Visits and Sketches at Home and Abroad with Tales and Miscellanies Now First Collected Volume I Part 4

Instead of embarking in the steam-boat, we posted along the left bank of the Rhine, spending a few days at Bonn, at G.o.desberg, and at Ehrenbreitstein; but I should tell you, as you allow me to diverge, that on my second journey, I owed much to a residence of some weeks at Bonn.

There I became acquainted with the celebrated Schlegel, or I should rather say, M. le Chevalier de Schlegel, for I believe his t.i.tles and his "starry honours" are not indifferent to him; and in truth he wears them very gracefully. I was rather surprised to find in this sublime and eloquent critic, this awful scholar, whose comprehensive mind has grasped the whole universe of art, a most agreeable, lively, social being. Of the judgments pa.s.sed on him in his own country, I know little, and understand less; I am not deep in German literary polemics. To me he was the author of the lectures on "Dramatic Literature," and the translator of Shakspeare, and, moreover, all that was amiable and polite: and was not this enough?

MEDON.

Enough for you, certainly; but, I believe that at this time Schlegel would rather found his fame on being one of the greatest oriental critics of the age, than on being the interpreter of the beauties of Calderon and Shakspeare.

ALDA.

I believe so; but for my own part, I would rather hear him talk of Romeo and Juliet, and of Madame de Stael, than of the Ramayana, the Bhagvat-Gita, or even the "eastern Con-fut-zee." This, of course, is only a proof of my own ignorance. Conversation may be compared to a lyre with seven chords--philosophy, art, poetry, politics, love, scandal, and the weather. There are some professors, who, like Paganini, "can discourse most eloquent music" upon one string only; and some who can grasp the whole instrument, and with a master's hand sound it from the top to the bottom of its compa.s.s. Now, Schlegel is one of the latter: he can thunder in the ba.s.s or caper in the treble; he can be a whole concert in himself. No man can trifle like him, nor, like him, blend in a few hours' converse, the critic, philologist, poet, philosopher, and man of the world--no man narrates more gracefully, nor more happily ill.u.s.trates a casual thought. He told me many interesting things. "Do you know," said he one morning, as I was looking at a beautiful edition of Corinne, bound in red morocco, the gift of Madame de Stael; "do you know that I figure in that book?" I asked eagerly in what character?

He bid me guess. I guessed playfully, the Comte d'Erfeuil. "No! no!"

said he, laughing, "I am immortalized in the Prince Castel-Forte, the faithful, humble, unaspiring, friend of Corinne."

MEDON.

To any man but Schlegel, such an immortality were worth a life. Nay, there is no man, though his fame extended to the ends of the earth, whom the pen of Madame de Stael could not honour.

ALDA.

He seemed to think so, and I liked him for the self-complacency with which he twined her little myrtle leaf with his own palmy honours. Nor did he once refer to what I believe every body knows, her obligations to him in her De l'Allemagne.

MEDON.

Apropos--do tell me what is the general opinion of that book among the Germans themselves.

ALDA.

I think they do not judge it fairly. Some speak of it as eloquent, but superficial:[7] others denounce it altogether as a work full of mistakes and flippant, presumptuous criticism: others again affect to speak of it, and even of Madame de Stael herself, as things of another era, quite gone by and forgotten; this appeared to me too ridiculous. They forget, or do not know, what _we_ know, that her De l'Allemagne was the first book which awakened in France and England a lively and general interest in German art and literature. It is now five-and-twenty years since it was published. The march of opinion, and criticism, and knowledge of every kind, has been so rapid, that much has become old which then was new; but this does not detract from its merit. Once or twice I tried to convince my German friends that they were exceedingly ungrateful in abusing Madame de Stael, but it was all in vain; so I sat swelling with indignation to hear my idol traduced, and called--O profanation!-- "_cette Stael_."

MEDON.

But do you think the Germans could at all appreciate or understand such a phenomenon as Madame de Stael must have appeared in those days? She whisked through their skies like a meteor, before they could bring the telescope of their wits to a right focus for observation. How she must have made them open their eyes!--and you see in the correspondence between Goethe and Schiller what _they_ thought of her.

ALDA.

Yes, I know that with her lively egotism and Parisian volubility, she stunned Schiller and teased Goethe: but while our estimate of _manner_ may be allowed to be relative and comparative, our estimate of _character_ should be positive and abstract. Madame de Stael was in manner the Frenchwoman, accustomed to be the cynosure of a salon, but she was not ridiculous or egoiste in character. She was, to use Schlegel's expression, "femme grande et magnanime jusque dans les replis de son ame." The best proof is the very spirit in which she viewed Germany, in spite of all her natural and national prejudices. To apply your own expression, she went forth, in the spirit of peace, and brought back, not only an olive leaf, but a whole tree, and it has flourished.

She had a universal mind. I believe she never thought, and still less _made_, any one ridiculous in her life.[8]

At Bonn much of my time was spent in intimate and almost hourly intercourse with two friends, one of whom I have already mentioned to you--a rare creature!--the other, who was herself the daughter of a distinguished auth.o.r.ess,[9] was one of the most generally accomplished women I ever met with. Opposed to each other in the const.i.tution of their minds--in all their views of literature and art, and all their experience of life--in their tastes, and habits, and feelings--yet mutually appreciating each other: both were distinguished by talents of the highest order and by great originality of character, and both were German, and very essentially _German_: English society and English education would never have produced two such women. Their conversation prepared me to form correct ideas of what I was to see and hear, and guarded me against the mistakes and hasty conclusions of vivacious travellers. At Bonn I also saw, for the first time, a specimen of the fresco painting, lately revived in Germany with such brilliant success.

By command of the Prussian Board of Education the hall of the university of Bonn is to be painted in fresco, and the work has been entrusted to C. Hermann, Gotzenberger, and Forster--all, I believe, pupils of Cornelius. The three sides of the hall are to represent the three faculties--Theology, Jurisprudence, and Philosophy; the first of these is finished, and here is an engraving of it. You see Theology is throned in the centre. The four evangelists, with St. Peter and St. Paul, stand on the steps of the throne; around her are the fathers and doctors of the church, and (which is the chief novelty of the composition) grouped together with a very liberal disregard to all religious differences; for there you see pope Gregory, and Ignatius Loyola, and St. Bernard, and Abelard, and Dante; and here we have Luther, and Melanchthon, and Calvin, and Wickliff, and Huss. On the opposite side of the hall, Philosophy, under which head are comprised all science, poetry, and art, is represented surrounded by the great poets, philosophers, and artists, from Homer, Aristotle, and Phideas, down to Shakspeare, Raffaelle, Goethe, and Kant. Jurisprudence, which is not begun, is to occupy the third side. The cartoons pleased me better than the paintings, for the drawing and grouping are really fine; but the execution struck me as somewhat hard and mannered. I shall have much to say hereafter of the fresco painting in Germany; for the present, proceed we on our journey.

Tell me, had you a full moon while you were on the Rhine?

MEDON.

Truly, I forget.

ALDA.

Then you had _not_; for it would so have blended with your recollections, that as a circ.u.mstance it could not have been forgotten; and take my advice, when next you are off on your annual flight, consult the calendar, and propitiate the fairest of all the fair Existences of heaven to give you the light of her countenance. If you never took a solitary ramble, or, what is better, a _tete-a-tete_ drive through the villages and vineyards between Bonn and Plittersdorf, when the moon hung over the Drachenfels, when the undulating outlines of the Seven Mountains seemed to dissolve into the skies, and the Rhine was spread out at their feet like a lake--so ample, and so still;--if you have never seen the stars s.h.i.+ne through the ruined arch of the Rolandseck, and the height of G.o.desberg, with its single giant tower, stand out of the plain,--black, and frowning against the silvery distance, then you have not beheld one of the loveliest landscapes ever presented to a thoughtful wors.h.i.+pper of nature. There is a story, too, connected with the ruins of G.o.desberg:--one of those fine tragedies of real life, which distance all fiction. It is not so popular as the celebrated legend of the brave Roland, and his cloistered love; but it is at least as authentic. You know that, according to tradition, the castle of G.o.desberg was founded by Julian the Apostate; another, and a more interesting apostate, was the cause of its destruction.

Gerard[10] de Truchses, Count Waldbourg, who was archbishop and elector of Cologne in 1583, scandalized his see, and all the Roman Catholic powers, by turning Protestant. According to himself, his conversion was owing to "the goodness of G.o.d, who had revealed to him the darkness and the errors of popery;" but according to his enemies, it was owing to his love for the beautiful Agnes de Mansfeld, canoness of Gersheim; she was a daughter of one of the greatest Protestant houses in Germany; and her two brothers, bigoted Calvinists, and jealous of the honour of their family, conceived themselves insulted by the public homage which a Catholic priest, bound by his vows, dared to pay to their sister. They were yet more incensed on discovering that the love was mutual, and loudly threatened vengeance to both. Gerard renounced the Catholic faith, and the lovers were united. He was excommunicated and degraded, of course; but he insisted on his right to retain his secular dominions and privileges, and refused to resign the electorate, which the emperor, meantime, had awarded to Ernest of Bavaria, bishop of Liege. The contest became desperate. The whole of that beautiful and fertile plain, from the walls of Cologne to the G.o.desberg, grew "familiar with bloodshed as the morn with dew;" and Gerard displayed qualities which showed him more fitted to win and wear a bride, than to do honour to any priestly vows of sanct.i.ty and temperance. Attacked on all sides,--by his subjects, who had learned to detest him as an apostate, by the infuriated clergy, and by the Duke of Bavaria, who had brought an army to enforce his brother's claims,--he carried on the struggle for five years, and at last, reduced to extremity, threw himself, with a few faithful friends, into the castle of G.o.desberg. After a brave defence, the castle was stormed and taken by the Bavarians, who left it nearly in the state we now see it--a heap of ruins.

Gerard escaped with his wife, and fled to Holland, where Maurice, Prince of Orange, granted him an asylum. Thence he sent his beautiful and devoted wife to the court of Queen Elizabeth, to claim a former promise of protection, and supplicate her aid, as the great support of the Protestant cause, for the recovery of his rights. He could not have chosen a more luckless amba.s.sadress; for Agnes, though her beauty was somewhat impaired by the persecutions and anxieties which had followed her ill-fated union, was yet most lovely and stately, in all the pride of womanhood; and her misfortunes and her charms, as well as the peculiar circ.u.mstances of her marriage, excited the enthusiasm of all the English chivalry. Unhappily the Earl of Ess.e.x was among the first to espouse her cause with all the generous warmth of his character, and his visits to her were so frequent, and his admiration so indiscreet, that Elizabeth's jealousy was excited even to fury. Agnes was first driven from the court, and then ordered to quit the kingdom. She took refuge in the Netherlands, where she died soon afterwards; and Gerard, who never recovered his dominions, retired to Strasbourg, where he died. So ends this sad eventful history, which, methinks, would make a very pretty romance. The tower of G.o.desberg, lasting as their love and ruined as their fortunes, still remains one of the most striking monuments in that land, where almost every hill is crowned with its castle, and every castle has its tale of terror, or of love.[11]

Another beautiful picture, which, merely as a picture, has dwelt on my remembrance, was the city of Coblentz and the fort of Ehrenbreitstein, as viewed from the bridge of boats under a cloudless moon. The city, with its fantastic steeples and ma.s.ses of building, relieved against the clear deep blue of the summer sky--the lights which sparkled in the windows reflected in the broad river, and the various forms and tall masts of the craft anch.o.r.ed above and opposite--the huge hill, with its tiara of fortifications, which, in the suns.h.i.+ne and in the broad day, had disappointed me by its formality, now seen under the soft moonlight, as its long lines of architecture and abrupt angles were projected in brightness or receded in shadow, had altogether a most sublime effect.

But _apropos_ to moonlights and pictures--of all the enchanted and enchanting scenes ever lighted by the full round moon, give me Heidelberg! Not the Colosseum of Rome--neither in itself, nor yet in Lord Byron's description, and I have both by heart--can be more grand; and in moral interest, in poetical a.s.sociations, in varying and wondrous beauty, the castle of Heidelberg has the advantage. In the course of many visits, Heidelberg became to me familiar as the face of a friend, and its remembrance still "haunts me as a pa.s.sion." I have known it under every changeful aspect which the seasons, and the hours, and the changeful moods of my own mind, could lend it. I have seen it when the sun, rising over the Geisberg, first kindled the vapours as they floated away from the old towers, and when the ivy and the wreathed verdure on the walls sparkled with dewy light: and I have seen it when its huge black ma.s.ses stood against the flaming sunset; and its enormous shadow, flung down the chasm beneath, made it night there, while daylight lingered around and above. I have seen it when mantled in all the bloom and foliage of summer, and when the dead leaves were heaped on the paths, and choked the entrance to many a favourite nook. I have seen it when crowds of gay visitors flitted along its ruined terraces,[12] and music sounded near; and with friends, whose presence endeared every pleasure; and I have walked alone round its desolate precincts, with no companions but my own sad and troubled thoughts. I have seen it when clothed in calm and glorious moonlight. I have seen it when the winds rushed shrieking through its sculptured halls, and when grey clouds came rolling down the mountains, folding it in their ample skirts from the view of the city below. And what have I seen to liken to it by night or by day, in storm or in calm, in summer or in winter! Then its historical and poetical a.s.sociations--

MEDON.

There now!--will you not leave the picture, perfect as it is, and not for ever seek in every object something more than is there?

ALDA.

I do not seek it--I find it. You will say--I have _heard_ you say--that Heidelberg wants no beauty unborrowed of the eye; but if history had not clothed it in recollections, fancy must have invested it in its own dreams. It is true, that it is a mere modern edifice compared with all the cla.s.sic, and most of the gothic ruins; yet over Heidelberg there hangs a terror and a mystery peculiar to itself: for the mind which acquiesces in decay, recoils from destruction. Here ruin and desolation make mocks with luxurious art and gay magnificence. Here it is not the equal, gradual power of time, adorning and endearing what yet it spares not, which has wrought this devastation, but savage war and elemental rage. Twice blasted by the thunderbolt, three times consumed by fire, ten times ravaged, plundered, desecrated by foes, and at last dismantled and abandoned by its own princes, it is still strong to endure and mighty to resist all that time, and war, and the elements may do against it--and, mutilated rather than decayed, may still defy centuries. The very anomalies of architecture and fantastic incongruities of this fortress-palace, are to me a fascination. Here are startling and terrific contrasts. That huge round tower--the tower of Frederic the Victorious--now "deep trenched with thunder fires," looks as if built by the t.i.tans or the Huns; and those delicate sculptures in the palace of Otho-Henry, as if the genius of Raffaelle or Correggio had breathed on the stone. What flowing grace of outline! what luxuriant life! what endless variety and invention in those half-defaced fragments! These are the work of Italian artists, whose very names have perished;--all traces of their existence and of their destinies so utterly lost, that one might almost believe, with the peasantry, that these exquisite remains are not the work of mortal hands, but of fairies and spirits of air, evoked to do the will of an enchanter. The old palatines, the lords of Heidelberg, were a magnificent and magnanimous race. Louis III., Frederic the Victorious, Frederic II., Otho-Henry, were all men who had stepped in advance of their age. They could think as well as fight, in days when fighting, not thinking, was the established fas.h.i.+on among potentates and people. A liberal and enlightened spirit, and a love of all the arts that humanise mankind, seem to have been hereditary in this princely family. Frederic I. lay under the suspicion of heresy and sorcery, in consequence of his tolerant opinions, and his love of mathematics and astronomy. His personal prowess, and the circ.u.mstance of his never having been vanquished in battle, gave rise to the report, that he was a.s.sisted by evil demons; and for years, both before and after his accession, he was under the ban of the secret tribunal.

Heidelberg was the scene of some of the mysterious attacks on his life, but they were constantly frustrated by the fidelity of his friends, and the watchful love of his wife.

It was at Heidelberg this prince celebrated a festival, renowned in German history, and, for the age in which it occurred, most extraordinary. He invited to a banquet all the factious barons whom he had vanquished at Seckingen, and who had previously ravaged and laid waste great part of the palatinate. Among them were the Bishop of Metz and the Margrave of Baden. The repast was plentiful and luxurious, but there was no bread. The warrior guests looked round with surprise and inquiry. "Do you ask for bread?" said Frederic, sternly; "you, who have wasted the fruits of the earth, and destroyed those whose industry cultivates it? There is no bread. Eat and be satisfied; and learn henceforth mercy to those who put the bread into your mouths."

A singular lesson from the lips of an iron-clad warrior of the middle ages.

It was Frederic II. and his nephew Otho-Henry, who enriched the library, then the first in Europe next to the Vatican, with treasures of learning, and who invited painters and sculptors from Italy to adorn their n.o.ble palace with the treasures of art. In less than one hundred years those beautiful creations were defaced or utterly destroyed, and all the memorials and records of their authors are supposed to have perished at the time when the ruthless Tilly stormed the castle, and the archives and part of the library of precious MSS. were taken to litter his dragoons' horses, during a transient scarcity of straw.[13]--You groan!

MEDON.

The anecdote is not new to me; but I was thinking, at the moment, of a pretty phrase in the letters of the Prince de Ligne, "la guerre--c'est un malheur--mais c'est le plus beau des malheurs."

ALDA.

O if there be any thing more terrific, more disgusting, than war and its consequences, it is that perversion of all human intellect--that depravation of all human feeling--that contempt or misconception of every Christian precept, which has permitted the great, and the good, and the tenderhearted, to admire war as a splendid game--a part of the poetry of life--and to defend it as a glorious evil, which the very nature and pa.s.sions of man have ever rendered, and will ever render, necessary and inevitable. Perhaps the idea of human suffering--though when we think of it in detail it makes the blood curdle--is not so bad as the general loss to humanity, the interruption to the progress of thought in the destruction of the works of wisdom or genius. Listen to this magnificent sentence out of the volume now lying open before me--"Who kills a man, kills a reasonable creature--G.o.d's image; but he who destroys a good book, kills reason itself. Many a man lives a burthen to the earth, but a good book is the precious life-blood of a master-spirit embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life. It is true, no age can restore a life, whereof perhaps there is no great loss: and revolutions of ages do not oft recover the loss of rejected truth, for the want of which whole nations fare the worse; therefore we should be wary how we spill the seasoned life of man preserved and stored up in books."

MEDON.

"Methinks we do know the fine Roman hand." Milton, is it not?

ALDA.

Yes; and after this, think of Milton's Areopagitica, or his Paradise Lost, under the hoofs of Tilly's dragoon horses, or feeding the fishes in the Baltic! It might have happened had he written in Germany instead of England.

MEDON.

Do you forget that the cause of the thirty years war was a woman?

ALDA.

A woman and religion; the two best or worst things in the world, according as they are understood and felt, used and abused. You allude to Elizabeth of Bohemia, who was to Heidelberg what Helen was to Troy?

One of the most interesting monuments of Heidelberg, at least to an English traveller, is the elegant triumphal arch raised by the palatine Frederic V. in honour of his bride--this very Elizabeth Stuart. I well remember with what self-complacency and enthusiasm our Chef walked about in a heavy rain, examining, dwelling upon every trace of this celebrated and unhappy woman. She had been educated at his country-seat, and one of the avenues of his magnificent park yet bears her name. On her fell a double portion of the miseries of her fated family. She had the beauty and the wit, the gay spirits, the elegant tastes, the kindly disposition, of her grandmother, Mary of Scotland. Her very virtues as a wife and a woman, not less than her pride and feminine prejudices, ruined herself, her husband, and her people. When Frederick hesitated to accept the crown of Bohemia, his high-hearted wife exclaimed--"Let me rather eat dry bread at a king's table than feast at the board of an elector;" and it seemed as if some avenging demon hovered in the air, to take her literally at her word, for she and her family lived to eat dry bread--aye, and to beg it before they ate it; but she _would_ be a queen. Blest as she was in love, in all good gifts of nature and fortune, in all means of happiness, a kingly crown was wanting to complete her felicity, and it was cemented to her brow with the blood of two millions of men. And who was to blame? Was not her mode of thinking the fas.h.i.+on of her time, the effect of her education? Who had

"Put in her tender heart the aspiring flame Of golden sovereignty?"