solemn grandeur of one of Mozart’s masses; and the effect produced by the finest sacred music, as it floats through the lengthened aisles, through pillars, arches, and chapels, can be more easily conceived than described. The “St. Peter’s of Gothic architecture” needs nothing to increase the natural astonishment at its beauties, but it is consistent with one of the grandest religious services in Europe.
This by the way. Take the right bank of the Rhine: get a comfortable first-class carriage for yourself and your friends, if you can. Carry with you some fruit: a few peaches, grapes, or any luxury of the kind that you please. It will save trouble, as between Cologne and Heidelberg I literally should have had nothing to eat, but for the goodnature of one of our conducteurs, who procured me a bottle of wine and a sandwich at Darmstadt. If you prefer the river—and certainly, though longer, the views are finer and the air purer, to say nothing of the dust—embark at Bonn: up to that point and beyond Bingen, you will find the wine of the country better than its water. Be particular not to get into a wrong carriage: speak German by all means, if you can; and never mind about your luggage. It always turns up right at last. Do as many good natured things as you can on the road; especially for your compatriots. You will thus stand a chance of being yourself mistaken for a foreigner; but be careful not to associate yourself permanently with what is called a “regular Briton.” He will ask you to make impertinent inquiries for him along the line; to count his money; to take a place for him in the railway; to contend with porters and douaniers, and to secure him a bed at the same hotel as yourself, which you, from a natural but childish feeling of courtesy, will take care shall be the better of the two.
The glory of Heidelberg was its castle and its independence. The glory of Heidelberg is its Philistines and its Fuchs. To the lovers of the picturesque it presents attractions from the castle terraces too well known to require description here; to the curious in pipes, jewellery, caps, and student-life, it offers features, the study of which will scarcely be found to repay the trouble. As a peculiarity of the social life of Germany, student life has interest for some writers. Like other excrescences, it has its uses, and may serve to occupy the leisure moments of the ethical inquirer; but with an intimate acquaintance with its provisions and disorders, it will be better known only to be less trusted.
On the 1st of September, Baden-Baden was as full as the most thirsty water-drinker could desire. It seems to be a rule with the ladies and gentlemen of delicate constitution, that, unlike the pool of Bethesda, there cannot be too many of the maimed or infirm, sharing the benefit of the waters at once. The whole pleasure of a remedy, in the case of a spa, be it foreign or English, appears to consist in participation: a wholesale philanthropy, which we may place to a diminution of our own distresses by sharing them with others, or to a true benevolence in the imparting of our alleviations. To be candid, in Baden, the latter must be the case: nor can I conceive any appearance to be so far removed from the grim faces of a society of physic-drinkers, as the cheerful, not to say, boisterous happiness, and the piquant costumes of these Black Forest bathers. If that young Frenchman be really dyspeptic; if the young lady from the Vaudevilles or the Palais Royal, drinking champagne out of tumblers, and singing snatches of her last songs between the crowning of her cups, be in a state of chronic disease demanding the waters of Baden; if the roses on the cheek of her companion, Mademoiselle Adèle, be nothing more than the reflection of those in her chapeau; if the florid gentleman in the broad-rimmed, well-brushed hat, and polished boots, with one hand on a rouleau, within easy reach of the colour, has the corresponding foot in the grave; if the young dukes, marquises, counts, and barons, Russian, Prussian, French, or English, who throng the Kursaal, applaud Tartuffe, back the run on red, and dine al fresco at the Stephanie Bad,—be subjects for the virtues of the Trinkhalle at Baden, all I can pray for, in the way of earthly comfort, is a normal state of diseased liver, and a sufficiency of time and money thoroughly to enjoy its cure. There is rheumatism in Weisbaden, I know; and dyspeptic peers, and gouty members of the Lower House in Homburg; but there is nothing but youth, and health, and freshness, and gaiety in Baden,—or I am much mistaken.
Having perfectly satisfied the reader as to the great water-question, it is worth while to inquire the particular end for which men leave their homes for the comforts and economy of hotel life in Germany. We have an answer at once. Fearful of letting down the system by too rapid a fall, the pleasures of Baden serve to arrest the traveller on his downward course; and to fill up a vacancy between a London season and a winter at Melton. Nothing can be more charming than its situation. Surrounded by the hills and mountains of the Black Forest, itself on a rising ground, and sloping into the valley of the Oos, it looks, at the first glance, peculiarly adapted for pleasure or repose. Permit me to suggest that if the pleasures be great, the repose is nil. From morning to night there is something to do. Everybody promenades, or rides, or drives. Breakfasts at Lichtenthal, or lunches at Rothenthal. There is the old castle; a walk which certainly gives an appreciation of the bottle of Liebfraumilch awaiting you on your arrival. There is the new castle; to which the Margraves descended, as soon as the old domicile became too hot to hold them; or increased civilisation brought them nearer the subjects, whom they plundered with increased facility; the founder of which obtained from one of the Archdukes of Austria the well-merited order of the Golden Fleece. There is a lovely country all round you, in parts approaching the sublime: a pulpit, on the road to Stauffenberg, from which Satan is said to have held forth, at first to a scattered auditory, until the seductive nature of his doctrines and his eloquence, extended his reputation. Whether any of his efforts made more than a passing impression in Baden is at least open to discussion. There are the extensive beauties of Eberstein; the fantastic architectural adorn-
