Henry W. Wolff

“ But our interest, in England, lies more with the Guelphs than with Germany. One cannot help sympathizing with a race which, being evidently designed for greatness, advanced towards it with giant strides, only to find the prize at which it ambitiously grasped snatched from its hand in the very moment of seeming attainment.
Of the very early history of the Guelphs we have fairly definite, but only very fragmentary, information. ”

“ Modern History is, in its rapid march onward, making sad havoc of old races. New nations are rising up; but only like new banks and headlands on our coast, by the accumulation of drifted shingle, which the very same tide is washing away from wasting older rocks. A generation or two hence, in the making of a new German people, the last remnant will have finally disappeared of an interesting race, which historians and archæologists alike, to whom it is known, will be loth to miss. ”

“ In truth, Bonn owes a great deal to the Prince Consort—more than most people are aware. If the University has grown great and popular, a favourite with reigning houses, a High School in which every King of Prussia is expected to have pursued his studies, something like a "Christ Church" among German Universities; if the town has grown rich and flourishing, a favourite residence with wealth and position en retraite, the merit is in no small measure due to the Prince who, practically speaking, first set the fashion among illustrious folk. ”

“ Stanislas had added the delightful "Bosquet," laid out for him by Gervais—overloading it, it is true, with kiosks and pavilions, renaissance architecture and renaissance statuary, a hermitage, and eventually with de Tressan's "Chartreuse." Like all persons of "taste" in his day, Stanislas loved gimcrackery; he had utilized François Richard's inventive genius for embellishing his principal residence with a unique contrivance, admired by all Europe—an artificial rock with clockwork machinery setting about eighty figures in motion. You may see a picture of it still in the Nancy Museum. ”

“ It is all so racy and peculiar, all so merry and yet so modest in the expenditure made upon it, it all shows the Wends so much to advantage as a contented, happy, cheerful people—perhaps a little thoughtless, but in any case making the best of things under all circumstances, and glad to show off their Slav finery, and throw themselves into whatever enjoyment Providence has vouchsafed, with a zest and spirit which is not to be excelled, and which I for one should be sorry to see replaced by the more decorous, perhaps, but far less picturesque hilarity of the prosy Prussians. ”

“ What a Wendish village would in winter time be without those social spinning meetings it is difficult to imagine. To no race do conviviality, mirth, harmless but boisterous amusement, seem so much of a necessary of life. ”

“ Saxon descent may have had much to do with the development of our own peculiar cerevisial taste—taste, that is, for beer with some body and a good strong flavour of malt. There can be no doubt that, compared with the produce of other countries, our beer is still the best—if only one's liver will stand it—the most tasty, the most nourishing—"meat, drink and cloth," as Sir John Linger puts it—beer which will occasionally "make a cat speak and a wise man dumb." The Saxons always had a liking for beer with something in it—not merely "strong water," as Sir Richard l'Estrange calls the small stuff. ”

“ The ladies of Toledo conspired to liberate the interesting captive, who, in spite of his fifty years, was still handsome, nimble, full of courtesy and full of life. His own subjects braved tortures, galleys, death—everything, to effect his rescue. Never was ruler more beloved; rarely did he less deserve it. Nicole loyally forgot all past grievances, appealed to Mazarin, appealed to King Louis, appealed to the Pope. ”

“ Surely these quiet, harmless folk, fathers as they are of the North German race, might have been spared that uncalled-for nagging and worrying which has often been pointed against them from Berlin for purely political purposes! In the day of their power they were more tolerant of Germanism. They fought side by side with the Franks, fought even under Frankish chieftains. Germany owes them a debt, and should at least, as it may be hoped that she now will, let them die in peace. Death no doubt is bound to come. ”

“ The German Chancellor, instead of the parliamentary full-dress dinners customary among ourselves, invites the members of the Diet to "beer-evenings." If a learned professor discover a new bacillus or antidotal lymph; if an African traveller annex a new province; if a statesman attain his jubilee—there is but one form of public recognition for all varieties of merit and distinction, and that is a biercommers. No doubt the great extension of university education has a great deal to do with the spread of regulated beer-drinking. The learned classes set the tone, and the many follow it. ”

“ Every tenth year sees Britons rushing in shoals to the picturesque banks of the Ammer, to witness there, while it may be witnessed, the last surviving specimen of that popular religious drama which in bygone times helped the Church so materially, and over so wide an area, to impress her truths upon men's minds. But I question, if among all those thousands of sight-seeing Britons, who gather as interested spectators, there are many who realize in what very close relation that same little valley stands to the early fortunes of the ancient House whose Head now occupies our Throne. ”

“ It boots little that the Saxon Government, kinder in its own smaller country, has, very late in the day, changed its policy, and is now striving to preserve what is, at its lowest valuation, a most interesting little piece of ethnographic archæology. It is much too late now to stop the march of Germanisation, which has pushed on so rapidly that even in the same family you may at the present day find parents still thoroughly Wendish, and priding themselves on their Wendish patronymics, and children wholly German, styling themselves by newly coined German names. Evidently the race is dying fast. ”

“ Receive James, Leopold had no choice but to receive him. His letters and despatches make this perfectly clear. There is a good deal of talk about the Pretender's "estimable qualities," how the Duke and Duchess admire him, how happy they are that he has not gone to Aix-la-Chapelle. And no doubt the two managed to be for a time excellent friends. But every now and then, through all this polite buncombe, out comes the frank admission that all is done "to please the king." And we know how promptly and unhesitatingly Leopold's hospitality was withdrawn, once French pressure ceased, in 1716. ”

“ In the middle of the village is the broad street or green, planted with high trees, which, by their contrast with the surrounding pine forest, indicate the site to the traveller a long way off. The Wends are devoted lovers of trees, and in every truly Wendish village you are sure to find a large lime tree, tall or stunted, but in every case spreading out its branches a long distance sideways, and overshadowing a goodly space. That tree has for generations back formed the centre of local life, and is venerated as becomes a "sacred tree" of ancient date. Here young and old are wont to assemble. ”

“ The lake was reached, and the oars splashed briskly over the smooth surface—when all of a sudden, at half-way, over goes the boat, capsizing, and Bertha sinks down to the bottom, to be seen no more. Diving, and swimming, and calling proved all in vain. Thoroughly unhappy, indifferent to anything that might happen, Welf consents to wed the elderly Matilda, with whom he settles down to live at Spoleto, sullenly resigning himself to his fate. One day a nun begs to be allowed to see him. ”

“ Brave, chivalrous, frank, generous to a fault, and zealously solicitous for the welfare of his subjects, for the extension of commerce, the improvement of agriculture, the development of self-government, a friend and supporter to every kind of progress—but, at the same time, headstrong, rash, impetuous—he seemed the very beau-ideal of knighthood, a man morally as well as physically of the colossal stature that the sculptor has attributed to him at Brunswick—a fit companion for his brother-in-law and staunch ally, Richard Cœur-de-Lion. ”

“ In that house they meet throughout the winter, spinning industriously with wheel or with spindle from seven to ten, and requiting the housewife for her hospitality with welcome assistance in various kinds of domestic work. On the first evening the company quite expect to be treated to a good supper of roast goose. How all the spinners, with the resident family, and those young fellows who, of course, will from time to time pay the lasses a visit—either in disguise or in their own proper garb—manage to meet, and work, and lark, and dance, where they do, it is rather a problem to solve. ”

“ They are well known. It was at Commercy that the treachery was detected, and that those half-comical, half pathetic scenes described by Longchamp occurred—Voltaire, mad with a sense of the injury endured, firing up, abjuring Emilie, almost accepting Saint Lambert's challenge to fight, ordering his valet, Longchamp, to bespeak a coach and horses at once, that very night, for Paris. Longchamp knew too well who was master. Instead of rushing to the posting-house, he went quietly to Emilie, who directed him to let post-master, horses, and coach alone, and report that there were none to be had. ”

“ They have them of all descriptions—legends and convivial songs, martial songs, sacred hymns, short rónčka and reje for the dancing-room, and long elegies and ballads for the field, to shorten the long summer's day out at work. They have their own curious instruments, too, still in use—a three-stringed fiddle, a peculiar sort of hautboy, and bagpipes of two different sizes, the larger one invariably ornamented with a goat's head. To be a kantorka (precentress) in church, or even in a spinning-room, is a thing for a Wendish girl to be proud of, and to remember to her old age. ”

“ A modern writer, Charles Monselet, says that in Strassburg—in this respect a typically German town—"tout se ressent de la domination de la bière." Beer lends its colour to the faces of the inhabitants, to their hair, to their clothes; to the soil and the houses; and the very women seem nothing but "walking chopes." ”

“ Thus ended, on June 5, 1663, the changeful life of that "excellents peace as Nature ever made," as wrote Richard Flecknoe in contemplation of her portrait at Windsor, full of "colour" and "freshness," and with eyes whose very lids were "than other eyes more [Pg 143] admirably fair," the lady who on the canvas in our royal castle looks so happy and serene, but who in real life tasted far more of the bitterness than of the sweet of man's fleeting love—not, certainly, without much fault on her own part, yet, in respect of her relations with Charles, surely more sinned against than sinning. ”

“ Born and bred in Austria, allied to the Imperial family by the closest ties of blood—his mother was an archduchess—trained in Austrian etiquette, an officer in the Austrian army, beholden to Austria for many past favours—and keenly alive to the fact that for any favours which might yet be to come he must look exclusively to the Court of Vienna—in his leanings and prepossessions he was entirely Austrian. ”

“ Under the new aspect of things, if, fortunately, Henry the Lion's bold bent for war be wanting, his characteristic care for the welfare of his subjects has been retained; and it is a satisfaction to know, in a reign that has happily outlived its Jubilee, that there is no longer occasion for that sorrowful plaint to which, in the warlike days of the race, Countess Itha gave expression—the wife of the great-grandson of Eticho II., of Ammergau—that "No Guelph was ever known to live to a great age." ”

“ As the clock strikes midnight the young women form in procession and march out to the fields, and all round the cultivated area, singing Easter hymns till sunrise. It produces a peculiarly striking effect to hear all this solemn singing—maybe, the same tunes ringing across from an adjoining parish, as if echoed back by the woods—and to see those tall forms solemnly moving about in the early gloaming, like ancient priestesses of the Goddess Ostara. ”