m 
 
 Saxon 
 Studies 
 
 lull an 
 
 
The " Dresdener Nachrichten " on "Saxon Studies." 
 
 As if to mark his, exultation at the injuries of all kinds- 
 which the inhabitants of Dresden have sustained at the hands 
 of the monster Thomas, another American, Julian Hawthorne, 
 of Boston, has perpetrated an outrageous libel on Dresden. It 
 is entitled " Saxon Studies," and is full of eveiy kind of false- 
 hood and insult, ostensibly calumniating Dresden, Leipzig, and 
 Saxony only ; but in reality conveying aspersions against the 
 whole of Germany. Fortunately, this opinion of the work is 
 that held in America itself, as appears by the Neiv Yorker 
 Stnafs Zeitunrj of the 12th January, which has been forwarded 
 to us. We extract from this honoured newspaper the following 
 vigorous defence of Germany : " It is well known that the 
 Saxons are esteemed the best-mannered, most affable people in 
 Germany. They are renowned for their politeness ; their stylo 
 of living is in many respects more refined than is the case in 
 the north and south of Germany ; and if, therefore, the bulk of 
 the Saxon population is described as stupid and coarse, rude- 
 and dirty if, during a three years' residence in Germany, the 
 author failed to meet with a single pretty face among all the- 
 Saxon ladies, who, on the contrary, impressed him only by their 
 ugliness, silliness, hypocrisy, great fondness for beer, and un- 
 appeasable appetite for dancing if all Saxons without excep- 
 tion, so often as tney came in contact with this author, exercised 
 a most disagreeable influence on his sense of smell if the resi- 
 dences of even the highest classes are far inferior in their lack 
 of comfort, their bareness and formality, their want of all those 
 
refinements demanded by aesthetic taste, to the most moderate 
 requirements of respectable housekeeping if all this, we say, is 
 the case in Dresden and Leipzig, it would really be hard to 
 name any spot in Germany which would not appear to this 
 bumptious American \_anspruchsvollen Amerifcaner] in a much 
 more perverse light. According to Hawthorne's view, the 
 Saxon mind that is, the German mind in general certainly 
 possesses a great aptitude for the acquisition of knowledge, but 
 this knowledge is not digested, is not assimilated into flesh and 
 blood, and does not make the Germans a wise people. And 
 therefore Goethe, Schiller, Heine, and the other great thinkers 
 of Germany are either not Germans, or they are the only 
 true Germans ever born. Immediately after this assertion the 
 author goes on to say that Dresden barmaids have composed 
 very pretty poetry in his presence, that they understand 
 playing on the piano, and that he was fairly amazed by the 
 many - sidedness of their accomplishments, and the skill 
 with which they expressed themselves. But alas! the un- 
 fortunate Saxon women are forced to work like slaves. 
 They must attend to the housekeeping and earn the means 
 of livelihood at the same time ; nay, he has met women 
 in his walks who were harnessed along with a dog to a 
 waggon, while the husband sat smoking like a sultan within. 
 The misuse of dogs, who are employed, contrary to the intention 
 of nature, as draft-animals, is certainly not uncommon in 
 Dresden ; and if, occasionally, a woman helps a dog in his labour, 
 she does it out of a humane feeling for the animal, and a desire 
 to lighten his toil: and it is rank absurdity to paint such a 
 picture as the above of a service of friendship like this. Even 
 in the judgment of an American newspaper printed in the 
 English language, the whole book is nothing but a caricature ; 
 and what more lenient judgment is possible when, for example, 
 we read that the author has nowhere heard worse music than in 
 Saxony where music is interpreted in the most impassioned 
 manner, and whose musical institute is renowned for its excel- 
 lence throughout all Europe ? The author affirms that true 
 
3 
 
 music cannot be appreciated by Saxon ears, because it were else 
 incomprehensible that people at a garden-concert, while a 
 symphony of Beethoven was being given, quaffed from time to 
 time a mouthful of beer, or munched the sausage which lay on the 
 plate before them, and immediately afterwards intimated their 
 approval of the majestic harmonies by clapping their hands, 
 nodding their heads, and rolling their eyes. Bnt space fails us 
 to expose all the nonsense which, under the pretentious title of 
 1 Studies,' this book contains : but we have already said enough 
 to show that the author is a snobbish blockhead, who cannot 
 enough wonder that all Saxons do not live in the same style as 
 wealthy people on Fifth Avenue in New York. Because he was 
 unable to gain admittance to the respectable society of Dresden 
 and Leipzig, and found himself confined to association with the 
 masses, he revenged himself by describing the habits and 
 customs of the lowest orders as if they were those of the whole 
 people : as when, for example, he assorts that the only way tho 
 dance-loving Saxons dance is for the man to grasp the woman 
 round the waist with both hands. Were a European traveller 
 to take a fancy to make studies of society in New York after 
 such a fashion as this, what a distorted picture of American life 
 might he paint : and yet he would not find it necessary to sin 
 half as much against truth as the author of this book has done, 
 in order to produce no less repulsive an effect. Without doubt 
 there may be many imperfections in German social life ; but the 
 extenuation of circumstances must be allowed for ; and in order 
 to form a fair opinion, the observer should not fail to compare 
 the social results in Germany with those in other countries." 
 To these admirable remarks we will append the observation 
 that we arc far from classing the numerous Americans living in 
 Saxony in the same category with their self-conceited fellow- 
 countryman. They are our beloved and honoured guests, and 
 clearly demonstrate by the fact of their presence among us, 
 their disagreement with the views of this clownish upstart 
 [ Gleichheits-Fleyet]. 
 
New York Times, Jan. 9th. 
 
 " We get, instead of criticism and glorification [of German 
 literature and people], of ^ which the world nowadays has enough 
 and too much, a series of very interesting and often very 
 amusing sketches of real life. . . . The actual dulness of 
 his subject does not repress the vivacity of a thoughtful and 
 skilful writer, as Mr. Hawthorne amply shows. . . . ' Saxon 
 Studies ' take place in the class of literature to which Emer- 
 son's English Traits ' belongs. It is of lighter calibre than that 
 sententious study of our English cousins, but it may therefore 
 be more generally attractive. Not that it is lacking in thought- 
 fulness, far from it ; but that it is easy and unconscious in its 
 manner of thought and very pleasing in its style." 
 
 Appleton's Journal, Jan. 8th. 
 
 " No amount of quotation could do justice to a work whose 
 most impressive effect lies in the cumulative character of its 
 contents. . . . His contempt becomes a genuine literary 
 inspiration. . . . He subjects [the Saxons] to an analysis so 
 incisive, so ingenious, so searching, and so pitiless, that the 
 reader feels at times as if he were himself upon the rack. . . 
 Among noted examples of satire and invective, ' Saxcn Studies * 
 is wholly, unique. Junius's scorn was confined to persons and a 
 party ; the humour of Swift carries a genial element into his 
 most ferocious satire ; but if ever the literature of hate comes 
 to be classified, ' Saxon Studies ' will easily take the first place 
 among its classics. It alone suffices to counterbalance, from a 
 literary point of view, all the adulation that Germany's success 
 has extorted from the world." 
 
 New York Evening Post, Dec. 27th. 
 
 " The good points of ' Saxon Studies ' are readableness, 
 vivacity, and pictorial power." 
 

 
 rnr**. 
 
 I 
 
 SAXON STUDIES 
 
SAXON STUDIE S 
 
 BY JULIAN HAWTHORNE. 
 
 STRAHAN & CO., PUBLISHERS 
 
 34 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON 
 187G 
 
PRINTED BY 
 
 M'CORQUODALE AND CO., "THE ARMOURY,' 
 80UTHWARK. 
 
TO 
 
 EDWARD D. HOSMER, ESQ., 
 
 OF CHICAGO, 
 
 A SOUVENIR OF ONE OR TWO WELL-REMEMBERED YEARS. 
 FROM HIS FRIEND 
 
 THE AUTHOR. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 WHEN the ostensible subject of a book is one with which 
 everybody believes himself familiar, the legendary gentle 
 reader becomes rarer than ever. The author of the present 
 compilation, however, has not consciously written anything 
 calculated practically to avail the least instructed visitor 
 to Saxony. Under cover of discussing certain aspects of 
 Dresden life, he has stolen entrance to a far wider field 
 of observation and remark so wide, that thoug'h the whole 
 world of analysers and moralists crowded into it, there 
 would be space and to spare for each hobby to curvet its 
 fill. He is free to admit that his interest in Saxony and 
 the Saxons is of the most moderate kind, certainly not 
 enough to provoke a treatise on them. They are as 
 dull and featureless a race as exists in this century, 
 and the less one has to do with them the better. But, 
 the plan of his work requiring some concrete nucleus 
 round which to group such thoughts and fancies as he 
 wished to ventilate, and the Saxon capital happening to 
 
Vl.l PREFACE. 
 
 have been his residence of late years, he has used it r 
 rather than any other place, to serve his turn in this 
 respect. So far, therefore, from being abashed at any 
 critic's discovering nothing essentially Saxon in "Saxon 
 Studies," he would insist upon thinking such a verdict 
 complimentary. 
 
 On the other hand, the author by no means desires to 
 evade the responsibility of whatever opinions, on matters 
 of Saxon life and character, the ensuing pages chance 
 to contain. lie has perhaps been led to speak home 
 truths more often than he would otherwise have done, 
 by reason of the mawkish tendency, very observable of 
 late, to make Germans, of all people in the world, and 
 Saxons with them, the object of sentimental hero-worship. 
 But nothing that he has advanced in this direction errs 
 not on the side of mildness rather than of severity; and 
 no deliberate assertion as to matter of fact that he has 
 made, is controvertible upon any grounds whatever. 
 
 Probably none would more readily admit this than the 
 better class of Saxons themselves. It is true that these 
 chapters, while appearing serially, were bitterly denounced 
 in some of the Dresden journals, as well as elsewhere. 
 But the author has before him, as he writes, the pro- 
 gramme of a "Native and Foreign Mutual Interest Pro- 
 tection Company," dated at Dresden, June, 1875, and 
 signed by Baron von Stockhausen as president. This 
 company aims to remedy some of those very abuses, for 
 
PREFACE. ix 
 
 mentioning- which the "Studies" have been assailed. 
 The reform is a necessary, if not a particularly hopeful 
 one; but in any event, the present writer is very far 
 from claiming- either credit for the enterprise or interest 
 in its success : and would be hugely diverted to find him- 
 self masquerading in a character so alien to his ambition 
 and capacity as that of a patcher-up of dilapidated 
 manners and morals. ' 
 
 " Saxon Studies " own no such exalted pretensions. 
 That they may be an amusement and relaxation to the 
 reader, as they have been to the writer, is the best the 
 latter cares to wish for them. Providence would never 
 have been at the pains to create man the only laughing 
 animal, had it not first made him the most laughable of 
 
 all 
 
 TWICKENHAM, 
 
 Dec., 1875. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I. DRESDEN ENVIRONS 1 
 
 II. OF GAMBRINUS 52 
 
 III. SIDEWALKS AND ROADWAYS 95 
 
 IV. STONE AND PLASTER 153 
 
 V. DRESDEN DIVERSIONS 203 
 
 VI. TYPES CIVIL AND UNCIVIL 258 
 
 VII. MOUNTAINEERING IN MINIATURE . 321 
 
DRESDEN ENVIRONS. 
 
 capital of Saxony, although not devoid of 
 some pleasant interior features, improves, like 
 the Past, as we walk away from it ; until, seen from 
 a certain distance, it acquires a smack of Florence. 
 But cross this line in either direction, and the charm 
 begins to wane. Here erects itself a moral barrier, 
 which the temperate traveller should not transgress. 
 A like mystic circle of greatest enjoyment surrounds 
 all delights; though, unfortunately, we are aware of 
 it only after it has been overpassed. The right per- 
 ception of mutual distances is a Philosopher's Stone, 
 for which the wise, from Solomon down, have been 
 experimenting. 
 
 The true end of travel is, to reconcile us to our 
 homes. We study foreign countries and customs, not 
 for their intrinsic sake, but in order to compare them 
 
 B 
 
2 SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 disadvantageously with our own: and thus the mere 
 cosmopolitan misses more than he gains. But man's 
 eyesight sharpens as his intellect expands ; and he 
 "begins to hold aloof from his surroundings. The 
 tendency is not an unhealthy one, and, had Paradise 
 never been lost, we should scarce have heard so much 
 about its attractions. Lovers, it is true, appear to pre- 
 fer contact to vision; but hearts sweet-hearts at all 
 events see with some faculty transcending ordinary 
 eyesight, and unattainable \>y common-place travellers. 
 Nevertheless, we shall do wisely, on starting out into 
 the world, not quite to disencumber ourselves of our 
 affectional luggage. It restrains too extended wander- 
 ings, and tempers glances else too keen for perfect 
 truth. 
 
 As for Dresden, I think its main charm lurks in 
 the towers of its churches and palaces. They elevate 
 the city's outline and make it seductive ; albeit thereby 
 somewhat falsifying its true character. Dresden is 
 less romantic than the promise of its spires : for that 
 matter, it is doubtful whether any city could -maintain 
 the standard of a cluster of minarets. Surely, the 
 veriest atheist if there stir within him any vestige 
 of what less rational beings call a soul must bless 
 Eternal Nothingness that superstition still puts steeples 
 on her churches. Religion may be folly, but all creeds 
 admit the beauty of a dome. It gives unlimited en- 
 
DRESDEN ENVIRONS. 3 
 
 joyment, and covers a multitude of sins. What is 
 there, in this upward-tapering, slender-pointing, worse 
 than practically useless structure, that so ensnares the 
 fancy ? Certainly, a spire is an outrage to logic and 
 to common sense. Yet the practice of building them 
 has outlived many a seeming- wiser custom, and will, 
 I trust, be one of the latest-cured follies of mankind. 
 The idea was first, perhaps, suggested by an aspiring 
 lamp-flame ; and it may continue in vogue so long as 
 fire and that finer fire we call soul tends heaven- 
 ward. 
 
 At all events, had I a grudge against Dresden, with 
 power to back it, I would overthrow her towers. Had 
 they never been erected, the city would to-day have 
 been unknown. The traveller, down ward -gazing from 
 yonder long-backed hill, and beholding a flattened 
 swarm of mean-featured houses spreading dingily on 
 both sides of a muddy river, would have hastened on, 
 to carry fame and fortune elsewhere. Not here had 
 the Sistine Madonna chosen her abode. 
 
 But, as it is, these dusky minarets are loadstones 
 whose attraction it is not easy to resist. In absence, 
 tney rise in memory and woo us back. Nevertheless, 
 if we have once escaped, we shall do wisely to revisit 
 them no more. The tall pinnacles lose nothing in the 
 light of recollection ; rather, a second look would find 
 them less refined and lofty than at first. Beautiful 
 
4 SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 were they as we gazed upon them ; but perfect, only 
 when we have turned away. 
 
 II. 
 
 From the summit of this grassy upland we may see 
 the city lie below us in the broad and shallow valley 
 through which the Elbe prolongs a lazy S. "Under 
 the influence of the early sunbeams, a thin brown mist 
 rises above the red-tiled roofs, and is trailed away by 
 the indolent breeze. This valley is a notable wind- 
 conductor, and many an epidemic has been put to 
 flight by the sturdy northern gales fortunate medicine 
 for a most constipated system of drainage. 
 
 We turn our backs on the city, and ramble county- 
 wards for to-day. We may walk as leisurely as we 
 like, pausing whenever the humour takes us. For my 
 own part, I refuse at the outset to be hurried, or to 
 stick to the main road when the bye-path looks more 
 inviting. The day is before us: and it is better to 
 acquire something of country lore before attempting 
 the city. 
 
 As the sun of planets, so is Dresden centre of a 
 spattering of villages. It is observable, that, although 
 the central body is greatly larger, and presumably 
 older than its satellites, yet the latter are more antique 
 in aspect and conservative in character. Like the 
 
DRESDEN ENVIRONS. 5 
 
 smallest babies, they have the oldest faces, and are 
 furthest behind the age. Their limited constitutions 
 do not easily assimilate new food: the short-paced 
 intelligence of the offspring fails to keep pace with 
 the parent's far-striding civilization. Dresden is, at 
 present, not very far behind the age in some respects : 
 it knows something about velocipedes, tramways, and 
 expensive living. But the villages are still early in 
 their eighteenth century. The ignorance of the 
 average Saxon peasant is petrifying all the more in 
 view of the fact that, of late years, he has begun to 
 learn reading and writing. Such acquirements appear 
 to be a poor gauge of intelligence. Of the march of 
 events the news of the day of all such knowledges 
 as the American Infant sucks in with the milk from 
 his feeding-bottle your Saxon peasant has no inkling. 
 Often, he cannot tell you the name of the king beneath 
 whose palace walls ho lives. A tradition is current 
 that the last king but one (who was safely buried 
 about thirty years ago) still survives in a neigh- 
 bouring castle, a captive to the amtition of his 
 relatives. 
 
 In short, like better men than they, when truth is 
 not readily to be had, they swallow lies with at least 
 equal relish. The Saxon mind is capacious of an in- 
 definite amount of information; but its digestion is 
 out of proportion weak. There is not power to work 
 
6 SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 up the meal of knowledge into the flesh and blood of 
 wisdom. I have observed in the faces of the learned 
 an expression of mental dyspepsia, bulbous foreheads 
 and dull pale eyes. As for Schiller, Goethe, Heine, 
 and the rest of that giant conclave, they are either 
 not German, or else they are the only true Germans 
 ever born. Immense, truly, seems to be their popu- 
 larity among their later countrymen: but is the 
 sympathy so officiously asserted, genuine stuff? It 
 sometimes puts me in mind of the reflection of sub- 
 limity in mud puddles. 
 
 There is, or used to be, a symmetricalness and 
 consistency about these peasants, unattainable by the 
 more enlightened. They lived near the earth, like 
 plantains ; but their humbleness was compensated by 
 some wholesome qualities. It is uncomfortable to 
 reflect that cultivation will vitiate them has already 
 begun to do so. Such manure as they are treated to 
 will cause them either to grow rank and monstrous, 
 or to rot away. Broad-based scepticism is sometimes 
 maintained to be better than deep-rooted prejudice; 
 but it does not seem to withstand storms so well. 
 
 If progress must progress with these people, why not 
 a little modify the method ? The heart of the peasant 
 is, perhaps, as valid as other men's: but his brain 
 is perniciously weak. Yet reformers address them- 
 selves solely to the latter, and force it to an empty 
 
DRESDEN ENVIRONS. 7 
 
 activity. The cone is thus inverted, and the learned 
 peasant topples over. In the best of men, the brain, 
 however large, has always been outweighed by the 
 heart. Were education filtered into the peasant 
 through the latter channel, it could never hurt him. 
 It might work in more slowly, but would always 
 remain pure and sweet, and never overfill the vessel. 
 
 III. 
 
 Barriers against civilisation are rather physical 
 than moral, a matter of good or bad roads. We 
 need not consult books for the history of past times ; 
 all ages since the Deluge live to-day, if the traveller 
 direct his steps aright. How old is the world ? Shall 
 we measure its antiquity by Babylon or Boston ? 
 Time sleeps beneath immemorial ruins at one spot, 
 while he mounts the telegraph pole at another. 
 
 The Nineteenth Century, accordingly, while it 
 ambles easily down the current of the Elbe, and along 
 the high-roads and railways, seldom exerts itself to 
 climb a hill or wind its way into a sequestered valley. 
 There are retreats but a few miles from Dresden, 
 where still lingers the light of centuries sunk beneath 
 the general horizon. The " Guttentag " affords a 
 ready test of the matter : the distribution of this 
 flower of courtesy marks the boundaries of progress. 
 
8 SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 
 
 Try yonder peasant, for instance, as he passes us on 
 the road. Did he stare at us stolidly ? or go by, 
 awkwardly unconscious, with averted gaze ? We are 
 at an easy distance from Dresden, and the roads are 
 good. But, did he touch his cap, meet our glance 
 with humble frankness, and speak the " Good-day " 
 with a pleasant gruffness of cordiality ? Alas, poor 
 fellow ! he lives in a savage gorge, accessible only by 
 an uneasy footpath. Though he appear scarce thirty, 
 he was born at least one hundred and fifty years ago. 
 He knows nothing about the Neue-Continental-Pferd- 
 Eisenbahn-Actien-Gesellschaft lately started in Dresden. 
 May we not almost say, seeing that he has never 
 breathed our Nineteenth Century air, that he has no 
 real existence at all ? 
 
 This same flower of courtesy depends for its growth 
 not solely on the locality, however, but somewhat also 
 on the individual. In one and the same household we 
 may meet with it under all conditions of luxuriance 
 or starvation. As a rule, it flourishes best with the 
 very old and with the very young those who have 
 either lived too long to be affected by modern gospels, 
 or have not yet grown tall enough to reach up to 
 them. It is in the hands of the well-grown youtli 
 that the flower is most apt to droop, or wither quite 
 away : they it is who dream most of emigrating to 
 America, and who meantime practise some American 
 
DRESDEN ENVIRONS. 9 
 
 virtues in their native cottages. Much unhappiness 
 is no doubt in store for them: but posterity may 
 glorify their stripes with stars. 
 
 Their newly gained culture has not yet sunk so 
 deeply into these peasants, however, as to be incapable 
 of occasional disconcertment. If we first salute them, 
 they will almost invariably return our greeting: or 
 the magnet of an overbearing or calmly superior 
 glance will often draw the words from our man, or 
 startle them out of him. For no Saxon, of whatever 
 degree, understands the maintenance of self-respect in 
 the presence of what he fancies a superior power. 
 
 In treating of Saxon manners, it might be supposed 
 that the illustrations should be drawn elsewhere than 
 from the peasantry. But I find among them the 
 original forms of many social peculiarities, which, on 
 higher planes, are almost unnoticeable by reason of 
 their conventional dress : conventionalism being the 
 true cloak of invisibility. Superficially, a best-society 
 drawing-room in Germany and in England appear 
 much alike ; but go to the corresponding villages, and 
 we see plainly points of difference, which exist no 
 less although outwardly imperceptible higher up. 
 The thin, satiny skin of the polished man-of-the- 
 world is a better veil of his soul, than is the canvas- 
 like hide of the coarse-grained labourer. 
 
 But, indeed, all Saxons know how to be polite, and 
 
io SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 often seem to take pleasure in elaborate exhibitions of 
 civility. Few things do they enjoy more than to take 
 off their hats, smile, nod, and exclaim " Ja ! Ja ! Ja ! " 
 It is curious and strange to watch the antics of a 
 group of acquaintances who have by chance en- 
 countered one another at a street corner. After a brief 
 but highly animated conversation, they proceed to 
 make their adieux. It is on his powers in this respect 
 that the Saxon chiefly prides himself. Behold, there- 
 fore, our friends who stand waving their hats, smiling, 
 nodding, gesticulating, peppering one another with 
 broadsides of Ja's. They become every moment more 
 and more wound-up. Their excitement permeates 
 every part of their bodies, and approaches ecstacy. It 
 resembles the frenzy of Dancing Dervishes, or the 
 more familiar madness of our own Shakers. This is 
 the Saxon's mystic religious dance. To this height of 
 fervour rises the warm-heartedness for which he is 
 noted. Politeness is common in Saxony provided 
 only that it cost no more than in the proverb. 
 
 IV. 
 
 American Emerson says, " I have thought a sufficient 
 measure of civilisation is the influence of good women." 
 He is said to be the most popular foreign essayist in 
 Germany ; and it is certain that these people are most 
 fond of such literature as is furthest beyond their 
 
DRESDEN ENVIRONS. n 
 
 comprehension. Nevertheless, no true Saxon would 
 subscribe to that particular dogma. For, yonder 
 market- waggon, high-piled with country-produce, and 
 drawn by a woman and a dog tugging on either side 
 the shaft, while the husband driver walks unen- 
 cumbered alongside, is so far from being a singular 
 spectacle that, after now some six years daily famili- 
 arity with it, I confess to a difficulty in quite 
 sympathising with the indignation of a new-comer. 
 But, indeed, this is nothing : only, at nightfall, we 
 shall meet the same waggon homeward-drawn by the 
 same team : and lo ! seated upon the empty hampers, 
 smokes serene the man and master of all. Let us be 
 rational : why walk home when our woman and dog 
 arc at hand to carry us ? 
 
 Why do not the woman-emancipationists come to 
 Saxony, and see with their own eyes what the 
 capacities of the sex actually are ? Here women 
 show more strength and endurance than many of 
 their husbands and brothers do. They carry on their 
 broad backs, for miles, heavier weights than I should 
 care to lend my shoulders to. Massive are their legs 
 as the banyan-root; their hips are as the bows of a 
 three-decker. Backs have they like derricks; rough 
 hands like pile-drivers. They wear knee-short skirts, 
 sleeves at elbows, head-kerchiefs. As a rule, they 
 possess animal good nature and vacant amiability. 
 
12 SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 But at twenty or twent3 7 -five they are already 
 growing old. 
 
 Growing old. with them, is a painful process, not a 
 graceful one. The reserves of vitality are dry, and 
 the woman's face becomes furrowed, even as the fields 
 she cultivates. Her eyes fade into stolidity and un- 
 intelligence. Her mouth seldom smiles. Thirty finds 
 her hollow-cheeked, withered, bony. At fifty should 
 she live so long she is in extreme old age. Mean- 
 while she has been bearing children as plentifully as 
 though that were her sole employment. But such 
 labours secure her scarce a temporary immunity from 
 other toil. I have seen her straining up a long hill, 
 weighted with more burdens than one. 
 
 Pleasanter is it to consider her in the hayfield, 
 before youth has dried up in her. Her plain costume 
 follows her figure closely enough to show to the best 
 advantage its heavy but not unhandsome contours. 
 Seen from a distance, her motions and postures have 
 often an admirable grace. Her limbs observe har- 
 monious lines. In raking, stooping, tossing hay, her 
 action is supple and easy. As she labours in the 
 sun, she keeps up a continuous good-humoured chatter 
 with her companions. Her bare arms and legs are 
 bronzed by summer exposure to heat and dirt ; and 
 her visage is of a colour almost Ethiopian. But an 
 American Southerner might see in her more than the 
 
DRESDEN ENVIRONS. 13 
 
 dark complexion, to put him in mind of former days 
 and institutions. 
 
 The Greeks had slaves who took the edge off the 
 work, but were not intended to bear Grecian children. 
 Saxon slaves are not let off so easily. A nation, whose 
 women keep their houses, saw their wood, cultivate 
 their crops and carry them to market on their backs, 
 and bear children in season and out of season, may 
 indeed go to war with full ranks, for a time. But 
 what use to conquer the world, if our sons and 
 daughters are to grow up cripples and idiots ? For, 
 does that pregnant woman whom we saw straining 
 uphill with her heavy basket injure only herself? 
 
 I have already remarked that the ground-plan of 
 high society may best be studied in the nearest 
 village- ; and so the best way to become acquainted 
 with a Saxon lady is to observe her peasant-sister 
 who sweats and tug3 in fields and on country roads. 
 The spirit of chivalry never throve among these 
 people, high or low ; what is more serious (and, per- 
 haps, too much so for context so light- toned as this), 
 the bulwarks of female chastity, where they exist, are 
 rather mechanical than moral. In Saxony, therefore, 
 suspicion justly has the weight of conviction. The 
 best result of this system is an insecure and exag- 
 gerated innocence the rest needs not further to be 
 enlarged upon. 
 
i 4 SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 Women are Avhat men make them; and thus WQ 
 come back to our Emersonian text. The nation that 
 degrades its women, cuts off the wings and darkens 
 the light which should lift and guide it to an enduring 
 standpoint. I cannot but feel a misgiving about 
 these German triumphs in field and cabinet, when I 
 see men helping themselves before women at table 
 and elsewhere. 
 
 How many of us have dreamt romantically about 
 the ideal German peasant-girl ? She appeared to us 
 pretty to the edge of beauty perhaps a step beyond. 
 She was blue-eyed, and flaxen braids fell over shapely 
 shoulders. Her gown was charmingly caught up at 
 one side ; she was often seen with a distaff, and was 
 apt to break out in sunny smiles or pathetic little 
 songs. Goethe and Kaulbach have much to answer 
 for! And yet, among many imperfect Gretchens, I 
 have sometimes fancied that I caught a glimpse of the 
 real, traditional heroine. 
 
 Handsome and pretty women are certainly no rarity 
 in Saxony, although few of them can lay claim to 
 an unadulterated Saxon pedigree. We see lovely 
 Austrians, and fascinating Poles and Russians, who 
 delicately smoke cigars in the concert-gardens. But 
 it is hard for the peasant type to rise higher than 
 comeliness ; and it is distressingly apt to be coarse of 
 feature as TV ell as of hand, clumsy of ancle, and more 
 
DRESDEN ENVIRONS. 15 
 
 or less wedded to grease and dirt. Good blood shows 
 in the profile ; and these young girls, whose full faces 
 are often pleasant and even attractive, have seldom an 
 eloquent contour of nose and mouth. There is some- 
 times great softness and sweetness of eye ; a clear com- 
 plexion; a pretty roundness of chin and throat. 
 Indeed, I have found scattered through half-a-dozen 
 different villages all the features of the true Gretchen ; 
 and once, in an obscure hamlet, whose name I have 
 forgotten, I. came unexpectedly upon what seemed a 
 near approach to the mythic being. She was at work 
 on the village pump-handle, and her management of it 
 was full of grace and vigour. She bade me good- 
 morning in a round, melodious voice, and looked 
 healthy, fresh, bright, and almost clean. I gave but 
 one glance, and then a subtle inward monition 
 impelled me to hurry away. For, although a second 
 look might have recognized her as the long-sought one, 
 yet it might have brought disappointment, and, there- 
 fore, was too much to risk. Meanwhile, so much was 
 gained I cannot say that I have failed to find her. 
 
 But this is sentimental nonsense. English, French, 
 Italians, Spaniards, Russians each and all surpass 
 their German sister in some particular of beauty ; and 
 the American, of course, in all combined. Gretchen 
 will always have unlovely hands and shapeless feet ; her 
 flaxen braids will be dull and lustreless, and her head 
 
16 SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 will be planed off behind on a line with her ears. This 
 is no anti-climax : for most of the qualities which make 
 a human being humanly interesting, are dependent 
 upon a goodly development of the cerebellum. 
 
 v. 
 
 We sallied forth this morning in quest of a repre- 
 sentative Saxon village ; but, save as regards situation, 
 one is as representative as another. The same people 
 inhabit all, and follow the same customs, submit to the 
 same inconveniences, partake of the same ignorance, 
 and are wedded to the same prejudices and super- 
 stitions. Moreover, the names of fifteen out of twenty 
 of these villages end in the same three mystic letters 
 " itz." What " itz " signifies, I know not ; but I should 
 fancy that whoever lives in a community whose name 
 terminates otherwise would feel like a kind of outlaw 
 or alien. Loschwitz, Blasewitz, Pillriitz, Pulsnitz, 
 Sedlitz, Gorbitz, all are members of one family, and 
 look, speak, and think in the family way. It is 
 admirable the care they take to post up their names on 
 a signboard at each entrance of the village, doubtless a 
 safeguard against the serious danger of forgetting their 
 own first syllables. Were some mischievous person, 
 while the honest villagers slept, to interchange all their 
 signboards, there would be no hope of their ever identi- 
 fying themselves again. Perhaps, indeed, they would 
 
DRESDEN ENVIRONS. 17 
 
 fail to perceive the alteration. Pillnitz or Pulsnitz 
 what odds ? It can matter little to a pebble what posi- 
 tion on the beach it occupies; and I dare say the members 
 of various families might be substituted one for another, 
 and nothing be noticed much out of the way on either side. 
 Many of these little flocks of houses have settled 
 down from their flight in realm of thought along the 
 banks of a stream which trickles through a narrow 
 gorge, between low hills. The brook is an important 
 element in the village economy, fulfilling the rather 
 discordant offices of public drain, swill-pail, and wash- 
 tub; and moreover serving as a perennial plaything 
 for quantities of white-headed children and geese. It 
 is walled in with stone ; narrow flights of steps lead 
 down at intervals to the water's edge, and here and 
 there miniature bridges span the flood. The water 
 babbles over a pebbly bottom, varied with bits of 
 broken pottery and cast-away odds-and-ends of the 
 household ; once in a while the stream gathers up its 
 strength to turn a saw-mill, and anon spreads out to 
 form a shallow basin. Stiff-necked, plas&Tr-faced, the 
 cottages stand in lines on either bank, winking lazily 
 at one another with their old glass eyes, across the 
 narrow intervening space. Above their red-tiled 
 roofs rise the steep hill-ridges, "built up in irregular 
 terraces, overgrown with vines or fruit-trees. Nobody 
 seems to stay at home except the geese and the babies. 
 
 c 
 
i8 SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 Such little settlements hide in country depths, 
 whither only grassy lanes and footpaths find their wa} T . 
 Others there are, mere episodes of the high road, 
 dusty, bare, and exposed, with flat views over sur- 
 rounding plains ; with a naked inn " Gasthaus " in 
 their midst, where thirsty teamsters halt for beer, and 
 to stare with slow-moving eyes at the pigmy common 
 with its muddy goose-pond, and to pump up unin- 
 telligible gutterals at one another. Others, again, are 
 ranged abreast beneath the bluffs on the river bank ; 
 a straggling footpath dodges crookedly through them, 
 scrambling here over a front doorstep, there crossing a 
 backyard. Women, bare of foot and head, peer 
 curiously forth from low doorways and cramped 
 windows ; soiled children stare, a-suck at muddy 
 fingers ; there are glimpses of internal economies, rustic 
 meals, withered grandparents who seldom get further 
 than the doorstep ; visions of infants nursed and 
 spanked. A strip of grass intervenes between the 
 houses and the Elbe river ; through trees we see the 
 down-slipping current, bearing with it interminable 
 rafts and ponderous canal boats, and sometimes a 
 puffing steamer, with noisy paddle wheels. At times 
 we skirt long stretches of blind walls, from the chinks 
 of which sprout grass and flowers ; and which convey 
 to us an obscure impression of there being grape-vines 
 on the other side of them. 
 
 
DRESDEN ENVIRONS. 19 
 
 Or, once more, and not least picturesquely, our 
 village alights on a low hill-top, where trees and 
 houses crowd one another in agreeable contention, 
 The main approach winds snake-like upwards from 
 the grass and brush of the valley, but on reaching the 
 summit splits into hydra heads, each one of which 
 pokes itself into somebody's barnyard or garden, 
 leaving a stranger in some embarrassment as to how 
 to get through the town without unauthorized 
 intrusion on its inhabitants. Besides the main 
 approach, there are clever short-cuts down steep 
 places, sometimes forming into a rude flight of stone 
 steps, anon taking a sudden leap down a high terrace, 
 and finally creeping out through a hole in the hedge, 
 at the bottom. The houses look pretty from below ; 
 but after climbing the hill their best charm vanishes, 
 like that of clouds seen at too close quarters. In 
 Saxony, as well as elsewhere, there is a penalty for 
 opening Pandora's box. 
 
 VL 
 
 As for the cottages themselves, they are for the 
 most part two-storied boxes, smeared with stucco and 
 gabled with red tiles : thatch being as rare here as it 
 is common in England. In fact, these dwellings are 
 not real cottages, but only small inconvenient houses. 
 
20 SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 They are never allied to their natural surroundings 
 never look as though they had grown leisurely up 
 from some seed planted aeons ago. They never permit 
 us to mistake them for an immemorial tree-stump or 
 mossy rock, which rustic men have hollowed out, and 
 improved into a home. The oldest of them have a 
 temporary, artificial look, conveying the idea that they 
 have been made somewhere else, and set down in 
 their present situation quite by accident, to be tried 
 in a new place to-morrow. A Saxon never sees the 
 spot he builds in, but only the thing he builds. 
 German toy- villages, which charmed our childhood, 
 are more accurate copies of the reality than our years 
 of discretion would have supposed. Magnify the toy, 
 or view the reality from a distance, and the two are 
 one and the same. 
 
 This unstable impression results from the fact that 
 Saxon souls have no home-instinct. The peasant thinks 
 of his house as a place to sleep in and to eat in 
 before and after sleep. He knows no hearth, around 
 which he and his family may sit and chat ; instead, 
 there stands a tall glazed earth enware stove, which 
 suggests the idea rather of a refrigerator than of a fire, 
 until we burn our fingers on it ; a hypocritical, repel- 
 lant thing, which would sooner burst than look com- 
 fortable. And how can a man converse rationally or 
 affectionately over-night, with the woman whom he 
 
DRESDEN ENVIRONS. 21 
 
 means to harness to his cart in the morning ? His 
 only resource is to go to the inn, and drink flatulent 
 beer in company with a knot of smoky beings like 
 himself. He seldom gets drunk; indeed, I doubt 
 whether the " Einfaches " beer which he affects is 
 capable of producing anything worse than stolid 
 torpidity which is perhaps not a wholly undesirable 
 condition for a homeless man to be in. On gala-days 
 lie drinks and eats more than usual, and sometimes 
 puts on a suit of remarkable black broadcloth with 
 the comfortless grandeur thereto appertaining. He 
 plods on foot to the next village, and sits in the 
 " Restauration," or bowls in the alley, or talks crops 
 and prices with his peers. Be that how it may, the 
 gala ends, for him, so soon as he turns his face 
 homewards. 
 
 Partly answerable for this barrenness of soul is, no 
 doubt, the form of government, which pokes its 
 clammy, rigid finger into each man's private concern, 
 till he loses all spirit to be interested in them himself. 
 But yet more, must it be said, is it traceable to that 
 cold, profound selfishness which forms the foundation 
 and framework of the national and individual charac- 
 ter, in every walk of life : the wretched chill of which 
 must ultimately annul the warmth of the most fervent 
 German eulogist, provided he be bold enough to bring 
 his theoretical enthusiasm to the decisive test of a few 
 
22 SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 years' personal intercourse and conversation with the 
 people. 
 
 At this early hour of the day, however, our peasant 
 is off to his work, and we may examine his abode 
 without calling into question the qualities of the 
 owner. It is by no means devoid of ornamentation, 
 both natural and artificial : which, if in harmony 
 with the temporary character of the house itself, is, 
 not the less, often tasteful and pretty. Whenever 
 possible, the house is made the nucleus of a bunch of 
 flowers and verdure. Brightly coloured blossoms 
 crowd the narrow windows, winter and summer ; and 
 the greater number of the cottages have attached to 
 them tiny gardens some hardly bigger than large 
 flower-pots where grow pansies, pinks, marigolds, 
 and roses, in gaudy profusion. Flower cultivation is a 
 national trait ; and I have seen very unsesthetic-look- 
 ing people plucking wild-flowers in the fields. Wild- 
 flowers are easily obtainable, it is true, but the spirit 
 that uses them is less common. Here seems to be a 
 contradiction, and a pleasant one, in the Saxon pea- 
 sant's character. We look in vain from his house- 
 windows to those of his face ; there are no traces of 
 flowers there ; albeit plenty of soil in which to plant 
 them. Nevertheless, were there not germs of grace 
 and beauty somewhere hidden in him, such blossoms 
 would scarcely adorn his outward life. 
 
DRESDEN ENVIRONS. 23 
 
 For my part, I like to believe that the women thus 
 make amends to themselves, a little, for the moral 
 sterility of their earthly existence. The flowers that 
 we see in their windows may bloom there to a better 
 purpose than elsewhere. Perhaps, too, they may be 
 prophetic as well as emblematic of good. 
 
 Besides his flowers, the peasant often drapes the 
 front of his house with a thick green apron of wood- 
 bine or grape. The latter is never out of place : but 
 woodbine impresses me as being insincere and artifical 
 the antipodes of the strong and faithful ivy. It 
 does not cling to its support of itself, but must be 
 fastened up ; and a mischievous wind-gust may snatch 
 it from its moorings. It grows rapidly ; but its ten- 
 drils do not twine round the heart ; nor does it endure 
 long enough for the eye to become lovingly familiar 
 with its twists of stem and massings of foliage. Com- 
 pared with ivy, it is meretricious; flourishes with 
 superficial luxuriance, but has no real pith ; makes a 
 gaudy show in autumn ; but in winter its splendours 
 fall away, and leave a straggling nakedness. It does 
 not uphold, but is upheld, and must fall when the 
 support is withdrawn. It endures but a few years at 
 best, and dies unlamented, for another may readily be 
 had to fill its place. It has no modesty, but obtrudes 
 itself officiously, flaunting its glossy, fragile leaves 
 with an unbecoming freedom. It lacks the tender 
 
24 SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 traditions which ivy owns. Seen from a distance, an 
 incautious eye might mistake the one for the other ; 
 but when I find my ivy turn out woodbine, I feel the 
 same kind of disappointment which follows upon 
 addressing, to a stranger, the sentimental remark 
 intended for a friend. 
 
 -The grape is, on the whole, perhaps the most suitable 
 vine for cottage purposes, because it has to do with 
 the life of the present ; whereas the iyy more resembles 
 a pall than a wedding garment, and is chiefly associ- 
 ated with ruins and crumbling traditions. The grape- 
 vine hangs its shaggy green beard from eaves and 
 window-sills ; and when the fruit is ripe, the cottage 
 seems the realization of an Arcadian dream of luxury. 
 Howbeit, if we attempt still further to realize our 
 dream by putting forth our hand to pluck and eat, 
 the awakening comes ; for every cluster has a market 
 as well as aesthetic value. It is well to be pastoral and 
 romantic, but I must first pay so many groschen for 
 the grapes. Thus is sentiment made ridiculous now- 
 a-days ; all the fine pictures have a reverse side, 
 whereon is daubed a grinning caricature, named 
 Common Sense, or Practical Experience. Some clever 
 person is almost always at hand to spring this reverse 
 upon us ; but not the less, in solitude, or in rare 
 companionship, we will sometimes forget the parody 
 in musing on the poem. 
 
DRESDEN ENVIRONS. 25 
 
 VII. 
 
 As at present used in reference to the works of man, 
 picturesque is rather a vague term. If it may not be 
 directly defined as ignorance, it is at least opposed to 
 what is understood as classic beauty. A picturesque 
 house or street is one which, though meant for use, is 
 practically inconvenient to the verge of uselessness. 
 From this point of view, it will be doing no violence 
 to polite usage to describe these Saxon villages as 
 eminently picturesque. The dwellings are seldom 
 so comfortable as a right economy of materials would 
 have allowed ; they huddle together irregularly, draw- 
 ing in their toes, as it were, and ducking their heads 
 between their shoulders. Some few are built of hewn 
 logs, the second storey projecting like a ponderous eye- 
 brow; and these have I know not what quaint charm, 
 which distinguishes them from others in the memory. 
 They are more primitive. It is the yoking of poverty 
 with some so-called modern improvements that makes 
 real, unlovable ugliness. Justly to harmonize itself, 
 poverty should wear a garment of antiquity, propor- 
 tioned to its degree. 
 
 The front door is not always the mouth through 
 which proceeds the true utterance of the house ; in 
 many it is uniformly closed, and wears an aspect of 
 wooden formality. We behold, on jambs and lintel, an 
 
26 SAXOA 7 STUDIES. 
 
 uncouth display of architectural ornamentation ; and 
 here are inscribed the date of erection, the name or 
 initials of the founder, and some baldly pious motto 
 a scriptural 'proverb, or other scrap of religious truism. 
 "Im Gottes Segen ist Alles gelegen," "Wer Gott ver- 
 traut. hat wohl gebaut," and so on indefinitely. These 
 may be, and I suppose they generally are, taken as 
 evidences of a childlike simplicity and faith. But I 
 would rather they had been written on the inner side 
 of the lintel. The introduction of God's name to 
 every base occasion is a trait of this people, and crops 
 out in their daily conversation to a degree quite 
 astonishing. It is not a sincere or wholesome practice, 
 rather a kind of religious snobbishness. 
 
 Although the front door has not always this 
 pharisaical character, but is sometimes made genial 
 by an ample porch and worn steps and balusters yet 
 as a general thing the back-door manifests more 
 vitality and frankness. It opens on an unevenly 
 paved court : above, the tiled roof stoops affectionately ; 
 here sits the old man with his porcelain pipe, and 
 watches the old woman peeling potatoes ; while the 
 baby at their feet is happy with the potato-skins. 
 Here we see the earthen pots and copper-kettles of 
 Dutch painters; here detect makeshifts and undress 
 rehearsals. Here is a fine irregularity of light and 
 shade ; and, in the heat of summer, a grateful gloom 
 
DRESDEN ENVIRONS. 27 
 
 and dampness. That man must be puritanically 
 upright and above-board who never cherished a secret 
 partiality for back-doors. There arc easy back-door 
 ways of doing and saying things, such as can never 
 make their appearance on the front doorstep. 
 
 The curiosity which may have prompted me to peep 
 into a Saxon farm-yard was never justified by what I 
 saw there. Two sides of the enclosure are bounded by 
 a high blind wall rough with dirty plaster ; the other 
 two, by barns and outhouses. There is always a 
 melancholy excess of space : objects which should be 
 grouped together, languish apart. Here is a pump ; 
 in that corner huddles a cart ; yonder is a heap of 
 straw. Lonely hens straggle here and there, presided 
 over by a preoccupied cock, who seldom crows. An 
 ill-humoured dog barks at me from a distant kennel, 
 and rattles his rusty chain. It is vain to look for the 
 warmly-hospitable atmosphere, for the bustle, the 
 sound, the busy repose that should belong to farm- 
 yards. The ground is roughly paved with cobble 
 stones ; infrequent men and women shuffle, wooden- 
 shod, across and along, but I see no one who looks a 
 farmer. The Saxons do not appreciate the earth ; 
 they sow without affection, and reap without thank- 
 fulness. Their selfish stolidity cannot sympathize 
 with warm-hearted, generous, slow, majestic nature; 
 they grudge the labour of co-operating with her, and 
 
28 SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 would rather steal the milk from her "breast, than 
 claim it by the sacred right of children. But though 
 they be sulky, nature never is ; she yields nourish- 
 ment to them as to others ; and there is gracious 
 humour in the smile wherewith she hears them 
 grumble at the pain of suckling her. 
 
 Hard by the farm-yard are the hillocks and head- 
 stones of the village cemetery. Were there any 
 warmth in the dead, they lie close enough here to 
 create a very genial temperature. The monumental 
 devices stand shoulder to shoulder, each striving to 
 outdo its neighbour, either in stylishness or in extrava- 
 gance of eulogistic inscription. There can be no 
 safer gauge of culture in a people than the aspect of 
 their graves. They bury their bodies out of sight ; but 
 their superstition, their vanity, their truth or falsehood 
 these nowhere declare themselves so undisguisedly 
 as on the tombstone. We must read the carven 
 inscription, like some kinds of secret writing, between 
 the lines ; and how different is the hidden from the 
 ostensible meaning! What traits of character and 
 condition are pourtrayed in the design, ornament, and 
 material of this last milestone of earthly life ! In what 
 a solemn light it stands ; and with what eyes must 
 the soul regard it, which looks from beyond the 
 grave ! Pitifully awry must the least pretentious 
 appear, from that standpoint ; but what of these gilt, 
 
DRESDEN ENVIRONS. 29 
 
 gingerbread affairs, with their records of titles and 
 virtues? Green grass is the tombstone which best 
 bears all tests. It tells only of the life which springs 
 from decay. 
 
 From of old, humourists have made capital of the 
 follies of headstones ; but there is something ghastly 
 in the smile which such jests create. I prefer to let 
 the poor, fantastic records remain in peace, to crumble 
 or endure, as sun and rain may choose. Most of these 
 Saxon memorials are made of wood, garnished with 
 more or less of symbolic atrocity. The graveyard, as 
 a whole, wears an aspect of grisly gaiety, impressing 
 the beholder as a subtle stroke of malignant satire. 
 In the silent sunshine of a summer day, or beneath 
 the yet more voiceless moonlight, the strained discord 
 of the spectacle is protest sufficient against itself. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 I have already made passing mention of the geese ; 
 but they are entitled to more than a brief notice. 
 They constitute a goodly proportion of the village 
 population, and they are invariably at home. When 
 not paddling and gobbling in their mud-puddle, they 
 dawdle in lines along the streets, or anent the back- 
 yards, where may perchance be found some kind of 
 food dear to the goosey heart. There is admirable 
 unanimity in a flock of geese, as though each were 
 
3.o SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 magnetically conscious of all his companions' senti- 
 m3nts and emotions. All wish to do the same thing 
 at the same time ; and fortunately the conditions cf 
 their life permit the indulgence of this desire. Yet is 
 each goose a kingdom to himself ; pride waddles in his 
 gait, and unbounded self-complacency wallows with 
 him in the dirt. You may easily put him to flight; 
 bat out of countenance never ! So soon as his 
 pursuer's back is turned, the fugitive hisses as briskly 
 as though he had been heroic from the beginning. 
 
 There is something very human in their hiss, and 
 in their expression in giving vent to it. I have never 
 heard precisely such a sound from a human being, or 
 seen a human neck stretched in just such a way. But 
 I fancy that many souls, were they visible, would 
 appear not otherwise than as hissing geese ; and that 
 the spirit of their speech is a similar sibilation. 
 
 Though intolerant of strangers, geese fraternize with 
 their fellow villagers, albeit never on terms of such 
 familiar confidence as hens maintain. The character of 
 the goose, with its fine distinctions from those of other 
 domestic fowls, has never been sufficiently set forth. 
 The goose should not be made typical of stupidity, save 
 as it may be the essence of stupidity to see all things 
 through the medium of one's self. He is the symbol of 
 the lowest form of egotism : barring that, he is as astute 
 as any animal of his order. I am always surprised 
 
DRESDEN ENVIRONS. 31 
 
 to hear of a pet goose : there seems to be no way of 
 caressing him, except to feed him ; fo. % thDugh egotists 
 are not as a rule averse to being made much of as 
 witness cats yet the goose is too full of himself to 
 care for endearments. Furthermore, his self-conceit is 
 not of a wholesome external character, like that of 
 the turkey or peacock : it subsists little on the 
 consciousness of outward attractions, but seems to 
 build upon a suppositions mental or moral worth, 
 with an assurance, ludicrous, yet too human to be 
 agreeable. What causes the goose to bend his head 
 in passing beneath the farm-yard gate, except the 
 persuasion that his towering spirit overtops the world? 
 Unlike that of the eagle, however, the goose's self- 
 esteem has nothing lofty or noble in it : it is the 
 conceit of vulgarity pride inverted, because based on 
 petty self. 
 
 It is agreeable to harmony to observe how con- 
 stantly the goose affects muddy water. They are the 
 pigs of the bird race. They prefer muddy water, 
 and glory in it. If muddy water be not a good 
 emblem of spiritual uucleanness and perverted truth, 
 I know not where to find a better. The proud 
 severity of swans leads them to pure lakes and streams, 
 and the naive innocence of the duck attaches him to 
 ponds whose faults are mitigated to duckweed and 
 minnows. But nothing suits the goose so well as a 
 
32 SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 barren mud-puddle. The sleekness of his coat presents 
 a sinister contrast to the undisguised grossness of his 
 interior. He is an epitome of certain human vices; 
 and even when prepared for the table, a slice too 
 much of him fills the soul with heavy disgust. 
 
 I once met with a quaint theory, according to which 
 the dumb companions of man were held to be the 
 reflection of his own ruling thoughts and affections. 
 Thus the character of the savage is revealed in the 
 wild beasts he hunts ; that of pastoral nations, in 
 their peaceful flocks; of the chivalrous and warlike 
 races, in their thorough-bred and fiery steeds. As the 
 man's nature changes, so do the animals around him 
 die out or multiply. For every wild beast that 
 becomes extinct, there expires some fierce passion of a 
 human soul. For every dove that coos on the roof, 
 there dwells in some heart a thought of innocence and 
 gentleness : a pretty fancy, arbitrary at first sight, 
 perhaps, but to a deeper consideration revealing 
 glimpses of a profound inward significance. 
 
 How happens it, now, that there should be so many 
 geese in Saxon villages ? Geese will grow as readily 
 in one place as another ; yet here are twice as many 
 geese, in proportion to the human population, as 
 elsewhere. I fear there must be an occult vein of 
 sympathy between them and their owners, reaching 
 deeper than the flavour of roast goose, or money value, 
 
DRESDEN ENVIRONS. 33 
 
 can explain : some mutual consciousness of similar 
 dispositions. Geese, I say, are symbolic of self- 
 seeking, self-glorifying, short-sighted human vanity, 
 and where geese abound, such vices are rife. If 
 this be not the solution of the mystery, the sole 
 alternative lies in the fact that, at Strasbourg, they 
 make pate-de-fois-gras. In justice to the theory, I 
 must admit that there are at least half as many 
 pigeons as geese in Saxony. These I take pleasure in 
 construing as representative of the love of mothers for 
 their babies, and the innocent thoughts of the babies 
 themselves. If we must have pies, let us fatten 
 pigeons rather than geese. 
 
 IX. 
 
 A noticeable quietness pervades these villages; as 
 though they had dropt asleep ages ago, not to awaken 
 in this century at any rate. The houses stand voice- 
 less, like empty shells, and the narrow road wanders 
 lonely between them. The inhabitants are abroad 
 in Dresden, in the fields, wherever their work may 
 have taken them. Within the village limits remain 
 only those who are either too old or too young to be 
 away : these, with the proprietor of the Gasthaus, and 
 a shopkeeper or two, are all. 
 
 But even were every one at home, we should never 
 see anything resembling the omnipresent activity of 
 
 D 
 
34 SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 a New England or Western village. They are born 
 quiet, these people : a Saxon baby has but little cry 
 in him, and no persistent noisiness. In infancy he is 
 stiffened out in swaddling-clothes, and lives between 
 two feather pillows, like an oyster in his shell : 
 moving only his pale blueish eyes and pasty little 
 fingers. A greasy nursing-bottle is poking itself into 
 his mouth all day long. He has a great, hairless, 
 swelled head, like an inflated bladder. His first 
 appearance out doors is made in a basket-waggon, 
 planted neck deep amidst his pillows ; the hood of the 
 waggon being up and closely blue-curtained. Some- 
 times he rides double, his brother's or sister's head 
 emerging at the opposite end of the little vehicle. 
 They seldom die under this treatment : indeed even a 
 soul would find difficulty in escaping from those 
 feather pillows, and through the crevices of those 
 close drawn blue curtains. When they have colic (but 
 they seldom muster energy sufficient), they uplift a 
 meagre cry, as though aware that something of the 
 sort would be expected of them. But it often 
 happens, as I am credibly informed, that they must 
 be dashed with cold water in order to bring their 
 lungs into action. A dash of cold water would be apt 
 to produce a spasm in a Saxon of whatever age. 
 
 Thus early begins the subjection to law and custom. 
 When the child gets to be thirty inches high, or there- 
 
DRESDEN ENVIRONS. 35 
 
 abouts, it is sent to school ; whither it paces temper- 
 ately, with little noise ; racing, horse-laughing and all 
 disorder are tacitly discouraged. The little girls link 
 arms and gossip as they go; while the boys march 
 soldier-like with their small knapsacks, precocious in 
 discipline and conservatism. When the play-hour 
 comes, they engage in a mutually suspicious manner, 
 as though self-conscious of hypocrisy and make- 
 believe. 
 
 By and by some of them grow up, more of them 
 than would be supposed. But the habit of following 
 authority and precedent in all concerns of life grows 
 with them. They will never feel quite safe about 
 blowing their noses, until they have seen the written 
 law concerning that ceremony, signed and sealed by 
 the king, and countersigned by Prince Bismarck. 
 They swim everywhere in the cork-jacket of Law; 
 and, should it fail them, flounder and sink : or even 
 lose their heads and are betrayed into some folly 
 which helps them to the bottom. 
 
 It is that early experience of swaddling and feather- 
 pillowing, I suppose, which implants in all Saxons 
 their sleepless dread of a draught. I fancy their very 
 coffins must be made more air-tight than other 
 people's, and the sod must be pressed down more 
 closely over their graves. Summer or winter, nothing 
 will hire a Saxon to sit beneath an open window, to 
 
36 SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 stay in the same room with an open window, or to sleep 
 with an open window in the house. Why windows in 
 Saxony were made to open, is a mystery. The Saxon 
 turns up his coat-collar and glares intolerant at the 
 mere rattling of a window sash. He will risk a broken 
 head in the cause of bad air. The atmosphere of the 
 lecture-rooms in schools and universities, lies thick 
 and foul as stagnant water. Those rooms are atmo- 
 spheric sewers, with no outlet. If you become giddy 
 and nauseated with the breathing-material, you must 
 seek relief out of doors : no fresh air may trespass on 
 the hallowed impurity of the interior. 
 
 As might be imagined, such lung-food as this gets 
 the native complexion into no enviable state : in fact, 
 until I had examined for myself the mixture of paste 
 and blotches which here passes for faces, I had not 
 conceived what were the capacities for evil of the 
 human skin. I have heard it said inconsiderately 
 that the best side of a Saxon was his outside : that the 
 more deeply one penetrated into him, the more offen- 
 sive he became. But I think the worst damnation 
 that the owner of one of these complexions could be 
 afflicted with, would be the correspondence of his 
 interior with his exterior man. 
 
 The Saxon can no more be influenced to moderation 
 in this matter, than the wind can be persuaded not to 
 blow. His argument declares that a cold is more to 
 
DRESDEN ENVIRONS. 37 
 
 be dreaded than poison, and influenza than a two-edged 
 sword. Whereas, at worst, an influenza can but kill ; 
 but foul air means diseased life. It is surely better to 
 die in the freedom of the mountains, than to exist in 
 however luxurious a polluted room. Nevertheless, the 
 Saxon does not merely endure pollution, he likes it 
 and it likes him. 
 
 It is an ill-built, ill-favoured race, and of an 
 unhealthy constitution. As for the soldiers, they are 
 in all respects a forced product ; compelled to exertion 
 and hardship so long as their term of service lasts, 
 they make up for it by dying early. They are ma- 
 chines, working marvellously while the driver's hand 
 is over them ; then coming to a rusty standstill for ever. 
 
 Despite their closeness within doors, in summer the 
 Saxons much affect the open air. They will sit all day 
 beneath the beer-garden trees. Yet do they return, 
 without sigh or shudder, to their atmospheric sties at 
 night. And they seem to carry their atmosphere about 
 with them. Meeting a party of them on the breeziest 
 summit of the Saxon Switzerland, anon we have a 
 subtile reminiscence of stale tobacco and beer. Is there 
 nothing in the souls of this people congenial to the fair 
 and pure influences of nature? They admire who 
 more vociferously ? a fine view or picturesque vista, 
 Howbeit, the very fact of their being able glibly to 
 utter profundities, casts a sinister suspicion upon the 
 
38 SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 genuineness of their title-deeds thereto. What true 
 lover of nature, should she in a fortunate hour reveal 
 her beauty to him, would not blush and stammer in 
 the attempt to compliment her to her face ? She 
 abashes his praise to silence. That eloquent stanza 
 which, as he sat at home, seemed to him the full utter- 
 ance of the best his eyes could discover, shrinks now 
 from his lips, and shows pale and vulgar. He must 
 turn his back upon living nature, and forget the better 
 part of her, before he can remember her eulogies 
 aright. 
 
 Not so the Saxon, who not only delights to wear 
 his heart upon her sleeve, but is himself the daw that 
 pecks at it. He loudly approves that which transcends 
 approval. The pure and chaste loveliness of nature, 
 which should be viewed only reverently and in 
 silence, he levels with the allurements of a harlot, 
 which every charlatan may canvass with praise or 
 blame. And, such is the bad power of this low spirit, 
 the true lover's reverence is disturbed, and he is vexed 
 with a miserable suspicion of that sanctity which he 
 had fancied secure from all base approach. But in 
 truth it is no mysticism to say that the essential 
 Nature is in each man's soul ; it is the soul, and the 
 soul's mood, which quickens and colours her; and, 
 womanlike, she changes with our change. 
 
 The Saxon's sentimentalism is vitiated by his 
 
DRESDEN ENVIRONS. 39 
 
 moral and physical ill-health. He is continually doing 
 things false in harmony, and incomprehensible, as all 
 discord is. Who but he can sit through a symphony 
 of Beethoven's, applauding its majestic movements 
 with the hand which has just carried to his lips a mug 
 of beer, and anon returns thither with a slice of 
 sausage ? It seems as if no length of practice could 
 marry this gross, everlasting feeding to any profound 
 appreciation of music. He frowns down the laughter 
 of a child, the whispering of a pair of lovers, as 
 disturbing the performance : but the clatter of knife 
 and fork, the champing of jaws, offend him not. 
 He seems to recognize the noble beauty of the theme ; 
 he nods and rolls his eyes at the sublimer strains. 
 Does he comprehend them ? He reminds me of the 
 Jews, who,, indeed, possess the Bible ; written more- 
 over, in their native Hebrew; who peruse it daily, 
 and can repeat much of it by heart; and who yet 
 have never read so much as a single line of the word 
 of God. 
 
 x. 
 
 We have wandered through the village, its extreme 
 outpost is behind us, and we tread once more upon the 
 smooth white highway. The road is lined on both 
 sides by interminable rows of trees, defining its course 
 when itself is out of sight. There are cherry, apple, 
 
40 SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 and, less often, poplar trees. On the whole, the effect 
 is tiresome. I do not like to see my path marked out 
 before me. Moreover, I am kept perpetually in mind 
 of the nearness of mankind. Each tree was planted 
 by a man ; and, if it happen to be a fruit tree, men 
 must often visit it. The road itself, to be sure, is also 
 man's handiwork. But it does not obtrude itself; at 
 most it is but the amplification of a natural pathway, 
 and so falls quietly in with the order of nature 
 provided only it be not too immitigably straight. 
 
 It is a noticeable trait of this country the im- 
 possibility of getting beyond e very-day limits. There 
 is no seclusion, whereof we may feign ourselves the 
 first invaders, and, as such, secure from pursuit or 
 encounter. There is no profound wildness, even where 
 the surroundings seem least tame. The woods are 
 supervised by foresters, in green uniforms and glazed 
 caps, who take care that the trees shall be planted in 
 straight lines, and affix its label to every tenth trunk. 
 Who but a hypocrite would pretend to lose himself 
 in a forest, all whose trees were numbered ? Nay, in 
 some places (the ix^al park for instance) are certain 
 respectable-looking old vegetables, which no one 
 would suspect of such enormity, which are provided 
 with names and titles into the bargain. We may find 
 them set forth in the Forester's book thus : " No. 27. 
 Oak lieinrich the Stout." "No. 28. Elm. Karl the 
 
DRESDEN ENVIRONS. 41 
 
 Long-legged." What is to happen to a people who 
 can do such things as this ? 
 
 We cannot fly beyond the possibility of a Saxon, so 
 long as we remain in Saxony. No matter where we 
 are, he has been there just before us ; and hark ! his 
 step approaches from behind. Yonder thickly- wooded 
 dell seems the abode of nymphs and hamadryads, un- 
 profaned as yet by any human presence : let us plunge 
 into it, and woo its sweetly shy inhabitants. Virgin 
 moss yields beneath our feet, we hear Arcadian twit- 
 terings of birds. The bare exterior world is shut out 
 and forgotten. We listen for the light step of the wild 
 nymph amidst the bushes, and scan closely the rough 
 bark which seems ready to start asunder at the magic 
 pressure of the hamadryad's finger. We strike a path 
 leading to the nymph's grot 'tis a smartly painted 
 beer-cabin, with square, yellow wooden chairs and 
 tables. The nymph and the hamadryad, in soiled 
 petticoats and rolled-up sleeves, are scrubbing the floor 
 and window ; while Pan stands yonder in a swallow- 
 tailed coat, with a napkin under his arm, and answers 
 to the title of Kellner. Bring your best beer, waiter, 
 and draw it cool. We need refreshment ! 
 
 I know few spots more beautifully unkempt than is 
 a certain rocky pass in- the Saxon Switzerland. The 
 steep sides are rank with mossy verdure cool and 
 moist with trickling springs. Tender ferns bend 
 
42 SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 greenly athwart dark backgrounds of stony clefts. 
 Beside the rugged pathway bubbles over rocks the 
 glancing soul of a cold brook. High up, the slope 
 whispers with thick-growing pines, mingled with trees 
 of less austere foliage. Highest of all, grey crags 
 crowd abrupt and angular against the sky, and cast 
 jagged shadows on the opposite steep. Listening 
 closely, we hear only the brook, and the pines, and a 
 dapper bird or two, and a torrid hum of invisible 
 insects. Here, surely, is the unprofaned retreat so 
 long desired in vain. 
 
 But, looking again at that immemorial battlement 
 which the siege of centuries has so grandly scarred, we 
 see painted, just at its base, a spruce white square, on 
 which is recorded in accurately formed letters and 
 numerals, white and red, the position of this point 
 relatively to the Government Survey Base Line, and 
 its elevation in metres above the mean level of th& 
 North Sea. Immediately the secluded pass seems 
 peopled with the shapes of Saxon engineers, uniformed 
 and equipped. Those pines were set out, at so much 
 per dozen, by the king's landscape gardeners, who,, 
 likewise, grouped the rocks by aid of a steam derrick. 
 The brook was a happy after- thought ; but owing to- 
 the scarcity of water, it runs only during the season. 
 There is a model in plaster of our entire surroundings, 
 in the Engineer's Bureau, with a pin sticking in the 
 
DRESDEN ENVIRONS. 43 
 
 vei-y spot where we now stand. I repeat there is no 
 escape. The presence of man journeys "with us like 
 the horizon, go we never so fast or far. 
 
 Indeed, there are the stone-breakers, who take up 
 their abode along our whole line of march. They are 
 a class by themselves ; I cannot imagine their following 
 any other profession. They are mostly time-gnawed 
 old fellows, whose bones seem to have been cracked 
 long ago by their own hammers. They wear great 
 goggles of wire-gauze, which give them an impressive 
 air of gloomy cadaverousness. A huge wooden-soled 
 shoe protects their foot from stray knbcks. On fre- 
 quented roads a canvas screen is set up, to protect the 
 passer by from flying stone-sparks. We hear the dull 
 intermittent beat and crack, but see only the head of 
 the hammer as it rises occasionally above the screen 
 for a harder stroke. 
 
 The men seem to take an interest even in such work 
 as this. An extra hard bit of stone arouses their 
 combative instinct ; and they have a sensation of plea- 
 sure when a fragment divides into pieces of the proper 
 size and shape ; while, if it weakly crumble, they damn 
 it with contempt. Thus with their hammers do they 
 sound the whole gamut of the emotions. Occasionally 
 they pause from labour, straighten their stiff old backs, 
 and glance at the sun, to see how far he is from dinner 
 time. Before falling to work again, they look critically 
 
44 S-AXON STUDIES. 
 
 at their next neighbour's stone pile, and exchange a 
 grunt or two with him. Like other world toilers, they 
 sometimes think themselves hardly used the sport of 
 fortune and grumble that they would have done better 
 as watchmakers, or painters on porcelain. In point of 
 fact, however, stone-breaking is all they care about on 
 earth, and, were they compelled to forego it, they 
 would break their old hearts in default. Even and 
 regular stand their stone-heaps, end to end, and each is 
 provided with its number, painted on a larger piece of 
 flat rock. Labelling and classification is carried thus 
 far, in Saxony ; and I cannot kick a pebble from my 
 path without more or less disorganizing the schemes of 
 the Government at Berlin. 
 
 XI. 
 
 I am continually oppressed with the idea that im- 
 measurable possibilities for fine scenery are wasted in 
 Saxony. The Saxon Switzerland is, to be sure, as 
 picturesque as could be desired. But it is an abrupt 
 topographical anomaly, uprearing itself in a reactionary 
 manner out of a tedious extent of plain. From a great 
 distance we see the vast square-built rocks lifting their 
 shoulders a thousand or twelve hundred feet skyward ; 
 they seem to own no relationship to the silly fields 
 that smile at their feet no sympathy either of form 
 or substance. I find a shrewd correspondence between 
 
DRESDEN ENVIRONS. 45 
 
 this typographical anomaly, and that mental one which 
 uplifts, above the low level of ordinary German intelli- 
 gence, the enduring group of cloud-capped giants which 
 has given the land its reputation. 
 
 Why so flat and tedious, Saxony ! as though some 
 enormous incubus had for ages been rolling its heavy 
 length across your unfortunate face, till your every 
 feature was obliterated ? Is there any remedy ? I see 
 none, short of a general eruption, whereby the whole 
 surface might be broken up in volcanoes, and become a 
 Switzerland indeed. And may the physical upheaval 
 be prophetic of a moral one ; for it is of significance 
 that mountainous tracts are ever inclined to freedom. 
 
 However, the country is not flat in the prairie 
 fashion. It appears so only as the eye sweeps it from a 
 distance. But, traversing the seeming plain, we find it 
 everywhere seamed by narrow gullies, in which the 
 villages lie ; so that it were better described as an agglo- 
 meration of low table-lands. Beautifully verdant they 
 are in spring and in summer, and pleasingly variegated 
 with squares of many-tinted grain and produce. 
 Moreover, there is an extraordinary abundance of wild 
 flowers rather an abundance than a variety. I have 
 seen tracts of seven acres actually carpeted with pan- 
 sies, whose myriad little faces show at a distance like a 
 purple haze. Amidst the green young wheat grow 
 deep azure corn-flowers and scarlet poppies : an armful 
 
46 SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 might be gathered in a few minutes. The banks of 
 country lanes are often blue with harebells ; and anon 
 we pass great clover-meadows, humming with bees. 
 This commonness of beauty perhaps mars that finer 
 enjoyment which needs rarity as the finishing flavour. 
 Nevertheless, it affords a broad triumphant satisfaction. 
 
 A more concrete taste may be gratified by the 
 cherries a staple produce of Dresden neighbourhoods. 
 In spring, so thick are the blossoms, the trees resemble 
 white branching coral ; but the perfume is faint, as is 
 likewise the flavour of the fruit itself. Flavour or not, 
 they are agreeable eating in warm weather, and cheap 
 enough to tempt to imprudence. We may sit on the 
 bench beside the cherry-booth, and see our plateful 
 gathered from the tree over our heads : or, for a con- 
 sideration, mount the tree ourselves, and work our will 
 upon it. The cherries are of all kinds and colours, 
 from black to white, and are recommended by the 
 vendor as good for the blood. We devour them, there- 
 fore, with the self-complacency of a health-seeker 
 added to the palatal enjoyment; and were it not that 
 they are dismally apt to be wormy, our pleasure would 
 be without alloy. 
 
 Agreeably suggestive are the booths themselves 
 little board huts, planted in the green midst of the 
 cherry country. The season lasts from the end of 
 June on into August the mellowest slice of the year ; 
 
DRESDEN ENVIRONS. 47 
 
 and if enjoyment of nature be ever unconsciously 
 possible, the cherry-people must be happy. Material 
 cares have they none, for their business can lose them 
 nothing, and is apt to pay them well. Each merchant 
 hires a number of trees for the season, paying a per- 
 centage not on what they bear, but on what he sells. 
 The only danger for him is a total failure of the cherry 
 yield, in which case he would be liable for ground- 
 rent ; but this occurs only thrice a life-time. 
 
 The booth contains a single room, in which sleep 
 the merchant and his family, like caterpillars in a web. 
 The cooking-stove is wisely put outside on the grass, 
 and the interior thus kept free from smoke and heat. 
 The wife sits in the doorway nursing the baby, while 
 the other children, who are incredibly dirty, but all 
 the happier therefor, play together in a desultory 
 way, or tease a cross-grained cur, who is always an 
 outspoken foe of intending customers. At noon, when 
 the baby goes to sleep, mamma gets dinner: the family 
 gather together : in the afternoon the man smokes his 
 pipe : and so the day passes on. 
 
 Delightful all this : the leisure ; the trees, beneath 
 whose shade we sit, all the time working for us and 
 supporting us ; the amusement of watching our guests 
 their various fashions of eating, their remarks and 
 questions, their discontent or satisfaction, their manner 
 of payment and of departure. With what independ- 
 
4 8 SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 ence would we prepare our noonday meal, and how 
 appetising a fragrance would go up from our fried 
 trout and our bacon and greens. Then light we the 
 after-dinner pipe, whose blue smoke ascends skywards 
 through the green leaves of the tree beneath which we 
 recline. At night, how comfortable to lie on our 
 matting, amidst the country hush, hearing the summer 
 winds come soft-footed up the valley and pause at our 
 window; occasional cherries dropping, over-ripe, with 
 a gentle pat on the roof above ; half-conscious, during 
 the night, of the whispering passage of a shower; to 
 fall asleep, secure in the watchfulness of the dog on 
 the threshold ; to dream of Arcadian shepherdesses ; to 
 awake, fresh, in the early morning, gather betimes our 
 basket of fruit, and sit down to await our first cus- 
 tomer. But I suppose the real life, especially when 
 there are babies, does not run on quite so unexception- 
 ably. A prolonged rain, or a wind perverse enough 
 to blow the smoke in at the hut door, would impair 
 our ideal humour. 
 
 XII. 
 
 We must turn our steps homeward: at yonder 
 crossing is a guide-post, which should tell us our way, 
 and the distance. Small risk of getting lost in Saxony, 
 if guide-posts can prevent it : though their usefulness 
 is sometimes impaired by the illegibility of the names 
 
DRESDEN ENVIRONS. 49 
 
 inscribed upon them : the " nacli " is the only part of 
 the direction which is always distinct. Nor are the 
 estimates of distances often of much service, espe- 
 cially when couched in terms of "Stunde." Theo- 
 retically, two Stunde go to a German mile; but, in 
 practice, they vary as the length of various men's legs. 
 What is an hour's walk for one, another may accom- 
 plish in half the time ; and a dim recognition of some 
 such fact has led the people to qualify their Stunde by 
 an array of adjectives, which complicate if they do not 
 relieve the difficulty. The government milestones, 
 however, are distinct from the guide-posts are a 
 newer institution, and as rigidly accurate as their elder 
 brethren are lax. Solid and orderly are they, arched 
 over the top, and consecrated with the government 
 monogram. They look like gravestones, beneath which 
 we may fancy the particular mile recorded on them to 
 be interred. German miles are so long, that we never 
 get on such familiar terms with these milestones as we 
 do with English ones ; and the decimal fractions are a 
 sore trial of friendly forbearance. 
 
 As we descend the slope towards Dresden, the long 
 panorama is rich with peaceful beauty. There rise the 
 spires and domes, mellowed by the western sun ; the 
 white-gleaming river; the further shore dotted with 
 white villas ; the pine-shaded horizon ; and, wide and 
 high above all, the grand phantasmagory of cloudland. 
 
50 SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 It is in this point of cloud-scenery that Dresden sur- 
 passes all places I have seen. The time will some day 
 come, after we have learnt to travel by telegraph, and 
 have become familiar to satiety with terrestrial beauty, 
 that there will be pilgrimages, not to the Alps and to 
 Niagara, but to the land of superbest clouds. Clouds 
 never can become hackneyed, for their forms and tints 
 are infinite, and no Murray or Baedekker can lay down 
 rules and usages about the seeing them. In any true 
 sense of the word, they are indescribable save by lady- 
 novelists, new to their profession, whose ideas are apt 
 to be cloudy. In every way they are the most ele- 
 vating part of nature entrapping our eyes at the 
 horizon, and leading them zenith-ward. Without 
 clouds, the bare, blue, unchanging sky would become 
 intolerable. Man cannot bear unmitigated heaven, any 
 more than he can do without clothes. Clouds are the 
 garments of the sky, arid each new costume seems 
 fittest of all. Throughout the world it is the garment 
 that is beautiful. Trees have their leaves, rocks their 
 moss, soil its grass, the earth its blue atmosphere, the 
 atmosphere its clouds. 
 
 These vapoury mountains quite outdo their solider 
 rivals; but inspire the imagination with promise of 
 celestial prototypes yet fairer than they. With their 
 unlimited range of form and shade, they may arouse 
 all sentiments from grotesque to sublime; and they 
 
DRESDEN ENVIRONS. 51 
 
 prepare the untravelled miiid for all the best that earth 
 can show. No alps, no castles by the sea, no palaces 
 in Spain, can surprise him who from his own house 
 door has seen the sun set. And not the traveller only, 
 but the wit, the humorist, the student of character, may 
 find stimulus for thought and food for reflection in 
 the clouds find his noblest fancies outdone, his com- 
 pletest theories proved inadequate. But how is this ? 
 Yonder celestial cloud-pinnacle, up whose steep acclivity 
 our high-flown thought was clambering, has subtly 
 sculptured from its facile substance a set of demoniac 
 features, which twist themselves into a sardonic 
 grimace of mockery at our enthusiasm. Our parting 
 digression has carried us too far: we must get back 
 once more to the sober highway. But we return, also, 
 to the opinion which has accompanied us throughout 
 our day's ramble that the solidest attractions of 
 Dresden and its suburbs are the impalpablest ones, and 
 the least describable. If so it be, the Saxons need not 
 repine. Only the baser part of things is communicable, 
 and doubtless the pleasanter features of the Garden of 
 Eden are those whereof no tradition has come down 
 to us. 
 
IL 
 
 OF GAMBRINUS. 
 I. 
 
 T" IFE is a tissue of mysteries. One is, that if the 
 feelings be touched the palate never complains. 
 An egg, hard-boiled over the fire of the affections, 
 outdoes an omelette by Savarin. A half-pint of 
 schnapps, poured into an earthern mug by the hand 
 of the affections, has a finer aroma than old wine in 
 crystal goblets, less finely presented. Or what rude 
 bench, cushioned by the emotions, is not softer than 
 satin and eider-down ? The spiritual not only 
 commands the sensual it may be said to create it. 
 The banquets of the gods are divine only in so far as 
 they harmonize the two. This is the whole secret of 
 nectar and ambrosia. 
 
 The theme so expands beneath the pen, that we 
 were best bring it to a head at once. Suffice it 
 introduces us to the modest establishment of Frau 
 Schmidt, just beyond the outer droschky limits : a 
 
OF GAMBRINUS. 53 
 
 favourite resort of mine, though better beer, easier 
 chairs, and more accessible sites be discoverable else- 
 where. I cannot baffle the reader's insight the 
 outweighing attraction is Frau Schmidt herself. Yet 
 she is not a widow nay, she is fonder of her husband 
 than is the case with most Saxon women ; and he is 
 really quite a fine fellow. Moreover, her personal 
 charms are not bewildering. She appears before us a 
 grey-clad little woman, with plain, pleasant, patient 
 visage, and low, respectful voice : she puts down our 
 schoppen of beer on our accustomed table near the 
 window, smiles a neutral-tinted little smile of welcome ; 
 and we pass the compliments of the day. Twice or 
 thrice during our stay she returns to chat with us ; and 
 her big, grave, reticent husband stands beside her, and 
 puts in a rumbling word or two. Anon they are off 
 to serve their other customers mostly common 
 workmen out of the street, thirsty, rough fellows, with 
 marvellous garments and manners. Evidently, the 
 spell that draws us hither is one which works beneath 
 the surface. Well, we are not going to draw aside the 
 veil just yet. Let us first discuss our meditative beer : 
 in the dregs of the last glass, perhaps, we shall find 
 the secret revealed. 
 
 From our window is a view of the river and the 
 town. A tree rustles in the little front yard: 
 beyond curves a dusty stretch of road. It is about 
 
54 SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 four in the afternoon, and we have the room almost to 
 ourselves. Till sunset we will sip, and muse, and 
 moralize, and hold converse with the spirit of the 
 great Gambrinus. Mighty, indeed, is he ! Kings and 
 emperors may talk, but to Gambrinus belongs the true 
 fealty of Germans. We have only eulogy for him 
 his is a spell to disarm ill-nature's self. He is 
 author of the most genial liquor in the world ; his 
 wholesome soul bubbles in every foaming glass of it. 
 We could have forgiven Esau, had he yielded his birth- 
 right for a glass of German beer ; nor would himself 
 have regretted the exchange. The national song of 
 Germany, which now pretends to be chiefly concerned 
 about some sentimental " Wacht am Rhein " or other, 
 were much better altered as follows : 
 
 "Lieber Land ! Kannst ruhig sein; 
 Test steht und treu " das Bior-Vercin ! 
 
 Try we a mouthful or two ; how fresh, how whole- 
 somely bitter the texture how fine and frothy : mark 
 the delicate film it leaves upon the glass. Lighter than 
 English ale, of a less pronounced but more lastingly 
 agreeable flavour : we tire of it no more than of bread. 
 We may drink it by the gallon ; and yet a little will 
 go a long way. It seems not a foreign substance, but 
 makes itself immediately at home. In colour it ranges 
 from brightest amber to deepest Vandyke brown, 
 and in strength from potent Nuremberg to airy 
 
OF GAMBRINUS. 55 
 
 Bohemian. It is both food and drink to many a poor 
 devil, whose stomach it can flatter into hypothecating a 
 meal. To be sure, an unwelcome flabbiness and 
 flatulence will, in the long run, reveal the deception. 
 Rightly used, however, it makes thirst a luxury. 
 
 This liquor can be neither brewed nor exported 
 beyond the fatherland ; nay, a journey of but a few 
 miles from its birthplace impairs its integrity. "Why, 
 is a romantic and poetical enigma. In America the 
 brewing is more elaborate and careful, but the result is 
 nervous and heady. The broad Gambrinian smile 
 becomes a wiiy grin, or even a sour dyspeptic grimace. 
 If exported, no matter with what care of cork and tinfoil, 
 ere it can reach its destination some subtle magic has 
 conjured away the better part of it. Et calum et 
 animam mutat. Gambrinus has laid a charm upon it : 
 it is the life-blood of the country, and shall not flow or 
 rise in alien veins. 
 
 A profound political truth is symbolized here, if we 
 would but see it ; it elucidates the subject of emigra- 
 tion and the effect of locality on temperament. The 
 varieties of German beer are innumerable ; each tastes 
 best on the spot where it was brewed ; and each has its 
 supporters as against all others. Now, the Berlin Go- 
 vernment seems desirous of proving (what we Ame- 
 ricans have already proved to the world's satisfaction, if 
 not to our own), that people living, no matter how far 
 
56 SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 apart and under what different circumstances, may be 
 united in mind, sentiment, and disposition as one man. 
 To this end, what method more effective than to ordain 
 a universal beer, and forbid the brewing or drinking of 
 any other ? Condense into one the many inconsider- 
 able principalities of Gambrinus. True, though men 
 can apparently be induced by the proper arguments to 
 accommodate themselves to whatever political or moral 
 exigencies, beer is of a more intractable temper, and 
 persists in being different in different places. But 
 surely Prince Bismarck, who can do so much, will not 
 be beaten by a beverage: the difficulty will be ultimately 
 overcome, if military discipline and legislation be worth 
 anything. Two alternatives suggest themselves at once. 
 The first, to create a uniform climate, soil, and water 
 throughout the Fatherland not an impossibility to 
 German science, I should suppose; the second, to brew 
 the beer nowhere save in Berlin, to be drunk on the 
 premises. Berlin would thus be secure of becoming 
 the centre of attraction of the empire ; and if, as is 
 believed, Germans are Germans by virtue of the beer 
 they drink, if all drank the same beer, of course they all 
 would become the same Germans. 
 
 Moreover, if this may be done with the nation, why 
 not apply the principle to the individual? A nation is 
 but a larger, completer man ; and if a nation may be 
 concentrated at a single point, as Berlin, why not con- 
 
OF GAMBRINVS. 57 
 
 centrate the persons composing it into a single indi- 
 vidual, as Bismarck ? Having swallowed his country- 
 men, the Prince could thereafter legislate to please 
 himself; and might ultimately proceed to swallow 
 himself into a universal atom. 
 
 Pending these improvements, we are consoled with 
 the reflection that there are advantages connected with 
 the undigested form impressed upon men and states by 
 their original creator ; for example, there is much en- 
 tertainment in the discussions between various beer- 
 cliques as to the merit of their respective beverages. 
 Saxons, like other people, most enjoy disputes the least 
 important and adjustable. A perverse instinct, no 
 doubt, but universal, is that of asserting the worth of 
 our opinion and individuality against all comers. It 
 remains to hope, that Saxony, and Germany with her 
 leading the world in other departments of civilization 
 may, before long, resolve themselves into a homo- 
 geneous mass according to modern lights, the only 
 true form of union. 
 
 II. 
 
 Another pull at our schoppen : we must avoid over- 
 heating ourselves with transcendental controversy. 
 The genius of beer is peaceful; and there is a mild 
 unobtrusive efficacy about it which is a marvel in its 
 way. The flavour, although highly agreeable, does not 
 
5cS SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 
 
 take the palate captive, but introduces itself like a 
 friend of old-standing ; the liquor glides softly through 
 the portals of the gullet, and grows ever more good- 
 humoured on the way down. We swallow a mouthful 
 or two, and then put down the glass to pause and 
 meditate. The effect upon thoughts is peculiar and 
 grateful. It gently anoints them, so that they move 
 more noiselessly and sleekly, getting over much ground 
 with little jar. It draws a transparent screen between 
 us and our mental processes as a window shuts out 
 the noise of the street without obstructing our view of 
 what is going on there. Upon this screen are projected 
 luxurious fancies coming and going we know not 
 whence or whither and we become lost in following 
 them. Slight matters acquire large interest; with 
 what profound speculation do we mark the course of 
 yonder leaf earthwards floating from its twig, over- 
 weighted by the consideration we have bestowed on it. 
 The striking of a church clock, a mile away, echoes 
 through vast halls of arched phantasy. The babble of 
 those good people at a neighbouring table foregoes dis- 
 tinctive utterance, and is resolved into a dreamy 
 refrain. Our own voices seem to come from far away ; 
 our prosaic thoughts take on the hues of poetry and 
 romance. We seem to chant rather than speak our 
 sentences, and perceive a subtle melody in them. We 
 feel comfortable, peaceful, yet heroic and strong; surely 
 
OF GAMBRINUS. 59 
 
 there is somewhat superb and grand about us, which, 
 till now, has been but half appreciated. We sit full- 
 orbed and complete, and regard our fellow-men with the 
 sweet-tempered contempt of superiority. 
 
 That peculiar kind of friendliness and sociability 
 which distinguishes Saxons would soon languish if 
 deprived of its inspiring beer. As sun to earth, is their 
 beer to them the source of their vitality. Colourless 
 and bloodless enough were they without it. If Gam- 
 brinus may not be said (such an assertion would indeed 
 be treasonable) to be Germany's immediate sovereign, 
 he at least renders her worth being sovereign over. It 
 is well to make slaves and puppets of men, but he also 
 deserves credit who gives the puppet a soul to be en- 
 slaved with. 
 
 Happy Saxons ! have they themselves an adequate 
 conception of the part beer plays in their economy of 
 the degree to which their ideas and acts are steeped 
 in it ? Only Germans can properly be said to possess 
 a national drink ; beer takes with them the place of all 
 other beverages; an American bar, with its myriad 
 eye-openers and stone-walls, would be absurdly out of 
 place here. The Saxon's palate is not tickled with 
 variety ; one thing suffices him, which he loves as he 
 loves himself because it has become a part of him. 
 It fascinates him, not as aught new and strange, which 
 might be potent for a time, but eventually palls. But 
 
60 SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 it is dear to him as are the ruddy drops which visit 
 his sad heart a steady, perennial, exclusive affection, 
 constant as his very selfishness. Who calls the Saxon 
 cold ? is there any devotion, he asks, warmer than 
 mine to me ? 
 
 I like to hear him call for his beer as though he had 
 been wrongfully separated from it, and claimed it as his 
 Saxon birthright. There is a certain half-concealed 
 complacency in his tone, too; arising partly from plea- 
 sureable anticipation, partly from patriotic pride that 
 there is so good a thing to call for. Having got it, he 
 never shows to such advantage as with it in his hand 
 never so like an apple of gold in a picture of silver. 
 It seems a pity, then, that he should ever strive to be 
 aught sublimer than a beer-drinker. For nothing else 
 is he so fit ; nothing else, perhaps, renders him so 
 genial and happy ; and surely there are many tilings 
 which do him more harm. Gambrinus, the mightiest 
 of Germans, not only did nothing else he owes his 
 greatness to that fact. Methinks there is a deep 
 significance in the story how, when Satan called to 
 claim his bargain, the German Bacchus trusted to no 
 other weapon than this single beer-drinking faculty of 
 his, and therewith got the better of his enemy. He 
 played a manly part : a smaller man would have 
 fallen to evasion, forsaking his true stronghold for 
 another with which he was unacquainted. Gambrinus 
 
OF GAMBRINUS. 61 
 
 succeeded, as do all men who know their power and 
 rely upon it. Doubtless, he might have wasted his 
 time in making himself a fair philosopher, politician, 
 soldier, or what not ; but all would not have saved him 
 from the devil. Saxons, here is food for reflection. 
 
 I am bound to admit, however, that this luxury, like 
 all others, may be indulged in to imprudent lengths, 
 and thereby lead to consequences anything but 
 peaceful or meditative. A legend is current of a certain 
 evil demon, Katzenjammer by name, who is as hateful 
 as Gambrinus is genial; and it is whispered that between 
 the two there is a mysterious and awful connection. 
 When the jovial monarch's symposium is at its maddest 
 height, when the guests are merriest and the liquor 
 most delicious then it is that this hideous presence 
 lurks most nigh. The lights may blaze upon the festive 
 board ; but out of the shadow below, and in gloomy 
 alcoves here and there, the boon companions shudder 
 at the glimpse of his ghastly features. Those who- 
 have met him face to face (and such men live) describe 
 him as sallow, cadaverous, blear-eyed, and un- 
 wholesome : his countenance overspread with a gray 
 despair, as of a creature born from joy to misery, and 
 retaining, in his wretchedness, the memory of all that 
 makes life sweet, and the yearning for it. Moreover 
 and this is perhaps the grisliest feature of the legend 
 he is said to bear a villanous and most unaccountable 
 
62 SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 resemblance to Gainbrinus himself; insomuch that, 
 when encountered the morning after a carousal, the 
 beholder can scarce free himself from the delusion that 
 it is Gambriims's self he sees fearfully changed, indeed, 
 yet essentially the same. I fear there is some dis- 
 agreeable secret at the bottom of all this, and that poor 
 old Gambrinus did not quite escape the devil's claws, 
 after all. However, if we can be resolute not to 
 commit ourselves too far with the god, we may be 
 tolerably secured against falling into the clutches of 
 the hobgoblin. Meanwhile, excellent Frau Schmidt, 
 another pint of beer ! 
 
 in. 
 
 What may be the subtle principle according to which 
 liquors depend for their flavour upon the form and 
 fashion of the vessel from which they are quaffed, I 
 know not ; but certainly German beer should be drunk 
 only from the schoppen. For a long time I put my 
 faith in an Oxford mug of pewter with a plate-glass 
 bottom ; but, in the end, I reverted to the national 
 tankard, with its massive base, its scolloped glass sides, 
 and its lid enamelled with pictures and mottoes. The 
 rest of the world might produce port glasses, hock 
 glasses, sherry glasses, absinthe glasses ; it was reserved 
 for Germany to evolve the schoppen. Whether 
 Gainbrinus was the first to invent it, I am not precisely 
 
OF GAMBRINUS. 63 
 
 informed, but am inclined to consider it a supreme 
 product of modern civilization. 
 
 I once visited the Antiken Sammlung in the Museum 
 of the Zwinger ; and judging by the wild experiments 
 in the way of drinking-vessels on exhibition there, I 
 should have thought the ancients must half the time 
 have been in doubt what they were swallowing. 
 There were elephants, fishes, Chinese pagodas, legless 
 human figures which, unlike their living prototypes, 
 would never stand upright even when they were empty; 
 huge silver-mounted horns; ingenious arrangements 
 to rap the drinker's pate if he spared to drink all at a 
 draught, or to prick his tongue if he drank not fast 
 enough. Some goblets there were of the capacity of 
 seven quarts so the guide assured me ; and he added, 
 in a quiet tone, that the mighty ones of yore thought 
 nothing of emptying these without drawing breath. He 
 was a tall, thin, courteous, amenable fellow, that guide 
 yellow-eyed, curly-bearded, with hands gloveless, 
 unclean, and very cold. Near at hand stood a marble 
 bust of Washington, placid, respectable, and rather 
 dirty. How often had he heard that lie reiterated, 
 without once being able to knit his marble brow at 
 the liar, or wink a pupil-less eye at the visitor, not to 
 be taken in. But I doubt not that the fact of the 
 bust's being there deepened the guide's crime. 
 
 Of a less barbarous age are the ivory tankards, 
 
64 SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 elaborately caived, to be found in the windows of 
 curiosity shops throughout Dresden. There, moreover, 
 stand tall green glasses of Bohemian manufacture, 
 jewelled and painted with arabesques and figures. But 
 all are but approximations to the excellence of the clear 
 glass schoppen of to-day, which, though it holds but a 
 pint, may be replenished a hundred times a day, and 
 is vastly more manageable than the seven-quart affair. 
 They are usually some seven or eight inches high, and 
 twice as much in girth -just the proportion of a 
 respectable toper; but this model is varied .within 
 certain limits : and some of gothic design, with peaked 
 lids, are as beautiful as heart could wish ; and a pewter 
 mannikin an inch and a half high, staggering under 
 the weight of a barrel of liquor, is perched above the 
 handle. The lids are a distinguishing feature, 
 necessary to retard the too rapid evaporation of the 
 foam. They must be kept down, like those of a 
 maiden's eyes; should we neglect this precaution, not 
 only is our beer liable to stale, but any impertinent 
 fellow sitting near may, by beer-law, snatch a draught 
 of it without saying, By your leave ! 
 
 We may, of course, hurl the mug at him ; there are 
 few better missiles than a good schoppen, and every 
 Saxon knows how to use it in this way also. The 
 schoppen-throwing spirit is latent in the most seeming- 
 inoffensive of the race, and will crop out on occasion. 
 
OF GAMBRINUS. 65 
 
 We do not know our friend until we have seen him at 
 such a moment. He has no tendency to individual 
 action; he loves a majority, though not ignorant of 
 how to turn the contrary position into a virtue. With 
 a crowd to back him, he will sling his mug at anybody ; 
 and it is instructive to observe, when once his victory 
 is secure, how voluble, excited, and indignant he 
 becomes how implacable and overbearing towards 
 his foe; the same Saxon in his beer-saloon as at 
 Sedan ! 
 
 In reflecting upon the amount of beer consumed by 
 the average Saxon during the day, I am inclined to 
 believe with Kabelais that drinking preceded thirst in 
 the order of creation, since the want postulates the 
 habit : and that he drinks, not because his throat is 
 parched, but in order that it may not be. It is no 
 paradox that the thirstiest men are the smallest 
 drinkers : therefore Saxons can never be thirsty, but 
 drink either out of mere bravado, or else from a belief 
 that to drink steadily the first half of their lives, will 
 secure them from thirst during the second. If this 
 creed be not a popular fallacy, it is a most im- 
 portant truth. Nevertheless, it would perhaps be 
 safer to continue the remedy throughout the decline 
 of existence, and so float comfortably into the other 
 life. 
 
66 SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 IV. 
 
 From our present point of view, Dresden might be 
 described as a beer-lake, of which the breweries are the 
 head-waters. The liquid, however, is divided up into 
 reservoirs of all sizes, from thousand-gallon tuns to 
 pint bottles. The fishes are the Dresdeners them- 
 selves, who, instead of swimming in the lake, allow it 
 to swim in them a more pleasant and economic 
 arrangement. This lake resembles the ocean in having 
 hours of flood and ebb ; but the tide never runs out so 
 far as to leave the fishes high and dry. The periods of 
 high beer, or full fishes, are, roughly speaking, from 
 twelve to two at noon and from six to ten in the 
 evening. 
 
 It is really not easy to exaggerate the importance of 
 beer-saloons to the city economy. Beer, like other 
 valuable things, has a tendency to lodge humbly: is 
 fond of antique, not to say plebeian, surroundings ; and 
 is so thorough a demagogue that it not only flatters 
 
 the multitude, but harbours in their midst ! Now, so 
 
 
 
 uninviting are some Dresden neighbourhoods, we must 
 believe that, except for the beer-saloons in them, they 
 would speedily be left without inhabitants. Thus beer 
 equalizes the distribution of population. What is of 
 more moment, it provides employment either directly 
 or indirectly for a vast proportion of the people. Not 
 
OF GAMBRINUS. 67 
 
 to speak of the architects, coopers, glass-workers, and 
 numberless others to whose support it largely con- 
 tributes, it actually creates the landlords, waiters, and 
 waitresses. We may go further, and point out that it 
 is the vital principle, if not the cause, of the popular 
 concerts, as well as of summer excursions into rural 
 suburbs, whose healthful beauties would else remain 
 unexplored. The student "Kneipen" owe what life 
 they have more to their beer than to either their 
 traditions or the Schliiger. In short, society, among 
 the mass of the people, is clustered round the beer- 
 glass; and the liquor of Gambrinus is not more the 
 national beverage than it is the builder-up of the 
 nation. 
 
 The beer-saloon is the Saxon's club, parlour, and 
 drawing-room, and is free alike to rich and poor, noble, 
 and simple. The family- man as well as the bachelor, 
 the old with the young man, is regular and uniform in 
 his attendance, for Saxons have no homes, nor the 
 refinement which leads most creatures, human or other, 
 to reserve for themselves a retreat apart from the 
 world's common path and gaze. It must not be 
 inferred that the husband objects to taking his wife 
 and children along with him: the broad Saxon 
 tolerance never dreams of ostracising woman from the 
 scene of her lord's conviviality. Though seldom 
 present in large numbers, there is generally a sprinkling 
 
68 SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 of them in every roomful of drinkers. I have not 
 observed that they exercise any restraint upon the 
 tone of conversation : considering the light in which 
 woman is regarded, it is not to be expected that they 
 should ; and as for children, they are not regarded at 
 all. The wives watch the conversation of their masters 
 much as a dog might do, seldom thinking of contribut- 
 ing to it; or if they do, it is not in womanly fashion, 
 but so far as possible in imitation of the men's manner. 
 They drink their fair share of beer, often from the 
 men's glass ; but I cannot say that the geniality thus 
 induced improves them. Until pretty far up in the 
 social scale, there is little essential difference between 
 the lower orders of women and those above them 
 especially after Gambrinus has laid his wand upon them. 
 In the German language there are no equivalents for 
 the best sense of our Lady and Gentleman ; and perhaps 
 the reason is not entirely a linguistic one. 
 
 Female Saxony is very industrious; carries its 
 sewing or embroidery about with it everywhere, and 
 knits to admiration. When in its own company, it 
 chatters like magpies, and we watch it with an appro- 
 priately amused interest. But our interest is of 
 another sort when, as sometimes happens, a man enters 
 with his newly-married wife, or sweetheart. The 
 untutored stranger observes with curiosity the in- 
 difference of the couple to the public eye. Towards 
 
OF GAMBRINUS. 69 
 
 the close of the second glass, her head droops upon his 
 shoulder, their hands and eyes meet, they murmur in 
 each other's ear, and fatuously smile. It is nothing to 
 them that the table and the room are crowded with 
 strange faces. The untutored stranger, if he imagine 
 these persons to be other than of perfect social respect- 
 ability, commits a profound mistake. They are 
 Saxons of the better class, and are utterly unconscious 
 of anything coarse or ungainly in thus giving publicity 
 to their mutual endearments. The untutored stranger 
 had perhaps believed , that publicity of love, to be 
 sublime, must be manifested under very exceptional 
 circumstances. He had read with pleasure how the 
 beautiful woman threw herself upon her lover's bosom, 
 so to intercept the fatal bullet ; or his heart had throbbed 
 at the last passionate embrace of wife and husband on 
 the scaffold steps. But he is extravagant and pre- 
 judiced : not instant death, but a quart or so of beer, 
 is pretext all-sufficient. Nay, may it not be that our 
 Saxon sweethearts would find death put their affection 
 out of joint, and therefore do wisely to be satisfied 
 with the easy godfathership of Gambrinus ? At all 
 events, our criticisms are as gratuitous as untutored. 
 The mixed assembly in which the exhibition takes 
 place considers it so little extraordinary, as scarcely to 
 be at the trouble of looking at it or away from it. 
 Nevertheless there seems to be a spiritual nudity 
 
70 SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 about it, which, if not divine, indicates a phase of 
 civilization elsewhere unknown. 
 
 I have introduced this scene because it typifies a 
 universal trait. Saxons cannot be happy except in 
 public and under one another's noses. The edge of 
 pain is dulled for them if only they may undergo their 
 torture in the market place ; and no piece of good luck 
 is worth having which has not been dragged through 
 the common gutter. Each man's family is too small 
 for him he must take his neighbour's likewise into 
 his bosom. Is this the result of a lofty spirit of human 
 brotherhood ? or is it a diseased vanity, which finds its 
 only comfort in stripping the wretched fig-leaves alike 
 from its virtue and its vice ? Nevertheless, most 
 Saxons, if charged to their faces with being the first of 
 nations, admit the impeachment : which proves how 
 little true greatness has in common with the minor 
 proprieties. 
 
 It would be pleasant to study this trait in its effect 
 upon gossip and scandal. If a man denudes himself in 
 presence of my crony and me, does he not deprive our 
 epigrams of their sting, and make our inuendoes 
 ridiculous ? Backbiters, thus rudely treated, must miss 
 that delicate flavour which renders a dish of French 
 scandal the delight of the world. But the guild dies- 
 hard, and even in the face of a persecution which 
 should go the length not only of confessing discredit- 
 
OF GAMBRINUS. 71 
 
 abilities, but of taking a pride in them, will still find 
 some husks to fatten upon. 
 
 V. 
 
 It is high time for us to make some pleasant 
 acquaintances; and if we will let our imagination 
 wander citywards, I know a spot where we may meet 
 some. Turning aside from the venerable Schloss 
 Strasse, we traverse a narrower side thoroughfare, and 
 soon arrive at a low and dark-mouthed archway. We 
 vanish beneath it, and, feeling our way along the wall, 
 come presently to a door which, opening almost of 
 itself, admits us into an apartment remarkable alike 
 for its smokiness, its narrowness, and its length. The 
 opposite wall seems to press against us, and we in- 
 stinctively adopt a sideways motion in walking down 
 the room. Full five out of the seven or eight feet of 
 narrowness are taken up with the square brown chairs 
 and tables, of which there must be enough in Saxony 
 to cover a third of the country's area. The walls are 
 panelled breast high; the ends of the room are in- 
 distinct in the smoky haze. All the world is sitting 
 down except ourselves and buxom Ida, who comes 
 tripping along behind us, with both her plump hands 
 full of beer. Let us hasten to be seated. 
 
 The Saxon habit of sitting down to everything is, by 
 the way, one which Americans would do well to 
 
72 SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 imitate, especially when they eat or drink. Man is 
 the only animal that can sit squarely down upon a 
 chair it is as much his prerogative as laughing or 
 cooking. The moral effect of sitting down is to induce 
 deliberation, and we Republicans should have too 
 much self-respect as well as prudence to stand up to a 
 luncheon or liquor-bar like so many sparrows : while 
 our Saxon brother finds his knees giving way at no 
 more than the sight of a toothpick. That foolish 
 relic of barbarism, the practice of rising to toasts, does, 
 it is true, obtain in Saxony no less than elsewhere ; but 
 internal evidence justifies the prediction that Saxons 
 will lead the world in refining it away. 
 
 Having thus got comfortably seated, buxom little 
 Ida caresses the back of our chair, while she lends her 
 ear and ear-ring to our order. Ida is always on the 
 best of terms with her company, while maintaining a 
 feminine ascendancy over them. She responds 
 cordially if we summon her by name, but is deaf to 
 the unceremonious rattling of the schoppen-lid, which 
 is the usual way of calling for attendance. She sustains 
 the many personal compliments wherewith she is plied 
 with a rare complacent equanimity, repaying them 
 with a softened cadence of tone and an approving 
 smile. She has her favourites of course, but so 
 manages matters as not to obtrude the fact unpleasantly 
 upon the less fortunate. When, at parting, we take 
 

 OF GAMBRINUS. 73 
 
 occasion to slip into her palm an eleemosynary coin, 
 she allows her short fingers to close for a moment over 
 ours in mute friendly acknowledgment. She is a brisk, 
 round, smooth little body, with no feature or ex- 
 pression worth mentioning, and a figure consisting 
 mainly of rounded protuberances. She knows her 
 duties well, and deftly remembers the idiosyncrasies of 
 her guest, after the first few visits have made him 
 familiar. I have never seen in her face any record or 
 passage of thought : she even adds up her accounts 
 without thinking, and this is possibly one reason why 
 so many small perquisites make their way to her 
 plump pockets. When she finds herself at leisure 
 usually for an hour or so during the morning and 
 afternoon she has a well-conditioned little nap in a 
 corner, never bothering her small brain-pan with life- 
 problems past or to come. It is a mystery how a body 
 and soul, combined in such very unequal proportions, 
 should produce so pleasant and cheerful an effect. Is 
 Ida ever naughty ? I should as soon think of applying 
 moral standards to a jelly-fish as to her; meanwhile, 
 the worst wickedness I have detected in her is a funny 
 fat slyness in that matter of perquisites. Her conscience 
 which probably is less fat and more gristle than any 
 other part of her body is, I am sure, untroubled. 
 
 Ida can scarcely be taken as a representative of 
 her class a fact which is probably less to their 
 
74 SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 credit than to hers. German beer-girls are harder 
 worked than English bar-maids since in addition to 
 late hours, they are obliged to walk from ten to 
 fifteen miles a day, carrying to and fro heavy loads of 
 beer-glasses. Though they may equal their English 
 sisters in education, they are far behind them in 
 intelligence and the appearance of refinement. The} r 
 are often pretty, however, and, withal, healthy and 
 substantial-looking: and I dare say their labours, 
 arduous as they appear, are luxury compared to 
 those of the peasantry, from which class most of them 
 spring. More deleterious than the physical work is 
 doubtless the moral wear and tear consequent upon 
 receiving day by day the jokes, caresses, compliments, 
 or insults of a rabble of men of all ranks and tempers. 
 They generally acquit themselves with some tact and 
 more good humour; and they are subjected to a 
 freedom of speech and behaviour from the sterner sex 
 which, in any other country, would be met by a 
 thoroughly deserved box on the ear. It appears to be 
 understood that the right of embracing the beer-girl 
 is included in the price of the beer. In one respect, 
 these young women compare pleasantly with the men- 
 waiters : that whereas we may bind the latter body 
 and soul to our service by a judicious administration 
 of fees, in the minds of the former we can at best only 
 create a conflict between their interests and their 
 
OF GAMBRINUS. 75 
 
 affections. We may fee a Kellnerin to the limit of her 
 desires ; yet, if that be our best charm, all will not 
 prevent her enjoying her whisper in the corner with 
 her poor soldier, who never gave her anything more 
 valuable than a kiss, while our beer-glass stands 
 empty. This is more agreeable than anything in the 
 male character. Women were never so necessary to 
 the world's welfare as now, if only they will be 
 women. Let them steep their brains in their hearts, 
 or else dispense with the former altogether. What 
 becomes of these waitresses later in life, I know not. 
 Let us hope they are happy with their soldiers. 
 
 The little clique which makes Ida's beer-saloon its 
 nightly resort is of a character complementary to Ida's 
 own. They are elderly men, and represent the most 
 thoughtful and enlightened class in Dresden. They 
 are patriots of '48, who, having been banished by 
 their government, owe their recall to the progress of 
 those opinions for which they suffered exile. Most of 
 them are now members of the Council, and amuse 
 themselves by occasionally voting against an increase 
 of the king's income. They are among the few Saxons 
 whose patriotism does not consist in being selfish, 
 conceited, and intolerent of criticism. They desire, 
 not to defend their country for what she is, but to 
 help her to what she might be: if they do not 
 sympathize with their unenlightened countrymen, 
 
76 SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 they would like to render them worthy of sympathy. 
 In the face of so stiff a job, I cannot but admire their 
 uniformly jovial and well-conditioned aspect. There 
 is nothing of the melancholy, wild-eyed, long-haired, 
 collarless enthusiast about them. Probably they have 
 the wisdom to use those qualities in their opponents 
 which can be made to serve their own ends, and thus 
 have become prosperous. 
 
 We may hold agreeable converse with these men, 
 lor their draught of the outer world has permanently 
 improved their mental digestions, and allows us to 
 talk discursively without fear of giving offence. When 
 the beer has loosened in them the reins of those 
 faculties which their experience has developed, they 
 become very good company. Yet, when all has been 
 said, there remains a secret sense of dissatisfaction. 
 We have coincided upon many points, but on what 
 one have we melted together ? The objection may 
 seem fantastic, but it is true and of significance. Many 
 a hard head and intractable judgment do we meet, 
 who yet in the dispute lets fall a word or tone which 
 makes the eyes fill we know not why revealing 
 a deeper agreement between us than any of opinions. 
 We fight such men more lovingly than we ally 
 ourselves with others, whose creeds, perhaps, fit ours 
 like the lines of a dissecting map. 
 
OF GAMBRINUS. W 
 
 VI. 
 
 Besides the politicians, there is a sprinkling of the 
 learned class, who are often shabbier in external aspect 
 than men of far less consideration. In addition to their 
 undeniable beer-drinking powers, they have quaffed 
 deep of the Pierian spring, and are no less interesting 
 than the books which they compile. There is a little 
 human glow in them, however, and their erudite talk 
 reminds of conversations printed on a page : it lacks 
 the unexpectedness and piquancy of original or spon- 
 taneous thought. They are wood of a straight, close 
 grain displaying none of the knots and eccentric 
 veins which make a polished surface attractive : nor 
 do they possess the rich, pervading colour which 
 might compensate for plainness of structure. Their 
 faculties are useful to the world in the same way that 
 printing-types are they may be arranged to form 
 valuable combinations, but are not therefore intrin- 
 sically captivating have none of that fascination 
 which attaches to a black-letter MS. Geniuses not 
 only never repeat themselves, but never use the same 
 material twice. Each fresh work is done in a new 
 way, with new tools; and retains an unhackneyed 
 aroma, be it ever so irregular or imperfect. 
 
 But the talents of the Saxon sages are limited in 
 number and overworked ; and the very fact of their 
 
78 SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 limitation and want of idiosyncrasy seems to be the 
 cause of their application to all sorts and amounts of 
 labour. But a man who can get anything out of 
 himself, all on the same rule and scale, should perhaps be 
 especially careful to confine himself to only one thing. 
 Original men change colour, tone, and key with every 
 new idea; and as no idea can ever be twice the 
 same, so is their manner of entertaining it never twice 
 identical Otherwise they are machines ; and I think 
 the Saxon sages often have a tendency to be mechanical. 
 Nevertheless, there are some originals among them. 
 One gentleman I remember, who was by profession a 
 lawyer, but had dabbled in literature, was the author 
 of some poetry, I believe, and ranked himself among 
 the Klopstocks and Heines. He had fine features, and 
 a high, bald forehead, which he seemed always trying 
 to heighten by passing his hand up it, and tossing 
 back the thin locks of grey hair which hung down to 
 his shoulders. He was dressed with small care, and 
 less cleanliness ; his shirt, in particular, was enough to 
 make the heart ache. Reverses, perhaps, or disap- 
 pointed ambition, had enrolled this personage among 
 the sworn disciples of Gambrinus, and it was his daily 
 custom to pledge that monarch so deeply that by 
 evening his heart was full and ready to overflow on 
 small encouragement. One night he entered late, and 
 proceeded, without warning, to be ardently enamoured 
 
OF GAMBRINUS. 79 
 
 of an unobtrusive young man who happened to be of 
 our party, and whom he had never seen before. " Sir, 
 you are dear to me! I love you, sir! my heart is 
 yours ! " In proof of his regard, he presently began to 
 declaim a great deal of poetry ; and never have I 
 heard those pieces more finely and eloquently in- 
 terpreted. The scene, perhaps, took its rise in the 
 whim of a half- tipsy brain, but, as the actor wrought 
 upon himself, it assumed a hue of grotesque pathos. 
 The man became stirred to his depths; now tears 
 ran down his cheeks ; now his eyes flashed, and 
 he manned himself heroically ; and now again he 
 paused to empty his beer-glass and sign to Ida for 
 more. But the liquor he drank, instead of disguising 
 him, dissolved the mask of his inner nature. Heaven 
 knows what confused memories of joy and grief were 
 at work within him ; but it was evident that, through 
 the miserable absurdity of circumstance, he gave us 
 distorted glimpses of what had been best and highest 
 in his character that he was laying bare to us the 
 deepest heart he had. And it is on this account 
 not for purposes of ridicule that I have brought 
 forward the episode. His sincerity no one could have 
 doubted, least of all himself: yet it revealed nothing 
 genuine; the man's very soul was artificial, and in 
 the heat of his self-abandonment, he could not be 
 natural. His sentiment and passion could only have 
 
8o SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 moved unconscious hypocrites like himself. He had 
 been very eminent in his profession, and all he did was- 
 marked by exceptional talent: he must once have 
 been an exceeding handsome man ; and, above all, he 
 was a thorough German, in accord with the genius of 
 his countrymen. But for those who are not Germans, 
 the heart is the gunpowder whose explosion gives the 
 bullet of thought its effect, and they cannot be pierced 
 with the subtlest intellectual missile which lacks this 
 projecting power. 
 
 After Ida's, my favourite resort was a mediseval- 
 looking apartment in the Neustadt, near the head of 
 the venerable, historic bridge which connects the main 
 thoroughfares of the old and new towns. Werth- 
 mann, the proprietor, is a man of taste and feeling, 
 and has adorned his saloon with intent to realize, so- 
 far as he may, the ideal of a Gambrinian temple. We 
 enter a square room of a moderate size, wainscoted to 
 a height of five feet from the floor with dark carved 
 wood. Above the wainscot the wall is divided length- 
 wise into two compartments, the upper one exhibiting 
 designs of highly-coloured groups of figures in four- 
 teenth-century costumes, relieved against a dark-blue 
 background ; while the other is devoted to scraps of 
 convivial poetry, appropriate to the paintings, and 
 executed in the black-letter character ; which poetry, 
 if not always unexceptionable, either from a moral or 
 
OF GAMBRINUS. Si 
 
 poetical point of view, matches well enough the tone 
 of the surroundings. Over the doorway is inscribed 
 the legend " Kommt Herein, Hier iwt gut seinl" which 
 is certainly an improvement upon some of those reli- 
 gious perpetrations which I have noticed further back. 
 In other places we spell out such agreeable truism as 
 " Gerste mit Hopfen giebe gute Tropfen ; " and here, 
 again, is Doctor Martin Luther's famous couplet. The 
 windows are sunk nearly three feet into the walls, 
 with black oak sills and panels, and command a view 
 of the ugly old market-place, with its rough cobble 
 pavement and its tanned market women, presided over 
 by the ungainly equestrian statue of Augustus the 
 Strong, his gilding sadly tarnished by the weather. 
 There is an inner room, much in the fashion of the 
 first, save that the background of the frescoes is golden 
 instead of blue ; and still beyond is the billiard-room, 
 whence issues a buzz of voices and click of balls. At 
 certain hours of the day Werthmann comes in a 
 portly, imposing, but thoroughly amiable figure, bow- 
 ing with serious courtesy to each of his assembled 
 guests. This done, he seats himself at a table with 
 his favourite gossips and a glass of his particular beer. 
 Among the frescoes on the walls there is more than 
 one portrait figure of Herr Werthmann in the character 
 of Gambiinus himself and he supports the role well. 
 But he is not for show only. One morning I caught 
 
 G 
 
82 SAX ON STUDIES. 
 
 him on a chair, amidst half-a-dozen workmen, clad in 
 an enormous pinafore, and bespattered with the white- 
 wash which he was vigorously applying to the ceiling. 
 He is a good type of Saxon landlords, who, as a rule, 
 are among the pleasantest and most conversable men 
 in town. Much of the success of their business de- 
 pends on their genialty, and practice makes it their 
 second nature. 
 
 The attendants here are both male and female, though 
 the former perhaps predominate, in their regulation 
 black swallow-tails. I have often noticed a singular 
 effect which uniforms have upon the analysis of 
 character; it is nearly impossible to form an un- 
 biassed judgment of a man whose coat and hat mark 
 his profession. Inevitably we regard him, not as a 
 simple human being, but through the coloured medium 
 of his official insignia. Thus, if the Kellners wore 
 ordinary clothes, it would be much easier to pronounce 
 upon their peculiarities of disposition and behaviour. 
 As it is, their sable dress-coats which seem to have 
 been born with them and to have grown like their 
 skins their staccato manner, their fallacious brisk- 
 ness, their elaborate way of not accomplishing any- 
 thing, and their fundamental rascality, appear to be 
 the chief impressions of them left upon my mind. 
 They do not contrast well with the English waiters ; 
 there is seldom any approach to neatness in their con- 
 
OF GAMBRINUS. 83 
 
 clition, and they never attain the cultured, high-bred 
 repose which we see on the other side of the Channel. 
 In their swindling operations they manifest neither 
 art nor delicacy ; moral suasion is unknown to them, 
 nor do they ever attempt to undermine us on the side of 
 abstract justice and respectability. They simply and 
 brutally retain the change, and meet any remonstrance 
 on our part, first with denial, secondly with abuse, and 
 finally with an appeal to the police. 
 
 Some few of these men have grown old in the ser- 
 vice, but the majority are between eighteen and thirty. 
 Often they are the sons of hotel-keepers, serving an 
 apprenticeship, at their trade. Their wages are very 
 moderate, but I fancy few of them retire from the pro- 
 fession without having accumulated a tolerable fortune. 
 Unless treated with a politic mixture of sternness and 
 liberality, they are apt to be either brusque or pre- 
 occupied, if not altogether oblivious. Possibly their 
 darker traits may be the effect of continually wearing 
 black tailed-coats, and when they put them off, they 
 may also lay aside their tendency to theft and false- 
 hood. But my researches have not gone so deep as to 
 warrant me in more than offering the suggestion. 
 
 VII. 
 
 In summer, however, we have no business to sit 
 between four walls ; Dresden is full of beer-gardens, 
 
84 SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 where, if the beer is sometimes inferior, its flavour is 
 compensated by the soft pure air and the music. Our 
 difficulty will be, not to find a pleasant spot, but to fix 
 upon the pleasantest. Sauntering beneath a mile-long 
 avenue of chestnut-trees, we might climb to the Wald- 
 schloesschen Brewery, resting on the hillside like a 
 great yellow giant, whose hundred eyes look out over 
 a lovely picture of curving river and hazy-towered 
 town. Here, sitting on the broad stone terrace, 
 beneath trees so dense of foliage that rain cannot 
 penetrate them, we are on a level with the tops of trees 
 below, which have the appearance of a green bank 
 suspended in mid-air. Far off on the river the white 
 steamboats crawl and palpitate, and the huge canal- 
 boats spread their brown wings to help along as best 
 they may their unwieldy bulk. Here, too, the beer is 
 of the best, and we may drink it to the tune of Mozart 
 and Strauss. 
 
 Somewhat similar are the attractions of the Bruelsche 
 Terrasse, which is also more accessible and more exclu- 
 sive. It is fine in the evening, when it sparkles thick 
 with coloured lamps and throbs with music ; and the 
 river, above whose brink it stands, is a black, mys- 
 terious abyss, revealed only by the reflected lights 
 which wander here and there across its surface, or 
 range themselves along the length of the distant 
 bridge, and cast long wheeling shadows of unseen 
 
OF GAMBRINUS. 85 
 
 people passing to and fro across it. But even here we 
 find imperfections; the beer glasses are scandalously 
 small, and the waiters, who wear not only dress-coats 
 but silver buttons, are more rapacious and remorseless 
 than harpies. 
 
 After all, however, the best place is the Grosser 
 Wirthschaft, in the Royal Park. Thsre we are in the 
 midst of a small forest ; but a vista, opening through 
 the trees and broadening over a wide green meadow, 
 yields us a glimpse, at a mile's distance, of a grey dome 
 and two or three tapering spires. The square open 
 court, some sixty yards in width and closely planted 
 with trees and street-lamps, is partly closed in on two 
 sides by low buildings ; the orchestra occupies a third, 
 while on the fourth stands sentinel a gigantic tree. 
 During the pauses of the music, a few steps will bring 
 us to sweet secluded walks, where we might almost 
 forget that such things as houses and Saxons existed 
 in the world. During the heat of the season concerts 
 are given here at five in the morning, and are attended 
 by crowds of tradespeople, who thus secure their half- 
 holiday before the day has fairly begun. If we can 
 manage to get up early enough to go to one, the effect 
 of the spectacle upon the imagination is very peculiar. 
 Reason tells us that it is long before breakfast time ; 
 but the broad sunshine, the crowd of people drinking 
 their beer, the music and the wide-awakeness of every- 
 
86 SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 thing, proclaim four o'clock in the afternoon. The fact 
 that the sun is in the wrong quarter of the heavens 
 only increases our bewilderment, and we are almost 
 persuaded either that the whole scene is a wonderful 
 mirage, or that we are phantoms, accidentally strayed 
 into the material world. 
 
 Surely, only hypercriticism could find anything to 
 complain of in all this. We do not, I suppose, expect 
 Saxon beer-gardens to be like the land of the lotus- 
 eaters, where dreamy souls recline on flowery couches, 
 and know not whether the music in their enchanted 
 ears comes from without or within. Moreover, cane- 
 bottomed chairs are in many ways better than flowery 
 couches, and to sit at a table with three or four other 
 people, even if we do not happen to know them, is 
 preferable to" having no table at all. Lovers of music 
 should not object to receiving in exchange for five 
 groschen, a piece of paper with the musical programme 
 on one side, and a bill of fare on the other ; nor should 
 they allow themselves to be disturbed by the continual 
 repassing, during the performance, of unsympathetic 
 waiters, who never allow a beer-glass to become empty 
 through any lack of solicitation on their part to have 
 it refilled. If the ground beneath our feet is red- 
 dish-brown gravel instead of turf, it is all the safer for 
 delicate constitutions ; and if trees, tables, and lamp- 
 posts are rigidly aligned, it is all the better for order 
 
OF GAMBRINUS. 87 
 
 and convenience. As for the music, it surely could not 
 be finer; and the fact that every individual of the 
 orchestra may be seen sawing or puffing himself red in 
 the face over his horn or violin, ought only to make 
 the pleasure more real and tangible. 
 
 Who can deny all this ? Nevertheless, all the 
 world knows that to possess good things is only 
 to foster the notion that they might be improved. 
 Any strictures against Saxon beer-gardens would 
 certainly apply with equal force anywhere else, 
 and perhaps it is chiefly because they aro good 
 enough to suggest dreams of something better, that 
 such dreams venture to assert themselves. "Were 
 I inclined to pick flaws, the first would be that the 
 gardens disappoint from being half gardens and half 
 something with which the spirit of gardens is quite 
 irreconcilable. Music, whispering leaves, summer 
 skies what combination could be more charming? 
 
 O 
 
 but if we descend as we must beneath the leaves, 
 the disenchantment is all the harsher. Nature is put 
 in a strait-jacket, her tresses are shorn, and she is pre- 
 posterously decked out with artificial ornament. These 
 gardens are aptly symbolised by the Sirens, who made 
 fascinating music and had lovely hair, and who, seen 
 from a proper distance, seemed all delightful. But 
 they turned out to be less attractive below. Thus, 
 if we walk in the secluded paths near the Grosser 
 
88 SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 "Wirthschaft, catching snatches of the melody, and 
 glimpses of the gay crowd shadowed by the cool 
 foliage, the effect is captivating ; but the stern utilita- 
 rian features which a nearer view discovers, are the 
 Siren's claws. 
 
 But my quarrel strikes a deeper root than this, and 
 will not, I fear, gain much sympathy. I question 
 whether music can be heard as well in company as in 
 solitude, save when the company is in very exceptional 
 accord. Certainly, any strange or unwelcome presence 
 jars like a false note continually repeated. Lovers. I 
 should imagine, might listen to sweet music with a 
 multiplied pleasure and appreciation : or a great 
 assembly, ablaze with some, all-inspiring sentiment, 
 doubtless take additional fire from the sound of an 
 appropriate strain. But to lavish the mighty sym- 
 phonies of great musicians upon an ill-assorted crowd, 
 brought together, ticketed and arranged of malice 
 aforethought, is to pawn pearls at less than their 
 value : isolation harmonious seclusion are the only 
 terms upon which a perception of subtle musical 
 jewels can be obtained, and even these are often in- 
 sufficient. 
 
 The Bible tells us that Divine Presence can be better 
 invoked by two or three than by one ; but music, like 
 nature, not being an infinite divinity, seldom reveals 
 her more exquisite charms save to the solitary wor- 
 
OF GAMBRINUS. 89 
 
 shipper. Human beings are terribly potent things: 
 we admire the shrewd scent of wild animals, but what 
 is it compared with the keenness of man's spiritual 
 scent for his fellow ? 
 
 Furthermore, musicians, unlike little boys, should be 
 heard but not seen. Perhaps a beautiful singer may 
 be an exception, because, in her, facial expression may 
 aid the interpretation and give it richer colouring ; and 
 possibly the cultured grace of a master- violinist may 
 impart form and vividness to his rendering. But the 
 grace and beauty, not to be offensive, must, at least, 
 equal that of the theme. A visible orchestra is like 
 a dissected Venus : to lay bare the springs and 
 methods of the sweet mystery of harmonious life, is 
 to sin alike against art and nature. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 I should not have been tempted to go so far, had it 
 not been my purpose to go one step further, and 
 announce the remarkable discovery that the Saxons 
 have a less correct ear for music than any people with 
 which I am acquainted. I am sure they think quite 
 differently, and no doubt, after the first surprise is 
 over, they will be grateful for having had their 
 error pointed out* Undeniably, the greatest musical 
 composers have been of German blood : just as in 
 ancient times, by a sort of revenge of nature, giants 
 
90 SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 and pigmies were made to live together. Moreover, 
 there is nowhere more good music than in Saxony: 
 nor anywhere better soldiers: the reason being, not 
 that Saxons have any especial aptitude for war or 
 music, but that they are exhaustively and inde- 
 fatigably trained. Bismarck and Wagner are at the 
 bottom of it. 
 
 The average Saxon orchestra learns its music by 
 rote, and its perception of harmony is not intuitive 
 but mechanical. They regard a false note as a mis- 
 take never as a sin ; and it is only rigid drilling 
 which enables them to do so much as that. Listen to 
 a party of young students singing together, as is 
 the custom of young students all over the world : 
 they sing loudly and in perfect good faith, conscious 
 that they are Saxons, and therefore fancying that 
 they are infallible. But there will be more discords 
 to a stave, than an equal number of young men 
 of any other country could produce. There may be 
 something pathetic about this, but there is certainly 
 much that is disagreeable. Again, the audiences of the 
 garden concerts are affected by tunes and slight airs, and 
 are invariably enthusiastic in their applause of a solo, 
 however imperfectly rendered; because, having actually 
 beheld a man stand up before them and produce, with 
 more or less physical exertion, a variety of musical 
 sounds, they are convinced that they have heard what 
 
OF GAMBRINUS. 91 
 
 is, or ought to be, music. But they pass by the great, 
 sublime compositions with significant silence. Now, 
 animals are moved by tunes, and parrots and magpies 
 can be taught to whistle them. When the tunes are 
 what is called national enhanced, that is, by some 
 glorious or inspiring tradition, the consideration of 
 whatever musical worth they may have is as nothing : 
 such tunes influence mobs, and Saxon mobs no less 
 than others. A tune is to music what an automaton, 
 with its little round of recurring movements, is to a 
 living man with his infinite variety of manifestation, 
 which yet observes a distinctive form and purpose. 
 
 Music in Saxony, like the army, is a forced product, 
 having no root in the nature of the people, and destined 
 to wither away when the artificial inspiration is re- 
 moved. There is surely something sacred about 
 music : those who are born to it will seek it out 
 through all obstacles ; but to obtrude it upon persons 
 who have no vital understanding of it, "is to do injury 
 both to the music and to them. The commonest of 
 concerts in Saxony, and elsewhere in Germany, is 
 everywhere admired : they are too common, perhaps, 
 and may be lowered by low appreciation. Nothing- 
 beautiful can be driven into a man from without : the 
 only result will be to disfigure him and desecrate the 
 thing of beauty. But we are getting heated again. 
 Another glass of beer ? No, we must bid Gambrinus 
 
92 SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 farewell, for it is late. We have found more than we 
 bargained for in our schoppen. 
 
 IX. 
 
 Good little Frau Schmidt comes up, with her pleasant 
 but not quite cheerful smile, to see us to the door, and 
 bid us not forget to return. We had made a little 
 mystery about her, at the beginning of our session, 
 with the understanding that it should be cleared up 
 before we went away. The mystery does not amount 
 to much, after all, but its elucidation may serve also 
 to explain why Frau Schmidt is more of a favourite 
 of ours than any Saxon woman we have known. 
 
 The fact is (for we have not skill further to prolong 
 the suspense, even were there any longer reason for 
 doing so) Frau Schimdt is an Englishwoman, born, 
 she tells us, within hearing of Bow bells. She met in 
 London the big, silent Saxon, with the fine massive 
 head and serious bearing, who was destined to win 
 her love and marry her. He, perhaps, was at that 
 time a political refugee. Certainly he was more a 
 man than the average : there was a force and large- 
 ness in him rare among Saxons ; and individual excel- 
 lence is an uncomfortable possession in a land governed 
 as is this. 
 
 But when a good many years had passed, and an 
 altered administration could pardon Herr Schmidt's 
 
OF GAMBRINUS. 93 
 
 political virtues, the memory of his birthplace con- 
 tinually haunted him : his health began to fail, and he 
 fancied that only a breath of his native air could 
 restore him. His wife doubtless shrank at first from 
 the thought of leaving England, and settling among 
 strange faces and barbarous tongues, in an unknown 
 land. Yet her heart would not let her hold him back, 
 and without her he could not go. They came, there- 
 fore, and Herr Schmidt, having purchased a small 
 beer-saloon on the banks of the river he had known in 
 boyhood, looked forward to health and quiet happiness. 
 But all was somehow not right not as he had 
 expected. Was Dresden changed, or had his memory 
 played him false ? There stood Dresden, with her 
 domes and steeples ; there flowed the well-known Elbe 
 beneath the old historic bridge. Around him were 
 Saxon tongues and faces ; yet the city, the people of 
 his remembrance were not there. Perchance, save in 
 memory, they had never been at all. Ah, Herr 
 Schmidt, in leaving England, I fear you were not 
 wise. Had you remained, two good countries would 
 have been yours : England, good enough in all con- 
 science for those who have never known a better, 
 and the Saxony of your remembrance, without doubt 
 superior to England, to Saxony itself, or to any other 
 place whatever. But you were not wise, Herr Schmidt,, 
 and therefore both countries are lost to you. 
 
94 SAXON STL/DIES. 
 
 And how of Frau Schmidt/ the little grey-clad 
 Englishwoman ? She loves her Saxon husband, and 
 would rather be with him than anywhere ; yet, per- 
 haps, amidst her many cares and few amusements, she 
 finds now and then a moment wherein to be decently 
 wretched. When, on my first chance visit to her 
 little saloon, I happened to let fall an English word, I 
 shall not soon forget with what a thirsty eagerness she 
 caught up the old familiar tongue ; with what an 
 almost tremulous pleasure she stood and talked 
 talked for the mere pleasure of once more talking 
 English ; delighting in it as a child does over a long- 
 lost toy ; yet saddened by that very delight, because 
 it made her recognize how rare the luxury was and 
 must ever be. Well, she does her best to be a good 
 wife, to make her guests welcome, and worthily to 
 serve King Gambrinus, hoping secretly that in time 
 he will reward her from his treasury, and enable her 
 at least to die in England. That time will never 
 come, patient little Frau Schmidt; but meanwhile 
 may evil befall me if ever I neglect to send you that 
 occasional English newspaper for which you once with 
 hesitating earnestness besought me. 
 
III. 
 
 SIDEWALKS AND ROADWAYS. 
 
 "13EOPLE live surrounded with themselves, and in 
 their own atmosphere, and feel at ease in propor- 
 tion as what is without is attuned to what is within. 
 The religious devotee still gravitates towards his pew, 
 the student towards his library, the drunkard towards 
 his gin-shop. We never feel sure of a man until we have 
 met him at his own fire-side, clad in his dressing-gown 
 and slippers. If we happen to have made acquaintance 
 beforehand with the dressing-gown and fireside, we 
 shall already have gone far towards getting the 
 measure of their proprietor. With this background 
 to relieve the figure, a brief examination will reveal to 
 us more than protracted study without it. But were 
 it possible wholly to isolate a man from all sur- 
 roundings, he would appear if he appeared at all 
 an incomprehensible monstrosity. 
 
 As with the individual, so with the community. If 
 
96 SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 we wish to picture a people to alien minds, we shall 
 do wisely to eschew direct description and analysis,, 
 and rather seek to indicate our subject by analogies 
 from its encompassment ; by suggestion, and subtle 
 inference. Otherwise, our rendering is apt to appear 
 crude and lifeless; for many delicate but important 
 shades of character, too evanescent to be caught from 
 the living man, are indelibly and permanently im- 
 pressed upon the four walls between which his life is 
 passed. 
 
 Men are a kind of hieroglyphic writing hard to deci- 
 pher ; but they translate themselves into their houses, 
 and we may read them there at our leisure, without 
 danger of being influenced by the sphere of human per- 
 sonality to falsify the conclusions of our cool and sober 
 judgment. A man may, by virtue of his personal mag- 
 netism, juggle me into the belief that his black is white; 
 but a glance at his designs in brick and mortar, at his 
 pictures and paper-hangings, will go far to set me right 
 again. As Emerson would put it, his expenditure is 
 him ; and he must be a shrewd man indeed who can 
 falsify his expenditure. 
 
 Now, all communities, from families to nations, have 
 each their distinctive flavour, insomuch that a Bos- 
 tonian, or a Cockney, can be identified almost as 
 readily as if he were coloured blue or green. In 
 logical correspondence with this truth is the fact that 
 
SIDEWALKS AND ROADWAYS. 97 
 
 the material London or Boston from which they come 
 has recognizable peculiarities, distinguishing it from 
 all other cities ; the streets and houses are so built and 
 laid out that they occupy a separate and particular 
 place in the memory. To the vulgar mind the word 
 city conveys the idea of streets and houses, and nothing 
 more ; or at best (if they have read Blackstone), of a 
 town which has. or had something to do with ,a bishop. 
 Strictly speaking, however, these walls and pavements 
 are but the incarnation of the true city, which pri- 
 marily inheres in the brains and wills of the citizens. 
 Their expenditure being them, and the city being un- 
 questionably their expenditure, it follows that the city, 
 as a whole, is an exposition of the modes of thought 
 and temper of its inhabitants. Whatever discrepan- 
 cies exist are due solely to the limitations of man's 
 control over matter. Swedenborg, a profounder and 
 broader seer than either Emerson or Blackstone, touches 
 the core of the question when he says that cities repre- 
 sent doctrines. 
 
 Flesh and blood being thus related to stone and 
 mortar, the delineator of the latter must become to 
 some extent the portrayer of the former a circum- 
 stance in no small degree to his advantage. For, let 
 him describe what he will a paving-stone or a door- 
 knob, a window-blind or a church-steeple he can 
 always rebut the charge of triviality by admonishing 
 
 II 
 
98 SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 the critic of a hidden symbolism contained in the 
 passage, the vital significance of which only ignorance 
 or levity could overlook. And if, in the course of his 
 narrative, he happen on some bit of personal gossip, 
 some human characteristic, humorous or pathetic, let 
 him admit it without fear of inconsistency : it is but a 
 more direct and undisguised method of painting a Dutch 
 interior, or of giving relief and solidity to his sketch 
 of yonder picturesque old castle-turret. Such a person 
 is as infallible as the Pope ; but, unlike the Pope, his 
 infallibility is a comfort to him, and productive of 
 both profit and amusement. 
 
 In these days of the ballot, and of universal suf- 
 frage, some enthusiastic elector may object, that the 
 true representatives of a people's doctrines are, not the 
 cities they live in, but the gentlemen they return to 
 Congress or to Parliament ; and that, consequently, a 
 detailed analysis of these gentlemen's character and 
 personal appearance will serve all the purposes of a 
 moral and material estimate of the towns which they 
 represent. Fifth Avenue or Mayfair, as the case 
 might be would be discoverable in the representative's 
 high arched nose ; Wall Street, or Lombard Street, 
 in the calculating glance of his sharp eyes; Five 
 Points, or Seven Dials, in the ungainly shape of his 
 mouth and feet. His intellectual and affectional nature 
 would be a compendium of his electors', no less than his 
 
SIDEWALKS AND ROADWAYS. 99 
 
 political opinions and prejudices. And the biography 
 of the man would be a symbolic history of the city. 
 
 The suggestion is a valuable one, but action upon it 
 would at present be premature. Every man is a 
 microcosm, but some advance must be made in uni- 
 formity of condition and opinion, and in consistency 
 of belief, before it would be possible for him, humanly 
 speaking, to become a micropolis. His incongruities 
 would kill him, in real life ; even the creations of 
 modern fiction could scarcely fulfil the exigencies of 
 the position. Moreover, granting our micropolis, there 
 is still a heavy deficiency to be made up in our capa- 
 cities for analyzing him. Though our insight may be 
 keen enough to distinguish the business quarters of 
 his town from the aristocratic or plebeian ones, as 
 portrayed in his features ; yet, when we descended to 
 the minutire upon which the general effect in so great 
 measure depends, we should be apt to find ourselves 
 at fault. Where, for instance, should we find recorded 
 the order of architecture of the city hall ? or how 
 determine whether the streets were stone-paved or 
 macadamised ? But science, and the enlightenment of 
 the masses, can work miracles ; and far be it from us 
 to question its ultimate mastery of trifles such as these. 
 Meanwhile, however, we are fain to continue our lucu- 
 brations under the first-mentioned system. 
 
loo SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 n. 
 
 It would be of convenience to me could I declare at 
 the outset what the distinctive characteristics of 
 Dresden streets and houses are : whether the streets 
 were all narrow, dark, and devious; or broad, 
 straight, and open : whether the houses were in- 
 variably gabled, quaint, and crooked; or erect, fair- 
 proportioned, and spacious : whether the city were 
 one of magnificent distances, or contracted within the 
 limits of a bow-shot. Unfortunately any such definite 
 generalities are out of place in speaking of Dresden. 
 Its only distinctive characteristics, so far as my obser- 
 vation goes, are its ubiquitous evil odour and its 
 omnipresent dirty plaster. For the rest, what it 
 asserts in one quarter it contradicts in another, and 
 hardly allows us finally to make up our mind to either 
 condemnation or approval. 
 
 There is one thoroughfare which, under five different 
 names, traverses the city from north to south, as a 
 diameter its circle. This fickleness in the matter of 
 names becomes less surprising when we consider that 
 the street has been several centuries growing, and that 
 its course takes it through nearly every phase of life 
 which the city affords, excepting only the lowest. 
 Traversing its two or three miles of length from end 
 to end, we shall make as thorough an acquaintance 
 with the genius of Dresden streets as it suits our 
 
SIDEWALKS AND ROADWAYS. 101 
 
 purposes to do. If once or twice we make a short 
 incursion to the right or left, it will only be for tho 
 end of recreation. 
 
 It begins locally if not chronologically speaking 
 in the Neustaclt, on the northern bank of the Elbe, 
 being known there as the Haupt Strasse. Considered 
 in itself, this Haupt Strasse is the finest street in 
 Dresden. It is sixty yards or more in width, and 
 nearly a mile long ; down its centre runs a broad walk 
 bordered with trees ; on either side is a carriage-way 
 and sidewalks. But the street dwarfs the houses, 
 which are here quite low and mean, and shops into the 
 bargain. Shops and, still more, shop-signs, however 
 intrinsically attractive and brilliant, are not consonant 
 with architectural dignity; and these Saxon shop- 
 signs, with their impossible names and grotesque 
 announcements, would turn a street of Parthenons to 
 ridicule. The Haupt Strasse merges at either ex- 
 tremity into an open place or square, that towards the 
 north-west presided over by the new Albert-Theater, 
 while the south-western one is forced to be content 
 with that foolish old Augustus, surnamed the Strong 
 bare-headed, bare-armed, bare-legged, and astride cf 
 an incredible steed which squats on its hinds legs, and 
 paws the air with its fore-feet like a gigantic kan- 
 garoo. Standing in the shadow of this worthy, we 
 see the street pass on over the ancient bridge to the 
 
102 SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 Altstadt; on our left, across the market-place, is the 
 hospitable door of our old friend "Werthmann's beer- 
 saloon, while nearly in front of us lies the black guard- 
 house, like a sullen mastiff, whose glittering teeth are 
 the stacked arms before the entrance, while his eyes 
 are the sentry pacing to and fro, on the look-out 
 for officers and royal carriages. 
 
 If the street dwarfs its houses, it pushes its side- 
 walks out of sight. Dresden is sometimes said to bear a 
 distant resemblance to Florence ; and, hearing this, the 
 Dresdeners perhaps thought it incumbent upon them 
 to dispense with all invidious distinctions between 
 road and footway. But they proceeded upon a mis- 
 taken principle in so doing ; for whereas in Florence the 
 streets are all sidewalk, in Dresden the sidewalks are 
 all street, or nearly so. The houses edge forward their 
 broad stone toes towards the curb, and often quite 
 overstep it ; or, if otherwise, the path is mounded up 
 to such a ticklish height, that walking upon it becomes 
 precarious. In some districts, the matter is com- 
 promised by putting the sidewalk in the centre of the 
 street, where it ekes out a slender existence, forming, 
 on rainy days, the bed of an unsavoury little torrent 
 which bears away in its current such domestic super- 
 fluities as the adjoining houses find it inconvenient to 
 retain. 
 
 This, however, more accurately describes the con- 
 
SIDEWALKS AND ROADWAYS. 103 
 
 dition of things ten years ago. An improvement- 
 spasm has seized Dresden of late, and sidewalks have 
 begun to broaden here and there, and laws have been 
 made as to the conditions under which they are to be 
 used, which are rigidly enforced by the police. It is 
 observable, nevertheless, that although sidewalks are 
 coming into existence, the Dresdeners either do not know 
 how to use them, or do not much care to do so ; they 
 prefer the pavement. They stray on to the sidewalk in 
 an incidental sort of way, but do not find themselves 
 at home there, and soon return to the gutter. To a 
 foreign mind a sidewalk is desirable not so much on 
 account of its utility as because it assists, like a decent 
 hat and coat, in the preservation of a certain self- 
 respect and dignity. As men, we wish to separate 
 ourselves as far as we may from the chaos of the road- 
 way, where we are on no better a footing than the 
 dogs, horses, peasant-women, and other draught ani- 
 mals. Sidewalks are, in our view, the etiquette the 
 courtesy of streets ; as significant there as tasteful 
 upholstery in a drawing-room. The Saxon, however, 
 either has a soul above such considerations, or, shall 
 we say ? alien to them. 
 
 Be it said, meanwhile, that the streets are kept from 
 dirt to an extent that would astonish a Cockney, or 
 even a New-Yorker. This is partly due, of course, to 
 the circumstance that there is comparatively little 
 
134 SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 traffic in the city, and the dirt never . has a fair show 
 as against the cleansers. Possibly, since every case 
 has two sides, something might be said in defence of 
 streets which have a strong tendency to get dirty. A 
 street without dirt is like a man without blood pallid, 
 forlorn, and lacking vigour. Nobody, let us hope, 
 likes unclean streets ; but perhaps some people have a 
 secret partiality for streets which demand incessant 
 toil and struggle to keep them pure, and thereby prove 
 their possession of energetic life and powerful vitality. 
 No dead streets should be allowed in this busy world ; 
 when they cease to be thronged, they cease to have an 
 excuse for being at all. The same is true of houses, of 
 which many in Dresden are lifeless shells, or nearly so. 
 They look like empty, ugly, overgrown hotels ; no 
 human life and bustle informs them. They would 
 seem to have been born insignificant, and subsequently, 
 for no sufficient reason, to have expanded into gawky 
 giantship. In this respect they might be compared 
 with the Saxon people, who possess no qualities to 
 warrant their rising above pigmydom, but whom an 
 ironic freak of destiny has uplifted to a foremost place 
 among nations. They should be taken down and 
 reconstructed upon a smaller and more economic scale. 
 This, however, is by the way. I wish to remark 
 that there is something peculiar about Dresden clean- 
 liness I had almost said, something horrible ; for 
 
SIDEWALKS AND ROADWAYS. 105 
 
 though streets, entrance-halls, and stairways are 
 washed, brushed, and put in order with as much 
 careful regularity as if they were race-horses, they are 
 not the less pervaded by a strange and most unwel- 
 come odour, which nothing will eradicate. It arouses 
 the darkest suspicions, though every ocular appearance 
 be calculated to inspire confidence. However spotless 
 the outside may seem to the eye, the nose is not to be 
 beguiled; there must be impurity somewhere. And 
 surely there is something horrible about a thing that 
 looks clean and yet smells badly. What pleases the 
 sight is the more bound to gratify the nostrils. 
 Noblesse oblige. 
 
 Now, in connection with this circumstance, is to be 
 taken another, the explanation of which will, I think, 
 solve the whole mystery. If we pass from the clean 
 exterior of a Saxon's house to its interior, we shall 
 find his drawing-room somewhat less immaculate than 
 his passage, his dining-room than his drawing-room, his 
 bed-chamber than his dining-room ; while he himself 
 is by far the least immaculate of all, tried whether by 
 nose or eye there is no whited sepulchre about him, 
 at all events. An evil odour is something which only 
 inward cleanliness, working outward, can remove. 
 Men are more apt to desire that their emanations, their 
 works, their expressed and embodied thoughts, should 
 appear pure, than that their proper selves should be so. 
 
io6 SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 Their surroundings, they argue, are more seen than 
 they ; and it is their continual delusion that though 
 their actions, having once been acted, are no longer to 
 be concealed, yet it is always easy to hide themselves 
 The Saxon, consequently, diligently expends his 
 lustrative energies upon his street and stairway, but 
 never thinks of washing his own shirt. Of the omni- 
 present evil odour he is never conscious, but it is the 
 very essence and betrayal of the whole matter. Dogs 
 are more sagacious; do not trust to ocular appear- 
 ances ; the cloven foot of the devil would not move 
 them ; but let them once get to leeward of him, and he 
 stands convicted in a moment. He, in his innocence* 
 would probably be at far greater pains to cover those 
 awkward hoofs of his than to determine the direction 
 of the wind. But it is by oversights such as this that 
 so many honest people get into trouble. 
 
 in. 
 
 The ancient bridge which joins Haupt Strasse to 
 the Schloss Platz is the only respectable piece of 
 architecture in Dresden. But it seems nearly im- 
 possible to make an ugly bridge. Its necessity is to 
 produce an impression of combined lightness and 
 power of one kind of strength overcoming another 
 which is the essence of vitality. It requires genius to 
 erect an edifice which shall appear other than dead, 
 
SIDEWALKS AND ROADWAYS. 107 
 
 but to build a lifeless bridge would need almost as 
 much talent perverted. Man has seldom made any- 
 thing so flattering at once to the eye and to the self- 
 esteem of his kind. For bridges are fascinating not 
 only at a distance; it is a triumph even greater to 
 stand upon them and watch the baffled current fret 
 vainly below, slipping helpless past the sturdy feet of 
 the piers, and hurrying in confusion away beneath 
 the shadow of the arches. Here is a direct and pal- 
 pable victory gained over Nature, less exhilarating, 
 no doubt, than a ship's, but more assured. As we 
 saunter across the pavement, firm in mid-air, we men- 
 tally exult in our easy superiority to the discomfort 
 and peril from which we are protected. In every step 
 we feel the whole pride of the builders in their accom- 
 plished work. Beholding the swirling charge of the 
 river down upon us, we half-consciously identify 
 ourselves with the massive masonry, and share its 
 defiance of the onset. 
 
 Yet it behoves our pride not to overween too far, 
 since the immortal river must in the end overcome its 
 stubborn old adversary. Indeed, one pier already 
 succumbed, in days gone by, to the terrific down-rush 
 of a spring flood, armed with huge battering-rams of 
 ice. I have myself often watched great ice-slabs come 
 sweeping on and dash harsh-splintering against the 
 buttresses, and pile themselves suddenly up on one 
 
io8 SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 another's hoary shoulders, as if to scale the angry 
 ramparts. But, though seeing, I could never feel the 
 shock, or fancy the bridge endangered. In great 
 freshets, however, when the river boils upwards to 
 the keystone and higher, the push must be like that 
 of a giant's hand. The arches are narrow, so that the 
 stout piers seem to have pressed close to one another 
 for mutual support; they stand foot to foot and 
 shoulder to shoulder, close embattled against their in- 
 terminable foe. It is sad to think that the successful 
 contest of hundreds of years must issue in ultimate 
 defeat. It will be broken, one day that rigid 
 phalanx ; first one and then another ancient warrior 
 will crumble away, conquered but not subdued, and 
 their stony remains will stand, for centuries longer, 
 in the river bed where they fought ; and a future age 
 will dig up their foundation-piles, and out of them 
 build a theory of a city which lay on the river banks 
 some time in the pre-historic past. 
 
 The bridge is not a wide one, but the summits of the 
 outstanding piers are furnished with a semicircle of 
 stone bench, which makes them look particularly 
 comfortable on midsummer afternoons. Were Dresden 
 Florence indeed, these recesses would be spread two- 
 deep with lazy lazzaroni all day long. But somehow 
 or other (though heaven knows there is little enough 
 briskness or wide-awakeness in them), Saxons never 
 
SIDEWALKS AND ROADWAYS. 109 
 
 lie about in picturesque attitudes, with their hat- 
 brims drawn over their eyes. Saxons cannot be pic- 
 turesque, and would only dislocate their joints if they 
 tried to be so. To be picturesque requires an un- 
 conscious originality of nature, and disregard of the 
 rules of vulgar conventionalism, or, better still, igno- 
 rance of them. But vulgar conventionalism is our 
 Saxon hero's best virtue; when he abandons it he 
 becomes, not picturesque, but brutal. However, tired 
 and shabby people do sometimes sit down on these 
 stone benches, with due heed to the police regulations ; 
 so let us not be ungrateful 
 
 The law of keep-to-the-right, which is strictly en- 
 forced on this bridge, throws light on some of the 
 traits both of the Government and the governed. The 
 scheme works admirably ; there is never any jostling 
 or hindrance ; we bowl along with our backs all turned 
 to one another, and entirely relieved from the re- 
 sponsibility of self-guidance. But we pay the penalty 
 of this sweet immunity as soon as we get beyond the 
 law's jurisdiction. We are run into so constantly that 
 it seems as though the world had conspired against 
 us. Everybody appears bent upon button-hole-ing 
 us on particular business. If there be a moderate 
 crowd in the streets, no amount of agility in dodging 
 will enable us to get on fast ; either we must shoulder 
 down everyone we meet, or else resign ourselves to a 
 
no SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 mile and a half per hour. It is useless to blame the 
 Saxons for this they cannot help it. Th ey are so accus- 
 tomed to walking through life with the policeman's 
 hand on their coat-collar, that when his grasp is 
 relaxed they stray without helm or compass, and 
 could not get out of the way of the devil, if he hap- 
 pened to be in their path. A fairer mark for 
 criticism is their lack of that American or English 
 sense of humour which alone can compensate for the 
 annoyance of such encounters. To be easily put out 
 or insulted, cannot be said to prove a lofty magna- 
 nimity. How we like men who can be amused where 
 most people would get in a passion ! Such men are 
 stout-souled and self-respectful; but thin patiences 
 proclaim meagre natures. And a Saxon crowd is 
 deficient not in temper only. There is in the world 
 none to which I would less willingly trust a lady. As 
 I have before had occasion to point out, the Saxons 
 are a strictly logical people ; they have sufficient in- 
 telligence to understand that woman is the weaker 
 vessel; and if she be unprotected, the syllogism is 
 complete ; over she goes into the gutter, and let her 
 thank her stars if no worse befall her. 
 
 At night the bridge is lit with a double row of 
 lamps; and, seen from a distance, the dark arches 
 vanish, and the fire-points seem strung upon a thread, 
 and suspended high over the river, which lovingly 
 
SIDEWALKS AND ROADWAYS, in 
 
 repeats them. Reflected in water, fire enriches both 
 its mirror and itself like truth discerned in the 
 shadowy bosom of allegory. But the Saxons are 
 thrifty souls, who do not believe in letting their lights 
 shine before men, after the hour when sober citizens 
 should be a-bed. Accordingly, one half of them are 
 extinguished by eleven o'clock, and the remainder two 
 or three hours later. There is nothing more strongly 
 suggestive of incorrigible death than a street-lamp put 
 out before daylight. It is the more forlorn because 
 it had been so cheerful. No belated traveller needs 
 other companions, if he be provided with an occasional 
 lamp along his way. It shines and wavers, and has in 
 it the marvellous sun-born quality of positive life; 
 it warms and burns, like his own household fire, and 
 is thus a link between his home and him; it brings 
 memories of genial hours, and doubly lights his way. 
 The most natural god of fallen man was Fire ; his was 
 an ardent, and withal a poetic and refined religion. 
 Perhaps we should be no worse off were there more 
 men, now-a-days, simple and reverent enough to rein- 
 state his worship. They would possibly be no further 
 from the ultimate truth than were they to evolve God 
 from philosophical mud-pies and Chaos. 
 
 IY. 
 
 Having crossed the bridge, and walked the length of 
 
ii2 SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 a melancholy Droschkey-stand, we reach the Georgen 
 Thor the triple archway, beneath which entrance is 
 made into Dresden proper which is the very nucleus 
 of quaint antiquarian interest. Let us therefore 
 pause a moment to admire, before proceeding further. 
 That the archway is not ornamental must be ad- 
 mitted, but its parent was Necessity, not Art. The 
 way of it was this : Once upon a time, but for no 
 good reason that I ever heard, a Royal Palace was 
 born into the world, and, as luck would have it, 
 in Dresden. A more awkward, flat-faced, shapeless, 
 insufferable barn of a Eoyal Palace was never before 
 smeared with yellow plaster. Nevertheless, like other 
 ill weeds, it grew apace, and, before long, had sprawled 
 itself over a good part of the city ; but as there 
 happened to be plenty of waste land thereabouts, 
 which people thought might be covered with one kind 
 of rubbish as well as with another, nothing was said, 
 and the Royal Palace went on growing bigger and 
 uglier every day. At length, however, it began to 
 approach the main thoroughfare of the city, and 
 actually seemed to threaten interference with the 
 popular freedom of traffic. Now, indeed, the wiseacres 
 began to shake their heads, and whisper to one another 
 that they should have fenced the Royal Palace in while 
 it was yet young, and have obliged it to agree never 
 to exceed reasonable bounds, and on no account to 
 

 SIDEWALKS AND ROADWAYS. 113 
 
 interfere with the lawful public freedom. But, alas ! 
 their wisdom came too late ; for what was their con- 
 sternation, on waking up one morning, at finding that 
 this ugly, good-for-nothing, barefaced Royal Palace had 
 grown clear across their main thoroughfare, and then, 
 to prevent its flank from being turned, it had scrambled 
 hastily down a side street, and made fast its further 
 end to a great sulky block of a building, nearly a 
 quarter of a mile off I All direct access to the market- 
 place was thus obstructed, and the city lay prone 
 beneath the foot of this intolerable Royal Palace. 
 And so, doubtless, would it have remained to the 
 present day, had it not been for the fairy godmother, 
 Necessity. That redoubtable old personage, who has 
 the valuable quality of always being on hand when 
 she is wanted, was not long in making her appearance; 
 and, seeing how matters lay, with her customary 
 readiness of resource, she thrust three of her long 
 fingers directly through the body of the Royal Palace, 
 thereby opening a way for the people to run to and fro 
 as before. So the people exulted, freedom of traffic 
 was restored, and the lubberly Palace was obliged 
 to put the best possible face upon its discomfiture. 
 This it literally accomplished by setting the royal 
 coat-of-arms over the tunnel, by declaring that it had 
 itself caused the tunnel to be made for the good of the 
 people, and by christening it "George's Gate ;" though 
 
 I 
 
IT4 SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 why not " Limited-Monarchy Gate," or even " Con- 
 servative-Republican Gate," I never was able to 
 discover. But it is said that the Royal Palace never 
 grew any more after that deadly thrust given it 
 by Necessity ; nay, there are those who maintain that 
 it is beginning to dwindle away, and who cherish 
 hopes of finally getting rid of it altogether. Mean- 
 while, however, this is the end of the story ; and the 
 moral is in the story itself. 
 
 Like many seeming misfortunes, this triple tunnel 
 is of more service to Dresden than an unobstructed 
 roadway would have been : it is so delightfully 
 grotesque, mediaeval, and mysterious. Its low-browed 
 arches, as our imagination peeps beneath them, lend 
 the city beyond a peculiar flavour of romance. 
 Passing through the dusky groined passage-way, we 
 seem to enter an interior world; we bid farewell 
 to the upper life, and greet the narrow strip of sky, 
 which shows between the high-shouldered roofs of the 
 antique houses, as the first glimpse of a firmament 
 hitherto unknown. That ideal German life fore- 
 shadowed in nursery songs and story-books is now 
 on the point of realisation ; we keep our eyes open, 
 half expecting to encounter a gnome or a good- 
 natured giant at every step; and are not a little 
 indignant at meeting so many people with every-day 
 dresses on. We make the most out of the old- 
 
SIDEWALKS AND ROADWAYS. 115 
 
 fashioned black and yellow uniforms of the Royal 
 messengers, the scanty petticoats of the bare-legged 
 peasant girls, and the spiked helmets of the soldiery. 
 We rejoice in the narrow gloom of the by-ways, in the 
 gabled unevenness of the houses, in the fantastic 
 enchantment of the shop-windows. And by the time 
 we have traversed Schloss-Strasse and reached the 
 Alt-Markt, we are ready to pronounce Dresden the 
 genuine German Eldorado. 
 
 Here, however, the real old city comes to an end, 
 and disenchantment grows upon us at every fresh 
 step : until, having wandered down See Strasse and 
 Prager Strasse, and, from the verge of the railway, 
 cast a glance at the brand-new block of sandstone 
 palaces on the further side, fronting the Reich 
 Strasse and the Bismarck Platz, we discover that the 
 romantic charm wrought upon us by the mysterious 
 old archway has quite worn off, and, alas ! is never to 
 be conjured back again. Once more we reiterate it 
 would that mankind knew where to stop ! Dresden, 
 with all its faults, might at least have remained 
 Dresden ; but these monstrous outgrowths throw con- 
 tempt not only upon the quaint simplicity of the 
 original town, but still more upon themselves for 
 pretending to belong to it. 
 
 Let us saunter back to the Alt-Markt, which is full 
 of suggestions. On our way we may observe, at the 
 
ii6 SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 entrance of more than one street, a bit of board nailed 
 to a stick, bearing the announcement, ' Strasse Ges- 
 perrt." Let no rude hoof approach, no wheel invade. 
 The poor street is diseased, and the surgeons are at 
 work upon it. This warning-off lends a peculiar 
 interest to the forbidden spot ; for the first time we 
 feel impelled to make it a visit. Still more remark- 
 able is the fascination attaching to empty-house lots, 
 so soon as they are boarded up preparatory to beginning 
 building. I know no place of public entertainment 
 more sedulously visited. The moment the screen is 
 well up, each knot-hole and crack becomes a prize to 
 be schemed and fought for. Staid citizens, anxious 
 business men, blase men of the world, will pause for 
 half an hour, eagerly scrutinising a bed of slaked 
 lime, a pile of bricks under a shed, a couple of dirty 
 ladders leaning against a maze of scaffolding, half-a- 
 dozen old wheelbarrows, and as many workmen 
 leisurely building a house with a pipe of tobacco and 
 a can of beer each. The fairest coryphees of a ballet 
 would be vain of half the attention which these fellows 
 receive. The explanation is to be sought not only 
 in the perverse instinct to see what is not meant to be 
 seen ; it is traceable likewise to that universal interest 
 in the process of creation, which is among the most 
 pregnant and significant traits of humanity. Who 
 would not rather witness a house being built, or a book 
 
SIDEWALKS AND ROADWAYS. 117 
 
 being written, than see either completed ? And when 
 the process may be viewed through surreptitious knot- 
 holes, it is enough to captivate a Stoic ! 
 
 " Strasse Gesperrt " is all too familiar to Dresdeners. 
 The city is for ever undergoing cliseinbowelment ; some 
 part of her internal economy is chronically out of 
 kelter. It is the curse of Dresden that she is founded 
 upon a rock : she lies in a granite basin, and can never 
 get rid of her iniquities. So imbued is her soil with 
 impurity, the hero of the Augean stables himself would 
 be baffled by it. Bad as is the disease, however, the 
 remedies do but complicate it. The Dresdeners appear 
 to have an actual mania for hacking at their mothers' 
 entrails, but their unnatural conduct inflicts its own 
 penalty. Her disease is contagious ; not earth only is 
 thrown up out of these trenches, but fever and small- 
 pox likewise ; whereof many die each year, the rich 
 scarcely less often than the poor. I mention this 
 because I believe it to be little known. The authori- 
 ties, who are wise in their generation, so manage their 
 reports that even the dying can hardly bring them- 
 selves to believe there is really anything the matter 
 with them. The only meliorator, as has been already 
 hinted, is the fierce north wind which at certain 
 seasons, as if out of all patience with the foul atmos- 
 phere, sweeps madly through the city, bringing down 
 tiles and chimneys, wrenching off windows, blowing 
 
u8 SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 away people's hats, upsetting boats on the river and 
 omnibuses on the bridge. Perhaps a desire to get 
 through with its job as quickly as possible adds 
 impetus to the blast. But the fallacy that Dresden is 
 a healthy residence must be exploded. In addition to 
 its feverish soil, it possesses one of the most trying 
 climates in the world. They say the climate used 
 formerly to be better ; which is certainly more credible 
 than that it was ever worse. 
 
 v. 
 
 A little way down one of the most unsavoury side- 
 streets stands a pump, from which, oddly enough, is 
 obtained the best water in the city. To be sure, that 
 is not saying much ; for the best water is quite un- 
 drinkable, and cannot be used, even for washing 
 purposes, until after it has been boiled. The pump is 
 made of iron, with ornamental mouldings, has a long 
 curved tail, well polished by the fiction of many 
 hands, and a straight nose, with a single nostril under- 
 neath ; so that the stream does not issue forth in a 
 sparkling arch, after the graceful old fashion, but 
 gushes straight down at right angles probably a 
 more convenient arrangement. Although the pump 
 itself may not be up to our ideal in Faust, the group of 
 Dicnstmaedchen, which gathers round it at water- 
 drawing hours, is none the less pleasant to contemplate. 
 
SIDEWALKS AND ROADWAYS. 119 
 
 They assemble from far and near, a wooden pitcher in 
 each hand, their heads and arms bare, their skirts 
 tucked up; full of free motion, relaxation, and fun. 
 Ever since Kebecca's time, who has not enjoyed the 
 spectacle of young women at a spring ? How grace- 
 ful and feminine all their movements are, whether 
 standing in good-humoured gossip, awaiting their 
 turn; or stooping to place the pitcher beneath the 
 spout ; or lending vigorous strokes to the long pump- 
 handle; or tripping stoutly away with their fresh- 
 sparkling burden, splashing it ever and anon upon the 
 pavement as they go ! They seem especially to enjoy 
 themselves at the water-drawing, as though it were 
 an employment peculiarly suited to them. And so it 
 is ; men look as awkward at a pump as women grace- 
 ful. To do the Saxon men justice, they never affront 
 good taste in this matter, if there be a woman any- 
 where in the neighbourhood to do their pumping for 
 them. 
 
 Women have been compared with water as to some 
 of their qualities, but I think the two in many ways 
 complements of each other, and this may be the reason 
 their association produces so complete and satisfying 
 an effect. Sea-born Aphrodite had been less beautiful 
 as a child of earth ; and I would rather see a naiad 
 than a hamadryad, for instance. Depend upon it, 
 women are never more dangerous than at a fountain 
 
120 SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 or bj the sea-shore, as Cupid's statistics would 
 easily prove : and does not this lend an additional 
 touch of pathos to the thought that women are so apt 
 to, drown themselves when love deceives them ? They 
 draw bright water from the grimy earth for the puri- 
 fication and refreshment of mankind ; and if man- 
 kind prove ungrateful, a plunge into the self-same 
 element provides their remedy. Speaking frankly, 
 however, were these Dresden naiads to take an occa- 
 sional plunge with no more serious purpose than that 
 of cleanliness, the chances against their being driven 
 to a final plunge by disappointed affection would be 
 materially increased. 
 
 Midway between the pump and the Schoppen stands 
 the soda-water bottle. The ^ater is manufactured by 
 Dr. Struve, and is a pleasant beverage enough, especially 
 the morning following an overdose of beer. During the 
 summer season it is sold at the Trink-Hallen, which are 
 scattered throughout the town and for a mile or so 
 among the environs. They are neat clap-boarded 
 little boxes, about ten feet square ; all made on the 
 same pattern, with an open counter across the front, 
 on which are abundance of flowers in pots, and behind 
 the flowers a young lady, who is not to blame if 
 she happen to be less fair than they. Occasionally a 
 pretty girl will accept the situation ; but the service 
 is not so popular as that in the beer saloons ; though 
 
SIDEWALKS AND ROADWAYS. 121 
 
 the one is as sedentary as the other is active. There 
 is no chance for sociability ; the hostess has no chair 
 to offer her guest ; and the comparative isolation com- 
 bines with the lack of exercise to produce a gloomy, 
 and even forbidding demeanour strongly in contrast 
 with the smiling freedom of the beer-maidens, not to 
 mention the careless abandon of the nymphs of the 
 pump-handle. 
 
 VI. 
 
 Along with the new districts which have of late years 
 been added to the city, the Dresdeners have seen fit 
 to provide themselves with a tramway. As an intelli- 
 gent inhabitant informed me, tramways were first 
 invented about two years ago, and Dresden was one 
 of the first cities to make practical use of them. It 
 commonly happens that we are most proud of those 
 things which we have, as it were, discovered our- 
 selves ; and accordingly this honest populace regards 
 its novel experiments with no little satisfaction, not 
 unmixed with wonder, and even awe. 
 
 " I was not so fortunate as to be present at the first 
 launching of these extraordinary engines ; but about 
 a fortnight later I was attracted by the sight of a large 
 and excited crowd assembled on the corner of Prager 
 and Waisenhaus Strasse. At that time there were 
 rumours of strikes and disaffection among certain of 
 
122 SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 the workmen employed by the Government ; and I at 
 once conceived that a disturbance had actually broken 
 out, and that possibly a battle was even then in pro- 
 gress between the infuriated labourers and the police. 
 In vain, however, having arrived breathless on the 
 ground, did I look about for the combatants. Nobody 
 seemed to be fighting ; no corpses were visible ; there 
 was not so much as a drunken man or a woman in a fit. 
 Nevertheless, the crowd was manifestly wrought up to 
 a high pitch of excitement about something ; and 
 being too dull to divine the cause, and too proud to 
 inquire it, I resolved patiently to await the issue. 
 By-and-by I noticed that the tramway-rails were laid 
 round this corner, and then methought I began to 
 understand a little. 
 
 " The crowd was massed on the sidewalk, and was 
 kept there by two policemen. Some distance beyond 
 the curb, in the hollow of the arc described by the 
 rails in turning the corner, stood a man in official 
 costume, holding a whistle in his lips, upon which he 
 played an irregular and very shrill tune. Occasionally 
 he paused a moment to look down the street ; then, 
 turning to the crowd, gesticulated with a red flag in 
 an agitated manner, and blew his whistle more sharply 
 than before. After this had gone on for some time, 
 and every heart was beating high with suspense, a 
 distant rumbling noise was heard, like thunder, or still 
 
SIDEVVALkS AND ROADWAYS. 123 
 
 more like the rolling of tlie wheels of a tramway car. 
 Along with this sound another of a different descrip- 
 tion was audible a sharp, penetrating sound, closely 
 resembling the whistle of a tramway-car-driver. It 
 was answered by the man on the corner with a wild, 
 ear-piercing peal. At the same moment a hoarse 
 voice shouted, ' Es kommt ! es kommt \ ' 
 
 " Then began a tumult hard to describe. The cry 
 was taken up and repeated. The crowd surged storm- 
 like, those in front striving to press back out of reach 
 of danger, while those behind seemed madly bent on 
 getting forward. All the time the rumbling grew 
 louder and nearer, the whistling wilder and shriller, the 
 gesticulation of the official on the corner with the 
 red flag more violent and unintelligible. One poor 
 fellow, the warring of whose emotions had been too 
 much for him, entirely forsook his senses at this junc- 
 ture ; and even as wild animals, when driven mad by 
 terror, are said to rush straight into the jaws of danger, 
 did he, eluding the grasp of the now exhausted police- 
 man, dash frantically across the track. Women 
 shrieked, strong men turned pale, and averted their 
 eyes with a shudder. But a special Providence guards 
 the insane. The terrible tramway car was still full 
 thirty paces distant, and he gained the opposite side 
 of the street in safety. 
 
 " The next few moments comprise such a sickening 
 
124 SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 whirl of sights, sounds, and emotions as only a pen of 
 fire could hope to pourtray. Indeed, I have no very 
 distinct recollection of what passed. Something I 
 seem to hear of a clattering of steel-shod hoofs, a 
 panting of straining steeds, a grating of harsh-turning 
 wheels. Something I seem to see of a face, grim-set, 
 with a whistle in its mouth ; of a vast moving bulk, 
 which was neither house nor chariot, but a mingling 
 of the essential parts of both, sweeping in majestic 
 grandeur round the iron curve. Something I seem to 
 feel of a pride that was half awe, of an exultation that 
 was mostly fear, of a wonder that was all bewilderment. 
 But I remember no more. When I came to myself, I 
 found that the tramway car had halted a rod or two 
 beyond the turn, and was discharging its pale-faced 
 passengers on the sidewalk. The driver was chatting 
 with one of the policemen, quietly, as if nothing of 
 special importance had happened. The official on the 
 corner had stepped into the neighbouring beer saloon 
 to whet his whistle. But I walked homeward, deep 
 in thought. Come what might, at least I had lived to 
 see a tramway car. 
 
 " The conviction forces itself upon me that tramway 
 cars are alive ; that, in addition to the destructive 
 qualities of ordinary steam engines, they are endowed 
 with an appalling intelligence all their own, which 
 drivers and guards may be able in some degree to 
 
SIDEWALKS AND ROADWAYS. 125 
 
 influence, but not wholly to control. To Lave live 
 engines rushing through our very streets and over our 
 shop doorsteps ! Is it not tremendous, and really very 
 alarming ? But is it not also grand, and our own 
 invention ? The fact that for so many years we have 
 been taught to regard anything in the shape of a 
 railway as the most forbidden of forbidden ground, 
 may explain the consternation wherewith we behold 
 the dreaded rails winding their iron way into our daily 
 walks. Time will, perhaps, accustom us to the inno- 
 vation, though hardly during the present generation."* 
 I may be permitted to add that the cars appear 
 exceptionally large to a foreign eye, and are further 
 peculiar in being provided with a second story, 
 attainable by means of a couple of elaborate spiral 
 staircases, one at each end : a sufficiently luxurious 
 arrangement, though perhaps a good steam-lift would 
 be an improvement. Inside they are very comfortable ; 
 and no one is allowed to stand up. They do not run 
 singly and at short intervals, but in trains two or 
 three starting at the same time ; and then a prolonged 
 cessation. As for the men with red flags and whistles, 
 who are stationed at short intervals all along the line, 
 it is a question whether they are employed to summon 
 the populace to behold the greatness and majesty of 
 tramway cars, or to warn them out of the way lest 
 
 * Translated from the Journal of a Saxon acquaintance. 
 
126 SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 they be run over. Be that as it may, there is never 
 any lack of spectators ; and every week or so we hear 
 of some poor creature's having been crushed beneath 
 the Juggernautic wheels. 
 
 Collisions with vehicles are frequent. The teamsters 
 and Droschkey drivers have a deadly feud with tram- 
 way cars; the latter because the cars injure their 
 business ; the former because they make them " turn 
 out." The police always support the new-fangled 
 tramways, and the feud is thereby embittered Most 
 opprobrious epithets are exchanged, and occasionally 
 matters proceed further yet. Once I saw a lumbering 
 great waggon heavily bumped by a car. The waggoner, 
 an uncouth, stolid-featured fellow, started at the jar as 
 though a new and very ugly soul had suddenly entered 
 into him. He stood up, shaking his fist and his whip, 
 and shrieking out a great volume of abuse and defiance. 
 The car passed on, leaving him to rave his fill. But 
 this did not satisfy him. He presently jumped down 
 from his box and gave chase, whip in hand, his long 
 ragged coat flying out behind him. He caught up 
 with the car, and lashed it with his whip as though 
 it had been a sentient being. The guard was standing 
 on the platform, but it was not until he had said 
 something to the revengeful waggoner, that the latter's 
 whip was aimed at him. The fellow probably thought 
 that since the guard was connected with the car, it 
 
SIDEWALKS AND ROADWAYS. 127 
 
 would be as well to give him a share of the car's 
 punishment. He sprang on the step, and so plied the 
 unfortunate official with his knotted lash, as soon to 
 force him to retreat inside. The victor then jumped 
 off, fetching the car a parting thwack as he did so, and 
 ran back to his waggon, laughing hysterically, talking 
 incoherently to himself, and tossing up his arms, in 
 the savage glee of satiated vengeance. He ran directly 
 into the arms of an impassive, inexorable, helmeted 
 policeman ; and there I left him. 
 
 VII. 
 
 Dresden abounds in squares or market-places, of 
 great size in comparison with the uniform gloomy 
 narrowness of the streets. It seems as though the 
 streets, ever and anon, got tired of being narrow, and 
 suddenly outstretched their mouths into a portentous 
 yawn. If only a compromise could be effected between 
 the expansion of the market-places and the contraction 
 of the thoroughfares, Dresden would become a more 
 consistent as well as a better ventilated capital. These 
 market-places confine themselves rigidly to business ; 
 they are market-places, not parks or pleasure-gardens. 
 Every square foot of them is solidly paved ; no en- 
 closed grass-plots, no flower-beds, bushes, or trees are 
 allowed. If you want such things, go where they are 
 
128 SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 to be had ; but when you enter the city make up your 
 mind to city and nothing else. 
 
 I confess a decided preference for this arrangement 
 over that which prevails in American and English 
 cities the forcing scraps of country into the midst of 
 every chance gap between the houses. Setting aside 
 the question of hygiene, the effect of such violence 
 done to Nature must be depressing to everyone capable 
 of being depressed. Could there be imagined two 
 more irrecoxicileable elements than trees and brick 
 walls ? unless it were flower-beds and street-pave- 
 ments ? The houses, being in the majority, put out 
 the trees : the trees, so far as they have any efficacy at 
 all, satirise the houses. If we are in the garden, 
 glimpses of the surrounding buildings distract our 
 attention from the foliage ; and if we would hear birds 
 sing, it must be to an accompaniment of carriage- 
 wheels and street-cries. Should we contrive to find a 
 more secluded nook, where we might pretend for a 
 moment to forget the city, we are in constant anxiety 
 lest some untoward chance confront us with our 
 hypocrisy. Or if, on the other hand, we stand outside 
 the railings, the case is no way bettered: the poor 
 garden seems to pine like a bird in its cage, and, so 
 far from refreshing us, imposes a heavy tax on our 
 sympathies. 
 
 Nature must not be surrounded. Her beauty is not 
 
SIDEWALKS AND ROADWAYS. 129 
 
 compatible with shackled limbs ; she must be free to 
 extend to the horizon and salute the sky. Caged 
 Nature will not sing, and loses her power to bless. 
 She may hold a city in her bosom, like a jewel, and 
 both she and the jewel will look the prettier; but 
 either her majority must be without limit, or else 
 all comparison should be avoided. Never bring the 
 country into town in larger quantity than may go into 
 a flower-pot. If harmony and hygiene must come 
 into collision here, I am inclined to let hygiene go to 
 the wall, as Dresden does. Let us abolish cities, if we 
 can, but not by throwing small handfuls of green grass 
 and flowers at them. 
 
 The Dresden market-place looks dreary enough, 
 say, on a Sunday, when it has been swept severely- 
 clean, and the level expanse of stone is unbroken by 
 so much as a cigar-stump. It needs some audacity to 
 walk across it the expanse is so large, and the con- 
 spicuousness of the walker so complete. The houses on 
 opposite sides stare hopelessly at one another, like hungry 
 guests across an empty dining-table ; and it seems as 
 though the table never could be laid. But see what 
 a transformation takes place on Friday morning 
 market-day throughout Germany. The naked plain, 
 which seemed incurably barren yesterday, has wonder- 
 fully brought forth what appears to be a great crop 
 of colossal mushrooms, whereof the smallest stand six. 
 
 K 
 
130 SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 feet high. They rise from amidst fertile undergrowths 
 of vegetables and produce of all kinds; and beneath 
 them, in comfortable chairs made out of three-quarters 
 of a barrel, stuffed and padded with old carpeting, sit 
 robust elderly ladies in flannel petticoats and wooden 
 shoes, every one of them knitting a blue stocking, and 
 no less indefatigably soliciting passers-by for their 
 custom. The morning sun slants across the scene, 
 gilding the umbrella-tops, and gloating over the heaps 
 of fresh green vegetables, and everywhere making 
 merry with the warm, omnipresent, stirring, shifting, 
 murmuring life which crowds the market-place from 
 brim to brim. 
 
 There is nothing else in Dresden so broadly pic- 
 turesque and amusing, so rich in antique and piquant 
 characteristics, so redolent of humour and good- 
 humour, as are her markets and out-door fairs. The 
 open sky and kindly sunshine give an air of informality 
 to the ugly business of buying and selling, which renders 
 it charming. Bewitching are the primitive stands im- 
 provised by these country dames for the display of 
 their wares. They, too, are bewitching in their way 
 a brown and wrinkled tribe, but full of shrewdness, 
 and of broad, ready wit, that is often apt and amusing. 
 There they sit, from early morning till late afternoon, 
 and then the whole establishment is packed into the 
 dog-cart, and trundled away. 
 
SIDEWALKS AND ROADWAYS. 131 
 
 Their costume is markedly simple, especially when 
 compared with the fearfully and wonderfully-made 
 head-dresses and sleeves which are the fashion else- 
 where on the Continent. They possess, moreover, an 
 admirable talent for making themselves comfortable ; 
 never dash our spirits by assuming a miserable and 
 lugubrious demeanour, but, on the contrary, wear the 
 very most prosperous face possible, and address their 
 customers not with an unintelligible w r hine, but with 
 hearty compliments and clever flatteries, to which the 
 cheerful suggestion that they can furnish the very 
 commodity which alone is needed to give the finishing 
 touch to worldly well-being, appears a purely un- 
 premeditated addition. I owe much to these excellent 
 personages, and rejoice in this opportunity of acknow- 
 ledging my debt. Had my acquaintance with Dresden 
 never extended beyond the shadow of their big um- 
 brellas, doubtless I had brought away more genial 
 memories of it. As a background to their sturdy 
 figures, the ugly houses, with their plaster faces and 
 hump-back roofs, acquire an undefinable charm. Who- 
 ever delineates Saxon life and manners, whether with 
 pen or pencil, should not fail to give the market-place 
 an honourable position in his picture. The sun always 
 shines there. 
 
 These Friday-morning market-women must, how- 
 ever, be distinguished from what may be called the 
 
132 SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 every-day class, who have pernanent stands at this 
 and that street-corner, rented by the year; who, sit, 
 not in three-quarter barrels, but in little wooden 
 sentry-boxes, painted green; who never exert them- 
 selves to solicit custom, but let their wares speak their 
 own commendation ; who suffer the buyer to depart 
 as he came, instead of throwing after him the affec- 
 tionate injunction, "Come again, highly-honoured 
 individual ! forget not your most devoted servant ! " 
 Their permanence, in short, seems to have dried up in 
 them the springs of that naive and piquant humour 
 which their Friday-morning sisters bring in fresh from 
 the fields, along with the turnips and cabbages. They 
 become as stiff and taciturn as the little wooden boxes 
 in which half their lives are passed ; and, notwith- 
 standing many luxurious appliances in the way of 
 wraps, cushions, and footstools, which in the course of 
 time they contrive to get together, they never look 
 half so comfortable and contented as my jolly old 
 favourites of the Alt-Markt. 
 
 Certainly this market is worth all the enclosed parks 
 and pleasure-gardens in the world. It is the only 
 satisfactory solution of the problem how to bring city 
 and country together. Set them on the honest, if 
 unaesthetic, basis of buy and sell, and the meeting will 
 redound to their mutual credit and profit. 
 
SIDEWALKS AND ROADWAYS. 133 
 
 VIII. 
 
 But the Alt-Markt, in company with its smaller 
 brethren, is indispensable for even more important 
 purposes than the accommodation of Friday-morning 
 market-women. Three or four times in a year, but 
 notably towards Christmas, does Dresden give symp- 
 toms of being in an interesting situation. After a 
 few days' labour, and considerable turmoil and con- 
 fusion, she is happily delivered of a progeny of ten 
 thousand little booths, more or less, which straightway 
 proceed to arrange themselves as a miniature city 
 within the city, and, in their turn, mysteriously to 
 bring forth an inexhaustible store of every description 
 of merchandize. Meanwhile, a myriad army of buyers 
 and merry-makers has assembled from the surrounding 
 country, and a grand carnival and celebration takes 
 place, known as the Jahr-Markt, or Christmas Fair. 
 It continues for a week or ten days, until, Christmas 
 being fully come, the residue of merchandize is packed 
 away in boxes and baskets, and the little booths, being 
 thus stripped of all their finery, are themselves rapt 
 away to some limbo or other, there to await the time 
 when they shall be born again. 
 
 The earliest symptom of approaching festivity, how- 
 ever, is the sudden up-growth, in every quarter of the 
 city, of extensive forests of young fir-trees. They are 
 
134 SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 of all heights, from twelve inches to twenty feet, and 
 there are so many of them, that it seems as if every 
 man, woman, and child in Dresden might take one each, 
 and yet leave half as many more behind. They sprout 
 forth from every nook and corner, and are not at all 
 embarrassed by the necessity they are under of taking 
 up their stand on cold stone pavements. Indeed, they 
 altogether dispense with roots, substituting for them 
 the more convenient arrangement of two billets of 
 wood, mortised together at right angles, with a hole at 
 the intersection, into which the stem of the tree is fitted. 
 The only contingency under which this principle is 
 defective, is when the wind blows. A moderate gust 
 will overturn an entire grove, like a row of cards ; 
 and in the event of a persistent breeze, the foresters 
 resign themselves with the best grace they may, not 
 attempting to set their plantation on end again until 
 the elements have calmed down. Their appearance, 
 sitting erect amidst so much prostration, is not a little 
 forlorn; it would seem more appropriate were they 
 to utter a melancholy wail, and fall down likewise. 
 These trees, it need scarce be said, are the property of 
 the good Santa Claus, and are one and all destined to 
 produce a crop of fruit which shall gladden the hearts 
 of heaven knows how many children. In view of so 
 glorious a consummation, no wonder they consent to 
 exchange their comfortable roots for the insecure foot- 
 
SIDEWALKS AND ROADWAYS. 135 
 
 hold of a wooden cross; and, after the fruit-bearing 
 season is over, to live on memory in the attic until the 
 period of their second and final coruscation in the 
 kitchen fire. They make friends with all ranks, from 
 peer to peasant ; and in the case of any other people 
 than this, would probably create some temporary bond 
 of sympathy between rich and poor. But each indi- 
 vidual Saxon walks off with his own tree, and enjoys 
 it in his own way, without troubling his head about 
 his neighbour. As the trade grows brisk, we are con- 
 tinually startled at the singular spectacle of animated 
 fir-trees hastening up and down the streets, and 
 running into us on the corners ; careering to and fro 
 through the crowd, as though in anxious search after 
 their owners. It seems almost a pity that so many 
 thousands of beautiful young trees should every year 
 be sacrificed, even to so beneficent a deity as Santa 
 Claus. But, whencesoever they come, the supply 
 never appears to run short; and, perhaps, the brief 
 splendour of these Christmas forests is better than 
 gloomy centuries upon the impassive hills. 
 
 Having provided ourselves with a Christmas-tree, 
 we must next repair to the booths for wherewithal to 
 dress it. Ever since I began to take an interest in 
 story-books, the word " booth " has had an inexpres- 
 sible fascination for me. The spell originated, I think, 
 in a picture of a booth on a certain page of an 
 
r 3 6 SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 unforge table German fairy- volume, called " The Black 
 Aunt;" which, likewise, contained the tragic history 
 of Nutcracker and Sugar-dolly, and the touching 
 romance of Johnnie and Maggie. Most children, I 
 trust, have known the Black Aunt, or some of her 
 kindred; but comparatively few can have been so 
 fortunate as to stumble upon the palpable realisation 
 of her wondrous tales -just at the moment, too, when 
 they were perhaps ready to question her veracity. 
 No less happy a destiny, however, was reserved for 
 me, in wandering through the toy-district of the 
 Christmas Fair ; and the sentiment stirred in me by 
 what I saw there was tender to the verge of emotion. 
 I have walked those fairy streets for hours, and not 
 one of the tow-headed little rascals, who were for ever 
 stumbling betwixt my legs, was more captivated or 
 credulous than I. 
 
 As for the booths, they are of sufficiently simple 
 construction, being mere sheds of plain boards, which 
 much rain and snow, and a little sunshine, have tinted 
 a rusty black. They vary from six to ten feet in 
 height and breadth, and are open in front, and roughly 
 fitted with half-a-dozen shelves. The counter is 
 generally made of a long plank, supported at each end 
 by a barrel, and the only way for the merchant to get 
 in or out of his shop is to crawl underneath this 
 arrangement. Everything about the establishment 
 
SIDEWALKS AND ROADWAYS. 137 
 
 is temporary ; we feel that, though it is here to-day, 
 to-night may see it taken to pieces, and carted off into 
 oblivion ; and this transitoriness is in powerful con- 
 trast with the brilliant and warm intensity of its 
 life so long as it endures. Certainly it endows it with 
 a charm unknown to. shops, however gorgeous, whose 
 existence is measured by years rather than hours. 
 Charming, too, is the set-off given by these weather- 
 beaten boards to the gaudy colours of the freshly- 
 painted toys, the gilt gingerbread, and the sugar-plums. 
 It is all story-book; and as we gaze, we half listen 
 for the turning of the leaf, or the unwelcome in- 
 junction to go to bed, and hear the rest another time. 
 Most of the booths bear a black placard, whereon 
 is painted in white letters the name of the proprietor, 
 together with his or her condition in life, and native 
 place. " Frau Mellot, Wittwe, aus Tirol:" so we stare at 
 Frau Mellot, who is a comely woman, not too old, and 
 wonder whether her husband met his death hunting 
 chamois ; and whether there is not something marked 
 in the regard of yonder stout curly-headed Fritz 
 Wagner, vendor of earthenware from Bohemia, who 
 keeps the booth on the other side of the way. Frau 
 Mellot is doing an excellent business in cheese and 
 sausages. Next year, perhaps, the two establishments 
 will have become one the earthen pots will have 
 wedded the sausage and cheese. For it is scarcely 
 
I 3 8 SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 possible to avoid feeling a lively personal interest in 
 these people ; they arc all characters in our story-book, 
 and their welfare is essential to the happy develop- 
 ment of the narrative. " Hier nur giebt es billige 
 Waaren ! " shouts Fritz, with a sly wink at the 
 widow ; and she tosses her head, and calls, " Ein 
 Groschen das Stuck, hier ! hier ist jedes Stuck nur 
 ein Groschen ! " Then she catches my eye, and at once 
 attacks my sensibilities thus : " Buy something of 
 me, then you, dear sir ! you, who appear so benevo- 
 lent and so wealthy ! " No, no, Frau Mellot, I will 
 not be your cat's-paw, to give honest Fritz the heart- 
 ache ; nay, is he not jealous already ? methinks there 
 is something sinister in the way he balances that 
 earthen jug, and glances at my head ! Farewell for the 
 present ; but next year, if all goes well, I will buy 
 of Mr. and Mrs. Fritz both a round of cheese and a 
 stone jar to keep it in. 
 
 IX. 
 
 The booths occupy not only the squares, but the 
 streets and alleys likewise, and still there never seems 
 to be half room enough. We cannot hope to inspect 
 them all, and, perhaps, our best plan will be to confine 
 our observations to the Alt-Markt collection, which in 
 itself forms a large town, and may be looked upon as 
 Santa Claus's head-quarters. The shops are arranged 
 
SIDEWALKS AND ROADWAYS. 139 
 
 with admirable regularity in avenues and cross-streets, 
 the widest barely seven feet in breadth ; and, generally 
 speaking, each street is devoted to a separate kind of 
 goods, so that, by the time we have been through 
 them all, we shall have beheld as large a variety of 
 cheap and reasonably worthless commodities as were 
 ever brought together within similar limits since time 
 began. In this quarter, for instance, the whole world 
 seems to have been turned to leather, and so strong is 
 the perfume of tanned hides that, for the moment, we 
 forget that other fundamental odour which- reigned 
 here last week, and will resume its ancient sway 
 to-morrow or the day after. Here we turn the corner, 
 and straightway the eye is attacked by an overpowering 
 onset of all the colours of the rainbow, besides a great 
 many which the most charitable rainbow would in- 
 dignantly repudiate, embodied in hundreds and 
 thousands of rolls of stout coarse flannels, such as the 
 peasant- women make up into petticoats for holiday 
 wear. This district is very popular with the fair sex, 
 though less so than the region of crude ribbons and 
 priceless jewellery further on. The next street 
 epitomises the iron age, and is resonant with pots 
 and kettles, flat-irons and pokers, rakes, spades, and 
 kitchen cutlery ; but I think iron should be excluded 
 from fairs, as being too permanent and uncompromis- 
 ing an element where change and the brilliance of a 
 
140 SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 moment are the chief aim and attraction. Pleasanter 
 and more interesting is the place of baskets and wicker 
 work, where we may see the osiers being deftly and 
 swiftly wrought up into an amazing variety of pretty 
 or eccentric forms. Germany is notable for basket- 
 making as well as for pottery the two most primitive 
 and not least graceful industries known to man. 
 
 Manifestly, however, we are not equal to the task of 
 perambulating even the Alt-Markt. We pause on the 
 verge of a wilderness of sparkling glass-ware, and 
 altogether neglect the extensive assortment of dried 
 fish and groceries which monopolise the stalls on the 
 further side of the square. Neither can we hope to do 
 justice to the numberless shows of fat women and 
 strong men, of wild children and tame mice, of con- 
 jurors and mountebanks, which swarm here no less 
 than at other fairs. The truth is, I am anxious to 
 spend such time as remains to us in the toy depart- 
 ment, which occupies the centre of the Christmas 
 township, and is the nucleus of gaiety into the bargain. 
 
 Here, indeed, is rich bewilderment piled ten deep ! 
 Every inch of space is used and used again, until we 
 are ready to forget that such a thing as space exists^ 
 The vendors are up to their neck in toys ; toys are 
 piled on the counters, hung from hooks and along 
 lines, crammed into baskets. Assuredly there are 
 more toys in the world than anything else toys are 
 
SIDEWALKS AND ROADWAYS. 141 
 
 the sole reality and business of life, and all else is 
 mere pastime and make-believe. They are all im- 
 mortal, too; for here are the jumping monkeys and 
 dancing harlequins, the red-roofed villages and the 
 emerald-green poplar-trees, the Noah's Arks, the 
 drums, and the trumpets all the things of our child- 
 hood, which we have loved and smashed to pieces 
 all as active, as life-like, as brilliant, as new and 
 unstained as when we saw them first so many years 
 ago. Here is the gallant Nutcracker, with his stiff 
 pig- tail, powerful jaw, and staring blue eyes ; beside 
 him the sweet and gentle Sugar-dolly, to whose tragic 
 fate I have never been able to resign myself. Yonder 
 is the famous cock who flew to the top of the barn and 
 gave up crowing, but who turns constantly this way 
 and that on one leg, to see whence the wind blows. 
 Near him the squirrel, joint hero with Nutcracker in 
 that never-to-be-forgotten duel of theirs. And here 
 are dear Johnnie and Maggie, grown not a day older ; 
 or, if they be the descendants of the historic pair, 
 reproducing the characteristics of their progenitors 
 with a completeness which would make Mr. Galton 
 the happiest man in England. Nor will we forget 
 Hans Christian Andersen's tin soldier, with his 
 shouldered musket, his single leg, and his rigid observ- 
 ance of discipline. It appears he was not melted up 
 after all ; and I see the little dancer whom he loved 
 
142 SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 pirouetting not far away. She is a giddy little lady, 
 and military discipline is a serious matter, especially 
 of late years ; but I have faith that they will yet live 
 long enough to meet and make each other happy. 
 We human beings are mere toys, who are born, and 
 die, and never come again ; but these beings who are 
 not human, and whom we rather look down upon, 
 perhaps, are for ever beginning their existence, and 
 wiU be the delight of children of future eras when 
 those of ours shall be streaks of sunset cloud ! 
 
 Verily, this is an enchanted land, unchanging amidst 
 the world's change, undisturbed amidst our wars and 
 factions. Santa Glaus has learned the secret of wise 
 government. Here dwells no common sense nor logic 
 no atomic theory nor doctrine of evolution. The 
 inhabitants of this kingdom know neither Hegel nor 
 Kant, yet theirs is the true philosophy of the uncon- 
 ditioned. The ship of humanity pitches in a heavy 
 sea, but these little people are the ballast that keep 
 her from rolling over. Germany has ever been the 
 home of toys let her beware lest her ambition move 
 them to emigration ! She may conquer Europe and 
 command the seas, but all shall not avail if she let 
 this little Noah's Ark escape her ports. In a few 
 years, more or less, her reign must come to an end ; 
 and Bismarck, for all his bluster, is not immortal ; but 
 if he lives long enough to drive Nutcracker and Sugar- 
 
SIDEWALKS AND ROADWAYS. 143 
 
 dolly out of Germany and it seems probable he may 
 not the conquest of many Europes would compensate 
 the loss ; for when Nutcracker and Sugar-dolly depart, 
 they will take the child-heart with them ; men will be 
 born old in the next generation : and we need not 
 pursue our speculations further, because those who 
 have never been children will not be apt to fall into 
 the absurdity of begetting any. 
 
 This is no fanciful warning ; the seeds of the catas- 
 trophe are already sown. At the Christmas fair last 
 year a hateful suspicion possessed me that the children 
 were not quite what they used to be ; they clustered 
 round the booths, indeed, and stared at the toys, but some 
 of them seemed half-ashamed of their interest, while 
 others were positively and brutally indifferent. I saw 
 a great peasant, six feet high, stand for ten minutes 
 with his mouth hanging open from pure delight and 
 astonishment at sight of a jumping-jack, which a 
 miserable little rascal, not seven years old, passed 
 by with hardly so much as a glance, I suppose to 
 spend his money on a topographical map of France. 
 As for the countryman, I believe to this day (though I 
 did not see him do it) that he ended by buying the 
 jumping-jack. Unfortunately, however, the small boys 
 will outlive the tall countrymen, and who will buy the 
 jumping-jacks then ? 
 
144 SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 x. 
 
 The vein we have fallen into is too sad a one for 
 this blessed season, and we must try to think of some- 
 thing else. The proprietors of the booths are always 
 an interesting study; and seem to be under no re- 
 strictions as regards either sex or age. I have seen a 
 candy-booth in charge of a boy so small that he was 
 obliged to mount on a chair to bring his head above 
 the counter; and he could walk out underneath it 
 without stooping. How he could bring himself to sell 
 what should have been to his mind priceless treasures, 
 is beyond my comprehension ; not only did he accom- 
 plish this feat, however, but he showed an aptitude 
 for business and a shrewdness which might have put 
 many an older practitioner to the blush. 
 
 There is a goodly number of grown-up men among 
 the merchants, and the most of them are unusually fat. 
 I suppose a dozen or twenty years of sitting behind a 
 counter in the open air, with no further occupation 
 save eating, smoking, and drinking beer, would go far 
 towards fattening a skeleton. One fellow I remember 
 (at least I remember his head and shoulders : the rest of 
 him if there were any rest was so completely hidden 
 behind the heaps of salt herrings and sausages which 
 formed his stock-in-trade as to suggest the idea that 
 he had resolved himself into them so far, and would 
 
SIDEWALKS AND ROADWAYS. 145 
 
 finish the process by and by) whose physiognomy was 
 overlaid with an amount of padded blubber such as 
 would have made a prime pair of Bath chaps look 
 famished in comparison. It was my fancy that he 
 was a good deal too fat to talk, and, indeed, I never 
 saw him so much as open his mouth. His eyes were 
 very fishy, and there was something of the sausage in 
 the modelling of his nose, and in his mottled com- 
 plexion. 
 
 The majority of the shop-keepers, however, seem to 
 be women of between twenty and forty years old, 
 all of them knitting on the interminable German 
 stocking. The spirits of the women are both depressed 
 and elevated more easily than the men's ; at all events, 
 the latter assume an air of phlegmatic indifference 
 under misfortune which few women are able to imitate. 
 In prosperity all grin alike, till one would think fate 
 could never again have the heart to frown upon them. 
 Nor do I suppose she ever does very seriously ; a rainy 
 day is the heaviest calamity which she is likely to 
 inflict upon them. To be sure, few things are more 
 uncomfortable and depressing than a rainy day at 
 a fair. The outlying wares must be covered over with 
 ugly black oilcloth, or gathered in out of sight ; the 
 water trickles through the cracks of the boards, and 
 drips exasperatingly down upon the empty counter : 
 the crowd of customers sensibly diminishes, and busi- 
 
 L 
 
146 SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 ness prospects are gloomy. What if the weather 
 continue in this mood till Christmas, leaving our boxes 
 full and our pockets empty ? But when the sun 
 breaks forth once more, and a brisk frost makes all 
 bright and dry again, what a change in these good 
 people's visages ! They have shortened an inch or 
 two, and now the booths put forth their leaves again, 
 like flowers in the morning. 
 
 After we have become familiar with the daylight 
 aspect of the fair, it is well to visit it after dark, when 
 the flaring lamps fantastically illuminate the long array 
 of sparkling and glowing merchandise, and reveal the 
 multitudinous faces of the shifting crowd ; and all is 
 projected against the sable back-ground of night with 
 an effect which is magical indeed, and renders the 
 scene at once more real and more visionary than ever. 
 What London or Paris can boast such streets as these, 
 where the whole house-line is one endless shop- window ? 
 where there is no inch of bare wall or vacant pave- 
 ment? Where else is such a solid wedge of life as 
 here such bustle and babble crowding and brilliancy ? 
 We are under unceasing pressure of shoulders, backs, 
 and fronts on every side. There are fifty human faces 
 within a radius of five feet from our own : and we 
 seem to tread upon a dense undergrowth of children. 
 A crowd such as this, whereof each individual is intent 
 upon his own private and particular affairs, and is not 
 
SIDEWALKS AND ROADWAYS. 147 
 
 observant of any one else, is as good as solitude or 
 better. It is only when a mob is more or less 
 inspired by some common sentiment or purpose, that 
 its unpleasant qualities become manifest. I mean, of 
 course, the morally unpleasant ones ; the physical 
 drawbacks are not so lightly got rid of. This Saxon 
 crowd has a larger proportion of elderly persons in it, 
 and of those who come on business rather than 
 pleasure, than would be the case with a similar gather- 
 ing in America or England. But we meet specimens 
 of every class and not a few nationalities of men. 
 Occasionally an American or an Englishman turns up, 
 more rarely with a lady on his arm. 
 
 I cherish agreeable recollections of a certain elderly 
 Englishman whom I used to meet every day at the 
 Christmas Fair, some six years ago. He was always 
 hand in hand with a beautiful little girl about ten years 
 old, whose fair skin and long yellow hair were well 
 contrasted with the ruddy geniality which glowed 
 in his complexion and twinkled in his jolly eyes, and 
 with the crisp whiteness of his beard and moustache. 
 His attire was invariably faultless, and he was evi- 
 dently not unconscious of the nicety of its adaptation 
 to his rather slender figure. A more prosperous-looking 
 old gentleman I have seldom seen ; and between him 
 and his fair-haired grandchild there was palpable 
 evidence of a very tender companionship and affection. 
 
143 SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 There were no two people at the fair who entered with 
 more zest into the spirit of the fun. The sympathy 
 of each enhanced the excitement and enjoyment of the 
 other. Early in the week they selected one of the 
 biggest and straightest trees in the whole Christmas 
 forest, and thenceforward until Christmas Eve they 
 bought such a quantity of toys, bonbons, and knick- 
 knacks as it makes one's heart warm to think of. 
 This pair of youthful personages contributed more 
 than all the rest of the visitors to making the Christ- 
 mas element of the fair an abiding reality for me. 
 Looking at them, it became impossible to doubt 
 that Christmas was something more than a word. 
 Their preoccupation and unconsciousness of obser- 
 vation were priceless evidence, and argument incon- 
 trovertible. 
 
 Not that other people fail to have a very good time. 
 Towards evening, the soldiers from the neighbouring 
 barracks get their furlough, and come down in their 
 dark scarlet-trimmed uniforms, with visored caps and 
 sparkling sword-hilts. Here, as elsewhere throughout 
 the world, their sway is supreme over the servant- 
 girl's heart. I never observed these humble lovers say 
 much to each other; but they stand holding each 
 other's hands, and evidently full of an exalted amia- 
 bility which is preferable to most conversation. The 
 soldiers have one marked advantage over the rest of the 
 
SIDEWALKS AND ROADWAYS. 149 
 
 Saxon nation they are neatly and tidily dressed. The 
 costume of the average non-military man is sadly 
 demoralised. During the winter he unfailingly makes 
 his appearance in a long voluminous garment having 
 sleeves like a coat, but otherwise anomalous. It 
 is lined throughout with fur, and has a fur collar 
 and cuffs, heavy enough to make a polar bear perspire. 
 Yet these Saxons, whose physical warmth appears to 
 be as defective as that of their affections, crawl about 
 in their great fur sacks from November to May : as 
 though with intent to retain the atmosphere of last 
 summer until the summer to come. Again, I find it 
 characteristic of them that they should rather be at 
 pains to prevent cold from getting in than to kindle 
 an inward warmth whereby to repel it. That genial 
 Englishman we spoke of just now, never wore any- 
 thing heavier than an immaculate velvet walking coat, 
 buttoned over his chest, and slanting down to the 
 pearl-grey perfection of his pantaloons. Even his 
 yellow kid gloves were half the time carried in one 
 hand. But the kindly ardour of his heart and like- 
 wise, doubtless, of the fine old crusted port which he 
 quaffed every day at dinner not only kept him 
 warm, but made him the cause of warmth in 
 others. . . . 
 
 We have lingered so long at this Christmas Fair, 
 
150 SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 that all opportunity for the sober prosecution of our 
 original programme is lost, and, for my own part, I 
 am glad of it. At best, we can only say of Dresden 
 streets as of the woes of Troy, " forsitan ct Jiccc olini 
 meminisse juvabit" If we praise them, it must be 
 negatively thus : The new districts are even more 
 uninteresting than the old, and the old are, if possible, 
 more abominably unsavoury than the new. Such 
 language, whether flattering or not, is hardly in har- 
 mony with the spirit of the season, and we are glad 
 to be spared the use of it. 
 
 I feel tempted, on the other hand, to pronounce at 
 this point a eulogistic peroration on the Saxon Christ- 
 mas ; pointing out that insomuch as they (in common 
 with other Teutons) lay more stress on Christmas 
 celebrations than any other people, it logically follows 
 that they are inspired with a larger portion of the 
 Christian spirit, and of that simple charity which 
 gives for pure love of giving. If I do not say 
 this, it is because the Saxons would themselves be the 
 last to comprehend the meaning of such an imputa- 
 tion, and the first to ridicule it when they did. That 
 part of charity which consists in making presents is, 
 with them, but another name for barter. Roche- 
 foucauld has observed (and he must have had Saxony 
 in his eye at the time) that gratitude is a keen sense 
 of favours to come; and he might have added still 
 
SIDEWALKS AND ROADWAYS. 151 
 
 making the same tacit application that generosity 
 is a shrewd calculation of probable returns. A Saxon 
 once told me that he spent more money at Christmas 
 than during all the rest of the year; but added, with 
 touching naivete, that he more than got it back 
 again : 
 
 " Say I have twenty friends : in buying each of 
 them a present I expend my two-hundred thaler, 
 reserved for the purpose. Good. Each, now, gives 
 me a present in return; I appraise their value, and 
 nine times from ten I find myself ten thaler to the 
 good. It is a science, Sir ! " 
 
 This seems plausible, though it would seem as if some 
 one among the twenty must be a sufferer ; but all life 
 is a lottery. And putting the question of pecuniary 
 profit in the background for a moment shall we 
 count as nothing all that sweet incense of flattery and 
 compliment which the occasion warrants us in burn- 
 ing beneath one another's noses ? I trow not, for only 
 under the circumstances we have supposed do such 
 compliments acquire their full flavour. It is well 
 enough for my friend to call me generous, but half 
 my enjoyment of his recognition is destroyed if I am 
 out of pocket by my generosity. What the world 
 needs is and it may thank the Saxon nation for the 
 hint a new set of virtues, guaranteed to do all the 
 work of ordinary virtues, and to receive all their meed 
 
152 SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 of praise ; but ensured against being of the slightest 
 risk or inconvenience to their owner. To sit still, and 
 declare that virtue is its own reward, is folly, and weak 
 folly; we must set to work, and make it its own. 
 reward and a good, solid, marketable reward too ! 
 
IV. 
 
 STONE AND PLASTER. 
 
 r | ^HERE is a kind of ugliness which is practically 
 invisible. It is not ugliness of the grotesque, 
 fascinating, or forcible order; its characteristics are 
 negative and probably indescribable. It is always 
 tinctured strongly with conventionality, and has a 
 mildly depressing effect rather than an actively ex- 
 asperating one : it partakes more of the nature of an 
 incubus than of an irritant. It is an ugliness, in short, 
 which, instead of compelling our eyes at the same 
 time that it revolts them, simply causes us not to see 
 it. There are vast numbers of persons in the world, 
 good, plain persons, with no piquancy or individuality 
 of aspect, with whom we may converse for hours or 
 years, looking straight at them all the time, yet never 
 actually seeing them. Their image is formed on the 
 physical retina, but the mind's eye refuses to take 
 note of them; and the consequence is an undefined 
 
154 SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 feeling of dejection, expressing itself, perhaps, in a 
 sigh or even an irrepressible yawn. 
 
 I think the sombre humour which is apt to settle 
 upon us after a little acquaintance with Dresden may 
 be traceable to the invisible ugliness, I will not say of 
 its people, but of its houses. They curiously elude 
 our observation, even when we strive to fix our 
 regards upon them. We walk street after street, 
 with all our eyes about us (so we fancy), and yet 
 on reaching home we cannot call up the picture of 
 any one among the hundreds of buildings which we 
 have passed. They are featureless, bare, and neutral- 
 tinted, and present no handle for memory to catch 
 them by. They do not make our nerves prick with 
 anguish and our brows flush, as do the palatial resi- 
 dences in New York and elsewhere ; a little stimulus 
 of that sort once in a while would be healthful. They 
 deaden us by communication of their own deadness, 
 and it is a mystery how living men built them or can 
 live in them. 
 
 The best way to get at them is to put them side by 
 side with houses of our own, and note the differences. 
 These differences all begin from the fundamental dif- 
 ference between the Saxon and the Anglo-Saxon 
 modes of living. They live in layers, we in rows; 
 and when we have analysed all the issues of this 
 variance, we shall have done much towards account- 
 
 
STONE AND PLASTER. 155 
 
 ing for things of far greater importance. In some 
 respects the Saxons have the advantage of us. Our 
 city houses are no better than an array of pigeon- 
 holes ranged interminably side by side; the close 
 assemblage of pompous doorways, each with its little 
 flight of steps, its porch, and its twelve feet of area 
 railings, fatigues the eye. There is a constant re- 
 petition, but no broad uniformity. Moreover, the fact 
 that the houses are clothed only in front, and are 
 stark naked behind and at the sides, keeps us in a 
 state of constant nervous apprehension. We do our 
 best to see only the brown stone pinafores, and to 
 ignore the bare red brick ; but the effort is no less 
 futile than it is wearisome. The bareness haunts us, 
 until the very pinafores seem transparent. 
 
 "Undoubtedly they manage this matter much better 
 in Dresden. They are as niggard of their doors as 
 though they were made of gold. One door to a 
 frontage of an hundred windows; and instead of a 
 joining together of twenty or more sections of imita- 
 tion stone cornices of various designs, here we have a 
 single great bulging, rambling, red-tiled roof, covering 
 the whole building ; with rank upon rank of dormer- 
 windows and fantastic chimneys figuring against the 
 sky. Whatever its failings, at all events, the house is 
 coherent and conceivable. It has a back, of course, 
 but an honest back, such as we are not ashamed to 
 
156 SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 look at. Three or four of these caravansaries form a 
 block ; and there is an absence of fussy detail about 
 them at which the harassed New Yorker may well 
 rejoice. The economy in doors extends itself to door 
 numbers. One would suppose that, let them swell 
 their biggest, these would remain small enough ; but 
 they are rigorously decimated by a free application of 
 the alphabet. If the first door in the block is No. 7, 
 the next is not No. S, but No. 7 A, and the third No. TB, 
 and so on up to G. High numbers are considered 
 vulgar, but letters may be supposed to denote archi- 
 tectural blue blood. 
 
 The doorways are flush with the sidewalk ; if there 
 are steps, they are within the house-line; and the 
 houses never set back behind a railing as with us. 
 They seem to have grown since they were first put 
 down, and to have filled out all spare room. The larger 
 houses are built round three sides of a court, with 
 which the front door communicates. But houses in 
 Dresden are under no restrictions as regards the 
 ground-plan. Any geometrical figure is good enough 
 for them ; and the Royal Palace, already referred to, 
 aifords them an example of license in this direction 
 which it would be hard to outdo. The crookedness of 
 the streets abets the eccentricity ; and yet the most 
 extravagant sprawler of them all seems more human 
 than our endless repetition of pigeon-holes. 
 
STONE AND PLASTER. 157 
 
 The houses are built of coarse sandstone, quarried 
 from the cliffs of Saxon Switzerland, and brought 
 thence on canal boats. The interior is patched here 
 and there with brick, while to the outside is applied a 
 thick layer of grey or yellow plaster, whose dead 
 surface is sometimes relieved by arabesques and 
 friezes in low relief, or perhaps a statuette or two in a 
 shallow niche. This facade is from time to time over- 
 smeared with a staring coat of paint, causing it to 
 look unnaturally and even violently clean for a month 
 or so, but not improving it from an aesthetic point of 
 view. In the more modern villas, however, which 
 line the approach to the Royal Park, the plaster is 
 generally replaced by a fine kind of stone, dark cream- 
 colour, and better as a building material than our 
 American yellow or brown stone. These villas are 
 four-square, detached, two-storied structures, each in 
 the midst of its garden, and surrounded by an irre- 
 proachable iron railing. The roofs are either French or 
 hip, slated and regular ; the carriage-drive is smoothly 
 paved with a mosaic of black and white ; there is a 
 fountain on the lawn ; a handsome porch ; and a 
 balcony full of flowers. They more resemble the 
 wooden country seats on the outskirts of American 
 cities than anything in England ; there is none of the 
 English passion for seclusion and reserve ; no impene- 
 trable hedges, no ivy screens, nor canopy of foliage. 
 
153 SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 Everything is bare, open, and visible, and seems to 
 invite inspection, like a handsome immodest woman. 
 We can even look through the plate-glass windows 
 and see the painted ceilings and satin-wood doors. 
 
 But it is to the city houses that we must look for traits 
 essentially Saxon. Balconies .they generally have, 
 fitted to the drawing-room windows of the successive 
 Etages, and supported on stone cantalevers. Not 
 always trustworthily supported, however ; for moisture 
 rots the stone, and the balconies occasionally come 
 down, to the destruction of whatever is on them or 
 beneath them. Meanwhile they are a pleasant refuge 
 in summer; we sit chatting, smoking, and sipping 
 beer among the flower-pots as the sun goes down, and 
 long after the stars are out. They may even be used 
 as supper rooms when the day has been very hot, and 
 the company is not too numerous. If we have lived 
 long in Dresden, it will not discompose us that every 
 passer-by in the street may see how our table is fur- 
 nished. 
 
 II. 
 
 Twenty families sometimes live under one roof; and 
 the same front door serves for all. Through it must 
 pass alike the Prince on the Bel-etage, the cobbler in 
 the basement, and the seamstress who lives in the 
 attic. This is a state of things which deserves consi- 
 
STONE AND PLASTER. 159 
 
 deration. A house-door, which is common property, 
 which stands agape for any chance wayfarer to peer 
 through nay, whose threshold is no more sacred than 
 the public kerbstone ! we are democratic in America, 
 but I think the Saxons are in advance of us here. So 
 far as I have observed^ New Yorkers and Bostonians 
 are as careful of their doors, and as chary of them as 
 is a pretty young woman of her lips. I would 
 as lief share my parlour with a stranger, as be liable 
 to meet him on my stairway, or to rub shoulders 
 with him over my threshold; especially when his 
 right to be there is as good as mine. There is an 
 indelicacy about it, as if a dozen or twenty people were 
 all to eat and speak through one mouth. The street 
 does not stop outside the house; it eddies into the 
 hall, and forces its dirty current up stairs. True, there 
 is another door within, but after we have given up 
 our outworks, few people will believe in the genuine- 
 ness of our inner defences. The spell of reserve is 
 broken. 
 
 This may be esteemed a fanciful objection to the 
 " Flat " system, which, I see, is gaining favour in 
 America on the score of cheapness and compactness. 
 If we will frankly call such establishments hotels, 
 we may at least escape the evil of growing to believe 
 them homes. Home is no less sacred a word than ever, 
 though, like other English words nowadays, it is 
 
160 SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 getting to be much desecrated in the appliance ; and I 
 fear these common doors, standing always ajar, may 
 let escape many delicate beauties and refinements whose 
 value is not fanciful, but inestimable. 
 
 To be sure, hall-porters have lately been introduced 
 in the more modern and pretentious houses, whose 
 business it is to keep the door shut, and only to open 
 it when somebody wishes to come in, and not to admit 
 beggars or disreputable persons. Their position is not 
 a sinecure. I made the acquaintance of a Dresden 
 hall-porter, and observed his proceedings for a whole 
 year. He was a small, cringing, hook-nosed man, 
 with thick straight black hair, short black beard, and 
 a ghastly pallor of complexion which no stress of cir- 
 cumstances could ever modify. He cultivated that 
 philosopher's desideratum, a continual smile, and he 
 was full of becks, nods, obeisances, and grimaces. 
 He rose at five in summer, and, I believe, not more 
 than an hour later in winter. Why so early, I know 
 not ; there seemed not much to do besides sweeping 
 out the hall, knocking the door-mat against the jamb, 
 and exchanging a morning greeting with the char- 
 woman of the house opposite. But he was a married 
 man, and may have had some household jobs of his 
 own to attend to. He and his wife lived in two rooms 
 adjoining the hall-way, so narrow and close that any 
 respectable house-rat would have turned up his nose 
 
STONE AND PLASTER. 161 
 
 at them. The porter followed some small handicraft 
 or other, whereby to eke out his salary ; and at odd 
 moments I could see him at the side window, working 
 away, but ever keeping an eye to the sidewalk for 
 visitors. He could lift the door-latch without leaving 
 his seat, by means of a wire pulley, and when a 
 denizen of the house approached , the door would 
 spring open as if to welcome an old friend, before he 
 could lay his hand to the bell handle ; but strangers 
 had to ring. In winter, I fear the porter had a sour 
 meagre time of it. Besides the extra work of clearing 
 the ice and snow, there was the cold, which he could 
 not do away with. But in summer he was happier ; 
 he wore a striped linen jacket and a long dirty apron, 
 and was very active with his broom, and his street 
 watering-pot. He had a great circle of acquaintances, 
 and his little hall-room had its fill of visitors at all 
 times. He was a very sink of private information, 
 knew all that the housemaids of the various etages 
 could tell him, and had understandings with all 
 the tradesmen's boys who brought parcels for mem- 
 bers of the household. Whether there was an escape- 
 pipe for this deluge of confidences, must have been a 
 question of some moment to those who were discussed. 
 All at once a baby was born ; it looked as if nothing 
 could prevent its dying instantly ; but it lived, and I 
 daresay is alive now. The little porter was as proud 
 
 M 
 
1 62 SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 of his baby as though there had been the germ of a 
 Goethe in it ; he held it constantly in his arms, and 
 clucked at it, and dandled it unweariably. All the 
 gossips admired it, and the people in the house stopped 
 to smile at it as they passed through the hall. I doubt 
 not that various bits of baby-furniture, useful or 
 playful, found their way down-stairs from the upper 
 floors ; for babies make even Saxons forget themselves 
 for a moment. No doubt, too, any little deficiency of 
 water in the cisterns, or irregularity in the gas- 
 lighting, or delay in bringing up letters and visiting- 
 cards, was condoned for a time. The porter might 
 reasonably have wished that the baby should be 
 renewed as often as once every four or five months. 
 
 Next to the baby, the porter's trump card was a 
 gigantic dog, a cross between a Newfoundland and a 
 Saint Bernard. He was as big as a Shetland pony, 
 and lay majestically about the hall, or stalked lion-like 
 up and down the sidewalk. The chief objection to 
 him was that he was above keeping himself clean, and 
 had no valet to do it for him ; and whoever made bold 
 to caress him had reason to remember it for the rest 
 of the day. Nevertheless, this huge beast slept in the 
 porter's room, filling up all the space unoccupied by 
 the porter himself; and, considering that fresh air was 
 rigorously excluded in summer as well as in winter, 
 it was a constant surprise to me to see the porter 
 
STONE AND PLASTER. 163 
 
 appear, morning after morning, apparently no worse 
 off than when he went to bed. But I do the dog 
 injustice ; it was he who suffered and degenerated ; 
 why should he be forced to share his kennel with the 
 porter ? There was in him a capacity for better things ; 
 for when the porter watered the lawn at the back of 
 the house with the garden hose-pipe, the dog would 
 rush into the line of the stream and take it point-blank 
 on his muzzle, barking and jumping with delight. 
 But the porter never took the hint home to himself, 
 nor understood, I suppose, what pleasure the dog could 
 find in being wetted. 
 
 The porter's bearing towards the various inhabitants 
 of the house was accurately graduated in accordance 
 with their elevation above the ground floor. With 
 the waifs of the attic he was hail-fellow-well-met. 
 Pleasantly affable was his demeanour to the respectable 
 families on the third ttage, whose rent did not exceed 
 150 a year. The second floor, at 300, commanded 
 his cordial respect and good offices ; while speechless, 
 abject reverence, and a blue dress-coat with brass 
 buttons, fail to express his state of mind towards the 
 six-hundred-pounders of the first landing. This be- 
 haviour of his was not so much acquired, as an instinct. 
 The personality of its recipients had nothing to do 
 with it ; were Agamemnon, on the first etage, to 
 change places with Thersites in the attic, our porter 
 
164 SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 would slap the king of men on the back at their next 
 meeting, and hustle him out of the way of Thersites, 
 when the latter came down to his carriage. Moreover, 
 if Agamemnon were a Saxon, he would not dream of 
 getting indignant at this novel treatment. 
 
 But hall-porters do not strike at the root of this 
 common-door evil ; on the contrary, by pruning away 
 the ranker leaves, they make the ill weed grow the 
 stronger. The door is still open to whomsoever chooses 
 to enter, and would be just as common, were an 
 especial passport from Berlin necessary for every 
 crossing of the threshold. If decency is to be outraged, 
 it is of no real moment whether it be done directly or 
 indirectly. There is a vast moral advantage in the 
 feeling that our home is our own, from the garden-gate 
 to the bed-chamber. Any infringement thereof is a 
 first step towards communism ; and I do not believe 
 that a person of refinement can become accustomed to 
 the " Flat " system without undergoing more or less 
 abrasion or what is worse, hardening of the moral 
 cuticle. Between vertical and horizontal living there 
 is even more of a difference than of a distinction. To 
 sit between two men one on the right hand, the other 
 on the left is endurable ; but not so the being sand- 
 wiched, prone, over one man and underneath the other. 
 We can neither raise our eyes to heaven, nor set our 
 feet upon the earth ; a human body intercepts us in 
 
STONE AND PLASTER. 165 
 
 both directions. Surely one door is not enough for so 
 great an escape as is needed here. 
 
 in. 
 
 In these houses people begin to live beneath the 
 level of the pavement, and thence ascend until scarce 
 a tile intervenes between them and heaven. The 
 basement people must take degraded views of life. 
 They see only feet and legs and dirty petticoats, and 
 their window panes are spattered with mud from the 
 sidewalk. Living up to their necks in earth must 
 considerably impede them in the race, not to speak of 
 the crushing weight of five or six stories overhead. 
 If they were deeper down it would not be so bad, for 
 there is a mystery about the depths of our mother 
 earth a blind recognition, perhaps, of the interest of 
 buried ages : and we get so much from the earth 
 everything except our souls, let us say that what 
 concerns her is our concern also. Miners are a fine 
 symbol of materialism. They live in the earth earth 
 is beneath their feet, around and above them ; no 
 firmament too high to be reached with a ladder ; many ' 
 strange things, but none that may not be handled ; a 
 world of facts, wherein they stand self-contained and 
 gloomily serene. As we, sitting indoors, pity the 
 wayfarers exposed to the inclemency without, so do 
 these miners pity and despise us, exposed to the blue 
 
1 66 SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 and white glare of the bold heavens, stared out of 
 countenance by sun and moon, blown by winds and 
 wet with rain. Who can sympathize with the sky ? 
 Yet sooner or later all must revisit the surface, if only 
 to be buried there. 
 
 But the grave and taciturn miners, whom we often 
 meet on our walks towards Tharandt, with their odd 
 costume and gruff " Gliick auf ! " are a very different 
 race from the dwellers in basements. These poor 
 creatures, being half in and half out, can claim neither 
 heaven nor earth, but are exposed to the wrath of 
 both. The feverish damps have entered into their 
 blood, and their sallow faces, as they peer up at us 
 from the underground windows, seem more clay than 
 flesh. I am, however, able to record one cheerful 
 exception, which will help us to take leave of the 
 basements with a pleasant savour in our nostrils. It 
 is on the north-eastern corner of See and Waisen- 
 hausstrasse. Here the sidewalk consists partly of a 
 grating, in passing over which a most appetising odour 
 salutes us. We glance downwards through a sub- 
 terranean window, where behold two or three stalwart 
 
 
 
 cooks in white aprons and paper caps, frying delec- 
 table veal cutlets over a glowing range. The window 
 is open at the top, and the spiritual essence of the 
 cutlets rises through the aperture to delight our noses. 
 As we pause to sniff once more, the fattest of the cooks 
 
STONE AND PLASTER. 167 
 
 tips back his paper cap and wipes his sweating brow 
 with his warm bare arm. Phew! here, at all events, 
 is more flesh than clay. The fat cook's glance meets 
 ours, and we exchange a sociable grin. He is cliff of 
 the Victoria Keller, and we know his cutlets of old. 
 
 IV. 
 
 In the houses which are only dwelling-houses, the 
 next step above the basement is to the Parterre, which 
 is generally raised some four or five feet above the 
 sidewalk level. But the great mass of houses in the 
 city are shops in their lower story, and attain the 
 heights of gentility only after climbing a flight of 
 stairs. There is a subdued mellow splendour about 
 Dresden shops such as I have not seen exactly 
 paralleled anywhere else. Perhaps the gloom of the 
 narrow streets and the musty drab colour of the houses 
 enhance these splendid windows by contrast. But the 
 shopkeepers give much time and thought to the 
 artistic arrangement of their wares; it is a matter 
 which they understand, and into which they can put 
 their whole souls, and the result does them credit. 
 Each window is a picture, with height, depth, breadth, 
 and chiaro-oscuro all complete : and far more attractive 
 pictures, to most people, than those on the walls of the 
 Gallery. Moreover, the details are altered every 
 morning, and at longer intervals there is a re-casting 
 
1 68 SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 of the entire design ; so that the fascination of life is 
 added to the other fascinations. And, finally, the 
 shops are so immediately accessible that it seems 
 rather easier to go into them than not. Our timidity 
 is not daunted by imposing doorways, nor is our inertia 
 discouraged by dignified flights of steps and broad 
 approaches. Within, we take off our hats, say good 
 morning, and feel perfectly at home. However fine 
 the wares may be, we are distracted by no grandeur 
 of architecture ; and we are waited on by attendants, 
 not by ladies and gentlemen. We bid adieu at 
 parting, and hardly realize, as we regain the sidewalk, 
 that we have actually been shopping at all. 
 
 These are some of the lights of the picture ; there 
 are shadows heavy ones ! After some deliberation, 
 however, I think there will be little use in attempting 
 to reproduce them. Those whose lives have been 
 crossed by them will not care to have the experience 
 recalled; while the uninitiated can never be brought 
 to believe in their depth and blackness. Be it merely 
 observed, therefore, that Dresden shopkeepers are 
 sufficiently inspired with a desire to prosper in trade. 
 It may be conjectured that they give their minds to 
 their business ; certainly the reproach of discursive 
 attainments can not be brought against them. Their 
 heads, so far as intellectual value is concerned, are 
 about on a par with the silver effigies on the thaler 
 
STONE AND PLASTER. 169 
 
 which they cherish. I have somewhere seen it asserted 
 that the German tradesman is notably of a scientific, 
 philosophic, ' and aesthetic turn, and that, in the inter- 
 vals of labour, he snatches up his volume of Rosencranz, 
 Lemcke, Bolzmann, or Goethe, from the perusal of 
 which the very chink of coin will scarcely win him. 
 
 So far as my observation goes, this is a cruel and 
 unfounded aspersion upon the character of a guild 
 whose singleness of purpose has profoundly im- 
 pressed me. They do not know what Science and 
 Philosophy are. They will not read even a novel, nor 
 yet a newspaper, unless it be the Boerse, Zeitung. 
 They look at the pictures in Kladdera latsch, but do 
 not understand the political allusions. Their eyes 
 are dull to the culture and progress of the world, and, 
 to all that is above the world, wholly blind. But 
 they can spy a bargain through a stone wall, and a 
 thievish advantage through the lid of a coffin. Never- 
 theless, I am of opinion that a wider culture might 
 help them to be even more truly themselves than they 
 are now. Beautiful as is the untutored earnestness 
 of their character to the eye of the psychologist, to 
 the man of the world they seem deficient in the 
 breadth and grasp of mind which w r ould enable them 
 most effectively to carrry out their designs. With all 
 the disposition to steal that an ardent Saxon nature 
 can have, they lack the wisdom so to commit their 
 
i;o SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 thefts as to secure the largest and most permanent 
 returns. There is a rugged directness in the way 
 they pick our pockets which at first charms us by its 
 naivete, but ends with wounding our feelings and 
 lowering our self-esteem. They take so little trouble 
 to make their lies plausible, that we cannot pretend 
 to believe them without blushing. It is easy to pay 
 a bill of three times the amount of the original 
 charges ; but to pay again and again for things which 
 we never had, and which it is not even feigned that 
 we ever had, gets to be almost painfully embarrassing. 
 If I lay my purse upon the counter, it would evince a 
 delicacy of sentiment in the shopkeeper to wait until 
 I had turned away my eyes before taking it. Such a, 
 course would be to his advantage, besides ; for I could 
 then ignore the theft, and we could continue our rela- 
 tions with the same frankness and cordiality as before, 
 and in due course of time I might let him steal my 
 purse again. But openly to transfer it to his till, 
 while I am looking straight at it, seems to me tanta- 
 mount to a wanton rupture of our acquaintance. 
 There is originality, there is vigour, there is noble 
 simplicity in the act, if you will ; but our effete 
 civilization is apt to forget its beauties in shuddering 
 at its lack of clothing. 
 
 This ruggedness is largely fostered, no doubt, by the 
 continual shifting of the foreign population. A cus- 
 
STONE AND PLASTER. 171 
 
 tomer who is here to-day and gone to-morrow must 
 evidently be robbed without delay ; and it makes 
 little difference how, since there will be another to 
 take his place. So demoralising is travel to the places 
 which are travelled through ! If a permanent colony 
 of philanthropic English and Americans would esta- 
 blish themselves in Dresden, I question not that, in 
 the course of a few years, the whole mercantile com- 
 munity would be educated into such accomplished 
 thieves that they could steal twice as much as now, 
 without creating a tithe of the awkwardness and mis- 
 understanding which at present exist. Persons in search 
 of a mission would do well to ponder this enterprise. 
 
 v. 
 
 Passing over, then, the darker shadows appertaining 
 to the Dresden merchant guild, let us revert to the 
 cheery spectacle of the shop windows. The mercers' 
 are the best off for colour; 'they sometimes look like 
 giant rosettes, with tints sweetly harmonised. There 
 is a bald-headed gentleman on Seestrasse who arranges 
 his silks in a fresh combination every morning, and 
 then steps into the street and contemplates the effect 
 with side-long glances and hands clasped in silent 
 rapture at his shirt-bosom. He forgets that his head 
 is hatless not to mention its haiiiessness ; he does 
 not heed the unsympathetic world-stream, hurrying 
 
1/2 SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 }>ast ; the universe is an unstable vision, but his silks 
 are real, are beautiful, are tastefully arranged. We 
 cannot withhold our respect from this man. He is. as 
 sincere an enthusiast as Luther or Mahomet, and no 
 less estimable in his degree. Undoubtedly he is a 
 happier man than either, for I never saw him dissatis- 
 fied with his work. 
 
 But the windows of the stationers' shops are more 
 generally attractive. Here is a world of photographs 
 from life, from still-life, and from art, ancient and 
 modern. There is a sympathy between photographs 
 and travelling; they are mathematical functions of 
 each other. Dresden photographs are remarkable for 
 their softness and delicate tone qualities which 
 appear to depend in some measure upon the atmo- 
 sphere, but still more, I fancy, upon the care and skill 
 wherewith they are " finished " in India ink and 
 white. There is a certain Professor Sclmrig, not 
 the only good man of his name in Dresden, whose 
 profession seems to.be to make crayon copies of the 
 more famous pictures in the . Gallery ; and these 
 crayons are diligently photographed in every grada- 
 tion of size. The Professor is sometimes very feli- 
 citous, but within the last year photographs have 
 been taken from the famous originals ; and though 
 they appear rough and stained and obscure, there is 
 always a gleam of divine expression somewhere about 
 
STONE AND PLASTER. 173 
 
 them, which transcends the art of the most curious 
 copyist. Besides these, there are a great many of 
 Goupil's French reproductions, and a whole army of 
 female deities, as well of this as of more primitive 
 ages. It is a singular fact that the wholly naked god- 
 desses of ancient mythology look incomparably more 
 modest than do the half-clothed divinities of to-day. 
 The reason may be that the former were never aware 
 that their unconsciousness would one day be photo- 
 graphed ; but what a shame that our modern nymphs 
 should labour under so embarrassing a disadvantage I 
 An artistic fruit more native to Dresden is the 
 china-painting, of which there are many exhibitions 
 in town. It is all copying- work, save for such origi- 
 nality as may belong to an inaccurate imitation. 
 Accuracy, indeed, is not aimed at ; for even if attained 
 in the painting, the subsequent baking would warp it 
 wrong again. But the effects produced are marvel- 
 lously soft, glowing, and pure ; and such brilliant 
 falsehoods are generally preferred to the black-and- 
 white truths of photography. Justly so, perhaps, 
 since black-and-white is not the whole truth, and 
 colour is often of more significance than form. A new 
 application of this art is to copying cartes-de-visite, 
 with better success than might be expected. The 
 most satisfactory results are with the faces of old 
 people and young children : in the first the furrows 
 
174 SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 and wrinkles are guiding-lines to the draughtsman ; 
 in the others there are few fixed and definite traits in 
 which to err. But the subtle curves and changing, 
 yet expressive, contours of youth make game of the 
 artist's efforts. The best thing to do with paintings of 
 this kind is to inlay them as medallions in ebony and 
 marqueterie cabinets. So placed, they look like great 
 jewels, and any minor inaccuracies are unnoticeable. 
 
 As for the Dresden that is, the Meissen porcelain 
 it is too delicate a topic for such rough notes as these. 
 I went to Meissen once, and saw it made and painted. 
 I walked up and down long cool corridors, and peeped 
 into oblong rooms, where five hundred sickly young 
 men are always at work, each repeating for ever his 
 especial detail, and never getting a step beyond it. I 
 saw little legs and arms and heads and trunks come 
 out perfect from separate moulds, and presently build 
 themselves into a pigmy man or woman. In another 
 apartment I saw flowers painted so rapidly and well, 
 that they seemed to blossom beneath the painter's 
 fingers. No flower-painting surpasses the best work 
 of these young fellows for they almost all are young. 
 They apotheosise Watteau, too, making him out a 
 more cunning artist than he was. I am speaking of 
 the flat work ; the raised flowers are hideous, indecent, 
 and soulless. It is no small labour to model them, 
 and wonders of skill they are ; but what sort of a 
 
STONE AND PLASTER. 175 
 
 Frankenstein must he have been who first conceived 
 and carried out the idea of making them ! No flowers 
 grow on his grave, I think ; but it would have been 
 poetical justice to bury him in a heap of his own roses. 
 
 The little porcelain people are not so objectionable, 
 except when they are made to pose at ease on the 
 precipitous slopes of slippery vases. They are much 
 better before baking than afterwards, however, for they 
 emerge from the fiery furnace with a highly polished 
 surface, which is beautiful in itself, but far too lustrous 
 to be human. ... I will not moralize here ; but 
 on the whole I wish a bull would get into the Messien 
 china-shop and smash everything except the simple 
 flower-painted vases and dishes. There is one vase 
 with a flower- wreath round it, which seems just to 
 have been dropped there, fresh, fragrant, and dewy 
 from some Juliet's garden a wreath which should 
 immortalize him who created it. " Ja," assents our 
 Saxon conductor, " es ist ja wunderschoen ; but here, 
 best sir, here is what far outdoes the nature ; behold 
 it, the pride of our manufactory a porcelain violet, 
 modelled by hand, tinted to the life^ baked, glazed, 
 perfect ! Verily a masterpiece ; and to think that a 
 trumpery, good-for-nothing little violet should have 
 inspired a work of art like that! Strange oh, 
 wonderful ! " 
 
 It is strange, indeed. However, we are not in 
 
i;6 SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 Meissen. In Dresden is only one legitimate porcelain 
 shop, containing specimens of all the work produced. 
 After the vases, the things best worth studying are a- 
 pair of Chinese personages a lady and gentleman 
 who squat cross-legged on porcelain cushions, smiling 
 broadly, and hanging their hands as only the Chinese 
 can. We jog them a little, and instantly they become 
 alive they move ! They wag their grinning heads 
 and stick out their pointed red tongues with a jolly, 
 leering, Chinese impropriety impossible to describe. 
 Their hands move up and down in a slow ecstacy of 
 ineffable Mongolian significance. Really it is an im- 
 pressive sight : we see them long afterwards, wagging 
 and leering at us, in our dreams. The unanswerable 
 question is, which of the two is the more scandalously 
 fascinating ? 
 
 Next to this happy pair, I like an epergne, where 
 three charming young women the Graces, by their 
 costume embrace a thick column which expands 
 above into a dish. A most comfortable design ; for it 
 always appears to me that Aglaia, Thalia, and 
 Euphrosyne have got hold of a round German stove, 
 and are warming their pretty little porcelain stomachs 
 against it. None of the ancient sculptors have repre- 
 sented them doing anything half so cosy and sensible. 
 The notion gives the group just that touch of humour 
 which it requires to be interesting. Beauty, simple 
 
 j 
 
STONE AND PLASTER. 177 
 
 and severe, should never be attempted in tinted, melo- 
 dratnatic sculpture such as this : our Saxon artists, 
 though, can in no wise be brought to believe it. They 
 enjoy sentimentality more than fun ; and this is one 
 reason why their sentimentality is so sickly. 
 
 They succeed better with meerschaum. The goddess 
 Nicotine has a fund of good sense, which prompts her, 
 as a general thing, to put a smile, either broad or 
 latent, into the carving of her pipes and cigar-holders. 
 The material is more beautiful than either marble or 
 porcelain, and is delightful to work in. A man of 
 leisure, education, and refinement might benefit both 
 himself and the world by devoting his whole attention 
 to cutting and polishing meerschaum. There is un- 
 limited field for inventive design, for taste, for humour, 
 for manual skill and delicacy. And how pleasant to 
 reflect that each pipe, over which we thought and 
 laboured our best, will become the bosom friend of 
 some genial, appreciative fellow, who will discover its 
 good points, and be proud of them, and love them. 
 For all good smokers are married to their pipe ; are 
 sensitive to its critics, and jealous of its rivals. And 
 when the pipe is worthy of affection, it endears itself 
 ever more and more ; and though it be coloured black 
 with nicotine, is tinged yet more deeply with the 
 rich essence of mellow reminiscences and comfortable 
 associations. 
 
 N 
 
SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 The Viennese do their work well, and perhaps have 
 a special knack at it. There was once, in this window 
 which we are now contemplating, a Skye terrier's- 
 head, about the size of a clenched fist, with mouth 
 half open and hair on end, which only needed a body 
 to begin barking. It was bought by a Scotchman for 
 twelve pounds, which, if the animal was of the true- 
 meerschaum breed, was dog-cheap. This question of 
 genuineness, by the way, is one which every tyro- 
 believes he can settle at a glance. There are, he 
 tells you, a few simple and infallible tests, easily 
 learnt and readily applied ; he talks about weight, tint, 
 texture, sponginess; and assures you that if you 
 are ever taken in, only your own carelessness is to- 
 blame. 
 
 It is a fallacy from beginning to end. There is no- 
 way of " telling " a meerschaum, except to smoke it 
 for at least a year. We may amuse ourselves with 
 applying tests, if we like, but they will demonstrate 
 only our fatuity. The dealer is as impotent to decide 
 as anybody, so far as judgment by inspection goes, 
 unless he be prompted by the maker. But even the 
 maker will be at a loss between two pipes, the history 
 of whose making he has forgotten. We might go 
 back still farther, and ascribe the only trustworthy 
 knowledge to the Natolian miner, who digs the clay 
 out of the earth. Meerschaum is like a woman's^ 
 
STONE AND PLASTER. 179 
 
 heart as soft, as light, as brittle, and as enigmatic, 
 and only time and use can prove it true. 
 
 Pipes are bought chiefly by foreigners ; Germans 
 use meerschaum in the form of cigar-holders 
 " Spitzen," they call them. Spitzen are economical, 
 but not otherwise desirable ; they enable us to smoke 
 our cigar to the bitter end, but they are an unneces- 
 sary and troublesome encumbrance. Nevertheless, 
 they are popular, for they colour more evenly and 
 further towards the mouth than pipes do, and they 
 are more striking in appearance. But I scarcely 
 think they insinuate themselves far into their owners' 
 secret affections ; a man of sentiment may have 
 vanity enough to wear one in public, but in private 
 he will not be bothered with it. Coarse, hard 
 men, devoid of sentiment, and of the fine quality 
 which can appreciate the quiet charms of a pipe, are 
 precisely fitted to enjoy the ostentation of a Spitze. 
 
 Tobacco plays so prominent a role in a Saxon's life 
 so perfumes the air and impregnates the lungs that 
 we are insensibly led to discuss it at some length. 
 Probably there are not ten righteous men in Dresden 
 who do not smoke or snuff chewing, luckily, is un- 
 known, though I believe the practice originated here- 
 abouts. I have often met on the street a hundred men 
 in succession, no one without his cigar. Cigar-smoking, 
 it should be observed, is not an expensive habit in 
 
i8o SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 Dresden ; it may be indulged in to excess for not more 
 than two. pounds sterling a year. Half as much will 
 provide three not intolerable cigars daily. More- 
 over, it is to be borne in mind that no true-born 
 Saxon ever throws away a cigar, or any part of 
 one. He consumes it in instalments, and his pockets 
 and cupboards are full of pestilent remnants from 
 half an inch to three inches long. A learned Pro- 
 fessor, whom I visited occasionally, passed his life at a 
 study-desk, every loophole and cranny of which har- 
 boured cigar stumps of various ages and sizes. My 
 first supposition was that here was an eccentric re- 
 cluse, whose whim it was to rake together this kind 
 of unsavoury relies merely to preserve them. But I 
 presently saw him select the most ancient, stalest stump 
 from its hiding-place in the most cobwebbed cranny, 
 and kindle it into activity with a sulphur match. He 
 preferred such resuscitated corpses an old tobacco- 
 vulture, with a morbid craving for carrion ! 
 
 This same people smoke Russian cigarettes the 
 most ethereal guise under which tobacco presents itself. 
 The variety used is Turkish, so called Latakia; 
 it is pure and fine; but so pungent that except 
 hookahs the cigarette is the only available form 
 for it. Ladies smoke these cigarettes, though only 
 the Poles and Russians do so publicly they, indeed, 
 smoke cigars quite as readily, and for my own part I 
 
 
STONE AND PLASTER. 181 
 
 much enjoy the spectacle. Not only do they appear 
 admirable as regards their dainty manipulation and 
 osculation of the weed, but their smoking lends an 
 oriental flavour to the scene, whereof the fumes of the 
 tobacco are but the material emblem. When an 
 English or American lady smokes, she simply commits 
 a small impropriety ; but in the mouth of a fair 
 foreigner, who has been brought up to know no 
 better, a cigar is a wand to conjure up romantic 
 visions and Eastern fantasies. The gentle reader will 
 understand me aright, nor seek to put me out of 
 countenance by evoking images of coarse, black-pipe- 
 puffing Indian squaws and Irishwomen. 
 
 An idiocrasy of Dresden, or perhaps of Germany, is 
 the sausage and smoked-meat shop. It is kept clean 
 as a pin in every part. The dressers are glistening 
 white limestone ; the scales and weights of polished 
 yellow brass ; there are generally one or two panel- 
 mirrors, very effective. The razor-keenness of the 
 long, bright knives ; the clear red and white of the 
 " cuts," and of the complexions of the female attend- 
 ants ; the piquant odour of the smoke-cured flesh, 
 would give a Brahman an appetite. Raw meat is not 
 a pleasant sight except to butchers and medical 
 students ; but when refined by the education of salt 
 and smoke, it becomes highly companionable. Of the 
 merits of sausage, it would perhaps be rash in a foreigner 
 
1 82 SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 to speak ; every nation has its pet peculiarity, which 
 no outsider can criticise without offence. Nothing is 
 more peculiarly national than the German sausage, 
 and perhaps the very quality which so endears it to 
 Germans, renders it hard of comprehension by the 
 barbaric mind. The Coat-of-Arms of Dresden has 
 been flippantly described as bearing a sausage in its 
 pocket, with the motto, " Es ist mir Wurst." The 
 people certainly have a way of carrying sausage 
 about with them in their pockets not always in 
 their coat-pockets either and pulling it out to gnaw 
 upon it, in moments of abstraction or ennui ; and if a 
 barbarian expresses annoyance at the spectacle, they 
 shrug their shoulders scornfully and ejaculate, "Es 
 ist mir Wurst ! " But the phrase is of very various 
 application, and like the American formula, " It don't 
 pay," is noteworthy only as indicating the bed of the 
 popular current of thought. 
 
 There are two or three furniture shops about town, 
 containing plenty of pretty furniture imported from 
 Berlin, and made chiefly after French designs. But in 
 spite of its prettiness, there is nothing sincere or 
 satisfactory in the making of it. The chairs and sofas 
 are never comfortable; the tables, sideboards, and 
 cabinets are never solid, though always warranted to 
 be so. A superficial acquaintance with such furniture 
 predisposes us in its favour ; but ripening familiarity 
 
STONE AND PLASTER. 183 
 
 breeds contempt. Our fine friends wear out ; their 
 gay feathers ornament nothing substantial ; they are 
 loose in the joints and warped in the back. In the 
 day of auction they are found wanting. On the 
 whole, I think this Dresden or Berlin furniture is 
 the most worthless that is anywhere manufactured. 
 Compared with the massive and rich simplicity of the 
 best American furniture, it shows like a charlatan 
 beside a gentleman ; nor is its case much bettered by 
 contrast with English work. A Saxon feels none of 
 the pleasures which we feel in knowing that what 
 pretends to be ebony, or mahogany, or cloth, of gold, 
 Is such, to the backbone. A solid mahogany dining- 
 table would take away his appetite as often as he sat 
 down to dinner. It is a fine show from cheap materials 
 that yields him most unmixed satisfaction ; and so the 
 Saxons are happy in their furniture. What I have 
 said is in reference only to the best and most expensive 
 upholstery, such as adorns the villas on the Blirger- 
 wiese. The ordinary houses are fitted up with a kind 
 of goods which is, perhaps, preferable ; for though to 
 the full as badly made as the fine sort, it does not so 
 belie itself by any attempt at outward embellishment. 
 Some people see a charm in old curiosity-shops, 
 but they remind me of the artfully constructed cripples 
 and sufferers from painted ulcers, whose simulated 
 woe is often obtruded upon innocent travellers. It is 
 
184 SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 conceivable that a vast deal of antiquated trash 
 should exist, which its owners would gladly be rid of; 
 but that age and worthlessness should enhance value is 
 a circumstance requiring explanation. I never saw a 
 beautiful thing in a Dresden curiosity-shop, and I 
 think the sweepings of two or three old-fashioned 
 attics would outshine and outvalue the richest of 
 them. They are hidden artfully away in gloomy 
 alleys and back streets ; their windows are dusty, 
 their ceilings stained, their floors creaky, their corners 
 dark ; their rubbish is heaped disorderly together 
 with a coarse attempt at dramatic effect. The dealer 
 is dressed in a correspondingly shabby costume, and 
 cultivates an aspect of dishevelled squalor. I should 
 suppose that the business largely depends for success 
 upon the philosophic principle of the grab-bag at fairs. 
 In such a mass of plunder we cannot help believing in a 
 leaven, however small, of something really valuable ; 
 some pearl of price which, by advantage of the dealer's 
 ignorance, we may obtain for next to nothing. But 
 the real lay of the land is quite otherwise. Instead of 
 buying invaluable things cheap, we purchase valueless 
 things dear ; and as to the dealer's ignorance what, 
 in the line of his business, he does not know, is 
 decidedly not worth knowing. The tribe is not 
 peculiar to Dresden ; wherever are travelled flies, there 
 likewise spin their webs these curious old spiders. 
 
STONE AND PLASTER. 185 
 
 VI. 
 
 Eut let us rise above shops and shopkeepers and see 
 life upon the first etage, where dwell the rich foreigners 
 and the German princes. The staircase which helps 
 us thither is probably very dark, and darker still the 
 passage to which the inner house-door admits us. An 
 artistic stratagem may be intended by this; for, 
 indeed, that were a poor parlour which looked not 
 well after so dusky, not to say evil-smelling an en- 
 trance-way. Evil-smelling or not, we must pause to 
 be delivered of an observation before opening the 
 parlour-door. In the Anglo-Saxon mind an entry is 
 associated with the idea of a staircase ; without which 
 it seems an anomaly, and we wonder how it manages 
 to dispose of itself. In fact, it sprawls about in an 
 unbraced, vacant-minded manner, with its doors all 
 on one side, and half-strangled by two or three great 
 wardrobes, which also endanger the head and knees 
 of the unwary. This lack of stairs makes itself felt 
 throughout the house, which is comparable to a face 
 without a nose or a land without a mountain. It is 
 insipid. Our houses are rooms grouped round a stair- 
 case, and thus gain a flavour and character which dis- 
 tinguish them in the imagination. The different 
 floors, each with its separate sphere in the household 
 economy, are ordered as naturally as are the organs in 
 
186 SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 the human body. But no stairs implies a serious 
 deficiency of moral stimulus. Moreover, we are em- 
 barrassed by the loss of handles to an extensive 
 family of remarks. " Go down stairs/' " Run up 
 stairs," " Come down to breakfast," " The baby is on 
 the stairs ! " these and many more such expressions 
 must be simply dropped out of existence. It is 
 startling, too, to reflect that the kitchen stands as 
 high as the parlour, and that the parlour is no less out 
 of the way than the bedchamber. We can roll a 
 marble back and forth from one end of the house 
 to the other. 
 
 Meantime we will open the parlour-door. Like all 
 German doors, it opens in the middle, the left half 
 being usually bolted to the floor, and only the right 
 opened and shut. There are several advantages over 
 our system in this arrangement. The doors are less 
 obtrusive. They open only with half as much of a sweep 
 and a flourish, and stand ajar without standing in the 
 way. They are the next best things to curtains : for 
 interior doors are all more or less a relic of barbarism, 
 and latches and locks delay the entrance of the millen- 
 nium. Heaven has its gates, it is true, but those once 
 passed, we shall find none in the heavenly mansions : 
 whereas Hell is doubtless as full of bolted doors as of 
 burglars. 
 
 Dresden doors, to tell the truth, are almost too 
 
STONE AND PLASTER. 187 
 
 yielding for this sinful age. They have a strong bent 
 towards warping. The bolts will not shoot, nor the 
 latches catch, and the door is constantly springing 
 open in a generous, free-hearted way, as much as to 
 exclaim, " Look through me, everybody ! I have 
 nothing to conceal ! " In Heaven, in summer, or in 
 solitude, this vivacity is a charming trait, but at other 
 times it may be annoying. It is partly compensated 
 by the crevice underneath the door being ordinarily 
 so wide that letters and newspapers, and even slender 
 volumes, sometimes, may be slipped through without 
 disturbing the hardly-won attachment of the latch. 
 But in the common event of a sudden gust of wind, 
 all the doors in the house jump open at once, as though 
 a dozen ghostly intruders had forced a preconcerted 
 entrance. The latches, by the way, turn by handles 
 instead of round knobs ; a trifle, but one of those 
 which lend a foreign flavour. 
 
 The latch gives way, then, and behold the parlour ! 
 There is a tall square white stove a permanent 
 feature in all the rooms drawn up in one corner like 
 the ghost of a family chimney. In the adjoining 
 angle the centre-tab] e is pinning the stiff-backed sofa 
 against the wall, and four rungless chairs are solemnly 
 watching the operation. There are flower-stands in 
 the slimly curtained windows, and the pallid walls 
 are enriched with half-a-dozen lithographic portraits 
 
iSS SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 of the Royal Family, and a large engraving of Schiller 
 at Weimar. In another place there is an eruption of 
 small round black-rimmed daguerreotypes and photo- 
 graphs of dead or departed relatives a singularly 
 unattractive collection. Neither these nor the larger 
 pictures are hung ; they have apparently broken out 
 of the wall in consequence of the diseased condition 
 of the house, and the breaking-out has not taken place 
 in an even or orderly manner ; the frames are all more 
 or less awry, and there is no balancing of one against 
 another. Between the windows is a mirror reaching 
 nearly from floor to ceiling ; but instead of being one 
 sheet of glass, it consists of three or four sections, the 
 line of junction generally contriving to maintain the 
 same level as our line of sight. The floor is of bare 
 boards painted brownish yellow and polished ; or, in 
 the newer houses, it is parqueted, and waxed, so that 
 it reflects the ceiling, and is perilous to walk on. It 
 is seldom left wholly bare, however, unless in the heat 
 of summer; the expanse is tempered with rugs, a 
 large one beneath the table, and smaller satellites in 
 various parts of the room. The banishment of full- 
 grown carpets is by no means an unmitigated blunder. 
 The polished floor communicates a sort of dignity to 
 the legs of the chairs and tables, and puts us in mind 
 of French genre pictures. If there is dirt anywhere, it 
 is immediately visible ; and the rugs can be thrashed 
 
STONE AND PLASTER. 189 
 
 every day without disordering anything. In winter a 
 fox or bear-skin remedies the coldness of bare boards 
 which summer renders a luxury. Our partiality for 
 Aubussons, fitting snug to the wainscot, is perhaps a 
 prejudice ; there may be no more reason for them than 
 for tapestry. Nevertheless, the foot naturally loves to 
 be pressed on softness, and requires artificial training 
 to walk on slipperiness. Turf is a good precedent 
 for carpets, and in discarding them we lose in home- 
 comfort what we gain in hygiene and elegance. 
 
 The windows open on hinges in the same manner as 
 the doors. It is a pleasant, antique fashion : this is 
 the kind of casements from which the ladies of the 
 Middle Ages were wont to converse with their lovers. 
 They could never have pushed up our modern window, 
 with its uneven grooves and rough-running cords, nor 
 eloped through it with any grace and dignity. More- 
 over, nothing is less picturesque than an open window 
 of the modern style ; whereas the old casement, stand- 
 ing ajar, forms a picture by itself. In winter a sup- 
 plementary window is fitted outside the original one, 
 with the good effect of excluding noise as well as cold 
 air. When the north winds blow these exterior 
 fixtures are severely shaken, and from street to street, 
 as the gale rises, we hear the slamming together of 
 loose sashes, there being a fine for any window left 
 open during a storm. A praiseworthy regulation, 
 

 igo SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 since if the glass be broken and fall into the street, it is 
 liable to shear off people's fingers and noses ; and a 
 couple of years ago, as a man was pointing out to 
 another the road to the railway-station, he suddenly 
 found himself without his hand. A piece of window- 
 pane from the third story of a neighbouring house had 
 cleanly amputated it at the wrist. 
 
 It is the mark of a civilised people to pay even 
 more attention to their bodily comfort at night than 
 during the day. Sleep is a mystery which still awaits 
 explanation ; but we know it to be the condition of 
 visions which sometimes have a vital influence over 
 our lives. In those visions the veil of the freewill is 
 drawn aside, and our naked, unregenerate self stands 
 revealed before our eyes. Pure, upright, and moral 
 though we may be, in sleep we are liable to commit 
 such crimes as the very Police News would fear to 
 illustrate. 
 
 Surely, then, it were wise to make ourselves as 
 comfortable in bed as possible, for physical uncase 
 communicates itself to the spirit, and a cramped 
 position of the legs increases the activity within us of 
 original sin. It is nearly a miracle, from this point of 
 view, that all Germany is not given over to the Evil 
 One. If their beds were a third part so comfortable 
 as an ordinary coffin, there would be comparatively 
 no ground for complaint. But the coffin is better in 
 
STONE AND PLASTER. 191 
 
 every respect, and a dead Saxon sleeps vastly easier 
 than a live one. .Were men like jack-knives, tliey 
 might contrive to fit six feet of stature into four feet 
 of bed-room; and, perhaps, to lie unmoved beneath 
 an overgrown feather pillow, which combines in itself 
 the functions of sheet, blanket, and counterpane. It 
 is imponderable, that pillow; a sort of ghost of a 
 mattress, but so hot as to suggest anything but a 
 celestial origin. What are we to think of a people 
 who put up with this sort of thing from year's end to 
 year's end ? C 4 an we expect from them gentleness and 
 refinement an appreciation of fine shadings a dis- 
 criminating touch ? Can such a people be supposed 
 capable of distinguishing between lying and dis- 
 cretion, between science and quackery, between 
 philosophy and charlatanry, between war and bru- 
 tality, or even between statesmanship and bullying ?' 
 They cannot tell why respect is due to women ; they 
 are a mingling of the animal with the machine ; and 
 I believe the Survival-of-the-fittest Law to be a libel 
 en their Gothic ancestry. 
 
 So we merely pass through the bedroom the most 
 desolate and cheerless spot in the house and are glad 
 to find ourselves in the passage-way once more. The 
 kitchen-door is ajar, and we may look in if we like ; 
 though, except the white china range, there is nothing 
 there describably novel. An English cook might find 
 
192 SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 some difficulty in broiling a steak ; but the arrange- 
 ments are well suited to Saxon needs. To be a 
 thorough. German cook requires only a callous con- 
 science, a cold heart, a confused head, coarse hands, 
 and plenty of grease. If, therefore, the other arts and 
 sciences should ever pall upon them, one half the 
 nation might very successfully cater to the palates of 
 the other half. Some of the hotels have French cooks, 
 or German cooks Fiench-trained ; but the people 
 accept them as they accept knives and forks to eat 
 with ; not because they appreciate them, but because 
 they are the fashion. 
 
 The best virtue of these etogcs shows itself when 
 they are thrown open for a ball. The long suite of 
 rooms, merging vista-like into one another, appears 
 palatial. The smooth floors seem made to dance upon. 
 The only dissatisfied people are those who live on the 
 etagc below; and even they may be conciliated by 
 an invitation. The Saxons are much given to dancing, 
 and may possibly have built their houses so as best 
 to indulge their inclination. It seems a barren use 
 to put a home to, but, on the other hand, it is no bad 
 expedient for disguising the ugly fact of Saxon 
 homelessness. 
 
r 
 
 STONE AND PLASTER. 193 
 
 VII. 
 
 There are certain features of the Saxon household, 
 upon which I have no disposition to enlarge, and 
 which I shall pass by in silence. Special diseases 
 should be left to the treatment of special physicians, 
 and let us trust that, in the progress of the water-cure 
 and of the sense of decency, they may be alleviated. 
 Meanwhile we must pass through the second and third 
 Etages, which are poor relations of the first, with 
 nothing original about them, and take our final 
 observations in the attic. 
 
 Unquestionably this is the most attractive part of 
 the house, whether viewed from without or from 
 within. The very inconveniences are an enticement. 
 Here we are next-door neighbours to the clouds ; and 
 if we look down from our dormer-window to the 
 street, we may be so straitened as scarcely to be 
 able to pay our ten pounds of rent, yet cannot we 
 repress a feeling of superiority to those absurd little 
 people crawling to and fro beneath us. By dint of 
 our commanding outlook, we become to a certain 
 extent prophets of the future. We can see the coming 
 event while yet it is afar, and can predict what will 
 happen to a man on his way from his house-door to 
 his office. Prophecy is easy, if only our views of life 
 are lofty enough ; and its exercise creates an agreeable 
 
 O 
 
I 9 4 SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 glow of power. What can be more pleasing than to 
 watch two persons running along two sides of a 
 corner, and to foresee what they cannot that there 
 will be a collision at the apex ? Courage is easy too, 
 and charity; and in general our moral and intellectual 
 capacity is indefinitely enlarged. We appropriate the 
 stature of the building, and become giants sixty or 
 seventy feet high, able to straddle the Alt Markt and 
 vault the Cathedral. We perceive the littleness and 
 the vanity of man the not-ourselves which eter- 
 nally makes for gain. We are broadly critical, and 
 marvel at the narrow-mindedness of people who 
 cannot see through stone walls, nor five minutes 
 ahead. We smile compassionately at yonder stranger, 
 who positively cannot find his way to the American 
 Bank. But shall we, in descending to the street, 
 descend likewise to the level of intelligence of those 
 who walk there ? Heaven forbid ! Yet if so it be, let 
 us henceforward forswear the staircase, and make our 
 promenades over the roof-tops, with only the crows, 
 the cats, and the chimney-sweeps for company. 
 
 I must assume that everybody has felt the fascina- 
 tion of an attic, for it is beyond my skill to reproduce 
 it. It depends in great measure upon the refreshing 
 unconventionality of the ceilings, which do not hesi- 
 tate to make advances to the walls, and sometimes 
 stoop to acquaintance even with the floors. These 
 
STONE AND PLASTER. 195 
 
 eccentricities are a death-blow to the maintenance of 
 any downstairs formality and stiffness; we must bo 
 free, good-humoured, and accommodating in our beha- 
 viour, nor hold our heads too erect, lest they catch a 
 rap from the rafters. It is strange how soon this sort 
 of restraint and inconvenience impresses itself upon 
 our affections ; perhaps on the same principle that we 
 are said to love best those who make the greatest 
 demands upon us. The place is full of makeshifts and 
 compromises, which may be bad things in conduct, 
 but in housekeeping are delightful The mind and 
 character, being met by constraints upon all sides, 
 leave their counter-impression in the more unmistake- 
 able colours. The room grows human a hundred 
 times faster than if it were square and ten feet high. 
 
 Moreover, attic-life is so condensed, that it must 
 needs appears rich and idiomatic. And it is original 
 because it is poor, and poverty cannot afford to be in 
 the fashion. Poets are fabled to live in attics, because 
 they cannot pay for grander lodgings ; but I suspect 
 there are better reasons for it ; and certainly we often 
 have cause to regret their better fortune ; for the songs 
 they sing on the Bel-etage are seldom so sweet and 
 pure as those that sounded above the eaves, though 
 doubtless far more ornate, ponderous, and regularly 
 proportioned. 
 
 These Dresden attics are a city by themselves, and 
 
196 SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 doubtless there is a kind of Freemasonry between the 
 inhabitants. There are often two or three stories 
 above the eaves, and it would hardly be too much to 
 say that half the city population have their homes 
 there. If the rich people knew what was to their 
 advantage, they would gladly exchange lodgings with 
 these Arabs of the roof. It is the roofs that redeem 
 the houses from the charge of nothingness. They are 
 the nonconformists, rich in individuality and warm in 
 colour, uneven as a tarpaulin flung over a pile of 
 luggage, rambling, sloping, cornered, full of lights and 
 shadows. The dormer-windows are of inexhaustible 
 interest, jutting out of the mother-roof like baby 
 houses taking a first look at the world. Doves roost 
 on the little gable, and occasionally perch among the 
 flower-pots on the window-sill. Now comes a young 
 girl, to water the plants and complete the picture 
 one which Hendschel's pencil has inimitably drawn. 
 She pauses a moment to watch, with a half-smile, the 
 courtship of two pigeons on the eaves-pipe ; a blush 
 gradually steals over her lovely face, for that canary, 
 warbling in its little wooden cage at her ear, is perhaps 
 reminding her of a certain maiden love-passage of her 
 own last evening, when her sweet lips made some 
 lucky fellow the happiest man in the world. How 
 tenderly the morning sunshine brightens on her fair 
 hair and virginal figure ! How lovingly that green 
 
STONE AND PLASTER. 197 
 
 vine droops over head, and how rich is the perfame 
 of that heliotrope ! 
 
 I should not have ventured upon this outburst 
 but for that sketch of Hendschel's, which stood before 
 me as I wrote. The responsibility is his ; I should 
 never dare create such a face as that and call it 
 Saxon. Being ready-created, however, I am well 
 content to believe it true, though the women I have 
 seen in dormer-windows were invariably homely, and 
 engaged in no more poetic occupation than sewing, or 
 hanging out clothes, or screaming something to their 
 gossip in the gable opposite. On rare occasions I have 
 seen a cat steal along the tiles, harassed, meagre, with 
 painfully suspicious eye, pausing ever and anon to 
 peer and snuff and wave her tail. I suppose she was 
 sparrow-hunting; but cats are the very scarcest wild- 
 fowl in Dresden. They are an exponent of another 
 kind of civilisation than any which Saxons will attain. 
 They are pariahs among this people no one sympa- 
 thises with them or understands them. The dogs have 
 ousted them perhaps ; and certainly there is more of 
 the cur than of the cat in the Saxon character. 
 
 Dormer-windows exist in other places besides 
 Saxony, but the eye-windows are, so far as I know, a 
 peculiarly German institution. It shows a grotesque 
 kind of humour to invent such things. They are 
 single panes, about a foot square, standing upright in 
 
198 SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 the body of the roof, which curves over them like a 
 sleepy eyelid, and broadens like a fat cheek below. 
 The life-likeness is often enhanced by various in- 
 genious additions; and a couple of such windows, 
 with a chimney between, give the house a curiously 
 human aspect. The effect is not earned out in the 
 body of the building ; but, in fact, all the vitality of 
 the house is concentrated in the top part of it, as if it 
 rose up from below, like oxygen bubbles, and collected 
 beneath the roof. The basement is torpid, the middle 
 floors are stiff and taciturn, but the attics draw the 
 very breath of life. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 There is a class of citizens in Dresden whose home 
 is even higher than the attics ; who dispute the ridge- 
 pole with the crows, the pigeons, and the cats ; but 
 who, though occupying the most elevated position in 
 the city, above even the heads of the King and his 
 council, are outdone by none in humbleness of de- 
 meanour, and sadness of attire. They are clothed 
 from head to foot in jetty black ; and, as though this 
 were not enough, they smear their countenances with 
 an application of the same joyless hue. Bare-footed 
 are they, and walk the streets, when they descend 
 thither, with folded arms and downcast eyes, as if 
 their very glance, not to mention their touch, might 
 
STONE AND PLASTER. 199 
 
 cliance to soil the immaculateness of somebody's shirt- 
 bosom. Nevertheless their complete blackness gives a 
 strange force to their appearance a condensation of 
 meaning, so to speak, of the very darkest import. 
 They are an embodied lesson to mankind. People of 
 one colour of one consistent idea, however gloomy 
 are sure to be more remarked in the world than the 
 gayest of piebalds. 
 
 This singular tribe never appears to have any 
 interests or sympathies in common with humanity. 
 Never are they seen conversing with a friend; and 
 as to sweethearts and wives ! the thing is incon- 
 ceivable. A species of awe invests them ; in the 
 most turbulent crowd their persons would be 
 respected, and a pathway would be cleared for them 
 whithersoever they might choose to pursue it. But 
 they are seldom seen on earth : their abode is in the 
 upper air. In the early morning, when most men 
 are asleep, we may see their lonely figures far aloft, 
 silhouetted against the pale tints of the sky, and 
 gilded perchance by the first rays of the day's sun- 
 shine. What are they doing there at such an hour ? 
 Are they priests of an unknown religion, bound by 
 dark vows to this sable garb and these mysterious 
 rites ? Mark yonder crazy anchorite with what 
 weird agility he clambers to the top of that tall 
 chimney, and stands with the sleeping city at his feet, 
 
200 SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 himself the blackest object in it a blot against the 
 pure heavens. Does he not look rather like the Devil, 
 setting his foot upon the conquered world ? Can it be 
 that, under the impression that they are merely a 
 useful and harmless, albeit personally unprepossessing 
 order of the community, mankind may have been 
 harbouring in its midst a deputation from the king- 
 dom of darkness ? 
 
 Let us observe that creature on the chimney ? He 
 seems to have a rope coiled round his arm ; now he 
 unwinds it, and lets it slip rapidly down the chim- 
 ney's throat, till it must have reached the house's 
 deepest entrails. Is there anything below which he 
 wants to catch ? See how he jerks the rope up and 
 down, and how curiously he peers into the sooty hole. 
 His motions remind us vividly of a fisherman bobbing 
 for eels. Is this the devil, bobbing for a human soul ? 
 What bait does he use ? not worms, surely : more 
 probably it is a deed of mortgage ; or, perhaps, the good 
 name of a young woman. Ah ! was not that a bite ? 
 yes, he has caught it at last whatever it is; and, 
 mercy on us ! with what an ugly eagerness does he 
 haul his booty up. If only it would come unhooked ; 
 and, after the experience of this one mortal peril, have 
 a chance to be wiser for the future ! but that is not to 
 be : the black fisherman is even now stooping to grasp 
 his prey. Let us veil our eyes from the ghastly spec- 
 
STONE AND PLASTER. 201 
 
 tacle of its last struggles. Heaven grant that ugly 
 hook never come dangling down into our own fireside 
 circle ! 
 
 Nay, but this gloomy fantasy is unworthy our 
 common sense ; in fact, it was only the last traces of 
 a nightmare from which, at this early hour, our brain 
 had not entirely freed itself. Yonder is no devil, but, 
 as we read him now, some eccentric misanthrope, who 
 vents his spite against the race by plucking defile- 
 ment from the very flame which makes the household 
 hearth bright or would do so, were there no china 
 stove in the way. He likewise finds a pleasure in 
 making himself hideous with the soot from other 
 people's chimneys, and thus rendering his aspect a 
 perpetual silent reminder to them of their inward 
 depravity. He takes a grim delight in their avoid- 
 ance of him he smiles to see them recoil from the 
 contact of his garments ; a little introspection, he 
 thinks, would reveal to them a blackness of their own 
 more foul than that which disfigures him. He may be 
 black-hearted, too, he does not deny it ; but at all 
 events he hesitates not to conform the external to the 
 interior man. Nobody can call him hypocrite. He is 
 proud of his sooty brow, and shares the Indian's con- 
 tempt for the pale-face. 
 
 But, once more, have we yet reached the deepest 
 solution of the problem ? May not this questionable 
 
202 SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 shape be a secret benefactor of his species ? Is he not 
 a philanthropist of such large charity that he is willing 
 to be loathsome in men's sight for the sake of relieving 
 them of the results of their misdeeds; willing to- 
 sacrifice his own good name and social advantages in 
 the attempt to clear a passage of communication be- 
 tween his brethren's homes and heaven ? True, he- 
 would, in this case, like other philanthropists, lay 
 himself open to misconstruction, if not to ridicule ; for 
 persons who take advantage of chimneys to seek the 
 sky are commonly looked upon as anything but proper 
 objects of benevolence. Nevertheless, if our sooty 
 friend be neither philanthropist, misanthropist, nor 
 devil, what, in the name of common sense, is he? 
 Well, it is not every man who can be mistaken for 
 these personages ; and should he, at last, turn out to- 
 be nothing more than a chimney-sweep, he may justly 
 console himself with that reflection. 
 
V. 
 
 DRESDEN DIVERSIONS. 
 I. 
 
 ^iTTE can judge better of a child's character from 
 seeing it at play than at work ; and so of men 
 and nations. The Saxons have a marked inclination 
 to amusements; they play like children, with an 
 absence of stiffness and self-consciousness which might 
 surprise those who had been used to regard them 
 only as philosophers. But a shrewder consideration 
 will probably discover in this seeming anomaly but 
 another evidence of the profundity of Saxon wisdom. 
 It takes more good sense than most people possess, 
 properly to alternate study with diversion. 
 
 The famous picture-gallery is open every day in the 
 week, in a featureless stone building one-sixth of a 
 mile in length, and two stories high, with an elaborate 
 archway through the centre. To and fro beneath the 
 archway pace for ever a bayoneted rifle and a spiked 
 helmet; the bas-relief of Mars on the base of the arch 
 
204 SAXON STUDIES 
 
 is not more constant in its place. An inner door to 
 the right admits us to the entrance-hall and staircase, 
 where we are met by a gold-laced cocked hat and 
 silver-headed mace, and bidden to exchange our 
 walking-stick or umbrella for a bit of brass with a 
 number stamped upon it. Should we chance to drop 
 this on the marble floor, the sound re-echoes as if we 
 had let fall a brazen buckler. It is curious what an 
 embarrassing responsibility we feel for our actions, 
 when each one bears its echo. It puts me in mind of 
 those stories of scientific marvel-mongers, who would 
 paralyze us by the assertion that the stamp of a foot 
 permanently displaces the whole stellar universe. I 
 always feel oppressed in an echoing apartment ; and if 
 I thought much about the stellar universe, I should 
 end either by crushing it, or letting it crush me. 
 
 Arrived at the staircase top, we push against a stiff- 
 moving door, and find ourselves in an ante-room ; one 
 wall is covered with a huge hideous picture of a Court 
 ladies and gentlemen in seventeenth century cos- 
 tume, and, down in the right-hand corner, a little 
 corkscrew-tailed cur, which somehow reminds us more 
 of human beings than anything else upon the canvas. 
 The only other object in the room is the catalogue stall, 
 with its bald-headed attendant, who is not only a cynic 
 but a misanthrope. Considering that he passes his life 
 face to face with that Court scene, and never (to my 
 
DRESDEN DIVERSIONS. 205 
 
 knowledge) sells a catalogue, I am only surprised that 
 he is not a suicide as well. 
 
 In this room we already become conscious of the 
 picture-gallery smell that most peculiar and depress- 
 ing of odours. It cannot be called offensive still less, 
 agreeable; but it produces an effect of lassitude and 
 apathy, such as" is experienced under no other circum- 
 stances. It is an aroma of old canvasses ; or we might 
 regard it as the ancient breath expressed from the 
 oily lungs of the innumerable old portraits. It is not 
 fit food for living organisms; it dulls the eye and 
 pales the cheek, and cuts short the temper. The buff 
 beadles who pervade the place have acquired so sour 
 and suspicious an aspect, that it is hard not to feel 
 guilty in their presence. The morbid influence is 
 enhanced by the arrangement of the rooms, which is 
 such as to give the idea of hopelessly interminable 
 extent; and by the style of architecture, which is 
 beyond words monotonous, idealess, soulless, dry, dis- 
 piriting, unbeautiful. Our boot squeaks and slips on 
 the parqueted floor, and there is scarcely one chair to 
 a thousand pictures. And as for the pictures be 
 their merits how great soever they are still the most 
 tiresome feature of all. 
 
 Why are picture-galleries allowed ? The best time 
 to visit the Continental ones is on Sunday the 
 people's day; for then we may find relief from the 
 
206 SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 rabble on the walls in observing the rabble on the 
 floor, which is vastly more amusing and less imper- 
 tinent. The latter is for ever on the move, and still 
 forming new combinations ; whereas the former varies 
 not a hair's breadth from age to age, as if conceitedly 
 conscious that its present attitude must be the very 
 best imaginable. Moreover, even admitting each one 
 of a hundred thousand pictures to be a masterpiece of 
 colour, form, and design, the value of each would be a 
 hundred thousand times less than if it stood alone. 
 Picture-galleries are the greatest aesthetic abuses of 
 our time. They are that saddest chaos which is 
 formed of disordered beauty like an insane poet's 
 mind. Why has no artistic vigilance-committee arisen 
 to annihilate this insult to good taste and modesty ? 
 
 We admire the intellectual self-command of a 
 Newton ; but it is nothing to the power of mental 
 abstraction necessary to the appreciation of a fine 
 picture on the walls of a gallery. In fact, real appre- 
 ciation is, under such circumstances, an impossibility. 
 We do not see the picture which the great master 
 painted. We discern only a "certain arrangement of 
 lines, and harmon}'- of colours. The painter may have 
 been divine, but he cannot show us his most precious 
 secrets in a crowd. On the contrary, the more subtle 
 and profound he is, the less our chance of apprehend- 
 ing him. It is not too much to say that no great 
 
DRESDEN DIVERSIONS. 207 
 
 picture, whether in the Dresden gallery or another, 
 has yet been seen by mortal eyes. Good copies 
 which, to be good, must be a slight improvement on 
 the originals are out of the question ; and therefore 
 these paintings will remain a dead letter until the 
 time comes for mankind not only to acknowledge com- 
 monplace truths, but to do them. 
 
 Then we shall see picture-galleries built upon a 
 different principle. A picture that is worth anything 
 is worth the devotion of, at least, one room. Of that 
 room it should be the reason, the expression, the key, 
 the consummation. Everything in the room should 
 lead up to it, comment on it, harmonize with it, interpret 
 it, reflect it. Without the picture, the room should 
 appear like a man without his head ; and the imagi- 
 nation should be able to predict the precise subject 
 and tone of the painting from the testimony of its 
 accessories. 
 
 Upon this principle shall the new gallery be 
 planned a private city of picture-homes, each work 
 the sole occupant of its own apartments. Any picture 
 not worth a room shall be burned ; and of the remain- 
 der (which will not be over large) some shall be 
 housed in a single chamber, others in a suite, others 
 again shall have a palace expressly built for them 
 according to their respective merits. No person shall 
 be permitted to visit more than one picture in one 
 
2o8 SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 day : at which rate it would take at least three years 
 to see a gallery of any extent ; and true picture-lovers 
 would probably confine their attentions to two or 
 three favourites; spending day after day at their 
 houses, not always gazing on the very canvas, but 
 musing upon the fine symbolism of the surroundings, 
 and leisurely accumulating fresh power to see and 
 understand. A year so spent would be culture ; but 
 what shall we say of this elbowing and jostling of 
 jaded throngs in barren, bare, unfurnished rooms ? 
 What shall we call those persons who sit for five 
 minutes before the Sistine Madonna, and comment 
 in strident whispers, and giggle, and retire as empty 
 as they came ? 
 
 It is time that they, and other evils of like nature, 
 departed, to return no more. 
 
 Meanwhile it may be admitted that the human eye 
 has a wonderful and providential faculty of blindness, 
 which is of great service in picture-galleries as they 
 are now. "When, by long subjection to torture, we 
 have learnt the walls by rote, we can sometimes con- 
 trive to concentrate our attention upon what we wish 
 to see. But how far from the ideal is this hard- won 
 and imperfect vision ! As well compare the tan- 
 talization of seeing a glass of Madeira wine to the 
 enjoyment of quaffing it. We know how sweetly we 
 could be intoxicated, if only we could get the goblet 
 
DRESDEN DIVERSIONS. 209 
 
 to our lips. Nevertheless, unless we have resolution 
 enough to avoid galleries altogether, our next best 
 course is to spend our whole time there. We may 
 thus acquire the faculty of keeping our eyesight some- 
 what under control, and of being conscious of the outer 
 mass of pictures only as of an ill-digested meal by a 
 general uneasiness which jaundices our vision, but 
 does not altogether prevent our imagining a better 
 state of things. 
 
 II. 
 
 There is a fine view of the Theater-Platz from the 
 windows of the gallery, and I have often found relief 
 in watching the building of the new opera-house from 
 that vantage ground. It will be a more pretentious 
 edifice than the old one, but not so unique and im- 
 pressive. The latter was a sort of infant Coliseum 
 or dwarf Coliseum, rather; for it was so smoke- 
 blackened and weather-beaten that it looked five 
 hundred years old. The interior was respectably 
 upholstered in the usual red velvet; and though the 
 audience might be somewhat put about for room, the 
 stage was of good size. As regards ventilation, I need 
 not say that every precaution was taken against it 
 which enlightened ingenuity could devise; and with 
 complete success. There were two companies con- 
 nected with this theatre one dramatic, the other 
 
 P 
 
210 SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 operatic ; and it should be observed that the latter, 
 who were good enough in their line, never could bo 
 accused of taking a leaf from the former's book. The 
 orchestra was one of the finest in Germany ; it played 
 sacred music in the cathedral on Sunday mornings, 
 and the same evening, at the theatre, would interpret 
 Figaro or Tannhauser. Occasionally some grand ora- 
 torios would be produced, when the stage would bo 
 merged in the orchestra, and the singers wear 
 evening dress, thereby, it seems to me, laying them- 
 selves open to criticism. I heard and saw Haydn's 
 " Creation " thus given, and could not drive away irre- 
 verent thoughts. The principal singers had their 
 seats immediately in front of the foot-lights ; and were 
 down in the programme as the archangels Gabriel, 
 Raphael, and Uriel ; and Adam and Eve. Raphael 
 was a bald-headed, severe-looking gentleman, with 
 e} 7 e-glasses ; he sat apart, but occasionally leaned over 
 to whisper something to a person whom I at first 
 mistook for Uriel, but who turned out to be Adam. 
 Uriel I afterwards identified with a rather foppish 
 young man on the left. These two archangels, and 
 Adam, were attired in black broadcloth and snowy 
 shirt bosoms and neckties. But Gabriel, who sat next 
 to Uriel, and was manifestly on the best of terms with 
 him, was a handsome young lady in a black satin dress 
 cut low in the body. She had a slight cold, and blew 
 
DRESDEN DIVERSIONS. 211 
 
 her nose during the lulls in the " Creation." Eve for 
 whose appearance I looked with some interest was a 
 staid and decorous personage of some forty summers ; 
 she was dressed with strict propriety in a black moiro 
 antique, high in the neck; and, as if this were not 
 -enough, a lace shawl was superadded. Adam was a 
 tall man with a big voice, a prominent forehead, and a 
 scraggy beard. He was an impulsive man, and his book 
 and his voice were always uplifted simultaneously. 
 
 Since I have gone so far, I will add that every one 
 of these exalted individuals consumed a great deal of 
 time in saying very short sentences. Having hit upon 
 a phrase sublime, certainly, in its original inspired 
 .simplicity they so hung upon it, and stuttered over it, 
 .and muttered it, and mouthed it, and shouted it, and 
 then began it again with fresh vigour, and broke off in 
 the middle, and went back again, and picked out a word 
 here and a word there, and juggled and dilly-dallied, 
 that what was grandeur became buffoonery. True, 
 they had to do it the inexorable music, grinding out 
 behind them, pulled their wires to suit itself, as the 
 music of a street-organ seems to animate the puppets 
 in its show-case. But this is Haydn, not the Bible ; 
 it was not thus that the morning stars sang together, 
 and all the sons of God shouted for joy. Am I to be 
 blamed for finding Haydn's " Creation " ludicrous ? T 
 think the blame lies elsewhere : I do not . find the 
 
212 SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 first chapter of Genesis ludicrous. Either Haydn was 
 not so great a man as Moses, or the " Creation " cannot 
 safely be entrusted to Euterpe. 
 
 But there was always compensation in the Royal 
 box. A true democrat must ever be interested to 
 observe a human being who holds himself, or is held, 
 above the ordinary human level. In some moods, the 
 idea pleases the imagination ; while at other times, as 
 we gaze upon the Royal faces, it seems irresistibly 
 funny. The apparent difference between them and 
 other people consists in an admirable simplicity and 
 repose of manner, and a full directness of eye, most re- 
 freshing after the fussy gestures and evasive glances of 
 plebeianism. The chief use of princes is to preserve a 
 tradition and standard of perfect manners, and a re- 
 spectable independence of soul qualities one or the 
 other of which is pretty sure to suffer in the progress 
 of republicanism. But there is a naive innocence 
 about them and their paraphernalia and pretensions 
 which, amidst all the regal pomp, suggests a sim- 
 plicity more primitive and genuine than Franklin's 
 plain coat at Versailles. 
 
 But the plain coats are coming into fashion. A 
 Yankee friend of mine, while at a medical college in 
 Saxony, had the honour, together with fifty or a hun- 
 dred other students, of being visited by the new King, 
 Albert. His Majesty, in his progress round the room, 
 
DRESDEN DIVERSIONS. 213 
 
 addressed some conventional remark to the American, 
 who remarked, in answer, unconventionally enough, 
 that Albert was the first King he had ever seen. The 
 seeming artlessness of this observation at first conceals 
 its originality, and this, again, veils its profound sub- 
 tlety. For in it spoke the prophetic voice of revolu- 
 tion ; and it is due to the King to say that he was 
 both startled and impressed ; and perhaps he raised his 
 hand to his head, to be sure that his crown was there. 
 When that remark has been made a few times more, 
 there will be no king left to hear it. 
 
 in. 
 
 The most brilliant performance I ever witnessed 
 at the old opera-house was its burning down, some 
 five years ago. The fire caught in the garret, and 
 a puff of smoke popped hastily out of window, as if 
 to summon assistance. But its appeal was received 
 with sarcastic incredulity. Fifteen minutes elapsed, 
 and then a body of flame burst suddenly through the 
 roof, and the Cassandra-puff was avenged for its rude 
 treatment. It was a magnificent fire, and the Dresden 
 firemen showed their appreciation of its beauty by 
 making no attempt to put it out. There was not a 
 breath of wind ; had there been, Dresden would have 
 perished upon the funeral-pyre of its opera-house. 
 Very soon an oval column of flame, seventy feet in 
 
214 SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 diameter, stood straight up, and roared two hundred 
 feet aloft. Above the flame, a dark stem of smoke 
 ascended perpendicularly, so high, that it seemed 
 to impinge against the dull grey cloud which screened 
 the heavens. Here a petulant breeze caught it, and 
 trailed and drifted it hither and thither athwart the 
 sky, until the whole resembled a titanic palm-tree, 
 with a stem a mile in height, whose feathery foliage 
 overshadowed the whole city. And in what a red-hot 
 flower-pot was that palm-tree planted ! so hot that 
 the pictures were blistered in the gallery, more than 
 seventy yards distant; and the Madonna descended 
 in haste from the wall, and took refuge at the further 
 side of the building. 
 
 Early in the proceedings, the soldiers were called 
 out, and formed in a cordon surrounding the building, 
 and distant from it about fifty paces. All these 
 gallant fellows afterwards fought the French, but not 
 at Gravelotte nor at Sedan was it their destiny to face 
 so hot a fire as this. The thermometer, at this range, 
 marked almost 200 Fahrenheit. Their rifles grew so- 
 warm that there was a general disposition to ground 
 arms, and acknowledge that the old opera-house had 
 the best of it. Retreat they could not, for they were 
 hemmed in by a solid wedge of human bodies a 
 quarter of a "mile deep on every side save one, and 
 there was the river. The precise reason of their being" 
 
DRESDEN DIVERSIONS. 215 
 
 there at all has always been a mystery to me. Osten- 
 sibly it was to prevent the populace from getting into 
 dangerous proximity to the burning buildings, but, 
 inasmuch as it was physically impossible to advance 
 twenty paces nearer without being shrivelled to a 
 cinder, I can hardly suppose this to have been the 
 true cause. Perhaps it was merely to accustom the 
 warriors 1 souls to stand unmoved in the presence of 
 ruin and devastation. Or, again, it may have been 
 a subtle stroke of policy, to establish the precedent of 
 military intervention in municipal affairs, by thus 
 parading when there was no real occasion for it, and 
 could, therefore, be no possible objection on the 
 municipal part. 
 
 There were the usual instances of mental aberration 
 to which fires give rise. A number of men, at the risk 
 of their lives, brought forth from the burning pile a 
 huge load of rusty iron bolts, bars, chains, screws, and 
 pulleys, which had been used in the stage machinery, 
 but they left the splendid wardrobe untouched, either 
 from fear of soiling it in the transportation, or else 
 upon the supposition that its value would cause the 
 flames to respect it. But fire is no respecter of finery, 
 even in Dresden, and the greater part of the actors' 
 clothes and of the musicians' instruments mounted 
 heavenward in flame and smoke, and are perhaps 
 awaiting their owners in some celestial opera-house. 
 
216 SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 IV. 
 
 The German language, as socially spoken, does not 
 sound musical, but the opera-singers so modify the 
 pronunciation as to make it soft and agreeable. I am 
 acquainted with no language, however, which sounds 
 so differently from different lips as does this German. 
 The Saxons are not of true German, but of Wendisli 
 origin, and their pronunciation, though by no means 
 the harshest, is the most demoralized of all; and those 
 foreigners who have formed their accent on Saxon 
 models have, humanly speaking, disqualified them- 
 selves from ever getting it right. In its perfection, 
 German is eminently a masculine tongue, but Dresden 
 has emasculated it. She clips it, whines it, undulates 
 it, sing-songs it, lubricates it, until it becomes a very 
 eunuch of languages. The hard, clear, deliberate 
 Hanoverian pronunciation compares with hers as 
 chips of ice shaken in a crystal goblet, with luke- 
 warm dish-water filliped in a greasy slop-bowl. 
 
 My feeling with regard to the pronunciation of 
 foreign languages is perhaps curious, but observation 
 inclines me to believe that it is not altogether unique. 
 I never imitate the native accent without feeling a 
 little ashamed of myself, and the closer my imitation, 
 the greater my loss of self-respect. On the other hand, 
 an execrable English twanj*, or still more, a few 
 
DRESDEN DIVERSIONS. 217 
 
 English words thrown in here and there, revive my 
 drooping independence like a tonic. I may be as 
 correct in my grammar, and in the placing of my 
 verbs and participles, as my knowledge will admit, 
 without a whisper of self-reproach ; but the moment I 
 -attempt to disguise my nationality I am degraded. 
 Moreover, supposing such disguise possible, what is 
 
 4* 
 
 gained by it ? Is it so great a triumph to be mistaken 
 for a Saxon, for instance ? There is surely nothing 
 intellectual in mimicry, and our best success amounts 
 to nothing higher than that. No ; a foreign accent is 
 to be shunned rather than sought. It is as demoral- 
 izing as to wear another man's clothes. It cannot be 
 attained without doing violence to the inner nature 
 to those fine perceptions of modesty and decorum 
 which give character its worth. A person who speaks 
 ,a foreign language so well as to deceive a native, is 
 rarely a delicate-minded man. He will either be 
 subtle, deceitful, sly, with a talent for intrigue, or else 
 superficial, coarse, and vain. He can seldom possess 
 a sensitive and nicely-balanced individuality. Besides, 
 what is called a broken accent is not displeasing to the 
 native hearer; rather it impresses him as a sort of 
 indirect compliment to the supreme refinement of his 
 tongue. And, at the best, we find ourselves saying 
 things in a foreign language which we should never 
 dream of uttering in our own. We feel it to be a 
 
218 SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 veil over our real selves, and so venture upon unaccus- 
 tomed liberties ; like scurrilous critics who write 
 anonymously. There is a point beyond which cosmo- 
 politanism becomes unwholesome. 
 
 v. 
 
 If we can once succeed in freeing ourselves from the 
 vulgar prejudice against Sunday amusements, a main 
 obstacle in the way of our Dresden diversions will 
 have been removed. Look upon Sunday as a holiday- 
 it is nothing else, indeed and theatre-going, dancing, 
 and junketing can hardly appear illegitimate. Live 
 among Saxons for a year or two, or for half-a-dozen- 
 years if two be not enough, and Sabbath bells will 
 cease to distract us from enjoyment of the opera- 
 bouffe overture. Walking out, in the clear Sabbath 
 twilight, to meditate upon the immortality of the 
 soul, we shall but meditate the more at the glimpse of 
 heated couples gyrating to a fiddle in yonder dance- 
 hall. And, as we grow wiser and broader-minded, we 
 shall gradually cease to associate Sunday with any 
 thoughts of God, or of a life beyond this world. This 
 point once reached, we may congratulate ourselves,, 
 und push onwards hopefully. Is it not, after al] ? fatal 
 to our appreciation of the world we are in, to keep 
 mingling with it speculations about a world we may 
 never attain ? Saxons have emancipated themselves in, 
 
DRESDEN DIVERSIONS. 219 
 
 good measure from such confusion. They recognize 
 religion as a word of four syllables whose meaning is 
 open to discussion. It gives them a holiday once a 
 week, and a pretext for bullying the Pope every day. 
 It is true that the Royal Family are Roman Catholics, 
 and a good part of their subjects also ; but that is a, 
 matter of detail. There is no personal animosity in. 
 the attitude of the rival parties nothing but political 
 exigency. Except His Holiness and Prince Bismarck, 
 nobody really cares how the cat jumps. Select a- 
 Lutheran here and a Catholic there, and confront 
 them with each other as spiritual enemies they can- 
 not keep straight countenances. The Catholic makes- 
 the sign of the cross, the Lutheran hums his " Wein y 
 Weib und Gesang," they link arms and are off to the 
 Sunday masquerade. 
 
 Let us be emancipated too, and follow them. These 
 masquerades are a prominent Dresden diversion dur- 
 ing the winter. They are widely advertised, not only 
 by the placards which glow forth in crimson, yellow, 
 and blue, from every advertising-post, but still more 
 by the masks which now begin to crowd and grimace 
 in shop-windows. Here is every variety, from the 
 simple false nose to the elaborate head and shoulders, 
 complete both back and front. Here they hang, row 
 above row, grinning, empty things, a curious revela- 
 tion of what men would make of themselves if flesh 
 
222 SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 change countenance, and we indulge our maddest 
 freaks Avith entire composure. This were a merry 
 world if no one knew his fellow, nor could find him 
 out. It is lucky for civilization that we cannot so 
 much as black our boots in a manner inconsistent with 
 .our past and our prospects. 
 
 But the spur of the fun is its necessary briefness. 
 If the masquerade could last a year, we should only 
 have shifted one self to take up another quite as bur- 
 densome. Besides, the spice of mystery and novelty is 
 evanescent, and, by-and-by, we cease to laugh at one 
 .another's long noses. Why we ever laughed at them 
 is hard to say: perhaps only as an alternative to 
 shuddering or weeping. Children are more frightened 
 than amused by masks of all kinds, which proves 
 them not funny, but monstrous ; and our laughter only 
 rshows our callousness. 
 
 As to these Dresden masquerades, I may observe 
 that the more masked they are the better. The 
 majority of their patrons are in attendance to regale 
 such phases of human nature as are commonly kept 
 in strict concealment. Under such circumstances, a 
 hideous mask is often the best virtue possible : it is, 
 so to say, devilishly appropriate. However hideous 
 it may be, the revelation of the naked face is often 
 yet more revolting ; and my chief quarrel with Dres- 
 den masquerades is on the ground of their indecency 
 
DRESDEN DIVERSIONS. 223 
 
 in too often neglecting to^ keep their indecency 
 veiled. 
 
 VI. 
 
 At masquerades the Saxon disguises himself in 
 more ways than one. He lays not much stress upon 
 his domino and vizard, but he bewilders us by an un- 
 wonted pecuniary extravagance, and himself with too 
 much champagne. Although there are no people that 
 can less truly be considered temperate than the 
 Saxons, we seldom find them helplessly intoxicated ; 
 and this precisely because they habitually drink so 
 much. Fortunately, moreover, it is to beer that they 
 hiefly address themselves, as being the cheapest 
 liquor and the most accessible. But when they for- 
 sake this honest beverage for more costly and potent 
 ones, they are speedily overcome. And they betray 
 an unwholesome delight in drunkenness. An Ameri- 
 can or a Frenchman is apt to be very troublesome 
 when intoxicated ; an Englishman, more or less brutal ; 
 but the Saxon is purely disgusting both in act and 
 aspect. Besides, neither in the prospect nor the re- 
 trospect is he at all ashamed of his vinous fermenta- 
 tion, but, rather, proud, as the Bacchantes might have 
 been. 
 
 Whoever should attempt without any definite in- 
 formation, but relying upon his knowledge of Saxon 
 
222 SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 change countenance, and we indulge our maddest 
 freaks with entire composure. This were a merry 
 world if no one knew his fellow, nor could find him 
 out. It is lucky for civilization that we cannot so 
 much as black our boots in a manner inconsistent with 
 .our past and our prospects. 
 
 But the spur of the fun is its necessary briefness. 
 If the masquerade could last a year, we should only 
 have shifted one self to take up another quite as bur- 
 densome. Besides, the spice of mystery and novelty is 
 evanescent, and, by-and-by, we cease to laugh at one 
 another's long noses. Why we ever laughed at them 
 is hard to say: perhaps only as an alternative to 
 shuddering or weeping. Children are more frightened 
 than amused by masks of all kinds, which proves 
 them not funny, but monstrous ; and our laughter only 
 :shows our callousness. 
 
 As to these Dresden masquerades, I may observe 
 that the more masked they are the better. The 
 majority of their patrons are in attendance to regale 
 such phases of human nature as are commonly kept 
 in strict concealment. Under such circumstances, a 
 hideous mask is often the best virtue possible : it is, 
 so to say, devilishly appropriate. However hideous 
 it may be, the revelation of the naked face is often 
 yet more revolting ; and my chief quarrel with Dres- 
 den masquerades is on the ground of their indecency 
 
DRESDEN DIVERSIONS. 223 
 
 in too often neglecting to^ keep their indecency 
 veiled. 
 
 VI. 
 
 At masquerades the Saxon disguises himself in 
 more ways than one. He lays not much stress upon 
 his domino and vizard, but he bewilders us by an un- 
 wonted pecuniary extravagance, and himself with too 
 much champagne. Although there are no people that 
 can less truly be considered temperate than the 
 Saxons, we seldom find them helplessly intoxicated ; 
 and this precisely because they habitually drink so 
 much. Fortunately, moreover, it is to beer that they 
 chiefly address themselves, as being the cheapest 
 liquor and the most accessible. But when they for- 
 sake this honest beverage for more costly and potent 
 ones, they are speedily overcome. And they betray 
 an. unwholesome delight in drunkenness. An Ameri- 
 can or a Frenchman is apt to be very troublesome 
 when intoxicated ; an Englishman, more or less brutal ; 
 but the Saxon is purely disgusting both in act and 
 aspect. Besides, neither in the prospect nor the re- 
 trospect is he at all ashamed of his vinous fermenta- 
 tion, but, rather, proud, as the Bacchantes might have 
 been. 
 
 Whoever should attempt without any definite in- 
 formation, but relying upon his knowledge of Saxon 
 
224 SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 character and tendencies to form an idea of what a 
 masquerade in Dresden would be like, could not fail 
 to be taken aback by the reality. The extent and 
 boldness of the advertising is misleading, for how can 
 that to which the whole community is invited be very 
 improper ? We are prepared, perhaps, to be a little 
 scandalized, but we certainly count on being amused, 
 and most likely gratified by a gorgeous and imposing 
 spectacle. The carnivals of old, we have heard, were 
 splendid to the eye, however questionable otherwise ; 
 and some of us have read Mr. De Quincey's " Masque 
 of Klosterheim," and are ready for all imaginable 
 mystery and grandeur. The very name '' masque," 
 " masquerade," possesses an indescribable magnetism 
 of its own. 
 
 So we present our ticket at the door, and pass 
 through the dressing-room into the main hall. It is 
 thronged from side to side, full of light, music, human 
 hum and tumult, and occasionally a shriller laugh or 
 call heard above the even din. The orchestra is some- 
 where overhead ; the whole broad floor is given up to 
 the dancers, actual or potential. The latter form a 
 wide, dense ring around the former, whose reeling 
 heads we behold confusedly agitated; now merging 
 exhausted in the ring, anon starting from it with new 
 vigour. The Saxons are clever dancers, one and all, 
 and devoted to the pastime ; but I confess I like it 
 
DRESDEN DIVERSIONS. 225 
 
 less since seeing them enjoy it. They dance with 
 emphasis with a greedy persistence which is dis- 
 enchanting. When warmed to their work, the 
 partners face each other, the man's arms round the 
 woman's waist, her hands clutching his shoulders, and 
 so fixed, they spin teetotum-like. But though this 
 arrangement is good for pace, it lacks the artificial 
 grace which is the charm of modern dancing. Since 
 we cannot be veritable nymphs and fauns, it is best to 
 adopt as different a style as possible. 
 
 The hall is draped with banners, and the walls glow 
 with various emblazonment. But when we turn to 
 the masqueraders themselves, they seem less fine than 
 their surroundings. Three-fourths of the men are in 
 evening dress or even in ordinary clothes, with 
 nothing better than a half-mask, or a false nose to 
 hide their faces withal, and not a few have dispensed 
 even with these poor disguises. Such nonconformity 
 is discouraging nay, insulting as if our host at a 
 banquet should present us our food uncooked. The 
 women are more orthodox ; scarce one but wears a 
 mask, generally a silken vizard with a veil for the 
 lower part of the face. Most of them, too, are clad in 
 fancy costume either a gay domino, or a stage dress 
 more or less elaborate. There are half-a-dozen ballet- 
 dancers, in gauze and silk tights somewhat dis- 
 maying, by their palpable proximity, those whose 
 
 Q 
 
226 SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 ideas of such beings have been formed only from 
 behind the foot-lights. Others there are in still more 
 dashing attire, which I will not undertake to describe. 
 But it would be all very well, and in keeping, were it 
 not for those black-coated, barefaced, besotted, mas- 
 culine intruders, who, like a malignant touchstone, 
 reveal the ugliness beneath the gay outside, and force 
 us to see only a cheat in the prettiest pretences. 
 
 Such as it is, hoAvever, there is more masquerading 
 in the main hall than in the side rooms, and the 
 discreet visitor will not push his investigations far 
 beyond the sound of the music, lest some sudden 
 Gorgon freeze him to stone. A glass or two of wine 
 beyond the common is, perhaps, a wise prescription at 
 this juncture. Now, let us force our way through the 
 ring, and seize our partner. \Ve need not be ceremo- 
 nious, and wait for an introduction; nor is such a 
 thing as monopolization of the chosen companion 
 countenanced. To the Saxon, all woman is one. For 
 convenience sake, she is multiplied into fractions ; but 
 one is just as good for practical purposes as another. 
 The nearest at hand is the most ours ; yet we must not 
 resent having her taken from our arms after the en- 
 joyment of a turn or two. The question is not, With 
 whom did you dance ? but, How much ? 
 
 To launch forth, with a good waltzer, to excellent 
 music, compensates many evils \ and, but for collisions, 
 
DRESDEN DIVERSIONS. 227 
 
 slips, dust, heat, and exhaustion, we should henceforth 
 get on famously. But as the evening advances, such 
 checks increase. The wine makes the floor slippery 
 and the dancers unwieldy. The scene begins to wear 
 a very dilapidated appearance. The noise is greater, 
 but more disorganized ; the laughter is wilder ; there 
 are sudden screams; and now and then a short 
 struggle, and perhaps a fall. Meanwhile, the music 
 pours on unceasing, infusing a strange harmony into 
 the discord. The policemen a number of whom have 
 been lurking unobtrusively in shady corners are now 
 occasionally in requisition ; but it must be admitted 
 that they are very lenient ; it would need a murder 
 to move them to real severity. They cast reproachful 
 glances ; or, in extreme cases, impose a remonstrative 
 hand. But there is no clubbing, no show of arms, no 
 dragging out by the coat-collar. Nor is it needed ; 
 the mere sight of the black helmet is ordinarily 
 enough ; for beneath it lowers, to the evil-doer's eye, 
 not the inoffensive visage of the individual policeman, 
 but the impending brow, trenchant glance, and aggres- 
 sive chin of Germany's greatest statesman. Mumbo 
 Jumbo teaches even drunkards to reason and refrain. 
 
 Meanwhile, eating and drinking proceed in the 
 ante-rooms, and above-stairs in the galleries and 
 lobbies. But the guests are in a sadly dishevelled 
 state ; even the women are now unmasked, and so the 
 
228 SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 last reserve is overthrown. We must have a bois- 
 terous appetite to compass a supper at one one of these 
 tables, amid such queer neighbours. Debauchery has 
 no attractions in Saxony beyond its naked self ; and 
 those who indulge in it there, must love it for its 
 own unmitigated sake. It is for the gratification of 
 these its children that a paternal Government provides 
 masquerades, and finds them remunerative. 
 
 VII. 
 
 Far different from this masked iniquity are the 
 balls given by the proprietors of beer-saloons to their 
 customers, and to such friends as the latter may choose 
 to invite. Hither flock minor tradesmen with their 
 wives and daughters, and hotel-waiters, clerks, and 
 such small deer of society. They are all well-behaved ; 
 there is nothing of the riot and disturbance which 
 would mark a gathering of the same rank in America. 
 Here is peaceful good -nature, and though joy be un- 
 con fined, there is decorum at least what Saxons under- 
 stand as such. There is little attempt at dress; the 
 men are in their Sunday coats and light trousers, the 
 women in robes of stout material, not of Parisian design, 
 but prettified about the arms and shoulders with lace 
 and muslin. Gloves are unknown ; you receive your 
 partner's hand as nature and exercise have left it 
 The fun is not confined to the young people; they 
 
DRESDEN DIVERSIONS. 229 
 
 bring their fathers and mothers with them, and the 
 latter dance as vigorously and enjoy ingly as their off- 
 spring. Every one is on familiar terms with his neigh- 
 bour, so that the assembly feels like a family party. 
 A friend of mine, who, with me, has investigated 
 many curious phases of Saxon life, accompanied me to 
 one of these merry-makings. We had for some weeks 
 past assiduously visited a modest Restauration in the 
 Am See, where the beer was brought us by a stalwart 
 maiden named Anna. Our calls being usually made 
 about the middle of the afternoon, Anna had leisure 
 for social converse, and surprised us by the extent of 
 her attainments. Not only could she play on the 
 piano, which prolonged a tuneless existence in one 
 corner of the room, but she could beat us at capping 
 verses from Heine, and even, as we subsequently dis- 
 covered, could rhyme a very creditable stanza herself. 
 In short, she was a young woman of parts, and I fancy 
 she had ambitions. Her personal attractions are soon 
 enumerated. She was short and broad-shouldered; 
 her arms and cheeks were red-shiny ; her wide, good- 
 humoured mouth was always stretching to a smile. 
 Her bright, small grey eyes twinkled in a very con- 
 tracted cranium, which was surmounted by a swathing 
 of hair so flattened down and polished off that it 
 seemed to be a coating of yellow-brown paint, laid on 
 thick and varnished. 
 
230 SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 Anna invited us to this ball we accepted 
 and she gave us each a card on which were neatly 
 written her own name and ours, her chosen guests. 
 I have seldom received an invitation so genuinely 
 cordial as this. Anna was proud of us, and even a 
 little anxious lest something might prevent our 
 coming. Again and again did she earnestly beseech 
 us not to fail her, and did grin from one honest ear to 
 the other when we affirmed that nothing short of 
 death should detain us. 
 
 The ball was at a saloon half-a-mile out of town, 
 and had been going on for an hour or two before our 
 arrival. We discussed a Sclinitt of beer in the Vorsaal, 
 and then peeped modestly through the ball-room door. 
 A waltz was in progress, and for a while we looked in 
 vain for Anna among the whirling couples. There 
 were near a hundred people present, and all at work ; 
 and the evening being rather a warm one, they were 
 pretty thoroughly heated. The Saxon, in this con- 
 dition, is less attractive than at other times. Perhaps, 
 speaking generally, there are few better ways of dis- 
 tinguishing the aristocrat from the plebeian than to get 
 both in a profuse perspiration. It is as sure a test of 
 physical purity as was the fairy girdle at Guinevere's 
 court of moral cleanliness. 
 
 At length we caught sight of Anna's genial coun- 
 tenance, brilliant with heat and pleasure, glowing over 
 
DRESDEN DIVERSIONS.- 231 
 
 the shoulder of a revolving young shopkeeper. She 
 shot a broad smile across the hall, and spinning her 
 partner to a seat, hastened up to us all redolent of 
 hospitality. How pretty she looked! She was 
 really the belle of the evening. She was enveloped 
 as to the upper part of her stout person in white 
 muslin, through which shone mistily her rosy arms 
 and shoulders ; below, fell a skirt of some respect- 
 able grey fabric, not so long as to incommode her 
 dancing feet. Her ears were splendid with glit- 
 tering glass pendants; round her neck a yellow 
 glass cross was suspended by a black gutta-percha 
 chain. Is there not pathos in these poor little 
 details of finery, and her manifest delight in them ? 
 On her short fingers were three or four broad 
 rings as yellow as gold. At her throat for even so 
 much magnificence was not enough Anna wore a 
 brooch as big as the palm of her own fair hand, of tin, 
 artfully moulded to resemble diamonds. As to her 
 hair, it seemed to have grown by the yard since yes- 
 terday, and was frizzled in short curls over the 
 forehead. It was plentifully anointed with some 
 glistening unguent, upon which I forbear to dwell. It 
 was the only thing about Anna which we could not 
 admire. 
 
 Nothing could be more flattering in its simplicity 
 than the way Anna took my friend's hand, rested her 
 
232 SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 cliin upon his shoulder, and, without question asked 
 or expected, danced him off into the steaming tumult 
 of the hall. I watched their devious course, whirling, 
 plunging, staggering, desperately keeping time, now 
 hidden, anon reappearing, and evermore revolving ! 
 I marvelled at the pained contraction of his brow, 
 and at the tireless vigour of her flying feet ! Finally, 
 either he relented, and gasped in her ear to remember 
 her deserted guest, or it was her own kind heart that 
 brought her whirling back to where I stood, and 
 transferred her from his fortunate arms to mine. 
 
 Be that as it may, it was I who, the next moment, 
 breasted with her the dangers of the dance. But I 
 will pass lightly over my own exploits. How long 
 the spell lasted I never knew, but it seemed to me that 
 Anna must be Atalanta in disguise. At length, how- 
 ever, our motion appeared to have ceased, though 
 still the room wheeled and tipped before my eyes. 
 We had eddied into a seat Anna and I and it was 
 given me to know that her threefold performance 
 had finally exhausted her. 
 
 " Ach ! so nriide bin Ich," she faltered, and with that 
 she innocently drooped her anointed head and laid it 
 on my shoulder. Being a constitutionally timid man, 
 I confess that, at this juncture, I could not repress a 
 movement of apprehension. The situation was really 
 too tender for long continuance: the fragrant head 
 
DRESDEN DIVERSIONS. 233 
 
 was uplifted ; but I found its imprint on the broad- 
 cloth the next morning " Zum Andenken," as Anna 
 would have said. 
 
 At midnight supper was announced, and the re- 
 sponse was unanimous. Three long tables were placed 
 on as many sides of a square, while opposite the open 
 end a small one was set apart for the host and his 
 family. We occupied the top of the right-hand table, 
 with Anna between us. We were scarcely well set- 
 tled in our places when the toasting began. The 
 host's health was first proposed by an orator at the 
 lower table. Amid the consequent enthusiatic uproar, 
 the host filled his goblet, and stepping into the hollow 
 square of tables, touched glasses with all his hundred 
 guests, they meanwhile standing up, or even climbing on 
 their chairs, loudly chanting the " Hoch soil er leben!" 
 which is always an accompaniment of the ceremony. 
 
 When the noise had subsided, the host he was a 
 small, dapper man, witli bushy whiskers and a rather 
 nervous manner made an address of some length. 
 He was cheered throughout, and ended with pro- 
 posing somebody else's health, which was received in 
 precisely the same manner as his own had been. Thus 
 the ball rolled round the table, every other guest, at 
 least, being called on, and responding with a speech, 
 a song, or an original poem. The ladies took part in 
 the exercises no less than the men ; and Anna, after 
 
234 SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 replying to the flattering terms in which her name 
 had been brought forward, recited, with good emphasis 
 and discretion, some three or four easy-flowing verses 
 of her own composition. I think we had but half 
 appreciated our little sponsor, after all. 
 
 Well, at last there was a pause, and we wondered 
 what was to happen next. But gradually, as it 
 were by some magnetic attraction, the eyes of all 
 present turned and fastened upon us. Then solemnly 
 the host arose, and began, with formal hints which by 
 degrees grew more and more transparent and compli- 
 mentary, to call attention to the presence in the 
 assembly of two distinguished strangers foreigners 
 in fact Americans. A brief eulogy of that great 
 nation followed ; and finally came (the host's version 
 of) our names, and a summons most heartily sup- 
 ported to drink us with all the honours. 
 
 During the succeeding tumult we held a hurried 
 consultation; and my friend showed himself equal 
 to the occasion. He arose, and in understandable 
 German regretted that his limited acquaintance with 
 that language denied him the pleasure of addressing 
 the company in it ; but, for his own sake as well as 
 for his country's, he could not sit down without 
 giving utterance to a few sentiments which would 
 only be the more cordial that they were expressed 
 in American. 
 
DRESDEN DIVERSIONS. 235 
 
 And here followed a speech which could not have 
 been better received had the speaker's tongue been a 
 very Goethe's. Indeed, I fancy our Saxon friends 
 felt even more gratified and complimented by a speech 
 which they could not comprehend than had it been 
 otherwise. We immediately became cynosures, and 
 were introduced to everybody among others, to those 
 two unexceptionable little personages, Anna's father 
 and mother. I think the old lady was pointedly 
 kind to me ; we never failed to touch glasses with 
 a smile and a bow before drinking : and afterwards, in 
 the cotillon, she bestowed two favours upon me the 
 Cross of the Legion of Honour and the Cap of Liberty. 
 
 It were too long to rehearse in detail a tithe ot 
 the events which followed. Anna, unwilling to choose 
 between her two guests, was partner of us both in the 
 ensuing cotillon; nay, it seemed that even we could 
 not satisfy her waltzing appetite, for she had three or 
 four relays of young Saxons constantly in waiting for 
 the spare turns. She did not spare herself at all; and 
 we could not help wishing, on more accounts than 
 one, that she had been somewhat less popular. Inde- 
 fatigable Anna ! Her muslin garments clung to her as 
 though she had been immersed in beer. 
 
 Till two o'clock we jigged it ceaselessly ; then there 
 was a universal pause; each couple sought their 
 chairs, and gradually the lights burnt blue, till we 
 
236 SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 scarce could see across the darkened hall. Presently, 
 however, we were aware of a mysterious apparition 
 seemingly an incarnation of the gloom in the shape 
 of a gigantic extinguisher, about seven feet in height. 
 This spectre glided in silence thrice around the room, 
 to slow music, bestowing upon each lady a small roll of 
 paper containing a sugar-plum and an amatory 
 epigram. The last round having been completed, the 
 ghostly extinguisher vanished as mysteriously as it 
 appeared seemed to put itself out, in fact and then 
 the lights suddenly resumed their brilliancy. Some 
 people departed after this, and we were of the num- 
 ber, after a melting farewell from Anna. She told 
 us, the next afternoon and a touch of paleness on 
 her cheek confirmed the tale that she had danced 
 till six that morning. And then she sat down to the 
 piano, and regretfully touched the chords of Strauss's 
 waltz, " An der schoenen blauen Donau." 
 
 " What, Anna " we exclaimed, " not yet enough of 
 dancing ? " 
 
 " Ach, bewalir ! " she murmured ; and with a subtle 
 mixture of tact and coquetry, she hummed with 
 Goethe's "Mignon," 
 
 " Dabin, Dahin, moclit' Ich mit Dir, mem Geleibter, zieh'n ! " 
 
 But we could never agree which of us it was she had 
 in mind ; and too probably it was neither. 
 
DRESDEN DIVERSIONS. 237 
 
 VIII. 
 
 There are diversions of war as well as of peace. At 
 all times in history the sight of blood, human or 
 bestial, has been delightful to mankind ; symbolic, I 
 suppose, of the cruel scoffing spirit which would rend 
 asunder the holy mysteries of nature, and discover her 
 vital secrets to all eyes rude enough to look upon 
 them. What siren was ever so seductive to entice 
 men to their harm as is the voice of a brother's blood 
 crying to heaven ? 
 
 We cannot be long in Dresden without meeting 
 about the streets, and at the cafes and beer saloons, 
 specimens of a guild which is peculiar to Germany, 
 and not likely to be exported. Their leading traits 
 are tolerably well known, having been diligently de- 
 scribed by travellers ever since "Hyperion." They 
 pace the streets, proud, in a striking costume, of 
 which the only invariable features are a pair of high 
 boots, reaching six or seven inches above the knee, 
 which, like snow-shoes, cannot be properly worn with- 
 out practice; a round cap, four inches in diameter, 
 and an inch and a-half deep, clinging by invisible 
 means to the north-east corner of the head; and a 
 striped ribbon crossing the chest from the shoulder to 
 the hip. They swing a light cane in one hand, stare 
 the passer-by boldly in the eye, puff tobacco-smoke in 
 
2 3 3 SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 the ladies' faces, and are very high-spirited and quar- 
 relsome. On cheek and brow are scars from an inch 
 to four inches in length, which it is no part of their 
 religion to conceal. They are inclined to monopolize 
 the sidewalks, and to hector it in the beer-gardens. 
 They are of that undesirable age, between sixteen and 
 twenty-three, through which, as through a miasmal 
 swamp, mankind is condemned to pass on its way to- 
 better things. 
 
 Yes, these are the University students or at least, 
 students from the Mining College in Freiberg, a 
 curious old town some twenty miles from Dresden. 
 The strong class spirit of these young fellows, and 
 their superstitious observance of antiquated forms and 
 customs, undeniably makes them an interesting study, 
 the more because it seems unlikely that they can exist 
 many years longer in their pristine quaintness. The 
 vital essence of the " Kneipe " is its vast absurdity ; 
 and its attraction to outsiders lies in the startling 
 contrast between its laws and customs, its costumes 
 and its creeds, and those of the present day. We 
 cannot expect it to hold its own in the teeth of 
 modern innovations and refinements, military laws, 
 science, persecutions, and republican despotisms. Its 
 dying aroma is being even now exhaled. 
 
 Between the soldiers and the students there has 
 always subsisted a hatred' and rivalry, wherein the 
 
DRESDEN DIVERSIONS. 239 
 
 former have generally the advantage. There is no 
 assignable cause for this feud, unless it be that the 
 students fight with the Schlacger and the officers with 
 the broadsword. In extreme cases, however, both 
 parties use pistols, which put them on more equal 
 footing. A regiment of infantry was formerly quar- 
 tered at Freiberg, much to the discontent of the 
 thousand or more students residing there. Collisions- 
 were frequent; and at length an officer mortally 
 affronted a Bursch, and in the consequent meeting 
 shot his opponent dead. Hereupon an indignation 
 gathering of all the Kneipen ; and the next day the 
 officer was the recipient of no less than a. thou- 
 sand distinct summonses to the field of honour - 
 weapons, pistols. Not only, therefore, did he stand a 
 thousand chances to one of being killed, but suppos- 
 ing him passed through such a hell-fire unscathed 
 he must bear during life the not entirely enviable 
 reputation of having slaughtered a thousand human 
 beings, and depopulated a college. A council of war 
 was held, resulting in the transmission to the student 
 champions of the apologies of the regiment, and the 
 withdrawal of the latter from Freiberg, which thus 
 vindicated its name. 
 
 But such serious affairs as this are very rare. 
 Duelling among the students is regarded as a means 
 of culture and a sign of good breeding; it forms an 
 
2 4 o SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 important part of the routine of University discipline ; 
 and a scar or two or a dozen, if possible are quite 
 as conducive to the credit of a graduate as his 
 diploma. Duelling meetings are held between rival 
 corps several times a year, and champions are matched 
 against one another, not by reason of personal enmity, 
 but according to their prowess as we would match 
 two college boys to row a single scull race. A spice of 
 genuine hostility between the duellists is not, how- 
 ever, objected to; and doubtless it is quite as well to 
 fight out petty quarrels and heart-burnings with the 
 Schlaeger as to promote their unhealthy growth by a 
 diet of bad language and morbid backbitings. My 
 observation leads me to the conclusion that a sound 
 bout at fisticuffs is better than either ; but fisticuffing 
 would soon put an end to the Kneipe system, and to 
 that peculiar code of etiquette, morality, and refinement 
 which it inculcates on the student's mind. We must 
 recollect, moreover, that the sword renders the small 
 fist as dangerous as the big one ; and since what is 
 known to Anglo-Saxons as fair play is but dimly 
 apprehended by the German intellect, perhaps this 
 safeguard of the weak against the strong is nob un- 
 important. 
 
 It is curious how the periodical shedding of a little 
 blood, organizes and vitalizes these guilds. In all 
 ways, blood is the strongest cement between man and 
 
DRESDEN DIVERSIONS. 241 
 
 man. Armies would soon thirst to death if blood were 
 denied them ; nor are elaborate discipline and forms 
 of behaviour anywhere so rigorously maintained as 
 where the rules are written with a bloody pen. The 
 reason is perhaps not far to seek. Bloodshed, pure 
 and simple, is vulgar, disgusting, and brutal. Nothing 
 else has so strong a natural tendency to degrade and 
 coarsen the nature. And it is the very recognition of 
 this which leads man to spend his best skill in sur- 
 rounding all its circumstances with the utmost pomp 
 and formality. It seems to be a universal law that 
 those things which have the strongest native ten- 
 dency to drag mankind to chaos, should become by 
 virtue of the struggle they compel him to make 
 against their destructive power his most potent edu- 
 cators. The completest gentleman the holiest saint 
 is he who has withstood the strongest temptation 
 to be a charlatan or a devil. 
 
 So with these corps-students : there is not much 
 education, one would suppose, in a slit nose, or a 
 cheek laid open. No ; but the processes which have 
 led up to it have we considered them ? There is the 
 fencing-school, in which, at all events, the hand and 
 eye are trained to an accuracy and strength to which 
 they had else been strangers. There, too, is the corps 
 etiquette to be learnt and preserved the recognition 
 of authority and order, and the careful observance of 
 
 B 
 
242 SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 self-respect. Each one is responsible for his conduct 
 to all the rest ; and if called upon to defend himself, it 
 is his fault should he fail successfully to withstand his 
 challenger. As to physical courage, I cannot own to 
 any great faith in its development by Schlaeyer duels. 
 It is true that the duellists soon cease to fear the 
 "cuts" and even learn to enjoy them. But then, they 
 are never mortal, and seldom very serious. And I 
 have no reason to believe that the most inveterate 
 Schlaeger duellist is any braver before a pistol than 
 other men might be. Special pleadings on questions 
 of this kind are, however, misleading ; since, however 
 well the theory may be supported, the practice always 
 belies it more or less. The best that can be affirmed 
 with regard to corps-students is, that we are not 
 obliged to make so many allowances for them as for 
 the unmitigated barbarians. 
 
 IX. 
 
 Perhaps the reader would like to be present at 
 one of these duel-meetings, and form his own judg- 
 ment upon the matter ? We turn down a narrow 
 side-street, whip under a gloomy archway, enter 
 by a glass-panelled door, and find ourselves in a 
 dismal beer-saloon. Passing through this, we arrive 
 at an inner apartment, to which a pecular knock gives 
 us admittance. This is the Kneipe-room, where the 
 
DRESDEN DIVERSIONS. 243 
 
 corps is to rendezvous before proceeding to the field of 
 honour. It is narrow, dark, and smoky, blearing out 
 through its one grimy window into a back yard The 
 floor is strewn with a little white sand; a rough 
 wooden table, bearing marks of age and hard usage, 
 extends the length of the room: wooden benches to 
 match, and unpretending chairs. The walls are 
 adorned with the coat-of-arms of the corps, embla- 
 zoned in gold and colours; round it are arranged a 
 score of old ScJtlaeger, like rays of a central sun. 
 Elsewhere are hung up enormous drinking-horns, such 
 as King Olaf might have used, with inscriptions on 
 their silver mountings. Here are trophies of all sorts ; 
 pictures, too, representing famous duels ; and photo- 
 graphs of past and present members, taken singly or 
 in groups. Traditions are jealously preserved among 
 the Burschen, and some of the societies are of very 
 .great antiquity ; so that the Burscli of to-day may see 
 upon the wall the sword with which his great- 
 grandfather fought, and drink himself seas-over out of 
 the ancestral Schoppen. 
 
 Has the reader ever held a Scldaeyer in his hand, 
 and examined it ? It has a large basket-hilt, guarding 
 the hand completely : the blade is straight, and 
 about three feet in length a thin, narrow strip of 
 soft steel, pliant but not elastic. It is a light weapon, 
 easily wielded; were it heavy as the ordinary broad- 
 
244 SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 sword, the muscles of an average Burscli would 
 soon tire beneath its weight, for the attitude in 
 fighting is an excessively wearisome one at best. Its 
 deficiencies in heaviness and stiffness are fully com- 
 pensated by the razor-keenness of the blade ; the soft 
 steel taking a marvellously fine edge. The point is 
 rounded, and the edge extends sixteen inches down 
 the front of the blade, and half as far down the back. 
 Both blade and hilt are gallantly scarred and hacked ; 
 from these the bloodstains have been wiped away; 
 but the " armour " shows enough of such to sate the 
 most sanguinary warrior. The gore of hundreds ay, 
 of thousands, is encrusted on these breast-plates and 
 cuishes, and presents a spectacle really ghastly, and 
 calculated, one would suppose, to dampen the courage 
 of a virgin duellist. A pig-sticker's apron would be 
 more reassuring. For this armour, excellent in other 
 respects, can never be cleansed; it consists of stout 
 buckskin pads, protecting the throat, right arm, and 
 the whole right side of the body to the knee. Iron 
 armour would speedily destroy the fine edge of the 
 Scltlacger ; though I doubt whether it would be found 
 any heavier than these enormous pads, and stiffer or 
 more awkward it certainly could not be. The pads 
 detract much from the aspect of the contest; a polished 
 cuirass and glittering arms would be more inspiring, 
 and the blood would seem more noble when shed oji 
 
DRESDEN DIVERSIONS. 245 
 
 steel than when absorbed and stiffened in dirty 
 leather. There is another objection. The rattle of a 
 .sword against a steel breast-plate is a martial sound ; 
 It kindles the imagination and inspires the courage; 
 but the " flap " of the blade against the buckskin pad 
 reminds us of nothing more dignified than carpet- 
 beating. If we close our eyes upon the bloody scene, 
 and only listen to the fray, we are transported to the 
 back-yard of our childhood's home, where John and 
 Bridget are knocking clouds of dust out of the parlour 
 carpet. The illusion is heightened by the fact that 
 the warriors, like John and Bridget, deliver their 
 blows alternately, in rapid and measured succession. 
 " Flap flap ! flap flap ! " It is carpet-beating, for 
 all the world! However, we must not carp and 
 criticize so much. Use is itself a beauty ; and since 
 the leathern pad answers its special purpose better 
 than anything else could, it must appear beautiful to 
 the unprejudiced observer. 
 
 Besides the furniture and ornaments, the room 
 contains a dozen or more young men, high-booted, 
 round-capped, and ribboned. Some of them are to be 
 the heroes of the coining tournament, though we 
 might not learn as much from the Indian stoicism of 
 their countenances. Probably the signs of battle will 
 be plainer after it is over than beforehand. The 
 students are not all Germans ; there are Hungarians, 
 
246 SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 Poles, Turks, an American, and a couple of Russians. 
 One of the latter is vice-president of the corps a tall, 
 burly fellow, with a rough face and small grey eyes ; 
 but when he speaks and he does so in four lan- 
 guages we perceive an unexpected courtesy and 
 refinement in his manner. His familiarity with the 
 English tongue is astonishing: he has even caught 
 the colloquialisms of the day. 
 
 " Do we fear the spectacle of blood ? " he asks us ; 
 " does it nauseate us ? he should say : " and he pro- 
 ceeds to tells us a gory tale or two, by way of gentle 
 initiation into the horrors we are soon to witness. 
 Once he was present at a notable duel between two 
 renowned fencers ; and for a long time the advantage 
 was on neither side. No cut had been given ; it was 
 feared that their skill would prove too perfect that 
 there would be no blood. Just then, however, Fritz 
 appeared suddenly to grow an inch taller; his wrist 
 extended itself admirably ah ! Karl was hit. So true 
 Xnd swift was the blow that Karl himself knew not, 
 at first, that he was overcome ; only when he went to 
 speak, and the blood poured into his mouth, did he 
 become aware of it. A sponge was brought ; the blood 
 wiped away ; when lo ! Karl had no end of his nose. 
 Du lieber Gott ! where is then the nose which Karl 
 had lost ? All search for it it is still in vain 
 the nose the nose had disappeared ! Then cries 
 
DRESDEN DIVERSIONS. 247 
 
 out all of a sudden Fritz " The dog ! the dog ! 
 Potz tausend Donnerwetter ! look once at the dog." 
 One sees the dog make like a cough, with some- 
 thing in mouth. One runs to him, catch him, pound 
 him on the back, lift him by the tail and shake. 
 Ach ! lo ! at last the nose, the poor nose, the end 
 of the nose which Karl has lost. Then Karl takes that 
 end and sticks it to his face to the root, you see." 
 
 " Yes ; well, did it grow on again ? " 
 
 " But surely yes. For seven days it is held con- 
 tinually on; then is the bandage removed, and the 
 nose is once more whole. But alas ! an unlooked-for 
 misfall has occurred." 
 
 "How so?" 
 
 " In the haste of replacing that lost end, the poor 
 Karl has it upside down applied ! It is now too late 
 to alter so grows it to this clay. Karl was before a 
 handsome man : he has still the Geist the vivacity ; 
 but the profile one finds it irregular." 
 
 I should not have ventured to repeat this story at 
 length, had I not the best of reasons for believing it 
 true. I heard it not long afterwards from the lips 
 of the redoubtable Karl himself, and when, at the 
 conclusion, he turned his head pensively aside, the 
 " irregularity " was unmistakeable. 
 
 This was by no means the only tale of blood 
 unfolded by our courteous Russian; but I cannot 
 
248 SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 undertake the responsibility of any more of them. 
 It was not without a touch of pride that he recounted 
 the exploit of a countryman of his own, who, it would 
 appear, was possessed of more fortitude than skill. In 
 the first bout his adversary's point caught in the 
 corner of Snipitoff 's mouth, and created a permanent 
 grin on that side three inches in length, laying bare 
 all the teeth in the right jaw. Snipitoff, however, 
 was no way discouraged, but intimated his resolve to 
 fight it out. The contest was therefore resumed : and 
 SnipitofF's adversary, who seems to have been gifted 
 with an almost unreasonable eye for symmetry, next 
 inserted his blade in the left corner of the gallant 
 [Russian's mouth, and brought it out at the ear. This 
 terminated an affair which was considered to reflect 
 equal credit on both sides. The mouth which now 
 measured from corner to corner a trifle over nine 
 inches was sewed up, with the exception of about 
 three inches in the middle ; and unconquerable 
 Snipitoff then called for beer, and drank until to use 
 the forcible expression of our courteous informant 
 " his back teeth were under water," for three days. 
 The practice of drinking heavily after receiving a cut 
 is universal among the duellists, and is indulged in by 
 way of delaying the healing of the wound, and thus 
 perpetuating the glorious scar. 
 
 While such tales are telling, we are otherwise re- 
 
DRESDEN DIVERSIONS. 249 
 
 galed with beer, bread and cheese, and sausage, whereof 
 the long table has a plentiful load. Perhaps, however, 
 after such fare as our imagination has been treated to, 
 we care not so much for the nourishment of the flesh. 
 In that case, the announcement that the hour for 
 setting forth has arrived will be not unwelcome ; we 
 gladly issue from our dark and musty quarters, and 
 are soon threading the outskirts of the city. The 
 " field of honour " is some two miles off, and is only 
 metaphorically a field ; literally it is an old Gasthaus, 
 deserted at this Lenten season, but hired by the 
 Kneipen for the occasion. There is, by-the-by, a pro- 
 hibitory law against the blood-drinking in which these 
 young savages would indulge, and its influence is no 
 less remarkable than is that of analogous legislation 
 among us in New England. The unnatural thirst is 
 augmented, and the ingenuity requisite to its gratifi- 
 -catioii adds a moral and mental delight to the merely 
 palatal enjoyment; encouraging the dipsomaniac to 
 drink a gallon where he would otherwise be satisfied 
 with a gill. The law is also serviceable, as a species 
 of persecution, in consolidating the Kneipen, and rivet- 
 ing the union of its members. The State desires the 
 permanence of the guild ; and as if the cement of blood 
 were not bond secure enough, doubles its strength by 
 making its use unlawful. There is much subtle wisdom 
 concealed beneath the plain outside of Saxon law. 
 
250 SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 x. 
 
 The Gasthaus is a forlorn and dilapidated old pile, 
 overgrown of bulk, with countless melancholy win- 
 dows, and streaks of greenish damp meandering down 
 its plaster walls from eaves to basement. Within, we 
 climb an aged winding staircase, and presently find 
 ourselves in a large upper room, of great length in 
 proportion to its breadth, wainscoated, with tarnished 
 chandeliers depending from the ceiling, and an iron 
 stove warming its further extremity. The tables and 
 most of the chairs have been removed. The floor, 
 especially at that spot where blood is to be shed, is 
 strewn with sawdust. A crowd of upwards of a hun- 
 dred students are standing about in knots, discussing 
 the instant firay. They are not a physically noble 
 race; many faces are marked with disease latent or 
 developed, and the figures are ill-hung, awkward, 
 or weakly. No other land, perhaps, could show so 
 large an assemblage of young men with so small a 
 leaven of physical manliness. Half of these wear 
 not the sportive eye-glass but the sober earnestness- 
 of spectacles. There is a fortune for oculists in 
 Saxony; and I should not wonder if a good part of 
 the current belief in the national learning might be 
 traced to the sage and studious aspect bestowed by 
 these semi -universal spectacles. As a matter of fact, 
 
DRESDEN DIVERSIONS. 251 
 
 however, their genesis is from bad diet, and perhaps- 
 from some quality in the atmosphere. Most foreigners 
 who have lived long in Saxony will have found their 
 eyesight more or less impaired. 
 
 We glance with some curiosity at the champions 
 who are to win their laurels to-day, or add to them. 
 The two youngest boys of about sixteen look a. 
 little pale; and we may observe a trifling nervous- 
 ness beneath the gaiety of that young American, who- 
 is destined to flesh his maiden sword this morn- 
 ing. But as for the rest, old duellists all, their faces 
 are quite impenetrable. None of them are in 
 what we call fighting condition ; the Saxon makes it 
 a point of etiquette to live loosely for some weeks 
 before and after his duel ; and if he be a trifle beery 
 even at the hour of engagement, it is set down to- 
 his credit. Blood is the thing wanted, and scars that 
 will not fade away ; and he is most properly in con- 
 dition whose veins are most plethoric, and whose flesh 
 is least apt to heal. 
 
 Well, the hour has struck. The landlord, a stout, 
 short-winded personage, of demeanour at once servile 
 and exciteable, trots in for the last time to see thai 
 all is as the gentlemen wish; and then the door is 
 closed, and the company gathers in a wide ring about 
 the battle-field. Those two pale boys, who are to open 
 the proceedings, arc arming with the assistance of 
 
252 SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 tlieir seconds; and most curious is the contrast 
 between their bloodless and pathetically inoffensive 
 faces, and the horrid arms, stiff with ancient gore, in 
 which they stand pilloried. Besides the system of 
 leather pads which we have already examined, they 
 wear a kind of spectacles, or iron guards, for the eyes ; 
 and these lend an indescribably gaunt and demoniac 
 quality to their expression. 
 
 Are the champions prepared ? Let them enter the 
 lists a space between two chalk lines twelve feet 
 apart. Within this space, they must confine their 
 struggle. Here they stand, the sword arm supported 
 by the seconds, lest the weight of the armour should 
 needlessly fatigue it. The president now steps for- 
 ward, inquires the names and designations of the 
 combatants, and is informed thereof by the seconds 
 all in conventional phrases. The president then states 
 the rules which must govern the contest ; and finally 
 the orders are given in a sharp peremptory tone : 
 
 " Auf die Mensur ! " 
 
 The warriors accordingly toe the scratch. 
 
 "Los!" 
 
 And the carpet-beating begins. 
 
 The position is a peculiar one, owing to the circum- 
 stance that the head is the only part attacked. The 
 right arm, pads and all, is arched above and a little in 
 front of the head : the Scldaeger, its point tending 
 

 
 DRESDEN DIVERSIONS. 253 
 
 . 
 
 downwards, continues the arch of the arm. The arm 
 is not moved at any time during the bout; the cute 
 being made by a rapid and elastic turn of the wrist, 
 whereby the blade is swung over or under the adver- 
 sary's guard. The parrying is all done with the 
 padded right arm, which comes in contact with the 
 flat of the attacking sword : and the safety of the 
 duellists' heads depends entirely on the true position 
 of this guard arm. An inch too low or too high, and 
 lo ! a bleeding cheek or forehead. 
 
 Meanwhile our young heroes are at work, flapping 
 away manfully, but doing no execution. Each makes 
 his cut alternately with the other, and the " recover " is 
 instantaneous. After every few strokes the seconds 
 interpose their swords, and take charge of their prin- 
 cipals' right arms for a score of seconds' rest; the 
 swords are straightened, and if their edges be turned, 
 they are replaced with fresh ones from a great bundle 
 of them lying in yonder chair. The heads of the com- 
 batants are, moreover, carefully searched for cuts ; with 
 a knowing gravity of manner which reminds us of cer- 
 tain transactions in the monkeys' cage at the zoological 
 gardens. There is no find, however, and work is re- 
 sumed with fresh vigour. " Flap-flap ! flap-flap ! " 
 
 But this duel is destined to be a failure. The spec- 
 tators become first apprehensive, then depressed. The 
 heads are examined with a plaintive anxiety. The 
 
254 SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 fifteen minutes beyond which no duel may extend 
 have elapsed. There is no blood. The unfortunate 
 duellists drop their swords, kiss each other as the law 
 commands, and are hurried away by their seconds to 
 disarm. No scars for them. 
 
 But the next combat is truly a refreshing exhibi- 
 tion. Our young American is matched against a full- 
 blooded Saxon. It is gratifying to have this palpable 
 assurance that our barbarous countrymen are capable 
 after due transplantation and training of rivalling 
 the culture of the philosophic Germans. May his good 
 genius procure him a scar so deep that the next fifty 
 years should he live so long shall fail to obliterate it. 
 
 The combat begins with the same formalities as 
 before : but ere the " flap-flap ! " has lasted five 
 minutes, a lock of wiry brown hair is seen to jump 
 suddenly from the American's head, and immediately 
 a stream of scarlet blood rushes out of doors, painting 
 one side of his face and dripping on his gorget. He 
 looks surprised and rather relieved. So, this is being 
 cut, is it ? "Well, it doesn't hurt so much, after all ; 
 no more than to hack one's self shaving. He is seated 
 in a chair and sponged off, though the blood continues 
 to flow rapidly, giving him a very grim aspect. Will 
 he continue ? Oh, certainly : just beginning to feel 
 like it. So the two stand up to each other once more. 
 The ring of spectators draws closer ; they have tasted 
 
DRESDEN DIVERSIONS. 255 
 
 blood we may know it by the dilation of their eyes, 
 and their eager parted lips. Blood, brothers ! stand 
 ready, we shall have another draught immediately. 
 Be it Saxon or American, what difference ? Either is 
 sweet to the taste of the philosopher. Oh, blood ! 
 
 This time the aspect of probabilities is somewhat 
 changed. The American's blood is not only out, but 
 up, whereas the Saxon appears somewhat out of sorts ; 
 being, perhaps, sickened at the gory locks and red- 
 dripping cheek of his adversary. He indulges, it may 
 be, in a flitting imagination of himself in like con- 
 dition. In that moment his guard wavers a trifle 
 from its right position ; over comes the sharp blade, 
 catches him beneath the nostril, and slices open his 
 cheek to the temple. The seconds strike up the 
 swords. How the man bleeds ! already there is a pool 
 on the floor. The surgeon sponges and examines, and 
 announces a cut four and a-half inches in length. 
 Happy Saxon ! Just at present, however, the abun- 
 dance of his good fortune a little overcomes him. He 
 sinks back in his chair with a dingy pallor in his face, 
 sharply contrasting with the dark blood which issues 
 from it. He will not be able to continue the duel : 
 he cannot even rise to salute his opponent, who must 
 therefore kiss him where he sits. Did ever two more 
 unlovely countenances exchange such a token of affec- 
 tion ? It is an odd sight, and we cannot help wishing 
 
256 SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 they had restrained their ardours until somebody had 
 washed their faces. 
 
 There are six duels still to come off ; and, though one 
 is pretty much like another, we undoubtedly would 
 like to stand by and see all the twelve heads carved to 
 ribbons. But just as the next pair are got to work, 
 and our eyes are following each blow with silent ex- 
 pectation, there is heard a scurrying and a scrambling 
 up the stairs outside. The door bursts open, and in 
 flies the landlord, his eyes far out of their sockets. 
 
 " Polizei-mcin'-Herren ! Polizei-mein-Gott-in-Him- 
 mel ! Ach ! Polizei-ist-da ! " 
 
 The police ! In an instant, the ring has vanished ; 
 there is turning this way and that, voices and counter- 
 voices. Off run the wounded, their tell-tale wounds 
 but half sewed up, and have vanished through a back 
 entrance. A loud crash of glass causes many a bold 
 heart to throb pshaw ! it is only that bundle of 
 Scldaegcr, which some thoughtful person has sent 
 flying through the window. Now a hasty tub of saw- 
 dust veils the guilty floor. Tables start up as if by 
 magic, with glasses of beer upon them, and peaceful 
 students quaffing the same. This is not a tournament, 
 but a quiet picnic in country solitudes : here is no 
 blood, save such as flows in decorous pulsations 
 through its proper channels. Enter, police I we 
 receive you with the frankness of innocence. 
 
DRESDEN DIVERSIONS. 25; 
 
 Well but the police do not enter. How long is 
 this suspense to last ? can our worthy landlord have 
 been mistaken ? or was he speculating for the price of 
 a few score glasses of beer ? At all events, it was a 
 false alarm ; no rude preservers of the peace are here 
 to offer us violence, and the games may proceed. 
 
 But, for our own private parts, either the fright, or 
 the reaction, or some more hidden cause, has dulled 
 our appetite for further feasting in this kind. Wo 
 have seen blood ; and were we to remain to the very 
 end, they could not shew us anything more interest- 
 ing. Let us, therefore, depart, and strive to introduce 
 Sclilaeger fighting into the colleges of our own land, in 
 place of boating, base-ball, cricket, and such like un- 
 meaning diversions. 
 
 There are other amusements in Dresden ; but after 
 this, to treat of them would be an anticlimax. We 
 must leave the skating-pond, and the boating, and the 
 horse-races, and the minor theatres yes, and the 
 American and English clubs, which, however, are quite 
 as much of a business as of an amusement we must 
 leave these to future historians or to silence. As to 
 chronicling the movements of the fashionable foreign 
 and native society, the magnitude of the theme 
 daunts us. But blood will tell, and must be told 
 about; and let us hope the moral of the tale will not 
 be disregarded. 
 
 S 
 
TYPES CIVIL AND UNCIVIL. 
 
 the German army is the finest in the world ; 
 and of that army, that the Saxon division 
 is the most commendable, is a fact very generally 
 admitted. The world is ancient; there have been 
 many ages and races of men ; but of all, the Saxon 
 soldier is the flower. It were rash to affirm that the 
 future may not produce a warrior better yet than he ; 
 the automatic theory holds out high hopes of possible 
 progress in this direction. When we shall have dis- 
 embarrassed ourselves of the notion that we live as we 
 please, a rigid system of discipline will become our 
 dearest comfort ; for it will tend most strongly to put 
 us out of the way of fancying our actions self-willed. 
 The new gospel shall be the manual of drill and 
 tactics. "What a humiliation to man's conceit the 
 thought that soldiers are nearer the eternal verities 
 
TYPES CIVIL AND UNCIVIL. 259 
 
 than any other bodies! Let the fools of sentiment 
 hasten to range themselves on the winning side. 
 But, whatever our haste, the Saxons are still 
 ahead of us. Though they may not, as yet, have 
 put in words the truth of automatism, they have 
 nevertheless done more to verify it in nature and 
 conduct than have the philosophers who set the theory 
 going. 
 
 It must not be forgotten, however, that their pre- 
 eminence is owing quite as much to the age they live 
 in as to their intrinsic quality. In short, we are 
 called on to admire an exquisite harmony of times and 
 traits. These sons of the drill-book would scarcely 
 have suited the days when personal prowess was an 
 essential soldierly requirement. Their best recom- 
 mendation to the modern, and still more to the future, 
 recruiting-sergeant, must be their unlikeness to the 
 old Greek and Roman giants of sword and spear. Not 
 hot blood and youthful fervour is wanted ; rather a 
 thin, colourless, meek, mechanical habit. What has 
 been called soul and individuality is to be got rid of : 
 an unbounded stomach for discipline is the desi- 
 deratum. We may look forward to the time when the 
 best soldier will be the least man I speak to consent- 
 ing ears, and need not, therefore, pause to explain the 
 paradox and already Napoleons and Hannibals are 
 at a discount, and the cry is for Moltkes. As for 
 
260 SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 Prince Bismarck, lie is still too much hinself to be put 
 in charge of the army. 
 
 It was observed the other day, in regard to the 
 boat-race, that such was the minuteness and accuracy 
 wherewith the result was foretold, there was really 
 little use in rowing it ; it was won and lost long before 
 it started ; and will, a while hereafter, be calculated 
 before an intellectual audience on the blackboard, 
 instead of being uncomfortably proved a foregone 
 conclusion on the river. Thitherward, likewise, tends 
 war. When the soldiers have become unmitigated 
 puppets, and so afford as secure a base for calculation 
 as other mechanical material ; when the officers have 
 grown to be incarnations of subtle scientific foresight, 
 fed on statistics ; shall we not be beyond the folly of 
 shedding blood and burning towns otherwise than on 
 paper ? It may take a little more time to write a 
 campaign than to fight it; but after one side has 
 mathematically proved the superiority of its poten- 
 tialities, the other will find it all the easier to pay its 
 indemnity. In fine, the incubus from which it is our 
 destiny to emancipate ourselves is action vulgar, 
 physical action. Brahma shall be the one true God, 
 and Saxony his chosen Israel. Far off his coming 
 shines very far, perhaps ; but prognostics favour him. 
 
 Meanwhile, I take pleasure in repeating that Saxon 
 soldiers are the best in the world. They can swallow 
 
TYPES CIVIL AND UNCIVIL. 261 
 
 most discipline. They submit to so much stuffing 
 with rules and regulations, great and small, that little 
 of the original creature is left save organic life and 
 uniform. They are a docile sort of Frankensteins. 
 This is well, so long as they remain in the service ; 
 but picture the sad plight of a being thus drained of 
 its proper entrails, and inspired solely by the breath 
 of Mars, when Mare no longer needs him ! Mars re- 
 creates men showily enough; but he lacks the constancy 
 of an original maker, and by-and-by leaves his re- 
 creatures dismally in the lurch. Even the uniform is 
 bereft them. Let who becomes a soldier reflect that he 
 enlists for life ; and whether he be killed in his first 
 battle, or honourabiy discharged after half-a-dozen 
 campaigns, his life still ceases with his soldiership. 
 
 It would be edifying to contrast Saxon soldiers with 
 other nations', point by point, and so arrive at a prac- 
 tical comprehension of their superiority. Much is 
 signified in the fact that their captains address them 
 as " children," while we Americans and our English 
 friends, try to inspire our warriors by appeals to their 
 " manhood." Men, forsooth ! Such is the fruit of 
 illogical sentiment. But persist in calling a person 
 child, and treating him so, and presently he will share 
 our view of the matter, and thus become fit for the camp. 
 But my business is not so much with comparisons as 
 with the incomparable Saxon soldier himself. 
 
262 SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 n. 
 
 Even his uniform is admirable, and, after the 
 shoppy productions worn by our Seventh Regiments, 
 and still more by English Guards and Grenadiers, 
 truly refreshing. It is mainly dark, the darkness en- 
 hanced by narrow lines of red adown the leg and 
 round the throat and wrist. His headgear, though 
 called helmet for lack of a better name, is not im- 
 posing, but eminently practical ; while as to his cap, 
 it is positively made and worn to cover the head, and 
 scarcely inclines more to one ear than to the other. 
 What a pregnant subject for analysis, by the way, is 
 that matter of wearing the hat aslant instead of 
 upright ! Some seer, one of these days, will draw a 
 deep moral from it. The head itself is not propped 
 fiercely up in unrelenting collar, but sits as easily as 
 the heads of ordinary men. We look in vain for the 
 stiff- kneedness, out-chestedness, square-elbowedncss, 
 high-mightiness, which we are accustomed to asso- 
 ciate with the thoughts of things military. This 
 model child of battle seems so comfortable in his 
 uniform, he might have been born in it. He can 
 stoop, kneel down, run, or. vault a fence, without 
 bursting a button. His belt is leathern no pipeclay 
 on his conscience. He can be very dirty without 
 much showing it. Padding and lacing are unknown 
 
TYPES CIVIL AND UNCIVIL. 263 
 
 at least to the private. His short sword seems as 
 natural an appanage as a monkey's tail; he would 
 look maimed without it. He walks the streets with 
 measured tread, indeed, for he is drilled to the marrow, 
 but with an infantile self-unconsciousness subversive 
 of all precedent. He looks of a race distinct from the 
 civilian, it is true, but quite at home in his dis- 
 tinction. 
 
 Soberness of uniform is so far from being a trifling 
 matter (things being as they are) that, should the 
 English be beaten in the next war, they may safely 
 lay the blame on their own red coats. In the time of 
 Marlborough or of Wellington these may have had 
 their use ; but nowadays, scarlet, added, to the vicious 
 my-soul's-my-own doctrine which even yet obtains 
 but too widely, gives the private soldier too much of 
 an opinion of himself. He esteems himself too grand 
 a being to be cuffed by corporals, and unceremoniously 
 bidden to right-about-face and present arms. More- 
 over, his ruddy splendours attract the feminine eye 
 and heart, and women are not wholesome for modern 
 warriors. Such individual inspiration as they may 
 once have given is not needed in battles fought out in 
 sight of the enemy. That army will be found most 
 efficient whose uniform is least seductive to the female 
 mind. I am far from asserting that the Saxon uni- 
 form is perfect in this respect No; it has a dapper 
 
264 SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 appearance, a snug neatness, a sparkle of helmet-spike 
 and sword-hilt greatly to be deplored. Still there is 
 none homelier, so far as I am aware ; and we may 
 cheerfully trust to the natural instincts of the Saxon 
 mind to make it uglier yet. 
 
 To be rid of woman, however, we must take thought 
 not of the uniform only ; there is the traditional 
 heroism of the soldier to be done away with. Women 
 persist in loving those who make a business of getting 
 killed, more fondly than those who get killed in the 
 way of business. Such preference is not only irra- 
 tional it was always that it is now foundationless. 
 When will our wives and daughters learn to believe 
 that he who, with unfaltering resolution, takes the 
 train to the city every morning, or calmly spends the 
 day in his confined study, and trembles not at the 
 dinner-bell, is more valiant than the man who leads a 
 healthy life in camps, and goes to battle with a tele- 
 scopic rifle once in twenty years? But no, to her mind 
 the soldier is engaged in daily hand-to-hand encoun- 
 ters ; his life is ever next door to a violent end ; there 
 is something heroic and perilous to himself in his own 
 sword and gun. I am compelled to admit that even 
 Saxon soldiers have their sweethearts, who lavish 
 upon the lucky dogs such looks as the poor Kellner 
 or shop-tender can never hope to obtain ; and the 
 necessity of being in barracks by a certain hour adds a 
 
TYPES. CIVIL AND UNCIVIL. 265 
 
 romance to the daily parting which, makes it worth a 
 dozen optional ones. 
 
 The infantry are all uniformed more or less alike, but 
 the cavalry are more gaudily attired in light blue and 
 white, and the lancers are the dandies of the army 
 greatly bedizened in front, with knowing little helmets 
 cocked on one side. This is perhaps not wholly in- 
 advisable ; lances and sabres suggest close fighting or 
 nothing, and a man on horseback is not liable to so 
 much bullying from the drill-master as is his comrade 
 on foot. The horse helps him, makes him more re- 
 spectable and respected, and the cavalry is in higher 
 consideration than the infantry, though the artillery ? 
 I believe, ranks higher than either. A little self- 
 esteem is not amiss with a man who may be called 
 on to use muscles and courage of his own in attack and 
 defence ; and it will take a long time to make ideal 
 soldiers out of horsemen. It may be observed, mean- 
 while, that the Saxon cavalry, though superbly 
 mounted, are inferior in horsemanship and individual 
 efficiency to either Sheridan's troopers or the English 
 Horse Guards, which can be taken as a sign that the 
 knightly element in the coming army will gradually 
 be refined away, unless we succeed in starting a breed 
 of scientific horses, on the principle of hobbies. 
 
 But the real efficient Saxon uniform is the uni- 
 formity of the men themselves. Of a regiment, one 
 
266 SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 man can scarcely be told from another ; it is one man 
 a thousandfold multiplied. Height, breadth, features, 
 wonderfully correspond. There are few men either so 
 well or so badly made as many in our own and 
 English regiments; but such as they are, they are 
 alike. They have none of the ruddy freshness of 
 aspect which one sees in the best English soldiers, and 
 little of the compact briskness of their French friends ; 
 they are coarse-skinned, pallid, big-boned, inelegant, 
 almost undersized ; but as I have been assured, and 
 never either doubted or denied they have shewn 
 themselves equal to all demands made upon them 
 in the late wars ; and I will add of my own mo- 
 tion, that, were a given number of Saxon troops to 
 encounter an equal body of picked French, English, 
 or Americans, the former would dispose of the latter 
 with a facility which would leave nothing to be 
 desired or everything. They are the best soldiers in 
 the world, this year; and unless the farm -women 
 break down sooner than is expected, they may be so 
 in years to come. 
 
 III. 
 
 When I say that I have observed these war-children 
 a good deal, I am only intimating that I kept my eyes 
 open. Every third man, every other woman, is a 
 soldier ! Fortunately they are not the least agreeable 
 
TYPES CIVIL AND UNCIVIL. 267 
 
 part of the population to look at. Once used to them, 
 their uniformity soon makes them our old friends; 
 they pleasantly fill all gaps and pauses ; we do not 
 exactly see them after a while, but we should greatly 
 miss them, were they absent. They never call for a 
 new thought, the same old thought does for all. 
 There is no extravagance in their look or behaviour. 
 They seem quite serene and undemonstrative, and 
 yet there is a fantastic skeleton underlying this out- 
 ward calm. 
 
 This may be seen any morning by repairing 
 to the barracks and watching the drill. It looks 
 absurd enough, but it is tremendous, and it works 
 wonders. Not a drop of the man's blood, not an 
 ounce of his flesh, not a breath of his body, but feels 
 the impress of the manual. What a stretch of the leg 
 was that ! and now what sharp angles, short corners, 
 starts, jerks, dead pauses, sudden veerings, dashes, 
 halts, thumpings, clankings ! The man is beside him- 
 self, and that grotesque caperer is some puppet whose 
 strings the sergeant is pulling. This periodical fit or 
 seizure they may call it drill, but in fact it is posses- 
 sion of seven devils, recurring at a certain hour every 
 morning, lasting a fixed while, and then the devils 
 depart, and presently the victim appears, rehabili- 
 tated : but we know his secret now, and all his quiet- 
 ness fails to impose on us : we discern his mad-pranks 
 
268 SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 ill concealed beneath the most innocent actions. The 
 mark is on him ; the Seven will rend him again 
 to-morrow. Skeletons are seldom attractive spec- 
 tacles ; but this skeleton of Drill, once seen, is not 
 lightly forgotten. The discovery of so grisly a sub- 
 structure to the pomp and circumstance of war is 
 impressive in its way. It is kept discreetly secluded 
 within the barrack walls, only venturing thence in the 
 guise of commonplace marching and rifle exercise. 
 To the barracks, too, are confined the more flagrant 
 tyrannies of the drill-master, whose cuffs, shoves, and 
 beratings make the on-looker's blood to boil, and him 
 to marvel at the silent, unretaliating meekness of the 
 berated one. It is odd to see that one of mankind 
 whose avowed business in life is retaliation, thus out- 
 doing the forbearance of the mildest country clergy- 
 man. But a soldier's spirit is bound strictly to the 
 rules of the manual : when not required in the way of 
 business, it must remain prostrate in the mire. Sol- 
 diers are generally credited with elasticity of spirits, 
 and from this point of view it is no wonder. But in 
 many cases, I fancy, the spirits are broken betimes, 
 and what afterwards passes as such is merely a kind 
 of galvanization produced by fear. Doubtless galvan- 
 ism is better than courage, being mechanical, and a 
 safer factor in calculations. 
 
 Besides their elemental training, the men are taken 
 
TYPES CIVIL AND UNCIVIL. 269 
 
 off on daily morning tramps of eight or twelve miles, 
 often in heavy marching order. They issue forth 
 from the barrack gates with an outstreaming rhythmic 
 undulation, curve steadily aside, and proceed with 
 rustling tramp along the centre of the street, seeming 
 to move more slowly than they do. Their bayoneted 
 rifles gleam aslant in serried evenness, each helmet 
 glistens alike, the brass spikes swaying aligned. 
 Every hand and red-bound coat-cuff swings parallel, 
 every knee crooks with one impulse, every empty 
 scabbard wavers in similar arcs. There is an onward 
 impetus, not swift, but so strong that it seems as if 
 houses and stone walls must move aside to let them 
 pass the impetus of hundreds of men moving as one. 
 The complete unison of physical and spiritual move- 
 ment, in vast numbers of human beings, is awful to 
 contemplate ; or, if we let ourselves be swept with 
 it, it hurries off our heads as a hurricane would our 
 hats. But the unison is everything, and it is this 
 which makes the march of Saxon soldiers more 
 impressive than that of troops less perfectly drilled. 
 Their gait is as good as it can be a long, elastic, 
 measured shamble, as easy at the end of twenty 
 miles as at the beginning; and the accuracy with 
 which they keep to straight lines, whether in 
 march or drill, is as satisfactory as a theorem in 
 Euclid. 
 
270 SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 The division, which thus issues from the barracks 
 several hundred strong, soon begins to separate into 
 detachments that switch off on different roads, and in 
 their turn split up, till the whole is parted into squads- 
 of ten or a dozen men each. Having got beyond the 
 outskirts of the town and the chance of stray officers 
 the severity of the discipline is somewhat relaxed, the 
 men are allowed to carry their rifles and to march as 
 they please, and to chat with one another as they go. 
 Of all these privileges they gladly avail themselves 
 and try to be disorderly ; but the attempt only shows 
 how intimately their training has entered into them. 
 What is ease to other men has ceased to be so to them. 
 The rigour of the march tires them less than irregu- 
 larity. Behind their most careless laxity one sees the 
 iron method and precision which makes the squad 
 like a machine, out of gear for the time, but evidently 
 needing only the turn of a crank to fall in order 
 once more. On they tramp, dusty, muddy, heated, 
 tired perhaps, but the pace never slackens ; and when, 
 two or three hours later, they pass again beneath the 
 barrack gates, rifles and helmets, line and step, are as 
 even and accurate as before. 
 
 After labour, play. At mid-day the crowd which 
 has been collecting for the last half-hour in front of 
 the Neustadt barracks beholds come forth a goodly 
 detachment, clad in its newest uniform, and headed 
 
TYPES CIVIL AND UNCIVIL. 271 
 
 by a military band in full triumphant blast. Band, 
 detachment, and crowd set out in gleeful array 
 towards the bridge, every foot within range of the 
 music keeping time to it. A halt is made opposite 
 the old black guard-house, and here some of the 
 music remains, disposes itself in a ring, and discourses 
 away heartily for half an hour, the echoes coming 
 finely back from the tall ungainly buildings that shut 
 in the square. Now the market-women are enviable, 
 sitting comfortably at their stalls : and our old friend 
 Werthmann, if it be summer, plants tables and chairs 
 under the oleanders outside his hospitable doors, and 
 finds plenty of customers. Every neighbouring win- 
 dow has its head or two, passers-by loiter or stop, the 
 soldiers in the guard-house are gradually drawn forth 
 to lounge and listen in the great dark portico, the 
 perpendicular sun pours a jolly warmth over every- 
 thing, and only Augustus, mounted aloft on his 
 brazen steed, and carrying on his immemorial flir- 
 tation with the weatherworn water-nymph on the 
 corner of Haupt Strasse, seems wholly indifferent to 
 the melody ringing in his brazen ears. 
 
 Meanwhile another and larger assemblage is enjoy- 
 ing a similar concert in a corner of the Schloss-Platz 
 on the other side of the river. The bands are the 
 same which play in the afternoons at the Grosse 
 Wirthschaft or other beer-gardens, and the music, 
 
272 SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 excellent in itself, is enhanced by its quasi-incidental 
 conditions. There is a rich spontaneity of flavour 
 about it which is apt to escape the malice-prepense 
 performances. 
 
 IV. 
 
 Of the barrack-life of the soldier not much is visible 
 to the outsider. Passing along the sidewalk, we may 
 glance in at the lower windows and exchange a stare 
 with the inmates, but we gain little wisdom thereby. 
 Often there are pots of flowers on the sill, and some- 
 times the carte-de-visite of a relative or sweetheart 
 pinned to the wall. But the warriors themselves do 
 not appear to advantage in undress. Neatness and 
 sweetness in a Saxon private's barrack-room (or any 
 other private's for that matter) are hardly to be 
 expected. They wear their dirty canvas jackets, and 
 lie about half asleep or drowsily gossiping together. 
 There seems nothing but the lazy body of them left. 
 It takes a sergeant or a sweetheart to enliven them. 
 
 When they obtain leave of absence after four 
 o'clock, and come out in brave attire to drink a glass 
 of beer, and take Gretchen's rough, affectionate paw in 
 theirs, they are perhaps at their best. Some of the 
 Freiwilligers, who belong to the better order of people, 
 attend lectures at the Government schools and colleges 
 during the intervals of their military duties ; but the 
 
TYPES CIVIL AND UNCIVIL. 273 
 
 multitude are of the reasonable opinion that a day's 
 drill is work enough, and that a taste of love and malt 
 liquor is only fair compensation. Accordingly they 
 form a good part of the guests at every saloon and 
 concert-room, and at some of the dance-halls they have 
 a monopoly. They are almost always the quietest and 
 most decorous persons present ; drunkenness is not for 
 them, nor loud talking, nor insolence ; they are a kind 
 of children that do credit to their bringing up, and 
 forget not the voice of the instructor even when out of 
 his presence. But can these mild, smug fellows be 
 successors of the shaggy, brutal, fierce, gigantic Suevi 
 who roamed the Hyrcanian forests scarce two thou- 
 sand years ago ? and is it not funny that a chemical 
 discovery or two and a smattering of mechanics should 
 render these small inoffensive-looking moderns a 
 hundred times as formidable in battle as those savage 
 ancients ? 
 
 One of the most touching sights in connection with 
 military matters which I have happened to notice is 
 that of the newly enlisted men roaming the streets 
 during the day or two of grace allowed them before 
 donning the uniform and beginning the long, weary 
 servitude of powder and ball. They are permitted a 
 license of behaviour quite extraordinary either to 
 soldier or citizen; they are on the neutral ground 
 between, and may have their fling, for once. Police- 
 
 T 
 
274 SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 men are blind to their escapades; officers ignore them; 
 people in general smile good-naturedly, and pick them 
 up when they fall down. For it almost invariably 
 happens that the first thing these unborn war-babes 
 do is to get drunk : it is the traditional way of passing 
 the solemn period of incubation, and appears to com- 
 mend itself anew to each successive brood. They 
 wear green ribbons in their button-holes, and stagger 
 along arm in arm, crooning discordant lays, laughing 
 or crying, and committing much harmless, foolish, and 
 piteous uproar. Many of them bring smooth, in- 
 experienced faces from unknown country villages; 
 others are already coarse and stolid; a few bear 
 traces of culture, but Gambrinus lays all alike in the 
 gutter. Occasionally, indeed, from the midst of this 
 beery bedlam, a sane and sober pair of eyes meets our 
 own, making us marvel how they came there. Perhaps 
 the drunkards are the wiser; the prospect is too 
 sorry a one for sober contemplation ; it requires all 
 the enchantment that malt and hops can cast over 
 it to make it tolerable. But what a rueful scene 
 must to-morrow morning's drill be, with its Katzcn- 
 jammer, its helpless ignorance, and its savage 
 sergeant ! 
 
 o 
 
 V. 
 
 Sentries represent, to my mind, the most interest- 
 ing phase of army life. Something of poetic sentiment 
 
TYPES CIVIL AND UNCIVIL. 275 
 
 still attaches to them. A solitary figure, with gleaming 
 weapon and watchful eye, moving to and fro with 
 measured tread on the beleaguered ramparts, or along 
 the snow-bound limits of the night encampment, 
 such is the sentry of the imagination. His suggest- 
 iveness is fascinating, and renders him impressive. 
 How much is confided to him, and what power is his ! 
 He is the waking eye and thought and strength of the 
 army, which slumbers defenceless but for him. A 
 signal from him, and a thousand men spring to arms ; 
 or, if he choose to play the traitor, they are mas- 
 sacred without remedy. So great a responsibility so 
 faithfully borne seems a remnant of the heroic age ; 
 a,nd to see commonplace men of to-day, with small 
 intelligence and infirm principles, so trusted and 
 vindicated, is beyond all question encouraging. And 
 in all ages of the world, sentries have maintained 
 their good repute; the veriest scamp rises above 
 himself when left alone on his beat, with the enemy 
 at hand ; so much depends upon his honour, that the 
 sentiment he had fancied extinct is recreated in his 
 breast. Generous thoughts renew a long-interrupted 
 acquaintance with him, and when the relief-guard 
 comes round, they perhaps find another and better 
 man than was placed here three hours ago. 
 
 But we are venturing rash lengths, hardly borne 
 out by our Dresden sentries in time of peace. With 
 
276 SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 these our main quarrel is that they are too numerous 
 the poetic loneliness is wanting. Where one would 
 suffice are two, and one where none is necessary. 
 Moreover, they are used for mere display, and are set 
 to watch over nothing more precious than their own 
 sentry-boxes ; it is hard to be enthusiastic about such 
 a peril, such a responsibility as that. Again, the 
 crowded streets belittle them; and finally, they are 
 mere lay figures ; if we brush past them, they do not 
 challenge us, and if we ask them a question, they 
 cannot answer it. To put so noble an instrument to 
 such paltry uses is like cutting bread and cheese with 
 Excalibur. 
 
 The chief business of city sentries the only thing 
 that gives a fillip to the lethargy of their plight is- 
 saluting. This affords them a constant supply of mild 
 excitement, varying in degree according as their man 
 is a second lieutenant or the King. They are always 
 on the look-out, like hunters for their game ; and that 
 were a soft-footed officer indeed who should catch one 
 of them napping. 
 
 The whole idea of saluting is graceful ; it is pleasant 
 to see men paying one another mutual deference, even 
 when it is based on so trifling a matter as the fashion 
 of an epaulette, and the cut of a coat. It seems to 
 declare a human sympathy and brotherhood outgrow- 
 ing the bounds of mere private acquaintance. It is a 
 
TYPES CIVIL AND UNCIVIL. 277 
 
 pity that all men should not adopt so good a custom ; 
 we all wear the uniform of flesh and blood, and our 
 common nature is perhaps respectable enough for us to 
 touch our hats to it. Only, the respect we pay, to pre- 
 serve its integrity, must be impersonal ; I am Quaker 
 enough to think that there exists no man who, in his 
 private capacity, is entitled to the cap or knee of any- 
 body. Into these subtleties, however, the simple 
 soldier entereth not ; it is enough for him that he sees 
 his officer and knows his duty. The officer must 
 salute in return, and since he is greatly in the 
 minority, he is sometimes kept at it pretty steadily. 
 When, for instance, hundreds of soldiers are streaming 
 across the bridge to their evening diversion, whatever 
 pair of epaulettes is unlucky enough to be going the 
 other way has to run the gauntlet of them all. The 
 men glue their hands to their caps, straighten their 
 shoulders, and will not be denied. !No doubt they 
 enjoy forcing his acknowlegdment the confession, as it 
 were, that despite his grave dignity he is but their fel- 
 low soldier, after all. Sometimes the soldier has both 
 hands occupied, and then he only bends a respectful 
 glance, while the officer must still touch his cap, with 
 however arrogant a dab. The messenger, with his 
 despatches in his breast and his rifle on his shoulder, 
 is likewise privileged to a certain extent; his mis- 
 sion elevates him for the moment above ordinary 
 
2/8 SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 regulations. But it is odd that so fraternal and catholic 
 a practice should obtain only, and of all places, in the 
 army ; it is like the honey in the carcase of Samson's 
 lion. 
 
 To return to our sentry, who has just discerned his 
 quarry approaching up the street. In consideration of 
 the spasmodic rigidity which always fastens upon 
 sentinels when under the eye of their superiors in 
 rank, the latter, one might suppose, must get queer 
 notions of them : what is this fixed, convulsed object, 
 gorgonized at my glance in so ungainly an attitude ? 
 Does it live ? has it intelligence ? As for the King, he 
 probably thinks of his soldiers as of so many wooden 
 toys, quaintly postured ; and only by a determined 
 effort realizes that they may have moved in a natural 
 manner before he laid eyes on them, and will be likely 
 to do so again hereafter. But kings are unfortunate in 
 never being able to steal a march upon nature : in the 
 attempt to express her sense of their divine rights, she 
 becomes unnatural; and the more ineffable their 
 majesty, the more fantastic her grimace. 
 
 Meanwhile, hither comes the officer, self-contained, 
 leisurely, dignified : his gloved hand on his sword- 
 hilt, his iron cross on his breast. If he be a colonel, 
 the sentry begins to be spasmodic while the great man 
 is yet half a block distant, and " presents arms " at a 
 time when, unless the colonel's arm were sixty or 
 
TYPES CIVIL AND UNCIVIL. 279 
 
 seventy feet in length, he could not possibly avail 
 himself of the offer. A lieutenant, on the other hand, 
 succeeds in stiffening his man only within a range of 
 six paces, and even then the rifle is but " ordered." 
 But in any case, the inferior is anxious, tense, elec- 
 trified ; the superior serene, indifferent, haughty ; he 
 affects to be unsuspicious of the brewing of the salute, 
 and acknowledges it at the last moment by a lazy 
 uplifting of the forefinger. Gesture nor expression 
 could better express aristocracy's contemptuous recog- 
 nition of the plebeian's existence. But should the 
 plebeian fail to discharge his whole debt of reverence, 
 the aristocrat wakes up. I saw an overgrown captain 
 whose rank the sentry had mistaken, keep the fellow 
 at the " present " fifteen minutes : till the sweat ran 
 down the poor devil's scared face, and the heavy rifle 
 trembled in his tired grasp as though it shared his 
 apprehensions. These are not insignificant details; 
 they are the lifeblood of the army. 
 
 When the King or any member of the royal house- 
 hold comes by, the sentry is full of hysteric bustle and 
 excitement. He runs to the bell-pull, jerks it, and 
 back to his place, now craning his head forwards to 
 see how near Majesty is, now twisting it back over his 
 shoulder to see whether the guard has turned out and 
 the drummer is ready. Now passes the outrider, high 
 jouncing on his hard-trotting, blindered horse ; now 
 
280 SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 follows the smooth-rolling carriage, Majesty within; 
 the drum beats, the guard is transfixed, the sentry a 
 motionless bundle of right angles. A few breathless 
 moments, and all is over : the guard relaxes and 
 stacks arms, the sentry comes to life and shoulders his 
 rifle; the drummer puts up his drumsticks and dis- 
 appears. Majesty has been saluted by man, and we 
 may breathe again. 
 
 VI. 
 
 We continually encounter squads of men uniformed 
 from head to foot in dirty canvas, marching hastily 
 along the streets in military order, and in charge of a 
 corporal. But though evidently connected with the 
 army, they are always weaponless, and they pass their 
 brethren of whatever rank unsaluted and unsaluting. 
 Sometimes they carry spades, hatchets, brooms, or 
 other agricultural and menial implements ; and if we 
 follow them up we shall find them sweeping the 
 streets, digging gardens, chopping firewood, or other- 
 wise making themselves sullenly useful : while the 
 corporal looks on with folded arms ; and, perhaps, 
 when the weather is cold, wishes that military 
 etiquette allowed him to bear a hand. These men are 
 generally of a gloomy and dejected aspect, never laugh 
 or sing over their labour, and converse, if at all, in a 
 growling undertone. When their work is done, they 
 
TYPES CIVIL AND UNCIVIL. 281 
 
 are not allowed to go and play, but must shoulder 
 their implements and march to barracks. They never 
 have leave of absence, and must never stray beyond 
 the corporal's reach. Their week seems to be full of 
 Fridays. 
 
 These melancholy drudges are the Bestrafene 
 soldiers who have outraged discipline in one way or 
 another, and have therefore incurred the penalty of 
 deprivation of all soldierly privileges, and subjection 
 to all refuse employments. All the more irksome 
 burdens are put on their shoulders, and they get no 
 thanks for bearing them. Nothing could be less ex- 
 hilarating than their position : they are hopeless of 
 bettering themselves, though any indiscretion will 
 surely sink them yet deeper. They are prisoners 
 bereft of the prisoner's right to fetters and stone 
 walls; for certainly it were better to be dungeoned 
 outright, and, by dint of never beholding human free- 
 dom and natural beauty, grow to forget that such things 
 exist, than thus daily to be flouted by the sight and con- 
 tact of blessings which they may not share. The lot 
 of the common soldier is not, under any circumstances, 
 the kindest in the world ; and the sting of his punish- 
 ments is the fact that they are inflicted for offences 
 intrinsically so trivial. The army is so portentously 
 abnormal an institution, that its code of right and 
 wrong must needs be exaggerated to match, and the 
 
282 SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 strangest consequences ensue. Soldiers and espe- 
 cially, it seems to me, Saxon soldiers are constantly 
 subjected to burning provocations, none the easier to 
 bear because they are part of inevitable discipline. 
 Nevertheless, any symptom of restiveness is treated as 
 a flagrant crime and properly so, if armies are to exist. 
 But what intolerable wrongs may not be thus facili- 
 tated ! Even Saxon soldiers, it appears, can lose their 
 complaisance at last ; and if an officer has a grudge 
 against a private, it is evident that the private is 
 doomed ; either his life is made a bane to him by 
 constant insult and oppression, or his forbearance 
 yields for a moment, and he incurs perhaps twenty 
 years' Bestrafung. There are thousands of Bestrafene 
 in Dresden ; and since they have all rebelled with a 
 full knowledge of the consequences, we may partly 
 estimate the severity of Saxon discipline. 
 
 Their terms of punishment vary from a few months 
 to life, according to the offence. One cannot help 
 being surprised that the crime for which they do 
 penance is not always murder. And indeed, if the 
 question is of moral accountability, were it not less 
 sin to have slain a tyrant in one fiery instant, than 
 impotently to curse him in cold blood every day 
 for twenty years ? 
 
 It must often happen, moreover, that the Bestrafene 
 who are thus laid on the shelf so far as any manly use 
 
TYPES CIVIL AND UNCIVIL. 283 
 
 is concerned, had it in them to be the very flower of 
 the army. It was the pith and force of the man that 
 got him into trouble. Had he been a little more 
 white-livered, he would have escaped. But he was 
 convicted of a flickering of manly spirit, a spark of 
 independence, a heat of temper; and for these un- 
 warrior-like qualities he is extinguished. Is there no 
 help for it ? no allowance to be made for provocations 
 and possibilities ? By no means : discipline must be 
 true to itself, or die. There is no flaw in the logic of 
 the army. If mankind to-day really loved fighting as 
 much as they seem to have done of yore, they would 
 not stop to do it scientifically ; the main expense of a 
 campaign would be for grave-diggers; while peace 
 could afford to be something more honest than a 
 gatherer-together of expensive brickbats against the 
 next contest. To shoot at a man is not to fight him ; 
 but get at him with your fists, or with a club, or dirk 
 at most, and immediately you have satisfaction ; you 
 feel that you have measured yourself against that 
 man ; if you kill him, it is with the serene assurance 
 that your superior personal prowess was the sole cause 
 of victory ; if he kill you, you are spared the annoy- 
 ance of succumbing to some sleight-of-hand trick or 
 mechanical hocus-pocus. Rifles, cannon, and military 
 manoeuvres are among the Will-o'-the-wisps of the age. 
 They seem to give us that which they rob us of. 
 
23 4 SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 Since they caine in vogue there have been no battles 
 no defeats nor victories. Unless we can slay our 
 enemy as Cain slew Abel, and perhaps eat him up 
 afterwards, we would better let him alone. " Civilized 
 warfare " is the very most dangerous device of the devil, 
 worth all his other investments put together 
 
 I scrutinized the faces of these canvas-backed 
 fellows with morbid interest. There is not a cheerful 
 one among them : many have acquired a sinister 
 expression ; some are sullen-brutal, some sullen-obsti- 
 nate, some sullen-fierce. Only a few have the passive 
 stolidity of despair, for hope is more obstinate than 
 most misery. Some wear a hang-dog look ; others 
 stare us defiantly in the face. All this is what might 
 be expected, but I was not prepared to find so many 
 well-built heads and able countenances. I do not 
 mean to say that there are any Liebigs or Goethes 
 among them ; but only that their intellectual promise 
 outdoes that of their unpariah-ed comrades no diffi- 
 cult feat, heaven knows. Brains, of a certain kind, 
 are desirable in the leaders of the army, but not in the 
 army itsel The analogy with man is strict He 
 must not allow his arms and legs, his liver and 
 stomach, to be intellectual ; the head is the place for 
 cerebration, and any other member that presumes to 
 do anything in that line ought to be licked into shape 
 without delay. 
 

 TYPES CIVIL AND UNCIVIL. 285 
 
 The unlucky wretches sometimes try to escape, but 
 only succeed when they accept the faithful co-opera- 
 tion of death. All plans for freedom to which that 
 venerable friend of man is not made privy are sure to 
 fail. The whole country rises and greedily hunts 
 them down; and such is human frailty the fugi- 
 tives generally suffer themselves to be caught alive. 
 Occasionally they adopt other methods. Not very 
 long ago a squad of Bestrafene were at work 
 on some job in the Grosser Garten, when Albert 
 (at that time Crown Prince) came riding by, un- 
 attended, except by the groom some distance behind 
 him. Suddenly one of the men left his work and 
 rushed up to the royal soldier the head of the 
 army, to whom all power was given to pardon, pro- 
 mote, or condemn. 
 
 Here I pricked up my ears, thinking I was going to 
 hear something worth hearing. What! had this 
 man's misery risen to so tragic a height as to nerve 
 him to lift a revengeful hand against the Prince ? I 
 have done injustice to the strength and colour of the 
 Saxon nature ! 
 
 " Before he could be stopped," continued my infor- 
 mant, "he had thrown himself on his knees in the 
 bridal path, and had seized the royal stirrup. He 
 besought the Prince to remit some years of his 
 sentence. He had been condemned to five-and-twenty 
 
286 SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 years ten had already elapsed. By this time assist- 
 ance arrived; the groom rode the impudent fellow 
 down, and his comrades dragged him off." 
 
 " But the Prince was gracious, of course ? " 
 
 " Most gracious ! he kept his eyes all the time 
 averted ; had he once looked at the man, it would 
 have been a life-imprisonment ! but he affected to be 
 not aware of him. Thereafter he called to him the 
 corporal, and graciously commanded that the man's 
 term should be not at all increased." 
 
 " I should think he might have pardoned him a 
 year or two," I said. 
 
 " Pardon ! God forbid ! where then would be dis- 
 cipline the army ? " 
 
 The gentleman who told me this was not a military 
 person, but a simple Saxon citizen, a doctor of phi- 
 lology, and an excellent man. On consideration, his 
 view of the incident rather relieved than otherwise 
 my injured sensibilities. If he, the most humane of 
 Saxons, could thus utterly ignore the down-trodden 
 petitioner's side of the question, might it not be justly 
 inferred that the petitioner himself, being a Saxon as 
 well as the doctor, and presumably of duller percep- 
 tions, was less affected by his misfortunes than I had 
 rashly supposed ? It has been recently established, I 
 believe, that the beetle which we tread upon suffers very 
 little corporal anguish after alL Why should not the 
 
TYPES CIVIL AND UNCIVIL. 287 
 
 analogy be applied to these Bestrafene? Our sym- 
 pathy has been thrown away upon them ; they do not 
 half mind being put out of the sunshine of existence. 
 Whoever attempts to apply to Saxons the moral, 
 mental, or emotional standards of other peoples, may 
 succeed in discovering himself, but not them. 
 
 VII. 
 
 The Saxon officers are a fine-looking body ot men. 
 They are taller, on the average, than the common 
 soldiers, and possess symmetrical figures. Their uni- 
 forms are kept scrupulously neat, their bearing is not 
 devoid of conventional grace, and, though not in- 
 variably remarkable for general culture, they are 
 thoroughly competent to their duties in the field, 
 and by no means ignorant of the arts of bowing, 
 dancing, and uttering smiling compliments to pretty 
 young foreigners, whose appreciation thereof is en- 
 hanced by the consideration that the complimenter, 
 besides being an officer, is almost always either a Count 
 or a Baron. 
 
 The army is, of course, the first profession in 
 Saxony ; all the young sprigs of nobility crowd to the 
 cadet-schools, and are thence commissioned to the 
 various branches of the service : there is little fun and 
 less profit to be got by staying under the paternal 
 
288 SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 roof-tree. The profession is no sinecure, however; 
 these dapper captains and lieutenants must work like 
 Irish labourers every day ; from four in the morning 
 till four in the afternoon they are sometimes kept in 
 the field ; while such pay as they get would hardly 
 keep an American gentleman in cigars. In view of 
 this fact, their immaculate coats and white kid gloves 
 and snug boots are doubly admirable. Such genius 
 for economy, combined with such capacity for labour, 
 would seem to argue just the men with whom love 
 in a cottage could be made at once pleasant and profit- 
 able ; and yet these Spartans never happen to fall in 
 love with the penniless young ladies. This may be in 
 part due to the fact that army benedicts, high or low, 
 must pay into the exchequer a fine equivalent, I believe, 
 to a third or more of the capital whose interest is their 
 pay. It generally needs a full-fledged heiress to make 
 this possible ; and hence the law is a sinister bar to 
 the marriage or a bar-sinister in the escutcheon of 
 the great majority of Saxon warriors. 
 
 Well but they are amusing and good-natured, and 
 really the life of American and English parties. They 
 have a child-like theatricality of manner which is 
 highly entertaining; and their courteous extrava- 
 gances are charming to women used to the cold 
 attentions of English and American men. The French 
 do it better, perhaps, but we cannot always be in 
 
TYPES CIVIL AND UNCIVIL. 289 
 
 Paris. It is something to have one's hand kissed 
 without being obliged to consider it the first step 
 towards a declaration. If only the Saxon officers 
 would learn discretion at table, they would be the 
 darlings of the foreign circle in Dresden ; and I under- 
 stand that they have considerably reformed in this 
 respect. Still, the table is their weak point, and they 
 might sin far more grievously in other directions 
 without incurring half the reproach which this pecca- 
 dillo brings upon them. I will not attempt to describe 
 their manner of putting food into their mouths; it 
 would lose colour in description ; but in this connec- 
 tion a characteristic trait or two should not be 
 omitted. They had a habit, when supper was an- 
 nounced at the entertainments given by their English 
 or American friends, of stopping neither for host nor 
 partner; but forming in an impenetrable phalanx 
 round the table, whence they budged not either for 
 man or woman until the time came when they could 
 eat no more. They would then retire in good order 
 to catch their breath, while the civilians of the party 
 would seize the opportunity to help the ladies, and, it 
 is to be hoped, to snatch a bite for themselves afterwards. 
 It is true that the ordinary rations of a Saxon officer 
 are neither rich nor varied, and that such repasts as 
 these must have offered extraordinary allurements: 
 nevertheless, with a little more tact, they might surely 
 
 u 
 
2 9 o SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 have contrived to satisfy the demands of both breeding 
 and appetite, and thus have removed the sole stain 
 from their social escutcheon. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 The Lodging-house keeper, the Droschkey-driver 
 and the Dienstman, however slight their apparent re- 
 semblance to one another, do nevertheless come under 
 one and the same category. They are all three con- 
 sequences of that widespread social disease the 
 indisposition to do our own work. They exist to 
 indulge the slipshod caprices of an enervated civili- 
 sation. They are a species of moral vermin, generated 
 by the sloth of the age. The cleanest and nicest of 
 us permit ourselves to be infested with them, and are 
 fain to think them a convenience : but can that 
 rightly be styled convenient, whose tendency is to 
 stunt our faculties ? To look closely into the matter 
 to realise how intimate is our dependence upon 
 unsavoury and unsympathetic strangers would be 
 perilous to our self-respect: but by the mercy of 
 Providence, we seldom do look closely, and at the 
 worst refuse to believe a tithe of what our analysis 
 declares is truth. 
 
 This is a mechanical era, and we are all aiming at a 
 state wherein nothing shall interfere with continuous 
 intellectual exaltation. Accordingly, instead of run- 
 
TYPES CIVIL AND UNCIVIL. 291 
 
 ning on our own errands, we hail a Dienstman. The 
 bargain between us is, that in consideration of from 
 one to five groschen paid to him, he is to engraft upon 
 himself a certain portion of our life to enact our 
 character, according to his conception of it. As a 
 guarantee of good faith (for even in such transactions 
 the cant of respectability is retained) he gives us a 
 slip of paper, inscribed with a name and a number ; 
 and thereupon we go our several ways. We, who 
 have voluntarily docked ourselves of part of our 
 rightful existence and office in the world, depart with 
 light step and jaunty air : and like the tailless fox in 
 the fable, would argue ourselves in better case than 
 before. We perceive no indelicacy still less absur- 
 dity in the contract. We reflect not that we have 
 adulterated our God-given personality, that instead 
 of decently limiting ourselves, as nature meant we 
 should, to the confines of our own skin and bones, we 
 have divided in pieces, as some insects do, and are 
 partly masquerading about the streets in the ignoble 
 guise of the canaille, exposed to all coarse association 
 and vicious interpretation. We have admitted this 
 rude, infragrant fellow, with his soiled blouse and 
 heavy boots, to a share in our conduct of life, and in 
 so far we have given him influence over our destiny 
 and reputation. Do we expect him, for the sake of 
 sixpence, to appreciate the delicacy of our mutual 
 
292 SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 relation, or try to do justice to it ? A private body- 
 servant, used to our humours and bound to us by 
 every tie of interest and gratitude, is still a question- 
 able commodity enough : but the Dienstman the 
 public footman and scullion who is at the beck of a 
 hundred masters in the course of each day there 
 cannot be much question about him ! 
 
 Men who serve ignoble ends are seldom among the 
 chosen of the race, to begin with, and at all events, 
 the nature of the employment must have an evil 
 influence upon them. The Dresdeners complain that 
 the Dienstmen are fallen from their original goodness, 
 having been corrupted by the American practice of 
 overpayment and bribery. But loth as I am to see a 
 flaw in aught Saxon, I fear these fellow-mortals were 
 always an ill-conditioned lot stupid, clumsy, un- 
 trustworthy, and prone to insolence. They come from 
 the lowest ranks of the community, and in spite of 
 their " receipts " are practically irresponsible, so far as 
 foreigners are concerned. In short, they are an un- 
 ceasing protest against the depraved social conditions 
 which brought them forth ; and the best I can wish 
 them is, that they should ultimately protest them- 
 selves out of existence. Meanwhile, objectively con- 
 sidered, they form an entertaining and instructive 
 feature of the population. They are very numerous, 
 standing in knots of three to a dozen at the street 
 
TYPES CIVIL AND UNCIVIL. 293 
 
 corners and in the squares and market-places, bloused 
 and belted in summer, and in winter mounting a 
 coffee-coloured top-coat ; always provided with a coil 
 of rope, and cognisant of a small hand-cart not far off. 
 They constantly smoke a pale brown brand of cigars, 
 which can be obtained in the shops at the rate 
 of about one shilling the hundred. They will 
 undertake any job, from delivering a billet-doux or 
 packing porcelain, to sawing wood or moving house- 
 furniture. But it is somewhat odd that although 
 essentially a labouring guild, they should yet contrive 
 to produce the impression of being among the most 
 indolent people in the city. They wait for the job 
 with an air as if the job itself were waiting : but no 
 sooner do they fall to work, than they appear abnor- 
 mal and out of place, and we long to see them with 
 their hands in their pockets once more. The reason 
 must be that though their leisure is their own, their 
 labour is always borrowed from some one else, and 
 thus sits more or less awkwardly upon them. They 
 have no personal interest in their work, nor can it be 
 either regular or homogeneous. For them, therefore, 
 work must evidently be demoralizing : and the only 
 alternative being idleness, it follows that the honor- 
 ablest deed for Dienstmen is to do nothing, a con- 
 clusion to which no one will assent more readily than 
 their sometime employer. 
 
294 SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 IX. 
 
 As for the Droschkey-drivers, they appear to be 
 broken down Dienstmen, who prolong life solely to 
 nourish their implacable resentment against mankind. 
 They are an elderly set, of furrowed and malignant 
 visage, and a complexion which weather-beating out- 
 side and hard-drinking inside has wrought up to an 
 extraordinary pitch of inflammation. They wear 
 cobalt-coats and caps, trimmed with vermilion, and 
 their vehicle is upholstered to match. In cold or 
 rainy weather they wrap themselves in an anomalous, 
 voluminous, dingy garment caped, skirted, wadded 
 and belted, and put on a broad brimmed, platter- 
 shaped hat of coarse black felt. They sit on their box- 
 like excrescences a new species of centaur ; looking 
 as if nothing short of a surgical operation could detach 
 them from it. Dull-eyed, round-shouldered, with chin 
 on breast ; evil-tempered, foul-mouthed, thievish 
 these men are among the curiosities of human nature. 
 I was fascinated by them, and begot for them at 
 length a horrible sort of affection. There was a, 
 fearful joy in putting one of them through his paces 
 in leading him on to demand (as was demanded once 
 of me) nine times his lawful fare ; and then witnessing 
 the grisly fever of his wrath at being forced back to 
 the confines of sober truth and justice. A tremendous 
 
TYPES CIVIL AND UNCIVIL. 295 
 
 experience, indeed ; but such as no man of ordinary 
 nerve would care to sustain more than once or twice a 
 year at the utmost. Here, at last, we have the Saxon 
 character in its most unredeemed phase ; and I repeat, 
 there is a hideous charm about it. 
 
 Why are cabbies all over the world (Parisian, 
 cabbies are perhaps an exception) so cross-grained, 
 misanthropic and cynical? Is it because they are 
 always sitting down, and thus never get a chance to 
 work off their ill humours ? There is certainly potent 
 virtue in a man's leg ; and were he anchored to a single 
 spot, like a vegetable, it is odds but he would be a 
 poisonous one. Cabbies, moreover, live in an atmo- 
 sphere of petty exasperation. The state of the weather, 
 and of their horses ; the perverseness and stinginess of 
 their customers; envy of their rivals on the stand; 
 anger against Providence and the world for having 
 given them nothing better to v do these and numberless 
 other flouts of fortune come in for their daily quota of 
 grumbled curses. The degree of a cabby's interest in 
 his fellow-beings varies as their probable need of his 
 cab ; and he searches their faces only for the signs of 
 ignorance or weakness which may enable him to get 
 the best of the bargain. He begins each day sullenly ; 
 ten minutes sooner, and he might have found an early 
 worm ; and ends it with anathema, because ten minutes 
 longer might have found him a belated one. Go 
 
296 SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 where he will, his surroundings never vary ; his steed 
 plods ever before him, his four wheels rumble behind, 
 his whip stands at his right hand, his toes still stub 
 against the self-same old dashboard. He naps on his 
 box but even in his dreams is cabby still ; his night- 
 mare is a just fare, his vision of bliss an exorbitant 
 one. What has he to look forward to in life ? and 
 after death how does he expect to manage about his 
 Drosclikey, which seems to have become an organic 
 and spiritual part of him ? It is ill-adapted to ascend- 
 ing straight and narrow paths, but exhibits a pestilent 
 readiness to run down hill; and although furnished 
 with a brake, which the driver is morbidly careful to 
 apply at each suspicion of a slope, yet some slopes 
 are steeper than brakes are strong, and wheels will be 
 wheels. 
 
 The horses, though they jog along at an easy rate, 
 compare favourably with the London breed. The 
 Droschkeys are all of one pattern, closed cabs in 
 winter, open in summer. To the back of the forward 
 seat is affixed a large square card, showing the tariff 
 of prices and distances, and the name of the driver 
 which is always a treble-barrelled name, and, oddly 
 enough, the middle barrel is almost always either 
 Gottlieb or Gottfried. Can it be that the burden of so 
 great titles overpowers that which it is meant to 
 sustain, and lands the would-be protege' of Providence, 
 
TYPES CIVIL AND UNCIVIL. 297 
 
 a friendless Droschkey- driver ? When on stand, the 
 Droschkeys are ranged side by side instead of end to 
 end, as though Dresden were broader than it is long ; 
 and the one which has stood the longest has prece- 
 dence over the rest in answering a call ; so that you 
 cannot make your own choice of a vehicle, but must 
 respect the rule of succession. 
 
 For some reason or other, the clatter of wheels and 
 hoofs in Dresden is more jarring and disconcerting than 
 in any other city I am acquainted with. Allowing for 
 the clumsy construction of the carriages and the cobbley 
 pavements, I believe the explanation to be that there 
 is never enough traffic .in the streets to create a con- 
 tinuous and coherent roar; you hear each individual 
 rattle, and the volume of sound is only sufficient 
 to rack your ears without dulling them. The effect 
 on the senses is somewhat similar to that produced 
 by a review of the driver's characteristics on the 
 mind they are harsh and ugly enough to exasperate 
 and revolt us, but fall short of that plenitude of evil 
 which might relieve by paralysing our moral sen- 
 sitiveness. 
 
 x. 
 
 Lodging-house keepers, like Jews and Gypsies, 
 seem to have existed from time immemorial : like 
 them, also, they are solicitous anent profit and loss, 
 
298 SAXON STUDIES 
 
 and have the outside of poverty, if not the thing itself. 
 But from this point begins a difference. I never heard 
 of lodging-house keepers intermarrying the heart 
 knoweth too well its own bitterness. There are 
 seldom any handsome women among them, nor can 
 the race be said to possess a distinctive type of 
 physiognomy. As to their religion, whatever may be 
 its ostensible character, I fancy there are passages in 
 its creed which have never received the sanction of 
 an Ecumenic Council. 
 
 The profession is very largely followed on the 
 Continent. The people seem unable to fill their own 
 rooms, or averse from doing so. They desire to coin 
 money out of their homes, to prostitute their board 
 and hearthstone to the highest bidder. A person 
 who will do this must have contrived to disembarrass 
 himself, consciously or otherwise, of a good many 
 prejudices. From a merely sentimental point of view, 
 he might be credited with a degree of philosophical 
 elevation not far removed from spiritual uncleanliness. 
 But it may be doubted whether the majority of the 
 present generation especially the Saxon part of it 
 have bethought themselves what a home is ; and it 
 would therefore be unjust to tax them with polluting 
 its sanctities. For some people, the only safe pre- 
 servative against sin is an absence of moral respon- 
 sibility; and Heaven may have seen fit to create 
 
TYPES CIVIL AND UNCIVIL. 299 
 
 lodging-house keepers without the home instinct, as 
 the only practicable way of keeping them from 
 violating it. However, we who let ourselves be 
 accommodated by the system are in a glass-house, and 
 must conduct ourselves accordingly. Were each 
 traveller now-a-days to set up his own vine and 
 fig-tree wherever he passed the night, travel would 
 soon become unfashionable : the edge of personal and 
 national individuality would remain unblunted, and 
 the thousands of small people who now try to 
 swallow the great world would respect the limits 
 of their own horizon, and take the faults of foreigners 
 for granted. But if, as seems probable, the current of 
 life continues to set towards cosmopolitanism, the 
 time will come when the lodging-house keeper will 
 have it all his own way, and no houses except lodging- 
 houses will exist. In that day we may look forward 
 to a universal speaking of one another's language, 
 wearing of one another's clothes, minding of one 
 another's business, drinking (Saxons do it already) 
 out of one another's beer-mugs, making love to one 
 another's sweethearts, and so forth. The broad en- 
 lightenment of the species will dazzle into invisibility 
 the petty distinctions of meum and tuum, us and our 
 neighbours, and we shall be able to declare with our 
 transcendental Philosopher, " The soul knows no 
 persons." 
 
300 SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 In our present comparatively unilluminated con- 
 dition, however, the advantages of lodging-houses 
 still lack full recognition. Some reminiscences of 
 the old-fashioned laws of hospitality embarrass us : 
 we have heard or read of the romantic and delicate 
 relations of guest and entertainer, and are perhaps 
 conscious of a certain awkwardness in the attempt to 
 reconcile these with the straightforward modern plan 
 of adjusting mutual courtesies by an appeal to cash, 
 having previously ensured their observance by signing 
 a contract. Nothing can be more hospitable than the 
 Dresden lodging-house keeper (to take an example) 
 when we first encounter him and indeed at all times, 
 if we do but consent to adopt his views on whatever 
 questions may arise between us. He is cordial, full of 
 smiles, compliments, and graceful attentions, presses 
 you to come in, to sit down, to remain, to make his 
 dwelling your permanent abode. To throw cold water 
 on such advances would be churlish; and yet why 
 does he love you at such short notice, and why 
 wanders his eye over the contour of your pocket ? 
 Your desire to feel flattered is defeated by the sus- 
 picion that under guise of studying your welfare, he 
 is on the scent of his own profit. In the teeth of his 
 smiles you must be cold, critical and distrustful. He 
 conducts you from room to room, pointing out luxuries 
 at every step, with touching confidence in your appre- 
 
TYPES CIVIL AND UNCIVIL. 301 
 
 elation : but, whether really pleased or not, principle 
 requires you to grumble and find fault, and turn up 
 your nose the higher, the faster he talks. All the 
 while, those troublesome old reminiscences are hanging 
 about, making you feel mean and humiliated. There 
 comes an impulse (which you resist) to be gracious 
 and chivalrous if it doubles your rent ! a fancy that, 
 cost what it would, you would be the better for in 
 the end. Cynicism and a critical spirit, indulged in 
 their proper place, agreeably tickle the self-esteem, 
 but carry no satisfaction here. Though you malign 
 the world with Diogenes or Apemantius, it is not 
 from their intellectual or philosophic standpoint, but 
 only because you are dealing with a lodging-house 
 keeper. You are shocked at what seems a parody and 
 degradation of heretofore sacred rights, and distressed 
 to find the evil influence reacting upon yourself, and 
 weighing you down to its own level. 
 
 But this is all a mistake, due to confusing parody 
 with progress. Hospitality is antiquated : it has lived 
 too long, and no longer accords with the spirit of the 
 age : let it die out of the world and out of mankind's 
 recollection at once. The lodging-house is its legiti- 
 mate successor, suited to our present condition and 
 requirements. Out of deference to our human weak- 
 ness, it still masquerades in the wardrobe of its 
 ancestor ; but mil ere long don its own garments, and 
 
302 SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 frankly assume the throne. Dresden lodging-house 
 keepers have been accused of avarice, dishonesty, and I 
 know not how many other vices and crimes ; whereas 
 they are all honourable men and full of humanity, 
 if you treat them in the right way. Let one example 
 stand for a thousand similar cases. The wife of a 
 friend of mine was lying at the crisis of a fever, her 
 life depending on absolute quiet and repose. As luck 
 would have it, the landlord discovered, at this junc- 
 ture, a defect in one of the water-pipes in the etage 
 overhead, and very properly set the plumbers at work 
 to repair it. It so happened that the defect in 
 question was at a point in the floor directly above the 
 sick woman's bed, and all the hammering, sawing, 
 racket and clatter beat straight down into her brain. 
 Her husband, without stopping to think whether or 
 not he were taking a liberty, ran up stairs, represented 
 to the landlord that his wife was wavering between 
 life and death, that this noise would be fatal to her, 
 and must therefore stop at once. To this the land- 
 lord replied that he was surprised, that he was sorry, 
 that he could not believe madame would be seriously 
 incommoded, and that all at events he had hired the 
 workmen for the day, and could not afford to dismiss 
 them. The husband offered to pay the workmen's 
 bill on the spot; but the landlord explained good- 
 naturedly that the flooring had already been torn up, 
 
TYPES CIVIL AND UNCIVIL. 303 
 
 and that it would never do to leave matters in con- 
 fusion on so slight a pretext. The husband, unable to 
 hold his own with the phlegmatic Saxon, here lost his 
 temper, and renewed his demand in the most peremp- 
 tory manner. The landlord rejoined with spirit that 
 the Herr was not in America but in Dresden ; that in 
 Dresden there were laws ; and that Dresden citizens 
 might do what they pleased with their own water- 
 pipes. The husband, driven to his wits' end, resorted 
 to threats ; he told the landlord, with an impressive 
 grimness of tone and manner, that, if the noise con- 
 tinued, and his wife's illness ended fatally, he (the 
 husband) would, in defiance of all laws, American, 
 Saxon or Divine, shoot the landlord dead. This put 
 an end to the dispute and to the noise at once. The 
 landlord, profoundly touched, dismissed his plumbers 
 without another word. It is the richest characters 
 that must be probed most deeply ere they betray their 
 wealth. This worthy Saxon, to a less persistent and 
 searching analyst than my friend, might have appeared 
 selfish, inconsiderate, almost unfeeling. Yet mark, 
 when the right chord was touched, how swift and full 
 was the response! how the tender Saxon heart of 
 him throbbed and surrendered ! Believe it, Dresden 
 holds many a soul like his slow to succumb to empty 
 representations and barren argument, but electric in 
 its recognition of an appeal to the vital interests 
 
304 SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 which it shares with all mankind. I cannot justify 
 my American friend, especially since his wife re- 
 covered ; but he must be credited with having shed 
 light upon an episode of human nature which the 
 world should not willingly let die. 
 
 XI. 
 
 I have left myself scarce a pigeon-hole in which to put 
 the policemen, and the letter-carriers, men of honest 
 and respectable professions, for whom, in spite of the 
 inconvenience and anxiety to which the course of their 
 duty often compels them to put us, no one can help 
 feeling a regard. To be a letter-carrier must, I should 
 fancy, be a fascinating occupation. You hold in your 
 hand, like destiny, the joy, sorrow, good luck and bad 
 luck of hundreds of people, high and low ; and they 
 cannot but associate you with the chequered light and 
 shadow which you bring. It were difficult to speak 
 too romantically on this subject. Before the war, 
 Dresden letter-carriers wore canary-coloured coats and 
 azure trowsers a uniform distinguishable at any dis- 
 tance, and as grotesque as could be imagined. But 
 not the wearer of the finest uniform in the world was 
 ever watched by so many anxious and eager eyes, 
 his pace and bearing so commented on, his turns, 
 pauses and deflections so canvassed. Bless the old 
 blue-legged canaries ! what sad and happy moments 
 
TYPES CIVIL AND UNCIVIL. 305 
 
 they have brought me. I cannot forgive Prussia for 
 stripping them of their blue and yellow feathers, and 
 condemning them to hop about in indistinguishable 
 indigo. These letter-carriers must not be confounded 
 with other Saxon post-office employe's and officials, in 
 whom the insolence and red-tape of office is flagrant ; 
 and, what is more serious, who labour under suspicion 
 of habitual tampering with the mails. Whether this 
 be explainable on grounds of governmental and 
 political exigency, or of mere private enterprise, I 
 know not. But during the latter two years of my 
 stay in Dresden, I lost more letters than in all the 
 rest of my letter-experience put together ; and though, 
 in many cases, every possible enquiry and exertion 
 was made towards their recovery, it was in no 
 instance successful. On one occasion the missing 
 article was a small packet containing a jewel of some 
 value; this was formally registered at the Dresden 
 post-office, and a description of the jewel entered in a 
 book. There stands the entry to this day, unless 
 some patriotic Saxon has torn the leaf out ; but the 
 jewel has vanished as utterly as Cleopatra's pearl; 
 anil no one could be found responsible for its dis- 
 appearance. I should not recall an incident 
 giving rise to such unwelcome suggestions as does 
 this, had not a somewhat extended enquiry estab- 
 lished the fact that my post-office fortunes, such 
 
 X 
 
306 SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 as they were, were very far indeed from being 
 exceptional 
 
 The police are certainly superior in most respects 
 both to our own and to the English force I speak 
 only of the rank and file the heads of departments 
 are scarcely up to the average. The men are not 
 brawny giants ; their physique is rather slight than 
 otherwise; but then no one (save now and then a 
 recalcitrant American or Englishman) ever dreams of 
 resisting their authority. They are uniformly cor- 
 teous, low-voiced, long-suffering, imperturbable, and 
 densely stupid, aside from the black and white of their 
 instructions. Discipline, their awful godfather, has so 
 filled them with the voice of his commands, that all 
 such innate and peculiar mental action as they may 
 originally have been capable of, is forced to the 
 wall. They pace to and fro with a mild, emasculated 
 sobriety of demeanour, oblivious of their personal selves, 
 and alive only with a spectral, official life, inspired by 
 Government. They have on white gloves, and carry 
 their hands peacefully clasped behind their backs. 
 But why they, of all men, should be made to wear 
 helmets and swords, is hard to imagine. The swords, of 
 course, are tied into their sheaths by an insoluble white 
 knot about their hilts ; the helmets are furnished with 
 a curved Greek crest a tempting handle to wrench 
 them off by ! These accoutrements are purely sym- 
 
TYPES CIVIL AND UNCIVIL. 307 
 
 bolic ; but what puzzles me is, how they first came into 
 use. Was there once a time when they had a 
 practical significance ? It is startling even to dream 
 of such an epoch of devastation and bloodshed; but 
 either that, or are we to adopt the yet more 
 appalling theory that something of the kind is in 
 prospect ? Should that day come, however, I doubt 
 whether the police will be to the fore ; the soldiers 
 will transact the business. Indeed, there can be little 
 doubt that it is the monstrous overgrowth of the 
 military element which has robbed the civic guardians 
 of their virility. In bygone years the latter may 
 have been a very truculent and hectoring set of 
 fellows, with their helmets cocked on their ears and 
 their weapons loose in the sheath ; but the bayonet 
 and the pickelhaube have changed all that. When 
 the policeman has laid down his club, 'tis vanity to 
 gird himself with steeL His proper arms thenceforth 
 are the pen and the inkhorn. There is a variety of the 
 Dresden policeman known as Nacht-Waechter ; they 
 appear after dark, armed with bunches of keys, and 
 hush up all noisy persons, belated students and such 
 like ; but there is no more of the true beak about 
 them than about their daylight brethren. There is 
 no Five Points in the capital of Saxony, nor Seven 
 Dials either. 
 
308 SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 XII. 
 
 Once, in the first months of my Saxon sojourn, I 
 was hurrying down See Strasse, when I found my 
 way blocked by three leisurely persons two gentle- 
 men with a lady between them who monopolised the 
 entire breadth of the side-walk. They were pro- 
 ceeding in the same direction as myself, so I could 
 see only their backs. The outside gentleman, and the 
 lady, appeared to be elderly people, and toddled 
 somewhat infirmly onward arm-in-arm. The inside 
 gentleman was stout, and fashionably dressed, and in 
 the prime of life ; and seemed acquainted with every- 
 body, for he was continually lifting his hat and 
 nodding to this one and that, and receiving polite 
 obeisances in return. 
 
 I was in haste, and the gutter was muddy, for it had 
 been raining ; so I touched the elderly gentleman on 
 the shoulder, and as he moved a little aside, I thanked 
 him and slipped by. At the same moment I caught a 
 glimpse of his face, and had the mortification of 
 finding myself in the attitude of disputing his 
 own sidewalk with King John of Saxony. The 
 mild old man only smiled and toddled on, and his 
 Queen was no less lenient than he ; but the punc- 
 tilious attendant who did their saluting for the Royal 
 couple, gorgonised me from head to foot, and would 
 have cut my ears off two hundred years ago. 
 
TYPES CIVIL AND UNCIVIL. 309 
 
 But for the misfortune of their royalty, this historic 
 family would be as desirable acquaintances as any in 
 the kingdom. They are quiet, courteous, educated and 
 refined, and what speaks yet more highly in their 
 favour, they have the name of being rather unpopular 
 with their people. Nor are they mere pallid bundles 
 of etiquette and accomplishment, devoid of personal 
 character and individuality ; they possess distinct, 
 recognisable human traits; indeed the present King, 
 Albert, is a man of more than average pith, who 
 makes himself soundly felt within his domains, and 
 outside of them also, to a good degree. 
 
 About a year before the old king's death, he cele- 
 brated his golden wedding. The festivities lasted four 
 or five days, beneath a solemn but unraining November 
 cloud, which afforded an artistic background to the 
 fluttering miles of painted bunting which gaudily 
 draped the sombre town. The newspapers announced 
 the programme some time in advance, albeit in such 
 courtly polysyllabic language as was undecipherable 
 to foreign understandings save through the dictionary. 
 Endless good society, including the Emperor of Ger- 
 many, was promised us ; and beside the grand 
 wedding-service in the palace, there were to be recep- 
 tions, music, banquets, theatrical performances, two 
 great balls, constant illumination of the city by 
 night, and bell-ringing night and day ; the whole to 
 
3io SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 wind up with a colossal torchlight procession I know 
 not how many miles long. It is only fair to say that 
 the performance of this fine programme even outdid 
 its promise. 
 
 Banners forty feet long streamed fourfold from 
 every tower and dome top. The main thoroughfare 
 dazzled with flags, festoons, medallions and mottoes ; 
 enormous garlands hung clear across the narrow 
 street, supporting shields emblazoned with allegoric 
 devices. Each shop window displayed its busts of the 
 royal Jubel-Paar, egregiously flattered, and swathed 
 in patriotic colours. Small brass and tin Fest-Medal- 
 lions were hawked about by the ten thousand. 
 Gorgeous military gentlemen of various nationalities 
 thronged the dense side-walks, their white plumes 
 and gilded helmets emerging above the crowd. In 
 the Schloss-Platz, opposite the bridge, were erected 
 two canvas obelisks, all scarlet, blue and gold, fifty 
 feet in height, surmounted with golden crowns, and 
 supported at the base by four allegoric statues, of 
 meditative aspect, as if overwhelmed by their own 
 significance. The bridge beyond pursued the narrow 
 directness of its way through a gorgeous storm of 
 many-hued flaglets. In short, dim old Dresden was 
 transfigured ; the good Haroun Al-Raschid would have 
 found himself much at home there. I could not avoid 
 comparing this coherent splendour of artistic adorn- 
 
TYPES CIVIL AND UNCIVIL. 311 
 
 ment with the hysteric dowdiness of my own New 
 York and Boston during the height of a political 
 celebration. But for the chaste integrity of the 
 politics themselves, the contrast might have led me to 
 despair of the Eepublic. 
 
 On Saturday I stood in one of the largest, densest 
 and best-behaved crowds I ever beheld, to see Kaiser 
 Wilhelm drive into town. A narrow carriage-way 
 was kept clear from the Georgen Thor to the bridge. 
 Near my standpoint was a policeman, whose duty con- 
 sisted in compelling the narrow stream of people who 
 were on their way across the bridge, to keep moving. 
 He was a man of men. He had reduced his profession 
 to a science. He regarded the human race not in the 
 light of a vicious animal with a head to be broken ; 
 he divided them into classes, as the timid, the 
 tractable, the polite, the reasonable, the quick, the 
 pliant, the obstinate, the sluggish, the stupid, the 
 defiant, and was never at a loss to manage any, He 
 would entreat, request, enjoin, urge, argue, expos- 
 tulate, command, cajole, condole, reproach, wheedle, 
 denounce and threaten ; always fitting his appeal to 
 the case with rare tact and wisdom, and invariably 
 carrying his point without a hair's breadth to spare 
 either way. The effect of his pill was uniform, to 
 move on, but the methods of administering it were 
 innumerable. 
 
312 SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 Meanwhile carriages after carriages, coachmaned 
 and footmaned with yellow liveries and irreproach- 
 able calves, were passing over the bridge on their way 
 to meet the Emperor at the Neustadt station. One 
 unpretending little couptf had the King in it, in 
 general's uniform, touching his cap and smiling in his 
 amiable way, but looking old in fact, senile. As time 
 went on, the already solid crowd got yet solider. On 
 the opposite side of the carriage-way stood a large, 
 inert young woman, absolutely impassive and imper- 
 vious, her face round, smooth and smiling who, 
 while undergoing a fierce shoving, wrenching, punch- 
 ing and pinching from a meagre, red-faced, angry-eye- 
 browed harridan behind her, did not for one instant 
 forego the serene beatitude of her expression. Another 
 young person, in squeezing through a place too narrow 
 for her, got through indeed, but, terrible to relate, left 
 her petticoats behind her. There was a general broad 
 smile at this mishap. 
 
 Suddenly came a stir and a hum their Royal and 
 Imperial Highnesses were approaching. A golden 
 coachman, golden footmen, prancing horses, four 
 elderly gentlemen in bestarred uniforms, cocked hats, 
 white plumes driving at full speed " Der Kaiser ! " 
 cried some one. Men cheered and threw up their 
 hats, women shook handkerchiefs and screamed, a 
 wave of enthusiasm surged through the crowd, and 
 
TYPES CIVIL AND UNCIVIL. 313 
 
 every one's toes were trodden on. A few sharp- 
 sighted persons smiled secretly, having perceived that 
 it was not the great German Emperor at all, but only 
 a couple of brace of his creatures, preparing the way 
 for him. 
 
 This mistake so mortified and depressed the profane 
 vulgar, that there was no demonstration left for Wil- 
 helm when he actually appeared. He was in an open 
 carriage alone with the King, two outriders in advance, 
 bouncing on the hardest-trotting of horses as only royal 
 and imperial outriders can bounce. The King, bent, 
 dark, wrinkled, skinny, with sunken mouth and elderly 
 smile, was in sharp contrast with the erect, square- 
 chested, sunburnt Emperor. The latter 's face was 
 firm and vigorous, his eyes intolerant and haughty 
 even in smiling, his white moustache curled upward. 
 He was a finer and sturdier man than I was prepared 
 to see looked not sixty, though he was then seventy- 
 five, and four years the King's senior. But his 
 expression is not pleasant too arrogant for mere 
 flesh and blood. I wonder how he gets over the 
 humiliating fact that he is fashioned after no better 
 a model than mankind in general the model, namely, 
 of the Creator ? Perhaps the speculation is ill-natured, 
 but human charity is scarce lofty enough to deal on 
 equal terms with rulers of nations. 
 
 The golden ceremony took place at ten o'clock the 
 
314 SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 following morning. Seldom does one see collected 
 together so many high-bred, high-conditioned, tho- 
 roughly deem persons ! for certainly there is a world 
 of difference between those who habitually pay 
 scrupulous attention to their toilets, and those who 
 only do so intermittently. Few of the women were 
 beautiful, but they were so delightfully dignified and 
 composed ! Every lady above the rank of countess 
 had a high, delicate nose: the higher the rank, the 
 higher the nose, generally. It is the badge of female 
 aristocracy, but does not hold good with the men. I 
 was especially pleased with the pages smooth-faced, 
 red-cheeked boys, wholesome as milk and roses, 
 dressed in scarlet and gold-lace, with white satin 
 knee-breeches and silk stockings. There was a stately 
 little princess, ten years old, who took charge of the 
 old Queen's enormous train. The Queen, in spite of 
 her moire-antique, golden myrtle-wreath, jewels, dia- 
 monds and lace, was not a cheering spectacle. Golden 
 weddings, after all, are more repulsive than pathetic. 
 It is beautiful to dream of two souls faithful to each 
 other through fifty years but to see the worn and 
 withered carcases in which those souls are confined, 
 grotesquely rehearsing the holy ceremony that united 
 their youth, is not beautiful, nor in good taste, 
 methinks. 
 
 At twelve I was in the streets once more, watching 
 
TYPES CIVIL AND UNCIVIL. 315 
 
 the carriagefulls of aristocracy drive homewards. 
 Some carriages contained men only, with grave and 
 indifferent visages ; where ladies were alone, all was 
 animated conversation and laughter ; while a mixture 
 of both sexes produced formal smiles and stilted 
 remarks. Such is human nature. I must pass over 
 the remaining festivities ; though the illumination was 
 more brilliantly extensive and intense than was ever 
 seen before the streets, inches deep in mud, being 
 rendered as dry as lava shortly after the thing was 
 set going, while the sky overhead glowed dull red, as 
 though lit up by a volcano. As for the torchlight 
 procession, it was the occasion of the nearest approach 
 to a riot that happened throughout the celebration. 
 The night fell so dark and gloomy that all the gorgeous 
 memories to be conjured up could scarce enlighten it. 
 Next morning, however, on looking out of my window, 
 I saw that graceful Nature had draped the earth in 
 snow. It glistened crisp and sparkling over all the 
 city : and the re-married King and Queen might take 
 the first steps of their further life over its spotless 
 expanse. 
 
 XIII. 
 
 Since I have gone so far with good King John, I 
 will follow him to the grave, and then take leave 
 of him and of Dresden for ever. 
 
316 SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 Never was heard such a bell-ringing ! Had bells 
 not existed before our time, we should not have had 
 genius to invent them. They are the outcome of an 
 age when people's hearts vibrated readily and har- 
 moniously, and emotions were grandly and sonorously 
 outspoken. The popular joy and sorrow then found 
 fitting utterance in them. Now, though the bells are 
 as well made as ever, the general heart has cracks in 
 it and does not vibrate soundly : and so we sometimes 
 feel that our bells are more moved than we are. 
 Pull away, however, worthy ringers ! It is as well, 
 perhaps, that we wag our iron tongues after our 
 fleshly ones have ceased to bear them out. They put 
 us on our mettle, and make us feel better thaii 
 we are. 
 
 The principle upon which Dresden bell-ringing is 
 carried on seems a little obscure. In event of fire, a 
 slow, measured ding-dong arises, better calculated, I 
 should fancy, to put the firemen asleep than to 
 summon them to the scene of disaster. But let there 
 be a funeral, and the steeples send forth an uproar 
 such as might fitly welcome the millennium, or wake 
 the dead, but can scarcely soothe the latter to their 
 last rest. As regards this particular funeral, however, 
 it may not have been so inappropriate. Royalty is 
 less solid than it used to be indeed, the suspicion 
 grows that it is hollow, and that its voice is big in 
 
TYPES CIVIL AND UNCIVIL. 317 
 
 proportion as it feels itself shaken. Viewed in this 
 light, there was a subtle propriety in giving the bell- 
 ringers a prominent part in the last rites above the 
 poor old monarch's grave. 
 
 Some of the circumstances attending his decease 
 were such as might gratify a cynic. For a fortnight 
 before his death it was known that die he must any 
 moment might bring the fatal tidings: and it was 
 also known that during six weeks following the fatal 
 announcement, all amusement, public or private, must 
 be intermitted. Why was it that, from the first 
 intimation of danger to the night of the king's death, 
 there was an unprecedented succession of gaieties in 
 the fore-doomed capital? Had the old gentleman 
 been able to hold his own at death's door for six 
 months, he would have made the fortune of every 
 amusement-monger in Dresden. I myself walked two 
 miles on a cold, damp night, to see the performance 
 at an American circus, for the sole reason, so far as I 
 know, that he died thirty-six hours afterwards. No- 
 in spite of craped banners and badges, black-edged 
 newspapers and lugubrious proclamations, his people 
 never mourned him. They mourned because they 
 must hear no music and see no Vorstellungen for six 
 weeks. These forms and shows of grief were good 
 when kings were the state ; but now it is a mockery 
 to prop up the poor old royal clay upon a gaudy bier, 
 
3 i8 SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 and paint the ghastly cheeks with the hues of life, 
 and call it honouring the dead. 
 
 For the very reason, however, that these things are 
 felt to be mere formalities, they must not be dispensed 
 with. We must sacrifice to our hypocrisy not to do 
 so were scandalous. Perhaps, indeed, did we not rely 
 upon bells, guns and torchlight-proceedings to do our 
 mourning for us in the most orthodox and respectable 
 manner, we might try our hand at mourning our- 
 selves once in a while. Were we to be scandalously 
 negligent of social proprieties for a time, we might 
 develope a new code of morals and etiquette, more 
 true and wholesome, if less mawkishly sentimental 
 than is the present one. 
 
 When the King celebrated his golden wedding, 
 busts and photographs of him crowded every shop- 
 window; the same re-appeared now that he was 
 dead. Again were the streets crowded with people 
 staring at the mourning decorations and pleased with 
 novelty. Again the bridge and wharf were thronged, 
 to witness the arrival of the vessel that bore the royal 
 corpse. The night was damp and dismal, and vantage 
 points were bought by speculators and sold at a 
 premium a window in the Bruelschen Concert Hall 
 bringing ten thalers. The King had died at Pillnitz 
 six miles up the river ; the steamer which brought him 
 thence was draped in black crape : around the coffin 
 
TYPES CIVIL AND UNCIVIL. 319 
 
 stood pages, each bearinga torch; while ahundred liveried 
 retainers, also with torches, lined the bulwarks. Along 
 the banks of the river were ranged thousands of children, 
 uplifting their small voices, as the sable craft swept 
 by, in funeral hymns a graceful fancy, if we question 
 not too closely what must have been the children's 
 condition when they got home again. As the vessel 
 neared the landing amidst the silence of the vast black 
 crowd, every one of whom (for the arrival was hours 
 later than was announced) was sick or sullen with cold 
 and fatigue, the first cannon thundered across the 
 river, and all the towers of Dresden sprang into 
 clamorous life. For an hour, while the funeral pro- 
 cession was passing from the landing to the cathedral, 
 the peal of bells and cannon slackened not. 
 
 Twenty-four officers of the royal army bore the 
 coffin ashore, and slowly up the slope to the cathedral 
 square. The way was lined with the Saxon infantry 
 and cavalry, who must take oaths of fealty to the new 
 King, Albert, to-morrow. The procession flared with 
 torches, to which the blackness of earth and sky gave 
 full effect. The only music was the beat of muffled 
 drums a strange sound the soldier who invented it 
 must have been a poet as well So the doors of the 
 cathedral were reached, and doubtless the chilled and 
 muddy-footed populace would fain have followed the 
 coffin inside : but this was to be the privilege of few. 
 
320 SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 The great interior looked like a fairy palace full of 
 soft light, incense, and sweet music ; while the high 
 altar sparkled with gold and precious stones. The 
 blackness of the funeral train, crawling up the central 
 aisle, contrasted solemnly with the ecclesiastical mag- 
 nificence through which it moved. The difference 
 between the scene here and that which had just 
 passed outside, was wide indeed. There, the vastness 
 and dark uncertainty of the surroundings had dwarfed 
 the pageant here the pageant gloomed the surround- 
 ings. Without, there was compassion at this last 
 appearance among his people of the mortal sovereign ; 
 within, the emotion was awe ; the shadow of death 
 lurked behind the marble columns and concentrated 
 beneath the funeral pall. A more impressive spectacle 
 than a royal funeral in a Roman Catholic cathedral is 
 seldom met with. In addition to what is actually 
 beheld, we must needs bend beneath the weight of all 
 the moralising upon the vanities of earthly greatness 
 that has been done since kings began ; and however 
 lightly we may smile at our emotion next morning, 
 it was none the less a reality last night. 
 
VII. 
 
 MOUNTAINEERING IN MINIATURE. 
 
 T PACKED my portmanteau full of silent hurrahs, 
 and set off, with a lightsome step, for the Boeh- 
 mische Bahnhof. It was a divine June day, and 
 Dresden looked so bright that I could almost have 
 disbelieved its evil odour. The club balcony, on 
 Victoria Strasse, had got its afternoon shadow, and 
 never looked more inviting ; but there was a train to 
 catch, and I might not pause even there. Prager 
 Strasse, gay and crowded, wooed me to loiter ; but I 
 had cast off, for good and all, the lazy leisure which a 
 Dresden residence begets, and felt that time was 
 precious once more. In a few minutes, I reached the 
 broad, open space in front of the Bahnhof, passed 
 through the serried droschkeys on stand there side by 
 side, bought a ticket to Krippen, and took my seat in 
 a third-class carriage. 
 
 Y 
 
322 SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 I have often done the journey on foot ; the highway 
 from Dresden to Saxon Switzerland about five-and- 
 twenty miles being itself excellent, while its situa- 
 tion is more or less picturesque throughout. The 
 main objection to it is its openness, and the circum- 
 stance that Koenigstein and Lilienstein the twin 
 rocky giants that sentinel the entrance to the moun- 
 tainous region are visible from the outset of the 
 walk, and are a long while in getting to look nearer. 
 For the rest, the road traverses seven or eight tiny 
 villages and two towns Pirna and Koenigstein as 
 quaint, crooked, and narrow-streeted as heart could 
 desire. For many miles it skirts the river-bank ; after 
 Pirna, climbs a steep hill, has an up-and-down time of 
 it as far as Koenigstein fortress, and then plunges 
 headlong down a straight incline, stone-paved and 
 ridged for the behoof of clambering waggons, into 
 Koenigstein town. Steep and long as is the ascent, it 
 is pleasanter than the going down ; the grade being 
 such that running is dangerous, and walking almost 
 impossible. Koenigstein passed, highway and railway 
 run cheek by jowl along the precipitous river-bank, 
 onward through the heart of the country. The road 
 is level, and parasolled with trees ; but the squat, 
 iiine-pin-shaped steeple of Schandau church, on the 
 opposite side of the river, now takes its turn in 
 making the walk wearisome by its unintermittent 
 
MOUNTAINEERING IN MINIATURE. 323 
 
 visibility. The scene, however, is really very pretty : 
 and were it not that his five-and-twenty miles beneath 
 a summer sun may have rendered the pedestrian a 
 trifle captious, doubtless he might swallow the inces- 
 sant steeple with more than toleration. 
 
 But it was not my cue to foot it on the present 
 occasion. Frequent pilgrimages to and fro had taken 
 all novelty out of the enterprise not to mention that 
 my portmanteau did, strictly speaking, have some 
 heavier things than hurrahs in it. So, for the nonce, 
 I chose the railway-carriage ; the noisiest, ugliest, 
 tiresomest, most unprivacied mode of conveyance 
 extant ; but not wholly deficient, even in Saxony, in 
 the exhilaration of speed, and never lacking in broad 
 variety of human interest. And, to the end of ensur- 
 ing, while I was about it, the full flavour of the 
 experience, I took a third-class ticket an unfailing 
 passport to whatever human interest might happen to 
 be in the way. First-class carriages are empty, in 
 every sense of the word; the seats may be softly 
 cushioned, the guard may salute whenever he catches 
 my eye, and request the favour of my ticket with such 
 sweet cajolery that I feel, in giving it up, as if I were 
 making him happier than it is right or lawful for man 
 to be ; nevertheless, the noise and weariness remain, 
 and there is nothing better than my own dignity to 
 distract my attention therefrom. As for the second- 
 
324 SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 class, it can be endurable only to penitents and to 
 second-class people ; the guard (whose behaviour 
 admirably gauges the travellers' social estimation 
 throughout) now chats with me on terms of friendly 
 equality; while my neighbours are hopelessly un- 
 picturesque and ordinary, yet of such pretensions that 
 I am dejected by a doubt whether they are not as 
 good as I am after all. No: the moral and mental 
 depression brought on by second-class outweighs the 
 pecuniary outlay of first and third combined. 
 
 But the third the third is romantic! It piques 
 my imagination, and gives the observation scope. I 
 fancy myself a peasant : I think of my farmyard, my 
 oxen, my Frau, my geese, my children ; of that bargain 
 got out of Mueller ; of that paltry advantage gained 
 by Schultze over me. My breath savours of sauer 
 Kraut; in my pocket is a half-eaten sausage; at 
 supper I will devour Limburger Kaese, and quaff 
 einfaches Bier. At the same time I am an observer, a 
 notary-public of humorous traits, a diviner of relations, 
 destinies, and antecedents. My fellow-pilgrims are 
 infragrant, familiar, talkative, and over-numerous; 
 the bench we sit on is hard, and the ticket-collector 
 is brusque and overbearing; nevertheless, if there 
 must be a human element at all, let it be as thick and 
 as strong as possible, and let me get as near it as I 
 decently may. In the long run, I prefer my men and 
 women with the crust off. 
 
MOUNTAINEERING IN MINIATURE. 325 
 
 ii. 
 
 Saxon third-class vans, like some English ones, are 
 tranversely divided into five open compartments, each 
 holding ten or twelve persons. In my box, on this 
 trip, was a young married couple of the lower middle- 
 class, who had not yet stopped being lovers. They 
 were in the full tide of that amorous joyance which 
 only lower middle-class newly-married young couples 
 can know. The girl was not uncomely clear-eyed 
 and complexioned, and smoothly curved; the young 
 husband was stout and earthy, with broad face, little 
 twinkling eyes, and defective chin. The two sat 
 opposite one another, her knees clasped between his, 
 and hand in hand. They showed a paradisaical in- 
 difference to stranger eyes, which was either coarse or 
 touching as the observer pleased. When one looked 
 out of window, so would the other; and each rejoiced 
 in the new sensation of seeing the world double, 
 finding it vastly bettered thereby. Such was their 
 mutual pre-occupation, that the guard had to demand 
 their tickets twice before they could bring themselves 
 to comprehend him. Truly, what should two young 
 lovers, lately wed, have to do with such utilitarian 
 absurdities as railway-tickets ? Ostensibty, indeed, 
 they might be booked for Bodenbach or Prag ; but 
 their real destination had no station on this or any 
 
326 SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 other earthly railway. Meanwhile, the husband was 
 puffing an unutterably villanous cigar, and blowing the 
 smoke of it right down his wife's pretty throat. She 
 dear little soul flinched not a jot, but swallowed 
 it all with a perfect love and admiration, such as only 
 women are (or ever can or ought to be) capable of. 
 
 My vis-a-vis, at the other end of the compartment, 
 was an under-sized Russian a black-haired, bristle- 
 bearded, brown-eyed, round-nosed, swarthy, dirty- 
 shirted little monster, who turned out to be a 
 travelling agent for some cigarette-manufacturing 
 company. The attrition of the world had rubbed off 
 whatever reserve he may originally have possessed, 
 and he was inclined to be sociable. He began by 
 requesting a light from my cigar, and proceeded to 
 have the honour to inquire whether I were of Russian 
 extraction, observing that my features were of the 
 Russian type. He meant it as a compliment, of 
 course ; but it is odd that a German, a Frenchman, 
 and an Englishman should severally, and in like 
 manner, have claimed countrymanship with me on the 
 testimony of my visage. The explanation is to be 
 found, I take it, in nothing more nor less than my 
 affability, which I can neither disguise nor palliate. 
 Why else, from a streetful of people, should I inva- 
 riably be the one picked out by the stranger to tell 
 him his way ? It is not because I look as if I knew 
 
MOUNTAINEERING IN MINIATURE. 327 
 
 and, in fact, I never do know but he feels convinced, 
 as soon as he claps eyes on me, that whether I know or 
 not, at all events he will get an affable answer from 
 me. Or why else, in third-class carriages and else- 
 where, am I the one to whom every smoker applies 
 for a light ? It is not because my light is better than 
 other people's, but because they perceive in me a lack 
 of gall to make their oppression bitter. Yet, but for 
 this experience, I should have supposed the cast and 
 predominant expression of my countenance to be 
 especially grave and forbidding ; which goes to prove 
 that the world knows its individuals better than they 
 know themselves. 
 
 Intellect plays but a subordinate part in the divina- 
 tion of character. It is your emotional, impressible 
 person who finds you out most surely and soon : 
 hence women are so apt to pass their verdict at sight, 
 and (prejudice apart) are so seldom entirely mistaken. 
 They cannot say, categorically, what you are the 
 faculty of formulating impressions being no necessary 
 part of their gift -but they can tell what you are not, 
 and description by negatives is often very good 
 description. Of course, they are easily led to alter, 
 or at least ignore their first judgment ; and their 
 second thought is never worth much. It is here that 
 the intellect steps in, confirming and marshalling the 
 emotional insight; and with both at their best, out 
 comes Shakespeare. 
 
328 SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 If, in these days of committees, we could have a 
 committee on geniuses those whose works captivate 
 all ages I think the most of them would turn out 
 soft-fibred persons, of no assertative individuality : 
 egotists, no doubt, but with a foolish personal not 
 lofty moral and intellectual egotism ; yielding, sen- 
 sitive natures, albeit finely balanced, and with an 
 innate perception of truth and proportion, sufficient to 
 prevent them being forced permanently out of shape. 
 Were they other than this, they would be always 
 tripping up their inspiration (meaning thereby the 
 power of so foregoing oneself as to reflect directly the 
 inner truth and beauty of moral and physical creation). 
 Obstinate, prognathous geniuses must have a hard 
 time of it : inspiration is not easily come at, upon any 
 terms : how, then, when breathless and sweating from 
 a tussle with one's own personality. 
 
 in. 
 
 " But you have lived in Russia. At the least you 
 speak the language ?" No. I was obliged to confess 
 that I had not. The little agent looked hard at me, 
 debating within himself whether he should ask me 
 outright where I did come from ; he decided against 
 it, and applied himself to staring out of the window, 
 and ever and anon spitting towards any part of the 
 prospect that attracted his interest. As there was a 
 
MOUNTAINEERING IN MINIATURE. 329 
 
 strong draught setting inwards, I moved further up 
 the seat. Presently, a thought of his personal appear- 
 ance visited him, and he pulled from an inner pocket 
 a little greasy box, having a tiny mirror set within 
 the lid, and containing four inches of comb. With 
 these appliances, the Russian went through the forms 
 of the toilet, replacing his box, when he had finished, 
 with a pathetic air of self-complacency, such as I have 
 observed in a frowsy dog who has just scratched his 
 ear and shaken a little dirt from his coat. This 
 human being had an untrained, unintellectual, repul- 
 sive aspect enough, but he looked good-natured, and I 
 have no doubt his odour was the worst part of him. 
 
 Sitting beside me was a lean, elderly man, of 
 pleasant and respectable appearance, and seemingly 
 well-educated and gentlemanlike. He had a guide- 
 book, which he consulted very diligently, and was 
 continually peering out of the windows on either side, 
 in hasty search for the objects of interest which the 
 book told about. He referred to me repeatedly, with 
 a blandly-courteous air, for information regarding the 
 towns and scenes through which we passed, and, 
 by-and-by, he produced the stump of a cigar, and 
 asked me for a light, which I gave him. At Pirna he 
 was painfully divided between the new bridge then in 
 course of building, the rock-mounted castle, now used 
 as an insane asylum, and the perpendicular brown 
 
333 SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 cliffs on the other side of the river the beginning of 
 the peculiar formation which makes the Saxon Swit- 
 zerland. While poking his head out of the Eussian's 
 window, he fell into talk with him, and whether they 
 turned out to be compatriots or not I cannot tell, but, 
 at all events, my lean friend spoke my frowzy friend's 
 language : they sat down opposite one another a 
 pendant to the two lovers at the other side and 
 emptied themselves into one another's mouths, so to 
 speak, during the rest of the journey. The guide- 
 book and the scenery were alike forgotten such is 
 the superior fascination of a human over a natural 
 interest. They more cared to peep into the dark 
 interiors of each other's minds than gaze at the sunlit 
 trees and river, and rocks, and sky outside. What is 
 this mysterious, irresistible magnet in all men, com- 
 pelling them to attend first of all to one another ? Is 
 it smitten into them from the infinite creative magnet ? 
 I find it most generally sensitive in men of small 
 cultivation, and in women, who, on the other hand, 
 seldom take much genuine interest in grand natural 
 scenery. The conversation of my two friends, so far 
 as I could make it out, was confined mainly to 
 cigarettes and matters thereto related. They frater- 
 nized completely; the Russian worked himself into 
 paroxysms of genial excitement, and gesticulated with 
 much freedom. Shortly before our arrival at Krippen, 
 
MOUNTAINEERING IN MINIATURE. 331 
 
 lie took out a pocket-case of cigarettes, and shared its 
 contents with his new acquaintance, and the two 
 likewise exchanged names and addresses. Every man 
 searches for something of himself in those he meets, 
 and is hugely tickled if he discovers it. 
 
 The remaining occupant of our compartment was a 
 poor, meagre little fellow, pale and peaked, with dirty- 
 white hands, and imperfect nails, and dingy genteel 
 attire. He was chilly, though the day was warm and 
 generous, and kept rubbing his pithless hands to- 
 gether in the vain attempt to get up circulation. He 
 was altogether squalid and dyspeptic, and smoked a 
 squalid cigar, and said nothing, save in answer to 
 some question put to him by his Eussian neighbour. 
 Even the endearments of the lovers availed not to 
 bring lustre to his pallid eyes ; and when his cigar went 
 out he put it in his pocket, without asking for a light. 
 Some unwholesome city clerkship was his, I suppose, 
 in a street where the sun never shone and the 
 drainage was bad. 
 
 The fortress of Koenigstein reeled dizzily above us, 
 perched indefinite hundreds of feet in air, on its 
 breakneck precipice, shelving towards the base, and 
 shawled in verdure. But the first sight of Lilienstein, 
 as we sweep around the curve, is perhaps, more 
 impressive. The rock, like most in this region, is of 
 an irregular oval plan; its wooded base sloping 
 
332 SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 conically upwards to within two hundred feet or so 
 of the top, at which point the rock itself appears, 
 hurtling straight aloft with black, naked crags. Seen 
 from the river level, its altitude is increased by the 
 height of the bank at least one hundred feet more ; 
 and presenting itself end-on, it bears a striking re- 
 semblance to the dismantled hull of some Titanic 
 frigate, wrecked on the tall summit of a hill. The 
 gloomy weather-beaten bows rise in slow grandeur 
 against the sky : there are the shattered bulwarks 
 bowsprit and masts are gone. Ages have passed since 
 the giant vessel was stranded there, and the pre- 
 historic ocean which hurled it to its place has rolled 
 into oblivion. But still looms the barren hulk over 
 that old ocean bed, now green with trees and crops, 
 dotted with tiny villages, and alive with pigmy men. 
 What mighty captain commanded her on her last 
 voyage ? whose hand swayed her tiller and hauled her 
 ropes ? what enormous exploits are recorded in her 
 log-book? But for some foolish historic and geo- 
 graphic scruples I should christen her The Ark, 
 manned by Noah and his sons, and freighted, long ago, 
 with the hopes of humanity. On second thoughts, 
 however, that could not be, for if there is any truth in 
 measurements, Lilienstein might have swung the ark 
 from her stern davits, and never felt the difference. 
 
MOUNTAINEERING IN MINIATURE. 333 
 
 IV. 
 
 Some of these canal boats, however, would have 
 made her stagger ; it seems impossible that anything 
 so ponderous should float. Looking down at them 
 from above they appear to be of about the tonnage of 
 an ordinary London street. Their masts are in 
 proportion, but their sails (which they ostentatiously 
 spread to the lightest breath of air) are exasperatingly 
 insufficient, and help them along about as much as its 
 wings do a penguin. Nevertheless, fleets of them are 
 continually passing up and down, and seem to get to 
 their destinations ultimately. Horses are harnessed to 
 the mast, and tug away along the rounded stone 
 levies, the long rope brushing the willows and bushes 
 which grow beside the banks. One mariner dreams 
 over the tiller, another occasionally slumbers in the 
 bows, upwards of a hundred yards away. Such 
 leisurely voyaging can hardly be supposed to keep 
 pace with the fleet foot of time, and traditions linger 
 hereabouts of boats that have left Dresden early 
 in the spring, and losing four months on the passage, 
 have only arrived at Bodenbach by the end of the 
 previous autumn. Can this be true ? 
 
 We arrived at Krippen just as a soft grey cloud 
 was poising itself above the valley, and sending down a 
 misty message of raindrops ; the sun, however, peeped 
 
334 SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 bsneath, and translated it into a rainbow. I hastened 
 down the steps to the ferry-boat a flat-bottomed 
 skiff about twenty feet long and sat down there 
 along with a dozen other passengers. Charon took 
 his pole (oars are unknown in this kind of craft) and 
 poked us across ; the boat, which was loaded down to 
 the gunwale, rocking alarmingly, and the people 
 ejaculating and protesting. At landing we were be- 
 swarmed by porters, but I knew the coast, and 
 escaping from them, took my way along the pretty 
 winding path towards the old Badehaus, which re- 
 poses at the upper end of the desultory village of 
 Schandau. Schandau proper, indeed, is comprised in 
 the little garden patch of red-roofed houses huddled 
 in the mouth of the valley where it opens on the 
 river ; but its " Bad " reputation has generated a long 
 progeny of stuccoed villas, standing in a row beneath 
 the opposite sides of the gradually narrowing cafion. 
 The pine-clad hillsides rear up within arm's reach of 
 their back windows, and as steep as their roofs. For 
 about half-a-mile up, the valley averages scarce a 
 hundred yards in breadth, while its sides are at least 
 as high as that, and look much higher. Down 
 the centre flows a brook, dammed once or twice to 
 turn saw-mills, and bordered with strips of grassy 
 meadow. The main road, unnecessarily tortured with 
 round cobble stones, and miserable in a width of some 
 
MOUNTAINEERING IN MINIATURE. 335 
 
 ten feet, crawls along beneath the house-row on the 
 northern side ; but the southern is the aristocratic 
 quarter the houses are villas, and have balconies and 
 awnings, overlooking a smooth gravel path densely 
 shaded with trees the fashionable morning and even- 
 ing promenade, untrodden by hoof of horse, and 
 familiar to the wheels of children's perambulators 
 only. Very charming is all this, and after the clatter, 
 glare, and poison of the city, unspeakably soothing and 
 grateful. 
 
 As I walked along, fragments of the rainbow shower 
 occasionally found their way to me through the leafy 
 roof overhead, while children toddled across my path, 
 escaping from white-aproned nurses ; and villa-people 
 girls in coquettish white hats, and gentlemen 
 indolent with cigars stared at me from the vantage- 
 ground of their shaded windows. At the garden 
 restaurant were beer-drinkers, merry in the summer- 
 houses, and great running to and fro of Kellner and 
 Kellnerinnen. The dust was laid the trees were 
 painted a livelier green the grass and flowers held 
 themselves straighter and taller the air lay cool and 
 still on the sweet earth, or moved faintly under the 
 influence of a doubtful breeze the brook gurgled 
 unseen, and the noise of the saw-mill, a moderate 
 distance off, sounded like the busy hum of some 
 gigantic grasshopper. 
 
SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 Where the Badehaus stands, the hill-ridges verge 
 towards each other, till a stone could be thrown from 
 one summit to the other. In the square court on 
 which the hotel faces, the aristocratic pathway finds 
 its end, and thenceforward the road, relieved of its 
 cobbles, and otherwise improved, takes up the tale 
 alone. The brook washes the Badehaus wall, and in 
 the earlier part of its course cleaves to the southern 
 side of the narrow gorge. The Badehaus places itself 
 transversely across the valley, looking down village- 
 wards, and giving the brook and the road scarcely 
 room to turn its northern wing. Its southern end, 
 meanwhile, thrusts right into the hillside, and even digs 
 a cellar out of it, to cool provisions in. The front 
 court, when I entered it, was noisy with multitudi- 
 nous children, and the daily brass band was on the 
 point of striking up in the open pagoda. The 
 audience were preparing their minds for the enter- 
 tainment with plentiful meat and drink, and the 
 three Kellner employed by Herr Boettcher had, as 
 usual, three times too much to do. Herr Boettcher 
 (who looks like a mild Yankee until he opens his 
 mouth) and his pale-haired helpmate received me 
 with many smiles, and ushered me into a small 
 scantily-furnished chamber, overlooking the brook and 
 the road, and likewise commanding a view of a small 
 villa crowded close against the hillside opposite. 
 
MOUNTAINEERING IN MINIATURE. 337 
 
 v. 
 
 I ordered supper, and then sat down at my window. 
 The brook, which flowed directly beneath it, was 
 somewhat cloudy of current, and disfigured as to its 
 bed by indistinct glimpses of broken crockery and 
 bottles scattered there. A short distance down, it 
 was crossed by a bridge communicating with the 
 Badehaus court. Some slender-stemmed young trees 
 were trying to make themselves useful along the road 
 side ; and there, likewise, were ranged three rectangu- 
 lar piles of stone, awaiting the hammer of the stone- 
 breaker ; and a wedge-shaped mud-heap, hard and 
 solid now, but telling of wet days and dirty walking 
 in times gone by. A weather-beaten picket fence, 
 interlarded at intervals with white-washed stone 
 posts, inclosed a garden, devoted partly to cabbages 
 and potatoes, and partly to apple-trees. At one end 
 of this enclosure stood the villa ; at the other, a large 
 tree, with a swing attached to it ; several small 
 people were making free with this plaything, subject 
 to an occasional reproving female voice from the 
 direction of the house, and the fitful barking of a 
 self-important little cur. I could also see the lower 
 half of a white skirt, squired by a pair of black 
 broadcloth legs, moving up and down beneath the 
 low-extending branches of the apple-trees. 
 
338 SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 The villa, whose red-tiled roof was pleasantly re- 
 lieved against a dark-green Lack-ground of pines, was 
 provided with an astonishing number of windows. I 
 counted no less than fifteen, besides a door, in the 
 hither end of it alone. Over the front door was a 
 balcony, thickly draped with woodbine ; and here sat 
 two ladies, in blue dresses, dividing their time be- 
 tween the feminine diversions of sewing, reading, 
 gossiping, and watching the passers-by. Small or 
 large parties were continually strolling up the road 
 towards the Schiitzenhaus the women, mostly attired 
 in white, with white hats, and white or buff parasols ; 
 and all chatting and laughing with great volubility 
 and good humour. One pretty girl, walking a little 
 in the rear of her companions, happened to glance up 
 at my window and catch my eye ; and all at once it 
 became necessary for her to cross the road, which 
 being rather dirty, she was compelled to lift her crisp 
 skirts an inch or two above a shapely pair of little 
 boots. What happy land first received the imprint 
 of those small feet ? Could it have been Saxony ? 
 They soon walked beyond my field of vision, which 
 was limited by the sash. Here, however, came into 
 play a species of ocular illusion, made possible in 
 Germany by the habit windows have of opening 
 inwards on hinges. The upper stretch of road to its 
 curve round the bold spur of the hill, a bit of dilapi- 
 
MOUNTAINEERING IN MINIATURE. 339 
 
 dated bridge, and one or two new villas half clad in 
 trees, all this pretty picture was mirrored and framed 
 in the pane of glass at my left hand. A few moments, 
 therefore, after the owner of the boots had vanished 
 from actual sight, she stepped daintily into this 
 phantom world, and proceeded on her way as de- 
 murely as though no such astonishing phenomenon 
 had occurred. She was, to be sure, unaware of it; 
 and we all live in blind serenity amidst marvels as 
 strange. Perhaps, when our time comes, we shall take 
 our first walk beyond the grave with no less uncon- 
 scious self-possession than attended the march of those 
 little boots across my window-pane. 
 
 As the afternoon wore on, waggons and droschkeys, 
 full of returning excursionists, began to lumber by, 
 with much cracking of whips, singing, and jollity. 
 Many of the men wore monstrous hats, roughly 
 plaited of white reeds, quantities of which were on 
 sale in the village for a groschen or so each, being 
 meant to last only a day. They were bound with 
 bands of scarlet ribbon, and lent their wearers a sort 
 of tropical aspect. Every vehicle was overcrowded, 
 and everybody was in high spirits except the horses, 
 which, however, were well whipped to make up for it. 
 Meanwhile, the band in the pagoda round the corner 
 had long been in full blast, and odds and ends of 
 melody came floating past my window. In the pauses 
 
340 SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 of the music I could hear two babies bemoaning them- 
 selves in the adjoining room. A small child, with red 
 face and white hair, made itself disagreeable by 
 walking nonchalantly backwards and forwards over 
 an impromptu plank bridge without railings, escaping 
 accident so tantalizingly that I could almost rather 
 have seen it tumble in once for all, and done with it. 
 At last, when the miracle had become threadbare, the 
 bath-girl appeared and took the infant Blondin away ; 
 and at the same moment a waiter knocked at my door, 
 and told me supper was ready. 
 
 VI. 
 
 Supper was set out on a little table under the trees 
 in the front court. The musicians had departed, 
 leaving a skeleton growth of chairs and music-rests in 
 the pagoda ; and most of the late audience had 
 assembled at the long dining tables in the Speise- 
 Saal, where I could see them through the open 
 windows paying vigorous attention to the meal. 
 
 Several young ladies, however, under the leadership 
 of a plump, brisk little personage, whom I cannot better 
 describe than by calling her a snub-nosed Jewess, 
 had got up a game of croquet, which they played with 
 much coquettish ostentation ; but in other respects 
 ill. They were in pronounced evening costume ; and 
 my waiter a small, fat boy, smuggled into a man's 
 
MOUNTAINEERING IN MINIATURE. 341 
 
 swallow-tail said there was going to be a ball. The 
 Tanz-Saal faced me on the other side of the court ; 
 being connected at right angles with the hotel, corner 
 to corner. It was a white stuccoed building, about 
 on an architectural par with a deal candle-box. A 
 double flight of steps mounted to the door, over which 
 were inscribed, in shaky lettering, some lines of 
 doggrel, composed by Herr Boettcher himself in praise 
 of his medicinal spring. The hall inside may have 
 been sixty feet in length, with a raised platform at 
 one end for the accommodation of the musicians. 
 
 It was lighted by two candelabra ; but these even- 
 tually pi'oving inadequate, a secret raid was made upon 
 the kerosene lamps in the guests' rooms, and every 
 one of them was carried off. I retired early that night, 
 and having discovered my loss and rung the bell, 
 an attendant did finally appear, in the shape of the 
 bath-girl. To make a short story of it, no light, 
 except starlight, was to be had. It is a hardship to 
 have- to go to bed in Saxony at all in. You know not, 
 from hour to hour, whether you are too hot or too 
 cold, but are convinced, before morning, that you are 
 three or four feet too long. But the Badehaus beds 
 are a caricature rather than a fair example of Saxon 
 beds ; and to go to bed not only in Saxony but in the 
 Badehaus, and not only in the Badehaus but in the 
 dark, was for me a memorable exploit. I have reason 
 
342 SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 to believe, however, that three-fourths of the hotel 
 guests had to do the same thing ; for my wakefulness, 
 up to three o'clock in the morning, was partly due to 
 the noisy demands and expostulations wherewith they 
 made known and emphasized their dissatisfaction. 
 
 But I am anticipating. By the time I had finished 
 supper it was growing dark, and the dancers were 
 arriving in numbers. The dresses were mostly white 
 and gauzy, though here and there were glimpses of 
 pink and blue satins, and one young woman had 
 divided herself equally between red and green. My 
 pretty vision with the shapely feet was not among 
 them. As evening came on, the hall filled, and I 
 could see the heads of the company moving to and 
 fro within ; and some were already stationary at the 
 windows. Meanwhile the whole domestic brigade 
 appertaining to the hotel, including Herr Boettcher 
 himself, were busied in carrying chairs from the 
 court yard to the hall, to be used in the cotillon. The 
 least active agents in this job were the two head 
 waiters ; the most strenuous and hard-working were 
 the bath-girl and the chamber-maid. Finally, the 
 only chairs left were my own, and one occupied by a 
 huge, fat Russian, at a table not far from mine ; and 
 from these the united blandishments of the entire 
 Boettcher establishment availed not to stir either 
 of us 
 
MOUNTAINEERING IN MINIATURE. 343 
 
 Darkness fell upon the valley the stars came out 
 above the lofty brow of the impending hillside the 
 trees stood black and motionless in the still air : all 
 light, life, and sound were concentrated behind the 
 glowing windows of the Tanz-Saal. The musicians 
 had struck up amain, and the heads were now moving 
 in couples, bobbing, swooping, and whirling in har- 
 mony with the rhythm of the tune. Now and then 
 an exhausted pair would reel to a window, where the 
 lady would fan herself and pant, and the gentleman 
 (in three cases out of five an officer) would wipe his 
 forehead with his handkerchief and pass his forefinger 
 round inside the upright collar of his military jacket. 
 Then both would gaze out on the darkness, and, 
 seeing nothing, would turn to each other, and launch 
 themselves into the dance once' more. Between the 
 pauses I could distinguish Herr Boettcher's brown 
 curly pate hastening busily backwards and forwards, 
 and began to remark an increase of illumination in the 
 hall ; but was, of course, without suspicion of the cost 
 to myself at which it was being obtained. 
 
 The huge Russian and I were the only voluntary 
 non-combatants ; for the half-score of forlorn creatures 
 (among them the chamber-maid and the bath-girl) 
 who had climbed on the railing of the steps, and were 
 stretching their necks to see what they could see, 
 would gladly have taken part if it had been permitted 
 
344 SAXON STUDIES 
 
 them. It was too dark for me to do more than 
 roughly guess at the outline of my stout neighbour ; 
 but I could hear him occasionally take a gulp from 
 his beer-glass, sigh heavily, and anon inhale a whiff of 
 cigarette-smoke. I also had drunk a glass of beer ; but 
 it now occurred to me to try the possibility of getting 
 something else. I called the waiter, and bade him 
 bring me a lemon, some sugar, some hot water, and 
 one or two other things from which I concocted a 
 mixture unknown to Saxon palates, but which proved 
 none the less grateful on that account to my own. 
 The cordial aroma must, I think, have been wafted by 
 some friendly breeze to the Russian's nostrils ; for, 
 after an interval, he, too, summoned the waiter and 
 categorically repeated my own order. 
 
 Meanwhile the music surged and beat, and the ball 
 went seething on. It is much pleasanter, as well as 
 wiser, thought I, to sit here quiet and cool beneath 
 the stars, with a good cigar and a fragrant glass 
 of punch for company, than to dance myself hot and 
 tired in yonder close, glaring room. Then, somehow 
 or other, the recollection of that pretty figure with 
 the white parasol and the small arched feet, which 
 had marched so daintily across my window-pane that 
 afternoon, entered my mind ; and I was glad to think 
 that she was not one of the red-faced, promiscuous 
 throng. She belonged to a higher caste than any 
 
MOUNTAINEERING IN MINIATURE. 345 
 
 there ; or, at all events, there was in her an innate 
 nicety and refinement, which would suffice to keep 
 her from mixing in such an assemblage. The more I 
 reflected upon the matter, the less could I believe that 
 she was a Saxon. I had contracted, it may be, a 
 prejudice against the Saxons, and was slow to give 
 them credit for exceptional elegance of form or 
 bearing. That graceful tournure that high-bred 
 manner no, no ! why might not she be a Spaniard 
 nay, why not even an American ? And here I 
 entered upon the latter half of my glass of punch. 
 
 The waiter returned, bearing the Russian's hot 
 water and so forth on a tray, and, having set them 
 before him, hastened off to his post at the ball-room 
 door. The soft glock-glock of liquids, and the subdued 
 tinkle of tumbler and spoon, now became audible from 
 the womb of night, accompanied by occasional labour- 
 ing sighs and tentative smackings of the lips tokens 
 that my heavy neighbour was making what, for him, 
 was probably a novel experiment. I became gradually 
 convinced, moreover, that it was not altogether a 
 successful one ; and I was more pleased than surprised 
 when I heard him, after a little hesitation, push back 
 his chair, and advance upon me out of the darkness, 
 entreating me, in the gentlest tone imaginable, to 
 favour him with a light for his cigarette. 
 
 This having been done, he stood silent for a 
 
346 SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 moment, and then observed, engagingly, that he had 
 been informed the gentleman was an American : that 
 the relations of Russia and America had always been 
 cordial : that the fame of the American punch was 
 known to him, but not, alas ! the exact method of 
 preparing it : that 
 
 I here ventured to interrupt him, begging that he 
 would bring his glass and his chair to my table, and 
 suffer me to improve the opportunity, so kindly 
 afforded, of introducing him to a national institution, 
 peculiarly adapted to increase the entente cordiale to 
 which he had so pleasantly alluded. He accepted my 
 invitation as frankly as it was given ; and in five 
 minutes we were hobnobbing in the friendliest man- 
 ner in the world. Like all educated Russians, he had 
 a fair understanding of English ; and I was antici- 
 pating an evening of social enjoyment, when the 
 following incident occurred : 
 
 The first part of the ball was over, and an inter- 
 mission of ten minutes was announced before the 
 beginning of the cotillon. The hall doors were 
 thrown open, and among the couples that came out 
 upon the steps was one which attracted my attention. 
 The lady, who was dressed in white, after a moment 
 sent back her partner for a shawl; and during his 
 absence she stood in such a position that the light 
 from within fell directly upon her face. The man 
 
MOUNTAINEERING IN MINI A TURE. 347 
 
 he was not an officer returned with the shawl, and 
 folded it round her pretty shoulders with an air that 
 was not to be mistaken. They descended the steps 
 arm in arm, and came forward, groping their way 
 and laughing, in our direction. They stumbled upon 
 a table only three or four yards from ours, and sat 
 down to it. After a short confabulation the man 
 called out " Karl I " and the waiter came. 
 
 " Karl, two glasses of beer ; but quick ! " 
 
 " And a portion of raw ham thereto, Karl," said the 
 lady, in the unmistakable Saxon accent : " I am so 
 frightfully hungry ! " 
 
 "Two glass beer, one portion ham," recited Karl, 
 and hurried off. 
 
 The man pulled a cigar from his pocket, and lit it 
 with a match. I had recognized him before : he kept 
 a small cigar-shop on See Strasse, in Dresden. He 
 threw the lighted match on the ground, and it burnt 
 there until the lady put out a small, arched foot, 
 neatly booted, and daintily extinguished it. She was 
 a pretty girl for a Saxon, especially a Saxon in her 
 humble rank of life. 
 
 " Herr Kombustikoff," said I to my Russian friend, 
 " I must leave you. I am very sorry but I have 
 received a great shock ! Good night ! " and I was gone 
 before Karl returned with the raw ham and the beer ; 
 and thus it happened that I went to bed so early that 
 
348 SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 night. I rested ill ; but it would have fared yet 
 worse with me had I known then what I discovered 
 next morning that my too courteous Russian had 
 gone off after having paid for my punch as well as for 
 his own ! Did he imagine that I meant to barter my 
 instruction for the price of the beverage to which it 
 related ? May this page meet his eye, and discover 
 to him, at last, the true cause of my unceremonious 
 behaviour. 
 
 VII. 
 
 By daylight I was dimly awake, and dreamily 
 aware of the singing of a bird outside my window. 
 Of all the bird-songs that ever I heard this was the 
 briskest, most high-strung, most dandified : giving my 
 drowsy head the fancy that some elfin exquisite was 
 busy arranging his cravat, parting his hair, and 
 pointing the ends of his moustache before a dew drop 
 mirror ; uttering the while a brilliant series of fairy 
 witticisms upon the follies of society. I fell asleep 
 again, and dreamed incoherently, though not un- 
 pleasantly, despite my cramped position : but awoke 
 soon after to see the pure sunshine lighting up the 
 fir-trees on the opposite hillside, and to hear the inner 
 voice of the brook babbling to itself beneath the 
 window. Even then I should not have got up, had 
 not a steady tide of weeping set in from the babies in 
 the adjoining room. 
 
MOUNTAINEERING IN MINIATURE. 349 
 
 No matter how early I rise in Saxony, I never fail 
 to find people up before me. It was now but little 
 after five o'clock; and two elderly hypochondriacs 
 were dipping up the iron water from the spring in the 
 front court, while a pallid young lady, blanched, I 
 suppose, from indulgence in city dissipations, was 
 pacing slowly up and down the walk, sipping fresh 
 milk out of a tall tumbler. For my own part, being 
 in search of an appetite, I started up the steep zigzag 
 hill-path, and steered a breathless course heavenward, 
 through dewy heather and blueberry bushes, and over 
 difficult rocks and grassy knolls. The world enlarged 
 around me as I climbed, though the feathery arc of 
 white cloud which spanned the blue overhead grew no 
 nearer for all my pains. At length I attained a small 
 semicircular stone erection, which from below, had 
 seemed to crown the hill, but which now turned out 
 to be somewhat below the highest point. It com- 
 manded, nevertheless, a comprehensive view of the 
 Schandau valley, still hazy with the remnants of last 
 night's mist. The pine-trees on the ridge of the hill 
 opposite seemed almost within reach of my out- 
 stretched arm. Below, some four or five hundred feet, 
 appeared the flattened roof of the Badehaus ; and 
 there were the hypochondriacs, pigmies now, still 
 lingering over the iron-spring ; and a young lady, a 
 couple of inches high, pacing slowly to and fro, and 
 
350 SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 occasionally sipping milk from an infinitesimal tum- 
 bler. There, too, comes a microscopic Karl, and 
 begins to set a breakfast-table, with tiny white cloth, 
 and glistening plates no bigger than heads of pins. 
 This pebble, which I hold in my hand, were I to cast 
 it down, would utterly overwhelm and crush out the 
 entire establishment Badehaus, hypochondriacs, Karl, 
 iron-spring, young lady, breakfast-table, and all ! 
 Heavens ! what power for wholesale destruction lurks 
 in this arm of mine. Yet, tremble not, poor mites, I 
 will not annihilate ye ; moreover, were one of you but 
 to turn his eyes hitherwards, it is I who would appear 
 insignificant, and you the giants. 
 
 Fresh and invigorating was the atmosphere at this 
 height, polluted by no human exhalations, but seeming 
 to be the essence of last night's stars, dissolved for my 
 use by this morning's sunshine. After swallowing my 
 fill of it, I left the little stone semicircle, and took 
 my way along the ridge of the hill towards the 
 river. Looking downwards, there were the red-tiled 
 roofs of the villas almost beneath my feet ; further out, 
 the brook, flowing on hastily between its green banks, 
 and at one time rushing out in white foam beneath a 
 dark archway. Beyond still, the road, with its line 
 of houses of older and quainter growth, seeming to rest 
 their aged shoulders against the perpendicular hill- 
 wall behind them. Long narrow flights of stone steps 
 
MOUNTAINEERING IN MINIATURE. 351 
 
 mounted straight upwards from the kitchen doors of 
 the villas, leading to heights of backyard on a level 
 with the tops of their chimneys. There was one villa, 
 high up on the opposite hillside, where it made a 
 white break in the dense growth of firs, which was 
 romantic with battlemented turrets and mullioned 
 windows, and dignified with an elaborate staircase of 
 dressed stone, winding through several landings to the 
 porticoed doorway. Farther on, surmounting the 
 extreme spur of the ridge and abreast of the village, 
 was the little Schloss-Bastei Kestauration, with its 
 flag flying, its camera-obscura like a black pill-box, 
 and its vine-covered beer-garden, where I had quaffed 
 many a refreshing stoup after a dusty tramp from 
 Dresden, chatting the while with bright- eyed, good- 
 humoured little Marie. 
 
 Before long, I found myself at the end of my own 
 ridge, apparently overhanging the red-roofed irregular 
 town, and sat down on one of the hospitable benches 
 established there. A wooden railing afforded a not 
 unnecessary precaution against tumbling over into the 
 front yard of the little villa on the roadside below. 
 The villa, plain enough in itself, was surrounded by a 
 small garden full of roses ; and its porch was heavily 
 overgrown with woodbine. Out of this porch presently 
 issued a woman and a little girl, and walked about the 
 garden picking the beautiful flowers. The woman 
 
352 SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 was simply clad in white, and had a green bow on the 
 bosom of her dress as if she were a humanisation 
 of the villa. Her hair, however, was not red, but 
 black. 
 
 Beyond the town flowed the river Elbe, and wind- 
 ing westward, gleaming white, swept round the broad 
 base of Lilienstein, five miles away. The great rock, 
 from this point of view, resembled an old woman 
 sitting closely huddled up beside the river in a green 
 cloak, her grey head bowed forwards on her knees. 
 On the railroad, just across the stream, an engine was 
 steaming itself out of breath in the effort to set in 
 motion an innumerable train of freight waggons. 
 Above the railroad was a showy, glistening, bannered 
 edifice, perched brand new on its raw green terraces ; 
 above this again, a yellow stone quarry ; and higher 
 still, the pine-fringed summit against the sky. Ferry- 
 skiffs, gay with awnings, and full of passengers by the 
 early train from Dresden, were being poled across ; the 
 landing-place, however, was shut out from my view by 
 the intervention of the line of hotels which is drawn 
 up so officiously along the river margin. The most 
 prominent feature in my immediate neighbourhood 
 was the church steeple, which bulged out irregularly, 
 like an insufficiently swaddled infant. None of the 
 streets in the town were visible ; but the green tops of 
 the trees planted along them rose up above the ruddy 
 
MOUNTAINEERING IN MINIATURE. 353 
 
 roofs, seaming them into uneven quadrilaterals. Mean- 
 while, from the chimneys the smoke of a hundred 
 breakfasts began to rise, reminding me that my own 
 was still uneaten. I returned along the ridge of the 
 hill to my semicircular bastion, whence descending, as 
 it were, through the very tops of the gloomy fir-trees, 
 I sat down to table, warm and glowing, with an 
 appetite for the largest of beefsteaks. The hypochon- 
 driacs and the milk-drinking lady had wandered away; 
 several people, singly or in parties, were breaking 
 their fast beneath the trees ; excursionists were stroll- 
 ing past, and Sunday was getting fairly under way. 
 By the time I had lit my morning cigarette the yard 
 was quite alive, and those who had parted latest the 
 night before were now hypocritically complimenting 
 one another upon the freshness of their appearance. 
 After a cool half-hour, I resumed my hat and staff, 
 and leisurely began the ascent of the Schiller-Hoehe, 
 on the other side of the road. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 It was a ten minutes' easy climb. The well-built, 
 easily-graded path went zig-zagging upwards beneath 
 the tall dark pines, bordered with dewy green ferns, 
 purple-tipped heather, huckleberry bushes, and tufts 
 of narrow-leaved grass. At the turns of the ascent 
 were benches, either constructed from a slab of stone 
 2 A 
 
354 SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 laid across two uprights, or hewn in the solid rock 
 whenever it jutted out conveniently. Enterprising 
 climbers had worn short-cuts straight upwards from 
 corner to corner of the path, tempting to look at, but, 
 as short-cuts, fallacious, unless men were made on the 
 principle of a balloon ! and, on reflection, I have come 
 to the conclusion that they must have been created 
 by people on the downward trip. Saxons will climb, 
 and climb to good heights; but it is indispensable 
 that the incline should not be arduous. In the 
 present case the gradual slope was further modified 
 by putting in three or four stone steps at the end of 
 each short stretch ; and if all should prove insufficient, 
 there were always the benches to fall back upon. 
 
 The profound stillness which prevailed here at this 
 hour had an exquisite charm. Through openings 
 between the trees I caught lovely green glimpses of 
 the valley below. I met no one until, when nearly at 
 the top, I came upon two peasant girls, each with her 
 basket, sitting down to rest. I gave them " good 
 morning," and one of them responded with sober 
 courtesy. A few steps further on I w^as startled, 
 emerging from such a depth of seclusion, at coming 
 abruptly in sight of an open, commonplace road, with 
 a cart rumbling along it; and beyond, broad fields 
 sown with potatoes and cabbages, and scattered over 
 with half-a-dozen women-cultivators. Still keeping 
 
MOUNTAINEERING IN MINIATURE. 355 
 
 to the path, I scon came to the " Schiller-Hoehe " 
 monument itself. 
 
 In itself, it certainly did not amount to much a 
 square shaft of grey stone, on a pedestal, the whole 
 less than ten feet high. On the side towards the 
 valley was a medallion of Schiller's head, and a date 
 1859 : and all four sides, both of shaft and pedestal, 
 were crowded with the names of visitors, and the dates 
 of their visits. Bound about, at a respectful distance, 
 were placed wooden benches, apparently for the pur- 
 pose of facilitating the study of so remarkable a work 
 of art. Accordingly, I sat down, and fixed my eyes 
 upon it. Three small ragged boys, dismayed at my 
 solemnity, gave up their irreverent gambols, and re- 
 treated into the woods. Finding myself once more 
 solitary, I filled a pipe with sweet Lone-Jack, and 
 smoked, and dutifully meditated upon the poet, who, 
 I suppose, composed some one of his poems or tragedies 
 on this spot. 
 
 After a while I heard an approaching step, weighty 
 and sedate ; and soon appeared a stout, elderly gentle- 
 man in wide black clothes, who, upon seeing me, 
 paused to deliver a gravely ceremonious bow; being 
 under the impression, probably, that I was a sort of 
 deputy tutelar genius of the grove, employed during 
 the poet's absence. I returned his salute with all the 
 dignity I could command. He advanced towards the 
 
356 SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 monument, and inspected, though with a rather em- 
 barrassed and mechanical air, the medallion and tho 
 date. It was easy to perceive that he was a morbidly 
 considerate man, and shrank from subjecting the affair 
 to a rigid criticism, while even the deputy tutelar 
 genius was looking on. Moreover, finding nothing to 
 admire, and being altogether too honourable a person 
 to counterfeit admiration, he was not long in making 
 up his mind that his only proper course was to retire. 
 This he accordingly did, as sedately as he had come ; 
 by no means forgetting to deliver me a second cere- 
 monious bow (which I returned) before passing out of 
 sight. 
 
 Hereupon ensued another interval of silence and 
 solitude: I finished my pipe; and so soothing was 
 the murmuring of the pines, and the wild domestic 
 twittering of the birds, that I think I should have 
 yielded to the temptation of compensating my bad 
 night with a nap, had not my drowsiness been scared 
 away by the sudden advent of a bevy of laughing, 
 prattling, sky-larking young women, upon whom the 
 solemnity of my demeanour produced not the slightest 
 effect. So, finding that they were determined to take 
 possession of the place, I resigned my deputy-tutelar- 
 ship perforce, and retired in my turn. Following a 
 downward-bending track, I stumbled upon a small 
 cave, partly hollowed out of the natural rock, but 
 
MOUNTAINEERING IN MINIATURE. 357 
 
 owing most of its attractions, such as they were, to 
 masonry. Schiller's Grot it was called, in black letters 
 upon a white ground. Of course, Schiller may have 
 sat in it : there is a pretty outlook over the valley 
 from a point near at hand ; and the Grot is ostenta- 
 tiously fitted up with a semicircular stone seat, which, 
 however, can hardly date back to Schiller's time. Be 
 that as it may, the place, when I visited it, was pecu- 
 liarly unsavoury, and nothing less than a Noachian 
 deluge would have kept me in it a moment. I rambled 
 on, and soon came to another coign of vantage, a little 
 lower down than the first, but overlooking a wider 
 prospect. Wooden benches were provided here also, 
 and a signboard, mounted on a pole, informed the 
 visitor that this was Friedens-Platz. 
 
 The Saxon custom of sentimentalizing over all their 
 pretty places, and branding them with lackadaisical 
 titles, is not altogether agreeable to a foreigner. It 
 destroys the finest aroma of natural beauty to have 
 it coarsely insisted upon and crammed down your 
 throat by some vulgar fellow who happens to have 
 been beforehand with you in discovering it. Every 
 one, it seems to me, ought to be allowed to believe, if 
 it suits his fancy to do so, that whatever charm he 
 finds in nature is virginal for him ; that it has not 
 been previously breathed upon, handled, catalogued, 
 and labelled by an impure rabble spectacled and 
 
353 SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 professional enthusiasm-mongers who never can rid 
 themselves of their itch for besmearing everything 
 with which they come in contact with the slime of 
 their own offensive personality. The Saxons, though 
 they carry the matter to the greatest extreme, are not 
 the only nation blameworthy in it. Let a man name 
 his house, if he likes; it is his own, and should 
 suggest him, and the name helps it to do so. But 
 what is the use of giving to eternal mountains 
 and everlasting rivers the puny patronymics of our 
 so-called great men, whose pigmy reputations are 
 astonishingly long-lived if they endure five hundred 
 years ? If such things must be directly named at all, 
 let the name be simply descriptive, like those the 
 Indians give. There is much talk nowadays, about 
 the wholesome effect of a sense of humour and a per- 
 ception of the ludicrous ; and Englishmen, Americans, 
 and others pride themselves upon the possession of 
 these qualities. But nature, I imagine, must often find 
 us humorous in another sense than we intend; and 
 bears our tiny impertinences with a smile too broad 
 for us to see. A rage for what is called conciseness is 
 the vice of the time, and circumlocution has been 
 made a bugbear. The truth is that our conciseness, 
 which is a literal and not a real conciseness, leads to 
 the worst kind of circumlocution, which is not real 
 circumlocution at all. To be truly consise is, once to 
 
MOUNTAINEERING IN MINIATURE. 359 
 
 express clearly one idea ; circumlocution is primitive 
 and majestic, and must lie at the bottom of all right 
 perception of truth. Such polemical essays, however, 
 are not particularly suited to a Fricdens-Platz. 
 
 IX. 
 
 Whatever other people's feeling may be, there is no 
 doubt that Saxons like a pretty place all the better 
 for having a lackadaisical name. It gives them their 
 cue, and they dispose themselves accordingly. I had 
 not more than got through the above diatribe, when a 
 Saxon family appeared a man and wife, child of four 
 years, and nurse. They looked at the prospect with 
 complacency, it is true ; but the signboard was their 
 primary admiration. " Friedens-Platz !" they repeated 
 one to another, in a congratulatory tone, and then 
 took another look with new eyes. Friedens-Platz 
 yes, yes ! Observe once more, the peculiar peaceful- 
 ness of the valley ; and methinks the sky is calmer, 
 and the breeze gentler here than elsewhere. Blessed 
 signboard ! to think that we might have come and 
 gone and never known wherein the charm of this spot 
 consisted, or whether it had any charm at all. It is 
 all in the signboard peace be unto it, and to the 
 poetic insight that placed it there ! 
 
 These people did not stay there very long, and I sat 
 them out. My next visitors were a woman and two 
 
3 6o SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 men pleasant, respectable people, and, I think, 
 Swedes. The woman was not only very good-natured, 
 but incredibly loquacious and voluble ; and so agree- 
 able were the tones and inflections of her voice, that, 
 although not understanding a syllable she uttered, I 
 found an indescribable charm in listening to her. 
 The effect was magnetic and soothing. Here was a 
 good opportunity for studying the influence of mere 
 speech, apart from all knowledge of its meaning, 
 upon the ear and sentiments of the hearer. Un- 
 doubtedly it has great significance is at least as 
 important to language as the material of a building is 
 to its architectural design. It was only my guess that 
 this language was Swedish : it may just as well have 
 been Hawaian or Persian. Whatever it was, it tripped 
 along at a great pace, in a kind of short four-footed 
 canter ; no drawling or dwelling upon syllables ; little 
 sibilation, but plenty of sh'ing, tt'ing, and pp'ing. 
 While the woman thus held forth, one of her com- 
 panions sat quietly listening, giving occasional vent to 
 an assenting or annotatory grunt; the other kept 
 walking restlessly to and fro, interpolating a sentence 
 here and there. I sat for half-an-hour, my back 
 turned upon the party, apparently absorbed in the 
 view really so, in fact ; for the flow of babble did 
 not interfere with my appreciation of what I saw, but 
 
MOUNTAINEERING IN MINIATURE. 361 
 
 chimed in with it. Very likely, on the other hand, it 
 was I who interfered with the Swedes. 
 
 Small sounds below in the valley were distinctly 
 audible at this height. The first-fiddle of the Bade- 
 haus band was tuning his instrument in the front 
 court. Then came the slow jar of a cart, and now the 
 driver cleared his throat. The road was visible for a 
 considerable distance, winding up the valley like a 
 smooth buff riband, the brook flowing light and dark 
 beside it, in pleasing contrast with the bright, moist 
 green of the grass and the swarthy tint of the pine- 
 clad hill. The whole valley was a westward curving 
 furrow, ploughed by some immeasurable giant. The 
 summit of the opposite hill was bald above its side- 
 growth of trees, just like the head of an elderly man 
 in a counting-house. White villas dotted the slope, 
 even to the top : river wards lay Schanclau, wedged 
 between its valley walls, and massed around its 
 steeple. Against the horizon, on all sides, uprose 
 abrupt pinnacles of rock and jagged detached boulders, 
 the like of which abound throughout this region. 
 Lilienstein was hidden by the woods behind me ; but 
 the crest of Wesenstein, across the river, reached into 
 sight. A faint odour of pine-leaves hung in the air, 
 though the breeze was scarcely strong enough to blow 
 ifc about. 
 
362 SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 I left Friedens-Platz to the babbling Swedes, and 
 walked along the ridge of the hill, as on the back of 
 some enormous animal. The stillness of the woods 
 was such as to make the heart beat : each lusty blade, 
 of grass, and leaf, and tree, and vegetable, stood so 
 motionless, yet so deeply alive. At length the path 
 brought me to the verge of the narrow precipitous 
 canon, through which the road runs after passing the 
 bend above the Badehaus. I managed to clamber out 
 upon an almost inaccessible boulder, which had been 
 partly detached from the face of the cliff, and dizzily 
 overhung the road. Here a deep ledge, cushioned 
 with heather, served me admirably for a chair, and a 
 projection lower down gave a rest for my feet. I was 
 indistinguishable from the road, and invisible from 
 behind, yet myself commanded everything. It was a 
 fall of about three hundred feet to the road below. 
 
 Facing me was a magnificent bastion of rock, rising 
 to a higher level than mine, and split and cleft in 
 every conceivable direction. Wherever root could 
 cling, the stern surface was softened and enriched with 
 small trees, bushes, or heather ; which last, being very 
 plentiful and in full purple bloom, gave a delicious 
 tone to the slopes. The rock itself was various in 
 tint; reddish where little exposed to rain and sun- 
 
MOUNTAINEERING IN MINIATURE. 363 
 
 shine ; in other places grey ; and mottled elsewhere 
 by lichens, like a Persian rug. One kind of lichen, 
 not uncommon, showed in broad splashes of sulphur 
 yellow. All these colours, harmonizing among one 
 another, were tuned to wholly different keys by sun- 
 shine or shadow. In many parts, the sunlight caught 
 the bastion obliquely, illuminating the projecting 
 points in sharp contrast with the rest. The silent 
 immobility of rocks is profoundly impressive, and this 
 surface-play of light and colour but emphasizes their 
 real unchangeableness. 
 
 The broader clefts or gorges, extending from top to 
 bottom of the bluffs, were verdant and rich with 
 crowded foliage, and seemed to invite ascent : for 
 wherever a tree can grow, there man fancies that he, 
 too, has a right to be. Great boulders had in many 
 places fallen from above, and lay buried in green beside 
 the brook. For centuries had they lain there, and 
 slowly, silently, and beautifully had nature healed 
 their scars, and clothed their nakedness with moss, 
 heather, and leaves of all kinds. Trees pressed in 
 lovely jealousy to the brookside, eager to see their 
 tender images mirrored there. How sweetly and 
 closely they mingled together, branch within branch 
 and leaf to leaf, each with its own beauty beautifying 
 its neighbour ! How rich were their contrasting 
 shades of green ! How melodiously did they whisper 
 
364 SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 to one another, when the breeze gave them tongue ! 
 How well each leaf and bough turned sun and shade 
 to advantage, and how inspiring was the upward 
 impulse that filled each one ! If trees, as some main- 
 tain, are emblems of men, it must be the men of the 
 golden age ! 
 
 Those which grew beside the brook had, in some 
 cases, attained a large size, but only the smaller ones 
 had been venturous enough to scale the cliffs and peer 
 fearfully over the hollow verges. Trees have a fine 
 and novel effect when seen from above with the sun 
 shining on them. The edges of the successive layers 
 of branches catch the yellow light, and the structure 
 and character of the tree, as it tapers upwards to a 
 point, is thus more clearly defined than when viewed 
 from below or on a level. But their fascination is in 
 all respects inexhaustible. Where they overhung the 
 brook, its warm brown tint was deepened to black ; 
 but through the midst of the gloom its wrinkled sur- 
 face snatched at the light in magic sparkles : nature 
 never omits what is needful to complete her harmony. 
 I could hear the gurgle of the stream, however, more 
 distinctly than I could discern the stream itself. All 
 sounds were so echoed up between the rocky walls, 
 that they reached my ears as plainly as if originating 
 but a few yards off. 
 
 A hill-top is a real, and not an apparent a moral 
 
MOUNTAINEERING IN MINIATURE. 365 
 
 as well as a physical height. I doubt whether a 
 murder, seen from a great elevation, would move the 
 beholder to any deeper feeling than pity. Men's deeds 
 appear of importance proportioned to their doer's size. 
 I should like to be informed, however, which requires 
 the finer structure of mind the power to appreciate 
 nature in great, or in little? to be able to see the 
 beauty of a grand prospect, or of a mossy stone 
 shadowed with fern ? Certainly, an uneducated man, 
 who would gape with admiration at the former, would 
 see nothing worthy attention in the latter. It is true, 
 on the other hand, that refinement loves not the little 
 to the exclusion of the great, but great and little both : 
 neither does vulgar admiration necessarily vulgarize 
 its object. Nevertheless, who can discern minute 
 beauties, may recognize, in great, qualities invisible to 
 the untrained eye ; and the uneducated man, perhaps, 
 loves not solely or chiefly the grandeur of the prospect, 
 but rather the sensation of moral and material eleva- 
 tion the feeling grander than the grandeur the 
 crown and culmination of it. 
 
 XL 
 
 A precipice possesses a strange charm ; it is in a 
 manner divine, being inaccessible to man, with his 
 belittling civilization. But if steep places lead our 
 upward-gazing thoughts heavenwards, they also 
 
365 SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 remind us of the devil when we shudder on their 
 brink. What is the spiritual significance of the 
 phenomena of gravitation ? Something profound and 
 universal, I fancy. I have never experienced the 
 common desire to jump from great heights ; but had 
 I, as a malefactor, to choose my form of death, I would 
 cling to some such great boulder as that on which I 
 was now sitting and bid the executioner use his lever. 
 Then headlong downwards would we thunder to the 
 valley's far bottom ; and, falling underneath, I should 
 be provided with both a grave and a gravestone ere I 
 were well dead. But that the general adoption of this 
 expedient for settling with condemned criminals would 
 soon deprive us of all our overhanging cliffs to say 
 nothing of scaring away superstitious tourists and 
 picnickers from our valleys I would respectfully 
 recommend it to the consideration of the Board. 
 
 What I most liked about my boulder (apart from 
 such reflections) was its isolation : the thought that 
 nobody could find me out, or get to me if they did. I 
 was separated from my kind ; and though greatly in 
 the minority, I felt that the advantage was on my side. 
 I had banished them, not they me. Moreover, I in- 
 dulged myself with the persuasion that I was the first 
 who had ever set foot on that spot, and that a long 
 time would elapse before any one came after me ; and 
 then I amused myself with speculating on what 
 
MOUNTAINEERING IN MINIATURE. 367 
 
 manner of man he, my successor, would be : whether 
 he were yet born ; whether he would be a Frenchman 
 out of the next war ; or whether aeons would go by, 
 and Europe be known by another title before he came. 
 Pending these questions, I took out my pipe and 
 smoked, where no man ever smoked before. My 
 isolation, it must be confessed, had not separated me 
 from the faculty of enjoying good tobacco, as other 
 men enjoyed it ; or, for that matter, from being shone on 
 by their sun and breathing their air. After all, there- 
 fore, it amounted to very little every human soul 
 stands on a pinacle of its own, eternally individual- 
 ized from all his fellows ; but our plainest badge of 
 brotherhood is this very individuality, which the love 
 and life that the good God gives us show to be but a 
 means to His end, and otherwise insignificant 
 
 An excursion carriage rattled by, seeming to make 
 slower progress than it did. I watched it from its 
 first appearance round the southern bend till it dis- 
 appeared just beneath my feet; and on its reappear- 
 ance, till it went out of sight beyond a roadside 
 cottage about a quarter of a mile northward. The 
 driver blabbed his guide-book formulas as they passed, 
 pointing here and there with his whip ; and the 
 people stared dutifully at the rocks, and straight at 
 my boulder, but without noticing the strange fungus 
 upon it. At one moment, I might have dropped the 
 
363 SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 ashes of my pipe right into the open mouth of the 
 senior member of the party. Some time after this, 
 three pedestrians came in sight ; two at the southern, 
 bend of the road, and one at the northern. The curve 
 of the valley was such that, at the rate they were 
 going, they would not come in view of each other 
 until within a few yards of their meeting-point; this 
 point being a little to the right of my position, and 
 about opposite a decayed bridge ; which, by the way, 
 must have been built for no other purpose than to be 
 fished from ; for its further end almost impinged upon 
 the vertical face of the opposite cliff up which not 
 even a Bertram Bisinghame could have conveyed 
 himself. 
 
 As the three pedestrians drew near, I perceived the 
 two southerners to be tramps ; but the northerner 
 was an ambitious young man in a black frock-coat, 
 ruffled shirt-front, and straw hat on the back of his 
 head. He strode along with a magniloquent step, 
 declaiming, with passionate emphasis and at the top 
 of his compass, some passage of blank verse. His 
 gestures were very striking : he held his head well up, 
 flung his arms about, slapped his breast, and made his 
 voice resound through the canon. Meanwhile the 
 two tramps shuffled along, as unconscious as was he 
 of mutual proximity. 
 
 " This young fellow," said I to myself, " evidently 
 
MOUNTAINEERING IN MINIATURE. 369 
 
 lias a mind to be an orator and a statesman. He feels 
 the seeds of greatness within him. Now he imagines 
 himself in the Senate, confronting the opposition. 
 That point was well given ! Bismarck is getting old : 
 who knows whether I do not here behold his suc- 
 cessor ? " The young orator was now within a couple 
 of rods of the bridge, and suddenly he and the tramps 
 came face to face. I watched with painful interest. 
 His voice quavered and sank : he cleared his throat, 
 put his hands in his pocket, and whistled. Bismarck, 
 or any truly great man, would have kept on louder 
 than ever nay, would have compelled the tramps to 
 stop and hear him out ! But this young man feared to 
 appear ridiculous ; and the savage sincerity which Mr. 
 Carlyle ascribes to all great men is not reconcilable 
 with any such timidity. A great man must be 
 capable of spending his life in a position which a small 
 man would find intolerably ridiculous even for a 
 minute's lease. 
 
 XII. 
 
 I climbed gingerly back to the mainland, and leaving 
 my boulder for ever, made my way by degrees to the 
 road, and followed it for about a mile. At one point, 
 the brook made a little detour, enclosing a lawn of the 
 softest and most vivid green I ever beheld. Straight 
 upwards from it sprang a smooth gray bluff, near two 
 
 2B 
 
3/o SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 hundred feet in height, throwing a deep, cool shadow, 
 sharply defined, over half the plot. Two peasant 
 women were mowing the grass with sickles, and the 
 wind that had begun to rise was taking great liberties 
 with the skirts which, at best, scarcely covered the 
 knees of their stout bare legs. Along the summit of 
 the cliff overhead a procession of long-shanked trees 
 were straggling against the sky. Further on, I came 
 to the entrance of a wood-path, whose shady in- 
 vitation I could not resist ; and in a few minutes more 
 I found myself in the heart of a pine forest. 
 
 I sat down upon a mossy stump, such as poets 
 write of; indeed, rnossy stumps and stones have 
 become so hackneyed in literature that I am shy of 
 further enlarging upon them. The pines were from 
 sixty to one hundred feet high, growing palm-like, 
 with all their foliage at the top. Their music, there- 
 fore, sounded far away, like the murmur of an ocean 
 in the clouds. Their thick, dark foliage strove to veil 
 from the sun the slender nakedness of their long, 
 graceful limbs ; but he peeped through them neverthe- 
 less, and made beautiful sport of their shyest secrets. 
 Around their roots was a sweet omnipresent dampness, 
 encouraging moss to flourish, and display its most 
 delicate tints. There was no grass or flowers to speak 
 of, but plenty of low bushes, and green creeping vines, 
 and elegant ferns. The forest was full of clear 
 
MOUNTAINEERING IN MINIATURE. 371 
 
 twilight, in which the occasional shafts of sunlight 
 burnt like celestial torches. 
 
 Still bearing eastward, the forest gave way to high 
 rocky fields, crossing which I presently sighted a 
 stupendous four-sided mountain of stone, standing 
 solitary and apart, its bare walls ascending far above 
 the tops of the tallest trees, and scarcely suffering 
 even lichens to gain foothold on them. Deep fissures, 
 crossing one another almost rectangularly, gave the 
 great mass the appearance of having been piled 
 together of blocks, in comparison with which the 
 huge shafts of Stonehenge would be mere dominoes. 
 On the summit was a sparse growth of scrawny pines, 
 looking as though they had lost flesh from exposure 
 and anxiety at the peril of their position. In short, 
 this might have been the donjon-tower of some 
 Atlantean castle, the remainder of which had either 
 been overthrown and annihilated, or was buried 
 beneath the sand out of which the lonely tower 
 arose. 
 
 But whether or not the antediluvian theory be 
 tenable, at all events this rock has been used as a 
 stronghold in modern times that is, within the last 
 three centuries. A band of robbers lived here, and the 
 rock is full of traces of their occupation. A place more 
 impregnable could scarcely be imagined. After toiling 
 up an arduous sandy path, as steep as the roof of a 
 
372 SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 house, until pretty well out of breath, I came to the 
 base of the " Stein " itself. The way now lay up 
 perpendicular fissures, through narrow crevices, under- 
 neath superincumbent masses, and along dangerous 
 precipices, where precarious footholds had been cut 
 out in the solid stone. Still further up, hands rather 
 than feet came into play, and three or four extra pairs, 
 of arms and legs might have been employed to great 
 advantage. How the robbers ever got their booty up 
 this ascent, or had strength left for anything except to 
 lie down and faint after they had done so, is hard to- 
 understand. At length, however, I reached the great 
 cave formed by the leaning together of the two prin- 
 cipal boulders of the pile. It was about twelve feet 
 wide at the base, and four times as high to the crotch 
 of the roof. The end opposite the entrance was 
 blocked up with fragments of rock and rubbish. A 
 large oblong pit, dug in the solid stone floor, was used, 
 I presume, either to keep provisions and booty in, or 
 as a dungeon for captives. It had been formerly 
 covered over with a wooden flooring, the square holes 
 in the rock which held the ends of the beams being 
 still visible. 
 
 From this, which may be called the ground-floor of 
 the robbers' dwelling, to the upper stories, there was 
 no natural means of access. The old fellows, there- 
 fore, by wedging short sticks of wood one above 
 
MOUNTAINEERING IN MINIATURE. 373 
 
 another into an irregular fissure, extending nearly 
 from the top to the bottom of the Stein, constructed a 
 primitive sort of staircase, traces of which yet remain. 
 Some enterprising modern, however, has introduced a 
 couple of ladders, whereby the ascent is greatly facili- 
 tated. Above, I found, at various well-chosen points, 
 the marks of old barricades, showing that these brigands 
 had some sound notions on fortification, and had 
 resolved, moreover, to sell their lives dearly, and to 
 fight to the last man. It is inconceivable, though, 
 that any force unprovided with the heaviest artillery 
 could have made the slightest impression on such a 
 stronghold as this. In those days of bucklers and 
 blunderbusses, a new-born babe might have held it 
 single-handed against an army. 
 
 It was very windy on the summit, and an excess of 
 wind ruffles up the nerves, blows away common sense, 
 baffles thought, and tempts to rashness and vain re- 
 sentment. The place, too, was a maze of sudden 
 crevasses, just wide enough to fall into, and utterly 
 impossible to get out of. What a ghastly fate to be 
 lodged in one of them, remembering that the Stein is 
 visited hardly once a month in the height of the 
 season! I was already so hungry that the mere 
 thought of such a catastrophe put me out of all conceit 
 with the robber-fortress. Accordingly, I made the 
 best of my way earthwards ; and, having previously 
 
374 SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 taken my bearings, I steered for a neighbouring farm- 
 house, where a smiling old lady, white-capped, yellow- 
 petticoated, and bare-legged, fetched me a tumbler of 
 cool creamy milk, nearly twelve inches high. 
 
 XIII. 
 
 On my homeward journey, I happened upon a long, 
 winding, shadow-haunted pass, such as abounds in 
 this region, and which reminded me (as, indeed, did 
 the whole Saxon Switzerland) of our own Yellowstone 
 Valley, modelled on the scale of one inch to the foot, 
 or thereabouts. The white-sanded bottom was so 
 narrow that space was scarcely left for the slender 
 path to follow the meanderings of the rivulet, which 
 tinkled, concealed, beneath luxuriant overgrowths of 
 forget-me-not and fern. Up to the sky on either side 
 climbed the rugged walls, shaggy with fir and hem- 
 lock, and thatched below with grass-tufts and shrubs. 
 The fallen fragments, which ever and anon blocked 
 the way with their surly shoulders, were iridescent 
 with green moss, and dampness seemed to exude from 
 the rocky clefts. The footpath was criss-crossed with 
 pine-roots till it resembled an irregular parquet-floor. 
 Sometimes the boulders had so fallen together as to 
 enclose spacious hollows, the crevices of which had 
 been stopped up with sand and pebbles and vegetable 
 
MOUNTAINEERING IN MINIATURE. 375 
 
 decay. I might have lived very comfortably in many 
 of these caves : they were overrun with raspberry and 
 blackberry vines, and within were cool and dry, with 
 clean sanded floors : but I saw no troglodytes. 
 
 At one point a broad nose of rock jutted over the 
 pathway full fifteen feet, like a ceiling ; and so low- 
 studded was it, that I could easily touch its flat 
 surface with my upraised hand. There was something 
 fascinating about this freak, and, at the same time, 
 provocative of a smile old nature making a humor- 
 ous pretence of imitating the works of man ! But the 
 grotesque pranks she plays with that soft-hearted 
 white sandstone of hers are indescribable and endless. 
 In many places the surface of the rock is honeycombed 
 and otherwise marked as if by the action of water. I 
 am not acquainted with the geological history of this 
 strange tract, but I should fancy it might have been 
 the compact sandy bed of some great lake, which 
 having broken its boundaries, and gone seaward by 
 way of the Elbe, the sand-bed caked and cracked and 
 hardened, and became traversed with ravines and 
 gullies, worn by downward percolating streams. The 
 lake must have subsided gradually, to produce the 
 horizontal markings which are everywhere apparent. 
 I have often seen precisely similar formations to this 
 of the Saxon Switzerland at the bottom of dried-off 
 mud-ponds. Beyond the mouth of the Elbe are great 
 
SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 shoals and bars, composed of the same kind of sand as 
 that which I trod underfoot in this shadowy ravine. 
 
 It should not be called a pass, for it was a place to 
 linger and pause in to enter at sunrise, and scarcely 
 depart from by moonlight. It seemed wholly se- 
 cluded ; I met neither foot nor foot-print throughout 
 its whole length. Even the sky might not be too 
 familiar ; looking upwards, but a narrow strip of blue 
 was visible, and the overbending trees fretted even 
 that with emerald lattice-work. However, I could not 
 support life on raspberries and water : the afternoon 
 was more than half gone, and I had no idea how far 
 off the Badehaus might be. Hastening onward, the 
 narrow walls of the ravine suddenly opened out right 
 and left in a vast circular sweep, and I stood within a 
 grand natural amphitheatre, rising high and descending 
 low above and beneath. My station was about a third 
 of the way up, in what might be called the dress- 
 circle. The area below was crowded thick with 
 summer foliage oaks, elms, beeches, and underbrush 
 in profusion. These were the players gay fellows in 
 nodding caps and green fluttering cloaks. The 
 audience was composed of a stiff and sedate assemblage 
 of dark-browed hemlocks, standing rigid and erect 
 each in his rock-bound seat. Not one of them all was 
 sitting down ; but whether they were merely standing 
 on ceremony, or whether (as, judging from their gloomy 
 
MOUNTAINEERING IN MINIATURE. 377 
 
 and unyielding aspect, seemed more likely) they had 
 started up to demand the condign punishment of some 
 unlucky wretch who had outraged their sense of 
 decorum, I had no means of determining. At all events, 
 my arrival seemed to have put an abrupt stop to the 
 proceedings, whatever they may have been ; there 
 was no voice or movement anywhere, save as created 
 involuntarily by the mysterious wind. On my shout- 
 ing across, however, to a sombre giant on the oppo- 
 site side of the amphitheatre, to know the title of the 
 drama which was under representation, he answered 
 me, indeed, but with an unreal tone of hollow mockery, 
 and in such a manner as to leave me no wiser than I 
 was before. Manifestly I was looked upon as an 
 interloper who had slipped in without paying for a 
 ticket, and self-respect demanded that I should retire 
 at once. 
 
 The theatre, vast as it was, had only two doors 
 that by which I had entered, and another just oppo- 
 site. To reach this I must make half the circuit of 
 the enclosure, the direct route across the arena being 
 impracticable, owing to the savagely precipitous nature 
 of the descent. The path which had hitherto guided 
 me now bearing to the right, I followed it in that 
 direction, passing almost within reach of the out- 
 stretched arms of hundreds of the inhospitable hem- 
 locks. Presently the sun, which, hidden behind a 
 
3/3 SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 cloud, had sunk almost to the upper verge of the 
 rocky rampart, shone out with mellow lustre, flinging 
 my shadow far away into the centre of the arena, 
 where the green-coated actors treated it with great 
 indignity, bandying it from one to another, tossing it 
 up and down, and more than once letting it tumble 
 heedlessly into some treacherous pitfall. Meanwhile 
 the wind, which had caused me no small annoyance 
 already that afternoon, was maliciously making the 
 rounds of the house, and stirring up every individual 
 in it to a sibilant utterance whose import there was 
 no mistaking. It was my first and will, I fancy, be 
 my last experience of being hissed out of a theatre ; 
 and I could not help resenting the injustice of the 
 proceeding. Yet, after all, why should I consent to 
 be ruffled by the senseless clamour of a lot of trees ? 
 If I have misrepresented them at all, it has been on 
 the side of eulogy ; and should I ever have occasion 
 to mention trees in future, it will be with the proviso 
 that every one of them the oldest, biggest, and re- 
 spectablest more particularly are no better than 
 incorrigible blockheads at bottom. 
 
 XIV. 
 
 To the banks of the Elbe I came at last, with a 
 dusty distance of three or four miles still lying 
 between me and Shandau. But the scenery here- 
 
MOUNTAINEERING IN MINIATURE. 379 
 
 abouts is novel and striking: the stone quarries 
 
 extending up and down the river for many leagues ; 
 
 and the heaps of sand and debris, rising to an average 
 
 height of perhaps a hundred feet, and sloping sharply 
 
 downwards to the water's edge, are a remarkable if not a 
 
 strictly picturesque feature. The path if the informal 
 
 track which leads a risky life along the base of these 
 
 lofty dumping- grounds can bo called such yields 
 
 wearisomely to the feet, and a wary look-out must be 
 
 kept to dodge the heavy stones which are continually 
 
 bowling downwards from the summit. At intervals 
 
 there are slides, compactly constructed of masonry 
 
 and worn very smooth, by which the square blocks 
 
 quarried from the cliffs are shot to the water's edge, to 
 
 be taken on board by canal-boats and floated to 
 
 Dresden, all the modern part of which is built of this 
 
 material. The supply is practically inexhaustible, 
 
 but that does not prevent the cliffs from suffering in 
 
 appearance ; and before many years a voyage up the 
 
 Elbe will be no longer attractive. It is a nice question 
 
 in economy, whether it be worth while to rob Saxon 
 
 Switzerland to pay Dresden. Perhaps only the stone 
 
 contractors would answer it unhesitatingly in the 
 
 affirmative. It reminds me of the little boy who 
 
 was courted by his friends as being the possessor of 
 
 a fine cake. With the praiseworthy purpose of at 
 
 once concentrating and augmenting their regard, he 
 
380 SAXON STUDIES. 
 
 made the cake a part of himself by eating it. But, 
 strange to say, his friends ceased to visit him from 
 that day forwards, and the cake gave him a 
 stomach-ache. 
 
 I took my dinner that evening at the Forsthaus, 
 one of that row of hotels which rampart Schandau. 
 Hot and noisy as they are to live in, their bill of fare 
 is to Herr Boettcher's as a novel by Thackeray to a 
 schoolboy's composition. I dined on a terrace beneath 
 the trees, with the river just beyond. At dark every 
 table had its great astral lamp, and the gentlemanly 
 proprietor amused himself and his guests by making 
 blue, red, and green tires on the stone steps. 
 
 Next morning, as I stood with my valise on the 
 platform c>f the railway station at Krippen, a fellow- 
 he keeps a small tobacco store on See Strasse in 
 Dresden stepped up to me, and, alter requesting the 
 favour of a light from my cigar, supposed, in a cheerful 
 tone, that I was returning to town by the approaching 
 train. 
 
 " No," said I, " I left Dresden finally yesterday 
 morning. I am now for Prag ; and never expect, sir, 
 to see you, or buy your cigars, again !" 
 
 The train came in, the cigar vendor assisted a pretty 
 young woman, with small shapely feet, into a second- 
 class carriage ; the whistle blew and the train moved 
 off. 
 
MOUNTAINEERING IN MINIATURE. 381 
 
 I have remembered and reproduced this disappoint- 
 ing little episode, because of the emblematic likeness 
 it bears to my experience of Dresden. The city, like 
 the young woman, enchants at first sight, but is- 
 presently detected in familiar association with senti- 
 mental vulgarity, and betrays an appetite for gross 
 and crude fare: whereupon our parting regrets are 
 narrowed down to the somewhat equivocal one that, 
 despite certain picturesque passages of physical con- 
 tour, so little in the capital of Saxony is honestly 
 regrettable. 
 
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 A CANDLE LIGHTED BY THE 
 LORD : 
 
 A LIFE STORY FOB THE OLD AND THE YOUNG, 
 AND THE RICH AND THE POOR. 
 
 BY A NEW AUTHOR. 
 Fcap. 8vo. Cloth, Is. 6d. 
 
 " ' A Candle Lighted by the Lord ' is a touching history of little 
 Jenny. How she found peace, lighted a dark home, blessed father 
 and mother, is admirably told without exaggeration or precocity. 
 It wins its way to the heart." The Freeman. 
 
 " ' A Candle Lighted by the Lord ' is a simple story of a child's 
 conversion, told in plain language that will strike the intelligence 
 of religiously disposed persons. The picture of the heroine a- 
 ragged street girl and her motherly love and care for her little 
 sister, is even pathetic here and there. The description of the 
 miserable home is, it is to be feared, only too graphic, as in- 
 numerable recent cases in the police records show." Lloyd's Weekly 
 Newspaper. 
 
 "This is the story of the good and useful life of a girl who- 
 was rescued when a child from dirt, poverty, and drunkenness, and 
 slowly led on by the example and precepts of Christian people to 
 an earnest and Christian life herself. Nowhere in the volume is 
 teetotalism mentioned, but the moral of the story is unmistakable, 
 and is its highest recommendation." Warrington Guardian. 
 
 PATERNOSTER ROW. 
 
RECENT PUBLICATIONS. 
 
 BY DR. C. J. YAUGHAN. 
 
 THE LORD'S PRAYER: 
 
 A COURSE OF SERMONS PREACHED IN THE TEMPLE CHURCH. 
 
 BY C. J. YAUGHAN, D.D., Master of the Temple. 
 Small Crown Svo. Cloth, 3s. 6d. 
 
 " They are the well-weighed utterances of an intelligent, culti- 
 vated, devout, and catholic divine ; and they reach, as they are in 
 the first instance addressed to, men from whom the average preacher 
 might find it sometimes hard to get audience." Bath Chronicle. 
 
 " ' The Lord's Prayer ' is an exposition, from the author's point 
 of view, of what ought to be thought, believed, and felt by persons 
 who use this, the oldest and most catholic form of prayer in use 
 among Christians. It would be easy to extract indeed there has 
 often been extracted from the Lord's Prayer a whole system of 
 divinity; but although his opinions on theology are sufficiently 
 definite, Dr. Yaughan's purpose in these discourses is practical 
 rather than theological ; and readers, to whatever school they may 
 belong, will be none the worse they may be all the better to have 
 pressed home upon them, in the earnest and searching words of the 
 Master of the Temple, the import of what is often, even by very 
 pious persons, repeated unthinkingly." Scotsman. 
 
 BY FREDERICK S. WILLIAMS. 
 
 THE MIDLAND RAILWAY 
 
 ITS RISE AND PROGRESS. 
 
 A NARRATIVE OP MODERN ENTERPRISE. 
 
 BY FREDERICK S. WILLIAMS, 
 Author of " Our Iron Roads." 
 
 Demy Svo, with 7 Maps and 120 Illustrations. Cloth, 20s. 
 PATERNOSTER ROW. 
 
/5T 
 
 STRAHAN & CO.'S RECENT PUBLICATIONS. 
 BY K F. YON KLODEN. 
 
 THE SELF-MADE MAN: 
 
 AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 
 
 TRANSLATED BY A. M. CHRISTIE. 
 
 Vol. I., demy 8vo. With Portrait. Price 14s., cloth. 
 
 The Saturday Review, in a recent notice of the German edition of 
 this work, thus speaks of it : " We are much mistaken if tnis 
 autobiography does not take rank as a classic. It is a masterpiece 
 of ingenuous self -portraiture and graphic narrative. In its warmth 
 and simplicity it reminds us of Mr. Smiles' ' Life of Stephenson/ 
 with the zest of autobiography superadded." 
 
 Vol. II., completing the work, in the press. 
 
 4 
 
 BY MRS. BROCK. 
 
 THE FINEST OF THE WHEAT; 
 
 OR, THE BREAD OF FORGIVENESS. 
 
 BY MRS. BROCK. 
 Small Crown 8vo. Cloth extra, 3s. 6d. 
 
 " This book forms really pleasant reading. It has been got up 
 with great taste, and is divided in such a manner as will readily 
 yield itself to disconnected reading. It is suffused with tender 
 thotight, savoured with Evangelicalism, and is broad enough to be 
 welcomed generally." Nonconformist. 
 
 PATERNOSTER ROW.