CHAPTER XXIX. ELLFELD.--MAYENCE.--HEIDELBERG.--A CONVERSATION BETWEENVANE AND THE GERMAN STUDENT.--THE RUINS OF THE CASTLE OF HEIDELBERG ANDITS SOLITARY HABITANT.
IT was now the full noon; light clouds were bearing up towards theopposite banks of the Rhine, but over the Gothic towers of Ellfeld thesky spread blue and clear; the river danced beside the old gray wallswith a sunny wave, and close at hand a vessel crowded with passengers,and loud with eager voices, gave a merry life to the scene. On theopposite bank the hills sloped away into the far horizon, and one slightskiff in the midst of the waters broke the solitary brightness of thenoonday calm.
The town of Ellfeld was the gift of Otho the First to the Church;not far from thence is the crystal spring that gives its name to thedelicious grape of Markbrunner.
"Ah," quoth Du-----e, "doubtless the good bishops of Mayence made thebest of the vicinity!"
They stayed some little time at this town, and visited the ruins ofScharfenstein; thence proceeding up the river, they passed NiederWalluf, called the Gate of the Rheingau, and the luxuriant garden ofSchierstein; thence, sailing by the castle-seat of the Prince NassauUsingen, and passing two long and narrow isles, they arrived at Mayence,as the sun shot his last rays upon the waters, gilding the proudcathedral-spire, and breaking the mists that began to gather behind,over the rocks of the Rheingau.
Ever memorable Mayence,--memorable alike for freedom and for song,within those walls how often woke the gallant music of the Troubadour;and how often beside that river did the heart of the maiden tremble tothe lay! Within those walls the stout Walpoden first broached the greatscheme of the Hanseatic league; and, more than all, O memorable Mayence,thou canst claim the first invention of the mightiest engine of humanintellect,--the great leveller of power, the Demiurgus of the moralworld,--the Press! Here too lived the maligned hero of the greatestdrama of modern genius, the traditionary Faust, illustrating in himselfthe fate of his successors in dispensing knowledge,--held a monster forhis wisdom, and consigned to the penalties of hell as a recompense forthe benefits he had conferred on earth!
At Mayence, Gertrude heard so much and so constantly of Heidelberg,that she grew impatient to visit that enchanting town; and as Du-----econsidered the air of Heidelberg more pure and invigorating than that ofMayence, they resolved to fix within it their temporary residence.Alas! it was the place destined to close their brief and melancholypilgrimage, and to become to the heart of Trevylyan the holiest spotwhich the earth contained,--the KAABA of the world. But Gertrude,unconscious of her fate, conversed gayly as their carriage rolledrapidly on, and, constantly alive to every new sensation, she touchedwith her characteristic vivacity on all that they had seen in theirprevious route. There is a great charm in the observations of one newto the world; if we ourselves have become somewhat tired of "its hacksights and sounds," we hear in their freshness a voice from our ownyouth.
In the haunted valley of the Neckar, the most crystal of rivers, standsthe town of Heidelberg. The shades of evening gathered round it as theirheavy carriage rattled along the antique streets, and not till the nextday was Gertrude aware of all the unrivalled beauties that environ theplace.
Vane, who was an early riser, went forth alone in the morning toreconnoitre the town; and as he was gazing on the tower of St. Peter,he heard himself suddenly accosted. He turned round and saw the Germanstudent whom they had met among the mountains of Taunus at his elbow.
"Monsieur has chosen well in coming hither," said the student; "and Itrust our town will not disappoint his expectations." Vane answered withcourtesy, and the German offering to accompany him in his walk, theirconversation fell naturally on the life of a university, and the currenteducation of the German people.
"It is surprising," said the student, "that men are eternally inventingnew systems of education, and yet persevering in the old. How manyyears ago is it since Fichte predicted in the system of Pestalozzithe regeneration of the German people? What has it done? We admire, wepraise, and we blunder on in the very course Pestalozzi proves tobe erroneous. Certainly," continued the student, "there must be someradical defect in a system of culture in which genius is an exception,and dulness the result. Yet here, in our German universities, everythingproves that education without equitable institutions avails little inthe general formation of character. Here the young men of the collegesmix on the most equal terms; they are daring, romantic, enamoured offreedom even to its madness. They leave the University: no politicalcareer continues the train of mind they had acquired; they plunge intoobscurity; live scattered and separate, and the student inebriatedwith Schiller sinks into the passive priest or the lethargic baron. Hiscollege career, so far from indicating his future life, exactly reversesit: he is brought up in one course in order to proceed in another. Andthis I hold to be the universal error of education in all countries;they conceive it a certain something to be finished at a certain age.They do not make it a part of the continuous history of life, but awandering from it."
"You have been in England?" asked Vane.
"Yes; I have travelled over nearly the whole of it on foot. I was poorat that time, and imagining there was a sort of masonry between all menof letters, I inquired at each town for the _savants_, and asked moneyof them as a matter of course."
Vane almost laughed outright at the simplicity and naive unconsciousnessof degradation with which the student proclaimed himself a publicbeggar.
"And how did you generally succeed?"
"In most cases I was threatened with the stocks, and twice I wasconsigned by the _juge de paix_ to the village police, to be passedto some mystic Mecca they were pleased to entitle 'a parish.' Ah"(continued the German with much _bonhomie_), "it was a pity to see in agreat nation so much value attached to such a trifle as money. But whatsurprised me greatly was the tone of your poetry. Madame de Stael, whoknew perhaps as much of England as she did of Germany, tells us that itschief character is the _chivalresque_; and, excepting only Scott, who,by the way, is _not_ English, I did not find one chivalrous poet amongyou. Yet," continued the student, "between ourselves, I fancy that inour present age of civilization, there is an unexamined mistake in thegeneral mind as to the value of poetry. It delights still as ever, butit has ceased to teach. The prose of the heart enlightens, touches,rouses, far more than poetry. Your most philosophical poets would becommonplace if turned into prose. Verse cannot contain the refiningsubtle thoughts which a great prose writer embodies; the rhyme eternallycripples it; it properly deals with the common problems of human nature,which are now hackneyed, and not with the nice and philosophizingcorollaries which may be drawn from them. Thus, though it would seemat first a paradox, commonplace is more the element of poetry than ofprose."
This sentiment charmed Vane, who had nothing of the poet about him;and he took the student to share their breakfast at the inn, witha complacency he rarely experienced at the remeeting with a newacquaintance.
After breakfast, our party proceeded through the town towards thewonderful castle which is its chief attraction, and the noblest wreck ofGerman grandeur.
And now pausing, the mountain yet unscaled, the stately ruin frownedupon them, girt by its massive walls and hanging terraces, round whichfrom place to place clung the dwarfed and various foliage. High at therear rose the huge mountain, covered, save at its extreme summit, withdark trees, and concealing in its mysterious breast the shadowy beingsof the legendary world. But towards the ruins, and up a steep ascent,you may see a few scattered sheep thinly studding the broken ground.Aloft, above the ramparts, rose, desolate and huge, the Palace of theElectors of the Palatinate. In its broken walls you may trace the tokensof the lightning that blasted its ancient pomp, but still leaves in thevast extent of pile a fitting monument of the memory of Charlemagne.Below, in the distance, spread the plain far and spacious, till theshadowy river, with one solitary sail upon its breast, united themelancholy scene of earth with the autumnal sky.
"See," said Vane, pointing to two peasants who were conversing nearthem on
the matters of their little trade, utterly unconscious of theassociations of the spot, "see, after all that is said and done abouthuman greatness, it is always the greatness of the few. Ages pass, andleave the poor herd, the mass of men, eternally the same,--hewers ofwood and drawers of water. The pomp of princes has its ebb and flow, butthe peasant sells his fruit as gayly to the stranger on the ruins as tothe emperor in the palace."
"Will it be always so?" said the student.
"Let us hope not, for the sake of permanence in glory," said Trevylyan."Had _a people_ built yonder palace, its splendour would never havepassed away."
Vane shrugged his shoulders, and Du-----e took snuff.
But all the impressions produced by the castle at a distance are asnothing when you stand within its vast area and behold the architectureof all ages blended into one mighty ruin! The rich hues of the masonry,the sweeping facades--every description of building which man everframed for war or for luxury--is here; all having only the commoncharacter,--RUIN. The feudal rampart, the yawning fosse, the rude tower,the splendid arch, the strength of a fortress, the magnificence of apalace,--all united, strike upon the soul like the history of a fallenempire in all its epochs.
"There is one singular habitant of these ruins," said the student,--"asolitary painter, who has dwelt here some twenty years, companioned onlyby his Art. No other apartment but that which he tenants is occupied bya human being."
"What a poetical existence!" cried Gertrude, enchanted with a solitudeso full of associations.
"Perhaps so," said the cruel Vane, ever anxious to dispel an illusion,"but more probably custom has deadened to him all that overpowersourselves with awe; and he may tread among these ruins rather seeking topick up some rude morsel of antiquity, than feeding his imagination withthe dim traditions that invest them with so august a poetry."
"Monsieur's conjecture has something of the truth in it," said theGerman; "but then the painter is a Frenchman."
There is a sense of fatality in the singular mournfulness and majestywhich belong to the ruins of Heidelberg, contrasting the vastness of thestrength with the utterness of the ruin. It has been twice struck withlightning, and is the wreck of the elements, not of man; during thegreat siege it sustained, the lightning is supposed to have struck thepowder magazine by accident.
What a scene for some great imaginative work! What a mockinginterference of the wrath of nature in the puny contests of men! Onestroke of "the red right arm" above us, crushing the triumph of ages,and laughing to scorn the power of the beleaguers and the valour of thebesieged!
They passed the whole day among these stupendous ruins, and felt, whenthey descended to their inn, as if they had left the caverns of somemighty tomb.
The Pilgrims of the Rhine Page 62