Chapter VI: Hungary (5)

The hotel, at which I have been set down, is situated on the quay of the Alster, a basin as large as the Lac d'Enghien, which it still further resembles in being peopled with tame swans. On three sides, the Alster basin is bordered with hotels and handsome modern houses. An embankment planted with trees and commanded by a wind-mill in profile forms the fourth; beyond extends a great lagoon. From the most frequented of these quays, a café painted green and built on piles, makes out into the water, like that café of the Golden Horn where I have smoked so many chibouques; watching the sea-birds fly. At the sight of this quay, this basin, these houses, I experienced an inexplicable sensation: I seemed to know them already. Confused recollections of them arose in my memory; could I have been in Hamburg without being aware of it? Assuredly all these objects are not new to me, and yet I am seeing them for the first time. Have I preserved the impression made by some picture, some photograph?

While I was seeking philosophic explanations for this memory of the unknown, the idea of Heinrich Heine suddenly presented itself, and all became clear. The great poet had often spoken to me of Hamburg, in those plastic words he so well knew how to use--words that were equivalent to realities. In his "Reisebilder," he describes the scene--café basin, swans, and townsfolk upon the quays--Heaven knows what portraits he makes of them! He returns to it again in his poem, "Germania," and there is so much life to the picture, such distinctness, such relief, that sight itself teaches you nothing more.

I made the circuit of the basin, graciously accompanied by a snow-white swan, handsome enough to make one think it might be Jupiter in disguise, seeking some Hamburg Leda, and, the better to carry out the deception, snapping at the bread-crumbs offered him by the traveler. On the farther side of the basin, at the right, is a sort of garden or public promenade, having an artificial hillock, like that in the labyrinth in the "Jardin des Plantes." Having gone thus far, I turned and retraced my steps.

Every city has its fashionable quarter--new, expensive, handsome--of which the citizens are proud, and through which the guide leads you with much complacency. The streets are broad and regular, and cut one another at right angles; there are sidewalks of granite, brick, or bitumen; there are lamp-posts in every direction. The houses are like palaces; their classically modern architecture, their irreproachable paint, their varnished doors and well-scoured brasses, fill with joy the city fathers and every lover of progress. The city is neat, orderly, salubrious, full of light and air, and resembles Paris or London. There is the Exchange! It is superb--as fine as the Bourse in Paris! I grant it; and, besides, you can smoke there, which is a point of superiority.

Farther on you observe the Palace of Justice, the bank, etc., built in the style you know well, adored by Philistines of every land. Doubtless that house must have cost enormously; it contains all possible luxury and comfort. You feel that the mollusk of such a shell can be nothing less than a millionaire. Permit me, however, to love better the old house with its overhanging stories, its roof of irregular tiles, and all its little characteristic details, telling of former generations. To be interesting, a city must have the air of having lived, and, in a sense, of having received from man a soul. What makes these magnificent streets built yesterday so cold and so tiresome, is that they are not yet impregnated with human vitality.

Leaving the new quarter, I penetrated by degrees into the chaos of the old streets, and soon I had before my eyes a characteristic, picturesque Hamburg; a genuine old city with a medieval stamp which would delight Bonington, Isabey or William Wyld. I walked slowly, stopping at every street-corner that I might lose no detail of the picture; and rarely has any promenade amused me so well.

Houses, whose gables are denticulated or else curved in volutes, throw out successive overhanging stories, each composed of a row of windows, or, more properly, of one window divided into sections by carved uprights. Beneath each house are excavated cellars, subterranean recesses, which the steps leading to the front door bestride like a drawbridge. Wood, brick, stone and slate, mingled in a way to content the eye of a colorist, cover what little space the windows leave on the outside of the house. All this is surmounted by a roof of red or violet tiles, or tarred plank, interrupted by openings to give light to the attics, and having an abrupt pitch. These steep roofs look well against the background of a northern sky; the rains run off them in torrents, the snow slips from them; they suit the climate, and do not require to be swept in winter. Some houses have doors ornamented with rustic columns, scroll-work, recessed pediments, chubby-cheeked caryatides, little angels and loves, stout rosettes and enormous shells, all glued over with whitewash renewed doubtless every year.

The tobacco sellers in Hamburg can not be counted. At every third step you behold a bare-chested negro cultivating the precious leaf or a Grand Seigneur, attired like the theatrical Turk, smoking a colossal pipe. Boxes of cigars, with their more or less fallacious vignettes and labels, figure, symmetrically disposed, in the ornamentation of the shop-fronts. There must be very little tobacco left at Havana, if we can have faith in these displays, so rich in famous brands.

As I have said, it was early morning. Servant-maids, kneeling on the steps or standing on the window-sills, were going on with the Saturday scrubbing. Notwithstanding the keen air, they made a display of robust arms bare to the shoulder, tanned and sunburned, red with that astonishing vermilion that we see in some of Rubens' paintings, which is the joint result of the biting of the north wind and the action of water upon these blond skins; little girls belonging to the poorer classes, with braided hair, bare arms, and low-necked frocks, were going out to obtain articles of food; I shivered in my paletot, to see them so lightly clad. There is something strange about this; the women of northern countries cut their dresses out in the neck, they go about bare-headed and bare-armed, while the women of the South cover themselves with vests, haicks, pelisses, and warm garments of every description.

Walking on, still at random, I came to the maritime part of the city, where canals take the place of streets. As yet it was low water, and vessels lay aground in the mud, showing their hulls, and careening over in a way to rejoice a water-color painter. Soon the tide came up, and everything began to be in motion. I would suggest Hamburg to artists following in the track of Canaletto, Guardi, or Joyant; they will find, at every step, themes as picturesque as and more new than those which they go to Venice in search of.

This forest of salmon-colored masts, with their maze of cordage and their yellowish-brown sails drying in the sun, these tarred sterns with apple-green decks, these lateen-yards threatening the windows of the neighboring houses, these derricks standing under plank roofs shaped like pagodas, these tackles lifting heavy packages out of vessels and landing them in houses, these bridges opening to give passage to vessels, these clumps of trees, these gables overtopped here and there by spires and belfries; all this bathed in smoke, traversed by sunlight and here and there returning a glitter of polished metal, the far-off distance blue and misty, and the foreground full of vigorous color, produced effects of the most brilliant and piquant novelty. A church-tower, covered with plates of copper, springing from this curious medley of rigging and of houses, recalled to me by its odd green color the tower of Galata, at Constantinople....

As the hour advanced, the crowd became more numerous, and it was largely composed of women. In Hamburg they seem to enjoy great license. Very young girls come and go alone without anyone's noticing it, and--a remarkable thing!--children go to school by themselves, little basket on the arm, and slate in hand; in Paris, left to their own free will, they will run off to play marbles, tag, or hop-scotch.

Dogs are muzzled in Hamburg all the week, but on Sundays they are left at liberty to bite whom they please. They are taxed, and appear to be esteemed; but the cats are sad and unappreciated. Recognizing in me a friend, they cast melancholy glances at me, saying in their feline language, to which long use has given me the key:

"These Philistines, busy with their money-getting, despise us; and yet our eyes are as yellow as their louis d'or. Stupid men that they are, they believe us good for nothing but to catch rats; we, the wise, the meditative, the independent, who have slept upon the prophet's sleeve, and lulled his ear with the whir of our mysterious wheel! Pass your hand over our backs full of electric sparkles--we allow you this liberty, and say to Charles Baudelaire that he must write a fine sonnet, deploring our woes."

As the Lübeck boat was not to leave until the morrow, I went to Wilkin's to get my supper. This famous establishment occupies a low-ceiled basement, which is divided into cabinets ornamented with more show than taste. Oysters, turtle-soup, a truffled filet, and a bottle of Veuve Cliquot iced, composed my simple bill of fare. The place was filled, after the Hamburg fashion, with edibles of all sorts; things early and things out of season, dainties not yet in existence or having long ceased to exist, for the common crowd. In the kitchen they showed us, in great tanks, huge sea-turtles which lifted their scaly heads above the water, resembling snakes caught between two platters. Their little horny eyes looked with uneasiness at the light which was held near them, and their flippers, like oars of some disabled galley, vaguely moved up and down, as seeking some impossible escape. I trust that the personnel of the exhibition changes occasionally.

In the morning I went for my breakfast to an English restaurant, a sort of pavilion of glass, whence I had a magnificent panoramic view. The river spread out majestically through a forest of vessels with tall masts, of every build and tonnage. Steam-tugs were beating the water, towing sailing-vessels out to sea; others, moving about freely, made their way hither and thither, with that precision which makes a steam-boat seem like a conscious being, endowed by a will of its own, and served by sentient organs. From the elevation the Elbe is seen, spreading broadly like all great rivers as they near the sea. Its waters, sure of arriving at last, are in no haste; placid as a lake, they flow with an almost invisible motion. The low opposite shore was covered with verdure, and dotted with red houses half-effaced by the smoke from the chimneys. A golden bar of sunshine shot across the plain; it was grand, luminous, superb.

[Footnote A: From "A Winter in Russia." By arrangement with, and by permission of, the publishers, Henry Holt & Co. Copyright, 1874. Hamburg is now the largest seaport on the continent of Europe. London and New York are the only ports in the world that are larger. Exclusive of its rural territory, it had in 1905 a population of 803,000.]

SCHLESWIG[A]

BY THÉOPHILE GAUTIER

When you are in a foreign country, reduced to the condition of a deaf-mute, you can not but curse the memory of him who conceived the idea of building the tower of Babel, and by his pride brought about the confusion of tongues! An omnibus took possession of myself and my trunks, and, with the feeling that it must of necessity take me somewhere, I confidingly allowed myself to be stowed in and carried away. The intelligent omnibus set me down before the best hotel in the town, and there, as circumnavigators say in their journals, "I held a parley with the natives." Among them was a waiter who spoke French in a way that was transparent enough to give me an occasional glimpse of his meaning; and who--a much rarer thing!--even sometimes understood what I said to him.

My name upon the hotel register was a ray of light. The hostess had been notified of my expected arrival, and I was to be sent for as soon as my appearance should be announced; but it was now late in the evening, and I thought it better to wait till the next day. There was served for supper a "chaud-froid" of partridge--without confiture--and I lay down upon the sofa, hopeless of being able to sleep between the two down-cushions which compose the German and the Danish bed....

I explored Schleswig, which is a city quite peculiar in its appearance. One wide street runs the length of the town, with which narrow cross streets are connected, like the smaller bones with the dorsal vertebræ of a fish. There are handsome modern houses, which, as usual, have not the slightest character. But the more modest dwellings have a local stamp; they are one-story buildings, very low--not over seven or eight feet in height--capped with a huge roof of fluted red tiles. Windows, broader than they are high, occupy the whole of the front; and behind these windows, spread luxuriantly in porcelain or faience or earthen flowerpots, plants of every description; geraniums, verbenas, fuchsias--and this absolutely without exception. The poorest house is as well adorned as the best. Sheltered by these perfumed window-blinds, the women sit at work, knitting or sewing, and, out of the corner of their eye, they watch, in the little movable mirror which reflects the streets, the rare passer-by, whose boots resound upon the pavement. The cultivation of flowers seem to be a passion in the north; countries where they grow naturally make but little account of them in comparison.

The church in Schleswig had in store for me a surprise. Protestant churches in general, are not very interesting from an artistic point of view, unless the reformed faith may have installed itself in some Catholic sanctuary diverted from its primitive designation. You find, usually, only whitewashed naves, walls destitute of painting or bas-relief, and rows of oaken benches well-polished and shining. It is neat and comfortable, but it is not beautiful. The church at Schleswig contains, by a grand, unknown artist, an altar-piece in three parts, of carved wood, representing in a series of bas-reliefs, separated by fine architectural designs, the most important scenes in the drama of the Passion.

Around the church stand sepulchral chapels of fine funereal fancy and excellent decorative effect. A vaulted hall contains the tombs of the ancient Dukes of Schleswig; massive slabs of stone, blazoned with armorial devices, covered with inscriptions which are not lacking in character.

In the neighborhood of Schleswig are great saline ponds, communicating with the sea. I paced the high-road, remarking the play of light upon this grayish water, and the surface crisped by the wind; occasionally I extended my walk as far as the chateau metamorphosed into a barrack, and the public gardens, a miniature St. Cloud, with its cascade, its dolphins, and its other aquatic monsters all standing idle. A very good sinecure is that of a Triton in a Louis Quinze basin! I should ask nothing better myself.

[Footnote A: From "A Winter in Russia." By arrangement with, and by permission of, the publishers, Henry Holt & Co. Copyright, 1874.]

LÜBECK[A]

BY THÉOPHILE GAUTIER

In the evening the train carried me to Lübeck, across magnificent cultivated lands, filled with summer-houses, which lave their feet in the brown water, overhung by spreading willows. This German Venice has its canal, the Brenta, whose villas, tho not built by Sanmichele or Palladio, none the less make a fine show against the fresh green of their surroundings.

On arriving at Lübeck, a special omnibus received me and my luggage, and I was soon set down at the hotel. The city seemed picturesque as I caught a glimpse of it through the darkness by the vague light of lanterns; and in the morning, as I opened my chamber-window, I perceived at once I had not been mistaken.

The opposite house had a truly German aspect. It was extremely high and overtopped by an old-fashioned denticulated gable. At each one of the seven stories of the house, iron cross-bars spread themselves out into clusters of iron-work, supporting the building, and serving at once for use and ornament, in accordance with an excellent principle in architecture, at the present day too much neglected. It is not by concealing the framework, but by making it distinct, that we obtain more character.

This house was not the only one of its kind, as I was able to convince myself on walking a few steps out of doors. The actual Lübeck is still to the eye the Lübeck of the Middle Ages, the old capital of the Hanseatic League.[B] All the drama of modern life is enacted in the old theater whose scenery remains the same, its drop-scene even not repainted. What a pleasure it is to be walking thus amid the outward life of the past, and to contemplate the same dwellings which long-vanished generations have inhabited! Without doubt, the living man has a right to model his shell in accordance with his own habits, his tastes, and his manners; but it can not be denied that a new city is far less attractive than an old one.

When I was a child, I sometimes received for a New Year's present one of those Nuremberg boxes containing a whole miniature German city. In a hundred different ways I arranged the little houses of painted wood around the church, with its pointed belfry and its red walls, where the seam of the bricks was marked by fine white lines. I set out my two dozen frizzed and painted trees, and saw with delight the charmingly outlandish and wildly festal air which these apple-green, pink, lilac, fawn-colored houses with their window-panes, their retreating gables, and their steep roofs, brilliant with red varnish, assumed, spread out on the carpet.

My idea was that houses like these had no existence in reality, but were made by some kind fairy for extremely good little boys. The marvelous exaggeration of childhood gave this little parti-colored city a respectable development, and I walked through its regular streets, tho with the same precautions as did Gulliver in Liliput. Lübeck gave back to me this long-forgotten feeling of my childish days. I seemed to walk in a city of the imagination, taken out of some monstrous toy-box. I believe, considering all the faultlessly correct architecture that I have been forced to see in my traveler's life, that I really deserved that pleasure by way of compensation.

A cloister, or at least a gallery, a fragment of an ancient monastery, presented itself to view. This colonnade ran the whole length of the square, at the end of which stood the Marienkirche, a brick church of the fourteenth century. Continuing my walk, I found myself in a market-place, where awaited me one of those sights which repay the traveler for much fatigue: a public building of a new, unforeseen, original aspect, the old Stadthaus in which was formerly the Hanse hall, rose suddenly before me.

It occupies two sides of the square. Imagine, in front of the Marienkirche, whose spires and roof of oxydized copper rise above it, a lofty brick façade, blackened by time, bristling with three bell-towers with pointed copper-covered roofs, having two great empty rose-windows, and emblazoned with escutcheons inscribed in the trefoils of its ogives, double-headed black eagles on a gold field, and shields, half gules, half argent, ranged alternately, and executed in the most elaborate fashion of heraldry.

To this façade is joined a palazzino of the Renaissance, in stone and of an entirely different style, its tint of grayish-white marvelously relieved by the dark-red background of old brick-work. This building, with its three gables, its fluted Ionic columns, its caryatides, or rather its Atlases (for they are human figures), its semicircular window, its niches curved like a shell, its arcades ornamented with figures, its basement of diamond-shaped stones, produces what I may call an architectural discord that is most unexpected and charming. We meet very few edifices in the north of Europe of this style and epoch.

In the façade, the old German style prevails: arches of brick, resting upon short granite columns, support a gallery with ogive-windows. A row of blazons, inclined from right to left, bring out their brilliant color against the blackish tint of the wall. It would be difficult to form an idea of the character and richness of this ornamentation.

This gallery leads into the main building, a structure than which no scene-painter, seeking a medieval decoration for an opera, ever invented anything more picturesque and singular. Five turrets, coiffed with roofs like extinguishers, raise their pointed tops above the main line of the façade with its lofty ogive-windows--unhappily now most of them partially bricked up, in accordance, doubtless, with the exigencies of alterations made within. Eight great disks, having gold backgrounds, and representing radiating suns, double-headed eagles, and the shields, gules and argent, the armorial bearings of Lübeck, are spread out gorgeously upon this quaint architecture. Beneath, arches supported upon short, thick pillars yawn darkly, and from far within there comes the gleam of precious metals, the wares of some goldsmith's shop.

Turning back toward the square again, I notice, rising above the houses, the green spires of another church, and over the heads of some market-women, who are chaffering over their fish and vegetables, the profile of a little building with brick pillars, which must have been a pillory in its day. This gives a last touch to the purely Gothic aspect of the square which is interrupted by no modern edifice. The ingenious idea occurred to me that this splendid Stadthaus must have another façade; and so in fact it had; passing under an archway, I found myself in a broad street, and my admiration began anew.

Five bell-towers, built half into the wall and separated by tall ogive-windows now partly blocked up, repeated, with variations, the façade I have just described. Brick rosettes exhibited their curious designs, spreading with square stitches, so to speak, like patterns for worsted work. At the base of the somber edifice a pretty little lodge, of the Renaissance, built as an afterthought, gave entrance to an exterior staircase going up along the wall diagonally to a sort of mirador, or overhanging look-out, in exquisite taste. Graceful little statues of Faith and Justice, elegantly draped, decorated the portico.

The staircase, resting on arches which widened as it rose higher, was ornamented with grotesque masks and caryatides. The mirador, placed above the arched doorway opening upon the market-place, was crowned with a recessed and voluted pediment, where a figure of Themis held in one hand balances, and in the other a sword, not forgetting to give her drapery, at the same time, a coquettish puff. An odd order formed of fluted pilasters fashioned like pedestals and supporting busts, separated the windows of this aërial cage. Consoles with fantastic masks completed the elegant ornamentation, over which Time had passed his thumb just enough to give to the carved stone that bloom which nothing can imitate....

The Marienkirche, which stands, as I have said, behind the Stadt-haus, is well worth a visit. Its two towers are 408 feet in height; a very elaborate belfry rises from the roof at the point of intersection of the transept. The towers of Lübeck have the peculiarity, every one of them, of being out of the perpendicular, leaning perceptibly to the right or left, but without disquieting the eye, like the tower of Asinelli at Bologna, or the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Seen two or three miles away, these towers, drunk and staggering, with their pointed caps that seem to nod at the horizon, present a droll and hilarious silhouette.

On entering the church, the first curious object that meets the eye is a copy of the Todtentanz, or Dance of Death, of the cemetery at Bâsle. I do not need to describe it in detail. The Middle Ages were never tired of composing variations upon this dismal theme. The most conspicuous of them are brought together in this lugubrious painting, which covers all the walls of one chapel. From the Pope and the Emperor to the infant in his cradle, each human being in his turn enters upon the dance with the inevitable terror. But death is not depicted as a skeleton, white, polished, cleaned, articulated with copper wire like the skeleton of an anatomical cabinet: that would be too ornamental for the vulgar crowd. He appears as a dead body in a more or less advanced state of decomposition, with all the horrid secrets of the tomb carefully revealed....

The cathedral, which is called in German the Dom, is quite remarkable in its interior. In the middle of the nave, filling one whole arch, is a colossal Christ of Gothic style, nailed to a cross carved in open-work, and ornamented with arabesques. The foot of this cross rests upon a transverse beam, going from one pillar to another, on which are standing the holy women and other pious personages, in attitudes of grief and adoration; Adam and Eve, one on either side, are arranging their paradisaic costume as decently as may be; above the cross the keystone of the arch projects, adorned with flowers and leafage, and serves as a standing-place for an angel with long wings. This construction, hanging in mid-air, and evidently light in weight, notwithstanding its magnitude, is of wood, carved with much taste and skill. I can define it in no better way than to call it a carved portcullis, lowered halfway in front of the chancel. It is the first example of such an arrangement that I have ever seen....

The Holstenthor, a city gate close by the railway station, is a most curious and picturesque specimen of German medieval architecture. Imagine two enormous brick towers united by the main portion of the structure, through which opens an archway, like a basket-handle, and you have a rude sketch of the construction; but you would not easily conceive of the effect produced by the high summit of the edifice, the conical roofs of the towers, the whimsical windows in the walls and in the roofs, the dull red or violet tints of the defaced bricks. It is altogether a new gamut for painters of architecture or of ruins; and I shall send them to Lübeck by the next train. I recommend to their notice also, very near the Holstenthor, on the left bank of the Trave, five or six crimson houses, shouldering each other for mutual support, bulging out in front, pierced with six or seven stories of windows, with denticulated gables, the deep red reflection of them trailing in the water, like some high-colored apron which a servant-maid is washing. What a picture Van den Heyden would have made of this!

Following the quay, along which runs a railway, where freight-trains were constantly passing, I enjoyed many amusing and varied scenes. On the other side of the Trave were to be seen, amid houses and clumps of trees, vessels in various stages of building. Here, a skeleton with ribs of wood, like the carcass of some stranded whale; there, a hull, clad with its planking near which smokes the calker's cauldron, emitting light yellowish clouds. Everywhere prevails a cheerful stir of busy life. Carpenters are planing and hammering, porters are rolling casks, sailors are scrubbing the decks of vessels, or getting the sails half way up to dry them in the sun. A barque just arriving comes alongside the quay, the other vessels making room for her to pass. The little steamboats are getting up steam or letting it off; and when you turn toward the city, through the rigging of the vessels, you see the church-towers, which incline gracefully, like the masts of clippers.

[Footnote A: From "A Winter in Russia." By arrangement with, and by permission of, the publishers, Henry Holt & Co. Copyright, 1874.]

[Footnote B: The decline of Lübeck dates from the first quarter of the sixteenth century and was chiefly due to the discovery of America and the consequent diversion of commerce to new directions. Other misfortunes came with the Thirty Years' War. As early as 1425, one of the constant sources of Lübeck's wealth had begun to fail her--the herring, which was found to be deserting Baltic waters. The discovery by the Portuguese of a route to India by the Cape of Good Hope was another cause of Lübeck's decline.]

HELIGOLAND[A]

BY WILLIAM GEORGE BLACK

In Heligoland itself there are few trees, no running water, no romantic ruins, but an extraordinary width of sea-view, seen as from the deck of a gigantic ship; and yet the island is so small that one can look around it all, and take the sea-line in one great circle.

Seen from a distance, as one must first see it, Heligoland is little more than a cloud on the horizon; but as the steamer approaches nearer, the island stands up, a red rock in the ocean, without companion or neighbor. A small ledge of white strand to the south is the only spot where boats can land, and on this ledge nestle many white-walled, red-roofed houses; while on the rim of the rock, nearly two hundred feet above, is a sister hamlet, with the church-tower and lighthouse for central ornaments.

On the Unterland are the principal streets and shops, on the Oberland are many of the best hotels and government-house. As there is no harbor, passengers reach the shore in large boats, and get their first glimpse of the hardy, sun-browned natives in the boatmen who, with bright jackets and hats of every picturesque curve that straw is capable of, pull the boat quickly to the steps of the little pier. Crowds of visitors line the way, but one gets quickly through, and in a few minutes returns either to familiar quarters in the Oberland, or finds an equally clean and moderate home among the lodging-house keepers or seamen. The season is a very short one, only ten weeks out of fifty-two, but the prices are moderate and the comfort unchallengeable....

Heligoland is only one mile long from pier to Nordkap, and a quarter of a mile wide at its widest--in all it is three-quarters of a square mile in size. There are no horses or carts in Heligoland--only six cows, kept always in darkness, and a few sheep and goats tethered on the Oberland. The streets are very narrow, but very clean, and the constant repetition in houses and scarves and flags of the national colors gives Heligoland a gay aspect; for the national colors are anything but dull.

Green land, red rocks, white strand--nothing could be better descriptive of the island than these colors. They are easily brought out in domestic architecture, for with a whitewashed cottage and a red-tiled roof the Heligolander has only to give his door and window-shutters a coat of bright green paint, and there are the colors of Heligoland. In case the unforgettable fact should escape the tourist, the government have worked the colors into the ingenious and pretty island postage-stamp, and many of our German friends wear bathing-pants of the same unobtrusive tints.

Life is a very delightful thing in summer in this island. On your first visit you feel exhilarated by the novelty of everything as much as by the strong warm sea wind which meets you wherever you go. When you return, the novelty has worn away, but the sense of enjoyment has deepened. As you meet friendly faces and feel the grip of friendly hands, so you also exchange salutations with Nature, as if she, too, were an old Heligoland friend. You know the view from this point and from that; but, like the converse of a friend, it is always changing, for there is no monotony in the sea. The waves lap the shore gently, or roar tumultuously in the red caverns, and it is all familiar, but none the less welcome and soothing because of that familiarity. It is not a land of lotus-eating delights, but it is a land where there is little sound but what the sea makes, and where every face tells of strong sun and salt waves. No doubt, much of its charm lies in its contrast to the life of towns or country places. Whatever comes to Heligoland comes from over the sea; there is no railway within many a wide mile; the people are a peculiar people, with their own peculiar language, and an island patriotism which it would be hard to match....

From the little pier one passes up the narrow white street, no broader than a Cologne lane, but clean and bright as is no other street in Europe, past the cafés with low balconies, and the little shops--into some there are three or four steps to descend, into others there is an ascent of a diminutive ladder--till the small square or garden is reached in front of the Conversation House, a spacious building with a good ball-room and reading-room, where a kiosque, always in summer full of the fragrant Heligoland roses, detains the passer-by. Then another turn or two in the street, and the bottom of the Treppe is approached--the great staircase which winds upward to the Oberland, in whose crevices grow masses of foliage, and whose easy ascent need not be feared by any one, for the steps are broad and low.

The older flight of steps was situated about a hundred paces northward from the present Treppe. It was cut out of the red crumbling rock, and at the summit passed through a guard-house. Undoubtedly the present Treppe should be similarly fortified. It was built by the government in 1834. During the smuggling days, it is said, an Englishman rode up to the Oberland, and the apparition so shocked an old woman, who had never seen a horse before, that she fell senseless to the ground.

From the Falm or road skirting the edge of the precipice from the head of the stairs to Government House, one of the loveliest views in all the world lies before our eyes. Immediately beneath are the winding stairs, with their constant stream of broad-shouldered seamen, or coquettish girls, or brown boys, passing up and down, while at each resting-place some group is sitting on the green-red-white seats gossiping over the day's business. Trees and plants nestle in the stair corners, and almost conceal the roadway at the foot.

Lifting one's eyes away from the little town, the white pier sprawls on the, sea, and countless boats at anchor spot with darkness the shining water. Farther away, the Düne lies like a bar of silver across the view, ribbed with emerald where the waves roll in over white sand; and all around it, as far as the eye can reach, white sails gleam in the light, until repose is found on the horizon where sea and sky meet in a vapory haze. At night the Falm is a favorite resort of the men whose houses are on the Oberland. With arms resting on the broad wall, they look down on the twinkling lights of the houses far beneath, listen to the laughter or song which float up from the small tables outside the café, or watch the specks of light on the dark gleam of the North Sea. It is a prospect of which one could hardly tire, if it was not that in summer one has in Heligoland a surfeit of sea loveliness....

Heligoland is conjecturally identified with the ocean island described by Tacitus as the place of the sacred rites of the Angli and other tribes of the mainland. It was almost certainly sacred to Forsete, the son of Balder the Sun-god--if he be identified, as Grimm and all Frisian writers identify him, with Fosite the Frisian god. Forsete, a personification to men of the great white god, who dwelt in a shining hall of gold and silver, was among all gods and men the wisest of judges.

It is generally supposed that Heligoland was first named the Holy Island from its association with the worship of Forsete, and latterly in consequence of the conversion of the Frisian inhabitants. Hallier has, however, pointed out that the Heligolanders do not use this name for their home. They call the island "det Lunn"--the land; their language they call "Hollunner," and he suggests that the original name was Hallig-lunn. A hallig is a sand-island occasionally covered with water. When the Düne was connected with the rock there was a large stretch of sand covered by winter floods. Hallig-lunn would then mean the island that is more than a hallig; and from the similarity of the words to Heligoland a series of etymological errors may have arisen; but Hallier's derivation is, after all, only a guess.

[Footnote A: From "Heligoland and the Islands of the North Sea." Heligoland, an island and fortress in the North Sea, lies thirty-six miles northwest of the mouth of the Elbe--Hamburg. It was ceded to Germany by Great Britain in 1890; and is attached to Schleswig Holstein. As a fortress, its importance has been greatly increased since the Germans recovered possession of the island.]

V

VIENNA

FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF THE CAPITAL[A]

BY BAYARD TAYLOR

I have at last seen the thousand wonders of this great capital, this German Paris, this connecting-link between the civilization of Europe and the barbaric magnificence of the East. It looks familiar to be in a city again whose streets are thronged with people and resound with the din and bustle of business. It reminds me of the never-ending crowds of London or the life and tumult of our scarcely less active New York. The morning of our arrival we sallied out from our lodgings in the Leopoldstadt to explore the world before us. Entering the broad Praterstrasse, we passed down to the little arm of the Danube which separates this part of the new city from the old. A row of magnificent coffee-houses occupy the bank, and numbers of persons were taking their breakfasts in the shady porticos. The Ferdinand's Bridge, which crosses the stream, was filled with people; in the motley crowd we saw the dark-eyed Greek, and Turks in their turbans and flowing robes. Little brown Hungarian boys were going around selling bunches of lilies, and Italians with baskets of oranges stood by the sidewalk.

The throng became greater as we penetrated into the old city. The streets were filled with carts and carriages, and, as there are no side-pavements, it required constant attention to keep out of their way. Splendid shops fitted up with great taste occupied the whole of the lower stories, and goods of all kinds hung beneath the canvas awnings in front of them. Almost every store or shop was dedicated to some particular person or place, which was represented on a large panel by the door. The number of these paintings added much to the splendor of the scene; I was gratified to find, among the images of kings and dukes, one dedicated "To the American," with an Indian chief in full costume.

The Altstadt, or "old city," which contains about sixty thousand inhabitants, is completely separated from the suburbs, whose population, taking the whole extent within the outer barrier, numbers nearly half a million.[B] It is situated on a small arm of the Danube and encompassed by a series of public promenades, gardens and walks, varying from a quarter to half a mile in length, called the "Glacis." This formerly belonged to the fortifications of the city, but as the suburbs grew up so rapidly on all sides, it was changed appropriately to a public walk. The city is still surrounded with a massive wall and a deep wide moat, but, since it was taken by Napoleon in 1809, the moat has been changed into a garden with a beautiful carriage-road along the bottom around the whole city.

It is a beautiful sight to stand on the summit of the wall and look over the broad Glacis, with its shady roads branching in every direction and filled with inexhaustible streams of people. The Vorstaedte, or new cities, stretch in a circle, around beyond this; all the finest buildings front on the Glacis, among which the splendid Vienna Theater and the church of San Carlo Borromeo are conspicuous. The mountains of the Vienna forest bound the view, with here and there a stately castle on their woody summits.

There is no lack of places for pleasure or amusement. Besides the numberless walks of the Glacis there are the imperial gardens, with their cool shades and flowers and fountains; the Augarten, laid out and opened to the public by the Emperor Joseph; and the Prater, the largest and most beautiful of all. It lies on an island formed by the arms of the Danube, and is between two and three miles square. From the circle at the end of the Praterstrasse broad carriage-ways extend through its forests of oak and silver ash and over its verdant lawns to the principal stream, which bounds it on the north. These roads are lined with stately horse-chestnuts, whose branches unite and form a dense canopy, completely shutting out the sun.

Every afternoon the beauty and nobility of Vienna whirl through the cool groves in their gay equipages, while the sidewalks are thronged with pedestrians, and the numberless tables and seats with which every house of refreshment is surrounded are filled with merry guests. Here on Sundays and holidays the people repair in thousands. The woods are full of tame deer, which run perfectly free over the whole Prater. I saw several in one of the lawns lying down in the grass, with a number of children playing around or sitting beside them. It is delightful to walk there in the cool of the evening, when the paths are crowded and everybody is enjoying the release from the dusty city. It is this free social life which renders Vienna so attractive to foreigners and draws yearly thousands of visitors from all parts of Europe....

We spent two or three hours delightfully one evening in listening to Strauss's band. We went about sunset to the Odeon, a new building in the Leopoldstadt. It has a refreshment-hall nearly five hundred feet long, with a handsome fresco ceiling and glass doors opening into a garden-walk of the same length. Both the hall and garden were filled with tables, where the people seated themselves as they came and conversed sociably over their coffee and wine. The orchestra was placed in a little ornamental temple in the garden, in front of which I stationed myself, for I was anxious to see the world's waltz-king whose magic tones can set the heels of half Christendom in motion.

After the band had finished tuning their instruments, a middle-sized, handsome man stept forward with long strides, with a violin in one hand and bow in the other, and began waving the latter up and down, like a magician summoning his spirits. As if he had waved the sound out of his bow, the tones leaped forth from the instruments, and, guided by his eye and hand, fell into a merry measure. The accuracy with which every instrument performed its part was truly marvelous. He could not have struck the measure or the harmony more certainly from the keys of his own piano than from that large band. The sounds struggled forth so perfect and distinct that one almost expected to see them embodied, whirling in wild dance around him. Sometimes the air was so exquisitely light and bounding the feet could scarcely keep on the earth; then it sank into a mournful lament with a sobbing tremulousness, and died away in a long-breathed sigh.

Strauss seemed to feel the music in every limb. He would wave his fiddle-bow a while, then commence playing with desperate energy, moving his whole body to the measure, till the sweat rolled from his brow. A book was lying on the stand before him, but he made no use of it. He often glanced around with a kind of half-triumphant smile at the restless crowd, whose feet could scarcely be restrained from bounding to the magic measure. It was the horn of Oberon realized. The composition of the music displayed great talent, but its charm consisted more in the exquisite combination of the different instruments, and the perfect, the wonderful, exactness with which each performed its part--a piece of art of the most elaborate and refined character.

The company, which consisted of several hundred, appeared to be full of enjoyment. They sat under the trees in the calm, cool twilight with the stars twinkling above, and talked and laughed sociably together between the pauses of the music, or strolled up and down the lighted alleys. We walked up and down with them, and thought how much we should enjoy such a scene at home, where the faces around us would be those of friends and the language our mother-tongue.

We went a long way through the suburbs one bright afternoon to a little cemetery about a mile from the city to find the grave of Beethoven. On ringing at the gate a girl admitted us into the grounds, in which are many monuments of noble families who have vaults there. I passed up the narrow walk, reading the inscriptions, till I came to the tomb of Franz Clement, a young composer who died two or three years ago. On turning again my eye fell instantly on the word "Beethoven" in golden letters on a tombstone of gray marble. A simple gilded lyre decorated the pedestal, above which was a serpent encircling a butterfly--the emblem of resurrection. Here, then, moldered the remains of that restless spirit who seemed to have strayed to earth from another clime, from such a height did he draw his glorious conceptions.

The perfection he sought for here in vain he has now attained in a world where the soul is freed from the bars which bind it in this. There were no flowers planted around the tomb by those who revered his genius; only one wreath, withered and dead, lay among the grass, as if left long ago by some solitary pilgrim, and a few wild buttercups hung with their bright blossoms over the slab. It might have been wrong, but I could not resist the temptation to steal one or two while the old gravedigger was busy preparing a new tenement. I thought that other buds would open in a few days, but those I took would be treasured many a year as sacred relics. A few paces off is the grave of Schubert, the composer whose beautiful songs are heard all over Germany.

We visited the imperial library a day or two ago. The hall is two hundred and forty-five feet long, with a magnificent dome in the center, under which stands the statue of Charles V., of Carrara marble, surrounded by twelve other monarchs of the house of Hapsburg. The walls are of variegated marble richly ornamented with gold, and the ceiling and dome are covered with brilliant fresco-paintings. The library numbers three hundred thousand volumes and sixteen thousand manuscripts, which are kept in walnut cases gilded and adorned with medallions. The rich and harmonious effect of the whole can not easily be imagined. It is exceedingly appropriate that a hall of such splendor should be used to hold a library. The pomp of a palace may seem hollow and vain, for it is but the dwelling of a man; but no building can be too magnificent for the hundreds of great and immortal spirits to dwell in who have visited earth during thirty centuries.

Among other curiosities preserved in the collection, we were shown a brass plate containing one of the records of the Roman Senate made one hundred and eighty years before Christ, Greek manuscripts of the fifth and sixth centuries, and a volume of Psalms printed on parchment in the year 1457 by Faust and Schoeffer, the inventors of printing. There were also Mexican manuscripts presented by Cortez, the prayer-book of Hildegard, wife of Charlemagne, in letters of gold, the signature of San Carlo Borromeo, and a Greek Testament of the thirteenth century which had been used by Erasmus in making his, translation and contains notes in his own hand. The most interesting article was the "Jerusalem Delivered" of Tasso, in the poet's own hand, with his erasures and corrections.

The chapel of St. Augustine contains one of the best works of Canova--the monument of the Grand Duchess Maria Christina of Sachsen-Teschen. It is a pyramid of gray marble, twenty-eight feet high, with an opening in the side representing the entrance to a sepulcher. A female figure personating Virtue bears in an urn to the grave the ashes of the departed, attended by two children with torches. The figure of Compassion follows, leading an aged beggar to the tomb of his benefactor, and a little child with its hands folded. On the lower step rests a mourning genius beside a sleeping lion, and a bas-relief on the pyramid above represents an angel carrying Christina's image, surrounded with the emblem of eternity, to heaven. A spirit of deep sorrow, which is touchingly portrayed in the countenance of the old man, pervades the whole group.

While we looked at it the organ breathed out a slow, mournful strain which harmonized so fully with the expression of the figures that we seemed to be listening to the requiem of the one they mourned. The combined effect of music and sculpture thus united in their deep pathos was such that I could have sat down and wept. It was not from sadness at the death of a benevolent tho unknown individual, but the feeling of grief, of perfect, unmingled sorrow, so powerfully represented, came to the heart like an echo of its own emotion and carried it away with irresistible influence. Travelers have described the same feeling while listening to the "Miserere" in the Sistine Chapel at Rome. Canova could not have chiselled the monument without tears.

One of the most interesting objects in Vienna is the imperial armory. We were admitted through tickets previously procured from the armory direction; as there was already one large company within, we were told to wait in the court till our turn came. Around the wall, on the inside, is suspended the enormous chain which the Turks stretched across the Danube at Buda in the year 1529 to obstruct the navigation. It has eight thousand links and is nearly a mile in length. The court is filled with cannon of all shapes and sizes, many of which were conquered from other nations. I saw a great many which were cast during the French Revolution, with the words "Liberté! Egalité!" upon them, and a number of others bearing the simple letter "N."....

The first wing contains banners used in the French Revolution, and liberty-trees with the red cap, the armor of Rudolph of Hapsburg, Maximilian, I., the emperor Charles V., and the hat, sword and order of Marshal Schwarzenberg. Some of the halls represent a fortification, with walls, ditches and embankments, made of muskets and swords. A long room in the second wing contains an encampment in which twelve or fifteen large tents are formed in like manner. There was also exhibited the armor of a dwarf king of Bohemia and Hungary who died a gray-headed old man in his twentieth year, the sword of Marlborough, the coat of Gustavus Adolphus, pierced in the breast and back with the bullet which killed him at Lützen, the armor of the old Bohemian princess Libussa, and that of the amazon Wlaska, with a steel vizor made to fit the features of her face.

The last wing was the most remarkable. Here we saw the helm and breastplate of Attila, king of the Huns, which once glanced at the head of his myriads of wild hordes before the walls of Rome; the armor of Count Stahremberg, who commanded Vienna during the Turkish siege in 1529, and the holy banner of Mohammed, taken at that time from the grand vizier, together with the steel harness of John Sobieski of Poland, who rescued Vienna from the Turkish troops under Kara Mustapha; the hat, sword and breastplate of Godfrey of Bouillon, the crusader-king of Jerusalem, with the banners of the cross the crusaders had borne to Palestine and the standard they captured from the Turks on the walls of the Holy City. I felt all my boyish enthusiasm for the romantic age of the crusaders revive as I looked on the torn and moldering banners which once waved on the hills of Judea, or perhaps followed the sword of the Lion-Heart through the fight on the field of Ascalon. What tales could they not tell, those old standards cut and shivered by spear and lance! What brave hands have carried them through the storm of battle, what dying eyes have looked upward to the cross on the folds as the last prayer was breathed for the rescue of the holy sepulcher.

[Footnote A: From "Views Afoot." Published by G.P. Putnam's Sons.]