After a slow ride, of nearly eight hours, in what, in Germany, is called
an express train, through a rain and clouds that hid from our view the
Tyrol and the Swabian mountains, over a rolling, pleasant country,
past pretty little railway station-houses, covered with vines, gay
with flowers in the windows, and surrounded with beds of flowers, past
switchmen in flaming scarlet jackets, who stand at the switches and
raise the hand to the temple, and keep it there, in a military salute,
as we go by, we come into old Augsburg, whose Confession is not so fresh
in our minds as it ought to be. Portions of the ancient wall remain, and
many of the towers; and there are archways, picturesquely opening from
street to street, under several of which we drive on our way to the
Three Moors, a stately hostelry and one of the oldest in Germany.
It stood here in the year 1500; and the room is still shown, unchanged
since then, in which the rich Count Fugger entertained Charles V. The
chambers are nearly all immense. That in which we are lodged is
large enough for Queen Victoria; indeed, I am glad to say that her
sleeping-room at St. Cloud was not half so spacious. One feels either
like a count, or very lonesome, to sit down in a lofty chamber, say
thirty-five feet square, with little furniture, and historical and
tragical life-size figures staring at one from the wall-paper. One
fears that they may come down in the deep night, and stand at the
bedside,--those narrow, canopied beds there in the distance, like the
marble couches in the cathedral. It must be a fearful thing to be a
royal person, and dwell in a palace, with resounding rooms and naked,
waxed, inlaid floors. At the Three Moors one sees a visitors' book,
begun in 1800, which contains the names of many noble and great people,
as well as poets and doctors and titled ladies, and much sentimental
writing in French. It is my impression, from an inspection of the book,
that we are the first untitled visitors.
The traveler cannot but like Augsburg at once, for its quaint houses,
colored so diversely and yet harmoniously. Remains of its former
brilliancy yet exist in the frescoes on the outside of the buildings,
some of which are still bright in color, though partially defaced. Those
on the House of Fugger have been restored, and are very brave pictures.
These frescoes give great animation and life to the appearance of a
street, and I am glad to see a taste for them reviving. Augsburg must
have been very gay with them two and three hundred years ago, when,
also, it was the home of beautiful women of the middle class, who
married princes. We went to see the house in which lived the beautiful
Agnes Bernauer, daughter of a barber, who married Duke Albert III. of
Bavaria. The house was nought, as old Samuel Pepys would say, only a
high stone building, in a block of such; but it is enough to make a
house attractive for centuries if a pretty woman once looks out of its
latticed windows, as I have no doubt Agnes often did when the duke and
his retinue rode by in clanking armor.
But there is no lack of reminders of old times. The cathedral, which was
begun before the Christian era could express its age with four figures,
has two fine portals, with quaint carving, and bronze doors of very old
work, whereon the story of Eve and the serpent is literally given,--a
representation of great theological, if of small artistic value. And
there is the old clock and watch tower, which for eight hundred years
has enabled the Augsburgers to keep the time of day and to look out over
the plain for the approach of an enemy. The city is full of fine
bronze fountains some of them of very elaborate design, and adding a
convenience and a beauty to the town which American cities wholly want.
In one quarter of the town is the Fuggerei, a little city by itself,
surrounded by its own wall, the gates of which are shut at night, with
narrow streets and neat little houses. It was built by Hans Jacob
Fugger the Rich, as long ago as 1519, and is still inhabited by indigent
Roman-Catholic families, according to the intention of its founder. In
the windows were lovely flowers. I saw in the street several of those
mysterious, short, old women,--so old and yet so little, all body and
hardly any legs, who appear to have grown down into the ground with
advancing years.
It happened to be a rainy day, and cold, on the 30th of July, when
we left Augsburg; and the flat fields through which we passed were
uninviting under the gray light. Large flocks of geese were feeding on
the windy plains, tended by boys and women, who are the living fences
of this country. I no longer wonder at the number of feather-beds at
the inns, under which we are apparently expected to sleep even in the
warmest nights. Shepherds with the regulation crooks also were watching
herds of sheep. Here and there a cluster of red-roofed houses were
huddled together into a village, and in all directions rose tapering
spires. Especially we marked the steeple of Blenheim, where Jack
Churchill won the name for his magnificent country-seat, early in the
eighteenth century. All this plain where the silly geese feed has been
marched over and fought over by armies time and again. We effect the
passage of, the Danube without difficulty, and on to Harburg, a little
town of little red houses, inhabited principally by Jews, huddled
under a rocky ridge, upon the summit of which is a picturesque medieval
castle, with many towers and turrets, in as perfect preservation as when
feudal flags floated over it. And so on, slowly, with long stops at many
stations, to give opportunity, I suppose, for the honest passengers to
take in supplies of beer and sausages, to Nuremberg.