Samuel Irenæus Prime

“ Crossing the court, paved with great granite blocks, we enter, and the massive walls, the cold damp halls, gloomy in their naked, solid grandeur, make us feel that we are entering a fortress, and not a palace. It would be impossible to find your way without a guide. There are sixteen courts within, and out of each of them long passages lead to eighty staircases, and up these we may go, if we have time, to twelve thousand doors, and look out of two thousand six hundred windows, and worship at forty altars!! You wish to be excused from such climbing and kneeling. ”

“ I have been left alone, or with my little party only, in a wayside inn, among the Swiss valleys, and have seen troops of travellers, some of them with white cravats and straight coat collars, go on their way of a bright, glad, summer Sabbath morning, when it seemed to me the mountains looked down with a divine benediction and invited us to sit all day under their shadows and worship toward the holy hill of Zion. And a Sabbath in a wilderness, alone, is well spent, if the soul is at peace, and the wearied limbs of a pilgrim are suffered also to have rest. ”

“ Here the master of empires, the great Charles V., reigned in grandeur, and gave laws to the world. It is a fitting place for such a history as it has; and no other city has a more romantic life. Indeed, romance has done so much to embellish the story of Toledo, it is difficult to be in it, and study it here on its own rocks, without asking for its enchanted towers, and haunted caves, and knights, with magic swords and spectre horses, and its 200,000 mighty men and beautiful women, that once made this castle-crowned crag the glory of Spain, and as famous in the earth as Babylon or Damascus. ”

“ Romance has been so busy with it that it is not an easy task to disentangle the web of fiction, and get the only part of the tale worth knowing. So dear is truth, the simple, naked truth of history, to every true soul, that he is a great doer of evil who seizes upon history, and while professing to write it, weaves into his story the fancies of his own prolific genius, and that so deftly and so charmingly that the whole is accepted as veritable history, and the romance as the most credible and interesting of the whole. ”

“ Copenhagen is the capital of Denmark, and the capital of Copenhagen is Thorvaldsen’s Museum. Copenhagen has other and many attractions, but this museum is the crown and glory of Denmark. Art has her victories, and those of war are not so enduring in their glory as the fruits of genius and peace. Here in this ancient and beautiful city, in 1770,—a hundred years, save one, ago,—was born Albert Thorvaldsen, the son of an Iceland ship-carpenter. Poor, obscure, and friendless, but inspired with the genius of his future art, the boy made his own way to Rome. ”

“ To murder a man is something palpable, and so obviously damnable. But to blot a nation out of being, to strike down the life of a people and bury it out of sight for ever, this is what has been done for poor Poland, and we have only to drop a tear over her grave, enter a protest in the name of human rights, and pass on. The most extensive portion of ancient Poland is under Russia, the most populous in the grasp of Austria, and the most commercial is held by Prussia. Warsaw is the unwilling serf of Russia. ”

“ Before us, as we turned on reaching the brow of the hill, stood the holy city of Russia, its ancient capital, the border city between the Eastern and the Western worlds! The sun unclouded and intensely glowing is behind us, and shedding its golden radiance in floods upon the domes and pinnacles of three hundred and seventy churches, countless towers and roofs and walls, the Kremlin standing above the rest in its majesty, with its crown of cathedrals and palace, a constellation of splendor rarely equalled in the cities of the world. ”

“ Those who worship here from day to day become familiar with all this sculpture, and are not distracted, if they are not aided by the beauty and the majesty of such a wealth of art. But a stranger within the gates, for a morning only, seeing it all at once for the first and the last time, would find it difficult to withdraw his soul from the marble and contemplate for an hour the unseen and eternal. ”

“ It was but a step from our lodgings, under the arch that divides and connects the state apartments into the grand square in front of the Winter Palace, the residence of the Emperor of Russia.
But before us rises a red granite column, the grandeur and beauty of which instantly fix the eye. A single stone, eighty-four feet high and fifty feet in circumference,—the loftiest single shaft of modern times, only less in height than Pompey’s Pillar,—stands in the midst of the square, surmounted by an angel and the cross. ”

“ Cheap as living is in Sweden it is cheaper in Norway. In Lillehammer,—this pleasant village at the head of Lake Mjosen, in the midst of beautiful scenery, where a fire is a luxury in midsummer, and the windows of the cottages blossom with flowers, and the streams laugh loudly as they tumbled along among the hills, where the linen on the beds and the table is as white as the snow of the long winters,—here in Lillehammer I spent one day and two nights, and my hotel bill for five meals, two sleeps, and three rides, was three dollars of our money. ”

“ And all the churches and towers over the whole city, four hundred bells and more, in concert, in harmony, “with notes almost divine,” lift up their voices in an anthem of praise, such as I never thought to hear with mortal ears: waves of melody, an ocean of music, deep, rolling, heaving, changing, swelling, sinking, rising, overwhelming, exalting. I had heard the great organs of Europe, but they were tame and trifling compared 339with this. The anthem of Nature at Niagara is one great monotone. The music of Moscow’s bells is above and beyond them all. It is the voice of the people. ”

“ Indeed, the pavements and columns and arches and apartments have been preserved or restored with so much greater care than the Alhambra itself, that the latter appears to be a feeble example of Moorish taste and skill, compared with these glorious rooms in Seville. Fancy must people these chambers with men and women, of flesh and blood; clothe them in Oriental and gorgeous raiment, surround them with every luxury that gold and labor and power can give; hang these passages with curtains whose richness has not been excelled by any thing that modern art has produced. ”

“ It is not so strange, nor so mournful, that the columns and walls should now be in the dust that did their duty two, three thousand years ago. It seems to be almost becoming that the temples of old paganism should moulder in the dispensation of faith that worships in spirit only. But it is painfully suggestive of the transient nature of all human art and power that these massive structures with gorgeous decorations, whose splendor is only equalled by the fancies of romance, have had their rise, their reign, and their ruin all within the lapse of the last ten hundred years. ”

“ The people are distributed in groups all over the plain. The grass is green. The sun, a winter sun, is kind and genial. The city lies in full view, with palaces and domes and pinnacles. And in the distance, but in this blazing sun and lucid atmosphere apparently very near, long ranges of mountains stand covered with snow, white, pure, glistening like silver in the sunlight, and forming a magnificent background to the gay picture at our feet. In the centre of each of these many groups a dozen, more or less, of young men and women are dancing to music. ”

“ A cleaner city is not in the world. It was the first city in Europe whose streets were paved, and the traditional habits of the people are so well preserved, that although it was a thousand years ago (in 850, under Abdurhaman) that this work was done, it has been done again and again, and the stones in the streets are kept as clean as the floor of a house. The Guadalquiver flows gently by the side of it, and under the shade-trees planted on its banks the idle and the fashionable have their favorite lounge and promenade. ”

“ The ladies of New York go to theatres and operas with their necks and more exposed to the gaze of men, and the ladies look at the licentious dancing of ballet girls who have been tortured into the art of showing themselves disgustingly to every virtuous taste. And I have come to the conclusion that in all parts of the world people have their own ideas about amusement, and there is no great difference in the moral of it. For my part I like a good fair stand-up bull-fight more than any of them. ”

“ The mysterious words, Riddarholm kyrkan, provided always your education has not extended into the language of Sweden, are used to define a kyrkan or kirk, the Riders’ or Horsemen’s or Knights’ Church in Stockholm, decidedly the most peculiar and interesting of all I have seen in the north of Europe.
Divine service is celebrated within its walls but once a year. It is not a house for the living to pray in, but for the dead to lie in. It is not for the dead of common clay, but for the dust of kings only,—a royal mausoleum. ”

“ When the sleepy janitor opens the outer gate and leads you through these deserted and empty halls, in which your footfalls make the only sound, into apartments that for centuries have been silent as the grave, yet on every hand is beauty of coloring and carving and curiously wrought adorning that you must pause to admire; even in the midst of admiration one cannot but mourn that the barbaric splendor of Moorish glory has departed, and the degenerate race of effete Spanish civilization has taken its place. ”

“ A vast open country, hill, wood and plain, is chosen, tents pitched, and for a few days mimic war goes through all its motions, saving and except that there is no blood shed. This annual exercise does something to keep up a martial spirit, and makes a few grand holidays, when the whole city is agog with the excitement. A fête day in Rome, an emperor’s day in Paris, or Derby day in London, would not exceed the annual review in Stockholm. The nobility and fashion, the beauty and folly, the masses of people in all sorts of conveyances, and more on foot than on wheels, were out at the parade. ”

“ About three miles north of Upsala, the seat of the great university, is Old Upsala, more sacred than any other spot in Sweden: for here are the lofty mounds which tradition has consecrated as graves of the gods,—the gods who aforetime were held in reverent awe and honor by the Scandinavian race, and who, to this day, hold some sort of sway over the rude masses of the North. ”

“ We come from a land where all is fresh and new, and these old temples fill us with awe. But if we are impressed with a ruin as in Rome, where Paganism built its temples to become the sites of Christian churches, which themselves have been buried and again dug up to be the wonder of the present age, how much more impressive is a building still fresh and unbroken by the march of centuries, where the pomp and ceremony of a religion, corrupt indeed, yet recognizing God the Father as the only true God, are perpetuated year after year till their number becomes a thousand years. ”

“ Neatness, order, elegance reign everywhere. Around the springs, through the avenues overhung with venerable trees, along the rows of beautiful lodging-houses and residences of those who permanently pass the summer here, the quietness of private life rests with a grace and charm quite rare in a great watering-place. This gives to Homburg such an attraction that thousands of the quietest class of people in the world love to come here for refreshment and repose. ”

“ By and by we come to one more imposing than all the rest; at first we catch but a single fall; as we advance it takes another plunge, and then another, and soon the whole reach and all the leaps of the Giesback are roaring and tumbling down the lofty precipices before us. I had been under it and around it, at its base, but had not before stood, as now, where its successive falls are all blended into one, and the white crystal flood pours more than a thousand feet, through the green fir-tree borders, into the lake. ”

“ And when they draw nigh unto the city, and on the evening air the music of these holy bells is first borne to their ears, they fall upon their faces, prostrate, and worship God. If they could go no further, they would be content to die there, for they have heard the bells of Moscow, and on their majestic tones their souls have been taken up to heaven. ”

“ We were alone in the Cathedral of the Assumption; four gigantic gilded and pictured columns in the midst of it support five great domes; and on the sides are arranged the huge sarcophagi in which repose the bones of old patriarchs whose names are part of the history of the church, and whose relics are thus kept near at hand impressing the worshipper with something of awe, as one will feel it in the presence of the dead. ”

“ On every balcony and at every window the wise Bensaken was ready with a tale of love, or blood, or gold; and it would be hard to say in which he most delighted to indulge. He was sure that out of this window the beautiful Zoraya, the “Morning Star” of Abu Hazen, she that was once Dona Isabel de Solis, a fair Christian captive who became the favorite Sultana, and the mother of Boabdil, let him down by a basket into an abyss from which he escaped and saved his life, to become afterwards the last of the race of princes here. ”

“ Neat cottages and wooded walks and gardens, signs of taste and culture, and plenty, are on our right hand and left; and these dwellings are so near that the canal seems a street like those of Venice, where you step from the gondola to the marble threshold of your house. Passengers on board recognize their acquaintance, and exchange salutations. Now and then an old mansion, with many out-buildings, shows that an extensive farm is behind; and occasionally we pass a village which appears to be of modern creation, as if progress was making even in Sweden. ”

“ And to this day the palm-tree, the pomegranate, and the fig, the orange and lemon, the olive and vine, flourish under the genial sun. In these declining years of the nineteenth century, with a railroad running into the city across the heart of this paradise, and telegraphs linking it with Madrid and London and Washington, the peasants still scratch the ground with the root of a tree for a plough, and carry their produce to market on the back of a donkey. ”

“ Gypsies are seen in England, in America, in Germany, in Italy, indeed there is hardly a country unvexed by gypsies. Wandering over the world, having no continuing city or abiding place, like the frogs of the land from which they get their name, they find their way into king’s houses and everybody’s house,—lying, cheating, stealing, peddling, and meddling, a nuisance and a curse. But the gypsies of Spain are a race by themselves, and not the ancestors nor the children of the gypsies of the other lands I have named. ”

“ But we are now on the border between the East and the West, between Asia and Europe, between barbarism in its best estate and civilization. Take a map of the world and see where Moscow stands! What vast, uncultured, desolate regions lie at the east of it, and still further on, what empires and peoples that make up the bulk of the human race! Out of the barbarism of that eastern portion of the earth’s plane, Russia is emerging, and Moscow is her frontier town ”