Chapter M: CLAUSSEN is here, and has kindly explained to me his processes and (6)

Most of the dwellings through all this region are built of stone--those of the poor very rudely, of the roughest boulders, commonly laid up with little or no mortar. The roofs are often of split stone. The houses of the more fortunate class are generally of hewn or at least tolerably square-edged stone, laid up in mortar, often plastered and whitened on the outside, so as to present a very neat appearance. Barns are few, and generally of stone also. The Vine is quite extensively cultivated, and often trained on a rude frame-work of stakes and poles, so as completely to cover the ground and forbid all other cultivation. Elsewhere it is trained to stakes--rarely to dwarf trees as in Italy. The Mulberry holds its ground for two-thirds of the way up the valley, giving out a little after the Vine and before Indian Corn does so. Wheat gives place to Rye about the same time, and the Potato, at first comparatively rare, becomes universal. As the Mulberry gives out the Chestnut comes in, and flourishes nobly for some ten or twenty miles about midway from Bellinzona to Airolo. I suspect, from the evident care taken of it, that its product is considerably relied on for food. Finally, as we gradually ascend, this also disappears, leaving Rye and the Potato to struggle a while longer, until at Airolo, at the foot of St. Gothard, where we stopped at 10 o'clock for the night, though the valley forks and is consequently of some width, there remain only a few slender potato-stalks, in shivering expectation of untimely frost, a patch or two of headless oats, with grass on the slopes, still tender and green from the lately sheltering snows, and a dwarfish hemlock clinging to the steep acclivities and hiding from the fierce winds in the deep ravines which run up the mountains. Snow is in sight on every side, and seems but a mile or so distant. Yet here are two petty villages and thirty or forty scattered dwellings, whose inhabitants keep as many small cows and goats as they can find grass for, and for the rest must live mainly by serving in the hotels, or as postillions, road-makers, &c. Yet no hand was held out to me in beggary at or around Airolo.

ST. GOTHARD.

We did not start till after 9 next morning, and meantime some more Diligences had come up, so that we formed a procession of one large and heavy, followed by three smaller and more fit carriages, when we moved out of the little village, and, leaving the larger branch of our creek, now a scanty mill-stream at best, to bend away to the left, we followed the smaller and charged boldly up the mountain. The ascent is of course made by zig-zags, no other mode being practicable for carriages, so that, when we had traveled three toilsome miles, Airolo still lay in sight, hardly a mile below us. I judge the whole ascent, which with a light carriage and three hard-driven horses occupied two hours and a half, was about eight miles, though a straight line might have taken us to the summit in three miles. The rise in this distance must have been near five thousand feet.

For a time, the Hemlocks held on, but at length they gave up, before we reached any snow, and only a little weak young Grass,--nourished rather by the perpetual mists or rains than by the cold, sour earth which clung to the less precipitous rocks,--remained to keep us company. Soon the snow began to appear beside us, at first timidly, on the north side of cliffs, and in deep chasms, where it was doubtless drifted to the depth of thirty feet during the Winter, and has been gradually thawing out since May. At length it stood forth unabashed beside our road, often a solid mass six or seven feet thick, on either side of the narrow pass which had been cut and worn through it for and by the passage of travelers. Meantime, the drizzling rain, which had commenced soon after we started, had changed to a spitting, watery sleet, and at length to snow, a little before we reached the summit of the pass, where we found a young Nova Zembla. An extensive cloud-manufactory was in full blast all around us, shutting out from view even the nearest cliffs, while the snow and wind--I being on the outside and somewhat wet already--made our short halt there anything but comfortable. The ground was covered with snow to an average depth of two or three feet; the brooks ran over beds of ice and under large heaps of drifted and frozen snow, and all was sullen and cheerless. Here were the sources (in part) of the Po and of the Rhine, but I was rather in haste to bid the former good-bye.

We reduced our three-horse establishment to two, and began to descend the Rhineward zig-zags at a rattling pace, our driver (and all the drivers) hurrying all the way. We reached the first village (where there was considerable Grass again, and some Hemlock, but scarcely any attempts at cultivation), in fifty minutes, and I think the distance was nearly five miles. "Jehu, the son of Nimshi," could not have done the distance in five minutes less.

We changed horses and drivers at this village, but proceeded at a similar pace down through the most hideous chasm for the next two or three miles that I ever saw. I doubt whether a night-mare ever beat it. The descent of the stream must have been fully 1,500 feet to the mile for a good part of this distance, while the mountains rose naked and almost perpendicular on each side from its very bed to hights of one to two thousand feet, without a shrub, and hardly a resting-place even for snow. Down this chasm our road wound, first on one side of the rivulet, then on the other, crossing by narrow stone bridges, often at the sharpest angle with the road, making zig-zags wherever space could be found or made for them, now passing through a tunnel cut through the solid rock, and then under a long archway built over it to protect it from avalanches at the crossing of a raving cataract down the mountain side. And still the staving pace at which we started was kept up by those on the lead, and imitated by the boy driving our carriage, which was hindmost of all. I was just thinking that, though every one should know his own business best, yet if _I_ were to drive down a steep mountain in that way I should expect to break my neck, and suspect I deserved it, when, as we turned a sharp zig-zag on a steep grade at a stiff trot, our carriage tilted, and over she went in a twinkling.

Our horses behaved admirably, which in an upset is always half the battle. Had they started, the Diligence managers could only have rendered a Flemish account of _that_ load. As it was, they stopped, and the driver, barely scratched, had them in hand in a minute.

I was on the box-seat with him, and fell under him, catching a bad sprain of the left wrist, on which I came down, which disables that hand for a few days--nothing broken and no great harm done--only a few liberal rents and trifling bruises. But I should judge that our heads lay about three feet from the side of the road, which was a precipice of not more than twenty feet, but the rocks below looked particularly jagged and uninviting.

Our four inside passengers had been a good deal mixed up, in the concussion, but soon began to emerge _seriatim_ from the side door which in the fall came uppermost--only one of them much hurt, and he by a bruise or gash on the head nowise dangerous. Each, as his or her head protruded through the aperture, began to "let in" on the driver, whose real fault was that of following bad examples. I was a little riled at first myself, but the second and last lady who came out put me in excellent humor. She was not hurt, but had her new silk umbrella broken square in two, and she flashed the pieces before the delinquent's eyes and reeled off the High Dutch to him with vehement volubility. I wished I could have understood her more precisely. Though not more than eighteen, she developed a tongue that would have done credit to forty.

The drivers ahead stopped and came back, helped right the stage, and each took a shy at the unlucky charioteer, though in fact they were as much in fault as he, only more fortunate. I suspected before that this trotting down zig-zags was not the thing, and now I know it, and shall remember it, at least for one week. And I have given this tedious detail to urge and embolden others to remonstrate against it. The vice is universal--at least it was just as bad at Mount Cenis as here, and here were four carriages all going at the same reckless pace. The truth is, it is not safe to trot down such mountains and hardly to ride down them at all. We passed scores of places where any such unavoidable accident as the breaking of a reach or a hold-back must have sent the whole concern over a precipice where all that reached the bottom would hardly be worth picking up. Who has a right to risk his life in this fool-hardy manner?

The next time I cross the Alps, I will take my seat for the stopping-place at the nearer foot, and thence walk leisurely over, with a long staff and a water-proof coat, sending on my baggage by the coach to the hotel on the other side. If I can get an hour's start, I can (by straightening the zig-zags) nearly double it going up; if not, I will wait on the other side for the next stage. If it were not for the cowardly fear of being thought timid, there would be more care used in such matters. Hitherto, I have not given the subject much consideration, but I turn over a new leaf from the date of this adventure.

We came down the rest of the mountain more carefully, though still a great deal too fast. A girl of twelve or thirteen breaking stone by the road-side in a lonely place was among the note-worthy features of the wilder upper region. Trees, Potato-patches, Grain-fields were welcome sights as we neared them successively, though the Vine and the Chestnut did not and Indian Corn barely did reaeppear on this side, which is much colder than the other and grows little but Grass. At the foot of the pass, the valley widened a little, though still with steep, snow-capped cliffs crowding it on either side. Five hours from the summit and less than two from the base, we reached the pretty town of Altorf, having perhaps five thousand inhabitants, with a mile width of valley and grassy slopes on the surrounding mountains. A few minutes more brought us to the petty port of Fluellen on Lake Lucerne, where a little steamboat was waiting to bring us to this city. I would not just then have traded off that steamboat for several square miles of snow-capped sublimity.

Lake Lucerne is a mere cleft in the mountains, narrow and most irregular in form, with square cliffs like our Palisades, only many times higher, rising sheer out of its depths and hardly a stone's throw apart. Mount Pilatte and The Rhigi are the most celebrated of those seen from its breast. After making two or three short turns among the hights, it finally opens to a width of some miles on a softer scene, with green pastures and pleasant woods sweeping down the hills nearly or quite to its verge. Lucerne City lies at or near its outlet, and seems a pleasant place, though I have had no time to spend upon it, as I arrived at 8 1/2 P. M. too weary even to write if I had been able to sleep. I leave for Basle by Diligence at eight this morning.

XXXII.

LUCERNE TO BASLE.

BASLE, July 13, 1851.

Very striking is the contrast between all of Switzerland I had traversed, before reaching Lucerne, and the route thence to this place. From Como to the middle of Lake Lucerne is something over a hundred miles, and in all that distance there was never so much as one-tenth of the land in sight that could, by any possibility, be cultivated. The narrow valleys, when not _too_ narrow, were arable and generally fertile; but they were shut in on every side by dizzy precipices, by lofty mountains, often snow-crowned, and either wholly barren or with only a few shrubs and stunted trees clinging to their clefts and inequalities, because nothing else could cling there. A fortieth part of these mountain sides may have been so moderately steep that soil could gather and lie on them, in which case they yielded fair pasturage for cattle, or at least for goats: but nine-tenths of their superficies were utterly unproductive and inhospitable. On the mountain-tops, indeed, there is sometimes a level space, but the snow generally monopolizes that. Such is Switzerland from the Italian frontier, where I crossed it, to the immediate vicinity of Lucerne.

Here all is changed. A small but beautiful river debouches from the lake at its west end, and the town is grouped around this outlet. But mountains here there are none--nothing but rich glades and gently swelling hills, covered with the most bounteous harvest, through which the high road runs north-easterly some sixty miles to Basle on the Rhine in the north-east corner of Switzerland, with Germany (Baden) on the east and France on the north. A single ridge, indeed, on this route presents a ragged cliff or two and some heights dignified with the title of mountains, which seem a joke to one who has just spent two days among the Alps.

Grass is the chief staple of this fertile region, but Wheat is abundantly grown and is just beginning to ripen, promising a noble yield. Potatoes also are extensively planted, and I never saw a more vigorous growth. Rye, Oats and Barley do well, but are little cultivated. Of Indian Corn there is none, and the Vine, which had given out on the Italian side some twenty miles below the foot of St. Gothard, does not come in again till we are close to the Rhine. But in its stead they have the Apple in profusion--I think more Apple trees between Lucerne and the Rhine, than I had seen in all Europe before--and they seem very thrifty, though this year's yield of fruit will be light. There are some other trees planted, and many small, thrifty forests, such as I had hardly seen before on the Continent. These increase as we approach the Rhine. There is hardly a fence throughout, and generous crops of Wheat, Potatoes, Rye, Grass, Oats, &c., are growing close up to the beaten road on either side. I don't exactly see how Cattle are driven through such a country, having passed no drove since crossing Mount St. Gothard.

The dwellings are generally large, low structures, with sloping, overhanging roofs, indicating thrift and comfort. Sometimes the first story, or at least the basement, is of hewn-stone, but the greater part of the structure is nearly always of wood. The barns are spacious, and built much like the houses. I have passed through no other part of Europe evincing such general thrift and comfort as this quarter of Switzerland, and Basle, already a well built city, is rapidly improving. When the Railroad line from Paris to Strasburg is completed, the French capital will be but little more than twenty-four hours from Basle, while the Baden line, down the German side of the Rhine, already connects this city easily with all Germany, and is certain of rapid and indefinite extension. Basle, though quite a town in Caesar's day, is renewing her youth.

THE SWISS.

I am leaving Switzerland, after four days only of observation therein; but during those days I have traversed the country from its southern to its north-eastern extremity, passing through six of the Cantons and along the skirts of another, resting respectively at Airolo, Lucerne, and Basle, and meeting many hundreds of the people on the way, beside seeing thousands in the towns and at work in their fields. This is naturally a very poor country, with for the most part a sterile soil--or rather, naked, precipitous rocks, irreclaimably devoid of soil--where, if anywhere, the poor peasantry would be justified in asking charity of the strangers who come to gaze at and enjoy their stupendous but most inhospitable mountains--and yet I have not seen one beggar to a hundred hearty workers, while in fertile, bounteous, sunny Italy, the preponderance was clearly the other way. And, though very palpably a stranger, and specially exposed by my ignorance of the languages spoken here to imposition, no one has attempted to cheat me from the moment of my entering the Republic till this, while in Italy every day and almost every hour was marked by its peculiar extortions. Every where I have found kindness and truth written on the faces and evinced in the acts of this people, while in Italy rapacity and knavery are the order of the day. How does a monarchist explain this broad discrepancy? Mountains alone will not do, for the Italians of the Apennines and the Abruzzi are notoriously very much like those of the Campagna and of the Val d'Arno; nor will the zealot's ready suggestion of diverse Faiths suffice, for my route has lain almost exclusively through the _Catholic_ portion of this country. Ticino, Uri, Lucerne, etc., are intensely, unanimously Catholic; the very roadsides are dotted with little shrines, enriched with the rudest possible pictures of the Virgin and Child, the Crucifixion, &c., and I think I did not pass a Protestant church or village till I was within thirty miles of this place. Nearly all the Swiss I have seen are Catholics, and a more upright, kindly, truly religious people I have rarely or never met. What, then, can have rendered them so palpably and greatly superior to their Italian neighbors, whose ancestors were the masters of theirs, but the prevalence here of Republican Freedom and there of Imperial Despotism?

Switzerland, shut out from equal competition with other nations by her inland, elevated, scarcely accessible position, has naturalized Manufactures on her soil, and they are steadily extending. She sends Millions' worth of Watches, Silks, &c., annually even to distant America; while Italy, with nearly all her population within a day's ride of the Adriatic or the Mediterranean, with the rich, barbaric East at her doors for a market, does not fabricate even the rags which partially cover her beggars, but depends on England and France for most of the little clothing she has. Italy is naturally a land of abundance and luxury, with a soil and climate scarcely equalled on earth; yet a large share of her population actually lack the necessaries, not to speak of the comforts, of life, and those who sow and reap her bountiful harvests are often without bread: Switzerland has, for the most part, an Arctic climate and scarcely any soil at all; and yet her people are all decently clad and adequately though frugally fed, and I have not seen one person who seemed to have been demoralized by want or to suffer from hunger since I crossed her border. Her hotels are far superior to their more frequented namesakes of Italy; even at the isolated hamlet of Airolo, where no grain will grow, I found everything essential to cleanliness and comfort, while the "Switzer Hoff" at Lucerne and "Les Trois Rois" at Basle are two of the very best houses I have found in Europe. What Royalist can satisfactorily explain these contrasts?

Switzerland, though a small country, and not half of this habitable, speaks three different languages. I found at Airolo regular files of Swiss journals printed respectively in French, Italian, and German: the last entirely baffled me; the two former I read after a fashion, making out some of their contents' purport and drift. Those in French, printed at Geneva, Lausanne, &c., were executed far more neatly than the others. All were of small size, and in good part devoted to spirited political discussion. Switzerland, though profoundly Republican, is almost equally divided into parties known respectively as "Radical" and "Conservative:" the Protestant Cantons being preponderantly Radical, the Catholic generally Conservative. Of the precise questions in dispute I know little and shall say nothing; but I do trust that the controversy will not enfeeble nor paralyze the Republic, now seriously menaced by the Allied Despots, who seem to have almost forgotten that there ever was such a man as WILLIAM TELL. Let us drink, in the crystal current leaping brightly down from the eternal glaciers, to his glorious, inspiring memory, and to Switzerland a loving and hopeful Adieu!

XXXIII.

GERMANY.

COLOGNE, Tuesday, July 15, 1851.

After spending Sunday very agreeably at Basle (where American Protestants traveling may like to know that Divine worship is regularly conducted each Sabbath by an English clergyman, at the excellent Hotel of the Three Kings), I set my face again northward at 7 1/2 A. M. on Monday, crossing the Rhine (which is here about the size of the Hudson at Albany) directly into Baden, and so leaving the soil of glorious Switzerland, the mountain home of Liberty amid surrounding despotisms. The nine first miles from Basle (to Efringen) are traversed by Omnibus, and thence a very good Railroad runs nearly parallel with the Rhine by Freiburg, Kehl (opposite Strasburg), Baden (at some distance), Rastatt, Carlsruhe, and Heidelberg, to Mannheim, distant from Basle 167 1/2 miles by Railroad, and I presume considerably further by River, as the Rhine (unlike the Railroad as far as Heidelberg) is not very direct in its course. There is a French Railroad completed on the other (west) side of the river from Basle to Strasburg, and nearly completed from Strasburg to Paris, which affords a far more direct and expeditious route than that I have chosen, as I wished to see something of Germany. It is also cheaper, I believe, to take the French Railroad to Strasburg, and the river thence by steamboats which ply regularly as high as Strasburg, and might keep on to Basle, I presume, if not impeded by bridges, as the river is amply large enough.

The Baden Railroad runs through a country descending, indeed, toward the Rhine and with the Rhine, but as nearly level as a country well can be, and affording the fewest possible obstacles to its construction. It is faithfully built, but instead of the numerous common roads which cross it being carried over or under its track, as the English Railroads are, they are closed on each side by a swing-bar, at which a guard is stationed--a plan which saves expense at the outset, but involves a heavy permanent charge. I should deem the English plan preferable to this, though men are had much cheaper for such service in Germany than in America, or even Great Britain. The pace is slower than with us. We were about nine hours of fair daylight traversing 160 miles of level or descending grade, with a light passenger train. The management, however, was careful and unexceptionable.

This Railroad runs for most of the distance much nearer to the range of gentle hills which bound the broad and fertile Rhine valley on the east than to the river itself. The valley is nearly bare of trees for the most part, and has scarcely any fences save the very slight board fence on either side of the Railroad. In some places, natural woods of considerable extent are permitted, but not many fruit nor shade-trees, whether in rows or scattered. The hills in sight, however, are very considerably wooded, and wood is apparently the common fuel. The valley is generally but not entirely irrigated, though all of it easily might be, the arrangements for irrigation appearing much more modern and unsystematic here than in Lombardy. The land is cultivated in strips as in France--first Wheat (the great staple), then Rye, then Potatoes, then Clover, then Beets, or Hemp, or Flax, and so on. For a small part of the way, Grass seems to preponderate, but generally Wheat and Rye cover more than half the ground, while Potatoes have a very large breadth of it. Rye is now being harvested, and is quite heavy: in fact, all the crops promise abundant harvests. The Vine appears at intervals, but is not general through this region: Indian Corn is also rare, and appears in small patches. In some places many acres of Wheat are seen in one piece, but usually a breadth of four to twenty rods is given to one crop, and then another succeeds and so on. I presume this implies a diversity of owners, or at least of tenants.

The cultivation, though not always judicious, is generally thorough, there being no lack of hands nor of good will. The day being fine and the season a hurrying one, the vast plain was everywhere dotted with laborers, of whom fully half were Women, reaping Rye, binding it, raking and pitching Hay, hoeing Potatoes, transplanting Cabbages, Beets, &c. They seemed to work quite as heartily and efficiently as the men. But the most characteristically European spectacle I saw was a woman unloading a great hay-wagon of huge cordwood at a Railroad station, and pitching over the heavy sticks with decided resolution and efficiency. It may interest the American pioneers in the Great Pantalette (or is it Pantaloon?) Movement to know that she was attired in appropriate costume--short frock, biped continuations and a mannish oil-skin hat.--And this reminds me that, coming away from Rome, I met, at the half-way house to Civita Vecchia, a French marching regiment on its way from Corsica to the Eternal City, to which regiment two women were attached as sutlers, &c., who also wore the same costume, except that their hats were of wool instead of oil-skin. Thus attired, they had marched twenty-five miles that hot day, and were to march as many the next, as they had doubtless done on many former days. It certainly cannot be pretended that these women adopted that dress from a love of novelty, or a desire to lead a new fashion, or from any other reason than a sense of its convenience, founded on experience. I trust, therefore, that their unconscious testimony in behalf of the Great Movement may not be deemed irrelevant nor unentitled to consideration. Their social rank is certainly not the highest, but I consider them more likely to render a correct judgment on the merit of the Bloomer controversy than the Lady Patronesses of Almack's.

THE RHINE.

After spending the night at Mannheim, I took a steamboat at 5 1/2 this morning for this place, 165 miles down the Rhine, embracing all the navigable part of the river of which the scenery is esteemed attractive. As far down as Mayence or Mentz (55 miles), the low banks and broad intervale continue, and there is little worthy of notice. From Mentz to Coblentz (54 miles), there is some magnificent scenery, though I think its natural beauties do not surpass those of the Hudson from New-York to Newburgh. Certainly there are no five miles equal in rugged grandeur to those beginning just below and ending above West Point. But the Rhine is here somewhat larger than the Hudson; the hills on either side, though seldom absolutely precipitous, are from one to five hundred feet high, and are often crowned with the ruins of ancient castles, which have a very picturesque appearance; while the little villages at their foot and the cultivation (mainly of the Vine) which is laboriously prosecuted up their rocky and almost naked sides, contribute to heighten the general effect. These sterile rocks impart a warmth to the soil and a sweetness to the grape which are otherwise found only under a more southerly sun, and, combined with the cheapness of labor, appear to justify the toilsome process of terracing up the steep hill-sides, and even carrying up earth in baskets to little southward-looking nooks and crevices where it may be retained and planted on. Yet I liked better than the vine-clad heights those less abrupt declivities where a more varied culture is attempted, and where the Vine is intermingled with strips of now ripened Rye, ripening Wheat, blossoming Potatoes, &c., &c., together imparting a variegated richness and beauty to the landscape which are rarely equaled. But the Rhine has been nearly written out, and I will pass it lightly over. Its towers are not very imposing in appearance, though Coblentz makes a fair show. Opposite is Ehrenbreitstein, no longer the ruin described (if I rightly remember) in Childe Harold, but a magnificent fortress, apparently in the best condition, and said to have cost Five Millions of dollars. The "blue Moselle" enters the Rhine from the west just below Coblentz. This city (Cologne) is the largest, I believe, in Rhenish Prussia, and, next to Rotterdam at its mouth, the largest on the Rhine, having a flourishing trade and 90,000 inhabitants. (Coblentz has 26,000, Mayence 36,000, Mannheim 23,000 and Strasburg 60,000.)

There are some bold hights dignified as mountains below Coblentz, but the finest of the scenery is above. The hills disappear some miles above this city, and henceforward to the sea all is flat and tame as a marsh. On the whole, the Rhine has hardly fulfilled my expectations. Had I visited it on my way _to_ the Alps, instead of just _from_ them, it would doubtless have impressed me more profoundly; but I am sure the St. Mary's of Lake Superior is better worth seeing; so I think, is the Delaware section of the Erie Railroad. It is possible the weather may have unfitted me for appreciating this famous river, for a more cloudy, misty, chilly, rainy, execrable, English day I have seldom encountered. To travelers blessed with golden sunshine, the Rhine may wear a grander, nobler aspect, and to such I leave it.

THE GERMANS.

I have been but two days wholly among the Germans, but I had previously met many of them in England, Italy and Switzerland. They are seen to the best advantage at home. Their uniform courtesy (save in the detestable habit of smoking where others cannot help being annoyed by their fumes), indicates not merely good nature but genuine kindness of heart. I have not seen a German quarreling or scolding anywhere in Europe. The deference of members of the same family to each other's happiness in cars, hotels and steamboats has that quiet, unconscious manner which distinguishes a habit from a holiday ornament. The entire absence of pretense, of stateliness, of a desire to be thought a personage and not a mere person, is scarcely more universal in Switzerland than here. But in fact I have found Aristocracy a chronic disease nowhere but in Great Britain. In France, there is absolutely nothing of it; there are monarchists in that country--monarchists from tradition, from conviction, from policy, or from class interest--but of Aristocracy scarcely a trace is left. Your Paris boot-black will make you a low bow in acknowledgment of a franc, but he has not a trace of the abjectness of a London waiter, and would evidently decline the honor of being kicked by a Duke. In Italy, there is little manhood but no class-worship; her millions of beggars will not abase themselves one whit lower before a Prince than before anyone else from whom they hope to worm a copper. The Swiss are freemen, and wear the fact unconsciously but palpably on their brows and beaming from their eyes. The Germans submit passively to arbitrary power which they see not how successfully to resist, but they render to rank or dignity no more homage than is necessary--their souls are still free, and their manners evince a simplicity and frankness which might shame or at least instruct America. On the Rhine, the steamboats are so small and shabby, without state-rooms, berth-rooms, or even an upper deck--that the passengers are necessarily at all times under each other's observation, and, as the fare is high, and twice as much in the main as in the forward cabin, it may be fairly presumed that among those who pay the higher charge are none of the poorest class--no mere laborers for wages. Yet in this main cabin well-dressed young ladies would take out their home-prepared dinner and eat it at their own good time without seeking the company and countenance of others, or troubling themselves to see who was observing. A Lowell factory-girl would consider this entirely out of character, and a New-York milliner would be shocked at the idea of it.

The Germans are a patient, long-suffering race. Of their Forty Millions outside of Austria, probably less than an eighth at all approve or even acquiesce in the despotic policy in which their rulers are leagued, and which has rendered Germany for the present a mere outpost of Russia--an unfinished Poland. These people are intelligent as well as brave--they see and feel, yet endure and forbear. Perhaps their course is wiser than that which hot impatience would prompt--nay, I believe it is. If they can patiently suffer on without losing heart until France shall have extricated herself from the toils of her treacherous misrulers, they may then resume their rights almost without a blow. And whenever a new 1848 shall dawn upon them, they will have learned to improve its opportunities and avoid its weaknesses and blunders. Heaven speed its auspicious coming!

XXXIV.

BELGIUM.

PARIS, Saturday, July 19, 1851.

From Cologne westward by Railroad to the Western frontier (near Verviers) of Rhenish Prussia, and thus of Germany, is 65 miles. For most of the way the country is flat and fertile, and in good part devoted to Grazing, though considerable Wheat is grown. The farming is not remarkably good, and the general aspect befits a region which for two thousand years has been too often the arena of fierce and bloody conflict between the armies of great nations. Cologne itself, though a place of no natural strength, has been fortified to an extent and at an evident cost beyond all American conception. All over this part of Europe, and to a less degree throughout Italy, the amount of expenditure on walls and forts, bastions, ditches, batteries, &c. is incalculably great. I cannot doubt that any nation, by wisely expending half so much in systematic efforts to educate, employ steadily and reward amply its poorer classes, would have been strengthened and ensured against invasion far more than it could be by walls like precipices and a belt of fortresses as impregnable as Gibraltar. But this wisdom is slowly learned by rulers, and is not yet very widely appreciated. Whenever it shall be, "Othello's occupation" will be gone, not for Othello only, but for all who would live by the sword.

For some miles before it reaches the frontier, and for a much larger distance after entering Belgium, the Railroad passes through a decidedly broken, hilly, up-and-down country, most unlike the popular conception of Flanders or Belgium. Precipices of naked rock are not unfrequent and the region is wisely given up mainly to Wood and Grass, the former engrossing most of the hill-sides and the latter flourishing in the valleys. This Railroad has more tunnels in the course of fifty miles than I ever before met with--I think not less than a dozen--while the grading and bridging must have been very expensive. Such a country is of course prolific in running streams, on which many small and some larger manufacturing towns and villages are located. At length, it ascends a considerable inclined plane at Liege, once a very popular, powerful and still a handsome and important manufacturing town with 60,000 inhabitants; and here the beautiful and magnificently fertile table lands of Belgium spread out like a vast prairie before the traveler. In fact, the peasant cultivators are so commonly located in villages, leaving long stretches of the rarely fenced though well cultivated plain without a habitation, that the resemblance to level prairies which have been planted and sown is more striking than would be imagined. But the growing crops are too cleanly and carefully weeded and too uniformly good to protract the illusion. Sometimes hundreds of acres are unbrokenly covered with Wheat, which has the largest area of any one staple; but more commonly a breadth of this is succeeded by one of Rye, that by one of Potatoes, then Wheat again, then Clover, then Rye, then Wheat, then Potatoes, then Clover or other grass, and so on. I never before saw so extensive and uniformly thrifty a growth of Potatoes, while acres upon acres of Beets, also in regular rows and kept carefully free from weeds, present at this season a beautiful appearance. I apprehend that not half so much attention has been given in our country to the growth of this and the kindred roots as would have been richly rewarded. Of course, it is idle to sow Beets on any but rich land, with a generous depth of soil and the most thorough cultivation, but with such cultivation the red lands of New-Jersey and the intervales of our rivers might be profitably and extensively devoted to the Beet culture and to that of the larger Turnips. I have seen nothing in Europe that made a better appearance or promised a more bountiful return than the large tracts of Belgium and the neighboring district of France sown to Beets.

Indian Corn and the Vine are scarcely, or not at all seen in Belgium. Beggars are not abundant; but women are required to labor quite extensively in the fields. The habitations of the poor are less wretched than those of Italy, but not equal to those of the fertile portion of Switzerland. Irrigation is quite extensively practised, but is far from universal. The few cattle kept in the wholly arable and thoroughly cultivated portion of the country are seldom allowed to range, because of the lack of fences, but are kept up and fed throughout the year. Women cutting grass in all by-places, and carrying it home by back-loads to feed their stock, is a common spectacle throughout central Europe. Trees sometimes line the roads and streams, or irrigating canals, and sometimes have a piece of ground allotted them whereon to grow at random, but are rather scarce throughout this region, and I think I saw square miles entirely devoid of them. Fruit-trees are clearly too scarce, though Cherries in abundance were offered for sale as we passed. On the whole, Belgium is not only a fertile but a prosperous country.

At Liege, the Railroad we traversed leaves its westerly for a north-west course, running past Tirlemont to Malines (Mechlin) and thence to Antwerp; but we took a sharp turn to the south-west of Malines in order to reach Brussels, which, though the capital and the largest city of Belgium, is barely a point or stopping-place on a right line, while Liege, Namur, Ghent and Bruges are each the point of junction of two or more completed roads. Brussels has slept while this network has been woven over the country, and will awake to discover herself shorn of her trade and sinking into insignificance if she does not immediately bestir herself. Her location is a fine one, on a ground which rises very gradually from the great plain to a modest hill southward, and she is among the best built of modern cities. But already she is off the direct line from either London or Paris to Germany; I would have saved many miles by avoiding her and taking the road due west from Liege to Namur, Charleroi and Mons, where it intersects the Brussels line; and soon the great bulk of the travel will do so if it does not already. Railroads are reckless Radicals and are destined by turns to make and to mar the fortunes of many great emporiums.

NORTH-EASTERN FRANCE.

Tournay in the coal region, fifty miles from Brussels, is the last town of Belgium; eight miles further is Valenciennes, one of the strong frontier fortresses of France, with over 20,000 inhabitants, an active trade and the worth of a dukedom wasted on its fortifications. Here our baggage underwent a new custom-house scrutiny, which was expeditiously and rationally made, and I kept on twenty-three miles farther to Douai, where our Railroad falls into one from Calais, which had already absorbed those from Dunkirk and Ghent, and where, it being after 10 o'clock, I halted for the night, so as to take a Calais morning train at 4 1/2 and see by fair daylight the country thence to Paris, which I had already traversed in the dark.

This country presents no novel features. It is not quite so level nor so perfectly cultivated as central Belgium, but is generally fertile and promises fairly. The Rye harvest is in progress through all this country, and is very good, but the breadth of Wheat is much greater, and it also promises well, though not yet ripened. Westward from Brussels in Belgium is an extensive Grazing region, bountifully irrigated, and covered with large herds of fine cattle. Something of this is seen after crossing into France, but Wheat regains its predominance, while large tracts are devoted to the Beet, probably for the manufacture of Sugar. There are few American gardens that can show the Beet in greater perfection than it exhibits here, in areas of twenty to forty acres. Wood also becomes far more abundant in the Grazing region, and continues so nearly up to the walls of Paris, Poplars and other trees of slender foliage being planted in rows across the fields as well as by the streams and road-sides. The Vine, which had vanished with the bolder scenery of the Rhine, reappears only within sight of Paris, where many of the cultivated fields attest a faultiness or meagerness of cultivation unworthy of the neighborhood of a great metropolis. I presume there will be more middling and half middling yields within twenty miles of Paris than in all Belgium.

I find Paris, and measurably France, in a state of salutary ferment, connected with the debate in the Assembly on the proposed Revision of the Constitution. The best speeches are yet to be made, but already the attention of the People is fixed on the discussion, and it will be followed to the end with daily increased interest. That end, as is well known, will be a defeat of the proposed Revision, and of all schemes looking to the legal and peaceful reestablishment of Monarchy, or the reelection of Louis Napoleon. And this discussion, this result, will have immensely strengthened the Republic in the hearts of the French Millions, as well as in the general conviction of its stability. And if, with the Suffrage crippled as it is, and probably must continue to be, a heartily Republican President can be elected here next May, an impulse will be given to the movement throughout Europe which can scarcely be withstood. Live the Republic!

XXXV.

PARIS TO LONDON.

LONDON, Tuesday, July 22, 1851.

The quickest and most usual route from Paris to London is that by way of Calais and Dover; but as I had traversed that once, and part of it twice, I resolved to try another for my return, and chose the cheapest and most direct of all--that by way of Rouen, Dieppe, New-Haven and the Brighton Railroad--which is 32 miles shorter than the Calais route, but involves four times as long a water passage, and so is spun out to more than twice the length of the other. We left Paris at 8 yesterday morning; halted at the fine old town of Rouen before noon; were in Dieppe at 2 1/2 P. M.; but there we waited for a boat till after 6; then were eight hours crossing the Channel; had to wait at New-Haven till after 6 this morning before the Custom-House scrutiny of our baggage was begun; so that only a few were enabled to take the first train thence for London at a quarter to 7. I was not among the lucky ones, but had to hold on for the second train at a quarter past 8, and so did not reach this city till after 10, or twenty-six hours from Paris, though, with a little enterprise and a decent boat on the Channel, the trip could easily be made in 14 hours--four for the French side, six for the Channel, two for the English side and two for Custom-House delay and leeway of all kinds. If Commodore Vanderbilt or Mr. Newton would only take compassion on the ignorance and barbarism prevailing throughout Europe in the matter of steamboat-building, and establish a branch of his business on this side of the Atlantic, he would do the cause of Human Progress a service, and signally contribute to the diminution of the sum of mortal misery.

The night was mild and fair; the wind light; the sea consequently smooth; and I suffered less, and repented my choice of a route less, than I had expected to; but consider the facts: Here was the most direct route by Railroad and Steamboat between the two great Capitals of Europe--a route constantly traveled by multitudes from all parts of world--yet the only boats provided for the liquid portion of the way are two little black, cobbling concerns, each perhaps seventy feet long by fifteen wide, with no deck above the water line, and not a single berth for even a lady passenger, though making one passage each night. Who could suppose that two tolerably civilized nations would endure this in the middle of 1851?

We were nearly two hundred passengers, and the boat just about decently held us, but had not sitting-room for all, above and under the deck. But as about half, being "second class," had no right to enter the main cabin, those who had that right were enabled to sit and yawn, and try to cheat themselves into the notion that they would coax sleep to their aid after a while. Occasionally, one or two having left for a turn on deck, some drowsy mortal would stretch himself on a setter at full length, but the remonstrances of others needing seats would soon compel him to resume a half-upright posture. And so the passage wore away, and between 2 and 3 this morning we reached New-Haven (a petty sea-port at the mouth of the little river Ouse), where we were permitted promptly to land, minus our baggage, and repair to a convenient inn. Here I, with several others, invested two British shillings in a chance to sleep, but the venture (at least in my case) proved a losing one. It was daylight when we went to bed, and the incessant tramping, ringing of bells, &c., kept us for the most part awake and called us up at a very early hour, to fidget uselessly for the recovery of our baggage, and lose the early train at last.

The country stretching north-westward from Paris to Dieppe (125 miles) is less thoroughly cultivated than any other I have seen in Europe out of Italy. I saw more weedy and thin Rye and ragged Wheat than I had noted elsewhere. Grass is the chief staple, after leaving the garden-covered vicinity of Paris, though Wheat, Rye and Oats are extensively cultivated. The Root crops promise poorly. Indian Corn is hardly seen, though the Vine is considerably grown. This region is generally well wooded, but in a straggling, accidental way, which has the effect neither of Lombard nicety of plantation, nor of the natural luxuriance of genuine forests. Fruit is not abundant. Irrigation is considerably practiced. The dwellings of the majority have an antiquated, ruinous, tumble-down aspect, such as I have observed nowhere else this side of Lower Italy. On the whole, I doubt whether this portion of France has improved much within the last fifty years.

Rouen, the capital of ancient Normandy, is the fifth city of France, only Paris, Lyons, Marseilles and Bordeaux having more inhabitants. Here the Railroad for Havre diverges from that to Dieppe, which we adhered to. Rouen is interesting for its antiquities, including several venerable and richly adorned Churches which I had no time to visit. Dieppe, on the Channel, has a small harbor, completely landlocked, and 17,000 inhabitants. It is considerably resorted to for sea-bathing, but seems to have very little trade. I judge that the Railroads now being extended through France, are likely to arrest the growth or hasten the decline of most of the smaller cities and towns by facilitating and cheapening access to the capital, where nearly every Frenchman would live if he could, and where the genius of people and government (no matter under what constitution) conspires to concentrate all the intellectual and artistic life of the Nation.

The Railroad from New-Haven to London passes through no considerable town, though not far from Brighton and Tunbridge. The country is undulating and beautiful, mainly devoted to Grass, Wheat and Wood, and in the very highest condition. It is now toward the end of Haying, and the Wheat is just beginning to ripen, though that of Central Italy was mainly harvested a full month ago. But the English Wheat covers the ground thickly and evenly, and promises a large average crop, especially if the present fine weather should continue through the next two weeks.

Noble herds of Cattle and flocks of Sheep overspread the spacious grounds devoted to Pasturage, especially near the Channel, where most of the land is in Grass. English Agriculture has a thorough and cleanly aspect which I have rarely observed elsewhere. Belgium is as careful and as productive, but its alternations of tillage or grass with woodland are by no means so frequent nor so picturesque as I see here. The sturdy, hospitable trees of an English park or lawn are not rivaled, so far as I have seen, on the Continent. I have rarely seen a reach of country better disposed for effect than that from a point ten miles this side of New-Haven to within some ten miles of this city, where Market Gardening supplants regular Farming. Women work in the fields at this season in England, but not more than one woman to five men were visible in the hay-fields we passed this morning--it may have been otherwise in the afternoon. As to beggars, none were visible, begging being disallowed.

Crossing the Channel shifts the boot very decidedly with respect to language. Those who were groping in the dark a few hours ago are now in the brightest sunshine, while the oracles of yesterday are the meekest disciples to-day. I rode from New-Haven to London in the same car with three Frenchmen and two Frenchwomen, coming up to the Exhibition, with a scant half-allowance of English among them; and their efforts to understand the signs, &c., were interesting. "_London Stout_," displayed in three-foot letters across the front of a drinking-house, arrested their attention: "_Stoot? Stoot?_" queried one of them; but the rest were as much in the dark as he, and I was as deficient in French as they in English. The befogged one pulled out his dictionary and read over and over all the French synonyms of "Stout," but this only increased his perplexity. "Stout" signified "robust," "hearty," "vigorous," "resolute," &c., but what then could "_London_ Stout" be? He closed his book at length in despair and resumed his observations.

LONDON AT MIDNIGHT.

London is given to late hours. At 6 A. M. though the sun has long been up, there are few stirring in the principal streets; occasionally you meet a cab hurrying with some passenger to take an early train; but few shutters are down at 7, and scarcely an omnibus is to be seen till after 8. The aristocratic dinner hour is 8 P. M. though I trust few are so unmerciful to themselves as to postpone their chief meal to that late hour when they have no company. The morning to sleep, the afternoon to business and the evening to enjoyment, seems the usual routine with the favored classes.