Part 16

Our party was to consist of three carriage loads, and our escort were all to be _en civile_, and this last determination, I may remark, was, to a Prussian officer, a very weighty one. A Prussian officer, be it known, is always in uniform; the government do not hide away the army that fights their battles, protects their soil, and upholds their honor, for fear of wounding the susceptibilities and irritating the nerves of the working classes; the country is proud of its army, and the army is proud of its uniform, and, as a rule, a Prussian officer always wears it. On this occasion, however, the uniform was to be doffed, and the extent and style of our friends' respective possessions _en civile_, and their appearance under the metamorphosis, became a very important item in the general arrangements. Some gloried in the perfection of their projected "get up;" one or two had never possessed a suit of plain clothes since they entered the army; one had everything but a hat; another, having come from Dusseldorf on leave, was incapable of the transformation; still, with this one exception, all were looking forward to appearing, for one day, as civilians.

At a quarter to five on Whit-Tuesday we started in our carriage to seek a "topper" for our host and relative, Herr V. Hartstein Hochstein, four of his brother officers having generously promised him the required article. Our first venture was an unlucky one; the borrowed hat would not remain on Hartstein's head, and though we made every possible effort to stretch it with feet and knees, our efforts were unavailing, and we had to try again. The second friend acknowledged that he had recklessly promised what he was incapable of performing; a third passed out a hat of indifferent color, and which, on trial, at once extinguished our friend as far as his coat collar. In fear and dread, and with incessant reference to our watches, we drove to our fourth and last hope. Here a hat, carefully wrapped in a number of the _Cölnische Zeitung_, was handed to us, and with a little manoeuvring we settled that it might do. Having "requisitioned" two colored bandanas from a friend who was getting himself up for the expedition with the most elaborate care, Hartstein put his head into our hands, and by dint of wrapping, and twisting, and folding, the hat was firmly settled in its place, without other inconvenience than the corner of a red pocket-handkerchief occasionally falling over his nose, and another corner permanently hanging over his left ear.

But these were comparative trifles; we reached the fine old Moselle Bridge, not much behind time, found our friends awaiting us, and started. This bridge, one of the many Roman monuments with which this strange old city abounds, was built in the reign of Augustus; only a portion of the massive foundation, and a few of the grand original pillars formed of enormous blocks of basalt, and fastened together by huge iron clamps, now remain. In all probability the bridge would still be standing in its integrity had it not been for "the most civilized nation of modern Europe," who did their best, under their great king Louis XIV., to destroy this magnificent memorial of old world times. The ruined arches were restored and the bridge partially rebuilt by one of the Prince Electors in 1717, and in spite of its restoration, it is even now worthy of the venerable city to which it belongs.

Crossing the bridge, we turned to the right, and passing the village of Pallien, soon reached the foot of a spur of the Eifel range, a mountainous tract in the Province of Lower Rhine, extending from Coblenz, through Trier and Metz, into France. On these Eifel mountains are many extinct volcanoes; the soil is only suited for the pine-forests which cover their sides; and the dirty, rough, and poverty-stricken look of the villagers among the scattered and desolate hamlets marks them unmistakably as charcoal-burners.

After literally winding our way through this wild scenery for more than an hour, we suddenly came upon the lovely valley of the Sauer; so lovely that it is said to have attracted Willibrod by its beauty to found his Benedictine monastery on the river's banks; beautiful indeed it is, with its wooded hills and cultivated slopes; and beautiful it must have been so to have enthralled a worn and weary monk and missionary in the eighth century.

But before entering the valley I must relate a slight incident that occurred, as it especially characterizes a social phase in Prussia. We were anxiously toiling up a steep incline in single file, not even daring to rest our horses, for fear they should not be able to hold up the carriages, when a sudden turn showed us a small public-house at the top of the hill, in front of which sat a young _Fähnrich_ (ensign). Two large carts laden with forage stood directly across the road, occupying its entire width, and two troopers, looking remarkably the worse for dirt, with pipes in their mouths, hands in their pockets, and outstretched legs in the form of a reversed V, quietly contemplated our struggling and perilous ascent. "In God's name," shouted the driver of the first carriage, "make room for us up there; we cannot halt, and if we cannot get on the level we shall roll backward, and all be killed." No answer and no movement; we were becoming desperate. One of the officers _en civile_, forgetting his present insignificance, put out his head and shouted, "Move your carts, pigs, or I'll know the reason why; would you see us all roll back to perdition?" "Roll away, holiday burghers, roll away," contemptuously drawled out one of the chivalrous troopers, "the royal forage is not going to move for you."

Our situation was truly frightful; at that moment our Dusseldorf friend, in his green uniform and sword, leaped out of the carriage, dashed up the hill, applied the flat of his sword with unsparing vigor to the backs of the astounded troopers, used a goodly amount of strong language to the abashed ensign, and before we had time to begin our backward descent the "royal" forage-carts were placed close up against "the Public" in single file, and we were safely struggling to the top of the hill. It is just possible, only just possible, that had I been one of a party of "holiday burghers," I might not have been alive in this year of grace to tell this tale.

And now we near the stone bridge which brings us over the Sauer from Prussia into Luxembourg; we are in plenty of time, but already feel the atmosphere of the procession. The country round is all excitement; groups of men and women in their holiday dresses are eagerly talking; some are kneeling and devoutly praying by the way-side, others are counting their beads and muttering their paternosters with careless tongues and wandering eyes; the instant our carriages cross the bridge we are thronged. "Oh! for the love of God," says a girl, "give me a franc, or a ten-groschen piece, I don't care which, and I'll jump for all the sins you have committed since last Monday was a week." "My lord," says a man to one of our party, "five francs, and I'll jump to the very cross for you without a halt, and cut you off all this year's sins." "Dear madam," whined an old woman, "I'll never reach the big crucifix, but I'll do a little jumping for you for a franc." I began now to realize that there _is_ a jumping procession at Echternach.

We had been most kindly invited by the colonel commanding at Echternach to breakfast with him, and see the procession from his windows, which overlook the best part of the town, and we naturally availed ourselves of his courteous hospitality.

[The shrine of St. Willibrod, at Echternach, has for centuries been a place of pilgrimage, though the origin of the jumping mania is not definitely known. There are several traditions having to do with the cure of a pestilence by the saint. It is now believed that the penalty for sin is remitted in proportion to the height and strength of the jumping.]

Breakfast is finished, and we take our places at the windows. The procession has formed on the Prussian side of the stone bridge, a short address has been delivered to the excited people, and in the distance we hear the shrill sounds of the many-voiced instruments, and the strange measured, musical tramp of the coming thousands. Headed by the privileged Prussian parish of Warwieler, on they come, these simple pilgrims, in columns of parishes, four abreast, and hand in hand, each parish with its banners waving, and headed by its own musicians, for every man who has played for money during the year is bound to give his services on this occasion, and woe betide the man who fails to put in an appearance. The strange dance consists of two steps forward with the right foot and one step backward with the left, and is danced to a very simple melody, and not one of the many thousands is out of time. The wise ones literally _step_ the measure, and generally accomplish the whole pilgrimage, which lasts about two hours and a half; but under superstitious excitement the wise ones are in the minority, and when the procession passed our windows, though never breaking their ranks or losing time, the majority were springing in a state of mad excitement, and, strange to say, the men were more "fast and furious" than the women. One man in particular was leaping to such a degree that at every step he sprang head and shoulders above the crowd, and as he had passed along, people rushed out of their houses and plied him with cider, which he invariably drank without losing his place or breaking time.

I do not recollect seeing one boy in the procession, though there may, of course, have been many, but there were hundreds of girls, all quiet and orderly. To watch the different moods and manners of these people as they passed on was a study well worth the journey; though the haggard faces and the drawn parched blue lips of many of these benighted jumpers were sad enough to behold. After looking at them for some time from our windows, I suggested that we adjourn to the church, and so witness the close of the procession. This suggestion was not received enthusiastically, and only one friend was willing to take compassion on my English curiosity. Off we started, but were unfortunately obliged to pass through a break in the line, which we did as decorously as possible, and were invited with outstretched hands by those who still had breath to speak to join the procession and so wipe off some of our sins; this we gratefully declined, and made rapidly for the parish church.

The church, being on an eminence, is reached by a flight of stone steps, and we took up our position at their base. On, on, they came, these strange pilgrims, with their unfaltering tramp and unflagging melody; but, oh! in what thinned numbers and with what drawn faces. In sight of the blessed goal how many of them drop! and the man I had watched so anxiously fell prostrate at the bottom of the steps, looking as if his soul had been driven by this frightful pilgrimage to seek its rest in another world. But the strong and steady ones tramp up the steps, spring round the high altar in wild ecstasy, and passing out at the opposite door, jump round the tall crucifix, fall on their knees, and all is over.

We loitered for some time about the church, listening to the very primitive remarks of the dispersing crowd, and wondering at its strange infatuation; and as we returned to our little inn we passed many a prostrate and exhausted form, some of whom could never again, alas, know a day's strong health. After a great deal of pleasant talk, a little eager discussion, and some very indifferent refreshment, I started on an excursion through the town, having an idea that I should find it _morne et silencieuse_, a sort of "city of the silent," after all the excitement of the morning. But, lo! from every Gasthof and Wirthshaus there came a sound of revelry; fiddles, flutes, cornets, laughing, dancing, everywhere. Could it be possible? Boldly I insisted upon my escort accompanying me into one of these petty inns, and going with me into an upper room, whence the gay sounds proceeded. Behold! the tearing galopade and the whirling waltz in one room, the bumping polka in another; and the "Queen of the Wirthshaus" ball, around whom the partners flocked and beseeched, was a stout young woman of about thirty, whom I had seen solemnly and deliberately footing it in the procession, without pause or hinderance from beginning to end. And all these devoted dancers of the many public-houses around and about had all been resolutely hopping away their sins from the bridge to the shrine for more than two hours.

Now let me record this wondrous fact. I went freely about through the town; I walked into small inns and public-houses, as I dared not have done in my own country; I was received politely everywhere; and in all that hilarious community, through the whole of that licensed holiday, from eight in the morning till late in the afternoon, I did not see one case of drunkenness. Yes, these people of the Eifel and the Sauer Valley and their surrounding towns may, perhaps, be debased by superstition, but at any rate they are not like some prouder communities I could name, thoroughly brutalized by drunkenness.

Our remaining half-hours were spent in the pleasure-gardens, where we fortified ourselves for the home journey with the inevitable coffee and _Mai-brank_,--Turk's-head cake,--and sandwiches of brown and white bread and butter. We started at seven on our return to Trier, merry as we came, not one discordant note having jarred on the universal harmony; and to one only of our party had there been anything like a hitch in the perfect pleasure of the day, and this hitch was occasioned by what, at the beginning of our journey, I had so foolishly considered "a comparative trifle,"--the ever-recurring red silk pocket-handkerchief from under Hartstein's hat and over his nose, which sorely disturbed the equanimity and wounded the conjugal pride of his devoted wife. With this exception, our expedition had been a complete success; and I was indeed pleased to add to my travelling sketches the Jumping Procession at Echternach.

THE CAPITAL OF AUSTRIA.

JOHN RUSSELL.

[It is with Vienna as it appeared in 1825 that we here propose to deal, in the language of a traveller of that period, who has given a graphic account of what was then and there to be seen. Russell's "Tour in Germany" is a sprightly and interesting work, and the Vienna which he describes, while yet in its chrysalis state, displayed many of the characteristics of the handsome and attractive city of to-day. Our extract begins with a distant view of the Austrian capital.]

On reaching the brow of the low eminences that border to the north the valley through which the Danube takes his course, a magnificent prospect burst at once upon the eye. A wide plain lay below, teeming with the productions and habitations of industrious men. On the east, towards Hungary, it was boundless, and the eye was obstructed only by the horizon. To the westward rose the hills which, beginning in orchard and vineyard, and terminating in forest and precipice, form, in this direction, the commencement of the Alps; and to the south the plain was bounded by the loftier summits of the Styrian mountains. Nearly in the centre of the picture lay Vienna itself, extending on all sides its gigantic arms; and the spire of the cathedral, high above every other object, was proudly presenting its Gothic pinnacle to the evening sun. From this point the inequality of the ground on which Vienna stands strikes the eye at once, and the cathedral has the advantage of occupying the highest point of the proper city; for not only the spire, but nearly the whole body of the edifice, was distinctly seen above all the other buildings of the city.

Every one of the three hundred thousand inhabitants who crowd Vienna and its interminable suburbs seems to reckon it a duty to make his life a commentary. They are more devoted friends of joviality, pleasure, and good living, and more bitter enemies of everything like care or thinking,--a more eating, drinking, good-natured, ill-educated, hospitable, and laughing people,--than any other of Germany, or, perhaps, of Europe. Their climate and soil, the corn and wine with which Heaven has blessed them, exempt them from any very anxious degree of thought about their own wants; and the government, with its spies and police, takes most effectual care that their gayety shall not be disturbed by thinking of the public necessities, or studying for the public weal. In regard to themselves, they are distinguished by a love of pleasure; in regard to strangers, by great kindness and hospitality. It is difficult to bring an Austrian to a downright quarrel with you, and it is almost equally difficult to prevent him from injuring your health by good living.

The city itself is a splendid and a bustling one; no other German metropolis comes near it in that crowded activity which distinguishes our own capitals. It does not stand, strictly speaking, on the Danube, which is a mile to the northward, and is separated from it by the largest of all the suburbs, the Leopoldstadt, as well as by the extensive tract of ground on which the groves of the Prater have been planted and its walks laid out. The walls, however, are washed, on this side, by a small arm of the Danube, which rejoins the main stream a short way below the city, and is sufficiently large for the purposes of inland navigation. On the south, the proper city is separated from the suburbs by a still more insignificant stream, which, however, gives its name to the capital, the Vienna. This rivulet, instead of serving effectually even the purposes of cleanliness, brings down the accumulated refuse of other regions of the town, and its noisome effluvia often render it an effort to pass the bridge across it, one of the most crowded thoroughfares of Vienna.

The proper city is of nearly a circular form, and cannot be more than three miles in circumference, for I have often walked quite around the ramparts in less than an hour. The style of building does not pretend to much ornament, but is massive and imposing; the streets are generally narrow, and the houses lofty, rising to four or five floors, which are all entered by a common stair. There is much more regularity, and there are many more cornices and pillars, in Berlin; in Dresden there is a more frequent intermixture of showy edifices; there is more lightness and airiness of effect in the best parts of Munich; and in Nürnberg and Augsburg there is a greater profusion of the outward ornaments of the olden time; but in none of these towns is there so much of that sober and solid stateliness, without gloom, which, after all, is perhaps the most fitting style of building for a large city. Some individual masses of building, in the very heart of the city, are as populous as large villages....

"The art of walking the streets" in London is an easy problem, compared with the art of walking in them in Vienna. In the former, there is some order and distinction, even in the crowd; two-legged and four-legged animals have their allotted places, and are compelled to keep them; in the latter, all this is otherwise. It is true that, in the principal streets, a few feet on each side are paved with stones somewhat larger than those in the centre, and these side slips are intended for pedestrians; but the pedestrians have no exclusive right; the level of the street is uniform; there is nothing to prevent horses and carriages from encroaching on the domain, and, accordingly, they are perpetually trespassing.

The streets, even those in which there is the greatest bustle, the Kärnthnerstrasse, for example, are generally narrow; carriages, hackney-coaches, and loaded wagons, observing no order, cross each other in all directions; and, while they hurry past each other, or fill the street by coming from opposite quarters, the pedestrian is every moment in danger of being run up against the wall. A provoking circumstance is, that frequently a third part, or even a half of the street, is rendered useless by heaps of wood, the fuel of the inhabitants. The wood is brought into the city in large pieces, from three to four feet long. A wagon-load of these logs is laid down on the street, at the door of the purchaser, to be sawed and split into smaller pieces, before being deposited in his cellar.

When this occurs, as it often does, at every third or fourth door, the street just loses so much of its breadth. Nothing remains but the centre, and that is constantly swarming with carriages, and carts, and barrows. The pedestrian must either wind himself through among their wheels, or clamber over successive piles of wood, or patiently wait till the centre of the street becomes passable for a few yards. To think of doubling the wooden promontory without this precaution is far from being safe. You have scarcely by a sudden spring saved your shoulders from the pole of a carriage, when a wheelbarrow makes a similar attack on your legs. You make spring the second, and in all probability your head comes in contact with the uplifted hatchet of a wood-cutter. The wheelbarrows seem to be best off. They fill such a middle rank between bipeds and quadrupeds, that they lay claim to the privileges of both, and hold on their way rejoicing, commanding respect equally from men and horses.

To guide a carriage through these crowded, encumbered, disorderly, narrow streets, without either occasioning or sustaining damage, is, perhaps, the highest achievement of the coach-driving art. Our own knights of the whip, with all their scientific and systematic excellencies, must here yield the palm to the practical superiority of their Austrian brethren. Nothing can equal the dexterity with which a Vienna coachman winds himself, and winds himself rapidly, through every little aperture, and, above all, at the sharp turns of the streets. People on foot, indeed, must look about them; and, from necessity, they have learned to look about them so well, that accidents are wonderfully rare, and very seldom, indeed, does it happen that the Jehus do not keep clear of each other's wheels. The hackney-coachmen form as peculiar a class as they do in London, with as much _esprit de corps_, but more humor, full of jokes and extortion. It is said that the most skilful coachman from any other country cannot drive in Vienna without a regular education. A few years ago, an Hungarian nobleman brought out a coachman from London; but Tom was under the necessity of resigning the box, after a day's driving pregnant with danger to his master's limbs and carriage....

Vienna has some very noble public squares, though no people requires them less for purposes of recreation; for, when amusement is their object, they hasten beyond the walls to the coffee-houses of the glacis, or the shades of the Prater, the wine-houses and monks of Kloster-Neuburg, or the gardens of Schönbrunn. The best of these squares happen to be in parts of the city where the fashionable world does not often intrude; they are not planted, but they are excellently paved; they are not gaudy with palaces, but they are surrounded by the busy shops and substantial and comfortable dwellings of happy citizens, and are commonly adorned with some religious emblem or a public fountain. Both the temples and fountains have too much work about them; there is too much striving after finery of sculpture, a department of art in which the Austrians are still very far behind. The consequence is, that there are crowds of figures which have no more to do with a basin of water than with a punch-bowl.