If the water in Lake George were turned to meadow, and its numberless
tall islands left standing as hills, it would be very like the natural
scenery from Liege to Aix la Chapelle. The railroad follows the meadow
level, and pierces these little mountains so continually, that it has
been compared to a needle passing through the length of a corkscrew.
Liege was a scene of Quentin Durward, you will remember, and at present
is the gunsmithery of Europe, but it graces the lovely scenery around
it, as a blacksmith in his apron would grace a ball-room, and I was not
tempted to see much more of it than lay in the bottom of a bowl of soup.
No bones of Charles the Bold, promised in the guide-book, nor tusk nor
armour of the “Wild Boar of Ardennes.” Scott was never here, and his
descriptions of town and castle were, of course, imaginary.
A river is much more of an acquaintance than a mountain, and I never see
one for the first time, without a mental salutation, especially if I
have heard of it before. The Vesdre would scarce be called a river in
our country, but it is a lovely little stream, that has seen a world of
romance, what with love and war, and it runs visibly dark from the
closeness of the hill-sides to it, and with a more musical ripple (if
you please,) for the spirits that haunt it. We got but a glimpse of the
Meuse, crossing it at Liege, but we tracked the Vesdre for some distance
by railroad. Of course it quite knocks a novel on the head to be dragged
through its scenes by a locomotive, and if you care much for Quentin
Durward, you had better not railroad it, from Brussels to the Rhine.
We were stopped an hour to show our credentials on the frontier of
Prussia, and here (at Aix la Chapelle) I had intended to make a day’s
halt. It rained in torrents, however. I pulled out my guide-book, and
balanced long between staying dry in the rail-cars, and going wet to see
the wonders. Here are to be seen the swaddling-clothes of our Saviour,
the robe of the Virgin Mary, the shroud of John the Baptist, some of the
manna of the Israelites in the wilderness, a lock of the Virgin’s hair,
and the leathern girdle of the Saviour. Here, also, is to be seen (with
more certainty) the tomb of Charlemagne. The church towers, which cover
these marvellous sights, loomed up through the shower, but my usual
philosophy of “making the most of to-day” gave way for once. Promising
myself to see the wonders of Aix on my return, I ordered my baggage into
the cars, and rolled away through the rain, to the fragrant-named city
of Cologne.
I got my first glimpse of the Rhine through the window of an omnibus.
From so prosaic a look-out, I may be excused for remarking, (what I
might not have done, perhaps, from the embrasure of a ruined castle,)
that it was a very ordinary looking river, with low banks, and of about
the breadth of the Susquehannah at Owego. A party of beer-drinkers,
bearded and piped, sitting under a bower of dried branches in front of a
tavern, were all that I could see at the moment that looked either
picturesque or poetical. This was on the way from the rail-road station
to the Hotel at Cologne. As it was the only view I had of the Rhine that
does not compel admiration, I seize the opportunity to disparage it.
In _doing_ the curiosities of Cologne with a guide and a party, I found
nothing not thrice told in the many books. Fortunately for the
traveller, things newly seen are quite as enjoyable, though ever so far
gone beyond a new description. I relished exceedingly my ramble through
the narrow streets, and over the beautiful cathedral, and I puckered my
lips with due wonder at the sight of the bones of the “Eleven Thousand
Virgins” in the Convent of St. Ursula. Alas, that, of any thing
loveable, such relics may have been a part! There was no choice, I
thought, between the skulls—yet there must have been differences of
beauty in the flesh that covered them.
I was lucky enough to bring the moonlight and my eyes to bear on the
cathedral at the same moment—the half-filled horn of the Queen of Stars
pouring upon the fine old towers, a light of beautiful tenderness, while
I strolled around them once more in the evening. The cathedral of
Cologne looks, indeed, a lovely confusion. And quite as lovely, I fancy,
to eyes that have no knowledge of how window and pinnacle put their
Gothic legs, ultimately, to the ground. I believe in Gothic. I am sure,
that is to say, that these interlaced points and angles have a harmony
in which lies architectural strength; and with this unexamined creed in
my mind, like capital in bank, I give to impressions of beauty,
unlimited credit. This is sometimes the kind of trust with which we
admire poetry. There is many a strain of Byron’s, learned by heart for
the music that it floats with, the meaning alone of which would not have
immortalized it for a nameless poet.
“The castled crag of Drachenfels,”
for example. The noble Cathedral of Cologne, however, like others in
Germany, stands knee-deep in common houses stuck against the wall—a
pitiful economy that makes more of a blot on their national taste than
all the “cologne” of “Jean Maria Farina” will ever wash away. And,
apropos, it was easier to forget the proper sovereign of Cologne than
the great prince of essences, and I stepped into his shop in passing,
and breathed for once without a doubt, the atmosphere of the genuine
“Farina.” It was a great warehouse of perfume—boxes and baskets piled
up in pyramids of sweetness—the sight of so much, however, most
effectually overpowering my desire for the single bottle. Luxuries, to
be valuable in this world of small parcels, should be guardedly shown to
the enjoyer.
After a little pondering upon the Rhine while sitting on one of the
stone posts of the wharf, I started for a moonlight ramble through the
streets. I felt somewhat lonely at that moment—in a city of 80,000
inhabitants without a soul to speak to—but I feel, _now_, as if there
was a link of music between me and an unknown player at Cologne, for I
stood under a window and listened to what seemed an improvisation upon
the piano, but done by a hand that sought nothing from the instrument
but melody in tune with sadness. Commonly, in listening long to music,
one has to suspend his heart at intervals, and wait for a return to the
chord from which the player has wandered; but in the varied and
continuous harmonies of this unseen hand, there was no note or
transition for which my mood was not instinctively ready. It was
evidently a performer whose fingers syllabled his thoughts in music, and
one, too, who had no listener but myself. The street was still, and all
around seemed to be buried in sleep, not a light to be seen, except
through the crack of the shutters which concealed the musician. A few
minutes after twelve the sounds ceased and the light departed, but the
music was apt and sweet enough to be remembered as an angel’s
ministration.
The day that had, among its errands, the duty of showing me the Rhine,
made its obeisance in sober grey, a half hour before sunrise. I arose
unwillingly, as one does, so early, whatever is to befal; but the
steamer was to start at 6, and steamers are punctual, even on the track
of Childe Harold. Following my baggage to the water-side, I found myself
on board a boat which would hardly pass muster as a ferry boat to Staten
Island—decks wet, seats dirty, and all hands, apparently, smoking pipe
while the passengers came on board. Many kinds of people were hurrying
over the plank, however. A young man who chose to sit in his travelling
carriage while it was drawn from the hotel by men’s hands, attracted
some notice, and it was soon whispered about that he was Prince
Napoleon, nephew to the Emperor. He was a pale discontented looking
youth, apparently twenty-two or twenty-five, and his servants waited on
him with an impassive doggedness of servility, that made its comment on
the temper of the master. The cashmeres thickened, and spurs and
moustaches, students’ caps and pedestrians’ knapsacks, soon crowded the
decks in most republican condition. I looked around, of course, in the
hope of seeing some one to whom I could say, of the beautiful scenery,
“how beautiful,” and, as my fellow travellers had passed under my eye, I
had mentally ticketed them as one generally does—possible
acquaintances, probable or impossible. And, among those who looked to me
both possible and desirable acquaintances, were three Englishmen, whose
manners and countenances at once took my fancy, and who, on exchanging
cards with me at night, gave me names that I had long been familiar
with—three of the most distinguished young artists of England. Somehow,
in all the countries where I have travelled and made chance
acquaintances, artists have been, of all the people I have met, the most
attractive and agreeable.
I was taking a turn on the wharf, for the sake of a few minutes of dry
footing before the boat should draw in her plank, when, to my surprise,
I heard my name, with a feminine ‘good morning,’ from a window overhead.
Looking up, I spied a lady, leaning out in shawl and night-cap and
smoking a cigar! I immediately recognised her as a handsome person whom
I had chanced to sit beside at a _table d’hôte_, at Brussels, and who
had the enviable gift of speaking two foreign languages, French and
English, absolutely as well as her own. She was a German. From the soup
to the pudding (two-thirds of a hotel-dinner) I had supposed I was
listening to an English woman, and as we had French and Germans at
table, and her German husband among them, her accomplishments as a
practical linguist were put to the test and remarked upon. She certainly
presented (to the rising sun and me) rather a startling _tableau_—one
long lock of hair escaping from her cap, ribbons flying,_ et
cetera_—but she removed her cigar so carelessly for the convenience of
smiling, and showed so little thought of caring about the impression she
might make in such trying dishabille, that I rather admired my new view
of her, on the whole. The same show from the window of the Astor hotel,
in New York, would perhaps be thought odd.