Chapter III: Part I: In Three Dialogues (1)

I.

MEDON--ALDA.

MEDON.

And so we are to have no "_Sentimental Travels in Germany_" on hot-pressed paper, illustrated with views taken on the spot?

ALDA.

No.

MEDON.

You have unloaded Time of his wallet only to deal out his "scraps of things past," his shreds of remembrance, in beggarly, indolent fashion, over your own fire-side? You are afraid of being termed an egotist; you, who within these ten minutes have assured me that not any opinion of any human being should prevent you from doing, saying, writing--any thing--

ALDA.

Finish the sentence--any thing, _for truth's sake_. But how is the cause of truth to be advanced by the insolent publication of a mass of crude thoughts and hasty observations picked up here and there, "as pigeons pick up peas," and which now lie safe within the clasps of those little green books? You need not look at them; they do not contain another Diary of an Ennuyée, thank Heaven! nor do I feel much inclined to play the _Ennuyeuse_ in public.

MEDON.

"Take any form but _that_, and my firm nerves shall never tremble;" but with eyes to see, a heart to feel, a mind to observe, and a pen to record those observations, I do not perceive why you should not contribute one drop to that great ocean of thought which is weltering round the world!

ALDA.

If I could.

MEDON.

There are people, who when they travel open their eyes and their ears, (aye, and their mouths to some purpose,) and shut up their hearts and souls. I have heard such persons make it their boast, that they have returned to old England with all their old prejudices thick upon them; they have come back, to use their own phrase, "with no foreign ideas--just the same as they went:" they are much to be congratulated! I hope you are not one of these?

ALDA.

I hope not; it is this cold impervious pride which is the perdition of us English, and of England. I remember that in one of my several excursions on the Rhine, we had, on board the steamboat, an English family of high rank. There was the lordly papa, plain and shy, who never spoke to any one except his own family, and then only in the lowest whisper. There was the lady mamma, so truly lady-like, with fine-cut patrician features, and in her countenance a kind of passive _hauteur_, softened by an appearance of suffering, and ill-health. There were two daughters, proud, pale, fine-looking girls, dressed _à ravir_, with that indescribable air of high pretension, so elegantly impassive--so self-possessed--which some people call _l'air distingué_, but which, as extremes meet, I would rather call the refinement of vulgarity--the polish we see bestowed on debased material--the plating over the steel--the stucco over the brick-work!

MEDON.

Good; you _can_ be severe then!

ALDA.

I spoke generally: bear witness to the general truth of the picture, for it will fit others as well as the personages I have brought before you, who are, indeed, but specimens of a species. This group, then, had designedly or instinctively entrenched themselves in a corner to the right of the steersman, within a fortification of tables and benches, so arranged as to forbid all approach within two or three yards; the young ladies had each their sketch-book, and wielded pencil and Indian rubber, I know not with what effect,--but I know that I never saw either countenance once relax or brighten, in the midst of the divine scenery through which we glided. Two female attendants, seated on the outer fortifications, formed a kind of piquet guard; and two footmen at the other end kept watch over the well-appointed carriages, and came and went as their attendance was required. No one else ventured to approach this aristocratic Olympus; the celestials within its precincts, though not exactly seated "on golden stools at golden tables," like the divinities in the song of the Parcæ,[1] showed as supreme, as godlike an indifference to the throng of mortals in the nether sphere: no word was exchanged during the whole day with any of the fifty or sixty human beings who were round them; nay, when the rain drove us down to the pavilion, even there, amid twelve or fourteen others, they contrived to keep themselves aloof from contact and conversation. In this fashion they probably pursued their tour, exchanging the interior of their travelling carriage for the interior of an hotel; and every where associating only with those of their own caste. What do they see of all that is to be seen? What can they know of what is to be known? What do they endure of what is to be endured? I can speak from experience--I have travelled in that same style. As they went, so they return; happily, or rather pitifully, unconscious of the narrow circle in which move their factitious enjoyments, their confined experience, their half-awakened sympathies! And I should tell you, that in the same steam-boat were two German girls, under the care of an elderly relative, I think an aunt, and a brother, who was a celebrated _jurisconsulte_ and judge: their rank was equal to that of my countrywomen; their blood, perhaps, more purely noble, that is, older by some centuries; and their family more illustrious, by God knows how many quarterings; moreover, their father was a minister of state. Both these girls were beautiful;--fair, and fair-haired, with complexions on which "the rose stood ready with a blush;" and one, the youngest sister, was exquisitely lovely--in truth, she might have sat for one of Guido's angels. They walked up and down the deck, neither seeking nor avoiding the proximity of others. They accepted the telescopes which the gentlemen, particularly some young Englishmen, pressed on them when any distant or remarkable object came in view, and repaid the courtesy with a bright kindly smile; they were natural and easy, and did not deem it necessary to mount guard over their own dignity. Do you think I did not observe and feel the contrast?

MEDON.

If nations begin at last to understand each other's true interests--morally and politically, it will be through the agency of gifted men; but if ever they learn to love and sympathize with each other, it will be through the medium of you women. You smile, and shake your head; but in spite of a late example, which might seem to controvert this idea, I still think so;--our prejudices are stronger and bitterer than yours, because they are those which perverted reason builds up on a foundation of pride; but yours, which are generally those of fancy and association, soon melt away before your own kindly affections. More mobile, more impressible, more easily yielding to external circumstances, more easily lending yourselves to different manners and habits, more quick to perceive, more gentle to judge;--yes, it is to you we must look, to break down the outworks of prejudice--you, the advanced guard of humanity and civilization!

"The gentle race and dear,
By whom alone the world is glorified!"

Every feeling, well educated, generous, and truly refined woman, who travels, is as a dove sent out on a mission of peace; and should bring back at least an olive-leaf in her hand, if she bring nothing else. It is her part to soften the intercourse between rougher and stronger natures; to aid in the interfusion of the gentler sympathies; to speed the interchange of art and literature from pole to pole: not to pervert wit, and talent, and eloquence, and abuse the privileges of her sex, to sow the seeds of hatred where she might plant those of love--to embitter national discord and aversion, and disseminate individual prejudice and error.

ALDA.

Thank you! I need not say how entirely I agree with you.

MEDON.

Then tell me, what have _you_ brought home? if but an olive-leaf, let us have it; come, unpack your budget. Have you collected store of anecdotes, private, literary, scandalous, abundantly interspersed with proper names of grand-dukes and little dukes, counts, barons, ministers, poets, authors, actors, and opera dancers?

ALDA.

Me?

MEDON.

Cry you mercy!--I did but jest, so do not look so indignant! But have you then traced the cause and consequences of that undercurrent of opinion which is slowly but surely sapping the foundations of empires? Have you heard the low booming of that mighty ocean which approaches, wave after wave, to break up the dikes and boundaries of ancient power?

ALDA.

I? no; how should I--skimming over the surface of society with perpetual sunshine and favouring airs--how should I sound the gulfs and shoals which lie below?

MEDON.

Have you, then, analysed that odd combination of poetry, metaphysics, and politics, which, like the three primeval colours, tinge in various tints and shades, simple and complex, all literature, morals, art, and even conversation, through Germany?

ALDA.

No, indeed!

MEDON.

Have you decided between the different systems of Jacobi and Schelling?

ALDA.

You know I am a poor philosopher; but when Schelling was introduced to me at Munich, I remember I looked up at him with inexpressible admiration, as one whose giant arm had cut through an isthmus, and whose giant mind had new modelled the opinions of minds as gigantic as his own.

MEDON.

Then you are of this new school, which reveals the union of faith and philosophy?

ALDA.

If I am, it is by instinct.

MEDON.

Well, to descend to your own peculiar sphere, have you satisfied yourself as to the moral and social position of the women in Germany?

ALDA.

No, indeed!--at least, not yet.

MEDON.

Have you examined and noted down the routine of the _domestic_ education of their children? (we know something of the public and national systems.) Can you give some accurate notion of the ideas which generally prevail on this subject?

ALDA.

O no! you have mentioned things which would require a life to study. Merely to have thought upon them, to have glanced at them, gives me no right to discuss them, unless I could bring my observations to some tangible form, and derive from them some useful result.

MEDON.

Yet in this last journey you had an object--a purpose?

ALDA.

I had--a purpose which has long been revolving in my mind--an object never lost sight of;--but give me time!--time!

MEDON.

I see;--but are you prepared for consequences? Can you task your sensitive mind to stand reproach and ridicule? Remember your own story of Runckten the traveller, who, when about to commence his expedition into the desarts of Africa, prepared himself, by learning beforehand to digest poisons; to swallow without disgust reptiles, spiders, vermin----

ALDA.

"Thou hast the most unsavoury similes!"

MEDON.

Take a proverb then--"Bisogna coprirsi bene il viso innanzi di struzzicare il vespaio."

ALDA.

I will _not_ hide my face; nor can I answer you in this jesting vein, for to me it is a serious thought. There is in the kindly feeling, the spontaneous sympathy of the public towards me, something which fills me with gratitude and respect, and tells me to respect myself; which I would not exchange for the greater _éclat_ which hangs round greater names;--which I will not forfeit by writing one line from an unworthy motive; nor flatter, nor invite, by withholding one thought, opinion, or sentiment, which I believe to be true, and to which I can put the seal of my heart's conviction.

MEDON.

Good! I love a little enthusiasm now and then; so like Britomart in the enchanter's palace, the motto is,

"Be bold, be bold, and every where be bold!"

ALDA.

I should rather say, be gentle, be gentle, every where be gentle; and then we cannot _be too bold_.[2]

MEDON.

Well, then, I return once more to the charge. Have you been rambling about the world for these six months--yet learned nothing?

ALDA.

On the contrary.

MEDON.

Then what, in Heaven's name, _have_ you learned?

ALDA.

Not much; but I have learned to sweep my mind of some ill-conditioned cobwebs. I have learned to consider my own acquired knowledge but as a torch flung into an abyss, making the darkness visible, and showing me the extent of my own ignorance.

MEDON.

Then give us--give _me_, at least--the benefit of your ignorance; only let it be all your own. I honour a profession of ignorance--if only for its rarity--in these all-knowing times. Let me tell you, the ignorance of a candid and not uncultivated mind is better than the second-hand wisdom of those who take all things for granted; who are the echoes of others' opinions, the utterers of others' words; who _think_ they know, and who _think_ they think: I am sick of them all. Come, refresh me with a little ignorance--and be serious.

ALDA.

You make me smile; after all, 'tis only going over old ground, and I know not what pleasure, what interest it can impart, beyond half an hour's amusement.

MEDON.

Sceptic! is that nothing? In this harsh, cold, working-day world, is half an hour's amusement nothing? Old ground!--as if you did not know the pleasure of going over old ground with a new companion to refresh half-faded recollections--to compare impressions--to correct old ideas and acquire new ones? O I can suck knowledge out of ignorance, as a weazel sucks eggs!--Begin.

ALDA.

Where shall I begin?

MEDON.

Where, but at the beginning? and then diverge as you will. Your first journey was one of mere amusement?

ALDA.

Merely, and it answered its purpose; we travelled _à la milor Anglais_--a _partie carrée_--a barouche hung on the most approved principle--double-cushioned--luxurious--rising and sinking on its springs like a swan on the wave--the pockets stuffed with new publications--maps and guides _ad infinitum_; English servants for comfort, foreign servants for use; a chess-board, backgammon tables--in short, surrounded with all that could render us entirely independent of the amusements we had come to seek, and of the people among whom we had come to visit.

MEDON.

Admirable--and English!

ALDA.

Yes, and pleasant. I thought, not without gratitude, of the contrast between present feelings and those of a former journey. To abandon oneself to the quickening influence of new objects without care or thought of to-morrow, with a mind awake in all its strength; with restored health and cheerfulness; with sensibility tamed, not dead; possessing one's soul in quiet; not seeking, nor yet shrinking from excitement; not self-engrossed, nor yet pining for sympathy; was not this much? Not so interesting, perhaps, as playing the _Ennuyée_; but, oh! you know not how sad it is to look upon the lovely through tearful eyes, and walk among the loving and the kind, wrapped as in a death-shroud; to carry into the midst of the most glorious scenes of nature, and the divinest creations of art, perceptions dimmed and troubled with sickness and anguish: to move in the morning with aching and reluctance--to faint in the evening with weariness and pain; to feel all change, all motion, a torment to the dying heart; all rest, all delay, a burthen to the impatient spirit; to shiver in the presence of joy, like a ghost in the sunshine, yet have no sympathy to spare for suffering. How could I remember that all this _had been_, and not bless the miracle-worker--Time? And _apropos_ to the miracles of time--I had on this first journey, one source of amusement, which I am sorry I cannot share with you at full length; it was the near contemplation of a very singular character, of which I can only afford you a sketch. Our CHEF _de voyage_, for so we chose to entitle him who was the planner and director of our excursion, was one of the most accomplished and most eccentric of human beings: even courtesy might have termed him old, at seventy; but old age and he were many miles asunder, and it seemed as though he had made some compact with Time, like that of Faust with the devil, and was not to surrender to his inevitable adversary till the very last moment. Years could not quench his vivacity, nor "stale his infinite variety." He had been one of the prince's wild companions in the days of Sheridan and Fox, and could play alternately blackguard and gentleman, and both in perfection; but the high-born gentleman ever prevailed. He had been heir to an enormous income, most of which had slipped through his fingers _unknownst_, as the Irish say, and had stood in the way of a coronet, which, somehow or other, had slipped over his head to light on that of his eldest son. He had lived a life which would have ruined twenty iron constitutions, and had suffered what might well have broken twenty hearts of common stuff; but his self-complacency was invulnerable, his animal spirits inexhaustible, his activity indefatigable. The eccentricities of this singular man have been matter of celebrity; but against each of these stories it would be easy to place some act of benevolence, some trait of lofty gentlemanly feeling, which would at least neutralize their effect. He often told me that he had early in life selected three models, after which to form his own conduct and character; namely, De Grammont, Hotspur, and Lord Herbert of Cherbury; and he certainly _did_ unite, in a greater degree than he knew himself, the characteristics of all three. Such was our CHEF, and thus led, thus appointed, away we posted on, from land to land, from city to city--

MEDON.

Stay--stay. This is galloping on at the rate of Lenora, and her phantom lover--

"Tramp, tramp across the land we go,
Splash, splash across the sea!"

Take me with you, and a little more leisurely.

ALDA.

I think Bruges was the first place which interested me, perhaps from its historical associations. Bruges, where monarchs kissed the hand to merchants, now emptied of its former splendour, reminded me of the improvident steward in scripture, that could not dig, and to beg was ashamed. It had an air of grave idleness and threadbare dignity; and its listless, thinly-scattered inhabitants looked as if they had gone astray among the wide streets and huge tenantless edifices. There is one thing here which you must see--the tomb of Charles the Bold, and his daughter, Mary of Burgundy. The tomb is of the most exquisite workmanship, composed of polished brass and enamelled escutcheons; and there the fiery father and the gentle daughter lie, side by side, in sculptured bronze, equally still, cold, and silent. I remember that I stood long gazing on the inscription, which made me smile, and made me think. There was no mention of defeat and massacre, disgraceful flight, or obscure death. "But," says the epitaph, after enumerating his titles, his exploits, and his virtues, "fortune, who had hitherto been his good lady, ungently turned her back upon him on such a day of such a year, and _oppressed_ him"--an amusing instance of mingled courtesy and _naïveté_. Ghent was our next resting place. The aspect of Ghent, so familiarized to us of late by our travelled artists, made a strong impression upon me, and I used to walk about for hours together, looking at the strange picturesque old buildings coëval with the Spanish dominion, with their ornamented fronts and peaked roofs. There is much trade here, many flourishing manufactories, and the canals and quays often exhibited a lively scene of bustle, of which the form, at least, was new to us. The first exposition, or exhibition, of the newly-founded Royal Academy of the Netherlands was at this season open. You will allow it was a fair opportunity of judging of the present state of painting, in the self-same land, where she had once found, if not a temple, at least a home.

MEDON.

And learned to be homely--but the result?

ALDA.

I can scarce express the surprise I felt at the time, though it has since diminished on reflection. All the attempts at historical painting were bad, without exception. There was the usual assortment of Virgins, St. Cecilias, Cupids and Psyches, Zephyrs and Floras;--but such incomparable atrocities! There were some cabinet pictures in the same style in which their Flemish ancestors excelled--such as small interior conversation pieces, battle pieces, and flowers and fruit; some of these were really excellent, but the proportion of bad to good was certainly fifty to one.

MEDON.

Something like our own Royal Academy.

ALDA.

No; because with much which was quite as bad, quite as insipid, as coarse in taste, as stupidly presumptuous in attempt, and ridiculous in failure, as ever shocked me on the walls of Somerset House, there was nothing to be compared to the best pictures I have seen there. As I looked and listened to the remarks of the crowd around me, I perceived that the taste for art is even as low in the Netherlands as it is here and elsewhere.

MEDON.

And, surely, not from the want of models, nor from the want of facility in the means of studying them. You visited, of course, Schamp's collection?

ALDA.

Surely; there were miracles of art crowded together like goods in a counting-house, with wondrous economy of space, and more lamentable economy of light. Some were nailed against doors, inside and out, or suspended from screens and window-shutters. Here I saw Rubens' picture of Father Rutseli, the confessor of Albert and Isabella: one of those heads more suited to the crown than to the cowl--grand, sagacious, intellectual, with such a world of meaning in the eye, that one almost shrunk away from the expression. Here, too, I found that remarkable picture of Charles the First, painted by Lely during the king's imprisonment at Windsor--the only one for which he sat between his dethronement and his death: he is still melancholy and gentlemanlike, but not quite so dignified as on the canvass of Vandyke. This is the very picture that Horace Walpole mentions as lost or abstracted from the collection at Windsor. How it came into Schamp's collection, I could not learn. A very small head of an Italian girl by Correggio, or in his manner, hung close beside a Dutch girl by Mieris: equally exquisite as paintings, they gave me an opportunity of contrasting two styles, both founded in nature--but the nature, how different! the one all life, the other life and soul. Schamp's collection is liberally open to the public, as well as many others; if artists fail, it is not for want of models.

MEDON.

Perhaps for want of patronage? Yet I hear that the late king of the Netherlands sent several young artists to Italy at his own expense, and that the Prince of Orange was liberal and even munificent in his purchases--particularly of the old masters.

ALDA.

When I went to see the collection of the Prince of Orange at Brussels, I stepped from the room in which hung the glorious Vandykes, perhaps unequalled in the world, into the adjoining apartment, in which were two unfinished portraits disposed upon easels. They represented members of the prince's family; and were painted by a native artist of fashionable fame, and royally patronised. These were pointed out to my admiration as universally approved. What shall I say of them? Believe me, that they were contemptible beyond all terms of contempt! Can you tell me why the Prince of Orange should have sufficient taste to select and appropriate the finest specimens of art, and yet purchase and patronize the vilest daubs ever perpetrated by imbecility and presumption?

MEDON.

I know not, unless it be that in the former case he made use of others' eyes and judgment, and in the latter, of his own.

ALDA.

I might have anticipated the answer; but be that as it may, of all the galleries I saw in the Netherlands, the small but invaluable collection he had formed in his palace pleased me most. I remember a portrait of Sir Thomas More, by Holbein. A female head, by Leonardo da Vinci, said to be one of the mistresses of Francis I., but this is doubtful; that most magnificent group, Christ delivering the keys to St. Peter, by Rubens, once in England; about eight or ten Vandykes, masterpieces--for instance, Philip IV. and his minister Olivarez, and a Chevalier le Roy and his wife: all that you can imagine of chivalrous dignity, and lady-like grace. But there was one picture, a family group, by Gonsalez, which struck me more than all the rest put together. I had never seen any production of this painter, whose works are scarcely known out of Spain; and I looked upon this with equal astonishment and admiration. There was also a small, but most curious collection of pictures, of the ancient Flemish and German schools, which it is now the fashion to admire, and, what is worse, to imitate. The word _fashion_ does not express the national enthusiasm on this subject which prevails in Germany. I can understand that these pictures are often most interesting as historic documents, and often admirable for their literal transcripts of nature and expression, but they can only possess comparative excellence and relative value; and where the feeling of ideal beauty and classic grace has been highly cultivated, the eye shrinks involuntarily from these hard, grotesque, and glaring productions of an age when genius was blindly groping amid the darkness of ignorance. To confess the truth, I was sometimes annoyed, and sometimes amused, by the cant I heard in Germany about those schools of painting which preceded Albert Durer. Perhaps I should not say _cant_--it is a vile expression; and in German affectation there is something so very peculiar--so poetical, so--so _natural_, if I might say so, that I would give it another name if I could find one. In this worship of their old painters, I really could sympathize sometimes, even when it most provoked me. Retzsch, whom I had the delight of knowing at Dresden, showed me a sketch, in which he had ridiculed this mania with the most exquisite humour: it represented the torso of an antique Apollo (emblematical of ideal grace), mutilated and half buried in the earth, and subject to every species of profanation; it serves as a stool for a German student, who, with his shirt-collar turned down, and his hair dishevelled, and his cap stuck on one side, _à la_ Rafaelle, is intently copying a stiff, hard, sour-looking old Madonna, while Ignorance looks on, gaping with admiration. No one knows better than Retzsch the value of these ancient masters--no one has a more genuine feeling for all that is admirable in them; but no one feels more sensibly the gross perversion and exaggeration of the worship paid to them. I wish he would publish this good-humoured little bit of satire, which is too just and too graceful to be called a caricature.

I must tell you, however, that there were two most curious old pictures in the Orange Gallery, which arrested my attention, and of which I have retained a very distinct and vivid recollection; and that is more than I can say of many better pictures. They tell, in a striking manner, a very interesting story: the circumstances are said to have occurred about the year 985, but I cannot say that they rest on any very credible authority.

Of these two pictures, each exhibits two scenes. A certain nobleman, a favourite of the Emperor Otho, is condemned to death by his master on the false testimony of the Empress (a sort of Potiphar's wife), who has accused him of having tempted her to break her marriage vow. In the back-ground we see the unfortunate man led to judgment; he is in his shirt, bare-footed and bare-headed. His wife walks at his side, to whom he appears to be speaking earnestly, and endeavouring to persuade her of his innocence. A friar precedes them, and a crowd of people follow after. On the walls of the city stand the Emperor and his wicked Empress, looking down on the melancholy procession. In the foreground, we have the dead body of the victim, stretched upon the earth, and the executioner is in the act of delivering the head to his wife, who looks grim with despair. The severed head and flowing blood are painted with such a horrid and literal fidelity to nature, that it has been found advisable to cover this portion of the picture.

In the foreground of the second picture, the Emperor Otho is represented on his throne surrounded by his counsellors and courtiers. Before him kneels the widow of the Count: she has the ghastly head of her husband in her lap, and in her left-hand she holds firmly and unhurt the red-hot iron, the fiery ordeal by which she proves to the satisfaction of all present the innocence of her murdered lord. The Emperor looks thunderstruck; the Empress stands convicted, and is condemned to death; and in the back-ground, we have the catastrophe. She is bound to a stake, the fire is kindled, and she suffers the terrible penalty of her crime. These pictures, in subject and execution, might be termed tragico-comico-historical; but in spite of the harshness of the drawing, and the thousand defects of style and taste, they fix the attention by the vigour of the colouring and the expression of the heads, many of which are evidently from the life. The story is told in a very complete though very inartificial manner. The painter, Derick Steuerbout, was one of the very earliest of the Flemish masters, and lived about 1468, many years before Albert Durer and Holbein. I have heard that they were painted for the city of Lorraine, and until the invasion of the French, they remained undisturbed, and almost unnoticed, in the Hotel-de-Ville.

MEDON.

Does this collection of the Prince of Orange still exist at Brussels?

ALDA.

I am told that it does--that the whole palace, the furniture, the pictures, remain precisely as the prince and his family left them: that even down to the princess's work-box, and the portraits of her children which hang in her boudoir, nothing has been touched. This does not speak well for king Leopold's gallantry; and, in his place, I think I would have sent the private property of my rival after him.

MEDON.

So would not I, for this is not the age of chivalry, but of common sense. As to the pictures, the Belgians might plead that they were purchased with the public money, therefore justly public property. No, no; he should not have a picture of them--"If a Vandyke would save his soul, he should not; I'd keep them, by this hand!" that is, as long as I had a plausible excuse for keeping them; but the princess should have had her work-box and her children by the first courier. What more at Brussels?

ALDA.

I can recollect no more. The weather was sultry: we dressed, and dined, and ate ices, and drove up and down the Allée Verte, and saw I believe all that is to be seen--churches, palaces, hospitals, and so forth. We went from thence to Aix-la-Chapelle and Spa. As it was the height of the season, and both places were crowded with gay invalids, perhaps I ought to have been very much amused, but I confess I was _ennuyée_ to death.

MEDON.

This I can hardly conceive; for though there might have been little to amuse one of your turn of mind, there should have been much to observe.

ALDA.

There might have been matter for observation, or ridicule, or reflexion, at the moment, but nothing that I remember with pleasure. Spa I disliked particularly. I believe I am not in my nature cold or stern; but there was something in the shallow, tawdry, vicious gaiety of this place, which disgusted me. In all watering-places extremes meet; sickness and suffering, youth and dissipation, beggary and riches, collect together; but Spa being a very small town, a mere village, the approximation is brought immediately under the eye at every hour, every moment; and the beauty of the scenery around only rendered it more disagreeable: to me, even the hill of Annette and Lubin was polluted. Our Chef de voyage, who had visited Spa fifty years before, when on his _grand tour_, walked about with great complacency, recalling his youthful pleasures, and the days when he used to gallant his beautiful cousin, the Duchess of Rutland, of divine memory. While the rest of the party were amused, I fell into my old, habit of thinking and observing, and my contemplations were not agreeable. But instead of dealing in these general remarks, I will sketch you one or two pictures which have dwelt upon my memory. We had a well-dressed laquais-de-place, whose honesty and good-humour rendered him an especial favourite. His wife being ill, I went to see her; to my great surprise he conducted me to a little mud hovel, worse than the worst Irish cabin I ever heard described, where his wife lay stretched upon some straw, covered with a rug, and a little neglected ragged child was crawling about the floor, and about her bed. It seems then, that, this poor man, who every day waited at our luxurious table, dressed in smiles, and must habitually have witnessed the wasteful expenditure of the rich, returned every night to his miserable home, if home it could be called, to feel the stings of want with double bitterness. He told me that he and his wife lived the greater part of the year upon water-gruel, and that the row of wretched cabins, of which his own formed one, was inhabited by those who, like himself, were dependent upon the rich, extravagant, and dissipated strangers for the little pittance which was to support them for a twelvemonth. Was not this a fearful contrast? I should tell you that the benevolence of our Chef rendered this poor couple independent of change or chance for the next year. My other picture is in a different style. You know that at Spa the theatre immediately joins the ball-room. As soon as the performances are over, the parterre is laid down with boards, and in a few minutes metamorphosed into a gambling saloon. One night curiosity led me to be a spectator at one of the _rouge et noir_ tables. While I was there, a Flemish lady of rank, the Baroness B----, came in, hanging on the arm of a gentleman; she was not young, but still handsome. I had often met her in our walks, and had been struck by her fine eyes, and the amiable expression of her countenance. After one or two turns up and down the room, laughing and talking, she carelessly, and as if from a sudden thought, seated herself at the table. By degrees she became interested in the game, her stakes became deeper, her countenance became agitated, and her brow clouded. I left her playing. The next evening when I entered, I found her already seated at the table, as indeed I had anticipated. I watched her for some time with a painful interest. It was evident that she was not an habitual gambler, like several others at the same table, whose hard impassive features never varied with the variations of the game. There was one little old withered skeleton of a woman, like a death's head in artificial flowers, who stretched out her harpy claws upon the rouleaus of gold and silver, without moving a muscle or a wrinkle of her face,--with hardly an additional twinkle in her dull grey eye. Not so my poor baroness, who became every moment more agitated and more eager: her eyes sparkled with an unnatural keenness, her teeth became set, and her lips drawn away from them, wore, instead of the sweet smile which had at first attracted my attention, a grin of desperation. Gradually, as I looked at her, her countenance assumed so hideous, and, I may add, so vile an expression, that I could no longer endure the spectacle. I hastened from the room--more moved, more shocked than I can express; and often, since that time, her face has risen upon my day and night dreams like a horrid supernatural mask. Her husband, for this wretched woman was a wife and a mother, came to meet her a few days afterwards, and accompany her home; but I heard that in the interval she had attempted self-destruction, and failed.

MEDON.

The case is but too common; and even you, who are always seeking reasons and excuses for the delinquencies of your sex, would hardly find them here.

ALDA.

And unless I could know what were the previous habits and education of the victim, through what influences, blest or unblest, her mind had been trained, her moral existence built up--should I condemn? Who had taught this woman self-knowledge?--who had instructed her in the elements of her own being, and guarded her against her own excitable temperament?--what friendly voice had warned her ignorance?--what secret burden of misery--what joyless emptiness of heart--what fever of the nerves--what weariness of spirit--what "thankless husband or faithless lover" had driven her to the edge of the precipice? In this particular case I know that the husband bore the character of being both negligent and dissipated; and where was _he_,--what were his haunts and his amusements, while his wife staked with her gold, her honour, her reason, and her life? Tell me all this before we dare to pass judgment. O it is easy to compute what is done! and yet, who but the Being above us all, can know what is resisted?

MEDON.

You would plead then for a _female_ gambler?

ALDA.

Why do you lay such an emphasis upon _female_ gambler? In what respect is a female gambler worse than one of your sex? The case is more pitiable;--more rare--therefore, perhaps, more shocking; but why more hateful?

MEDON.

You pose me.

ALDA.

Then I will leave you to think;--or shall I go on? for at this rate we shall never arrive at the end of our journey. I was at Aix-la-Chapelle, was I not? Well, I spare you the relics of Charlemagne, and if you have any dear or splendid associations with that great name, spare your imagination the shock it may receive in the cathedral at Aix, and leave "Yarrow unvisited."[3] Luckily the theatre at Aix is beautiful, and there was a fine opera, and a very perfect orchestra; the singers tolerable. It was here I first heard the Don Juan and the Freyschutz performed in the German fashion, and with German words. The Freyschutz gave me unmixed pleasure. In the Don Juan I missed the recitative, and the soft Italian flow of syllables, from which the music had been divorced; so that the ear, long habituated to that marriage of sweet sounds, was disappointed; but to listen without pleasure and excitement was impossible. I remember that on looking round, after Donna Anna's song, I was surprised to see our Chef de voyage bathed in tears; but, no whit disconcerted, he merely wiped them away, saying, with a smile, "It is the very prettiest, softest thing to cry to one's self!" Afterwards, when we were in the carriage, he expressed his surprise that any man should be ashamed of tears. "For my own part," he added, "when I wish to enjoy the very high sublime of luxury, I dine alone, order a mutton cutlet, _cuite à point_, with a bottle of Burgundy on one side, and Ovid's epistle of Penelope to Ulysses on the other; and so I read, and eat, and cry to myself. And then he repeated with enthusiasm--

"Hanc tua Penelope lento tibi mittit Ulysse:
Nil mihi rescribas attamen ipse veni;"

his eyes glistening as he recited the lines; he made me feel their beauty without understanding a word of their sense. "Strangest, and happiest of men!" I thought as I looked at him, "that after living seventy years in this world, can still have tears to spare for the sorrows of Penelope!" Well, our next resting place was Cologne.

MEDON.

You pause?--you have nothing to say of Cologne? No English traveller, except your professed tourists and guide-book makers, ever has; of the crowds who pass through the place, on their way up or down the Rhine, how few spend more than a night or a day there! their walk is between the Rheinberg and the cathedral; they look, perhaps, with a sneering curiosity at the shrine of the Three Kings; cut the usual jests on the Leda and the Cupid and Psyche;[4] glance at the St. Peter of Rubens; lounge on the bridge of boats; stock themselves with eau-de-Cologne, and then away! And yet this strange old city, which a bigoted priesthood, a jealous magistracy, and a variety of historical causes, have so long kept isolated in the midst of Europe, with its Roman origin, its classical associations, the wild gothic superstitions of which it has been the theatre; its legion of martyrs, its three kings and eleven thousand virgins, and the peculiar manners and physiognomy of the people, strangely take the fancy. What has become of its three hundred and fifty churches, and its thirty thousand beggars?--Thirty thousand beggars! Was there ever such a splendid establishment of licensed laziness, and consecrated rags and wallets! What a magnificent idea does it give one of the inexhaustible charity, and the incalculable riches of the inhabitants! but the French came with their besom of purification and destruction; and lo! the churches were turned into arsenals, the convents into barracks; and from its old-accustomed haunts, "the genius of beggary was with sighing sent." I really believe, that were I again to visit Cologne, I would not be content with a mere superficial glance, as heretofore.

ALDA.

And you would do well. To confess the truth, our first impressions of the place were exceedingly disagreeable; it appeared a huge, rambling, gloomy old city, whose endless narrow dirty streets, and dull dingy-looking edifices, were any thing but inviting. Nor on a second and a third visit were we tempted to prolong our stay. Yet Cologne has since become most interesting to me from a friendship I formed with a Colonese, a descendant of one of the oldest families of the place. How she loved her old city!--how she worshipped every relic with the most poetical, if not the most pious veneration!--how she looked down upon Berlin with scorn, as an upstart city, "_une ville ma chére, qui n'a ni histoire, ni antiquité_." The cathedral she used to call "_mon Berceau_," and the three kings "_mes trois pères_." Her profound knowledge of general history, her minute acquaintance with the local antiquities, the peculiar customs, the wild legends, the solemn superstitions of her birth-place, added to the most lively imagination and admirable descriptive powers, were to me an inexhaustible source of delight and information. It appears that the people of Cologne have a distinct character, but little modified by intercourse with the surrounding country, and preserved by continual intermarriages among themselves. They have a dialect, and songs, and ballads, and music, peculiar to their city; and are remarkable for an original vein of racy humour, a revengeful spirit, an exceeding superstition, a blind attachment to their native customs, a very decided contempt for other people, and a surpassing hatred of all innovations. They never admitted the jurisdiction of the electors of Cologne, and, although the most bigoted people in the world, were generally at war with their archbishops. Even Napoleon could not make them comformable. The city is now attached to Prussia, but still retains most of its ancient privileges, and all its ancient spirit of insubordination and independence. When, in 1828, the king of Prussia wished to force upon them an unpopular magistrate, the whole city rose, and obliged the obnoxious president to resign; the government, armed with all its legal and military terrors, could do nothing against the determined spirit of this half-civilized, fearless, reckless, yet merry, good-humoured populace. A history of this grotesque revolution, which had the same duration as the celebrated _trois jours de Paris_, and exhibited in its progress and issue some of the most striking, most characteristic, most farcical scenes you can imagine, were worthy of a Colonese Walter Scott. How I wish I could give you some of my friend's rich graphic sketches and humorous pictures of popular manner! but I feel that their peculiar spirit would evaporate in my hands. The event is celebrated in their local history as "_la Revolution du Carnaval_:" and this reminds me of another peculiarity of Cologne. The carnival is still celebrated there with a degree of splendour and fantastic humour, exceeding even the festivities of Rome and Naples in the present day; but as the season of the carnival is not the season for flight with our English birds of passage, few have ever witnessed these extraordinary Saturnalia. Such is the general ignorance or indifference relative to Cologne, that I met the other day with a very accomplished man, and a lover of art, who had frequently visited the place, and yet he had never seen the Medusa.

MEDON.

Nor I, by this good light!--I never even heard of it!

ALDA.

And how shall I attempt to describe it? Unless I had the "large utterance of the early gods," or could pour forth a string of Greek or German compounds, I know not in what words I could do justice to the effect it produced upon me. This wondrous mask measures about two feet and a half in height;[5] the colossal features, and I may add, the colossal expression, grand without exaggeration--so awfully vast, and yet so gloriously beautiful; the full rich lips curled with disdain--the mighty wings overshadowing the knit and tortured brow--the madness in the large dilated eyes--the wreathing and recoiling snakes, came upon me like something supernatural, and impressed me at once with astonishment, horror, and admiration. I was quite unprepared for what I beheld. As I stood before it my mind seemed to elevate and enlarge itself to admit this new vision of grandeur. Nothing but the two Fates in the Elgin marbles, and the Torso of the Vatican, ever affected me with the same inexpressible sense of the sublime: and this is not a fragment of some grand mystery, of which the remainder has been "to night and chaos hurled;" it is entire, in admirable preservation, and the workmanship as perfect as the conception is magnificent. I know not if it would have affected another in the same manner. For me, the ghastly allegory of the Medusa has a peculiar fascination. I confess that I have never wholly understood it, nor have any of the usual explanations satisfied me; it appears to me, that the Greeks, in thus blending the extremes of loveliness and terror, had a meaning, a purpose, more than is dreamt of by our philosophy.

MEDON.

But, how came this wonderful relic to Cologne, of all places in the world?

ALDA.

It stopped there on its road to England.

MEDON.

By what perverse destiny?--was it avarice on our part, or force or fraud on that of others?

ALDA.

It was, as Desdemona says, "our wretched fortune:" but the story, with all its circumstances, does so much honour to human nature, that it has half reconciled me to our loss. You must have heard of Professor Wallraf of Cologne, one of the canons of the cathedral, who, with his professorship and his canonship together, may have possessed from five to seven hundred francs a year. He was one of those wonderful and universal scholars, of whom we read in former times--men who concentrated all their powers and passions, and intellectual faculties, in the acquirement and advancement of knowledge, without any selfish aim or object, and from the mere abstract love of science. Early in life this man formed the resolution to remove from his native city the reproach of self-satisfied ignorance and monastic prejudices, which had hitherto characterized it; and in the course of a long existence of labour and privation, as professor and teacher, he contrived to collect together books, manuscripts, pictures, gems, works of art, and objects of natural history, to an immense amount. In the year 1818, on recovering from a dangerous illness, he presented his whole collection to his native city; and the magistracy, in return, bestowed on him a pension of three thousand francs for the remainder of his life. He was then more than seventy. About the same time a dealer in antiquities arrived from Rome, bringing with him this divine Medusa, with various other busts and fragments: he was on his way to England, where he hoped to dispose of them. He asked for his whole collection twelve thousand francs, and refused to sell any part of it separately. The city refused to make the purchase, thinking it too dear, and Wallraf, in despair at the idea of this glorious relic being consigned to other lands, mortgaged his yearly pension in order to raise the money, purchased the Medusa, presented it to the city, and then cheerfully resumed his accustomed life of self-denial and frugality. His only dread was lest he should die before the period was expired. He lived, however, to pay off his debt, and in three months afterwards he died.[6] Was not this admirable? The first time I saw the Medusa I did not know this anecdote; the second time, as I looked at it, I thought of Wallraf, and felt how much a moral interest can add to the charm of what is in itself most perfect.

MEDON.

I will certainly make a pilgrimage to this Medusa. She must be worth all the eleven thousand virgins together. What next?

ALDA.

Instead of embarking in the steam-boat, we posted along the left bank of the Rhine, spending a few days at Bonn, at Godesberg, and at Ehrenbreitstein; but I should tell you, as you allow me to diverge, that on my second journey, I owed much to a residence of some weeks at Bonn. There I became acquainted with the celebrated Schlegel, or I should rather say, M. le Chevalier de Schlegel, for I believe his titles and his "starry honours" are not indifferent to him; and in truth he wears them very gracefully. I was rather surprised to find in this sublime and eloquent critic, this awful scholar, whose comprehensive mind has grasped the whole universe of art, a most agreeable, lively, social being. Of the judgments passed on him in his own country, I know little, and understand less; I am not deep in German literary polemics. To me he was the author of the lectures on "Dramatic Literature," and the translator of Shakspeare, and, moreover, all that was amiable and polite: and was not this enough?

MEDON.

Enough for you, certainly; but, I believe that at this time Schlegel would rather found his fame on being one of the greatest oriental critics of the age, than on being the interpreter of the beauties of Calderon and Shakspeare.

ALDA.

I believe so; but for my own part, I would rather hear him talk of Romeo and Juliet, and of Madame de Staël, than of the Ramayana, the Bhagvat-Gita, or even the "eastern Con-fut-zee." This, of course, is only a proof of my own ignorance. Conversation may be compared to a lyre with seven chords--philosophy, art, poetry, politics, love, scandal, and the weather. There are some professors, who, like Paganini, "can discourse most eloquent music" upon one string only; and some who can grasp the whole instrument, and with a master's hand sound it from the top to the bottom of its compass. Now, Schlegel is one of the latter: he can thunder in the bass or caper in the treble; he can be a whole concert in himself. No man can trifle like him, nor, like him, blend in a few hours' converse, the critic, philologist, poet, philosopher, and man of the world--no man narrates more gracefully, nor more happily illustrates a casual thought. He told me many interesting things. "Do you know," said he one morning, as I was looking at a beautiful edition of Corinne, bound in red morocco, the gift of Madame de Staël; "do you know that I figure in that book?" I asked eagerly in what character? He bid me guess. I guessed playfully, the Comte d'Erfeuil. "No! no!" said he, laughing, "I am immortalized in the Prince Castel-Forte, the faithful, humble, unaspiring, friend of Corinne."

MEDON.

To any man but Schlegel, such an immortality were worth a life. Nay, there is no man, though his fame extended to the ends of the earth, whom the pen of Madame de Staël could not honour.

ALDA.

He seemed to think so, and I liked him for the self-complacency with which he twined her little myrtle leaf with his own palmy honours. Nor did he once refer to what I believe every body knows, her obligations to him in her De l'Allemagne.

MEDON.

Apropos--do tell me what is the general opinion of that book among the Germans themselves.

ALDA.