
old Gothic and curiously-ornamented houses, which range their gables
here and there along the streets—these attractions interest even the
keenest lovers of progress. Old-world times come up on the memory with
all their associations, and by dint of contrast awaken trains of thought
not the less pleasant that they are totally different from those which
railways and their accompaniments are continually suggesting to us.
Among these quaint old houses, that in which Leibnitz lived is in itself
one of the most attractive, and in its associations by far the most
interesting. Elevated from the din of the main street (Schmiede strasse)
on which it is situated, the philosopher is said to have studied in the
garret which looks out from the upper part of the gable, and there to
have arrived at those results of thought which have given both his name
and his monument a place in the annals of the city, which none of its
kings can boast of. It is honourable to one of these kings, Ernest
Augustus, that he bought the old house, and caused it to be kept from
disrepair, and to the citizens of Hanover that in 1790 they erected a
simple monument to the memory of the philosopher, consisting of a bust
on a marble pedestal. This now stands on a slight mound of earth on one
side of Waterloo Place, surrounded by a humble railing. Few strangers
visit the city who have not heard of the man, and who do not feel
gratified to have seen his likeness in his bust. Fewer, whose love of
books has carried them to the royal library, have not in silence looked,
and with a melancholy interest, on the chair in which he sat when the
death-stroke came upon him, and at the book which he was still holding
in his hand when the sudden summons came.
Bursting its old boundaries, like Hamburg, Brunswick, Breslau, and many
other fortified cities, the walls and ditches and towers of Hanover are
gradually disappearing. Some of the last of the ditches we saw in the
act of being filled up; and the progress of the arts of peace will
henceforth, it is to be hoped, save its modern inhabitants from the
frequent sufferings which besieging armies have in former times
inflicted. Traversed by the river Leine, which, at a short distance from
the town, becomes navigable from the junction of the Ihme, they have now
facilities for communication in every direction; the mercantile class of
the city is every year becoming more influential; and as education is
beginning to spread among the masses—a thing which is far from being
unnecessary—a more rapid advancement of the neighbourhood, both in
commerce and agriculture, may hereafter be anticipated.
To the south west of Hanover, at the distance of a few miles, appear the
terminating hills of the Deister, from which sloping grounds, densely
peopled and generally fertile, extend almost to the city. Rich
clay-soils on this side are fruitful in varied crops; but, stretching
away from its very walls on the other side, are sand, moor, and heath,
the flat and inhospitable beginnings of the far-extending Luneburg
heath. Away over these flat, black, and sandy moors we sped in the
afternoon to Brunswick. The brief stoppage of the train gave us time to
walk through some of the clean streets of this city, and to admire its
richness in picturesque gable-fronted buildings, many of them three
centuries old. We commend it to the leisurely traveller as worthy of a
more protracted visit; and if he is cunning in malt liquor, we entreat
him to indulge his palate with a glass of the so-called “Brunswicker
mumme,” the real substantial black-strap for which Brunswick is famous.
Daylight scarcely served to bring us to Magdeburg. We hurried past
Wolfenbüttel, famous for its library and its relics of Luther; and as we
glided into the station of the celebrated fortress-city, we could form
little idea either of the fertility of the river banks on which it
stands, or of the strength of the fortifications from which Magdeburg
derives its place in history. Within the walls it resembles Hanover and
Brunswick in the mixture of old and new, plain and picturesque, common
and quaint, which its streets present. Here are the simple remarks which
a day’s stroll through the city suggested recently to Madame Pfeiffer:—
“Magdeburg is a mixed pattern of houses of ancient, medieval, and
modern dates. Particularly remarkable in this respect is the principal
street, the “Broadway,” which runs through the whole of the town. Here
we can see houses dating their origin from the most ancient times;
houses that have stood proof against sieges and sackings; houses of
all colours and forms; some sporting peaked gables, on which stone
figures may still be seen; others covered from roof to basement with
arabesques; and in one instance I could even detect the remains of
frescoes. In the very midst of these relics of antiquity would appear
a house built in the newest style. I do not remember ever having seen
a street which produced so remarkable an impression on me. The finest
building is unquestionably the venerable cathedral. In Italy I had
already seen numbers of the most beautiful churches, yet I remained
standing in mute admiration before this masterpiece of Gothic
architecture.”[30]
This cathedral is worthy of all the admiration which Madame Pfeiffer
expresses. The glitter of the Roman Catholic worship is now foreign to
it, but the dignity of the pile remains. The city is Protestant, and
fondly it ought to cherish its purer worship, for in the same quaint
streets Luther sang as a poor scholar for charity, and at the doors of
the rich men of the time, to enable him to prosecute his learning.
But without the walls Magdeburg is equally attractive to one who has
just escaped from the sands and peaty flats of the Luneburg heath.
Situated where the Elbe widens, with its citadel planted on one of the
river islands, the city walls are skirted on either hand by fertile
plains, rich in corn and other produce. Still flat, however, unenclosed,
without hedgerows, clumps of trees, straying cattle, and the numerous
rural peculiarities which give life and variety and interest to an
English landscape, almost a single glance suffices to take in all they
exhibit of the picturesque, and to satisfy the merely superficial
tourist. But there is attraction in these flat plains, nevertheless, and
an economical interest, which may induce even the railway traveller to
stay and inspect them. Fitted by its free and open nature for the growth
of root crops, these alluvial shores of the Elbe have become the centre
of a husbandry of which little is known as yet in England. In Murray’s
_Handbook_, the traveller is informed that “much chicory is cultivated
in this district;” and this is one of the roots for the growth of which
the soil is specially adapted. The culture was in former years more
extensive than at present; but there are still five or six thousand
acres devoted to the raising of this crop. The yield in dried chicory
from this extent of land is from twenty to thirty millions of pounds. It
is largely exported to England and America through Hamburg—that which we
receive from this port being chiefly from the Magdeburg chicory
manufactories.
But the growth of the sugar beet, and the extraction of beet-sugar, are
superseding the chicory trade, and are gradually assuming the first
place both in the rural and manufacturing industry of Magdeburg and its
neighbourhood. The largest producer of beet-sugar in the world is
France; but the German Customs’ Union is the second in this respect, and
Magdeburg is the principal centre of the German production. Like eager
horses, skilfully jockeyed, and running neck and neck, the _Cis_ and
_Trans_ Rhenave sugar-extractors have for years back been struggling
hard to get ahead of each other in the perfection of their methods, and
the profit of their fields and manufactories; and many curious facts and
difficulties have come out or been surmounted during this
chemico-agricultural and chemico-manufacturing contest. For it is an
interesting circumstance, that while chemistry was, on the one hand,
aiding the farmer to grow large and profitable crops of roots, it was,
at the same time, on the other, assisting the manufacturer more
perfectly and profitably to extract the sugar from the roots when
raised. But it is curious, at the same time, that in the advances thus
made on either hand, the increased profits of the one party were found
singularly to clash and interfere with the profits and processes of the
other. Increase the size of your turnip by chemical applications, said
agricultural chemistry, and you have a heavier crop to sell to the
sugar-manufacturer. And the grower took the advice, and rejoiced in his
augmenting profits. The practices of North British turnip-growers were
introduced by British settlers, and their imitators, on the plains of
Magdeburg; and root crops more like those which cover our British
turnip-fields were seen, for the first time, on the banks of the Elbe.
Then up rose economical chemistry, on the other hand, and said, No, no,
Mr Farmer, we don’t want, and we won’t buy, your larger roots. We cannot
afford to purchase your gigantic beets, the offspring of your high
manuring. The chemistry which enlarged the roots did not increase the
quantity of sugar in proportion. “A ton of good big beets gives me less
sugar,” says the extractor, “than a ton of your small ones; and
therefore, if you will grow the big ones, I must have them at a less
price in proportion. And, besides, your high manuring puts salt into the
turnip, which prevents me from fully extracting all the sugar they do
contain.” Thus chemistry, on the one side, was at issue with chemistry
on the other, and the progress of a profitable scientific agriculture
appeared to be arrested by that of a scientific and economical
extraction of the sugar.
But difficulties to men of science are only things to be overcome. On
the one hand, the farmer kept down the size of his roots. He sought to
make up in number for the deficiency in size, while he applied his
manure at such times in his rotation, and of such a quality, as to give
him a slower-grown, more solid root, rather than a porous, light,
rapidly forced, and less saccharine crop. And on the other hand, the
chemical sugar-maker set his skill to work to devise means of more fully
extracting the sugar still, and of overcoming the difficulties which the
presence of salt in the juice had hitherto thrown in his way. And thus,
by improving in different directions, the two interests are gradually
ceasing to clash, and at the present moment a mutually advancing
prosperity binds together more and more the chemical manufacturer and
the chemical farmer on the alluvials of the Elbe.
We have already alluded to the importance of the beet-sugar industry to
the continent of Europe. But the reader will see, from what we have just
said, that it has a relative as well as a positive importance, very
similar to that which the arts of brewing and distilling have in this
country. It cannot flourish anywhere without causing the agriculture of
the place to flourish along with it. A necessary condition to the
establishment of a flourishing sugar-manufactory, is the existence of
well-cultivated farms, and skilful farmers in the neighbourhood. The
erection of such works, therefore, is a positive and direct means of
promoting agriculture, by affording a tempting and constant market for
an important part of the yearly produce. This is no doubt one of the
reasons why the German governments have given so many encouragements of
late years to the extension of this branch of manufacture, and why the
astute government of Russia should have incited the nobles of the empire
to exert themselves in its behalf in the various provinces of the Czar’s
dominion. Russia, in consequence, possesses a greater number of
beet-sugar works than any other country. Even as far as Odessa the
culture has penetrated, and is now carried on.
Mr Oliphant, who recently visited the shores of the Black Sea, informs
us that—
“Lately, in the neighbourhood of Odessa, the cultivation of beetroot,
and extraction of sugar from it, was carried on to a considerable
extent by the large landed proprietors of the adjoining provinces.
Notwithstanding most praiseworthy exertions, these aristocratic
beetroot growers were totally unable to make their speculation
remunerative, and many of them must have been ruined had not the
legislature stepped in and prohibited the sale of any other sugar. The
consequence is, that the inhabitants are obliged to buy sugar at a
hundred per cent higher than the price at which our colonial sugar
could be imported into the country. It is some satisfaction to know
that, notwithstanding this iniquitous regulation, combined with the
system of forced labour, the beetroot growers are unable to cultivate
with profit.”[31]
But the train is in motion, the trumpet has sounded, and we are off
through the darkness, and along the slightly undulating flats, on our
way to Berlin. We found ourselves in company with a pleasant Frenchman
_en route_ from the embassy in London to the embassy in Berlin; and
before our most unanimous deliberations on the affairs of the East had
come to a close, we found ourselves at the end of our journey, and by 10
P.M. had reached our quarters in the Hôtel de Russie.
Berlin, how many beauties and attractions dost thou present to the
stranger who steps out for the first time from this hotel, and, walking
a few yards, places himself in the centre of the Unter den Linden, with
his back to the river and bridge. Leisurely he feasts his eyes as he
turns, now to the right and now to the left, now gazing down the long
vista which terminates at the Brandenburg gate, now turning towards the
arsenal and the museum, and now farther round towards the cathedral and
the royal palace. Architecture, sculpture, and the arts of decoration
and design, all contribute their attractions; massing, grouping, and
colouring, add their effects upon the intelligent eye, while the heart
is touched by the mementoes of the past which here and there arrest his
glance, the grateful homage to the departed which the monumental
statuary exhibits, the love of country breathing from brief but frequent
inscriptions, and over all the love and veneration of both king and
people for the Great Frederick, the founder of the Prussian fortunes.
Deeper than all the other sights which thus first arrest the stranger’s
eye, the monument to Frederick and his times will touch and impress the
sensitive stranger. On his war steed there he rides, the iron man, the
observed of all eyes, surrounded, it is true, by the generals who rose
to fame beneath his banner, but not less conspicuously by the statesmen
who led his civil armies, by the poets and great writers whom he
esteemed and imitated, by the advancers of science in his time, and by
those who ornamented his reign through the decorations of the fine
arts,—all here find their place side by side, attendant upon the great
monarch, at once giving and receiving lustre. It is a monument to the
age rather than to the man—or, we might rather say, to the man and his
age; and the lover of abstract art, and the worshipper of modern
progress, will equally admire the design and execution of this
interesting monument. We were touched by a feature in the inscription,
which others have no doubt noticed as well as ourselves. The words of
the whole inscription are: “To Frederick the Great, Frederick-William
III., 1850, completed by Frederick-William IV., 1851.” Two kings emulous
of the distinction of dedicating this monument to their illustrious
predecessor! This scarcely expresses more highly the mutual veneration
of both father and son for the national hero whose blood they boast of,
than it bespeaks their pride in the work of art it was their happiness
to be able to dedicate to his memory. How many will admire and cherish
in it the genius of art, who will deplore and condemn the genius of war
to which the great hero offered his most ardent and most costly
sacrifices!
Yet the most deadly haters of war cannot but acknowledge that there is
something sublime in the special features of Frederick’s character,
which the letters recently published have disclosed. Oppressed by the
anxieties consequent upon military disasters, and apprehensive of
further defeats, in which he sees the possibility of himself being taken
prisoner, he writes to his minister, and prescribes the course to be
taken for the safety of the royal family in such an eventuality. And
then, speaking of his own possible position, and of the compulsion which
might be exercised upon him as a prisoner, he commands them to attend to
no instructions or orders he may issue while detained a prisoner, and no
longer to be regarded as a free agent. He is of a great mind who knows,
can anticipate, and provide against the special or possible weaknesses
of his bodily nature. And so Frederick, dreading what impatience for
liberty or personal suffering might possibly force from him in such
circumstances, lays upon his servants, while free, his heaviest commands
to regard him no more than one dead, should he happen to become a
prisoner, and to consider not his state or condition or written orders
_then_, but solely the tenor and substance of what he _now_ writes,
viewed in connection with the interests of his people and his country.
How many men have lived to despise themselves for acts of weakness, of
folly, or of vice, which in feeble hours they have committed! Here we
have the philosophical hero providing for the possible contingency of
such an hour of bodily weakness or mental imbecility casting its heavy
shadows over him! There is in this trait something not only for
descendants to be proud of, and for a people to venerate, but for
strangers of other nations also to respect and admire.
The character of the society in Berlin is familiar to most travellers.
To those who have access to diplomatic circles, the evening reunions in
the hotels of the ambassadors are described as agreeable in a high
degree. But of real Berlin hospitality in the houses of the Berlin
aristocracy, or of the nobles whose domains are in the provinces, little
is either to be seen or said. We had no leisure to seek an _entrée_ to
the houses of imperial and kingly representatives, then over head and
ears in notes, rejoinders, protocols, and despatches, and teased every
hour of the night by thundering couriers and impatient despatch-boxes.
We had, indeed, occasion to experience, as we had long before done in St
Petersburg, the kindness and affable attention of Lord Bloomfield, and
were happy to find that his long residence abroad had not lessened his
keen sympathy with English feeling, nor his contact with Prussian
vacillation made him undecided as to the conduct and policy of England
in the then approaching crisis.
But Berlin boasts a scientific society, to which it was our pride and
happiness to obtain an easy introduction. Every one is acquainted with
some of the numerous names which adorn the list of scientific men who
form the educational staff of the University of Berlin, or who hold
official situations of various kinds in the Prussian capital. No city in
Germany can boast of so many men of real eminence as illustrators and
discoverers in the several walks of science; and nowhere will you find a
pleasanter, franker, happier, more unpretending, jolly, and good-natured
a set of evening companions, over a bottle of good Rhine wine and a
_petit souper_, than these same distinguished philosophers!
One of the most agreeable of the evening meetings at which the stranger
may have the fortune to meet the greater part of the men of science in
Berlin, is that of the Geographical Society. The President is the
distinguished Carl Ritter, who was in the chair when we attended, and
around him were many whom we had come to see. But on turning over the
leaves of the book of travels of our friend Professor Silliman, of which
we have already spoken, we find an account of the meeting of the same
Society at which he was present two years before, which appears so exact
a photograph of the one at which we assisted that we shall not scruple
to quote his words.
“Several papers were read on geographical subjects, and different
gentlemen were called upon to elucidate particular topics. Their
course is, not only to illustrate topography, but all allied themes,
including the different branches of natural history and of meteorology
that are connected with the country under consideration. In this
manner the discussions become fruitful of instruction and
entertainment, and the interest is greatly enhanced.
“A supper followed in the great room of the Society. Among the eminent
men present whose fame was known to us at home were Professor
Ehrenberg, the philosopher of the microscopic world; the two brothers
Rose; Gustav, of mineralogy, and Heinrich, of analytical chemistry;
Dove, the meteorologist and physicist; Magnus, of electro-magnetism;
Poggendorff, the editor of the well-known journal which bears his
name; Mitscherlich, of general and applied chemistry, besides many
others almost equally distinguished. We received a warm welcome to
Berlin, and throughout the evening the most kind and cordial
treatment.”[32]
We, too, had the pleasure of eating and drinking with all these great
men. We had the satisfaction also, among the papers read, to hear one by
our friend Professor Ehrenberg, on microscopic forms of life which exist
in the bottom of the Atlantic, under the enormous pressure of a thousand
feet of water. They are found in a fine calcareous mud or chalk which
covers the sea-bottom, and which was fished up from this and still
greater depths by Lieutenant Maury, of the United States’ coast survey.
Ehrenberg, as a scientific man, enjoys the singular distinction, we
might almost say felicity, not only of having discovered a new world,
but of living to see it very widely explored, and of having himself
been, and still being, its chief investigator. His microscope and his
pencil are as obedient to him as ever, eye and hand as piercing, as
steady, and as truthful as ever; and, to all appearance, microscopic
investigation, and the classification of microscopic life, must assume a
new phase under the guidance of some new genius, before Ehrenberg cease
both himself to steer, and mainly to man and work, the ship which he
built, and rigged, and launched, and for so many years has guided on its
voyage of discovery.
Among the curiosities of the microscopic world which Ehrenberg has
investigated, we may notice in this place, as likely to interest our
readers, his singular suggestion in relation to the foundations of the
city of Berlin. This city stands in the midst of an infertile flat
plain, through which the river Spree wends its slow way, passing through
the centre of the city itself. Beneath the present “streets of palaces
and walks of state” exists a deep bog of black peat, through which
sinkings and borings in search of water have frequently been carried.
This peat, at the depth of fifty feet below the surface, swarms at this
moment with infusorial life. Countless myriads of microscopic animals,
at this great depth, beneath the pressure of the superincumbent earth
and streets, live and die in the usual course of microscopic life. They
move among each other, and wriggle, to human sense, invisible; so that
the whole mass of peaty matter is in a state of constant and usually
insensible movement. But in Berlin the houses crack at times, and yawn
and suffer unaccountable damage, even where the foundations seem to have
been laid with care. And this, our philosopher has conjectured, may be
owing to the changes and motions of his invisible world—the sum of the
almost infinite insensible efforts of the tiny forms producing at times,
when they conspire in the same direction, the sensible and visible
movements of the surface by which the houses that stand upon it are
deranged! The conjecture is curious, the cause a singular one, but who
shall say that it is inadequate to the effect?
Another among the names above mentioned—that of Mitscherlich—stands in
relation to the crystalline forms of matter in a nearly similar relation
to that which Ehrenberg occupies in regard to microscopic life. The
discoverer, at an early period of his life, of what is called the
doctrine of Isomorphism, he has lived to see his discovery assume a most
important place in chemico-crystallographic science, and to branch out
into various kindred lines of research; and at the same time has the
happy satisfaction of feeling that he has himself always led the
progress, and that he is acknowledged everywhere as still the principal
advancer and head authority in the department of knowledge he was the
first to open up.
But among the scientific men of Berlin, we must spare a few words for
one who shines among them as the acknowledged chief—the veteran and
venerable Alexander Von Humboldt. Here is Professor Silliman’s
description of the old gentleman, as the American Professor saw him, by
appointment, in the autumn of 1851:—
“I then introduced my son, and we were at once placed at our ease. His
bright countenance expresses great benevolence, and from the fountains
of his immense stores of knowledge a stream almost constant flowed for
nearly an hour. He was not engrossing, but yielded to our prompting,
whenever we suggested an inquiry, or alluded to any particular topic;
for we did not wish to occupy the time with our own remarks any
further than to draw him out. He has a perfect command of the best
English, and speaks the language quite agreeably. There is no
stateliness or reserve about him; and he is as affable as if he had no
claims to superiority. His voice is exceedingly musical, and he is so
animated and amiable that you feel at once as if he were an old
friend. His person is not much above the middle size; he stoops a
little, but less than most men at the age of eighty-two. He has no
appearance of decrepitude; his eyes are brilliant, his complexion
light; his features and person are round although not fat, his hair
thin and white, his mind very active, and his language brilliant, and
sparkling with bright thoughts. We retired greatly gratified, and the
more so, as a man in his eighty-third year might soon pass away.”—Vol.
ii. p. 318.
Two years more had passed away, when we were honoured with an audience
of the distinguished philosopher during our stay in Berlin. Age sits
lightly upon his active head. Still full of unrecorded facts and
thoughts, he labours daily in committing them to the written page,—for
the grave, he tells you, waits him early now, and he must finish what he
has to do before he dies. And yet he is as full at the same time of the
discoveries and new thoughts of others, and as eager as the youngest
student of nature in gathering up fresh threads of knowledge, and in
following the advances of the various departments of natural science.
And in so doing it is a characteristic of his generous mind to estimate
highly the labours of others, to encourage the young and aspiring
investigator to whatever department of nature he may be devoted, and to
aid him with his counsel, his influence, and his sympathy. We found him
congratulating himself on the possession of a power with which few
really scientific men are gifted—that of making science popular—of
drawing to himself, and to the knowledge he had to diffuse, the regard
and attention of the masses of the people in his own and other
countries, by a clear method, and an agreeable and attractive style in
writing. “To make discoveries plain and popular is, perhaps, more
difficult,” he said to us, “than to make the discoveries themselves.”
And the feeling of the present time seems very much to run in sympathy
with this sentiment. The power of diffusing is a gift perhaps as high,
and often far more valuable to the community, than the power of
discovering, and it should be esteemed and honoured accordingly. He
expressed himself as especially pleased that no less than four original
translations of one of his late books have appeared in the English
tongue. In a work so honoured by publishers’ regards, there must exist
some rare and remarkable element of popularity which our scientific
writers would do well to study.
Professor Silliman, in his description of Humboldt, scarcely seized the
most salient and characteristic points of his personal appearance. Fifty
commonplace men have “benevolent countenances, lively and simple
manners, and persons which are round though not fat.” But look, gentle
reader, at the picture of the venerable sage as it hangs there before
us. What strikes you first? Is it not that lofty, towering, massive
brow, which seems all too large, as it overarches his deep-sunk eyes,
for the dimensions of the body and the general size of the head itself?
And then, does not the character of the eye arrest you—the thinking,
reflecting, observing eye—which, while it looks at you quietly and
calmly, seems to be leisurely looking into you, and reflecting at the
same time upon what you have said or suggested to his richly-stored
mind? There is benevolence, it is true, in the mouth, and something of
the satisfied consciousness of a well-spent life, the more grateful to
feel that it is almost universally acknowledged. But there is tenacity
of purpose in the massive chin, and indications of that rare
perseverance which for so long a life has made him continuously, and
without ceasing, augment the accumulated knowledge of his wide
experience, and as continuously strive to spread it abroad.
The celebrity of Berlin among German cities depends in part upon its
architectural and other decorations, but chiefly upon the scientific and
literary men whom, during the last half-century, it has been the pride
and policy of successive governments to attach to its young university.
Where so many high-schools exist, as is the case in Germany, the resort
of students can only be secured by the residence of teachers of greater
genius and wider distinction. Fellowships and other pecuniary
temptations do not invite young talent to the universities there as with
us. Place a man of high reputation in a scientific chair in a puny
university like Giessen, and students will flock to his prelections.
Remove him to Berlin or Heidelberg, and all Germany will send its most
ardent natures to sit at his feet in his new home. The love of knowledge
carries them to college, the fame of its professors decides in which
college they shall enrol themselves. To the sedulous choice of the best
men from the various schools of Germany, and to great care in rearing
and fostering the best of its own alumni, the university of Berlin owes
its rapid growth in numbers and in reputation, and the city of Berlin
the agreeable circle of distinguished philosophers, among whom the
intellectual stranger finds at once a ready welcome and a great
enjoyment.
Though Berlin is actually south of London, yet its inland position gives
it a winter climate of much greater seventy. It derives, also, a
peculiar character from the cold north wind which, descending from the
frozen Baltic, sweeps across the flat country by which this sea is
separated from Berlin. These winds gave to the air, during a portion of
our stay, the feeling as if it was loaded with minute icicles, which
impinged upon and stuck in the throat as the breath descended. The
public statuary, and the plants in the public walks, were mostly done up
in straw to keep them from injury; scarcely an evergreen was anywhere to
be seen, and, as in Russia, our common ivy was cultivated in flowerpots,
and preserved as a hothouse plant.
In our walks through the city, our attention was attracted one day by a
sign-board announcing a “Cichorien fabrique und eichel _caffee
handlung_”—a chicory and acorn coffee-manufactory. As the latter
beverage at least was a novelty to us, we entered the premises and
explored the rude manufactory. Attending a huge revolving cylinder,
something like a gas-retort, stood one unclean workman, while on the
floor at his feet was a heap of dirty half-charred rubbish, which we
learned was the roasted chicory. Watching another machine, from which
streamed a tiny rivulet of coarse brown powder, stood a boy, who, with
the master, completed the staff of the establishment. The one machine
roasted and the other ground the materials, while place and people were
of the untidiest kind. We saw and bought samples of both varieties of
so-called coffee. The chicory, as the master told us without any
reserve, was made up half of chicory and half of turnips, roasted and
ground together. The latter admixture made it sweeter. The acorn coffee,
made from acorns roasted and ground, was made, he said, and sold in
large quantities. It was very cheap, was given especially to children,
and was substituted for coffee in many public establishments for the
young. This may be done with a medicinal rather than an economical view,
as acorn coffee finds a place in the Prussian and other German
pharmacopœias, and is considered to have a wholesome effect upon the
blood, especially of scrofulous persons. It is, however, manufactured
and used in many parts of Germany for the sole purpose of adulterating
genuine coffee, and it has been imported into this country for the same
purpose, chiefly, we believe, from Hamburg.
It is very interesting, in an economico-physiological point of view, to
mark and trace the historical changes which take place in the diet and
beverages of nations. The potato came from the west, and by diffusing
itself over Europe has changed the daily diet, the yearly agriculture,
and the social habits of whole kingdoms. Tea came from the east, and has
equally changed the drinks, the tastes, the bodily habits and cravings,
and we believe also very materially the intellectual character and
general mental and bodily temperament, of probably a hundred millions of
men, who now consume it in Europe and America. Coffee, coming in like
manner from the east, has in some countries of Europe turned domestic
life, we may say, literally out of doors. The coffee-house and living in
public have in France and elsewhere superseded the domestic circle and
the quiet amenities of the home hearth. And now, to succeed and
supersede both coffee and tea, we are ourselves in the west now growing
and manufacturing chicory, which in its turn is destined materially to
alter the taste, and probably to change the constitution, and thus to
affect the mental habits, dispositions, and tendencies of the people who
consume it. In chemical composition, and consequent physiological action
upon the system, this substance differs essentially from tea and coffee,
and, whether for good or for evil, it must gradually produce a change of
temperament which we cannot at present specially predict,—that is to
say, if the consumption spread and increase as it has done in recent
years. For, little comparatively as we have yet heard of this plant in
England, the European consumption of chicory, mixed and unmixed, amounts
already to not much less than one hundred millions of pounds.
Between Brussels and Berlin, when seen on a Sunday, much difference will
strike the English traveller. He is now in a Protestant country; and
though the bill-sticker announces balls and concerts, and open theatres
for the evening, yet the Sunday mornings are quiet in the streets, and
the bustle of business or of holiday pleasures in no offensive way
obtrudes itself upon the attention. The tendency also, during the
present reign, is to make the observance of the day more strict still,
though there, of course, as at home, opposition shows itself, and
diverse opinions prevail. Among the four hundred and sixty thousand
inhabitants of Berlin, there are comparatively few Roman Catholics. Two
churches and a chapel are all the places of public worship they possess;
and hence the passing to and fro of priestly vestments as we walk the
streets does not strike the eye here as it does in Brussels.
But at a time like this, politics are likely to be talked of in the
military capital of Prussia quite as much as either religion or science.
As to the Russian question, three main things, difficult to reconcile,
embarrass the Prussian policy. The people hate Russia—barely tolerate
the supposed sympathy of the court of Berlin with that of St
Petersburg—and would not suffer the King to take part with the Czar.
Then both court and people equally hate and distrust the French. They
fear to be robbed of their Rhenish Provinces by a sudden incursion from
France; and that, were Prussia once engaged in a struggle with Russia,
the occasion would be too favourable for the French to resist. The life
of Louis Napoleon is uncertain, his death would be followed by a
revolution, and this very probably by war upon their neighbours. With
England they would unite, but they cannot cordially do so with a country
they talk of as fickle and faithless France. And as a third main element
in the question comes the jealousy of Austria. Berlin and Vienna watch
each the motions of the other. If the one were to commit itself, the
course of the other would be clear; but so long as neither feels that it
can heartily trust in France or safely defy Russia, a union between the
two on a German basis, equally anti-Russian and anti-French, such as has
recently been announced, seems the only safe solution possible. But cool
reasoning on probabilities and situations is not to be expected from a
Prussian more than from an Englishman—less, perhaps, from the former
than the latter, since, in Prussia, patriotism is always associated with
more or less of that military feeling and ardour with which a three
years’ service in the army more or less inoculates all; and still less
can it be expected from an unstable and wavering Prussian King, whom
sympathy, more than duty, bends and binds.
Among the items in Berlin newspapers which daily amused us more than
their politics, were the marriage advertisements which have their
constant corner in the _Berliner Intelligenz Blatt_. Here is a bit of
conceit. “A man in his thirtieth year wishes to marry. To ladies who
possess a fortune of four to five thousand dollars or upwards, and who
have no objections to become acquainted with persons of good character,
I hereby give the opportunity to send in their addresses to,” &c. &c.
Side by side with this we have—“An active and respectable widow, about
thirty years of age, who has a secure pension, wishes to connect herself
in marriage with a man of business, and requests in all negotiations the
most inviolable secresy. Addresses to be sent,” &c. &c. Some of the
ardent male candidates for connubial bliss put forth the melting plea
that they want to marry, but have no female acquaintances; while the
females, on the other hand, urge that they have no protectors, and in
these piteous circumstances both sexes find an excuse for making their
wishes known through the public prints.
But we linger, not unnaturally perhaps, but somewhat long for our
narrative, in the city of Berlin. The passports are again _viséd_,
however, and stowed away in our safest pocket, the trumpet sounds anew,
and we are off to Stettin. Through flats and sands and moors as before,
and occasional patches of pine forest, we pass for the most part of the
way. Here and there a stretch of poor corn-land breaks upon the
monotony, and occasional undulations of the surface confine the view.
But no home-like fences divide the land, nor signs of comfort make up
for the natural nakedness and repulsive aspect of the bleak-looking
country. This character of the land and landscape prevails both east and
west along the southern shores of the Baltic Sea, not only in Prussia,
but in the Danish appendages of Holstein and Sleswick, and across to the
mouth of the Elbe. Yet there are some so little experienced in the
features of a fair landscape, or so patriotically blind, or so
poetically disposed by nature, as to see beauties even in these
unpromising countries, and to derive a pleasure from passing through
them which the majority of travellers can scarcely appreciate. Madame
Pfeiffer crossed this tract of country on her way from Hamburg through
Holstein to Kiel, in which route we also remember sands and heaths
somewhat less forbidding than those which intervene between Ungernsunde
and Stettin. This matter-of-fact old lady, who was already beyond the
age of poetry, thus speaks of what she saw and heard as she glided
along—
“The whole distance of seventy miles was passed in three hours; a
rapid journey, but agreeable only by its rapidity. The whole
neighbourhood presents only widely-extended plains, turf bogs, and
moorlands, sandy places and heaths, interspersed with a little meadow
and arable land. From the nature of the soil, the water in the ditches
and fields looked black as ink.”
And then, in the way of reflection, she adds—
“The little river Eider would have passed unnoticed by me, had not
some of my fellow-passengers made a great feature of it. In the finest
countries, I have found the natives far less enthusiastic about what
was really grand and beautiful, than they were here in praise of what
was neither the one nor the other. My neighbour, a very agreeable
lady, was untiring in her laudation of her beautiful native land. In
her eyes, the crippled wood was a splendid park, the waste moorland an
inexhaustible field for contemplation, and every trifle a matter of
real importance. In my heart I wished her joy of her fervid
imagination; but, unfortunately, my colder nature would not catch the
infection.”[33]
This region, so tiresome to the eye, is yet interesting to the student
of the pre-historic condition of this vast flat region. Covered
everywhere with a deep layer of drifted materials, which consist, for
the most part, of sand, sometimes of gravel, and more rarely of clay, no
rocks are seen _in situ_ for thousands of square miles. But strewed, now
on the surface, now at depths of two or three feet, and now beneath
fifty or sixty feet of sand or gravel, lie countless blocks of foreign
stone, of every size, from that of the fort to that of a small house.
These the waters of the once larger Baltic brought down ages ago from
the rocky cliffs of the Finnish and Bothnian gulfs. During that very
recent geological epoch which immediately preceded the occupation of the
country by living races, these flats of North Germany, as far south and
east as the mountains of Silesia, were covered by the waters of the
Baltic Sea. Yearly over this sea the northern ice drifted, bearing with
it blocks of granite and other old rocks as it floated southward,
dropping masses here and there by the way as the ice-ships melted before
the summer sun. But in greater numbers they bore them to the shores on
which the ice floes stranded and strewed them in heaps along the flanks
of the Silesian hills. Hence now, when the land has risen above the sea,
the huge stones so transported, age after age, are found at every step,
if not on the very surface, yet always at some small depth beneath the
sand, or gravel, or clay, or in the deep peat which covers so much of
the wide area. And, piled up in heaps on the slopes of the Silesian
mountains, at heights of nine hundred to twelve hundred feet, the
traveller wonders to see the same distant-borne strangers, unlike any of
the living rocks on which they rest, and which talk intelligibly to the
geologist of their ancient homes in the frozen wilds of Scandinavia.
Admired by the students of pre-historic physical geography, these
boulder-stones are prized and sought for by the inhabitants of this wide
tract of rockless plains. Though hard and intractable beneath the chisel
and hammer, these hard granitic and metamorphic masses are the only
durable building materials which are within their reach. Hence all solid
constructions are formed of them, and the houses of wood generally stand
on a substratum of these more lasting stones. In this way the traveller
sees them employed in town, village, and farm. Palace, fortress, and
cottage are equally indebted to the antediluvian icebergs of the
old-world Baltic. And thus near the ancient towns, and wherever frequent
people live, few of the unmoved boulders catch the traveller’s eye as he
rides over the unenclosed plains around them. But they occur singly, in
groups, and in rapid succession, when he penetrates to the less-peopled
interior, or explores the primeval forests, or where railway cuttings
dip deeply into the drift, or clay-beds are worked for economical
purposes, as we see them in the vicinity of Berlin.
Stettin, well known to our Baltic merchants and shipowners, and famed
among the fortresses of Germany, stands near the mouth of the Oder—where
the river, escaping from the long flats through which it has wound its
slow way, is about to expand into a broad lake. This lake, called the
Haaf, would in reality be a wide firth or arm of the sea, were it not
that its mouth is blocked up by the islands of Usedom and Wollin, which
leaves three channels for the escape of the waters of the Oder. The
central channel, called the Swine, is the deepest and most used; but all
are difficult and narrow, and easy of defence against attacks by sea.
The Silesian commerce has its principal outlet by the Oder, which
connects Stettin with Frankfort-on-the-Oder and with Breslau. Above the
town of Stettin, for the two or three last miles, the river winds, and
again and again returns upon itself, through the almost perfect flat—and
even throws off several small arms, which flow to the Haaf through
channels of their own, before the main stream passes the city. To look
down upon these windings from the tower of the old palace, when the
bright morning sun rests upon the valley, reminded us of the winding
Forth, as it is seen by thousands yearly from the beautiful summits of
our well-beloved Ochil Hills. Beyond this distance the whole valley on
either side is hemmed in by a lofty natural embankment of sand and
gravel, the ancient limits of the Haaf when the land was lower and its
waters covered the whole flat. The embankment which thus girdles the
valley, and skirts at a distance the river flanks, consists for the most
part of a ridge of ancient downs, such as we see on our own sandy shores
where sea-born winds blow often inland; which hide Flemish towns and
steeples from the eyes of the passing sailor; and which in Holland occur
far from the modern shores, telling how widely in former times the sea
asserted her dominion. Through this amphitheatre of sandy ridges the
river forces its way into the flat valley; and it is the natural
strength which the ridge possesses on the right bank, where the town now
stands, of which art has taken advantage in erecting the strong
fortifications which make Stettin the key of Pomerania. In the city
itself there is not much to see even in summer. At the time of our visit
the river was frozen up, some inches of snow covered the ground, the
people had already commenced the winter amusements to which snowy
climates offer so many inducements, and a single day was enough to
satisfy our taste for sight-seeing. The rumours of war here, as
elsewhere, were agitating the Prussian population. The course that our
Government might take naturally touched very nearly the interests of a
city which, by its commerce, was concerned for the openness of the sea
to its ships; which, as a fortress of the first class, was liable to
bombardment and siege in the event of hostilities by land; and which, by
its nearness to the Russian territory, was so likely to be assailed
should war commence. House property in the city was said to have already
fallen much in value, and commercial speculation for the time was in a
great measure paralysed.