Chapter III: Part 3

Pilgrims were we recently, making a day's journey, not to gaze upon bones, rusty relics, and mouldy garments, but to see something fresh, fair, and altogether adorable,--the cherry-trees of the Lenninger Thal in full blossom. From Stuttgart we went by rail to Kirchheim unter Teck, a railway terminus, where we were shown the palace occupied by Franciska von Hohenheim after the death of Herzog Carl, and a Denkmal erected to Conrad Widerhold, that brave and very obstinate German hero who held the famous Hohentwiel fortress against the enemy, when even his own duke, Eberhard III., had ordered him to surrender it. Widerhold and his wife stand side by side, and you must look twice before you can tell which is the warrior. Kirchheim lies prettily in the Lauter Thal among the mountains. From there in an open carriage we drove on into the charming Lenninger Valley, one of the most beautiful in the Alb, with the whole landscape smiling benignly beneath a wonderful sky, and air deliciously pure and soft; past little brooks where the young, tender willows were beginning to leave out, through the little village of Dettingen, on and on over the broad _chaussee_, until we were fairly among the cherry-orchards. Bordering the road, running far back on the hill-slopes, shadowy, feathery, exquisite, the snowy blossoms lay before our eyes, with the range of the Suabian Alb beyond, and many a peak and ruin old in story. This was the fresh morning of a perfect spring day, where the peace and loveliness of the scene--the fields of pure whiteness reaching out on both sides of us, with now and then a dash of pink from the rosy apple-blossoms--made us feel that a special blessing had fallen upon us as devotees at the shrine of Ceres. At evening, returning by another route, with the varying lights and golden bars and heavy, piled-up purple cloud-masses in the western sky, it was lovely with yet another loveliness. The same mountains showed us other outlines and assumed new expressions, and bold, proud Teck rose from the foam of blossoms at its feet, like a stern rock towering above surging waters.

One of our experiences that day was becoming acquainted with Owen. Owen is not a man, as you may imagine, but only a very little village with crooked streets and queer old women, and that curious aspect to all its belongings which never grows less curious to some of us, though we ought to have become unmindful of it long ago. Owen is picturesque and dirty. "Ours at home aren't half so dirty or half so nice," we endeavor to explain to our German friends.

At the inn where we drew up we were received by an admiring group of children,--three yellow heads rising above three great armfuls of wood, of the weight of which the little things seemed utterly unconscious in the excitement of seeing us. They stood, one above the other, on the dilapidated, crazy stone steps, while a bushy dog, whose hair looked as yellow and sun-faded as the children's, also made "great eyes" at us from the lowest stone. Out came mine host, and cleared away children and dog and woodpiles in a twinkling. This flattering reception occurred at the Krone. A large gilt crown adorned with what small boys at home call "chiney alleys" makes a fine appearance above these same tumble-down steps; and directly beside them is a great barn-door, so near that you might easily mistake one entrance for the other and wander in among the beasties; and benign Mistress Cow was serenely chewing her cud in her boudoir under the front stairs, we observed as we entered the house.

Let no one faint when I say we ate our dinner here. Indeed, we have eaten in much worse places, and the dinner was far better than we thought could be evolved from a house with so many idiosyncrasies, so very prominent barn-door qualities, such mooings and lowings in undreamed-of corners and at unexpected moments. However, we experienced an immense lightening of the spirits when trout were served, for it seemed as if we knew what this dish at least was made of. They were pretty silvery things with red spots, and had just been gleaming in the brook near by, beneath elms and birches and baby willows, and now they were butchered to make our holiday.

The little restored Gothic church at Owen is more than a thousand years old, and its walled Kirchhof recalls the times when the villagers with their wives and children sought refuge here from the descent of robber knights. The dukes of Teck are buried within the church, and their arms and those of other old families, with quaint inscriptions about noble and virtuous dames, are interesting to decipher. The prettiest thing in the church was a spray of ivy which had crept through a hole in the high small-paned window, completely ivy-covered without, and came seeking something within the still stone walls, reaching out with all its tendrils, and seemed like the little, adventurous bird that flutters in through a church window on a hot summer afternoon, and makes a sleepy congregation open its heavy eyes.

The altar-pictures are edifying works of art. Behind the little group in the "Descent from the Cross" rise a range of hills that look astonishingly like the Suabian Alb, with a genuine old German fortress perching on a prominent peak. Saint Lucia is also an agreeable object of contemplation, with a sword piercing her throat up to the hilt, the blade coming through finely on the other side, while her mildly folded hands, smirking of superior virtue and perfect complacency, make her as winning as a saint of her kind can be.

Beyond Owen is the Wielandstein, or a Wielandstein I should perhaps say, for Wielandsteins are as common in Germany as lovers' leaps in America; and the story is always how the cruel king murdered the wife and children of Wieland the smith and took him captive, granting him his life merely because of his skill in fashioning wonderful things from metals, but imprisoning him and maiming his feet that he might never escape. Wieland lived some time at court, and grew in favor with the king on account of his deft hands and clever designs. At length the king's young sons were missing and could not be found, though they were searched for many days, and the king was anxious and sorrowful. Then Wieland presented him with two beautiful golden cups, at the sight of which the king was so pleased that he gave a feast; and as he was drinking from the golden bowls and feasting with his nobles, Wieland flew away by means of two great golden wings he had for a long time been secretly fashioning, and, poising himself in mid-air, cried to the horrified king that he was drinking from the skulls of his sons, whom he, Wieland, had murdered out of revenge. The people shot many arrows after him, but he soared away unharmed, his golden wings gleaming in the sunlight until he disappeared behind the hills.

The ruin of the old Teck castle is in this neighborhood, and the _Sybillen Loch_, a grotto where a celebrated witch used to dwell, who differed from her species in general, inasmuch as she was a _good_ witch. The old chronicles say she was an exemplary person, always delighting in good deeds. Her sons, however, were bad, quarrelled, stole from the world and one another, and even, upon one occasion, from her, and then ran away. Sybilla in her fiery chariot went in pursuit, and to this day a fair, bright stripe over orchard, field, and vineyard, always fresher and greener than the surrounding country, marks her course. How a fiery chariot could produce this beautifying effect is not to be questioned by an humble individual whose home is in a land where ruined castles and legend upon legend _do not_ rise from every hill-top. Another story is that the fertile stripe was made by Sybilla's chariot-wheels, as she left forever the family to which she had always belonged. The last duke of Teck lay after a battle resting under a tree, and saw her passing with averted face, his arms lying at her feet, while she extended a stranger's in her hands, which signified ruin to his house; and the prophecy was fulfilled, for the duke outlived his twelve sons, and his arms and title were adopted by the counts of Wuertemberg, who then became dukes of Wuertemberg and Teck. All these interesting things are visible to the naked eye. The fresh green stripe is unmistakable; and the point in the air where Wieland hovered on his golden wings above the cliff can easily be discerned with a very little imagination.

A visit to a typical Suabian pastor, in another little village on this road, was a pleasant episode. A hale, handsome old gentleman of seventy, with a small black cap on his silvery locks and an inveterate habit of quoting Greek, looking at us with a simple, childlike air, as if we too were learned. His house has stone floors, low square rooms, severely simple in their appointments. The arms of a bishop of some remote century are on the inner wall by the front entrance, and a little farther on is an aperture, through which the cow of the olden time was wont to placidly gaze out upon hurrying retainers. The cow of that period seems to have had comfortable apartments in the middle of the house. The Suabian cow of the present time earns her hay by the sweat of her brow, toiling in the fields.

The good old pastor has a love amounting to adoration for his garden, every inch of which he has worked over and beautified, till it seems to be the expression of all the poetry and romance which the outward conditions of his frugal, rigid life repress. Full of nooks and arbors, comfortable low chairs and benches, where the blue forget-me-nots look as if they bloom indeed for happy lovers; trees whose great drooping branches close around retreats which can only be designed for tender _tete-a-tetes_; irregular little paths, wandering up and down and about, always ending in something delightful, always beckoning, inviting, smiling, amid flowers and foliage so fresh and luxuriant, you feel that every petal and leaf is known and loved by the white-haired old man. His favorite seat is at the end of a narrow, winding way at the foot of a magnificent elm. There he sits and looks, over the brook that sings to his sweet roses and pansies, upon broad meadow-lands and fields of grain extending to the Suabian hills, with their wealth of beauty and meaning and tradition. He sleeps and rests and thinks there after dinner, he tells us, and perhaps that is all; but I believe, when the old man is gone, a volume of manuscript poems will be discovered hidden away among his sermons and Greek tomes,--a volume of love poems, sonnets, dreamings of all that his life crowds out into his garden, and that only in his garden he has been able to express,--all the unspoken sweetness, all the unsung songs.

FRANCISKA VON HOHENHEIM.

Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Paracelsus Bombastus is a personage whom we know, it must be confessed, more through the medium of Robert Browning than through our own historical researches; and we were therefore filled with wonder to learn that, in addition to the modest cognomen above, _de Hohenheim_ also belonged to his name. This same Hohenheim we have recently visited. Paracelsus never lived there, to be sure, and was born far away in Switzerland. Browning puts him in Wuerzburg, in Alsatia, in Constantinople; and a solid German authority declares he lived in Esslingen, where his laboratory is still exhibited, and in proof mentions that in this neighborhood was, not many years ago, a Weingaertner whose name was Bombastes von Hohenheim, a descendant of Paracelsus. However, he lived nowhere, everywhere, and anywhere, I presume, as best suited such a conjurer, alchemist, philosopher, and adventurer, and went wandering about from land to land, remaining in one place so long as the people would have faith in his learning, his incantations and magic arts; but what concerns us now is simply that he was connected with the Hohenheim family, who, in the old days, occupied the estate which still bears its name.

To Hohenheim is a pleasant walk or drive, as you please, from Stuttgart. A castle, adjacent buildings, lawns, and fruit-trees are what there is to see at the first glance,--at the second, many practical things in the museum connected with the Agricultural College, which is what Hohenheim at present is; models, and collections of stones and birds and beasts, bones and skeletons, and other uncanny objects, pretty woods, grain, seeds, etc. Students from the ends of the earth come here, and from all ranks,--sons of rich peasants and also young men of family. An Hungarian count is here at present, and youths from Wallachia, Russia, Sweden, America, Australia, Spain, Italy, and Greece,--China too, for all I know to the contrary,--with of course many Germans, learning practical and theoretical farming. We sat under the pear-trees which were showering white blossoms around us, ate our supper to fortify us for our homeward walk, watched the sheep come home and the students walking in from the fields with their oxen-carts. They wore blue blouses and high boots, and cracked their long whips with a jaunty air, more like Plunket in "Martha" than veritable farmers. From the balcony opening from the largest _salon_ we looked upon pretty woods, and the whole chain of the Suabian Alb, with Lichtenstein, Achalm, and other points of interest to be studied through a telescope.

This is, then, what Hohenheim now is,--a place where you go and look about a little, walk through large empty halls and long corridors affording glimpses of the simple quarters of the students, see a pleasant landscape, and, in short, enjoy an hour of unquestionably temperate pleasure. What it was as the seat of the Hohenheim family, which is mentioned as early as the year 1100, we do not know; but under Duke Carl Eugen of Wuertemberg, in the last century, it was a sort of Versailles, if all accounts be true: magnificent parks and gardens, Roman ruins near Gothic towers and chapels, Egyptian pyramids and Swiss chalets, catacombs, artificial waterfalls, baths, hothouses, grottos with Corinthian pillars, a Flora temple with lovely arabesques on its silver walls, and the palace itself, rising proud and stately at the end of the park, furnished with every luxury, and filled with rare vases and pictures. Four colossal statues stand now in one of the halls, arrayed in garments which, in that freer time, they certainly could not boast. The raiment is of cloth, dipped, stiffened so that it resembles marble, unless you examine it too closely. No doubt it is more agreeable that those huge figures are somewhat clothed upon, but it does seem too absurd to think of ordering a new coat for "Apollo" when his old one gets shabby. Making minute investigations, we discovered he had already had several, wearing the last one outside of the others, as if to protect himself from the inclemency of the weather.

All the old magnificence was lavished by Herzog Carl upon Franciska von Hohenheim,--his "Franzel," as he called her in the soft Suabisch,--whose most romantic story is, _par excellence_, the thing of interest here, and the Suabians must love it, they tell it so very often.

From many narratives I gather the life-story of a woman who, in spite of the stain upon her name, is deeply revered in Wuertemberg for her strong, sweet influence upon its wild duke, for her wisdom and gentleness, and the good that through her came upon the realm.

She was a daughter of the Freiherr von Bernardin, a noble of ancient family and limited income. Franciska lived far removed from the gayety of courts, of which she and her sisters in their castle near Aalen rarely heard. When she was scarcely sixteen her father gave her hand to a Freiherr von Leutrum, a fussy, stuffy old man, who wrapped himself in furs even in summer, and was so conspicuously ugly the boys in the street would mock at him when he stood at his window. His great head, on a broad, humped back, scarcely reached the sill.

In addition, a small intellect, hot temper, and suspicious nature made him yet more of a monster; but Franciska was poor, and it appears it was considered then, as it would be now, a good match, as Von Leutrum was of an old family and rich. Whether the historians paint him blacker than he deserves in order to make Franciska white in contrast, is not easy to say. It certainly has that effect occasionally, however. Beauty, then, married the Beast. In 1770 Herzog Carl Eugen came to Pforzheim, where the nobles of the neighborhood, among them Baron von Leutrum, with his young wife, assembled to form his court.

Franciska was no famous beauty. She had, however, a tall, graceful figure, rich blond hair, and was very winning with her fresh, joyful ways, and a certain indescribable sweetness and gentleness of manner. The duke, from the first, singled her out by marked attention, which undoubtedly flattered her, coming from so famous, clever, and fascinating a man; and it is also probable that she made no especial effort to repulse the homage in which she could see no harm. He was then forty-two,--a man of stately beauty, one of the most renowned European princes of that time, with a strong and highly cultivated intellect, and of most winning manners where he cared to please. It also appears he could be a bear, a savage, and a tyrant when he willed.

It was, then, scarcely surprising that a girl married at sixteen to a fossil like Leutrum, who neglected and abused her, should be bewildered by the distinguished attention offered by her prince. Meanwhile Leutrum waxed more and more jealous, until one day in a rage, on account of remarks of the courtiers, he struck his wife in the face.

The duke, furious at this, insisted upon taking Franciska under his protection. But she, though agonized with fear and abhorrence of her husband, yet knowing too well her feeling for the duke, chose to leave the court at once and return with Leutrum to their castle.

Carl Eugen, never scrupulous as to means when he had anything to gain, caused a wheel of Leutrum's coach to be put into a state of precarious weakness, so that, going through some woods not far from Pforzheim, the carriage broke down, when the duke appeared, rode off with the trembling, miserable, happy Franciska, leaving Von Leutrum alone with his broken carriage and his rage.

The duke had been married for political reasons at eighteen to a princess of Bavaria, with whom he had lived but a year or two, their natures being strongly incompatible. He, however, a Roman Catholic, could not free himself from his first marriage until the death of his wife released him in 1784, when he married Franciska.

The remarkable thing in her history is, that the voice of no contemporary is raised against her. Noble ladies of unblemished name visited her as "Graefin von Hohenheim," and all testimony unites in praising her wisdom, sweetness, and grace, and her almost miraculous influence for good upon the duke.

"He found in her womanly grace and devoted love, the deepest appreciation of the beautiful and good, exquisite taste and tact, a strong, warm interest in his career and calling, wise counsel given in her soft, womanly words, and a heart for his people.

"In love and sorrow, in matters earnest and light, in his difficult affairs of state, in enjoyment of the beautiful in art and nature, she was ever by his side, filled with perfect appreciation of all that moved him."

She taught him gradually his duty towards his folk, which the wild, haughty duke had sadly ignored, and she, herself, was always loved and revered by them.

She was graceful and sparkling in society, not wearing her sorrows upon her sleeve, but in her private life and letters are marks of lifelong grief.

"If I could tell you my whole story," she writes to a friend in 1783, "if you could know the solemnity and repentance with which I look back upon it, you would withhold from me neither your pity nor your prayers.... Had I had in my sixteenth year, when, utterly inexperienced, I entered society with not the slightest knowledge of the world, left entirely to myself, surrounded by scenes whose meaning I could not grasp,--had I then had one true friend to warn me, to advise me; had his reason, his heart, his pureness of deed, inspired my respect and trust, indeed--indeed--I might have been a better woman."

Later, after a delightful evening at the Princess of Dessau's, where Lavater also was, she wrote:--

"I was inexpressibly moved by your assurance that you thought of me in this circle. Could I have felt worthier of such society, the pleasure would undoubtedly have been more unalloyed. But, as it was--Still I must not complain."

Such, briefly, is her story. She lived with the duke at the Solitude as well as here, and Hohenheim he made for her as beautiful as a fairy palace. He troubled neither her nor himself with scruples. His conscience was, indeed, not tender, and his life with her was unquestionably so innocent and idyllic in comparison with his mad past, that, to him at least, it no doubt seemed blameless. He loved her faithfully till his death, wrote to her when absent for a day or two as his good angel, with utter reverence as well as tenderest love. The proud respected her; the poorest and humblest came to her with their wants and sorrows.

She died in 1811 in her small, quiet court at Kirchheim unter Teck, where she had resided after the death of the duke; but her story and the remembrance of her eventful life will always haunt quiet Hohenheim, and invest it with a romance it cannot otherwise claim for itself.

"NUREMBERG THE ANCIENT."

The breeze of morning stole in and kissed our cheeks and whispered, "You have a day and a half to spend in dear, delicious old Nuremberg,--be up and doing!" Only a day and a half, and yet how infinitely better than no day at all there! We came, we saw, and were conquered, even by the huge knockers with bronze wreaths of Cupids and dragons' heads, the ornate, intricate locks, the massive doors, before we were within the portals of those proud patrician palaces with their stately inner courts and galleries, their frescos, painted windows and faded tapestries, time-stained grandeur, and all their relics of mediaeval magnificence.

O, we stretched our day and a half well, and filled it full of treasures, and our hearts with lovely thoughts and pictures of the unique old town, its high quaint gables, stone balconies, beautiful fountains, double line of walls, and seventy sentinel towers; its castle and wide moat, where now great trees grow and prim little gardens; its arched bridges and streams, with shadows of the drooping foliage on the banks; its oriel windows; its narrow, shady ways and odd corners; its memories of Albrecht Duerer and Hans Sachs, of Kaiser and knight and Meistersinger,--its Nurembergishness!

The St. Lorenz Church was our first halting-place. The whole world knows that its portal and painted windows are beautiful, and that it retains all the rich old objects of the Roman ritual; that being the condition under which Nuremberg pranced over in a twinkling to Protestantism, and people were ordered by the municipal authorities to believe to-day what they had disbelieved yesterday; and most of the world, perhaps, has seen the tabernacle for the vessels of the sacrament, but they who have not can never know from words how it rests on the bowed forms of its sculptor, Adam Kraft, and his two pupils and assistants, and rises like frozen spray sixty-four feet in the choir, with the warm light from the painted windows coloring its exquisite traceries and carvings. It looks like a holy thought or a hymn of praise caught in stone, aspiring heavenwards.

We saw there heavy gold chalices from old, old times, and some Gobelin tapestry only recently discovered hidden away; one scene represented the weighing of the soul of St. Lawrence to see if it were too light for heaven. The saint's soul had a shape, in fact was an infant's body, and the Devil was crouching near by, and St. Lawrence, full-grown, stood waiting, anxious to know his fate.

Then came a few hours in the German Museum, where, as usual in such places, the weary lagged behind, the elegant looked _blase_, the contrary-minded saw the wrong thing first, the energetic pushed valiantly on, striving to see all and remember all, from earliest forms of sculpture down through the ages,--all the gold and silver and carvings and costumes, the immense square green stoves, with the warm, cosy seat for the old grandmother in the corner; to glance at rare old lace without neglecting the ancient caps and combs and gewgaws; to look long at a few of the pictures,--the great one of Duerer's, "Otto at the Grave of Charlemagne," is here, you know,--and so our straggling party wandered on through corridor and chamber and staircase, past knights in effigy, some of whom looked like such jolly old souls, with gallons of wine beneath their breastplates, past a memorial tablet to a baby prince who died dim ages ago, to whom a small death-angel is offering an apple; and then, after seeing the bear, who guards a glass case of precious things in gold and silver, lowered down to his domain every night, and after sprinkling beer on his nose to see if he were of German parentage, we gathered ourselves together and wondered if we quite liked museums. You see so much more than you can comprehend; you see so much more than you want to see; you feel so astoundingly ignorant; you have information thrust upon you so ruthlessly. One wilful maiden says, "I'll go and live on a desert island, provided no one will show me an object of interest." Then in the shady cloisters we drank foaming beer with our German friends, and gathered strength for our next onslaught; and I beg no one to be captious about the length and out-of-breath character of this paragraph, for it is quite in keeping with our Nuremberg visit, with worlds to see in a little day and a half.

There was the old Rath Haus with the Duerer frescos and the Duerer house and pictures, which everybody mentions; and the rude, dark little den of a kitchen, which nobody to my knowledge has ever deigned to mention, where Mrs. Xantippe Duerer used to rattle her sauce-pans and scold her _Mann_. There was the Fraumkirche and St. Sebald, rich in painted windows and sculpture. In one room, so rich and dark with its oak wainscoting and Gobelin tapestry, we involuntarily searched behind the arras for Polonius, and then stared silently and felt quite flippant before the antique candelabra and Persian rugs and hopelessly indescribable ever-to-be-coveted furniture within those memory-laden walls. An antique, impressive writing-table was a model of rich, quaint beauty. Poems and romances would feel proud and pleased to simply write themselves under its aegis, and what a delicious aroma of the past would cling to them!

We visited the castle, of course, and streams of information about the Hohenzollerns were poured upon us. We were wicked enough to enjoy ourselves particularly among the instruments of torture,--exhibited by the jolliest, fattest, most _debonair_ Mrs. Jarley in the world. She regaled us with awful tales, that sounded worse than the "Book of Martyrs," and we were not disgusted, neither did we faint or scream. There was a lamentable want of feeling, and a marked inclination to laugh prevailed in our party. Indeed, we saw some sweet things there,--a hideous dragon's head, worn by women who beat their husbands; a kind of yoke in which two quarrelsome women were harnessed; a huge collar, with a bell attached, for gossips; and an openwork iron mask, with a great protruding, rattling tongue, for inveterate slanderers. We made liberal proposals to our jolly show-woman for a few of these articles, thinking we might be able to send them where they were needed, and strongly inclined to favor their readoption. An iron nose a foot long was worn by thieves, and the article stolen hung on the end of it.

It is grievous to think there will come a time when people who visit Nuremberg will see no walls and towers and moats. They are pulling down the walls at present, for they are as inconvenient as they are picturesque. Heavy teams and people on foot seeking egress and ingress at one time through the narrow passages in the massive structure, the city cramped, its growth retarded, dangerous accidents, as well as the most reasonable grounds in a commercial point of view, lead the wise to destroy something selfish tourists would fain preserve intact. But "if I were king of France, or, still better, pope of Rome," or emperor of Germany, I'd let the commerce go elsewhere where there is room for it, and guard old Nuremberg jealously as a precious, beautiful memorial and heirloom from ancestors who have slept for centuries.

The Johannes Cemetery here is the only lovely one I have yet seen in Germany. It is not beautiful in itself, as our cemeteries are; but the solemnity, the dignity of death is here, and no gaudy colors and tinsel wreaths jar upon your mood and pain you. Only great flat, gray stones, tablets with the arms in bronze of the old Nuremberg patricians, tell us wanderers who lies beneath. It was like a solemn poem to be there deciphering the proud armorial bearings on the great blocks placed there centuries ago, and the sweet-brier blooming all around with such an unconscious air on its pale pink blossoms, like fair young faces. One of Columbus's crew lies there. So many old names and dates!

We plucked a few leaves from Duerer's grave:--

"_Emigravit_ is the inscription on the tombstone where he lies,
Dead he is not, but departed, for the artist never dies;
Fairer seems the ancient city, and the sunshine seems more fair,
That he once has trod its pavement, that he once has breathed
its air."

SOME WUeRTEMBERG TOWNS.

The gardener gave it to the milkmaid and the milkmaid gave it to the errand-boy, the errand-boy gave it to the cook, who gave it to the head-waiter, who sold it to the individual who presented it to me. "It" was a bunch of great, sweet, half-blown June roses, that hung glowing on their stalks in their native garden at dawn, and before noon had experienced this life of change and adventure. It all happened in Wasseralfingen, a little town, where nothing else so momentous occurred during our brief visit, because it was Sunday, but where usually the celebrated iron-works make an immense disturbance, and interest visitors of a practical turn of mind. Our German friends bewailed the absence of the noise of the machinery on our account; believing that every American is born with a passionate devotion to mechanics, which increases through life, to the exclusion of a love of the beautiful. Recently, after relating a romantic story about a place on the Rhine, a German gentleman concluded his tale of love and chivalry by telling us that the Princess Somebody had established a girls' school there,--"which will interest you as Americans more than the story," he added, with perfect honesty and naivete.

"And why?" we meekly ask.

"Because Americans are practical and like useful things," he responds cheerfully, with as thorough a conviction as if he had said that two and two made four.

We made no useless effort to induce him to believe that the thought of sixty or eighty bread-and-butter misses does not enhance for us the charm of a tradition-haunted spot, nor did we struggle to impress our friends' minds in Wasseralfingen that its Sabbath stillness was more agreeable to us than the stir and rush of the works. There are some fixed ideas in the mind of the average German which a potent hand ought to seize and shake out. "Why don't you write letters to Germans about America, instead of to Americans about Germany?" suggests a clever German friend. "They seem to be more needed." It might really be worth while if Teutonic tenacity of opinion were not too huge a thing for a feeble weapon to slay.

To return to our Wasseralfingen,--most curious name!--it was pretty enough to look upon, as indeed most places in Wuertemberg are. It has its nicely-laid-out little park or _Anlagen_, with a statue in the middle of it; and this is what small manufacturing towns at home are not apt to waste much time upon, unfortunately for their children and their children's children. An inn nestled among the trees, with irregular wings and low, broad roofs, and a very broad landlord, who looked like a beer-mug, gave us comfortable shelter for a night, and supper and breakfast in its garden,--supper with lights and pipes and beer-bottles, and cheerful conversation all around.

A short trip by rail brought us to Heidenheim, past fields of waving grain and pretty hills, shadows of great trees falling on velvety meadows, oats rising and falling like billows in the morning breeze, and scarlet seas of poppies. Never anywhere have I seen such a glory of poppies! Miles of them on both sides of the road, gleaming and glowing as the sunlight kissed them.

And then Heidenheim, a pretty town given to manufactures, to factories and mills, with the ruins of its castle Hellenstein on the height, and its memories reaching far back to Roman times. Here lived knights who were princes of profligacy, and gloried in their extravagance; who shod their steeds with silver and gold, and flung jewels away like water. One of them longed to have his whole estate transformed into a strawberry, that he could swallow it all in one instant. Of course this family came to a bad end. It spent all its money, and its castles got out of repair; the last of its armor was sold for old iron, and the last of the race died a pauper.

The ruins retain traces of Roman architecture in the earliest walls, with various additions in later times, and are not especially interesting upon close acquaintance. The old well sunk deep in the foundation of natural rock, where you pay ten cents and see a woman drop a stone three hundred and eighty-five feet, and wait breathlessly until you hear the dull plash deep down in the darkness, is their most exciting feature. The woman offered to give us some water, but it requires a whole hour to get it up, and we felt suspicious of what might be lying in those uncanny depths.

On the shady side of the castle, with broad reaches of fertile field and belts of wood lying before our contented gaze, we listened to Volkslieder, so old and sweet they carried our hearts back into dim ages, and we strongly felt the tie that binds us to the race where such strains have their birth. Suddenly, as our singers ceased, a group of village children sitting on a block of stone at a short distance took up the refrain,--an irregular row of flaxen heads against the light, their forms prominent against the deep, peaceful background, singing away with such zest we could only be silent and listen. Song after song, in praise of their loved land, they sang; all sweet, whether the smallest ones could always keep in tune or not. They told how Eberhard im Bart could lay his head on the knee of his poorest peasant and sleep in peace till morning broke, and many another sweet, old story; and, keeping time with their heads and making daisy-chains with their hands, they shouted,--

"Beautiful Suabia is our _Heimath Land_!"

Truly you can forgive the Germans for a multitude of sins when you hear how and what their common people sing.

IN A GARDEN.

A Garden by the water's edge,--a garden where clematis and woodbine and grape-vines run all over their trellises and up the graceful young locust-trees and down over the stone-wall to meet the water plashing pleasantly below, and reach out everywhere that vine-audacity can suggest in an utter abandonment of luxuriance!--a garden where superb blood-red roses are weighed down by a sense of their own sweetness, and pure white ones look tall and stately and cool and abstracted by their side. At the right a point of land extends into the lake, so thickly covered with trees that from here it looks like a little forest, and the houses are almost concealed in the fresh green; and the trees look taller than anything except a funny old building that was once a cloister, and is now the royal castle, and has two queer, tall towers that rise far above the tree-tops at the extremity of the point. At the left, faint and shadowy in the distance, rise the Alps, and the mountains of Tyrol. There are bath-houses along the shore. Small boys who think they "would be mermen bold" are prancing about gayly in the water. On a rocky beach, peasant-women in bright-colored dresses are standing by tubs, dipping garments in the lake and wringing them dry. Some of them are kneeling. The sun is warm, and beats down on their uncovered heads, and the work is hard, and I don't suppose they have any idea they are making a picture of themselves, on the rocky shore with the background of trees. But everybody is a picture this morning. There is a young man standing in a row-boat, which an old fisherman lazily propels here and there before my eyes. The youth is really statuesque, balancing himself easily in the dancing boat, strong, supple, graceful, his arm extending the long fishing-rod. A rosebud of a girl in a white morning-suit and jaunty sailor-hat leans over the railing of a pavilion built out into the lake from the garden, and also patiently holds a fishing-rod, looking like a "London Society" illustration, as she gazes intently with drooping eyelashes into the water.

There are people reading, sketching, studying their Baedeckers, drinking their coffee or beer, in comfortable nooks through the pretty garden. All is quiet and restful, with only the rippling of the water and the shouts of the merry mermen to break the stillness. Now doesn't it seem as if one ought to write an exceptionally pleasant letter from so pleasant a spot? But, alas! there is not much to say about it when once you have tried to tell how it looks,--that it is a calm, peaceful, pretty place, where you could stay a whole summer and lose all feverish desires to explore and climb and see sights. To sit here in the garden, leaning on the wall among the vines, is happiness enough. In the morning early, the lake smiles at you and talks to you, and you see far away great masses of rose-color and pearl-gray, with snowy summits gleaming in the sunshine, and your eyes are blessed with their first view of the Alps. The outline of the opposite shore is misty and many-colored, and has also its noble heights. At sunset, too, is the garden a dreamy, blissful spot, as the little boats float about in the golden lights, and the water and the mountains assume all possible lovely hues, then sink away in a deep violet, and the stars come out and German love-songs go up to meet them.

Yes, it is a satisfying spot. If there's a serpent here, he keeps himself wonderfully well concealed. We haven't caught a glimpse of him, and we are wise enough not to search for him. It's an admirable place to be lazy, but it isn't very good for letters. Things hinder so, you know. You listen to the water, and your pencil forgets to go. You get lost in contemplation of the flapping of the ducks' feet, and make profound studies of their mechanism, and enviously wish you had something of the sort at your command, so that you could sail about in the cool, clear water as unconcerned as they, and with no more effort. Funniest of ducks that they are!--so pampered by the attention and bread-crumbs of summer guests that their complacency exceeds even ordinary duck self-satisfaction, and they act as if they thought they were all swans.

It occurs to me somebody may feel a faint curiosity to know where it all is. On the Lake of Constance, or the Bodensee, which, if you want useful information, is forty-two miles long, eight miles wide, is fed principally by the Rhine, and whose banks belong to five different States,--Bavaria, Wuertemberg, Baden, Switzerland, and Austria; a sheet of water whose shores are green and thickly wooded, where gay little steamers run, constantly displaying the flags of their several countries, between the principal places on the lake, and wherever you go you have beautiful mountain scenery. You see the Alps, the mountains of Bavaria, the Baden hills, the Tyrol, and you don't always know which is which; but they pile themselves up grandly among the clouds, one range behind the other, in a way that to the unaccustomed vision does not exactly admit of labelling, and you don't care what their names are. You are content to feel their beauty, to wonder and be silent.

This particular place on the lake is Friedrichshafen. It is really a new place and a commercial place,--and these adjectives are certainly not attractive,--but then the newness is not conspicuous, and the commerce, so far as we summer birds of passage are concerned, almost invisible.

The king and queen of Wuertemberg come here every summer, and are here at present. The Emperor of Germany and the Grand Duke of Baden are on the Island of Mainau.

It may be a busy place, but it does not seem so. Content and rest pervade the atmosphere. Serenity is written on every face. It may be many people would weary of its roses and the ripple of the water; of its gardens, that look as if they were growing directly out of the lake; of the blue, hazy, changing mountains far away; of its perfect quiet: but there are others who would love it well, and who would not tire of it in many a long summer day.

LINDAU AND BREGENZ.

Auf wiederschen, and not Lebewohl, we said to pleasant Friedrichshafen, as the little steamer left those kindly green shores and we sailed away, not for a year and a day, like the owl and the pussy cat in the beautiful pea-green boat, but for an hour or so only. There were many curious people to watch on board, but the most monopolizing sight was two Catholic priests devouring a chicken, or rather devouring _chickens_. They had, on the seat between them, a basket large enough for a flock of Huehnchen--boiled, dissected, and only too tempting to the priestly appetite--to repose in. And they had the lake as a receptacle for the bones. What more could they desire? If we could have suggested anything it would have been--napkins, because it was requiring too much work of their fingers to use them as knives and forks, and then to wipe their mouths on them. The zeal with which the holy men tore the tender meat from the bones and showered the remnants in the water, and particularly the endurance they exhibited, made us hope they evinced as much fervor and devotion in caring for their human flocks.

To Lindau then we came, having, as we approached, charming mountain scenery. The town is on an island, connected with the mainland by an embankment and railway bridge. It is a little place, but very striking as you look at it from the water, having a lofty monument (a statue in bronze of Maximilian II.), a picturesque old Roman tower, and, at the entrance of the harbor, a fine lighthouse, and a great marble lion on a high pedestal, guarding the little haven and his Bavarian land. We remained part of a day here, having before our eyes a beautiful picture,--the mountains of Switzerland directly across the lake, narrow at this point, with the lighthouse and the proud, ever-watchful Bavarian lion rising, bold and sentinel-like, in the foreground. You look between these two over the placid water to the heights beyond.

From Lindau we sailed to Bregenz, where the lake and mountains have quite another expression. It would be difficult to say which is the most attractive place on the Bodensee. You feel "How happy could I be with either, were t'other dear charmer away," and it is of course a question of individual taste. One person prefers the mountains near, another watches them lovingly from a distance. One likes to live on low land by the water's edge, and look up to the mountain-tops; another perches himself high, and finds his happiness in looking down upon the lake and off to other heights. But the shores are lovely everywhere, much frequented yet quiet, crowded with villas, private cottages, hotels, yet secluded and restful if one chooses.

Bregenz is a quiet place, a real country-place, with mountain views and mountain excursions without end. The common people have intelligent, happy faces, pleasant, cheerful ways, quickness of repartee, and civility. The women give you a smiling "Gruess Gott." The commonest man takes off his hat as you pass, and if you go by a group of rollicking school-boys every hat comes off courteously.

Gebhardsberg is the first place to which people usually go from Bregenz. We went, as in duty bound. It is a mountain--a castle--a pilgrimage church--a view; and to say that one commands a view of the entire lake, the valley of the Bregenzer Ach and the Rhine, the Alps, the snow mountains of Appenzel and Glarus, with mountains covered with pine forests in the foreground, conveys a very faint idea of the beauty before our eyes. In the visitors' book in the tower were some German rhymes, which, roughly translated, go somewhat in this way:--

"Charming prospect, best of wine,
Be joyful, then, O heart of mine;
Farewell, thou lovely Gebhard's hill,
Thou Bodensee, so fair, so still."

And more still about wine, for this is not the land of the Woman's Crusade, it appears:--

"It makes you glad to drink good wine,
And praying makes life more divine.
If you would be both good and gay,
Pray well and drink well every day."

Some one remarks,--

"What below was far from clear,
Is no less dark when we stand here."

And a very enthusiastic person writes,--

"Here flies from us sorrow, here vanishes pain,
Here bloom in our hearts joy and freshness again.
Who can assure us, and how can we know,
That heaven is fairer than this scene below?"

In pages of such doggerel one finds comical enough things; but exported, they may lose their native flavor, so I will not give too many of them.

By making rather a long excursion from here you can visit the birthplace of Angelica Kauffman. We didn't go, but we felt very proud to think we could if we wished, having lately read "Miss Angel."

There is a place in this neighborhood the name of which I refuse to divulge, because, if I should tell it and disclose its attractions, the next steamer from America would certainly bring over too many people to occupy it, and so ruin it. I shall keep it for myself. But I will describe it, and awaken as much longing and unrest and dissatisfaction with American prices as I can. It isn't exactly a village, but it is near a village. It has shady lanes that wind about between hedges; houses that are placed as if with the express purpose of talking with one another,--only three or four houses, with superb old trees hanging over them. There is the nicest, brightest of _Fraus_,--who owns this bit of land, the houses and the hedges and trees close by the water's edge, a boat, a bath-house, and a great dog,--a happy, prosperous widow, with a daughter to help in household matters, and to go briskly to market to the neighboring town. So happy is she, one thinks involuntarily her _Mann_ was perhaps aggressive, and that to be free from his presence may be to her a blessing from Heaven. She lives in a house where the ceiling is so low one must stoop going through the doors. The windows and doors are all open. The tables and chairs are scoured snowy white. She brings you milk in tall glasses,--it is cream, pure and simple. And then she takes you into the house close by, with great airy chambers, and broad low casements, under which the water ripples softly, and she tells you, without apparently knowing herself, one of the wonders of the age,--that she will rent her four rooms in this detached house for forty guldens a month, and serve four persons from her own dwelling with fruit, meat, cream, the best the land affords; and forty guldens are about twenty dollars, gold. (This must not mislead the unwary. There are places enough here where you can spend quite as much as you do at home.) We did not quite faint, but we were very deeply moved. We did not even tell the good woman that her terms were not exorbitant, crafty, worldly creatures that we were. Here was one spot unspoiled by the madding crowd. We were not the ones to bring pomps, and vanities, and high prices to it. So we choked down our amazement, and hypocritically remarked it was all very pleasant, and we thought perhaps we might return. Return! Of course we shall return! When all things else fail, and ducats are painfully few, then will we flee to this friendly abode, and live in a big room on the lovely lake, so near, indeed, that we can almost fish from our windows; have a boat to row, a bath-house at our service; quarts, gallons of cream; and the Swiss mountains before our eyes morning, noon, and night; and all for five dollars a month. I am telling the truth, but I do not expect to be believed. I am tempted to write its name,--its pretty, friendly, suggestive little name,--but I will not. It ends in LE, it sounds like a caress, so much will I say; perhaps so much is indiscreet. Don't waste your time looking for it. You will never find it. We only happened to drift there. It really is not worth your while to search for it. It is quite secluded, quite out of the way, a sleepy-hollow that I am sure _you_ would find dull.

There are many green, sweet nooks, many pretty villages, many cleanly little cottages, many smiling, broad-browed, clear-eyed women, on the shores of the Lake of Constance; but our woman, our cottage, our cream, our mountains, our _treasure_, you will never, never find.

THE VORARLBERG.

I feel a deep and ever-increasing sympathy with explorers of strange lands whose narratives a harsh world pronounces exaggerations. What if they do say that the unknown animal which darts across their path has five heads and seventeen legs? There is a glamour over everything in an utterly new place,--the very atmosphere is deceptive. After a while, things assume their natural proportions, but at first it seems as if one really did see with one's own eyes all these redundant members. Even here in the beaten track of travel, writing as honestly as possible from my own point of view, I feel like begging my friends to put no faith in anything I say. The mountains in themselves are intoxicating enough to turn one's head; but then of course much depends upon the kind of head one possesses. Recently, at sunset by a lake, we were looking over the water at a mountain view,--soft, wooded slopes near us, huge rocky masses beyond, height upon height rising in hazy blue, the snowy summits just touched by the Alpine glow,--when some strangers approached. Berlin has the honor of being their dwelling-place, we ascertained afterwards.

"_Lieber Mann_," said the lady, "just look at all that snow!"

"Snow!" replied the _lieber Mann_, "snow in summer! But that is impossible!"

"I think it must be snow," said the wife, doubtfully. Then, "But only see the beautiful mountains."

"Hm, hm," remarks the _lieber Mann_, regarding them superciliously through his eye-glass; "I can't say that they are particularly well-formed!" Here, at least, is a head that is secure; no jocund day on the misty mountain-tops, no broad, magnificent ranges at high noon, and no twilight with "mountains in shadow, forests asleep," have power to move that astute _Kopf_ a fraction of an inch. "They have better mountains in Berlin," remarked a German friend in an undertone.