The Pilgrims of the Rhine

  CHAPTER XVIII. COBLENTZ.--EXCURSION TO THE MOUNTAINS OF TAUNUS; ROMANTOWER IN THE VALLEY OF EHRENBREITSTEIN.--TRAVEL, ITS PLEASURES ESTIMATEDDIFFERENTLY BY THE YOUNG AND THE OLD.--THE STUDENT OF HEIDELBERG; HISCRITICISMS ON GERMAN LITERATURE.

  GERTRUDE had, indeed, apparently rallied during their stay at Coblentz;and a French physician established in the town (who adopted a peculiartreatment for consumption, which had been attended with no ordinarysuccess) gave her father and Trevylyan a sanguine assurance of herultimate recovery. The time they passed within the white walls ofCoblentz was, therefore, the happiest and most cheerful part of theirpilgrimage. They visited the various places in its vicinity; but theexcursion which most delighted Gertrude was one to the mountains ofTaunus.

  They took advantage of a beautiful September day; and, crossing theriver, commenced their tour from the Thal, or valley of Ehrenbreitstein.They stopped on their way to view the remains of a Roman tower in thevalley; for the whole of that district bears frequent witness of theancient conquerors of the world. The mountains of Taunus are stillintersected with the roads which the Romans cut to the mines thatsupplied them with silver. Roman urns and inscribed stones are oftenfound in these ancient places. The stones, inscribed with names utterlyunknown,--a type of the uncertainty of fame! the urns, from which thedust is gone, a very satire upon life!

  Lone, gray, and mouldering, this tower stands aloft in the valley; andthe quiet Vane smiled to see the uniform of a modern Prussian, with hiswhite belt and lifted bayonet, by the spot which had once echoed to theclang of the Roman arms. The soldier was paying a momentary court toa country damsel, whose straw hat and rustic dress did not stifle thevanity of the sex; and this rude and humble gallantry, in that spot, wasanother moral in the history of human passions. Above, the ramparts ofa modern rule frowned down upon the solitary tower, as if in the vaininsolence with which present power looks upon past decay,--the livingrace upon ancestral greatness. And indeed, in this respect, rightly!for modern times have no parallel to that degradation of human dignitystamped upon the ancient world by the long sway of the Imperial Harlot,all slavery herself, yet all tyranny to earth; and, like her ownMessalina, at once a prostitute and an empress!

  They continued their course by the ancient baths of Ems, and keeping bythe banks of the romantic Lahn, arrived at Holzapfel.

  "Ah," said Gertrude, one day, as they proceeded to the springs of theCarlovingian Wiesbaden, "surely perpetual travel with those we love mustbe the happiest state of existence! If home has its comforts, it alsohas its cares; but here we are at home with Nature, and the minor evilsvanish almost before they are felt."

  "True," said Trevylyan, "we escape from 'THE LITTLE,' which is the curseof life; the small cares that devour us up, the grievances of theday. We are feeding the divinest part of our nature,--the appetite toadmire."

  "But of all things wearisome," said Vane, "a succession of changes isthe most. There can be a monotony in variety itself. As the eye aches ingazing long at the new shapes of the kaleidoscope, the mind aches at thefatigue of a constant alternation of objects; and we delightedly returnto 'REST,' which is to life what green is to the earth."

  In the course of their sojourn among the various baths of Taunus, theyfell in, by accident, with a German student of Heidelberg, who waspursuing the pedestrian excursions so peculiarly favoured by his tribe.He was tamer and gentler than the general herd of those young wanderers,and our party were much pleased with his enthusiasm, because it wasunaffected. He had been in England, and spoke its language almost as anative.

  "Our literature," said he, one day, conversing with Vane, "has twofaults,--we are too subtle and too homely. We do not speak enough to thebroad comprehension of mankind; we are forever making abstract qualitiesof flesh and blood. Our critics have turned your 'Hamlet' into anallegory; they will not even allow Shakspeare to paint mankind, butinsist on his embodying qualities. They turn poetry into metaphysics,and truth seems to them shallow, unless an allegory, which is false, canbe seen at the bottom. Again, too, with our most imaginative workswe mix a homeliness that we fancy touching, but which in reality isludicrous. We eternally step from the sublime to the ridiculous; we wanttaste."

  "But not, I hope, French taste. Do not govern a Goethe, or even aRichter, by a Boileau!" said Trevylyan.

  "No; but Boileau's taste was false. Men who have the reputation for goodtaste often acquire it solely because of the want of genius. By taste Imean a quick tact into the harmony of composition, the art of making thewhole consistent with its parts, the _concinnitas_. Schiller alone ofour authors has it. But we are fast mending; and by following shadows solong we have been led at last to the substance. Our past literatureis to us what astrology was to science,--false but ennobling, andconducting us to the true language of the intellectual heaven."

  Another time the scenes they passed, interspersed with the ruins offrequent monasteries, leading them to converse on the monastic life, andthe various additions time makes to religion, the German said: "Perhapsone of the works most wanted in the world is the history of Religion. Wehave several books, it is true, on the subject, but none that supply thewant I allude to. A German ought to write it; for it is, probably, onlya German that would have the requisite learning. A German only, too,is likely to treat the mighty subject with boldness, and yet withveneration; without the shallow flippancy of the Frenchman, without thetimid sectarianism of the English. It would be a noble task, totrace the winding mazes of antique falsehood; to clear up the firstglimmerings of divine truth; to separate Jehovah's word from man'sinvention; to vindicate the All-merciful from the dread creeds ofbloodshed and of fear: and, watching in the great Heaven of Truth thedawning of the True Star, follow it--like the Magi of the East--tillit rested above the real God. Not indeed presuming to such a task,"continued the German, with a slight blush, "I have about me a humbleessay, which treats only of one part of that august subject; which,leaving to a loftier genius the history of the true religion, maybe considered as the history of a false one,--of such a creed asChristianity supplanted in the North; or such as may perhaps be foundamong the fiercest of the savage tribes. It is a fiction--as you mayconceive; but yet, by a constant reference to the early records of humanlearning, I have studied to weave it up from truths. If you would liketo hear it,--it is very short--"

  "Above all things," said Vane; and the German drew a manuscript neatlybound from his pocket.

  "After having myself criticised so insolently the faults of our nationalliterature," said he, smiling, "you will have a right to criticise thefaults that belong to so humble a disciple of it; but you will see that,though I have commenced with the allegorical or the supernatural, Ihave endeavoured to avoid the subtlety of conceit, and the obscurity ofdesign, which I blame in the wilder of our authors. As to the style, Iwished to suit it to the subject; it ought to be, unless I err, ruggedand massive,--hewn, as it were, out of the rock of primeval language.But you, madam--doubtless you do not understand German?"

  "Her mother was an Austrian," said Vane; "and she knows at least enoughof the tongue to understand you; so pray begin."

  Without further preface, the German then commenced the story, which thereader will find translated* in the next chapter.

  * Nevertheless I beg to state seriously, that the German student is an impostor; and that he has no right to wrest the parentage of the fiction from the true author.