Chapter XXXVII (1)

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—