Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands - Vol. 2

by Harriet Beecher Stowe

  Monday, July 25. Adieu to Interlachen! Ho for Lucerne and the Righi! Dined at Thun in a thunder storm. Stopped over night at Langnau, an out-of-the-way place. H. and G. painted Alpine flowers, while I played violin. This violin must be of spotless pedigree, even as our Genevese friend, Monsieur—, certified when he reluctantly sold it me. None but a genuine AMATI, a hundred years old, can possess this mysterious quality, that can breathe almost inaudible, like a mornbeam in the parlor, or predominate imperious and intense over orchestra and choir, illuminating with its fire, like chain lightning, the arches of a vast cathedral. Enchanted thing—what nameless spirit impregnates with magnetic ether the fine fibres of thy mechanism!

  Tuesday, 26. Rode from Langnan to Lucerne just in time to take the boat for Weggis. From the door of the Hotel de la Concorde, at Weggis, the guide chef fitted us out with two chaises a porteur, six carriers, two mules with grooms, making a party of fourteen in all.

  After ascending a while the scenery became singularly wild and beautiful. Vast walls and cliffs of conglomerate rose above us, up which our path wound in zigzags. Below us were pines, vales, fields, and hills, themselves large enough for mountains. There, at our feet, with its beautiful islands, bays, capes, and headlands, gleams the broad lake of the four cantons, consecrated by the muse of Schiller and the heroism of Tell. New plains are unrolling, new mountain tops sinking below our range of vision. We plunged into a sea of mist. It rolled and eddied, boiling beneath us. Through its mysterious pall we saw now a skeleton pine stretch out its dark pointing hand—now a rock, shapeless and uncouth, far below, like a behemoth petrified in mid ocean. Then an eddy would sweep a space for the sun to pour a flood of gold on this field far down at our feet, on that village, on this mountain side with its rosy vapor-wreaths, upon yon distant lake, making it a crater of blinding brightness. On we went wrapped in mantles, mist, and mystery, trembling with chilliness and enthusiasm. We reached the summit just as the sunset-gazing crowd were dispersing. And this is Righi Kulm!

  Wednesday, 27. At half past three in the morning we were aroused by the Alpine horn. We sprang up, groping and dressing in the dark, and went out in the frosty air. Ascending the ridge we looked off upon a sleeping world. Mists lay beneath like waves, clouds, like a sea. On one side the Oberland Alps stretched along the horizon their pale, blue-white peaks. Other mountains, indistinct in color and outline, chained round the whole horizon. Yes, “the sleeping rocks did dream" all over the wide expanse, as they slumbered on their cloudy pillow, and their dream was of the coming dawn. Twelve lakes, leaden pale or steel blue, dreamed also under canopies of cloud, and the solid land dreamed, and all her wilds and forests. And in the silence of the dream already the tinge of clairvoyance lit the gray east; a dim, diffuse aurora, while yet the long, low clouds hung lustreless above; nor could the eye prophesy where should open the door in heaven. At length, a flush, as of shame or joy, presaged the pathway. Tongues of many-colored light vibrated beneath the strata of clouds, now dappled, mottled, streaked with fire; those on either hand of a light, flaky, salmon tint, those in the path and portal of the dawn of a gorgeous blending and blazoning of golden glories. The mists all abroad stirred uneasily. Tufts of feathery down came up out of the mass. Soft, floating films lifted from the surface and streamed away dissolving. Strange hues came out on lake and shore, far, far below. The air, the very air became conscious of a coming change, and the pale tops of distant Alps sparkled like diamonds. It was night in the valleys. And we heard the cocks crowing below, and the uneasy stir of a world preparing to awake. So Isaiah foresaw a slumbering world, while Messiah's coming glanced upon the heights of Zion, and cried,—

  “Behold, darkness shall cover the earth

  And gross darkness the people;

  But the Lord shall rise upon THEE,

  And his glory shall be seen upon thee!”

  Hushed the immense crowd of spectators waited; then he came. On the gray edge of the horizon, under the emblazoned strata, came a sudden coal of fire, as shot from the altar of Heaven. It dazzled, it wavered, it consumed. Its lambent lines lengthened sidelong. At length, not a coal, but a shield, as the shield of Jehovah, stood above the east, and it was day. The vapor sea heaved, and broke, and rolled up the mountain sides. The lakes flashed back the conquering splendor. The wide panorama, asleep no more, was astir with teeming life.

  Tuesday, July 28. One of the greatest curiosities in Lucerne is the monument to those brave Swiss guards who were slain for their unshaken fidelity to the unhappy Louis XVI. In a sequestered spot the rocky hill side is cut away, and in the living strata is sculptured the colossal figure of a dying lion. A spear is broken off in his side, but in his last struggle he still defends a shield, marked with the fleur de lis of France. Below are inscribed in red letters, as if charactered in blood, the names of the brave officers of that devoted band. From many a crevice in the rock drip down trickling springs, forming a pellucid basin below, whose dark, glossy surface, encircled with trees and shrubs, reflects the image. The design of the monument is by Thorwaldsen, and the whole effect of it has an inexpressible pathos.

  [Illustration: of the memorial. Above the grotto reads:

  HELVETIORUM FIDEI AC VIRTUTI

  On the monument's plinth can be read the following:

  DIE X AUGUSTI II ET III SEPTEMBRIS MDCCXCII

  HAEC SUNT NOMINA EORUM OUTNE SACRA

  (illegible) (illegible)

  DUES XXVI DUCES ]

  Rode in our private voiture to Basle, and rested our weary limbs at the Three Kings.

  Friday, 29. Visited the celebrities of Basle, and took the cars for Strasbourg, where we arrived in time to visit the minster.

  Saturday, 30. Left Strasbourg by the Rhine morning boat; a long, low, slender affair. The scenery exceedingly tame, like portions of the Lower Mississippi. Disembarked at Manheim, and drove over to Heidelberg, through a continual garden. French is useless here. All our negotiations are in German, with W., S., and G. as a committee on gutturals.

  LETTER XXXIX.

  STRASBOURG.

  MY DEAR:—

  We arrived here this evening. I left the cars with my head full of the cathedral. The first thing I saw, on lifting my eyes, was a brown spire. Said I,—

  “C., do you think that can be the cathedral spire?”

  “Yes, that must be it.”

  “I am afraid it is,” said I, doubtfully, as I felt, within, that dissolving of airy visions which I have generally found the first sensation on visiting any celebrated object.

  The thing looked entirely too low and too broad for what I had heard of its marvellous grace and lightness; nay, some mischievous elf even whispered the word “dumpy” hi my ear. But being informed, in time, that this was the spire, I resisted the temptation, and determined to make the best of it. I have since been comforted by reading in Goethe's autobiography a criticism on its proportions quite similar to my own. We climbed the spire; we gained the roof. What a magnificent terrace! A world itself; a panoramic view sweeping the horizon. Here I saw the names of Goethe and Herder. Here they have walked many a time, I suppose. But the inside!—a forest-like firmament, glorious in holiness; windows many hued as the Hebrew psalms; a gloom solemn and pathetic as man's mysterious existence; a richness gorgeous and manifold as his wonderful nature. In this Gothic architecture we see earnest northern races, whose nature was a composite of influences from pine forest, mountain, and storm, expressing, in vast proportions and gigantic masonry, those ideas of infinite duration and existence which Christianity opened before them. A barbaric wildness mingles itself with fanciful, ornate abundance; it is the blossoming of northern forests.

  The ethereal eloquence of the Greeks could not express the rugged earnestness of souls wrestling with those fearful mysteries of fate, of suffering, of eternal existence, declared equally by nature and revelation. This architecture is Hebraistic in spirit, not Greek; it well accords with the deep ground-swell of Hebrew prophets.

  “Lord, thou hast been
our dwelling-place in all generations.

  “Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever thou hadst formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God.

  “A thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past.

  “And as a watch in the night.”

  The objection to Gothic architecture, as compared with Greek, is, that it is less finished and elegant. So it is. It symbolizes that state of mind too earnest for mere polish, too deeply excited for laws of exact proportions and architectural refinement. It is Alpine architecture—vast, wild, and sublime in its foundations, yet bursting into flowers at every interval.

  The human soul seems to me an imprisoned essence, striving after somewhat divine. There is a struggle in it, as of suffocated flame; finding vent now through poetry, now in painting, now in music, sculpture, or architecture; various are the crevices and fissures, but the flame is one.

  Moreover, as society grows from barbarism upward, it tends to inflorescence, at certain periods, as do plants and trees; and some races flower later than others. This architecture was the first flowering of the Gothic race; they had no Homers; the flame found vent not by imaged words and vitalized alphabets; they vitalized stone, and their poets were minster builders; their epics, cathedrals.

  This is why one cathedral—like Strasbourg, or Notre Dame—has a thousand fold the power of any number of Madeleines. The Madeleine is simply a building; these are poems.

  I never look at one of them without feeling that gravitation of soul towards its artist which poetry always excites. Often the artist is unknown; here we know him; Erwin von Steinbach, poet, prophet, priest, in architecture.

  We visited his house—a house old and quaint, and to me full of suggestions and emotions. Ah, if there be, as the apostle vividly suggests, houses not made with hands, strange splendors, of which these are but shadows, that vast religious spirit may have been finding scope for itself where all the forces of nature shall have been made tributary to the great conceptions of the soul.

  Save this cathedral, Strasbourg has nothing except peaked-roofed houses, dotted with six or seven rows of gable windows.

  LETTER XL.

  HEIDELBERG.

  MY DEAR:—

  To-day we made our first essay on the Rhine. Switzerland is a poor preparation for admiring any common scenery; but the Rhine from Strasbourg to Manheim seemed only a muddy strip of water, with low banks, poplars, and willows. If there was any thing better, we passed it while I was asleep; for I did sleep, even on the classic Rhine.

  Day before yesterday, at Basle, I went into the museum, and there saw some original fragments of the Dance of Death, and many other pictures by Holbein, with two miniature likenesses of Luther and his wife, by Lucas Cranach; they are in water colors. Catharine was no beauty at that time, if Lucas is to be trusted, and Luther looks rather savage. But I saw a book of autographs, and several original letters of Luther's. I saw the word “Jesus” at the top of one of them, thus, “J. U. S.” The handwriting was fair, even, and delicate. I laid my hand on it, and thought his hand also had passed over the paper which he has made living with his thoughts. Melanchthon, of whom a far more delicate penmanship might have been expected, wrote a coarse, rugged hand, quite like Dr. Bishop's. It somehow touched my heart to see this writing of Luther's, so fair, and clean, and flowing; and to think of his vive and ever-surging spirits, his conflicts and his victories.

  We were awakened, about eight o'clock this morning, by the cathedral bell, which is near by, and by the chanting of the service. It was a beautiful, sunny morning, and I could hear them sing all the time I was dressing. I think, by the style of the singing, it was Protestant service: it brought to mind the elms of Andover—the dewy, exquisite beauty of the Sabbath mornings there; and I felt, more than ever, why am I seeking any thing more beautiful than home? But today the sweet shadow of God's presence is still over me, and the sense of his love and protection falls silently into my soul like dew.

  At breakfast time Professor M. and his daughter called, as he said, to place themselves at our disposal for the castle, or whatever we might wish to see. I intimated that we would prefer spending the day in our New England manner of retirement—a suggestion which he took at once.

  After breakfast the servant asked us if we should like to have a room commanding a view of the castle. “To be sure,” said I. So he ushered us into a large, elegantly-furnished apartment, looking out immediately upon it. There it sat, upon its green throne, a regal, beautiful, poetic thing, fair and sad.

  We had singing and prayers, and a sermon from C. We did not go to the table d'hote, for we abominate its long-drawn, endless formalities. But one part of the arrangements we enjoyed without going: I mean the music. To me all music is sacred. Is it not so? All real music, in its passionate earnest, its blendings, its wild, heart-searching tones, is the language of aspiration. So it may not be meant, yet, when we know God, so we translate it.

  In the evening we took tea with Professor M., in a sociable way, much like the salon of Paris. Mrs. M. sat at a table, and poured out tea, which a servant passed about on a waiter. Gradually quite a circle of people dropped in—among them Professor Mittemeyer, who, I was told, is the profoundest lawyer in Germany; also there was Heinrich von Gagen, who was head of the convention of the empire in 1848, and prime minister. He is tall, has a strongly-marked face, very dark hair and eyebrows. There was also a very young man, with quite light hair, named Fisher, who, they told me, was one of the greatest philosophers of the time; but government had taken away his license to lecture, on account of his pantheistic principles. I understand that this has occasioned much feeling, and that some of the professors side with, and some against him. A lady told me that the theological professors were against him. I wonder people do not see that this kind of suppression of opinion is a sword with two edges, which may cut orthodoxy equally with pantheism. “Let both grow together,” says Christ, “the wheat and the tares.” In America we do this, and a nodding crop of all sorts we have. The more the better; the earth must exhaust herself before the end can come.

  Mr. M. spoke English, as did his very pretty daughter, Ida; his wife only French and German. Now, if you had only been there, we might have had quite a brilliant time; but my ignorance of German kept me from talking with any but those who could speak English. Professor Mittemeyer summoned English enough to make a long compliment, to which I responded as usual, by looking very foolish. There was a well informed gentleman there, who was formerly private secretary to Prince Albert, and who speaks English well. He has a bright, ingenious mind, and knows every thing, and seemed particularly willing to give me the benefit of his knowledge, for which I was suitably grateful. On the whole, I spent a very pleasant evening, and we parted about nine o'clock, Miss Ida promising to be our guide to the castle in the morning.

  Well, in the morning I was too unwell to leave the sofa. I knew the old symptoms, and remained in my room, while Professor M. and daughter, with S, W., and G, went up to the castle. I lay all day on the sofa, until, at five o'clock at night, I felt so much better that I thought we might take a carriage and drive up. C. accompanied me, and cocher took us by a beautiful drive along the valley of the Neckar, over the hills back of the castle, and finally through the old arched gateway into the grounds. I had no idea before of the extent or the architectural beauty of the place. The terrace behind the castle is a most lovely spot. It wanted only silence and solitude to make it perfect; it was full of tourists, as also was each ruined nook and arch. I sauntered about alone, for C. had a sick headache, and was forced to sit on one of the stone benches. Heidelberg Castle is of vast extent, and various architecture; parts of it, a guide book says, were designed by Michael Angelo. Over one door was a Hebrew inscription. Marshalled in niches in the wall stood statues of electors and knights in armor—silent, lonely. The effect was quite different from the old Gothic ruins I had seen. This spoke of courts, of princes; and the pride and grandeu
r of the past, contrasted with the silence and desertion, reminded me of the fable of the city of enchantment, where king and court were smitten to stone as they stood. A mournful lion's head attracted my attention, it had such a strange, sad look; and there was a fountain broken and full of weeds.

  I looked on the carvings, the statues, the broken arches, where bluebells and wild flowers were waving, and it seemed inexpressibly beautiful. It haunted me in my dreams, and I found myself walking up and down that terrace, in a kind of dim, beautiful twilight, with some friend: it was a strange dream of joy. But I felt myself very ill even while there, and had to take my sofa again as soon as I returned. There lying, I took my pencil, and drew just the view of the castle which I could see from my window, as a souvenir of the happiness I had felt at Heidelberg.

  [Illustration: of the author's window view of Heidelberg.]

  Now, I know you will say with me that a day of such hazy, dreamy enjoyment is worth a great deal. We cannot tell why it is, or what it is, but one feels like an AEolian breathed on and touched by soft winds.

  [Illustration: of Heidelberg castle.]

  This sketch of the castle gives only about half of it. Those tiny statues indicated in it on the points of the gables are figures in armor of large size. The two little kiosks or summer houses that you see, you will find, by turning back to the other picture, mark the extremities of the terrace. There is a singular tinge of the Moorish about this architecture which gives me great delight. That Moorish development always seemed to me strangely exciting and beautiful.

  JOURNAL—(CONTINUED.)

  Tuesday, August 2. We leave Heidelberg with regret. At the railway station occurred our first loss of baggage. As W. was making change in the baggage room, he missed the basket containing our books and sundries. Unfortunately the particular word for basket had just then stepped out. “Wo ist mein—pannier?” exclaimed he, giving them the French synonyme. They shook their heads. “Wo ist mein—basket?” he cried, giving them English; they shook their heads still harder. “Wo ist mein——“ “Whew—w!” shrieked the steam whistle; “Ding a-ling-ling!” went the bell, and, leaving his question unfinished, W. ran for the cars.