Chapter XXXVII (2)

“Lately, in the neighbourhood of Odessa, the cultivation of beetroot,
and extraction of sugar from it, was carried on to a considerable
extent by the large landed proprietors of the adjoining provinces.
Notwithstanding most praiseworthy exertions, these aristocratic
beetroot growers were totally unable to make their speculation
remunerative, and many of them must have been ruined had not the
legislature stepped in and prohibited the sale of any other sugar. The
consequence is, that the inhabitants are obliged to buy sugar at a
hundred per cent higher than the price at which our colonial sugar
could be imported into the country. It is some satisfaction to know
that, notwithstanding this iniquitous regulation, combined with the
system of forced labour, the beetroot growers are unable to cultivate
with profit.”[31]

But the train is in motion, the trumpet has sounded, and we are off through the darkness, and along the slightly undulating flats, on our way to Berlin. We found ourselves in company with a pleasant Frenchman _en route_ from the embassy in London to the embassy in Berlin; and before our most unanimous deliberations on the affairs of the East had come to a close, we found ourselves at the end of our journey, and by 10 P.M. had reached our quarters in the Hôtel de Russie.

Berlin, how many beauties and attractions dost thou present to the stranger who steps out for the first time from this hotel, and, walking a few yards, places himself in the centre of the Unter den Linden, with his back to the river and bridge. Leisurely he feasts his eyes as he turns, now to the right and now to the left, now gazing down the long vista which terminates at the Brandenburg gate, now turning towards the arsenal and the museum, and now farther round towards the cathedral and the royal palace. Architecture, sculpture, and the arts of decoration and design, all contribute their attractions; massing, grouping, and colouring, add their effects upon the intelligent eye, while the heart is touched by the mementoes of the past which here and there arrest his glance, the grateful homage to the departed which the monumental statuary exhibits, the love of country breathing from brief but frequent inscriptions, and over all the love and veneration of both king and people for the Great Frederick, the founder of the Prussian fortunes. Deeper than all the other sights which thus first arrest the stranger’s eye, the monument to Frederick and his times will touch and impress the sensitive stranger. On his war steed there he rides, the iron man, the observed of all eyes, surrounded, it is true, by the generals who rose to fame beneath his banner, but not less conspicuously by the statesmen who led his civil armies, by the poets and great writers whom he esteemed and imitated, by the advancers of science in his time, and by those who ornamented his reign through the decorations of the fine arts,—all here find their place side by side, attendant upon the great monarch, at once giving and receiving lustre. It is a monument to the age rather than to the man—or, we might rather say, to the man and his age; and the lover of abstract art, and the worshipper of modern progress, will equally admire the design and execution of this interesting monument. We were touched by a feature in the inscription, which others have no doubt noticed as well as ourselves. The words of the whole inscription are: “To Frederick the Great, Frederick-William III., 1850, completed by Frederick-William IV., 1851.” Two kings emulous of the distinction of dedicating this monument to their illustrious predecessor! This scarcely expresses more highly the mutual veneration of both father and son for the national hero whose blood they boast of, than it bespeaks their pride in the work of art it was their happiness to be able to dedicate to his memory. How many will admire and cherish in it the genius of art, who will deplore and condemn the genius of war to which the great hero offered his most ardent and most costly sacrifices!

Yet the most deadly haters of war cannot but acknowledge that there is something sublime in the special features of Frederick’s character, which the letters recently published have disclosed. Oppressed by the anxieties consequent upon military disasters, and apprehensive of further defeats, in which he sees the possibility of himself being taken prisoner, he writes to his minister, and prescribes the course to be taken for the safety of the royal family in such an eventuality. And then, speaking of his own possible position, and of the compulsion which might be exercised upon him as a prisoner, he commands them to attend to no instructions or orders he may issue while detained a prisoner, and no longer to be regarded as a free agent. He is of a great mind who knows, can anticipate, and provide against the special or possible weaknesses of his bodily nature. And so Frederick, dreading what impatience for liberty or personal suffering might possibly force from him in such circumstances, lays upon his servants, while free, his heaviest commands to regard him no more than one dead, should he happen to become a prisoner, and to consider not his state or condition or written orders _then_, but solely the tenor and substance of what he _now_ writes, viewed in connection with the interests of his people and his country. How many men have lived to despise themselves for acts of weakness, of folly, or of vice, which in feeble hours they have committed! Here we have the philosophical hero providing for the possible contingency of such an hour of bodily weakness or mental imbecility casting its heavy shadows over him! There is in this trait something not only for descendants to be proud of, and for a people to venerate, but for strangers of other nations also to respect and admire.

The character of the society in Berlin is familiar to most travellers. To those who have access to diplomatic circles, the evening reunions in the hotels of the ambassadors are described as agreeable in a high degree. But of real Berlin hospitality in the houses of the Berlin aristocracy, or of the nobles whose domains are in the provinces, little is either to be seen or said. We had no leisure to seek an _entrée_ to the houses of imperial and kingly representatives, then over head and ears in notes, rejoinders, protocols, and despatches, and teased every hour of the night by thundering couriers and impatient despatch-boxes. We had, indeed, occasion to experience, as we had long before done in St Petersburg, the kindness and affable attention of Lord Bloomfield, and were happy to find that his long residence abroad had not lessened his keen sympathy with English feeling, nor his contact with Prussian vacillation made him undecided as to the conduct and policy of England in the then approaching crisis.

But Berlin boasts a scientific society, to which it was our pride and happiness to obtain an easy introduction. Every one is acquainted with some of the numerous names which adorn the list of scientific men who form the educational staff of the University of Berlin, or who hold official situations of various kinds in the Prussian capital. No city in Germany can boast of so many men of real eminence as illustrators and discoverers in the several walks of science; and nowhere will you find a pleasanter, franker, happier, more unpretending, jolly, and good-natured a set of evening companions, over a bottle of good Rhine wine and a _petit souper_, than these same distinguished philosophers!

One of the most agreeable of the evening meetings at which the stranger may have the fortune to meet the greater part of the men of science in Berlin, is that of the Geographical Society. The President is the distinguished Carl Ritter, who was in the chair when we attended, and around him were many whom we had come to see. But on turning over the leaves of the book of travels of our friend Professor Silliman, of which we have already spoken, we find an account of the meeting of the same Society at which he was present two years before, which appears so exact a photograph of the one at which we assisted that we shall not scruple to quote his words.

“Several papers were read on geographical subjects, and different
gentlemen were called upon to elucidate particular topics. Their
course is, not only to illustrate topography, but all allied themes,
including the different branches of natural history and of meteorology
that are connected with the country under consideration. In this
manner the discussions become fruitful of instruction and
entertainment, and the interest is greatly enhanced.

“A supper followed in the great room of the Society. Among the eminent
men present whose fame was known to us at home were Professor
Ehrenberg, the philosopher of the microscopic world; the two brothers
Rose; Gustav, of mineralogy, and Heinrich, of analytical chemistry;
Dove, the meteorologist and physicist; Magnus, of electro-magnetism;
Poggendorff, the editor of the well-known journal which bears his
name; Mitscherlich, of general and applied chemistry, besides many
others almost equally distinguished. We received a warm welcome to
Berlin, and throughout the evening the most kind and cordial
treatment.”[32]

We, too, had the pleasure of eating and drinking with all these great men. We had the satisfaction also, among the papers read, to hear one by our friend Professor Ehrenberg, on microscopic forms of life which exist in the bottom of the Atlantic, under the enormous pressure of a thousand feet of water. They are found in a fine calcareous mud or chalk which covers the sea-bottom, and which was fished up from this and still greater depths by Lieutenant Maury, of the United States’ coast survey. Ehrenberg, as a scientific man, enjoys the singular distinction, we might almost say felicity, not only of having discovered a new world, but of living to see it very widely explored, and of having himself been, and still being, its chief investigator. His microscope and his pencil are as obedient to him as ever, eye and hand as piercing, as steady, and as truthful as ever; and, to all appearance, microscopic investigation, and the classification of microscopic life, must assume a new phase under the guidance of some new genius, before Ehrenberg cease both himself to steer, and mainly to man and work, the ship which he built, and rigged, and launched, and for so many years has guided on its voyage of discovery.

Among the curiosities of the microscopic world which Ehrenberg has investigated, we may notice in this place, as likely to interest our readers, his singular suggestion in relation to the foundations of the city of Berlin. This city stands in the midst of an infertile flat plain, through which the river Spree wends its slow way, passing through the centre of the city itself. Beneath the present “streets of palaces and walks of state” exists a deep bog of black peat, through which sinkings and borings in search of water have frequently been carried. This peat, at the depth of fifty feet below the surface, swarms at this moment with infusorial life. Countless myriads of microscopic animals, at this great depth, beneath the pressure of the superincumbent earth and streets, live and die in the usual course of microscopic life. They move among each other, and wriggle, to human sense, invisible; so that the whole mass of peaty matter is in a state of constant and usually insensible movement. But in Berlin the houses crack at times, and yawn and suffer unaccountable damage, even where the foundations seem to have been laid with care. And this, our philosopher has conjectured, may be owing to the changes and motions of his invisible world—the sum of the almost infinite insensible efforts of the tiny forms producing at times, when they conspire in the same direction, the sensible and visible movements of the surface by which the houses that stand upon it are deranged! The conjecture is curious, the cause a singular one, but who shall say that it is inadequate to the effect?

Another among the names above mentioned—that of Mitscherlich—stands in relation to the crystalline forms of matter in a nearly similar relation to that which Ehrenberg occupies in regard to microscopic life. The discoverer, at an early period of his life, of what is called the doctrine of Isomorphism, he has lived to see his discovery assume a most important place in chemico-crystallographic science, and to branch out into various kindred lines of research; and at the same time has the happy satisfaction of feeling that he has himself always led the progress, and that he is acknowledged everywhere as still the principal advancer and head authority in the department of knowledge he was the first to open up.

But among the scientific men of Berlin, we must spare a few words for one who shines among them as the acknowledged chief—the veteran and venerable Alexander Von Humboldt. Here is Professor Silliman’s description of the old gentleman, as the American Professor saw him, by appointment, in the autumn of 1851:—

“I then introduced my son, and we were at once placed at our ease. His
bright countenance expresses great benevolence, and from the fountains
of his immense stores of knowledge a stream almost constant flowed for
nearly an hour. He was not engrossing, but yielded to our prompting,
whenever we suggested an inquiry, or alluded to any particular topic;
for we did not wish to occupy the time with our own remarks any
further than to draw him out. He has a perfect command of the best
English, and speaks the language quite agreeably. There is no
stateliness or reserve about him; and he is as affable as if he had no
claims to superiority. His voice is exceedingly musical, and he is so
animated and amiable that you feel at once as if he were an old
friend. His person is not much above the middle size; he stoops a
little, but less than most men at the age of eighty-two. He has no
appearance of decrepitude; his eyes are brilliant, his complexion
light; his features and person are round although not fat, his hair
thin and white, his mind very active, and his language brilliant, and
sparkling with bright thoughts. We retired greatly gratified, and the
more so, as a man in his eighty-third year might soon pass away.”—Vol.
ii. p. 318.

Two years more had passed away, when we were honoured with an audience of the distinguished philosopher during our stay in Berlin. Age sits lightly upon his active head. Still full of unrecorded facts and thoughts, he labours daily in committing them to the written page,—for the grave, he tells you, waits him early now, and he must finish what he has to do before he dies. And yet he is as full at the same time of the discoveries and new thoughts of others, and as eager as the youngest student of nature in gathering up fresh threads of knowledge, and in following the advances of the various departments of natural science. And in so doing it is a characteristic of his generous mind to estimate highly the labours of others, to encourage the young and aspiring investigator to whatever department of nature he may be devoted, and to aid him with his counsel, his influence, and his sympathy. We found him congratulating himself on the possession of a power with which few really scientific men are gifted—that of making science popular—of drawing to himself, and to the knowledge he had to diffuse, the regard and attention of the masses of the people in his own and other countries, by a clear method, and an agreeable and attractive style in writing. “To make discoveries plain and popular is, perhaps, more difficult,” he said to us, “than to make the discoveries themselves.” And the feeling of the present time seems very much to run in sympathy with this sentiment. The power of diffusing is a gift perhaps as high, and often far more valuable to the community, than the power of discovering, and it should be esteemed and honoured accordingly. He expressed himself as especially pleased that no less than four original translations of one of his late books have appeared in the English tongue. In a work so honoured by publishers’ regards, there must exist some rare and remarkable element of popularity which our scientific writers would do well to study.

Professor Silliman, in his description of Humboldt, scarcely seized the most salient and characteristic points of his personal appearance. Fifty commonplace men have “benevolent countenances, lively and simple manners, and persons which are round though not fat.” But look, gentle reader, at the picture of the venerable sage as it hangs there before us. What strikes you first? Is it not that lofty, towering, massive brow, which seems all too large, as it overarches his deep-sunk eyes, for the dimensions of the body and the general size of the head itself? And then, does not the character of the eye arrest you—the thinking, reflecting, observing eye—which, while it looks at you quietly and calmly, seems to be leisurely looking into you, and reflecting at the same time upon what you have said or suggested to his richly-stored mind? There is benevolence, it is true, in the mouth, and something of the satisfied consciousness of a well-spent life, the more grateful to feel that it is almost universally acknowledged. But there is tenacity of purpose in the massive chin, and indications of that rare perseverance which for so long a life has made him continuously, and without ceasing, augment the accumulated knowledge of his wide experience, and as continuously strive to spread it abroad.

The celebrity of Berlin among German cities depends in part upon its architectural and other decorations, but chiefly upon the scientific and literary men whom, during the last half-century, it has been the pride and policy of successive governments to attach to its young university. Where so many high-schools exist, as is the case in Germany, the resort of students can only be secured by the residence of teachers of greater genius and wider distinction. Fellowships and other pecuniary temptations do not invite young talent to the universities there as with us. Place a man of high reputation in a scientific chair in a puny university like Giessen, and students will flock to his prelections. Remove him to Berlin or Heidelberg, and all Germany will send its most ardent natures to sit at his feet in his new home. The love of knowledge carries them to college, the fame of its professors decides in which college they shall enrol themselves. To the sedulous choice of the best men from the various schools of Germany, and to great care in rearing and fostering the best of its own alumni, the university of Berlin owes its rapid growth in numbers and in reputation, and the city of Berlin the agreeable circle of distinguished philosophers, among whom the intellectual stranger finds at once a ready welcome and a great enjoyment.

Though Berlin is actually south of London, yet its inland position gives it a winter climate of much greater seventy. It derives, also, a peculiar character from the cold north wind which, descending from the frozen Baltic, sweeps across the flat country by which this sea is separated from Berlin. These winds gave to the air, during a portion of our stay, the feeling as if it was loaded with minute icicles, which impinged upon and stuck in the throat as the breath descended. The public statuary, and the plants in the public walks, were mostly done up in straw to keep them from injury; scarcely an evergreen was anywhere to be seen, and, as in Russia, our common ivy was cultivated in flowerpots, and preserved as a hothouse plant.

In our walks through the city, our attention was attracted one day by a sign-board announcing a “Cichorien fabrique und eichel _caffee handlung_”—a chicory and acorn coffee-manufactory. As the latter beverage at least was a novelty to us, we entered the premises and explored the rude manufactory. Attending a huge revolving cylinder, something like a gas-retort, stood one unclean workman, while on the floor at his feet was a heap of dirty half-charred rubbish, which we learned was the roasted chicory. Watching another machine, from which streamed a tiny rivulet of coarse brown powder, stood a boy, who, with the master, completed the staff of the establishment. The one machine roasted and the other ground the materials, while place and people were of the untidiest kind. We saw and bought samples of both varieties of so-called coffee. The chicory, as the master told us without any reserve, was made up half of chicory and half of turnips, roasted and ground together. The latter admixture made it sweeter. The acorn coffee, made from acorns roasted and ground, was made, he said, and sold in large quantities. It was very cheap, was given especially to children, and was substituted for coffee in many public establishments for the young. This may be done with a medicinal rather than an economical view, as acorn coffee finds a place in the Prussian and other German pharmacopœias, and is considered to have a wholesome effect upon the blood, especially of scrofulous persons. It is, however, manufactured and used in many parts of Germany for the sole purpose of adulterating genuine coffee, and it has been imported into this country for the same purpose, chiefly, we believe, from Hamburg.

It is very interesting, in an economico-physiological point of view, to mark and trace the historical changes which take place in the diet and beverages of nations. The potato came from the west, and by diffusing itself over Europe has changed the daily diet, the yearly agriculture, and the social habits of whole kingdoms. Tea came from the east, and has equally changed the drinks, the tastes, the bodily habits and cravings, and we believe also very materially the intellectual character and general mental and bodily temperament, of probably a hundred millions of men, who now consume it in Europe and America. Coffee, coming in like manner from the east, has in some countries of Europe turned domestic life, we may say, literally out of doors. The coffee-house and living in public have in France and elsewhere superseded the domestic circle and the quiet amenities of the home hearth. And now, to succeed and supersede both coffee and tea, we are ourselves in the west now growing and manufacturing chicory, which in its turn is destined materially to alter the taste, and probably to change the constitution, and thus to affect the mental habits, dispositions, and tendencies of the people who consume it. In chemical composition, and consequent physiological action upon the system, this substance differs essentially from tea and coffee, and, whether for good or for evil, it must gradually produce a change of temperament which we cannot at present specially predict,—that is to say, if the consumption spread and increase as it has done in recent years. For, little comparatively as we have yet heard of this plant in England, the European consumption of chicory, mixed and unmixed, amounts already to not much less than one hundred millions of pounds.

Between Brussels and Berlin, when seen on a Sunday, much difference will strike the English traveller. He is now in a Protestant country; and though the bill-sticker announces balls and concerts, and open theatres for the evening, yet the Sunday mornings are quiet in the streets, and the bustle of business or of holiday pleasures in no offensive way obtrudes itself upon the attention. The tendency also, during the present reign, is to make the observance of the day more strict still, though there, of course, as at home, opposition shows itself, and diverse opinions prevail. Among the four hundred and sixty thousand inhabitants of Berlin, there are comparatively few Roman Catholics. Two churches and a chapel are all the places of public worship they possess; and hence the passing to and fro of priestly vestments as we walk the streets does not strike the eye here as it does in Brussels.

But at a time like this, politics are likely to be talked of in the military capital of Prussia quite as much as either religion or science. As to the Russian question, three main things, difficult to reconcile, embarrass the Prussian policy. The people hate Russia—barely tolerate the supposed sympathy of the court of Berlin with that of St Petersburg—and would not suffer the King to take part with the Czar. Then both court and people equally hate and distrust the French. They fear to be robbed of their Rhenish Provinces by a sudden incursion from France; and that, were Prussia once engaged in a struggle with Russia, the occasion would be too favourable for the French to resist. The life of Louis Napoleon is uncertain, his death would be followed by a revolution, and this very probably by war upon their neighbours. With England they would unite, but they cannot cordially do so with a country they talk of as fickle and faithless France. And as a third main element in the question comes the jealousy of Austria. Berlin and Vienna watch each the motions of the other. If the one were to commit itself, the course of the other would be clear; but so long as neither feels that it can heartily trust in France or safely defy Russia, a union between the two on a German basis, equally anti-Russian and anti-French, such as has recently been announced, seems the only safe solution possible. But cool reasoning on probabilities and situations is not to be expected from a Prussian more than from an Englishman—less, perhaps, from the former than the latter, since, in Prussia, patriotism is always associated with more or less of that military feeling and ardour with which a three years’ service in the army more or less inoculates all; and still less can it be expected from an unstable and wavering Prussian King, whom sympathy, more than duty, bends and binds.

Among the items in Berlin newspapers which daily amused us more than their politics, were the marriage advertisements which have their constant corner in the _Berliner Intelligenz Blatt_. Here is a bit of conceit. “A man in his thirtieth year wishes to marry. To ladies who possess a fortune of four to five thousand dollars or upwards, and who have no objections to become acquainted with persons of good character, I hereby give the opportunity to send in their addresses to,” &c. &c. Side by side with this we have—“An active and respectable widow, about thirty years of age, who has a secure pension, wishes to connect herself in marriage with a man of business, and requests in all negotiations the most inviolable secresy. Addresses to be sent,” &c. &c. Some of the ardent male candidates for connubial bliss put forth the melting plea that they want to marry, but have no female acquaintances; while the females, on the other hand, urge that they have no protectors, and in these piteous circumstances both sexes find an excuse for making their wishes known through the public prints.

But we linger, not unnaturally perhaps, but somewhat long for our narrative, in the city of Berlin. The passports are again _viséd_, however, and stowed away in our safest pocket, the trumpet sounds anew, and we are off to Stettin. Through flats and sands and moors as before, and occasional patches of pine forest, we pass for the most part of the way. Here and there a stretch of poor corn-land breaks upon the monotony, and occasional undulations of the surface confine the view. But no home-like fences divide the land, nor signs of comfort make up for the natural nakedness and repulsive aspect of the bleak-looking country. This character of the land and landscape prevails both east and west along the southern shores of the Baltic Sea, not only in Prussia, but in the Danish appendages of Holstein and Sleswick, and across to the mouth of the Elbe. Yet there are some so little experienced in the features of a fair landscape, or so patriotically blind, or so poetically disposed by nature, as to see beauties even in these unpromising countries, and to derive a pleasure from passing through them which the majority of travellers can scarcely appreciate. Madame Pfeiffer crossed this tract of country on her way from Hamburg through Holstein to Kiel, in which route we also remember sands and heaths somewhat less forbidding than those which intervene between Ungernsunde and Stettin. This matter-of-fact old lady, who was already beyond the age of poetry, thus speaks of what she saw and heard as she glided along—

“The whole distance of seventy miles was passed in three hours; a
rapid journey, but agreeable only by its rapidity. The whole
neighbourhood presents only widely-extended plains, turf bogs, and
moorlands, sandy places and heaths, interspersed with a little meadow
and arable land. From the nature of the soil, the water in the ditches
and fields looked black as ink.”

And then, in the way of reflection, she adds—

“The little river Eider would have passed unnoticed by me, had not
some of my fellow-passengers made a great feature of it. In the finest
countries, I have found the natives far less enthusiastic about what
was really grand and beautiful, than they were here in praise of what
was neither the one nor the other. My neighbour, a very agreeable
lady, was untiring in her laudation of her beautiful native land. In
her eyes, the crippled wood was a splendid park, the waste moorland an
inexhaustible field for contemplation, and every trifle a matter of
real importance. In my heart I wished her joy of her fervid
imagination; but, unfortunately, my colder nature would not catch the
infection.”[33]

This region, so tiresome to the eye, is yet interesting to the student of the pre-historic condition of this vast flat region. Covered everywhere with a deep layer of drifted materials, which consist, for the most part, of sand, sometimes of gravel, and more rarely of clay, no rocks are seen _in situ_ for thousands of square miles. But strewed, now on the surface, now at depths of two or three feet, and now beneath fifty or sixty feet of sand or gravel, lie countless blocks of foreign stone, of every size, from that of the fort to that of a small house. These the waters of the once larger Baltic brought down ages ago from the rocky cliffs of the Finnish and Bothnian gulfs. During that very recent geological epoch which immediately preceded the occupation of the country by living races, these flats of North Germany, as far south and east as the mountains of Silesia, were covered by the waters of the Baltic Sea. Yearly over this sea the northern ice drifted, bearing with it blocks of granite and other old rocks as it floated southward, dropping masses here and there by the way as the ice-ships melted before the summer sun. But in greater numbers they bore them to the shores on which the ice floes stranded and strewed them in heaps along the flanks of the Silesian hills. Hence now, when the land has risen above the sea, the huge stones so transported, age after age, are found at every step, if not on the very surface, yet always at some small depth beneath the sand, or gravel, or clay, or in the deep peat which covers so much of the wide area. And, piled up in heaps on the slopes of the Silesian mountains, at heights of nine hundred to twelve hundred feet, the traveller wonders to see the same distant-borne strangers, unlike any of the living rocks on which they rest, and which talk intelligibly to the geologist of their ancient homes in the frozen wilds of Scandinavia.

Admired by the students of pre-historic physical geography, these boulder-stones are prized and sought for by the inhabitants of this wide tract of rockless plains. Though hard and intractable beneath the chisel and hammer, these hard granitic and metamorphic masses are the only durable building materials which are within their reach. Hence all solid constructions are formed of them, and the houses of wood generally stand on a substratum of these more lasting stones. In this way the traveller sees them employed in town, village, and farm. Palace, fortress, and cottage are equally indebted to the antediluvian icebergs of the old-world Baltic. And thus near the ancient towns, and wherever frequent people live, few of the unmoved boulders catch the traveller’s eye as he rides over the unenclosed plains around them. But they occur singly, in groups, and in rapid succession, when he penetrates to the less-peopled interior, or explores the primeval forests, or where railway cuttings dip deeply into the drift, or clay-beds are worked for economical purposes, as we see them in the vicinity of Berlin.

Stettin, well known to our Baltic merchants and shipowners, and famed among the fortresses of Germany, stands near the mouth of the Oder—where the river, escaping from the long flats through which it has wound its slow way, is about to expand into a broad lake. This lake, called the Haaf, would in reality be a wide firth or arm of the sea, were it not that its mouth is blocked up by the islands of Usedom and Wollin, which leaves three channels for the escape of the waters of the Oder. The central channel, called the Swine, is the deepest and most used; but all are difficult and narrow, and easy of defence against attacks by sea. The Silesian commerce has its principal outlet by the Oder, which connects Stettin with Frankfort-on-the-Oder and with Breslau. Above the town of Stettin, for the two or three last miles, the river winds, and again and again returns upon itself, through the almost perfect flat—and even throws off several small arms, which flow to the Haaf through channels of their own, before the main stream passes the city. To look down upon these windings from the tower of the old palace, when the bright morning sun rests upon the valley, reminded us of the winding Forth, as it is seen by thousands yearly from the beautiful summits of our well-beloved Ochil Hills. Beyond this distance the whole valley on either side is hemmed in by a lofty natural embankment of sand and gravel, the ancient limits of the Haaf when the land was lower and its waters covered the whole flat. The embankment which thus girdles the valley, and skirts at a distance the river flanks, consists for the most part of a ridge of ancient downs, such as we see on our own sandy shores where sea-born winds blow often inland; which hide Flemish towns and steeples from the eyes of the passing sailor; and which in Holland occur far from the modern shores, telling how widely in former times the sea asserted her dominion. Through this amphitheatre of sandy ridges the river forces its way into the flat valley; and it is the natural strength which the ridge possesses on the right bank, where the town now stands, of which art has taken advantage in erecting the strong fortifications which make Stettin the key of Pomerania. In the city itself there is not much to see even in summer. At the time of our visit the river was frozen up, some inches of snow covered the ground, the people had already commenced the winter amusements to which snowy climates offer so many inducements, and a single day was enough to satisfy our taste for sight-seeing. The rumours of war here, as elsewhere, were agitating the Prussian population. The course that our Government might take naturally touched very nearly the interests of a city which, by its commerce, was concerned for the openness of the sea to its ships; which, as a fortress of the first class, was liable to bombardment and siege in the event of hostilities by land; and which, by its nearness to the Russian territory, was so likely to be assailed should war commence. House property in the city was said to have already fallen much in value, and commercial speculation for the time was in a great measure paralysed.

But we were bound for West Prussia. We had a desire to see the manners and _manège_ upon an old Prussian barony, where an ancient schloss still overlooks lake, field, and forest, and a numerous peasantry, though not bound like serfs to the soil, still pay so many days of bodily toil for the house and land which they hold of the lord. By the Posen railway, therefore, we left Stettin, and in four hours reached Woldenburg, whence four hours more by extra post brought us to the village of Tütz. Here a welcome awaited us from our friends in the old palace, while a natural interest, not unmixed with a little wonder, recommended us to the kind consideration of the villagers. Many of these simple people had never before seen a real live John Bull, and could not help suspecting a connection of some sort between the visit of “die zwei Englander” and the rumours of war which even in this secluded spot were already agitating their minds.

The lands attached to the old schloss in which we found ourselves, were in former times very extensive. When there were Dukes of Brandenburg, the lord of the place, it is said, was wont to go to war with his neighbours; on one occasion, when taken prisoner, he was obliged to ransom himself by ceding to the duke a large forest, which is still the property of the Crown. But the castle has passed through several hands since, and the whole estate now includes only twenty thousand acres, worth in fee about £30,000. Of these, about nine thousand are in forest, chiefly pine, four thousand in lakes and bogs, four thousand in arable culture, and three thousand rented in farms. These divisions include a considerable quantity of pasture and meadow land, and on the edge of the forests the sheep find food in summer. The soil is generally light and sandy, with a bed of clay marl at a greater or less depth below. The custom of the Prussian proprietors is to farm their own land, and thus they have extensive establishments, and carry on various branches of rural economy. The timber is felled, and either sold on the spot to merchants who come from a distance to buy, or is split up into billets and sent to the large towns for firewood; or, where a shipping place is accessible, is sawn into balks (_balken_) suitable for the English market. The pines are principally Scotch firs (_Pinus sylvaticus_); and here and there at the outskirts, or in the open glades of the forest, are seen magnificent trees of this species throwing out picturesque old arms, such as at times arrest the eye and step of the traveller in our Scottish highlands. Such he may see, for instance, on the borders of Loch Tula—the straggling relics of what were great forests in the days of our forefathers.

The arable land is chiefly under rye, of which great breadths are occasionally seen without fences or divisions. Already, where the snow had melted, the surface of these rye-fields was beautifully green. The average yield scarcely exceeds twenty bushels an acre, and it is often very much less. Were the labour and manure expended upon half the land, the profit, as our own experience has shown, would on the whole be much increased. Few root crops are grown, and these only on the low, black, and boggy land. The manures employed are what is made by the cattle and sheep, marl, black earth (_moder_) from the peaty bottoms, the pine leaves which are collected in the forests, and are known under the name of _waldstrew_ (forest straw), and the wood and peaty ashes from their fires. It is common to grow rape for the seed; and then the proprietor, if he has the means, erects a crushing-mill, uses the cake for his cattle, and sells the oil. Of rape-cake it is usual to give about a quarter of a pound a-day to the horses—their other food being oats, pease, and rye, mixed in equal quantities, and given three times a-day with chopped straw _ad libitum_. Of his potatoes the lord makes brandy, and feeds his stock on the refuse which remains in the still. Thus, he is a distiller as well as an oil-crusher, and a distillery in most parts of Germany is a usual appendage to the farm. Only very small, usually waxy, potatoes are retained for table use, the large and mealy ones being given either to the pigs or to the brandy-maker. Then the lakes yield their share of revenue. They are fished in winter, with nets introduced through holes in the ice; and the take from the lakes in this quarter is sent to the market of Berlin. Thus the lord is a fish-merchant also. Some proprietors, again, begrudge the waste of wood ashes upon the land; and as these readily melt into glass, another way of adding to the revenue is to build a glass-house. Hence many small glass-houses are scattered about in the midst of the forests, and another complication is added to the affairs and the manifold accounts of the North Prussian landlord. If he possess a bed of good marl, he burns it into lime with his waste timber, and both sells and uses it. If he find good clay, he makes bricks and coarse pottery. Thus he attempts to develop everything, to turn everything into money. He is the sole capitalist. There is no division of labour. He monopolises all trades and wholesale commerce. He has large concerns, various establishments, numerous servants, intricate accounts, and withal, as we Englanders would expect, it is only one man here and there who makes things yearly better, and finally enriches himself. Thus the Prussian aristocracy are livers in the country, full of affairs, rarely reside in Berlin, and at the most come for a month or two to apartments in a hotel, and attend a few state balls and receptions given by the royal family, and return again to their country habits. Amid the limited society of the unproductive sandy plains these habits not unfrequently degenerate.

Upon this estate two farms were let to tenants. We visited one of them. It was let on a lease for fifteen years, contained 2000 acres of corn-land, and 550 of meadow. The rent was 1800 dollars in money, 200 in kind, and about 500 in taxes—in all, about 2500 dollars, or a dollar (3s.) an acre. The tenant had upon it 800 sheep, 14 cows, 18 draught-oxen, and 10 horses. Twelve families of labourers were lodged upon the farm, and extra labour was employed as required. Everything in the way of stock and implements was defective. The sheep are kept under cover in the winter. They are fed on hay, the breeding ewes receiving, besides, chopped turnips and carrots. The sheep-houses, both here and elsewhere, we found to be warm and comfortable. The lord worked his own land with 64 horses and 76 draught-oxen, and had a yearly increasing flock of sheep, amounting at present to 4500.

The farm labourers are but poorly off. Those who live on the farm (the _hausinnen_) receive for the man’s wage four silver groschen, and for the woman’s three silver groschen a-day. (Five silver groschen make an English sixpence.) They have a house, for which each of them, the man and woman, must pay two days a week in summer, one day and a half in autumn, and half a day in the three first months of the year. They are allowed also two acres of corn-land, and a third of an acre for a garden. They have pasture for a cow, and are permitted to cut the inferior wood on the heath for fuel, and to gather the pine-needles from the forest for manure. Day-labourers, not resident on the farm, receive 5 silver groschen a-day—the unhappy sixpence of our Irish peasant.

There are on the outside, and here and there indenting the large estate, numerous small properties of from five to eighty acres, formerly belonging to the lord, and many of them owing him still a yearly acknowledgment. These people, though in a sense independent, yet upon such land are generally poor. They keep one or two horses, or two cows, to plough their light sandy soil, from three to thirty sheep, and a few pigs. With a single horse a man will work his farm of forty or fifty acres. Milk is their principal diet, and many never eat meat once a year, unless it be a bit of their own home-fed pork.

In this part of Prussia the people are nearly all Roman Catholics. Most of the traffic is in the hands of Jews. Each sect has its own place of worship and its own school in the village. The Roman Catholic priest is nominated by the lord, and the evangelical minister and the Jewish rabbi must both be approved by him. There are six schools on the estate, which are under government inspection, and of which the salaries of the masters are paid by the estate. Religious instruction is not excluded from the schools, but each denomination has here at least its own school. The sectarian spirit is very bitter, especially on the part of the ignorant Romanists, against the evangelicals, whose church had gone down, but has lately been rebuilt, very much to the dissatisfaction of the dominant party. Hence, though Protestant children are sometimes found in the Romanist school, the contrary is never the case. On occasion of our visit, a grander display than usual was got up by the priest in honour of the English visitors of our host. The village Schüzerei, sixty strong, marched up on the Sunday morning, with music and banners, to escort us to church. The whole population had turned out to see the strangers. The church was crowded to suffocation; and to identify himself with the occasion, the priest got up a religious procession through and around the church. First went so many of the sharpshooters, carrying their muskets; next a party bearing the Virgin and Child under a canopy; then the Herrschaft from the schloss, with lighted candles in their hands; then the priest with the Host under a large canopy, borne by four men; and the procession was closed by the remainder of the armed Schüzer, and by men and women in great numbers from the congregation. Coming out at the west end of the church, it marched northwards round the church, through six inches of untrodden snow; and when the head of the procession again reached the west end, the priest stopped, and with him the people. He then elevated the Host, when down went men and women, all in adoration, kneeling in the cold snow. Our travelling-companion, who had never assisted at a Roman Catholic service, had accompanied the party to church, not knowing what awaited him, and he was indeed mortified when he found himself unintentionally, and from the goodness of his nature, involved in such an act of worship.

While the party were absent at church, we walked to an adjoining round hill for the purpose of enjoying the view, when, in a thin plantation which partially covered it, we stumbled upon the Jewish burying-ground. Scattered among the trees, here and there stood on end slabs of granite and other hard rock, split from the boulder-stones of which we have already spoken; and on the flat faces of these were graven large, beautifully clear, deeply cut, Hebrew characters, bearing, no doubt, the names and commemorating the virtues of the dead, and expressing the love and sorrow of the living. In this far-off region the lonely Hebrew graves, so far from the homes of the once-favoured people, recalled to our minds those distant days when the Euphrates saw them weeping disconsolate, and the oppressor, as now in Poland and its borders, treating them with contumely and despite.

“By the rivers of Babylon there we sat down; yea, we wept when we
remembered Zion. We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst
thereof.

“For there they that carried us away captive required of us a song,
and they that wasted us, mirth. Sing us one of the songs of Zion.

“How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?

“If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, may my right hand forget her cunning.

“If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my
mouth; if I prefer not Jerusalem above my chief joy.”

It is very remarkable to find three millions of Jews settled in this portion of Europe. It may have been that, in former ages, when the Roman Church persecuted them so madly, they found greater peace and safety near the limits of the Eastern and Western churches, where the power of both was somewhat lessened; but certainly, in modern times, the two million two hundred thousand who are subjects of the Czar might readily find a more comfortable home.

Among other things which will amuse the Englishman in Germany, and, if, like ourselves, he refreshes himself at times with a cup of good tea, may perchance annoy him occasionally, is the kind of beverage he will obtain under this name. In the hotels we had often experienced this, and we expected to have our tea weak enough in the schloss also. But a refinement we had heard of, but never met, here presented itself in the form of a tiny bottle of rum, which was handed round with the sugar and cream to give a flavour to the tea! This contrivance for giving the tea some taste and flavour, so much less simple, one would suppose, than adding more of the pure leaf, is common in other parts of Germany besides West Prussia. Here is a humorous passage from a recent work of fiction by a German baroness, which illustrates very graphically the Teutonic notions about tea-drinking.

“At this moment Walburg exclaimed, ‘The water boils!’ and they all
turned towards the hearth. ‘How much tea shall I put into the
tea-pot?’ asked Madame Berger, appealing to Hamilton.

‘The more you put in the better it will be,’ answered Hamilton,
without moving.

‘Shall I put in all that is in this paper?’

Hamilton nodded, and the tea was made.

‘Ought it not to boil a little now?’

‘By no means.’

‘Perhaps,’ said Walburg, ‘a little piece of vanille would improve the
taste.’

‘On no account,’ said Hamilton.

‘The best thing to give it a flavour is rum,’ observed Madame Berger.

‘I forbid the rum, though I must say the idea is not bad,’ said
Hamilton, laughing.

Hildegarde put the tea-pot on a little tray, and left the kitchen just
as her stepmother entered it.

His tea was unanimously praised, but Madame Rosenberg exhibited some
natural consternation on hearing that the whole contents of her paper
cornet, with which she had expected to regale her friends at least
half-a-dozen times, had been inconsiderately emptied at once into the
tea-pot!

‘It was no wonder the tea was good! English tea, indeed! Any one could
make tea after that fashion! But then, to be sure, English people
never thought about what anything cost. For her part, she found the
tea bitter, and recommended a spoonful or two of rum.’ On her
producing a little green bottle, the company assembled around her with
their tea-cups, and she administered to each one two or three
spoonfuls as they desired.”[34]

Here our limits compel us to stop. After staying a few days at Tütz we returned upon our steps, again saw our friends at Berlin, thence came to Cologne in one day, to Ghent the second, and to London the third. We fell in with the Peace deputies on their way from St Petersburg, and divers other accidents happened to us which our most patient readers will thank us for passing by.

THE NATIONAL LIFE OF CHINA.