George Carless Swayne

“ It is necessary to beware of a stumble in descending the step between the nave and choir, since that step is said to have been often overlooked through people keeping their eyes fixed on the vaulted roof. A striking contrast is felt on emerging from the solemn desolation of the church to the luxuriant world without, and the orchards laughing in blossoms, which stand out against the blue heaven with the mingled lustre of rock-salt, and snow, and silver. ”

“ Both Wetzlar and Frankfort cathedrals would have been most imposing structures, had their plan been carried out as it has been at Strasburg. But we are thankful for even an unfinished specimen of Gothic architecture, while a Grecian building is nothing if it is not complete. The mind can supply what is wanting in the former case. Gothic architecture seems to grow out of the ground by degrees, like a tree, while a Greek building is, from first to last, artificial, and seems to stand where it is placed simply by its weight. ”

“ It is not a ruin, but an ancient castle, not restored with questionable taste like Stolzenfels on the Rhine, but preserved by some wonderful good luck, or traditional good taste, inside and outside exactly as it was. The blood of its owners is shown by this instinct of beauty to have run marvellously pure from generation to generation. ”

“ In short, our impressions of Jersey have tended much to corroborate in our minds the poet’s dictum, that
God made the country, and man made the town;
for while the town is a huge seething kettle of corruption, the country is a labyrinth of loveliness. It is a labyrinth of lanes all arched by trees and fringed by lush herbage, and with certain lights presenting little fantastic avenues of fairy beauty. ”

“ The river-side rocks are very grand, and one has obtained the dignity of being called the Lurley of the Moselle.
A still finer walk is up the walnut-shaded valley of the Enderbach to the top of the height crowned by the Castle of Winneberg, the ascent commanding a grand view of gabled hills with purple rocks, interspersed with foliage. A patriarchal walnut-tree, as at Cochem, keeps the gate of the mighty ruin. In the fourteenth century, Cuno II., Lord of Winneberg, married Lysa, only daughter of Gerlach of Beilstein, and thus received the possessions of his family. ”

“ Helier’s, most overgrown in population for the size of the island, is the receptacle for all the impurities, moral and physical, of this pretty little island, and for much of those of the external world. It is cooped up in a close, unhealthy hollow, and the wonder is how the cholera could ever have passed over it without destroying half the inhabitants. By some strange perversity, the best parts are built away from the sea, so that the fashionables are shut out from the view of Elizabeth Castle and the harbour, which is really pretty. ”

“ At the table-d’hôte, along with a bottle of the delicate Theirgärtner, the head waiter hands us a folded paper having on the one side a plan of Trêves, an engraving of the Red House, and a list of trains; on the other, a panorama of the Moselle from Trêves to Coblenz, with representations of eight of the principal lions of Trêves. The post of honour among these belongs to the Porta Nigra. This splendid old Roman gate is built of red sandstone, which has become of so dark a colour by age as to justify the name of the Black Gate, especially as contrasted with the light buildings around. ”

“ The Moselle is born among the pretty Vosges mountains, spends her childhood cheerfully in France, lives a capricious youth, each caprice having a charm of its own, till, surprised by the sturdy Rhine, she makes a happy marriage and is heard of no more. ”

“ The distinct sensations of cold and heat are merged in an intoxicating temperature which makes the whole air seem a bath of limpid freshness, instinct with joy and life, and realises for the nonce the fable of the Fountain of Youth, which the old painters are so fond of illustrating. The sun has risen in singular splendour over the hills on the Neuwied side, and his oblique rays are powdering the dark grey volcanic soil, over which the slowly rising path lies, with a dust of brilliants, which effect is probably the result of the grains of mica which form part of the composition of the soil. ”

“ The interior decorations, though brilliant, are in good taste, and the high altar, with the vault of the choir is chastely gorgeous, with none of that meretricious ornamentation which disfigures many Catholic churches. A hollow way through the budding woods, whose reddish tint is just bursting into a mist of green, leads by a long ascent insensibly to the brow of the mountain, when suddenly the moderate fatigue is recompensed by the revelation of a landscape which takes the eye by storm with its tranquil beauty. ”

“ They are simply bevilled blocks or dice, and the neatly adapted stones rest in their places by their own weight, in scorn of mortar, as the Roman legionaries kept their ranks by weight of armament and martial will. Time has beautified the dark red sandstone here and there with shrubs and flowers, and married ancient art to ever-young nature. ”

“ By following the bank of the Moselle to about a mile and a half above Cochem, we arrive at a large house, which was formerly a conventual building. Its chapel is a specimen of the purest style of Early Gothic, but is now entirely dilapidated, and used as a barn: a path through the woods, above this, leads to a point at the top of the plateau, whence Cochem is seen in the distance, with Winneberg behind it, and a superb panorama of hill-tops, which seen edgeways look like vast pyramids. ”

“ The Rhine rises among the snows and glaciers, is brought up roughly, bathes himself clean in a great lake, knows the way he is going, sweeps through his upper course with a broad calm dignity, meets obstacles at Bingen and puts them sternly and vigorously aside lives down all opposition like a strong man, and below Bonn descends quietly and unobtrusively to his final resting-place in the North Sea. ”

“ On a bend of the Lower Main lies the ancient town of Seligenstadt. It appears to be but a short walk from Offenbach, as the road thence to it appears on the map as the chord to which the arc is formed by the river; and distant but some ten minutes by rail from Frankfort is Offenbach, a thriving, industrious place, whose prosperity was caused by the Huguenot immigration. The road from Offenbach to Seligenstadt is monotonous enough, cutting through dense pine-forests in straight lines, so that a person or carriage approaching is seen for half an hour before he or it is met. ”

“ Limburg Abbey, looking East.
Dürkheim stands at the opening of a valley which pierces the hills to the west. It is a noted place for the grape-cure. This agreeable regime, which is very fashionable in Germany, consists in spending an hour every morning in the garden listening to the band and eating a pound of grapes, for the sale of which stalls are set in the garden. At all the baths which do not gamble, the visitors appear much of the same grade in society, and of the same—a moderately advanced—age. ”

“ If the projected railroad is completed between Trêves and Cologne, the old town will probably enter on a new lease of life; but the present is the time for those who are curious in history and antiquities to pursue their investigations, as modern improvements have a tendency to choke antiquity. At present, Nature holds her own in Trêves. The remains of ancient art have become part of Nature, and the memorials of the mighty dead are mellowed in tint by the same sunshine which glorifies the living vineyards and flower-gardens. ”

“ The second in rank may be that seen on mounting the ridge of hill which divides the bay of St. Clement’s from that of Grouville, where the road winds like an Alpine pass over the crest by the arsenal at Grouville, and as it were suddenly introduces the passenger to a new world, with Gorey Common below, the beautiful castle of Mont Orgueil forming beyond it the extremity of a long shore-like hill, which in Germany would be planted with vines; and beyond, all the dim coast of Normandy, distant some fifteen miles. ”

“ The town of Wertheim is built on both sides of the mouth of the Tauber, a good sized river, navigable for a short distance in its picturesque course. The castle, as its situation is exactly similar to that of Heidelberg, resembles it in colour, size, and general grandeur of effect. As a piece of antiquity it is far more interesting: parts of it, the keep for instance, are coeval with the earliest date of castle-building, while its more modern portion has not the exuberant Renaissance ornamentation of the Heidelberg castle, which is more of a palace than a stronghold. ”

“ The very ditch here is not dug, but hewn out of the solid rock. This castle was separated from Trifels under the Emperor Frederic II., but shared the subsequent fates of the sister-fortress. The whole country round Trifels has a weird and ghostly look, and the grotesque masses of sandstone which crown the tops and crests of the hills, and in the sun are scarcely distinguishable from castles, but in the evening appear often like sharply-featured spectral heads, give the impression of a very “eerie” place. ”

“ France supplies Jersey with meat, not of a first-rate description, from which cause Jersey labours under a twofold disadvantage—that of having French meat and English cookery; and, under the circumstances, it is a wonder that the thing called digestion exists at all in the island: for in England, where there is no cookery, the meat is so good that it does not require it; in France, where there is no meat, properly so called, the cookery is so good as to create it: in Jersey there is neither meat nor cookery. ”

“ Those who leave Paris by a train which starts in the evening, and can sleep through the dull night journey, will agreeably wake up on a fine summer’s morning on the Upper Moselle, in the neighbourhood of Metz. Here it is a softly-flowing river, with vineyards and white villages on the banks. ”

“ The trees and shrubs have grown in the roofless spaces so as in a measure to obscure the details of the architecture, standing as they do on an accumulation of rubble from the ruin of the upper part of the building. Around the machicolated walls wind pleasant walks, which lead past the remains of higher outworks into a kind of carefully kept shrubbery, and up to the crest of the hill, whence the castle is overlooked, and an extensive view of the reaches of the river on both sides is obtained. ”

“ It is a scene the more beautiful as so unexpected in these latitudes, and the beholder might well imagine himself standing on the brink of the Lake of Nemi, among the Sabine hills. Italy is also brought to mind by the fact that Laach possesses a cave where the fixed air destroys animal life, as is the case with the Grotto del Cane, near Naples. And all this is within an easy walk of the cockney-ridden Rhine! ”

“ Passing over this haunted ground along the remains of the mediæval walls, we come to those beautiful ruins called the Roman baths. We are glad to see that the Prussian government has taken measures for purchasing some of the surrounding land, so that the excavations may be continued, and it is probable that valuable discoveries will be made. Nothing can be fairer than the aspect of these ruins in their summer dress; they show to perfection how beautiful an effect may be gained by variegated courses of bricks and tiles. ”

“ These last seem to abound in all the old towns of the Rhine land, where one does not see enough men and women to account for them. They look as if they had been hatched from the ancient dirt by the modern sunshine, after having been dormant in it for centuries.
Bergen was formerly the property of a family belonging to the imperial household in Frankfort, bearing the strange name of the Schelms, or Skinners of Bergen. The castle which belonged to them is of more modern date than the town and outside it, so that at first they lived in the town itself, as notices of them are as old as 1194. ”

“ Summer’s growth gives ampler beauty,
⁠Winter’s sleep anneals your strength;
Nature’s Law is one with Duty,
⁠And the crown is gained at length.
Daylight sleeps, yet sleeps to waken;
⁠Leaves are changed, yet never cease ”