Fürst von Hermann Pückler-Muskau

“ Art alone,—the creation of fancy,—procures unmingled pleasure; and therefore let us, dear Julia, never cease to rejoice that an active creative fancy is stirring within us, and sometimes procures us enjoyments which reality cannot bestow. Shall I then prepare for myself such an innocent festival, and fly across the sea to you? we have been but too long asunder.
How beautiful does everything appear to me! It is spring;—the violets send forth enchanting fragrance after the heavy shower; swallows are twittering in the air, and pretty little water-wagtails are running merrily round the lake. ”

“ The first resting place is a delightful inn, like a gentleman’s villa, in the neighbourhood of Windsor. The prettiest veranda festooned with roses and all sorts of creepers, and adorned with a quantity of flowers in pots, covers the whole front; and a pleasure-ground and flower-garden, in exquisite order, stretch before my window. From hence I have a noble view of the gigantic Castle in the distance, which, set in a frame of two massy horse-chestnut-trees, gleamed like a fairy palace in the evening sun. ”

“ One is at Paris, one at Rome, one at Vienna, and the fourth here. I know them all, and must give unqualified preference to this. There is an enchantment about this splendid woman which is wholly indescribable. An eye leading to the very depths of the soul; queenlike majesty united with the most feminine sensibility; intense passion blended with the sweetest melancholy; and withal, a beauty of form, a transparent delicacy of skin, and a truth, brilliancy and grace of the drapery and ornaments, such as only a divine genius could call into perfect being. ”

“ On the side you perceive a cavern, the mouth of which is still closed with a rusty iron gate. Climbing rude steps in the rock, you reach the upper part of the ruin—a high roofless tower, in whose walls, fifteen feet thick, many trees centuries old have struck their roots, and in the interior of which is a well, which appears to sink down to the entrails of the earth. The massy and unshaken barrier around it, the lofty tower through which the sky appears above, and the bottomless depth beneath, where reigns eternal night, produce an effect I never remember to have experienced. ”

“ The road to Whitby is very hilly, and the aspect of the country singular. As far as the eye can reach, neither tree, house, wall, nor hedge;—nothing but an endless sea of wavy hills, often of a strange regularity of form, like heaps of rubbish shot down, thickly overgrown with heather, which at a near view presents the most beautiful shades of purple and red, but at a distance sheds one uniform dingy brown over the whole landscape, promising a rich harvest to grouse-shooters. ”

“ I had still time for a long ride, in the course of which, committing myself as usual to the guidance of chance, I came upon a most enchanting park, such as only the climate of England can produce. The gardens lay, in all their indescribable glow of beauty, in a narrow and fertile green valley full of high trees, under which three silver springs gushed forth, and flowing away in meandering brooks, took their course in all directions amid impervious thickets of blooming rhododendrons and azaleas. ”

“ Limerick is the third city in Ireland, and of the kind of cities I like, old and venerable, adorned with Gothic churches and moss-covered ruins; with dark narrow streets, and curious houses of various dates; a broad river flowing through its whole length, and crossed by several antique bridges; lastly, a busy market-place, and cheerful environs. Such a city has for me a charm like that of a wood, whose dark branches, now low, now high, afford sylvan streets of various forms, and frequently over-arch the way like a Gothic roof. ”

“ Over the great gate still stands the statue of Edward, with a crown on his head and a drawn dagger in his right hand, as if after six centuries he were still guarding the crumbling walls of his castle. He might justly have broken out into indignant complaint at the desecration I witnessed. In the midst of these majestic ruins, a camel and some monkeys in red jackets were performing their antics, while a ragged multitude stood shouting and laughing around, unconscious of the wretched contrast which they formed with these solemn remains of past ages. ”

“ In the day my great pleasure was lonely wandering in the country:—in the evening, the reading of romantic fictions, which I connected in my mind with the scenes I was so familiar with; and whether I sat in winter in the chimney corner poring over my book, or in summer lay stretched in luxurious indolence under a tree, my hours were equally filled with all those misty and voluptuous dreams which were perhaps the essence of poetry, but which I was not gifted with the genius to embody. Such a temper is not made for intercourse with men. ”

“ The first glance at your feet falls on a broad simple carpet of turf, around which a softly winding gravel-walk leads to the entrance and exit of the gigantic edifice. Looking backwards, your eye rests on the two black towers, of which the oldest, called Guy’s Tower, rears its head aloft in solitary threatening majesty, high above all the surrounding foliage, and looks as if cast in one mass of solid iron;—the other, built by Beauchamp, is half hidden by a pine and a chestnut, the noble growth of centuries. ”

“ Not a human being was to be seen; all was solitary, awful;—a gloomy but sublime memorial of destruction.
Such moments are really consolatory:—we feel more vividly than at any other that it is not worth while to grieve and trouble ourselves about earthly things, since sorrow, like joy, lasts but for a moment. As an illustration of the eternal mutation of human affairs, I found myself transported in the evening from the mute and lifeless ruins to the prosaic tumult of a multitude, busied but in gain; in the reeking, smoky, bustling manufacturing town of Birmingham. ”

“ Turn your imagination to a spot of ground so commandingly placed, that from its highest point you can let your eye wander over fifteen counties. Three sides of this wide panorama rise and fall in constant change of hill and dale, like the waves of an agitated sea, and are bounded at the horizon by the strangely-formed jagged outline of the Welsh mountains, which at either end descend to a fertile plain shaded by thousands of lofty trees, and in the obscure distance where it blends with the sky is edged with a white misty line—the ocean. ”

“ In this paradise every possible charm is united. A wood which appears of measureless extent, two noble rivers, rocks of every variety of picturesque form, the greenest meadows, the most varied and luxuriant shrubberies and thickets; in short, scenery changing at every step, yet never diminishing in beauty. The last time I traversed the valley it was moonlight, and I should have found my way with difficulty but for a young man who was returning from shooting; with true Irish kindness and courtesy he accompanied me at least three miles on foot, far beyond the most intricate parts. ”

“ There was a concert, and then a ball, at which the lovely German waltzer outshone all her rivals,—and with the most unpretending air, as if she did not perceive one of her conquests. Perhaps there never was a woman who had the art of appearing more innocent and childlike; and certainly this captivating sort of coquetry is the greatest charm, though not, perhaps, the greatest merit, of women. ”

“ At the top of the tower is a Latin inscription in gigantic Gothic letters, which proclaims from on high these beautiful and appropriate words, “Glory and praise to God alone through all ages!” The whole ruin is hung with draperies of ivy and creeping plants, and majestic trees here and there wave their tops above it. The river winds by, and a few steps further on, turns the old abbey-mill, which is still in use; as if to teach the lesson, that when power and magnificence pass away, the useful retains its modest existence. ”

“ The sun of fortune and favour changes a human being, as the sun of heaven does a plant which faded in darkness, and now raises its drooping head in his bright beams, and penetrated by the genial warmth opens fragrant blossoms to the light. We, dear Julia, still lie in the cellar, like hyacinth roots; but the gardener can place us in a more favourable soil and brighter sun in the spring—if it please him. ”

“ The carriage rolled with a heavy dull sound along the smooth rock, which old oaks darkly overshadow. Suddenly, at a turn of the way, the castle starts from the wood into broad open daylight, resting on a soft grassy slope; and the large arch of the entrance dwindles to the size of an insignificant doorway between the two enormous towers, at the foot of which you now stand. A still greater surprise now awaits you when you pass through the second iron gate into the court-yard: it is almost impossible to imagine anything more picturesque, and at the same time more imposing. ”

“ It was magnificent, and adorned with a richness which art can never reach. In an hour’s riding I reached a hill where the ruins of a church stood in the midst of a garden. The sun darted its rays from behind a cloud athwart the whole sky, like a huge torch, the centre of which rested directly on the metropolis of the world,—the immeasurable Babel which lay outstretched with its thousand towers, and its hundred thousand sins, its fog and smoke, its treasures and its misery, further than the eye could reach. ”

“ A beautiful greyhound, who bounded over the ground as lightly as a leaf borne by the wind, and enjoyed his freedom in the wildest gambols, accompanied us. We climbed, not without pain to my chest, ‘car je ne vaux plus rien à pied,’ to a rocky table-land, four hundred feet high, which overlooks the whole valley. Opposite is a strange sport of nature,—a monstrous face regularly formed in stone, looking gloomily and angrily on the lake below. The eye-brows and beard were distinctly marked by moss heath, and the prominent cheeks and deep sunk eyes perfectly formed by the clefts in the rock. ”

“ I breakfasted here, and thought over many circumstances of that journey; drove through the pretty, melancholy little capital without stopping; then through a noble beech wood, which gleamed in the sunshine with a gold-green lustre; made romantic observations on a curious hill covered with the moss-grown ruins; and hurrying on through this monotonous district, reached the ancient see of Osnabruck at dinner-time.
One always sleeps better in a carriage the second night than the first; the motion acts upon one like that of a cradle upon children. ”

“ The Dee, a rapid stream, winds through the green valley in a thousand fantastic bendings overhung with thick underwood. On each side, high mountains rise abruptly from the plain, and are crowned with antique ruins, modern country-houses, manufactories, whose towering chimneys send out columns of thick smoke, or with grotesque groups of upright rocks. The vegetation is every where rich, and hill and vale are filled with lofty trees, whose varied hues add so infinitely to the beauty and picturesque effect of a landscape. ”

“ Majestic as a queen, when she was ‘en representation;’ distinguished by the most easy and graceful manners, the most exquisite knowledge of the world, when doing the honours of her own house; and by the most ‘naïve,’ touching kindness and sweetness in the circle of her family;—but under every aspect rendered more interesting and impressive by a trace of thoughtful melancholy never wholly effaced, allied to that perfect feminine tenderness which gives to woman the highest and most resistless charm in the eyes of men;—her resemblance to this picture of Guido’s was striking. ”

“ The devil will not hear reason, and stretches out his long claws horribly at him. He appears just about to fly away with him, as erst with Faust, but Punch is not so easily to be dealt with; manfully he grasps his murderous staff, and defends himself even against the devil. A fearful fight ensues, and—who would have thought it possible?—Punch, so often in uttermost danger, at length remains universal conqueror, spits the black fiend on his stick, holds him up aloft, and whirling about with him with shouts of triumph, sings, while he laughs more heartily than ever. ”