Chapter IV: Part I: In Three Dialogues (2)

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

MEDON.

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

ALDA.

Yes, I know that with her lively egotism and Parisian volubility, she stunned Schiller and teased Goethe: but while our estimate of _manner_ may be allowed to be relative and comparative, our estimate of _character_ should be positive and abstract. Madame de Staël was in manner the Frenchwoman, accustomed to be the cynosure of a salon, but she was not ridiculous or egoiste in character. She was, to use Schlegel's expression, "femme grande et magnanime jusque dans les replis de son âme." The best proof is the very spirit in which she viewed Germany, in spite of all her natural and national prejudices. To apply your own expression, she went forth, in the spirit of peace, and brought back, not only an olive leaf, but a whole tree, and it has flourished. She had a universal mind. I believe she never thought, and still less _made_, any one ridiculous in her life.[8]

At Bonn much of my time was spent in intimate and almost hourly intercourse with two friends, one of whom I have already mentioned to you--a rare creature!--the other, who was herself the daughter of a distinguished authoress,[9] was one of the most generally accomplished women I ever met with. Opposed to each other in the constitution of their minds--in all their views of literature and art, and all their experience of life--in their tastes, and habits, and feelings--yet mutually appreciating each other: both were distinguished by talents of the highest order and by great originality of character, and both were German, and very essentially _German_: English society and English education would never have produced two such women. Their conversation prepared me to form correct ideas of what I was to see and hear, and guarded me against the mistakes and hasty conclusions of vivacious travellers. At Bonn I also saw, for the first time, a specimen of the fresco painting, lately revived in Germany with such brilliant success. By command of the Prussian Board of Education the hall of the university of Bonn is to be painted in fresco, and the work has been entrusted to C. Hermann, Götzenberger, and Förster--all, I believe, pupils of Cornelius. The three sides of the hall are to represent the three faculties--Theology, Jurisprudence, and Philosophy; the first of these is finished, and here is an engraving of it. You see Theology is throned in the centre. The four evangelists, with St. Peter and St. Paul, stand on the steps of the throne; around her are the fathers and doctors of the church, and (which is the chief novelty of the composition) grouped together with a very liberal disregard to all religious differences; for there you see pope Gregory, and Ignatius Loyola, and St. Bernard, and Abelard, and Dante; and here we have Luther, and Melanchthon, and Calvin, and Wickliff, and Huss. On the opposite side of the hall, Philosophy, under which head are comprised all science, poetry, and art, is represented surrounded by the great poets, philosophers, and artists, from Homer, Aristotle, and Phideas, down to Shakspeare, Raffaelle, Goethe, and Kant. Jurisprudence, which is not begun, is to occupy the third side. The cartoons pleased me better than the paintings, for the drawing and grouping are really fine; but the execution struck me as somewhat hard and mannered. I shall have much to say hereafter of the fresco painting in Germany; for the present, proceed we on our journey.

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

MEDON.

Truly, I forget.

ALDA.

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

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

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

Another beautiful picture, which, merely as a picture, has dwelt on my remembrance, was the city of Coblentz and the fort of Ehrenbreitstein, as viewed from the bridge of boats under a cloudless moon. The city, with its fantastic steeples and masses of building, relieved against the clear deep blue of the summer sky--the lights which sparkled in the windows reflected in the broad river, and the various forms and tall masts of the craft anchored above and opposite--the huge hill, with its tiara of fortifications, which, in the sunshine and in the broad day, had disappointed me by its formality, now seen under the soft moonlight, as its long lines of architecture and abrupt angles were projected in brightness or receded in shadow, had altogether a most sublime effect. But _apropos_ to moonlights and pictures--of all the enchanted and enchanting scenes ever lighted by the full round moon, give me Heidelberg! Not the Colosseum of Rome--neither in itself, nor yet in Lord Byron's description, and I have both by heart--can be more grand; and in moral interest, in poetical associations, in varying and wondrous beauty, the castle of Heidelberg has the advantage. In the course of many visits, Heidelberg became to me familiar as the face of a friend, and its remembrance still "haunts me as a passion." I have known it under every changeful aspect which the seasons, and the hours, and the changeful moods of my own mind, could lend it. I have seen it when the sun, rising over the Geisberg, first kindled the vapours as they floated away from the old towers, and when the ivy and the wreathed verdure on the walls sparkled with dewy light: and I have seen it when its huge black masses stood against the flaming sunset; and its enormous shadow, flung down the chasm beneath, made it night there, while daylight lingered around and above. I have seen it when mantled in all the bloom and foliage of summer, and when the dead leaves were heaped on the paths, and choked the entrance to many a favourite nook. I have seen it when crowds of gay visitors flitted along its ruined terraces,[12] and music sounded near; and with friends, whose presence endeared every pleasure; and I have walked alone round its desolate precincts, with no companions but my own sad and troubled thoughts. I have seen it when clothed in calm and glorious moonlight. I have seen it when the winds rushed shrieking through its sculptured halls, and when grey clouds came rolling down the mountains, folding it in their ample skirts from the view of the city below. And what have I seen to liken to it by night or by day, in storm or in calm, in summer or in winter! Then its historical and poetical associations--

MEDON.

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

ALDA.

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

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

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

MEDON.

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

ALDA.

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

MEDON.

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

ALDA.

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

MEDON.

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

ALDA.

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

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

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

For how many ages will you men exclaim against the mischiefs and miseries, caused by the influence of women; thus allowing the influence, yet taking no thought how to make that influence a means of good, instead of an instrument of evil!

Elizabeth had brought with her from England some luxurious tastes, as yet unknown in the palatinate; she had been familiarized with the dramas of Shakspeare and Fletcher, and she had figured in the masques of Ben Jonson. To gratify her, Frederic added to the castle of Heidelberg the theatre and banqueting-room, and all that beautiful group of buildings at the western angle, the ruins of which are still called the _English palace_. She had inherited from her grandmother, or had early imbibed from education, a love of nature and of amusements in the open air, and a passion for gardening; and it was to please her, and under her auspices, that Frederic planned those magnificent gardens, which were intended to unite within their bounds, all that nature could contribute or art devise; had they been completed, they would have rendered Heidelberg a pleasure-palace, fit for fairy-land. Nor were those designs unworthy of a prosperous and pacific sovereign, whose treasury was full, whose sway was just and mild, whose people had long enjoyed in tranquillity the fruits of their own industry. When I had the pleasure of spending a few days with the Schlossers, at their beautiful seat on the Necker, (Stift Neuburg,) I went over the ground with Madame de Schlosser, who had seen and studied the original plans. Her description of the magnitude and the sumptuous taste of these unfinished designs, while we stood together amid a wilderness of ruins, was a commentary on the vicissitudes of this world, worth fifty moral treatises, and as many sermons.

"For in the wreck of IS and WAS,
Things incomplete and purposes betray'd,
Make sadder transits o'er Truth's mystic glass,
Than noblest objects utterly decay'd."

Close to the ruins of poor Elizabeth's palace, there where the effigies of her handsome husband, and his bearded ancestor Louis V. look down from the ivy-mantled wall, you remember the beautiful terrace towards the west? It is still,--after four centuries of changes, of disasters, of desolation,--the garden of Clara. When Frederic the Victorious assumed the sovereignty, in a moment of danger and faction, he took, at the same time, a solemn vow never to marry, that the rights of his infant nephew, the son of the late palatine, should not be prejudiced, nor the peace of the country endangered by a disputed succession. He kept his oath religiously, but at that very time he loved Clara Dettin de Wertheim, a young girl of plebeian origin, and a native of Augsburg, whose musical talents and melody of voice had raised her to a high situation in the court of the late princess palatine. Frederick, with the consent of his nephew, was united to Clara by a left-hand marriage, an expedient still in use in Germany, and, I believe, peculiar to its constitution; such a marriage is valid before God and man, yet the wife has no acknowledged rights, and the offspring no supposed existence. Clara is celebrated by the poets and chroniclers of her time, and appears to have been a very extraordinary being in her way. In that age of ignorance, she had devoted herself to study--she could sympathize in her husband's pursuits, and share the toils of government--she collected round her the wisest and most learned men of the time--she continued to cultivate the beautiful voice which had won the heart of Frederic, and her song and her lute were always ready to soothe his cares. Tradition points out the spot where it is said she loved to meditate, and, looking down upon the little hamlet, on the declivity of the hill, to recall her own humble origin; that little hamlet, embowered in foliage, and the remembrance of Clara, have survived the glories of Heidelberg. Her descendants became princes of the empire, and still exist in the family of Lowenstein.

Then, for those who love the marvellous, there is the wild legend of the witch Jetta, who still flits among the ruins, and bathes her golden tresses in the Wolfsbrunnen; but why should I tell you of these tales--you, whose head is a sort of black-letter library?

MEDON.

True; but it is pleasant to have one's old recollections taken down from their shelves and dusted, and placed in a new light; only do not require, even if I again visit Heidelberg, that I should see it as you have beheld it, with your quick spirit of association, and clothed in the hues of your own individual mind. While you speak, it is not so much the places and objects you describe, as their reflection in your own fancy, which I see before me; and every different mind will reflect them under a different aspect. Then, where is truth? you say. If we want information as to mere facts--the situation of a town, the measurement of a church, the date of a ruin, the catalogue of a gallery--we can go to our dictionaries and our _guides des voyageurs_. But if, besides form and outline, we must have colouring too, we should remember that every individual mind will paint the scene with its own proper hues; and if we judge of the mind and the objects it represents relatively to each other, we may come at the truth, not otherwise. I would ask nothing of a traveller, but accuracy and sincerity in the expression of his opinions and feelings. I have then a page out of the great book of human nature--the portrait of a particular mind; when that is fairly before me I have a standard by which to judge: I can draw my own inferences. Will you not allow that it is possible to visit Heidelberg, and to derive the most intense pleasure from its picturesque beauty, without dreaming over witches and warriors, palatines and princes? Can we not admire and appreciate the sculpture in the palace of Otho-Henry, without losing ourselves in vague, wondering reveries over the destinies of the sculptors?

ALDA.

Yes; but it is amusing, and not less instructive, to observe the manner in which the individual character and pursuits shall modify the impressions of external things; only we should be prepared for this, as the pilot makes allowance for the variation of the needle, and directs his course accordingly. It is a mistake to suppose that those who cannot see the imaginative aspect of things, see, therefore, the only true aspect; they only see one aspect of the truth. _Vous étes orfêvre, Monsieur Josse_, is as applicable to travellers as to every other species of egotist.

Once, in an excursion to the north, I fell into conversation with a Sussex farmer, one of that race of sturdy, rich, and independent English yeomen, of which I am afraid few specimens remain: he was quite a character in his way. I must sketch him for you; but only Miss Mitford could do him justice. His coat was of the finest broad-cloth; his shirt-frill, in which was stuck a huge agate pin, and his neckcloth, were both white as the snow; his good beaver shone in all its pristine gloss, and an enormous bunch of gold seals adorned his watch-chain; his voice was loud and dictatorial, and his language surprisingly good and flowing, though tinctured with a little coarseness and a few provincialisms. He had made up his mind about the Reform Bill--the Catholic Question--the Corn Laws--and about things in general, and things in particular; he had doubts about nothing: it was evident that he was accustomed to lay down the law in his own village--that he was the tyrant of his own fire-side--that his wife was "his horse, his ox, his ass, his any thing," while his sons went to college, and his daughters played on the piano. London was to him merely a vast congregation of pestilential vapours--a receptacle of thieves, cut-throats and profligates--a place in which no sensible man, who had a care for his life, his health, or his pockets, would willingly set his foot; he thanked God that he never spent but two nights in the metropolis, and at intervals of twenty-seven years: the first night he had passed in the streets, in dread of fire and vermin; and on the last occasion, he had not ventured beyond Smithfield. What he did not know, was to him not worth knowing; and the word _French_, which comprised all that was foreign, he used as a term, expressing the most unbounded abhorrence, pity, and contempt. I should add, that though rustic, and arrogant, and prejudiced, he was not vulgar. We were at an inn, on the borders of Leicestershire, through which we had both recently travelled; my farmer was enthusiastic in his admiration of the country. "A fine country, madam--a beautiful country--a splendid country!"

"Do you call it a fine country?" said I, absently, my head full of the Alps and Appenines, the Pyrenean, and the river Po.

"To be sure I do; and where would you see a finer?"

"I did not see any thing very picturesque," said I.

"_Picturesque!_" he repeated with some contempt; "I don't know what _you_ call picturesque; but _I_ say, give me a soil, that when you turn it up you have something for your pains; the fine soil makes the fine country, madam!"

SKETCHES OF ART, LITERATURE AND CHARACTER.

II.

MEDON.

I observed the other evening, that in making a sort of imaginative bound from Coblentz to Heidelberg, you either skipped over Frankfort, or left it on one side.

ALDA.

Did I?--if I had done _either_, in my heart or my memory, I had been most ungrateful; but I thought you knew Frankfort well.

MEDON.

I was there for two days, on my way to Switzerland, and it rained the whole time from morning till night. I have a vision in my mind of dirty streets, chilly houses, dull shops, dingy-looking Jews, dripping umbrellas, luxurious hotels, and exorbitant charges,--and this is all I can recollect of Frankfort.

ALDA.

Indeed!--I pity you. To me it was associated only with pleasant feelings, and, in truth, it is a pleasant place. Life, there, appears in a very attractive costume: not in a half-holiday, half-beggarly garb, as at Rome and Naples; nor in a thin undress of superficial decency as at Berlin; nor in a court domino, hiding, we know not what--as at Vienna and Munich; nor half motley, half military, as at Paris; nor in rags and embroidery, as in London; but at Frankfort all the outside at least is fair, substantial, and consistent. The shops vie in splendour with those of London and Paris; the principal streets are clean, the houses spacious and airy, and there is a general appearance of cheerfulness and tranquillity, mingled with the luxury of wealth and the bustle of business, which, after the misery, and murmuring, and bitterness of faction, we had left in London, was really a relief to the spirits. It is true, that during my last two visits, this apparent tranquillity concealed a good deal of political ferment. The prisons were filled with those unfortunate wretches who had endeavoured to excite a popular tumult against the Prussian and Austrian governments. The trials were going forward every day, but not a syllable of the result transpired beyond the walls of the Römer Saal. Although the most reasonable and liberal of the citizens agreed in condemning the rashness and folly of these young men, the tide of feeling was evidently in their favour: for instance, it was not the _fashion_ to invite the Prussian officers, and I well remember that when Goethe's Egmont was announced at the theatre, it was forbidden by the magistracy, from a fear that certain scenes and passages in that play might call forth some open and decided expression of the public feeling; in fact, only a few evenings before, some passages in the Massaniello had been applied and applauded by the audience, in a manner so _ill-bred_, that the wife of one of the ministers of the Holy Alliance, rose and left her box, followed by some other old women,--male and female. The theatre is rather commodious than splendid; the established company, both for the opera and the regular drama, excellent, and often varied by temporary visits of great actors and singers from the other theatres of Germany. On my first visit to Frankfort, which was during the fair of 1829, Paganini, then in the zenith of his glory, was giving a series of concerts; but do not ask me any thing about him, for it is a worn-out subject, and you know I am not one of the enthusiastic, or even the orthodox, with regard to his merits.

MEDON.

You do not mean--you will not tell me--that with all your love of music, you were insensible to the miraculous powers of that man?

ALDA.

I suppose they were miraculous, as I heard every one say so round me; but I listened to him as to any other musician, for the sake of the pleasure to be derived from music, not for the sake of wondering at difficulties overcome, and impossibilities made possible--they might have remained impossibilities for me. But insensible I was _not_ to the wondrous charm of his tone and expression. I was thrilled, melted, excited, at the moment, but it left no relish on the palate, if I may use the expression. To throw me into such _convulsions_ of enthusiasm, as I saw this man excite here and on the continent, I must have the orchestra with all its various mingling world of sound, or the _divine_ human voice breathing music and passion together; but this is a matter of feeling, habit, education, like all other tastes in art.

I think it was during our third visit to Frankfort that Madame Haitzinger-Neumann was playing the _gast-rolles_, for so they courteously denominate the parts filled by occasional visitors, to whom, as guests, the precedence is always given. Madame Haitzinger is the wife of Haitzinger, the tenor singer, who was in London, and sung in the Fidelio, with Madame Devrient-Schroeder. She is one of the most celebrated actresses in Germany for light comedy, if any comedy in Germany can be called light, in comparison with the same style of acting in France or England. Her figure is rather large--

MEDON.

Like most of the German actresses--for I never yet saw one who had attained to celebrity, who was not much too _embonpoint_ for our ideas of a youthful or sentimental heroine--

ALDA.

Not Devrient-Schroeder?

MEDON.

Devrient is all impassioned grace; but I think that in time even _she_ will be in danger of becoming a little--how shall I express it with sufficient delicacy?--a _little_ too substantial.

ALDA.

No, not if a soul of music and fire, informing a feverish, excitable temperament, which is to the mantling spirit within, what the high-pitched instrument is to the breeze which sweeps over its chords,--not if these can avert the catastrophe; but what if you had seen Mademoiselle Lindner, with a figure like Mrs. Liston's--all but spherical--enacting Fenella and Clärchen?

MEDON.

I should have said, that only a German imagination could stand it! It is one of Madame de Staël's clever aphorisms, that on the stage, "Il faut menager les caprices des yeux avec le plus grand scrupule, car ils peuvent detruire, sans appel tout effet sérieux;" but the Germans do not appear to be subject to these _caprices des yeux_; and have not these fastidious scruples about corporeal grace; for them sentiment, however clumsy, is still sentiment. Perhaps they are in the right.

ALDA.

And Mademoiselle Lindner _has_ sentiment; she must have been a fine actress, and is evidently a favourite with the audience. But to return to Madame Haitzinger;--she is handsome, with a fair complexion, and no very striking expression; but there is a heart and soul, and mellowness in her acting, which is delicious. I could not give you an idea of her manner by a comparison with any of our English actresses, for she is essentially German; she never aimed at making points; she was never broadly arch or comic, but the general effect was as rich as it was true to nature. I saw her in some of her favourite parts: in the comedy of "Stille Wasser sind tief;" (our Rule a Wife and Have a Wife, admirably adapted to the German stage by Schroeder;) in the "Mirandolina," (the famous Locandiera of Goldoni,) and in the pretty lively vaudeville composed for her by Holtei, "Die Wiener in Berlin," in which the popular waltzes and airs, sung in the genuine national spirit, and enjoyed by the audience with a true national zest, delighted us _foreigners_. Herr Becker is an excellent actor in tragedy and high comedy. Of their singers I could not say so much--there were none I should account first-rate, except Dobler, whom you may remember in England.

One of the most delightful peculiarities of Frankfort, one that most struck my fancy, is the public garden, planted on the site of the ramparts; a girdle of verdure and shade--of trees and flowers circling the whole city; accessible to all and on every side,--the promenade of the rich, the solace of the poor. Fifty men are employed to keep it in order, and it is forbidden to steal the flowers, or to kill the singing birds which haunt the shrubberies.

MEDON.

And does this prohibition avail much in a population of sixty thousand persons?

ALDA.

It does generally. A short time before we arrived some mischievous wretch had shot a nightingale, and was caught in the fact. His punishment was characteristic; his hands were tied behind him, and a label setting forth his crime was fixed on his breast: in this guise, with a police officer on each side, he was marched all round the gardens, and made the circuit of the city, pursued by the hisses of the populace and the abhorrent looks of the upper classes; he was not otherwise punished, but he never again made his appearance within the walls of the city. This was the only instance which I could learn of the infraction of a law which might seem at least nugatory.

Of the spacious, magnificent, well-arranged cemetery, its admirable apparatus for restoring suspended animation, and all its beautiful accompaniments and memorials of the dead, there was a long account published in London, at the time that a cemetery was planned for this great overgrown city; and in truth I know not where we could find a better model than the one at Frankfort; it appeared to me perfection.

The institutions at Frankfort, both for charity and education, are numerous as becomes a rich and free city; and those I had an opportunity of examining appeared to me admirably managed. Besides the orphan schools, and the Burger schule, and the school for female education, established and maintained by the wives of the citizens, there are several infant schools, where children of a year old and upwards are nursed, and fed, and kept out of mischief and harm, while their parents are at work. These are also maintained by subscription among the ladies, who take upon them in turns the task of daily superintendence; and I shall not easily forget the gentle-looking, elegant, well-dressed girl, who, defended from the encroachments of dirty little paws by a large apron, sat in the midst of a swarm of thirty or forty babies, (the eldest not four years old,) the very personification of feminine charity! But the hospital for the infirm poor--Das Versorgung Haus--pleased me particularly; 'tis true, that the cost was not a third--what do I say? not a sixth of the expense of some of our institutions for the same purpose. There was no luxury of architecture, nor huge gates shutting in wretchedness, and shutting out hope; nor grated windows; nor were the arrangements on so large a scale as in that splendid edifice, the Hopital des Vieillards, at Brussels;--a house for the poor need not be either a prison or a palace. But here, I recollect, the door opened with a latch; we entered unannounced, as unexpected. Here there was perfect neatness, abundance of space, of air, of light, of water, and also of occupation. I found that, besides the inmates of the place, many poor old creatures, who could not have the facilities or materials for work in their own dwellings, or whose relatives were busied in the daytime, might find here employment of any kind suited to their strength or capacity,--for which, observe, they were paid; thus leaving them to the last possible moment the feeling of independence and usefulness. I observed that many of those who seemed in the last stage of decrepitude had hung round their beds sundry little prints and pictures, and slips of paper, on which were written legibly, texts from scripture, moral sentences, and scraps of poetry. The ward of the superannuated and the sick was at a distance from the working and eating rooms; and all breathed around that peace and quiet which should accompany old age, instead of that "life-consuming din" I _have_ heard in such places. On the pillow of one bed, there was laid by some chance a bouquet of flowers.

In this ward there was an old man nearly blind and lethargic; another old man was reading to him. I remarked a poor bed-ridden woman, utterly helpless, but not old, and with good and even refined features; and another poor woman, seated by her, was employed in keeping the flies from settling on her face. To one old woman, whose countenance struck me, I said a few words in English--I could speak no German, unluckily. She took my hand, kissed it, and turning away, burst into tears. No one asked for any thing even by a look, nor apparently wanted any thing; and I felt that from the unaffected good-nature of the lady who accompanied us, we had not so much the appearance of coming to look at the poor inmates as of paying them a kind visit;--and this was as it should be. The mild, open countenances of the two persons who managed the establishment, pleased me particularly; and the manner of the matron superintendent, as she led us over the rooms, was so simple and kind, that I was quite at ease: I experienced none of that awkward shyness and reluctance I have felt when ostentatiously led over such places in England--feeling ashamed to stare upon the misery I could not cure. In such cases I have probably attributed to the sufferers a delicacy or a sensibility, long blunted, if ever possessed; but I was in pain for them and for myself.

One thing more: there was a neat chapel; and we were shown with some pride the only piece of splendour in the establishment. The communion plate of massy silver was the gift of two brothers, who had married on the same day two sisters; and these two sisters had died nearly at the same time--I believe it was actually on the same day. The widowed husbands presented this plate in memory of their loss and the virtues of their wives; and I am sorry I did not copy the simple and affecting inscription in which this is attested. There was also a silver vase, which had been presented as an offering by a poor miller whom an unexpected legacy had raised to independence.

I might give you similar sketches of other institutions, here and elsewhere, but I did not bestow sufficient attention on the practical details, and the comparative merits of the different methods adopted, to render my observations useful. Though deeply interested, as any feeling, thinking being must be on such subjects, I have not studied them sufficiently. There are others, however, who are doing this better than I could:--blessings be on them, and eternal praise!--My general impression was, pleasure from the benevolence and simplicity of heart with which these institutions were conducted and superintended, and wonder, not to be expressed, at their extreme cheapness.

The day preceding my visit to the Versorgung Haus, I had been in a fever of indignation at the fate of poor R----, one of the conspirators, who had become insane from the severity of his confinement. I had descanted with great complacency on our open tribunals and our trials by jury, and yet I could not help thinking to myself, "Well, if _we_ have not their state-prisons, neither have _they_ our poor-houses!"

MEDON.

It is plain that the rich, charitable, worldly prosperous, self-seeking, Frankfort, would be your chosen residence after all!

ALDA.

No--as a fixed residence I should not prefer Frankfort. There is a little too much of the pride of purse--too much of the aristocracy of wealth--too much dressing and dinnering--and society is too much broken up into sets and circles to please me: besides, it must be confessed, that the arts do not flourish in this free imperial city.

The Städel Museum was opened just before our last visit to Frankfort. A rich banker of that name bequeathed, in 1816, his collection of prints and pictures, and nearly a million and a half of florins, for the commencement and maintenance of this institution, and they have certainly begun on a splendid scale. The edifice in which the collection is arranged is spacious, fitted up with great cost, and generally with great taste, except the ceilings, which, being the glory and admiration of the good people of Frankfort, I must endeavour to describe to you particularly. The elaborate beauty of the arabesque ornaments, their endless variety, and the vivid colouring and gilding, reminded me of some of the illuminated manuscripts; but I was rather amused than pleased, and rather surprised to see art and ornament so misplaced--invention, labour, money, time, lavished to so little purpose. No effect was aimed at--none produced. The strained and wearied eye wandered amid a profusion of unmeaning forms, and of gorgeous colours, which never harmonized into a whole: and after I had half broken my neck by looking up at them through an opera glass, in order to perceive the elegant interlacing of the minute patterns and exquisite finish of the workmanship, I turned away laughing and provoked, and wondering at such a strange perversion, or rather sacrifice, of taste.

MEDON.

But the collection itself?--

ALDA.

It is not very interesting. It contains some curious old German pictures; Städel having been, like others, smitten with the mania of buying Van Eyks and Hemlings and Schoréels. Here, however, these old masters, as part of a school, or history of art, are well placed. There are a few fine Flemish paintings--and, in particular, a wondrous portrait by Flinck, which you must see. It is a lady in black, on the left side of the door--of--I forget which room--but you cannot miss it: those soft eyes will look out at you, till you will feel inclined to ask her name, and wonder the lips do not unclose to answer you. Of first-rate pictures there are none--I mean none of the historical and Italian schools: the collection of casts from the antique is splendid and well-selected.

MEDON.

But Bethmann, the banker, had already set an example of munificent patronage of art: when he shamed kings, for instance, by purchasing Dannecker's Ariadne--one of the chief lions of Frankfort, if fame says true.

ALDA.

How! have you not seen it?

MEDON.

No--unhappily. The weather, as I have told you, was dreadful. I was discouraged--I procrastinated. That flippant observation I had read in some English traveller, that "Dannecker's Ariadne looked as if it had been cut out of old Stilton cheese," was floating in my mind. In short, I was careless, as we often are, when the means of gratifying curiosity appear secure, and within our reach. I repent me now. I wish I had settled to my own satisfaction, and with mine own eyes, the disputed merits of this famous statue; but I will trust to you. It ought to be something admirable. I do not know much of Dannecker, or his works, but by all accounts he has not to complain of the want of patronage. To him cannot be applied the pathetic common-place, so familiar in the mouths of our young artists, about "chill penury," the struggle to live, the cares that "freeze the genial current of the soul," the efforts of unassisted genius, and so forth. Want never came to him since he devoted himself to art. He appears to have had leisure and freedom to give full scope to his powers, and to work out his own creations.

ALDA.

Had he? Had he indeed? His own story would be different, I fancy. Dannecker, like every patronized artist I ever met with, would execrate patronage if he dared. Good old man! The thought of what he might have done, and could have done, breaks out sometimes in the midst of all his self-complacent _naïve_ exultation over what he _has_ done. I will endeavour to give you a correct idea of the Ariadne, and then I will tell you something of Dannecker himself. His history is a good commentary upon royal patronage.

I had heard so much of this statue, that my curiosity was strongly excited. A part of its fame may be owing to its situation, and the number of travellers who go to visit Bethmann's Museum, as a matter of course. I used to observe that all travellers, who were on the road to Italy, praised it, and all who were on their way home criticised it. As I ascended the steps of the pavilion in which it is placed, the enthusiasm of expectation faded away from my mind: I said to myself, "I shall be disappointed!"--Yet I was not disappointed.