Saunterings. Charles Dudley Warner
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you as to its “vine-clad hills.” You miss trees and a covering vegetation, and are not enamoured of the patches of green vines on wall-supported terraces, looking from the river like hills of beans or potatoes. And, if you try the Rhine wine on the steamers, you will wholly lose your faith in the vintage. We decided that the wine on our boat was manufactured in the boiler.
There is a mercenary atmosphere about hotels and steamers on the Rhine, a watering-place, show sort of feeling, that detracts very much from one's enjoyment. The old habit of the robber barons of levying toll on all who sail up and down has not been lost. It is not that one actually pays so much for sightseeing, but the charm of anything vanishes when it is made merchandise. One is almost as reluctant to buy his “views” as he is to sell his opinions. But one ought to be weeks on the Rhine before attempting to say anything about it.
One morning, at Bingen—I assure you it was not six o'clock—we took a big little rowboat, and dropped down the stream, past the Mouse Tower, where the cruel Bishop Hatto was eaten up by rats, under the shattered Castle of Ehrenfels, round the bend to the little village of Assmannshausen, on the hills back of which is grown the famous red wine of that name. On the bank walked in line a dozen peasants, men and women, in picturesque dress, towing, by a line passed from shoulder to shoulder, a boat filled with marketing for Rudesheim. We were bound up the Niederwald, the mountain opposite Bingen, whose noble crown of forest attracted us. At the landing, donkeys awaited us; and we began the ascent, a stout, good-natured German girl acting as guide and driver. Behind us, on the opposite shore, set round about with a wealth of foliage, was the Castle of Rheinstein, a fortress more pleasing in its proportions and situation than any other. Our way was through the little town which is jammed into the gorge; and as we clattered up the pavement, past the church, its heavy bell began to ring loudly for matins, the sound reverberating in the narrow way, and following us with its benediction when we were far up the hill, breathing the fresh, inspiring morning air. The top of the Niederwald is a splendid forest of trees, which no impious Frenchman has been allowed to trim, and cut into allees of arches, taking one in thought across the water to the free Adirondacks. We walked for a long time under the welcome shade, approaching the brow of the hill now and then, where some tower or hermitage is erected, for a view of the Rhine and the Nahe, the villages below, and the hills around; and then crossed the mountain, down through cherry orchards, and vine yards, walled up, with images of Christ on the cross on the angles of the walls, down through a hot road where wild flowers grew in great variety, to the quaint village of Rudesheim, with its queer streets and ancient ruins. Is it possible that we can have too many ruins? “Oh dear!” exclaimed the jung-frau as we sailed along the last day, “if there is n't another castle!”
HEIDELBERG
If you come to Heidelberg, you will never want to go away. To arrive here is to come into a peaceful state of rest and content. The great hills out of which the Neckar flows, infold the town in a sweet security; and yet there is no sense of imprisonment, for the view is always wide open to the great plains where the Neckar goes to join the Rhine, and where the Rhine runs for many a league through a rich and smiling land. One could settle down here to study, without a desire to go farther, nor any wish to change the dingy, shabby old buildings of the university for anything newer and smarter. What the students can find to fight their little duels about I cannot see; but fight they do, as many a scarred cheek attests. The students give life to the town. They go about in little caps of red, green, and blue, many of them embroidered in gold, and stuck so far on the forehead that they require an elastic, like that worn by ladies, under the back hair, to keep them on; and they are also distinguished by colored ribbons across the breast. The majority of them are well-behaved young gentlemen, who carry switch-canes, and try to keep near the fashions, like students at home. Some like to swagger about in their little skull-caps, and now and then one is attended by a bull-dog.
I write in a room which opens out upon a balcony. Below it is a garden, below that foliage, and farther down the town with its old speckled roofs, spires, and queer little squares. Beyond is the Neckar, with the bridge, and white statues on it, and an old city gate at this end, with pointed towers. Beyond that is a white road with a wall on one side, along which I see peasant women walking with large baskets balanced on their heads. The road runs down the river to Neuenheim. Above it on the steep hillside are vineyards; and a winding path goes up to the Philosopher's Walk, which runs along for a mile or more, giving delightful views of the castle and the glorious woods and hills back of it. Above it is the mountain of Heiligenberg, from the other side of which one looks off toward Darmstadt and the famous road, the Bergstrasse. If I look down the stream, I see the narrow town, and the Neckar flowing out of it into the vast level plain, rich with grain and trees and grass, with many spires and villages; Mannheim to the northward, shining when the sun is low; the Rhine gleaming here and there near the horizon; and the Vosges Mountains, purple in the last distance: on my right, and so near that I could throw a stone into them, the ruined tower and battlements of the northwest corner of the castle, half hidden in foliage, with statues framed in ivy, and the garden terrace, built for Elizabeth Stuart when she came here the bride of the Elector Frederick, where giant trees grow. Under the walls a steep path goes down into the town, along which little houses cling to the hillside. High above the castle rises the noble Konigstuhl, whence the whole of this part of Germany is visible, and, in a clear day, Strasburg Minster, ninety miles away.
I have only to go a few steps up a narrow, steep street, lined with the queerest houses, where is an ever-running pipe of good water, to which all the neighborhood resorts, and I am within the grounds of the castle. I scarcely know where to take you; for I never know where to go myself, and seldom do go where I intend when I set forth. We have been here several days; and I have not yet seen the Great Tun, nor the inside of the show-rooms, nor scarcely anything that is set down as a “sight.” I do not know whether to wander on through the extensive grounds, with splendid trees, bits of old ruin, overgrown, cozy nooks, and seats where, through the foliage, distant prospects open into quiet retreats that lead to winding walks up the terraced hill, round to the open terrace overlooking the Neckar, and giving the best general view of the great mass of ruins. If we do, we shall be likely to sit in some delicious place, listening to the band playing in the “Restauration,” and to the nightingales, till the moon comes up. Or shall we turn into the garden through the lovely Arch of the Princess Elizabeth, with its stone columns cut to resemble tree-trunks twined with ivy? Or go rather through the great archway, and under the teeth of the portcullis, into the irregular quadrangle, whose buildings mark the changing style and fortune of successive centuries, from 1300 down to the seventeenth century? There is probably no richer quadrangle in Europe: there is certainly no other ruin so vast, so impressive, so ornamented with carving, except the Alhambra. And from here we pass out upon the broad terrace of masonry, with a splendid flanking octagon tower, its base hidden in trees, a rich facade for a background, and below the town the river, and beyond the plain and floods of golden sunlight. What shall we do? Sit and dream in the Rent Tower under the lindens that grow in its top? The day passes while one is deciding how to spend it, and the sun over Heiligenberg goes down on his purpose.
ALPINE NOTES
ENTERING SWITZERLAND BERNE ITS BEAUTIES AND BEARS
If you come to Bale, you should take rooms on the river, or stand on the bridge at evening, and have a sunset of gold and crimson streaming down upon the wide and strong Rhine, where it rushes between the houses built plumb up to it, or you will not care much for the city. And yet it is pleasant on the high ground, where are some stately buildings, and where new gardens are laid out, and where the American consul on the Fourth of July flies our flag over the balcony