European days and ways

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

I. — From the New World to the Old ........ 7

II. — A Winsome German City . 13

Chapter I. From The New World To The Old

Our steamship, the City of Richmond, cast off her lines in New York harbor one exquisite morning in May. As usual on such occasions; many friends of the voyagers on board had assembled to see the ship off, and had laden the cabin tables with their parting floral gifts. With cheers and fluttering handkerchiefs these friends gave us their final salute as the shapely steamer swung into the stream, and with tremulous thrill sprang away in quick response to the motion of her engines. The waving adieux soon became indistinguishable, and the great city, with its deep-voiced activities, rapidly disappeared behind us.

We were favored with friendly winds and an exceptionally quick and tranquil voyage. On Queen Victoria's birthday, which found us in mid-ocean, the ship spread all her bunting, bewildering in design and color, making her seem like a mammoth butterfly skimming over the liquid prairies of the deep. In the evening, the passengers signalized their respect for the occasion by holding a banquet, with addresses and music.

Probably all sea-voyagers are impressed with the loneliness of the ocean. It is the world's great desert. An occasional ship and a few acrobatic porpoises and sea-birds are almost the only objects which vary the monotony of the wrinkled waste. To encounter, amidst this solitude, another vessel is quite an event. One fine evening the Richmond had a striking adventure of this kind, passing, at an apparent distance of but a few hundred yards, a three-masted ship, with every inch of canvas spread. Her crew cheered as the great steamer swept by, one of the sailors exuberantly swinging his boots over his head. Straightway the winged voyager passed out of hearing, and in a little while her white sails were shimmering in the evening sunlight, far away. So it is with wayfarers on the world's highways, whether on sea or land.

Like pilgrims on the hills of life, "We cross each other, and are gone.

Our approach to the coast of Ireland was made in the nighttime, amidst a thick fog, which enshrouded the land and darkened the sea. At daylight nothing could be seen but misty reaches of sea-water, close by the ship, but towards noon the cumbrous folds of vapor parted, disclosing some fine headlands, with intervening meadows.

During the afternoon the fog cleared away entirely, and the billows, breaking in spray against the Irish cliffs, flashed in the effulgence of an unclouded sun. Marvellous were the shades and combinations of color disclosed by this sudden revealment, as by drawn curtain, of the blended beauties of sea, sky, and land. The waves which dashed against the bow of the ship changed, in recoil, their light and deep greens into shades of blue of surpassing delicacy, fringed with snow-white foam. Equally pleasing to the eye were the verdurous meadows of the Irish coast, sloping down until blended with silvery volumes of rolling surf.

At four in the afternoon the Richmond put into Queenstown harbor, in quitting which, an hour later, she passed the Indiana corning in with General Grant on board. As the two

FROM THE NEW WORLD TO THE OLD. 9

ships exchanged salutations, the passengers, gathered on their decks, broke into cheers. Next day the Lord Mayor of Liverpool, as we landed there, came down to the docks with a numerous retinue, all in state carriages and gorgeous livery, to receive the illustrious American. The Indiana, following our steamer, was then momently expected in the Mersey.

Our arrival in London happened to fall on the eve of Derby Day, when all England, so to speak, had come up for its annual holiday in the metropolis. Not one of the half-dozen or more hotels to which we had been recommended could receive us ; the pleasure-seeking country folk had taken possession of London. We were glad to accept, at last, some improvised apartments, on condition that they should be surrendered next day. The condition was remitted, finally, for an extortionate consideration, and the days of our sojourn in the world's chief city were spared for something more agreeable than a tour of its lodging-houses.

Quitting London by a late afternoon steamer, we reached the open sea at nightfall, and early next morning were steaming up the wide and waveless Scheldt, rimmed with low, green dikes, along which groups of holiday-dressed peasants were passing. Under a cloudless sky we glided on over the placid waters until, rising on the distant edge of the far-reaching lowlands, the spire of the Antwerp Cathedral disclosed its pinnacle. The morning had not waned ere we quitted the steamer at her moorings and viewed the cathedral in full profile from the windows of our hotel apartments.

There is an old Antwerp and a new, — the one a maze of crooked lanes, across which the projecting peaked gables almost touch ; the other a city of palaces, parks, and boulevards. Over all, beautifying all, rises the majestic cathedral spire, — an architectural poem, — a perpetual delight. Its proportions with the rest of the structure are said to be out of harmony, but the incongruity is not so serious as to mar our

10 EUROPEAN DAIS AND WAYS.

enjoyment of an object in itself so superb. The tracery of this spire was compared by Napoleon to Mechlin lace, but without compare was the melody of its silver-toned carillon, falling in rhythmic showers on that tranquil Sunday morning.

Low, and loud, and sweetly blended, Low at times, and loud at times, And changing like a poet's rhymes, Bang the beautiful wild chimes.

A fortified city, famous in war and in statecraft, Antwerp nevertheless bestows more conspicuous veneration upon its artists than upon its soldiers or its statesmen. The finest memorials which adorn its public places are not of warriors, or diplomatists, but of the great master, Rubens, and his illustrious disciples, "Vandyke and Teniers. Indeed, the name and works of Rubens, it may almost be said, constitute the chief glory of Antwerp. The Museum contains his Crucifixion, — consummate in terrible sublimity, — his gorgeous Adoration of the Magi, and his dead Christ, known as the Christ db la Paille. His chair, even, is enshrined in a glass cabinet. His masterpiece, the Descent from the Cross, is preserved with pious care in the cathedral, where it is protected by a folding screen. His Elevation of the Cross, guarded in like manner, hangs on the wall opposite. His Scourging of Christ — a famous picture — is in the old Dominican chapel now known as the Church of St. Paul. The Church of St. Jacques contains one of his finest altar-pieces and his tomb.

The railway from Antwerp to Cologne, via Liege, courses through an exquisitely beautiful country, of great historical interest. There is scarcely a town or a village on the route which does not suggest some classic reminiscence. Meehelen, still abounding in mediaeval architecture, traces its history back to the time of King Pepin, in the eighth century, and has been overrun again and again by the armies of Marlborough and

FROM THE NEW WORLD TO THE OLD. \\

the invading French. The annals of Louvain, which claims Julius Caesar as its founder, are perspicuous as far back as the ninth century. Between Louvain and Landen — the birthplace of Pepin — lie the battle-fields of the Neerwinden plain, where the French were defeated in 1693 by William III. of England, and in 1793 by the Austrians. Near Tirleraont the Belgic Lion and Prussian monument on the field of Waterloo may be descried from the railway. Liege, founded in the sixth century, at the confluence of the Ourthe and the Meuse, amidst a circlet of beautiful hills, has acquired fame alike from history and from Sir Walter Scott's fiction. Dolhain, the last Belgian station, was sacked at different times by the Emperor Henry V., by Louis XIV., and by Marlborough. Diiren was the Marcodurum of Tacitus. At Aix-la-Chapelle, anciently renowned for its thermal springs, near which was stationed the First Roman Legion, Charlemagne was born, died, and was entombed. There also, in the course of subsequent centuries, thirty-seven successors of the great emperor were crowned. When his tomb was opened, in the year 1000, nearly two centuries after his interment, his body was found, still seated on its marble throne, and arrayed in its imperial robes.

At Herbesthal, the first Prussian station, the train halts while the German customs officers inspect the baggage of passengers. A change of currency and of language takes place at this boundary town, after quitting which the eastward-going traveller must accustom himself to reiehsmark instead of francs, and to the German vocabulary in lieu of the French.

While our train scuds swiftly over the alluvial plains of the Lower Rhine, about an hour after quitting Herbesthal, we descry the twin spires of the Cologne Cathedral, the pinnacles of which are yet blazing with the setting sun as we alight beneath their evening shadows.

An ideal June day, radiant and gentle as could be, favored our voyage by Rhine steamer from Cologne to Mayence. Byron must have had just such a day and season in mind when, with not less truth than poetry of description, he wrote :

The castled crag of Drachenfels

Frowns o'er the wide and winding Khine, Whose breast of waters broadly swells

Between the banks which bear the vine, — And hills all rich with blossomed trees,

And fields which promise corn and wine, And scattered cities crowning these,

Whose far white walls along them shine, Have strewed a scene which I should see With double joy, wert thou with me.

And peasant girls with deep-blue eyes,

And hands which offer yearly flowers, Walk smiling o'er this paradise ;

Above, the frequent feudal towers Through green leaves lift their walls of gray,

And many a rock which steeply lowers, And noble arch in proud decay,

Look o'er this vale of vintage bowers.

The Rhine steamers are swift travellers, make short stoppages, and keep closely to their time schedules. Both deck and cabin are admirably arranged for observation of the scenery, than which there is none which affords a more pleasing or interesting epitome of the historic and legendary past.

During the latter part of the afternoon our steamer — the Kaiser Wilhelm — emerged from the gorge at Bingen and passed Riidesheim, just above which the white-walled Schloss Johannisberg, crowning a distant height, came into view. The valley here widens out between lines of hills which gracefully recede on both sides of the river, the broad surface of which is clustered with small green islands. Through the Bingen gate-way we have entered the Garden of the Rhine, strewing which, along the river's margin, or back upon the hills, are

ARIADNE.

Dannecker.

numerous villages and castles whose vintages have made their names known the world over.

As we passed Eltville and Biebrich, the evening light was pouring in mellow splendors over the vine-clad hills, and burnishing the massive towers of the old cathedral at Mayence. The day and the river-voyage ended together as we touched the Mayence landing. Next morning we looked out, through a dripping atmosphere, on the quaint old Rossniarkt Square in Frankfort.

Chapter II. A Winsome German City

There is no more fascinating old city in Europe than Frankfort-on-the-Main. The foreigners, not excepting Americans, who sojourn long within its precincts never fail to become its enthusiastic adorers. The Frankforters themselves regard it as such an excellent place to stay in that not many of them can be persuaded to leave it. There are not a few of its families whose perspicuous annals of residence extend back through a long line of ancestry for. two or three centuries. There are banks and other business houses whose present name and location have been continuous for one hundred to one hundred and fifty years. The city itself dates back to the time of Charlemagne. One of its stone bridges, spanning the river Main, is said to have been built five or six centuries ago. A legend tells us it was placed there by His Satanic Majesty, on a special contract with the city fathers that he should have the soul of the first creature that should pass over it. When it was finished, the shrewd Frankforters sent a rooster across it, thereby showing themselves smarter than the sly party of the second part. An image of the rooster, surmounting a pole set upon the bridge, commemorates the event and confirms the truth of the story.

The foundation of the Frankfort Cathedral is traced to Charlemagne by some authorities, and by others to King Pepin. Within its walls many of the German emperors were crowned, beginning as far back as 1711. A few hundred yards from it stands the venerable Pomer, which is historically one of the most interesting buildings in Germany. The famous Golden Bull of Charles IV. is deposited among its archives ; the electors of the empire assembled, when a new emperor was to be chosen, within one of its chambers ; from its balcony the emperor-elect exhibited himself to the applauding multitudes, and in its grand saloon the coronation banquet was held. The full-size portraits of forty-eight German monarchs, painted in the costumes of their time, adorn this curious chamber.

Around the walls of Frankfort swept the armies of Louis XIV. and of the great Napoleon. Here Louis the Pious lived and King Giinther died. Here, in one of the fantastic rookeries of the Judengasse, the Rothschilds laid the foundations of the most colossal fortune in the world. Here, in a narrow and crowded street, stands a comely old house with peaked gables and projecting stories, over whose portal we read the inscription :

In diesem Hause

wurde

Johann Wolfgang Goethe,

am 2Sten August, 174-9, geboren.

In this building the great poet spent his infancy, and made the home of his boyhood and early manhood. Here, later in life, he was visited by Lavater, Basedow, and Klopstock, and here, as we wander about the curious old chambers, we recall the names of Marguerite and Maximiliane, of Bettina and

Lili, of Sybilla Monch and Anna Schonernan, of — but the list is too long for repetition. Most of all are we reminded here of her whose Martha- Washington-like face appears in a portrait on the wall, — the doting mother of the great Goethe. Of the spiritual presences within these old walls hers is the most palpable. Her illustrious son seldom dwelt in this house after the period of his early manhood, but here her faithful heart continued to beat in maternal fondness, until it ceased to beat, for her beloved Wolfgang.

In an obscure little park, beside a narrow and remote street, in another part of the city, Goethe's mother lies buried. There is no monument over the grave, — nothing to distinguish it save a plain, weather-worn tablet, around which a few sprigs of ivy scramble. The spot was once a suburban church-yard, but the city swept over and far beyond it, and now only a few of the graves remain undisturbed. Unnoted, Goethe's mother sleeps there, while out in the grand area, around which the life and energy of the city course and pulsate, stands Sch wan thaler's splendid monument to her immortal son.

Frankfort has no military fame like Mayence, Metz, Strasbourg, or Antwerp. Though once a walled town, it was never a celebrated fortress. It has had its military vicissitudes, but they were not conspicuous. Goethe narrates in his autobiography that, during his boyhood, he once heard the trumpets sounding the alarm all day long from the watch-towers, as the French army approached and invested the town ; that after the city had yielded without resistance to the beleaguering army, one of the enemy's generals of division quartered himself and staff upon the poet's reluctant and indignant father ; and that he (young Goethe) turned the annoyance to good account by learning French from the unbidden guests. Other annals narrate that, a century and a half before this time, the army of Gustavus Adolphus appeared before the city, even then " opulent and populous," and demanded its surrender ; that

IQ EUROPEAN DATS AND WATS.

the wealthy burghers hesitated, but at last succumbed ; and that the triumphant battalions of the great Swede marched through the gates and unfurled the banners of Protestantism from the city's walls and pinnacles.

Nearly two centuries later, Napoleon passed through Frankfort on his way to conquest, and also on his flight from disaster ; and in one of the public gardens a tree is pointed out under which, as tradition runs, the great emperor, when at the zenith of his fame, once stood while his veteran legions passed in review before him.

But Frankfort has always been a city of trade and finance, rather than one of military tastes and renown. Its wealth has been proverbial from its early history until now, and the assertion is made that, in proportion to population, its riches surpass those of any other city in the world. The Rothschilds, besides their great banking house, standing within a stone'sthrow of the hovel where the family was founded, possess vast estates here, and the singular story is told that their first considerable gains were made with funds received and deposited by the Hessian government as the wages of its mercenaries in the attempted subjugation of the American Colonies.

Many other families, both German and Jewish, possess enormous fortunes, and own or control financial, commercial, and industrial interests radiating to nearly every part of the civilized world. Of banking houses, properly so called, there is no unusual number, but the city abounds in dealers in all manner of securities, and its stock exchange is one of the most important in Europe. Its capitalists claim to have been the first to take the bonds of the United States offered abroad during our civil war, and there have been times when their holdings of those bonds amounted to not less than a hundred millions of dollars. They also deal enormously in the railway, State, and local securities of this country, and there is no city in Europe where all that pertains to American investments is better understood than in Frankfort. Several of the foremost financiers have branch houses in New York, with which they are in daily communication by cable. American investments are the favorites, particularly our national bonds, which are preferred even to those of Germany or Great Britain, but all the European loans are placed more or less through Frankfort agencies. It is a notable fact that many of the houses which have acquired great wealth in this business are those of Hebrews, who now live in princely elegance, although it is less than a century since all of that race dwelling in Frankfort were obliged to inhabit the hovels of the Judengasse, and were locked up at night in that narrow and odious quarter.

The ancient portions of Frankfort are poetically quaint. The narrow, meandering streets, overhung by projecting stories and lofty, peaked gables, are bewildering to the stranger. But all the thoroughfares, however irregular, are kept scrupulously clean ; the sewerage system is superb ; and the houses are painted in harmonious neutral colors, pleasant to the eye, so that even the older structures, some of which have existed without substantial change for seven or eight centuries, look comparatively fresh and tidy. Around the public square known as the Romerberg, fronting the Homer, stands a cluster of these ancient buildings, such as Ruskin might be supposed to describe when he says that " the glory of a human structure is not in its stones nor its gold, but in its age, and in that deep sense of voicefulness, of stern watching, of mysterious sympathy, nay, even of approval or condemnation which we feel in walls that have been long washed by the passing waves of humanity."

But Frankfort is by no means all ancient. The West End, as it is called, is mostly new, and is a town of palaces. Half the rickety old hovels of the Judengasse have been torn away, b 2* and many other primitive streets have been partly or wholly obliterated. Two splendid new bridges have been thrown across the Main, a grand opera-house rivalling that of Paris in the beauty and completeness of its appointments has been built, a system of sluice- ways by which the Main has been made navigable by Rhine steamers from Mayence to Frankfort has been constructed, and a union railway-station building, not surpassed except in size by any other on the Continent, has recently been completed. A large and elegant hotel, a museum and academy of art, a new exchange, and several large school buildings, all costly and beautiful structures, are among the later improvements.

Much is done for the general comfort and recreation of the people, and this is in nothing more conspicuous than in the public gardens and promenades. Most all German cities have such places of resort, but in few cities of any country are they so attractive and convenient as in Frankfort. On the site of the ancient walls, which have been torn away, and of the moat, which has been filled up, a series of connecting parks has been laid out encircling the old town, and lying nearly equidistant from the city's present centre and circumference. An American lady who well knows the Anlage, as this popular pleasure-ground is called, thus describes for me some of its attractions :

" One of its principal adornments is its trees. In the first place, besides being luxuriantly grown and leaved, they are all knotted and gnarled as fantastically as if they had grown so of their own volition, and not of the landscapist's. Nearly the whole tree is draped with light-green moss, which velvet may resemble but cannot rival. Even in winter, when the leaves are gone, it is delightful to look upon these venerable stems, with their interlacement of brown and green branches silhouetted against the sky.

" The Anlage abounds also in lakes, fountains, rustic bridges, and sequestered nooks, where one may while away the summer hours watching the shadows creeping up and down the sand. The lakes are stocked with goldfish, which the children feed, and which everybody stops to admire. Then there are milk and refreshment booths, wells of pure cold water,* and plenty of comfortable benches for tired and loitering pedestrians. A large proportion of the visitors are working people, who try to pass through the Anlage while going to and from their labor, or to enjoy an hour's stroll in it on Sunday afternoons. Here, also, the children and their nurses come, and the little ones make themselves happy, playing in the sand-heaps."

The Palmengarten is above all else the pride of Frankfort. When the Duke of Nassau — an active sympathizer with the beaten side in the Austro-Prussian war — lost his dominions, and quitted his famous chateau at Biebrich, the Frankforters availed themselves of the opportunity to buy his entire collection of rare and costly plants, comprising about thirty thousand specimens. They then erected a mammoth conservatory of glass, with an elegant and commodious music- and dininghall attached, and adorned the adjacent grounds with fountains, lakes, parterres, promenades, and all things beautiful, making, altogether, one of the loveliest spots in Europe. Scientific gardeners are .regularly salaried and employed to keep the place in order, whose assiduity and skill impart to it such ingenuity of color and arrangement as a practised artist bestows upon the labor of his heart. In truth their handiwork is, in its way, artistic. In fine weather an orchestra plays in a pavilion in the garden, and at other times in the spacious concert-room. This apartment looks directly into the great

* In one of the parks of the Anlage, near its junction with the Mainzerlandstrasse, is located one of these wells, containing a primitive pump worked by a long iron handle, and surmounted by the bust of a laughing Bacchus.

conservatory, which presents a scene of tropical enchantment. Five large palm-trees, imported by Humboldt, occupy conspicuous positions amidst skilfully-grouped dracsenas, ferns, azaleas, rhododendrons, passifloras, and a myriad of other rare tropical and semi-tropical growths. The ground is carpeted with light-green moss, smooth and soft as velvet, and moistened by the spray of falling waters.

Another popular place of resort, scarcely less attractive, is the Zoological Garden, containing a splendid music-hall in which daily concerts are given, an aquarium, and a large collection of rare specimens of the animal kingdom.

To the enjoyment of parks, promenades, and general out-door amusement the moderate and equable climate of Central Germany is particularly gracious. The city of Frankfort, though in about the same latitude as Montreal, lies upon a very different isothermal line. Screened by the Taunus Mountains from the cold winds of the North Sea, it is at the same time sufficiently remote from the Alps to escape the violent atmospheric changes common to South Germany. Snow generally falls at Dresden, and also in the Black Forest, two or three weeks earlier than at Frankfort. In summer the heat is seldom oppressive, or of long duration, and the nights are always sufficiently cool to insure comfortable sleep. The winters are usually mild and open. In all seasons a great deal of rain falls, and unclouded skies are exceptional. An atmosphere perfectly pellucid and crystalline, with that resulting " divine splendor of the fields" which Virgil speaks of, is not known in Germany as it is upon our Western Continent. It came within the observation of the writer that the month of July, at Frankfort, contained, one year, but seven days without rain, and none at all that were cloudless.

In the Main Valley the soil is light and sandy, and evaporation is rapid. The local physicians say that moist weather is healthier than dry, because, by saturating the porous earth, it prevents the exhalation of injurious vapors and secures a purer atmosphere. At any rate, the people do not seem to mind the rain, but rather to enjoy all the more on account of it their habits of out-door life. It is believed that the humidity of the atmosphere is favorable to corpulency, and no doubt to this cause, rather than, as commonly supposed, to the practice of beer-drinking, are due the full habit and tranquil temperament of the Germans.

The Frankforters possess, in its fullest degree, the German passion for art and music. They have among them several artists of wide celebrity, and also an art society of long standing, which maintains a permanent exhibition and weekly sale of contemporary paintings. The new Art Academy, known from its founder as the Stadel'sche Institute, and occupying a commanding site on the left bank of the Main, is richly endowed, and possesses many rare and celebrated works. A collection of sculptures and casts, privately belonging to the Baron von Bethmann, but easily accessible to visitors, derives its name — the Ariadneum — from Dannecker's Ariadne and the Lioness, an exquisite work, worthy to rank with the finest antiques. The figures — representing Ariadne reclining upon the lioness's back— are wrought, life-size, from a single block of Carrara marble, and cost the artist seven years of continuous study and labor. Had he expended upon them his whole lifetime, he might still have died content with the product of his genius.

Not famous, like Dresden or Stuttgart, for its musical advantages, Frankfort nevertheless enjoys the best music of the period. Its conservatorium, in whose calendar of instructors we find such names as those of Stockhausen, Raff, and Clara Schumann (widow of the great composer), has achieved wide reputation. The opera, subsidized by the government, is of the highest order of merit. The museum concerts, given bi-weekly during the winter, attract the cooperation of the best vocalists and instrumentalists in Europe, and are scarcely surpassed in any German city. The orchestra, containing about seventy performers, is extraordinary in its thoroughness of training and nicety of execution. Its interpretations of Beethoven, Mozart, and other great composers would be famous in any country less musical than Germany.

Scarcely less interesting than the music are the people who attend these concerts. The museum, as the concert-hall is called, is a model of comfort, convenience, and acoustic excellence, and not one of its fifteen hundred seats ever remains untaken. Hither come the wealthy, the refined, and those of all conditions who have a taste for the higher order of musical art, and among them all there is perceptibly no rude, illbehaved, or obtrusive person. The entire audience gives its undivided attention to the music, and neither entertainers nor entertained will tolerate interruption. If the leader of the orchestra overhears conversation, he will immediately face the disturbers and throw up his baton.

The new Opera-House bears upon its front the inscription, Dem Wahren, Sehonen, Guten, and it is an offering nobly conceived as well as nobly dedicated. It was built by joint funds of the municipality and of wealthy citizens, and contains seats for two thousand persons. As a precaution against fire, its Coulissenhause, or magazine for stage scenery, is built separately, at a considerable distance from the main building, with which it communicates by a surface tramway, and also by underground passages. The apparatus for heating, cooling, ventilating, and illuminating the building centres in the threestory basement — where its motive power is located — and performs its functions with marvellous perfection. Pure air, drawn from the neighboring Anlage, is heated in winter, or cooled in summer, and circulated with the most careful adjustment of temperature to every nook and corner of the building. From his position in the basement, the engineer advises himself by an electric contrivance of the exact state of the atmosphere, both as to purity and temperature, in every corridor, lodge, and chamber, and is able, by the apparatus at his command, to correct immediately any improper atmospheric condition in any part of the building. It has been said that the Frankforters go to the opera for hygienic benefit as well as for amusement, and that they find there a refuge alike from the asperities of winter and the heat of summer.