Part 2

He was then entering into his eighteenth year, and, according to his brother, he was ready of speech and possessed the laughing though deferential manner which he carried with him throughout his life. John resided at Portumna, and he could offer his brother facilities for fishing and shooting; moreover, he was able to give him a glimpse of the life of the Connaught squire. Amongst the houses to which John had the _entrée_ was Portumna Castle, then the residence of the widowed Countess of Clanricarde, a daughter of Sir Thomas Burke, Bart., of Marble Hall. The Countess was famed for her hospitality--famed even amongst a people noted for their easy-going habits, for their sprightliness, and for their unfailing courtesy to strangers. The brothers Lever were favoured guests at Portumna Castle, and here Charles encountered people who told him good stories of hunting, of steeple-chasing, of duelling, of love-making, of dare-devilry, which at the time impressed him vividly: subsequently some of this homespun was woven into his novels of the West.

After his first few visits to the County Galway, Lever began to develop a taste for improvising romances,--not committing them to paper, but relating them to his college chums. “He would tell stories by the hour,” declares one of his fellow-students, “and would so identify himself with the events as to impart to them all the vitality and interest of personal adventure.”

The elder Levers had now moved from the city of Dublin. On the road to Malahide, about four miles from the city, James Lever built himself a handsome dwelling-house which he called Moat-field. He expected that his second son would graduate in 1826, but Charles did not obtain his B.A. degree until the autumn of 1827. After he had “walked the hospitals” for some time, Charles made up his mind to visit Germany and to continue there his university career. He set out from Dublin in 1828, and under the title of ‘The Log-Book of a Rambler’ he recorded his first impressions of Continental life.

II. THE LOG-BOOK* OF A RAMBLER 1828

In the early part of last year I was awaiting in Rotterdam the arrival of a friend from England;** and as some untoward circumstances had occurred to detain him beyond the appointed time, I had abundant opportunity to domesticate in the family of mine host of the Boar’s Head. Do not suppose from the fact of my being thus _enfoncé_ that I shall gratify either your gossiping disposition or your love of personalities by any little detail of family failings from which the houses of the great are not always free. No: though the literary world does not want for instances of this practice, I shall abstain, and confine myself merely to such a delineation of the outward man as may serve to make you acquainted with him.

* This account of his wanderings in Germany was written by Lever in 1829-30. The original MS. of ‘The Log-Book’ was recently presented to the Royal Irish Academy by Mr C. Litton Falkner. The principal portion of the Log was printed at intervals in ‘The Dublin Literary Gazette’ during the year 1830.--E. D.

** John Maxwell, a companion of Lever, to whom many references are made in the course of his correspondence with Alexander Spencer.--E. D.

Mine host was the most famous gastronome of the Low Countries, and at the two _table d’hôtes_ at which he daily presided, never was known to neglect the order and procession of the various courses of soup, fish, game, and sauerkraut--of all and each of which he largely partook.

Would that George Cruikshank could have seen him with that breastplate of a napkin--which, _more majorum_, was suspended from his neck--whilst his hand grasped a knife whose proportions would cast into insignificance the inoffensive weapon of our Horse Guards! His head, too, was a perfect study. _Giove!_ what depressions where there should have been bumps. And then his eye, alternately opening and closing, seemed as if it were to relieve guard upon the drowsiness of his features.

He spoke but seldom, and, despite my various efforts to draw him into culinary discussion (having had some intention of publishing these “Conversations”), he was ever on his guard, and only once, when---- But I grow personal, and shall return to myself. So effectually did the society of this sage, the air of the place, and above all the statue of Erasmus which looked so peacefully on me from the market-place opposite the inn, conspire to tranquillise my mind, that in the course of a few weeks I had become as thoroughly a Dutchman as if I had never meditated an excursion beyond The Hague in a _trek-schuit_.

Dinner over, I was to be seen lolling under the trees on the Boomjes,* with my tobacco-bag at my buttonhole and my meerschaum in my hand, calmly contemplating the boats as they passed and repassed along the canal.

* The Regent Street of Rotterdam.

In this country such a scene would have been all bustle, confusion, and excitement: there it was quite the reverse,--scarcely a ripple on the surface of the water indicated the track of the vessel as she slowly held her course. How often have I watched them nearing a bridge, which, as the boat approached, slowly rose and permitted her to pass, whilst from the window of the low toll-house a long pole is projected with a leathern purse at its extremity, into which the ancient mariner at the helm bestows his tribute money and holds on his way, still smoking! But now comes the tug-of-war; it is, indeed, the only moment of bustle I have ever witnessed in Holland. How is the bridge to get down? Dutch mechanics have provided for its elevation, but not for its descent; and it is in this emergency that the national character shines forth,--and the same spirit of mutual assistance and co-operation which enabled them to steal a kingdom from the ocean becomes non-triumphant. Man by man they are seen toiling up the steep ascent, and, creaking under many a fat burgomaster, the bridge slowly descends and rests again upon its foundation. Doubtless, like the ancients, they chose to perpetuate customs which teach that laudable dependence of man upon, his fellows--the strongest link which binds us in society--rather than mar this mutual good feeling by mechanical invention.

Day after day passed in this manner, and probably you will say how stupid, how tiresome, all this must have been: so it would, doubtless, to one less gifted with the organ of assimilation or who has not, like me, endured the tedium of a soiree at Lady ------‘s.

At length my friend arrived, and after a few days spent in excursions to The Hague and the Palace in the wood, we set off in order to reach Cologne in time for the musical festival.

We left Rotterdam at night on the steamboat, and the following morning found us slowly stemming the current of the rapid Rhine, whose broad surface and unwooded banks gave an air of bleakness and desolation which more than once drove me from the deck to the warm stove of the cabin, crowded as the cabin was with smoking and singing Hollanders on the way to the Festival. Once I ascended the rigging to get a more extended view of the surrounding country: I might as well have remained below. A vast flat track of land, intersected by canals and studded with an occasional solitary windmill, was all the eye could compass, and then it was that I felt the full force of Goldsmith’s _mot_ that “Holland looks like a country swimming for its life.” Nothing breaks the dull monotony of a voyage on the lower Rhine except the sight of some vast raft of timber, peopled by its myriads of inhabitants, dropping down the current.

We passed several towns: but variety of Dutch city, Dutch lady, and Dutch ship, is only a slight deviation from an established scale of proportions.

Of my fellow-travellers I can tell you nothing. I had no means of cultivating their acquaintance; they spoke French (and doubtless they had a right to do so) after a manner of their own, but were as unintelligible to me as Kant’s metaphysics or Mr Montague’s directions for dancing the new galopades.

As an illustration of the peculiarity of pronunciation, they tell of a Fleming commencing, I believe, one of Beaumarchais’ plays with the line--

“Hélas! je ne sais pas quel cours je dois prendre”;

Upon which a witty Frenchman replied--

“Monsieur, prenez la poste et retournez en Flandre.”

Never was Parisian at Potsdam more thoroughly _ennuyé_ than I was during this voyage of two days. It was near night when I was roused from slumber by the boat’s arrival in Cologne. I had been dreaming of all sorts of things and people,--visions of mulled wine and Mozart, beefsteaks and Beethoven, flitted through my mind in all the mazes of mad confusion; and with the valorous resolution of realising at least one part of my musings in the shape of a hot supper and a flask of Nierensteiner, I went up on deck, when my friend came to meet me with the disastrous intelligence that there was not an unoccupied room or bed in the town. The good supper, the Nierensteiner, and the soft bed on which I had rolled by anticipation, faded like the baseless fabric of a vision.

However, we set out upon a voyage of discovery, accompanied by a little army of baggage porters and lackeys, one word of whose language we did not understand, but who did not on that account cease to hurl at our devoted heads every barbarous guttural of their macadamising tongue.

In this manner we made the tour of the entire town, and I was concluding a most affecting appeal to the sympathies of the vinegar-faced landlady of the Hôtel d’Hollande, which I already perceived would prove unsuccessful, when a German merchant with whom we had travelled from Rotterdam made his appearance, and by his kind interference we were admitted. Having realised our intentions with respect to supper, fatigued and worn out by our indefatigable exertions, we wrapped our travelling cloaks around us and slept soundly till morning.

As we had arrived one day before the Festival, we had full time to see the town. It was a mass of dark, narrow, ill-paved streets, with high gloomy-looking houses, each story projecting beyond the one beneath, and thus scarcely admitting the light of the blue heavens.

The Cathedral, however, is one of the most beautiful specimens of the florid Gothic remaining in Europe, and would, had it been completed, have eclipsed the more celebrated Cathedral of Strasbourg: the great entrance presents the richest instance of the laboured tracery of this school of architecture I have ever witnessed. The structure was originally designed to be built in the shape of a cross, but two limbs were all that were finished. The exterior is divided into a number of small chapelries, each of which boasts its patron saint, whose bones are exhibited in a glass-case to the admiration of the devotee.

Amongst the many relics preserved here, I well recollect with what pride the venerable sexton pointed out to me the skulls of Die Heilige drei Könige--by this meant the Magi, whom they call the Three Holy Kings, one of whom being an African, his skull had been most appropriately painted black.

In the middle of the great aisle stands a large misshapen block of marble, about two feet in height, and from three to four feet in length: this could never have formed any portion of the building, and stands, like our Irish Round Towers, a stumbling-block to the antiquarian.

The legend--I wish we could account for our Round Towers so reasonably--says that the devil had long endeavoured to terrify the workmen from the building, and had practised all the devices approved of on such occasions to prevent its completion; but being foiled in all, in a fit of spleen he hurled this rock through the roof of the Cathedral, and neither man nor the art of man can avail to remove it from its deep-rooted foundation. Be this as it may, there stands the rock, and OEhlenschlager, the Danish poet, has alluded to it in his spirited tale of “Peter Bolt” (translated into ‘Blackwood’s Magazine’ without acknowledgment).

We rose early on the following morning, and profiting by the advice of that wisest of travellers, Captain Dalgetty, victualled for an indefinite period. And here let me do justice to the character of that worthy woman whom I in my profligacy called vinegar-faced: as an artiste she was altogether unexceptionable.

Eaten bread is soon forgotten, saith the proverb. And if the passage is to be taken literally, so should it, say I. At the same time, I defy any man who has a heart to feel and a palate to taste ever to lose the recollection of a well-dressed maintenon cutlet or a chicken salad. No; it will recur to him _post totidem annos_, and bring once more “the soft tremulous dew” upon his lips.

At last we set out for the Festival, and although anticipating a crowd, yet we never expected to have found, as we did, every avenue blocked up by the people. Notwithstanding the immense number and the natural anxiety of all to press on and secure good places, nothing could exceed the good order and decorum: it was a perfect contradiction to Dean Swift’s adage that a crowd is a mob even if it is composed of bishops.

Into this dense mass we get gradually wedged, little regretting the delay which afforded so good an opportunity of looking about where there was so much to interest and amuse us.

The Cologne belles, with their tight-laced bodices of velvet, their black eyes, and still blacker hair, rarely covered by anything but a silk handkerchief drawn tightly over it, formed a strong contrast to the fair-complexioned, blue-eyed daughters of Holland, whose demure and almost _minauderie_ demeanour was curiously contrasted with the air of coquetry which the others have borrowed from their French neighbours; while the fat happy-looking burgher from Antwerp stood in formidable relief to the tall gaunt Prussian, who was vainly endeavouring to mould his cast-iron features into an expression of softness to salute some fair acquaintance.

My attention to the various coteries around was drawn off by a slight motion in the crowd, indicating that those nearest the door had gained admittance, and the swell of music borne upon the wind, mingled with the din of the multitude, forcibly reminded me of the far-off roar of Niagara when first I heard it booming in the distance.

A change came o’er the spirit of my dream, and, deeply engrossed by the various associations thus unexpectedly conjured up, I found myself, without being aware of it, at the entrance of the Cathedral.

Never shall I forget the effect of that moment. The vast building lay before me crowded with human beings to the roof, while the loud bray of the organ mingling its artillery of sound with the deafening peal of several hundred instruments was tremendous.

When I had sufficiently recovered from my first sensations of ecstasy, I looked towards the choir, hoping to see Ries or Spohr, both of whom were present, but I could not recognise them in the distance.

I had a very fine description of the Festival and the music--which consisted of selections from Handel and Beethoven--ready written, but I really feel that any attempt to convey the idea of this splendid spectacle, or my feelings on witnessing it, is altogether vain. In fact, the sensation of excitement with which I looked and listened was too great to permit of any permanent impression, capable of description, remaining in my mind. And I felt on coming out as if years had rolled over my head since the morning; for we measure time past not so much by the pleasurable or painful feelings which we have experienced during its lapse, as by the mere number and variety of sensations that have imprinted themselves on the sensorium....

There was little inducement to remain in Cologne when the Festival was over, so that having secured places in the steamboat for Bonn, we took our last look at the Cathedral by moonlight and returned to our beds. Next morning I was awoke by the most diabolical war-whoop that can be conceived, and on looking out from my window I descried the cause of my alarm to be a cow’s horn, blown by a person who might, from the length and breadth of his blast, have been one of the performers at Jericho. I found afterwards that the horn-blower was an emissary from the steamboat come to inform us that she was ready to depart, and would be under weigh in a few moments. After dressing rapidly, we soon found ourselves seated upon the deck: the air was calm--not a breeze ruffled the broad surface of the Rhine: it lay like a mirror before us, reflecting the tapered minarets and richly ornamented dome of the Cathedral, which glistened under the morning dew, like a vast globe of gold.

From the moment we left Cologne the scenery began to improve, and near Bonn it became really beautiful. The Rhine, from the bold and frequent winding course it takes, presents the appearance of a succession of small lakes. It is bounded by lofty vine-clad mountains bristling with tower and keep, while below are seen opening glens through which the small streams rush on, bearing their tribute to the father of rivers. The villages have generally a most picturesque effect as they rise street above street upon the steep mountain-sides, their white walls scarcely visible amid the trellised vines. And now as we passed along we could plainly hear the songs of the peasants breaking on the soft stillness of the summer morning.

After a four hours’ delightful sail we made Bonn in time for breakfast. The town itself has nothing remarkable except its situation in the valley of the Rhine and its being the seat of the second in rank amongst the Prussian universities.*

* It was established on the model of that of Berlin so lately as 1818, and, except the University of Munich, is the most modern of Germany. As early as 1777 we find an Academy existed here, and in 1786 this became a chartered University, of which, however, at the conclusion of the French Revolutionary War no trace was left The number of students, about one thousand, and the names of the two Schlegels, Niebuhr, and Walther (one of the first anatomists of Europe), attest sufficiently its present popularity. The Cabinet of Natural History at Popplesdorf is justly celebrated, and the collection of petrifactions is well known to the scientific world by the valuable work of Professor von Goldfuss [‘Petrefacta Musei Univ. Bonnencrio,’ &c) The library contains about 60,000 volumes, and includes a most remarkable cabinet of diplomatic seals and records. The Botanical Garden, which occupies upwards of nineteen acres, is considered one of the finest in Germany.

We spent the entire of the first three days visiting collections, museums, libraries, &c.; and although Professor Goldfuss, our cicerone, is a very worthy and well-informed gentleman, yet I have no mind to make you more intimately acquainted with him, so that I shall at once invite you to sip your coffee with us in the garden of the University. Here all is gaiety, life, and animation, the military are seen mixing with the townsfolk, and no longer is there any distance kept up between professor and student. The garden was in olden times the pleasure-ground of a palace, once the residence of the Churfurst of Cologne, and still preserves much of its ancient beauty. The trees are for the most part of foreign origin, and formed into long shady avenues or dark sunless bowers, in each of which might be seen some happy family party enjoying their coffee, the ladies assiduously occupied in knitting and the men no less assiduously occupied in smoking. Occasionally the loud chorus of a Freischtitz air told that the Burschen were holding their revels not far off, while the professors themselves, the learned expounders of dark metaphysics and eke the diggers of Greek roots, did not scruple to join in the gaiety of the scene, and might now be observed whisking along in the rapid revolutions of a German waltz. By the bye, let me warn any of my male readers to beware how he approaches a German dancing party if he be not perfectly _au fait_ at waltzing. It is quite sufficient to be seen looking on to cause some dancer to offer you his partner for a _turn_: this is a piece of politeness constantly extended to foreigners, and is called _hospitiren_; but indeed every spectator seems to expect a similar attention, and at each moment some tall moustached figure is seen unbuckling his _schlager_, throwing his cap upon the ground, and in a moment he is lost among the dancers.

It was already far advanced in the night and the moon was shining brightly upon the happy scene ere we turned our steps homewards, deeply regretting our incapacity either to speak German or to waltz.

The following day the Drachenfels was the scene of a rural _fête_, and thither we proceeded, and as the distance is only three English miles we went on foot. The road lay through a succession of vineyards sloping gently towards the Rhine, which is here extremely rapid. A sudden winding of the river brought us in sight of the mountain from base to summit. The Rhine here runs between the Godesberg on the one side and the Drachenfels on the other. The latter rises to the height of fifteen hundred feet above the stream, perpendicular as a wall, its summit crowned by a ruined tower. The sides are wooded with large white oak-trees through which the road winds to the top in a serpentine manner,--and thus as you ascend some new and altogether different prospect constantly meets the eye: at one moment you look out upon the dark forests and deep glens of the Sieben-gebirge, at another you see the river winding for miles beneath you through plenteous vineyards and valleys teeming with fertility; and far in the distance the tall spire of Cologne, rising amid its little forests of pinnacles, is still perceptible.

As we approached the picturesque effect was further heightened when through the intervals between the trees on the mountain-side some party might be observed slowly toiling their way upwards, the ladies mounted upon mules whose gay scarlet trappings gave all the appearance of some gorgeous pageant: and ever and anon the deep tones of the students joining in Schiller’s Bobber song, or the still more beautiful Rhein-am-Rhein, completed the illusion, and made this one of the most delightful scenes I ever observed.

We spent the entire day upon the mountains; and as we descended we observed a small figure standing motionless upon a rock at some distance beneath us. On coming nearer we discovered this to be a little girl of eight or ten years old, who, seeing us coming, had waited there patiently to present us with a garland of vine-leaves and Rhine lilies ere we crossed the river, as a charm against every possible mishap.

On our return we made the acquaintance of a professor whose name I no longer recollect--but he was a most agreeable and entertaining companion, and he gave us a clear insight into the policy of the University. When speaking of the custom of duelling, he surprised us by the admission that such practices were winked at by the heads of colleges, hoping, as he said, that the students being thus employed and having their minds occupied about their own domestic broils, would have less both of leisure and inclination to join in the quarrels and disagreements of their princes and rulers: in the same manner and with the same intention as “the Powers that were” are said to have encouraged the disturbances and riots at fairs in Ireland, hoping that the more broken heads the fewer burnings of farms or insurrectionary plots. And now that I am on the subject of Irish illustration, let me give you a better one.