Kitabı oku: «A July Holiday in Saxony, Bohemia, and Silesia», sayfa 17

The service on New Year's Eve is so numerously attended from all the neighbourhood round, that the church will hardly contain the throng. At half-past eleven a discourse is begun, in which the events of the year about to close are passed in review, with other subjects appropriate to the time, until, as the clock strikes twelve, the trumpet choir sound hail! to the new year. Then the verse

 
"Now all give thanks to God"
 

is sung, and with a prayer the service ends.

Burials are characterized by a simplicity worthy of all imitation; in striking contrast to the vain and oft-times ludicrous proceedings, by which folk in some other places think they do honour to the dead. The Brethren assemble—wearing no kind of mourning except in their hearts—in the church, where a short discourse is delivered, and a narrative of the deceased's life is read. The procession is then formed, preceded by the trumpet-band, who blow sacred melodies; and the corpse is carried on a bright-coloured bier, covered with a striped pall, by four brothers, dressed in their usual clothes. The nearest relatives follow, and behind them the community, according to kin. They form a circle round the grave and sing a hymn, accompanied by the trumpets, during which the coffin is lowered. The burial service is then read, and the simple rite concludes with a benediction.

Not least interesting among the annals of Herrnhut are incidents arising out of the wars which have afflicted Germany since the place was founded. All day the Brethren heard the roar of cannon when Frederick won his great victory at Lowositz; and a few days later, forty-eight of them had to keep watch against an apprehended foray of Trenck's wild Pandours. In 1757, General Zastrow quartered suddenly four thousand men upon them spitefully, and in defiance of a royal order to the contrary, keeping the peaceful folk in alarm all night; but the troops were withdrawn in the morning, and an indemnity was paid for the mischief they had committed. At times, long trains of men, horses, and artillery would pass through without intermission for a whole day—now Prussians, now Austrians, now heathen Croats. In the same year three thousand officers visited the place, among whom, during three weeks of the summer, were thirty-four princes, seventy-eight counts, and one hundred and forty-six nobles of other degree. Numbers of them attended the religious services of the Brethren. The Abbé Victor was one of the visitors, and on his return to Russia he said so much in praise of the Herrnhuters, that the emperor gave him permission to establish the colony of Sarepta in Southern Russia, which still exists.

In 1766 came the Emperor Joseph II., and by his pleasing manners and friendly inquiries made a "lasting impression" on the minds of the Brethren. In October, 1804, Francis I.—the Franzl of the Tyrolese—with his wife. In 1810, Gustaf Adolf IV. of Sweden, who expressed a wish to become a member. In 1813 the Emperor Alexander came as a visitor, and examined all things carefully; and it is recorded of him that while the children sang he stood among them bareheaded. He was followed by three of the famous marshals—Kellermann, Victor, and Macdonald.

This was a terrible year. With the retreat from Moscow came train on train of wounded Saxons on the way to Dresden. Requisition on requisition was made for linen and provisions; and one day, when no more wagons were left, the Brethren had to supply two hundred wheelbarrow-loads of rations. Night after night they saw the lurid glow of fires, for seventy-one places were burnt in the circles of Bautzen and Görlitz. Then came Cossacks, Calmucks, and squadrons of savage Bashkirs, armed with bows and arrows. Then Poniatowsky with his Poles, and Saxon Uhlans; and a review was held in a meadow behind the Schwesternhaus, and the sisters made hundreds of little pennons for the Polish lances.

In August, Napoleon was at Zittau. Daily skirmishes took place among Prussians, Poles, and Russians, for possession of the Hutberg—the best look-out for miles around. In September, Blucher came with Gneisenau and Prince Wilhelm, and had the Prussian head-quarters here for five days.

On the whole, Herrnhut suffered but little in comparison with other places; yet the Brethren were not slow to rejoice for the evacuation of Germany by the enemy, and the restoration of peace. "Praise and Thank-feasts" were held, with illuminations and fireworks; some of the fires being green and white, to represent the national colours of Saxony.

CHAPTER XXX

A Word with the Reader—From Herrnhut to Dresden—A Gloomy City—The Summer Theatre—Trip to the Saxon Switzerland—Wehlen—Uttewalde Grund—The Bastei—Hochstein—The Devil's Kettle—The Wolfschlucht—The Polenzthal—Schandau—The Kuhstall—Great Winterberg—The Prebischthor—Herniskretschen—Return to Dresden—To Berlin—English and German Railways—The Royal Marriage Question—Speaking English—A Dreary City—Sunday in Berlin—Kroll's Garden—Magdeburg—Wittenberg—Hamburg—A-top of St. Michael's—A Walk to Altona—A Ride to Horn—A North Sea Voyage—Narrow Escape—Harness and Holidays.

I fear, good-natured reader, that you will find this chapter too much like a catalogue. I am, however, admonished by the number of my pages that a swift conclusion is desirable. Moreover, my publisher—an amiable man in most respects—is apt to be dogmatic on questions of paper and print, fancying that he knows best, so I have no alternative but to humour him; and, after all, you will perhaps say that it is well to get over the ground as fast as possible when one comes again upon much-beaten tracks.

From Herrnhut I travelled by rail to Dresden—Pianopolis as some residents call it. Taken as a whole, it is a singularly heavy-looking and gloomy city: some of the principal streets reminded me of back-streets in Oxford. I saw the picture-gallery and the great library; and desirous to see what our forefathers used to see at the Globe—a play acted by daylight in a roofless play-house—I went to the summer theatre in the Grossen Garten. It is an agreeable pastime in fine weather, for you can see green tree-tops all round above the walls, and feel the breeze, and enjoy your tankard of Waldschloess—that excellent Dresden beer—while looking at the performance. A clever actress from Berlin made her first appearance; she played in the two pieces, and by her vivacity made amends for the miserable music, which was unworthy of Pianopolis, and of the leader's intense laboriousness in beating time.

I should like to take you with me in my walk through the Saxon Switzerland; but can only glance thereat for reasons already shown. If you have read Sir John Forbes's picturesque description of that romantic country published last year in his Sight-Seeing in Germany, you will not want another. I may, however, tell you, that you may visit all the most remarkable places in two days. Leave Dresden by steamer at six in the morning; disembark at Wehlen, walk from thence through the Uttewalde Grund to the Bastei, where, from the summit of a bastion rock springing from the Elbe, you have a magnificent view, with enough of water in it. You will see numerous specimens of those flat-topped hills, resembling the bases of mighty columns, such as we saw from the Milleschauer, and crag on crag, ridge on ridge, the gray stone shaded by forest for miles around. You will perceive Adersbach on a great scale; the same sort of sandstone split up in all directions, but the precipitous masses wide apart, isolated, and with glens and vales between all, glad with foliage and running water, instead of crevices and alleys.

From the Bastei you plunge down the zigzags among the crags to the Amselgrund, past the waterfall, and by wild ways to the Teufelsbruch and the Hochstein, an isolated crag, from which you look down into the Devil's Kettle, 350 feet deep. Then down through the Wolfschlucht, a crevice in the cliff, which, where you descend by ladders, looks very much like a wolf's-gully. It brings you into the Polenzthal, where on the grassy margin of a trout stream, beneath the shade of birches, precipitous cliffs towering high aloft, something grand and beautiful at every bend, you will believe it the loveliest scene of all. Then up the Brand—another out-look, and from thence down to Schandau, where you pass the night.

On the second day, walk up the Kirnitschthal to the Kuhstall, a broad arch in a honeycombed rock on the top of a hill; from thence to the Little Winterberg and Great Winterberg, the latter more than 1700 feet high—the highest point of the district, commanding a grand prospect over hill and hollow, crag and forest. While gazing around in admiration, you will perhaps wish that the old name—Meissner Highlands—had not been changed, for there is but little of the real Switzerland in the view.

Then on to the Prebischthor, crossing the frontier on the way into Bohemia at a lonely spot, uninfested as yet by guards or barrier. The Prebischthor is a huge arch, more than a hundred feet high, also on a hill-top, 1300 feet above the sea. Two mighty columns support a massive block, a hundred feet in length, forming a marvellous specimen of natural architecture. You can walk under and around its base, and look at the landscape through the opening, or mount to the summit and look down sheer eight hundred feet into the Prebischgrund. Here, as everywhere else, you find an inn, good beer, and musicians, a throng of tourists, and an album filled with names, and rhyming attempts at wit and sentiment.

From the Prebischthor you descend by the valley of the Kamnitz to Herniskretschen, a village built on a narrow level between tall frowning cliffs and the Elbe. I arrived here in time for the steamer at two o'clock, by which I returned to Dresden. I had seen the Saxon Switzerland from all the best points of view, and saw all the romantic course of the river, except the eight miles from Tetschen to Herniskretschen. A pleasanter two days' trip could not well be imagined. Once at Wehlen, the places to be visited are but from three to four miles apart; the way from one to the other is easy to find, and there is constant diversity of scenery, to say nothing of the talkative groups of Germans with whom you may join fellowship. But, in truth, it is a region to loiter in, and you will wish that weeks were yours instead of scanty days.

Soon after noon of the next day I was in Berlin. Travel the same route, and you will no longer wonder at the rapturous excitement of the Germans in the Riesengebirge. The country is one great plain—little fields, marshes, sluggish streams, ponds covered with water-lilies, windmills and sandy wastes sprinkled with a few trees that look miserable at having to grow in such a dreary land. Here and there a winding road—a mere deep-rutted track—winds across the landscape, making it look, if possible, still more melancholy. Look out when you will, you see the same monotonous features.

In our own happy country you would have the additional sorrow of an uncomfortable carriage. To know what outrageous inflictions can be perpetrated by railway monopoly, and endured by your long-suffering countrymen, just ride for once from London to Lowestofft in an Eastern Counties third-class carriage—you will have more than enough of North German scenery and of English discomfort, but without the compensations of German beer and German coffee. Or vary your experiences by a journey to Winchester in a second-class on the South-Western line, and try to enjoy the landscape through the wooden shutter which the Company give you for a window. Go to Euston-square—anywhere in fact—and you find that the passenger with most money in his pocket is the one most cared for. Even the Great Western and South-Eastern Companies, who have outgrown the short-sighted habit of building dungeons and calling them carriages—even these mighty monopolists condemn their second-class passengers to a wooden seat.

But on the line from Dresden to Berlin the third-class carriages are far more commodious than any second-class I have ever seen in England—except two or three at the Great Exhibition, which, perhaps, were meant only for show. The seats are broad, hollowed, and not flat, and with space enough between for the comfortable placing of your legs. The roof is lofty. You can stand upright with your hat on. At either end a broad shelf is fixed for small packages and light luggage; and more than all, the same civility and attention are extended by all the functionaries to third-class passengers as to the first. We brag of our liberty, and not without reason; but let us remember that the foreigner, though afflicted with passports, travels at less cost and with more comfort than we do.

Here, too, my fellow-passengers made merry over the "Palmerston gehänget" story; and many questions had I to answer concerning the coming marriage of the Prussian Prince and English Princess. I gave the same reply as to the Dresdener in the palace at Fischbach. One of the company, who told us he was a professor of literature at Berlin, inclined to be saucy. It was all a mistake to suppose that there was one jot more liberty in England than in Prussia. He could speak English, and knew all about it. Unluckily, by way of proving how well he could speak English, he said we should arrive at "Twelve past half;" whereupon I set the others laughing to take the conceit out of him. He relapsed into German, and looked so unhappy, that, by way of consolation, I told him of a countryman of his in England who went to keep an appointment at "clock five."

Berlin is a dreary, malodorous city, or rather an enormous village beginning to try to be a city; and fortunate in being the residence of men of taste and real artists who know what architecture and sculpture ought to be, as demonstrated by the improvements and embellishments around the palace and in the approach to that fine street Unter den Linden. You can hire a droschky to take you anywhere within the walls for fivepence; but be patient, for whether droschky or omnibus, the pace is as slow as if the drivers had to work for nothing. Pour le roi de Prusse, as the French say.

Many a portrait of the English Princess Royal, along with that of her future consort, did I see in the print-sellers' windows; and on the morrow I saw how the Berliners pass their Sunday: not with shops open all the day as in Paris, but with much beer, music, and tobacco in the environs. I was simple enough to walk out to the Zoological Garden—a few pens very widely scattered in a neglected forest plantation, containing specimens of swine, poultry, goats, and kine, all made as much of as if they were in Little Pedlington. From thence I walked out to Charlottenburg, notwithstanding the offensive drains which border the road the whole distance, and saw the tasteful mausoleum in the palace grounds, and the lazy carp in the big pond. The Opera House was open in the evening with Satanella, a "fantastic ballet," in three acts; and crowds made their way out to Kroll's Garden—the Cremorne of Berlin—where a play was acted in the theatre, and two orchestras outside kept up a constant succession of lively music: one striking up as the other ended. The number of tall people among the throng was remarkable, and not less so the rapidity with which beer and coffee, cakes and cutlets, were consumed. The numerous troop of waiters had not an idle moment.

I wished to see the place where the most terrible tragedy of the Thirty Years' War had been acted—where Tilly and Pappenheim—Bloodthirsty and Ferocious—sacked a flourishing city just as the foremost of the Swedish horse, commanded by Gustavus the Avenger, came within sight of its walls. So I journeyed to Magdeburg: always the same great plain on either side; but hereabouts fertile, and among the best of the corn-land of Europe. The early train travels quickly: it accomplished the distance in a little more than three hours.

I went directly to the cathedral, and, after a view of its noble interior, mounted to the gallery, which runs all round the top without a break. I stayed up there two hours pacing slowly round, surveying the busy town, the bustle of boats and barges on the Elbe, the citadel, the long line of fortification, and thinking over the history of the terrible siege. Besides the cathedral, the town contains but little to repay an exploration, and the people generally have a shabby look, as I proved by experiment, so I walked up the river bank to one of the suburban pleasure-gardens till the hour of departure approached. At five in the afternoon—away by train for Hamburg. Always the same great plain, heaved here and there into gentle swells. We slept at Wittenberg, and were off again the next morning long before the dew was dry. The plain abates somewhat of its monotony in Mecklenburg, and breaks into low hills with green valleys and pleasant woods between; and here, instead of groschen and dollars, we found schillings and marks—schillings worth a penny apiece. Shortly before eleven our long journey ended.

I went to the steam-boat office; took a place for London; asked one of the clerks which was the tallest church in Hamburg; left my knapsack under his desk, and made my way through the maze of picturesque old streets to St. Michael's. The tower is 460 feet in height, and you have to mount hundreds of stairs, the last flight, quite open to the sky, running in a spiral round the pillars of the belfry. Some weak heads turn back here; but if you continue, the view from the little chamber at the top will reward you. A vast panorama meets the eye. Miles away into Hanover and Holstein, all the territory of Hamburg, across Mecklenburg, and down the broad river well-nigh to the sea, sixty miles distant. The city itself is an interesting sight: the contrast between the old and new so great; the bustle on the Elbe and in the streets; the numerous canals, basins, dams, and havens; the planted walks, all enclosed by green and undulating environs, make up a picture that you will be reluctant to leave. Some of the windows of the little chamber are fitted with glass of different colours, so that at pleasure you may look out on a fairy scene below. The charge for the ascent is one mark.

Afterwards, when perambulating the streets, you will discover that Hamburg is a city not less interesting when viewed from the ground. The narrow streets, the old architecture, the variety of costumes, the curious ways of the traders, will arrest your attention at every step. And you will find much to commend in the building of the new quarter, and in the well-kept grounds and walks by the Exchange and around the Alster.

Seeing all this, I regretted that my stay would be but for a few hours: however, I improved those hours as diligently as possible. I walked out to Altona, and lived for an hour under the sovereignty of Denmark while looking at the old council-house and some other quaint specimens of architecture. Then turning in the opposite direction I rode out to Horn by omnibus; walked from thence across the heath and through the groves to Wansbeck, and rode back by a different road—a little trip in which I saw much to admire in the pretty wayside residences of the Hamburgers, situate so pleasantly among gardens and trees, and the inmates taking their evening meal on the grass-plot in front.¹¹

I kept up my explorations till the approach of midnight warned me that it was time to embark. The watch at the city-gate let me out on payment of the accustomed toll—twopence at ten o'clock, a shilling at eleven—and I groped my way along the quay to the steamer Countess of Lonsdale. When I woke the next morning the pilot was being landed at Glückstadt; and we steamed across the North Sea with no other incident than that of nearly running down a Flemish fishing-boat in broad daylight; and yet we had a man on the look-out. But for the quick eye of the captain—who was telling amusing stories about the German fleet to a party of us lounging around him on the quarter-deck—and his sudden "hard a-port!" the little vessel would have been cut in two. As it was, she escaped but by a few inches.

During the lazy leisure of a day at sea, I reckoned the sum of my journeyings and outlay. I had walked three hundred and fifty miles, and expended—up to Hamburg—fourteen pounds. The passage to London, with etceteras, including an unconscionable steward's-fee, amounted to nearly three pounds more.

A voyage of forty-eight hours brought us to London; and at four in the morning of the 1st of August we stepped on shore at St. Katherine's Wharf. It was a lovely morning: even London looked picturesque in the clear rosy light. The opportunity was favourable, and I took it for an hour's study of the busiest phenomena of Billingsgate. Then I walked awhile, and sat on a certain doorstep reading Goldsmith's Traveller till the maid came down, very early, at a quarter-past seven. Then I exchanged thick boots and a comfortable coat for the garb of Cockneydom. And then—sensations of liberty tingling yet in every limb, and swarming with happy recollections through my brain—I went and crept once more into the old official harness.

Harness in which I earn glorious holidays.