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Title: Around the clock in Europe
        A travel sequence

Author: Charles Fish Howell

Illustrator: Harold Field Kellogg

Release date: June 26, 2023 [eBook #71043]

Language: English

Original publication: United States: Houghton Mifflin Company

Credits: Fiona Holmes and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AROUND THE CLOCK IN EUROPE ***



Transcriber’s Note

 Page 76 — conquerers changed to =conquerors=
 Page 171 — expecially changed to =especially=
 Page 226 — Funicolà changed to =Funiculà=


AROUND THE CLOCK IN EUROPE


[Illustration:

  PIAZZA SAN MARCO FROM THE GRAND CANAL _Page 305_]




    AROUND THE CLOCK IN
    EUROPE

    A Travel-Sequence

    BY

    CHARLES FISH HOWELL

    WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY
    HAROLD FIELD KELLOGG

    [Illustration]

    BOSTON AND NEW YORK

    HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY

    The Riverside Press Cambridge

    1912

    COPYRIGHT, 1912, BY CHARLES FISH HOWELL

    ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

    _Published October 1912_

    TO

    HELEN EDITH HOWELL


    _Sweet the memory is to me_
    _Of a land beyond the sea._

    LONGFELLOW.


IN EXPLANATION


The pages that follow should best account for themselves, of course,
but for the satisfaction of those who very properly require some
general conception of a project before definitely entering upon it, the
author begs to say that he has here sought to visualize to the reader
the appearance and the life of these cities at the hours indicated,
and to preserve, as well, the distinctive atmosphere of each. He has
endeavored to catch and present faithful impressions of the streets,
their kaleidoscopic animation, and the activities and characteristics
of the people; to touch the pen-pictures with a light overwash of the
racial and national peculiarities that distinguish each, and to invest
them with what insight, sympathy, and enthusiasm he is capable of. It
is “fitting the scene with the apposite phrase,” as Mr. Howells has
so aptly described the process and as he himself has so wonderfully
exemplified it. A formidable undertaking? Indeed, yes; but there is the
dictum of Mr. Browning that the purpose swells the account.

These, then, are impressionistic sketches. They are of the moment only.
It has been sought, most of all, to give them just that character. They
have been written as reflecting the probable observations and emotions
of visitors of normal enthusiasm during these hours and in these
environs. Under such conditions, it is well to remember, every active
mind has its sudden, drifting excursions afield; something in the
visible, present surroundings whimsically invokes the subtle genii of
Memory and Imagination, and one is whisked off in a breath, and without
rhyme or reason, to the most ultimate and alluring Isles of Thought.
These swift and scarcely accountable flights are the common experience
of all travelers, and the author has felt it to be a part of his task
to take proper cognizance of them.

Travel is generally conceded to be one of the most informing and
diverting of engagements, and to gain in both particulars in proportion
to the favorableness of the conditions under which it is prosecuted.
It is, therefore, a satisfaction to be in position to afford readers
advantages scarcely obtainable elsewhere. Discarding conventions of
time and space, the author undertakes to give them twelve _consecutive_
happy hours in Europe,—once around the clock,—always endeavoring
to secure the most favorable union of hour and place. And though
there may be dissent from his judgment concerning the superiority of
this combination or that, there can hardly be two opinions as to the
perfection of the transportation facilities. The latter eliminate time
and space, and convey the reader from city to city and from point to
point, with no discomfort or inconvenience whatever, and without the
loss of so much as a tick of the watch.

With foot in the stirrup, it may be added that there has been an
earnest desire to entertain those whom circumstances have hitherto kept
at home, as also to revive to memory golden recollections for travelers
who have already passed along these pleasant ways. What is here offered
is just a new portfolio of sketches from Nature; the touch of another
but reverent hand on the old and well-loved scenes. Surely there can be
no better reason for any book than a desire to share with others the
happiness experienced by

  THE AUTHOR.




CONTENTS


    EDINBURGH—1 P.M. TO 2 P.M.       1

    ANTWERP—2 P.M. TO 3 P.M.        33

    ROME—3 P.M. TO 4 P.M.           69

    PRAGUE—4 P.M. TO 5 P.M.        101

    SCHEVENINGEN—5 P.M. TO 6 P.M.  135

    BERLIN—6 P.M. TO 7 P.M.        153

    LONDON—7 P.M. TO 8 P.M.        183

    NAPLES—8 P.M. TO 9 P.M.        215

    HEIDELBERG—9 P.M. TO 10 P.M.   249

    INTERLAKEN—10 P.M. TO 11 P.M.  273

    VENICE—11 P.M. TO MIDNIGHT     299

    PARIS—MIDNIGHT TO 1 A.M.       329




ILLUSTRATIONS


    PIAZZA SAN MARCO FROM THE GRAND CANAL (page 305) _Frontispiece_

    EDINBURGH CASTLE                                 1

    EDINBURGH, PRINCES STREET                        4

    THE WHOLE FAMILY                                33

    ANTWERP, FROM THE SCHELDT                       42

    IN THE GARDENS OF THE VATICAN                   69

    ROME, THE PIAZZA DI SPAGNA                      90

    THE PULVERTURM                                 101

    PRAGUE, THE CASTLE FROM THE OLD BRIDGE         108

    DUTCH GIRLS ARE ALWAYS KNITTING                135

    SCHEVENINGEN BEACH                             140

    IN THE SIEGES-ALLÉE                            153

    BERLIN, UNTER DEN LINDEN                       160

    TRAFALGAR SQUARE                               183

    LONDON, ST. PAUL’S FROM UNDER WATERLOO BRIDGE  212

    MARGHERITA                                     215

    THE BAY OF NAPLES                              220

    A HEIDELBERG STUDENT                           249

    HEIDELBERG, FROM THE CASTLE TERRACE            252

    DOWN FROM THE MOUNTAIN                         273

    INTERLAKEN, ON THE HOTEL LAWN                  282

    PIAZZA SAN MARCO                               299

    VENICE, GRAND CANAL FROM THE PIAZZETTA         304

    A GARGOYLE OF NOTRE DAME                       329

    PARIS, ON THE BOULEVARD                        334




[Illustration]




AROUND THE CLOCK

IN EUROPE




EDINBURGH

1 P.M. TO 2 P.M.


Up there on the gusty heights of Edinburgh no one ever inquires the
time at one o’clock in the afternoon. Precisely at the second, a ball
flutters to the top of the Nelson flagstaff on Calton Hill and a
cannon booms from a battery at Castle Rock; and watches are then set
by merchants all over town, by shepherds on the shaggy Pentland Hills,
and sailors on ships in the lee of Leith. And one o’clock is the very
best time Edinburgh could have fixed upon to encourage her people to
look up and about and behold her at her finest. It is luncheon-hour,
and when the sun is kindly, “Auld Reekie” is just about as garish and
stimulating as it is possible for a town of such dignified traditions
and questionable climate ever to become. The air freshens in from
blustering Leith, and fair Princes Street wears its most beguiling
smiles. One thrills with the joy of being alive in so brave and bonny
a world, with the bluebells and heather of Old Scotland about him and
this town of song and story at his feet. He gazes at the cheerful
crowds moving leisurely along the valley gardens elegant with statues
and flowered lawns, or across at the frowzy heads in rickety garret
windows away up among the palsied gables of ancient High Street, and
he knows that over there is the Canongate of stern tradition and the
storied St. Giles’ and black Holyrood, and beyond them he sees the
Salisbury Crags, a gaunt palisade halfway up to lofty Arthur’s Seat. He
has just arrived, perhaps, with the glow on his face of all he has read
and heard of this famed place, and the bugles are singing on Castle
Hill and the Edinburgh bells are ringing.

There is little opportunity for preliminary impressions while
arriving. The train darts up a valley before you have finished with
the suburban cottages of the laboring men, and with an ultimate shriek
of relief abruptly dives into its cave, as it were, and deposits you
unceremoniously in the esplanaded Waverley Station, with flowered
walks above and a market just at hand. The wise traveler gathers up
his luggage and fares eagerly forth to Princes Street, as a matter
of course. There, on the way to his hotel, he finds a good part of
Edinburgh idling pleasantly after luncheon, for Princes Street is
the dear delight of the loiterer be he old or young, Robin or Jean.
He is studied as he passes through the crowds, curiously, smilingly,
critically, tolerantly. His clothing may excite disapproval, his
baggage amusement, and his intentions speculation. Curiosity “takes the
air” at noon. Arrived in a moment at a Princes Street hotel and duly
registered, he is handed a curious disk of white cardboard the size of
an after-dinner coffee-cup’s top, upon which is blazoned the number of
the room to which he has just been assigned. Preceded by a chambermaid
gowned in black and aproned in white and followed by a porter with
his traps, he advances grandly to his quarters, according to the tag,
and hurries to a window for his first keen impression of the “Modern
Athens.”

[Illustration: EDINBURGH, PRINCES STREET]

Just why it should be called an “Athens” would scarcely be apparent
from a Princes Street hotel window. The literary rights to the title
might be conceded, but the stranger will need to view the town from
some neighboring height to appreciate the physical similarity between
the two cities and to observe the suggestiveness of the Castle and the
reminder of the Acropolis in the “ruin”-crowned summit of Calton Hill.
What he does see from his window is sufficiently inspiring. At his feet
stretches Princes Street which he has heard called the finest avenue in
Europe, and along its other side terraces of vivid turf, set with shade
trees and statues and flowered walks, drop down in graceful steps to
the lawns in the bottom of the valley that was once the North Loch’s
basin and where now, to Edinburgh’s chagrin, are the railroad tracks.
Across these gardens vaults a boulevard styled “The Mound,” and on
their farther side is the gray old Castle on its precipitous crag with
a soft sweep of green braes at its base. On the Castle side of the
valley the far-famed High Street turns the venerable backs of its tall,
tottering, weather-blackened rookeries on the frivolity of Princes
Street, and scornfully gives its laundry to the breeze in hundreds of
heaped and crooked gable-windows. Centuries before any of us were born
those fantastic and whimsical family nests were lined up as we see them
to-day. One could fancy them a row of colossal, prehistoric giraffes
with their tails all our way, nibbling imaginary tree-tops on High
Street. The stranger will lean out of his window and look down Princes
Street and start with delight to see that “sublimest monument to a
literary genius,” the lace-like Gothic spire to Scott, where, under a
springing canopy of arches and aspiring needles studded with statues of
the immortal characters he created, sits the great Sir Walter himself
in snowy Carrara, with his favorite hound at his feet. And one’s heart
warms to this romantic Edinburgh so beloved of him and of the fiery
Burns, the passionate Chalmers, the gentle Allan Ramsay, and Jeffrey
of the brilliant “far-darting” criticisms. Here, in their time, mused
Robert Fergusson and David Livingstone and Smollett and Hume and
Goldsmith and De Quincey and “Kit North” and Carlyle; and but yesterday
has added the name of Stevenson, not the least loved of them all. What
inspiration this region must have kindled to have given to Art such
sons as Gordon, Drummond, Nasmyth, Wilkie, Raeburn, and Faed! Could
the roster of old Greyfriars Burying-Ground be called, one would marvel
at the number of great names there memorialized that are familiar and
beloved to the remotest, out-of-the-way corners of the earth. And so
the new arrival closes his window more slowly than he raised it and
steals reverently down into the street to meet this Edinburgh face to
face.

You might think, to hear Americans talk at home, that every other
Edinburgh man carries a dirk or a claymore under a tartan and wears a
ferocious red beard like the pictures of Rob Roy; that people go about
in plaid shawls and tam o’shanters, and that most society functions end
up with a Highland fling. One may see at wayside railroad stations,
as in our own country, wild, hair-blown lassies with flaming cheeks
running in from the hills to have a look at the train; but with some
such mild exception, if it is one, the Scots on their native heath
are, of course, precisely what we are used to elsewhere. Types apart,
the man of the streets of Edinburgh looks entirely familiar—shrewd
and combative, rugged and perhaps hard, slouchy and indifferent in
the matter of dress, hobnailed and be-capped. There is something
tremendously genuine and wholesome about him. He is merry and brisk
and lively, often; but you would not call him ever quite gay—at least
with that sparkle that dances in the eyes you look into on the Paris
boulevards. You could scarcely, for instance, imagine a Scotchman
singing a barcarolle! Best of all they are honest and sincere, and
one takes to them at once. Here are the lassies and laddies you have
long sung about, fresh-faced and debonair. Cheerful fearlessness shines
out of their frank blue eyes, and they look to dare all things and be
utterly unafraid. The square foreheads of the older men, the austere
cheek bones and strong chins, unscroll history to the observer and make
him think of savage broils along the border, of fierce finish-fights
throughout the wild Highlands, and of the deathless Grays of Waterloo.
You may defeat a Scotchman, but he will never admit it, and if he
is all-Scotch he will not even know it. They are brave, witty, and
devoted, and many a person will take issue with Swift for finding their
conversation “hardly tolerable,” and with Lamb for pronouncing their
“tediousness provoking” and for giving them up in despair of ever
learning to like them.

The new arrival plunges into Princes Street, accepts inspection
good-naturedly, and soon feels entirely at home. He may even find the
day bright and cheerful, in spite of apprehension over the dictum
of Stevenson that this climate is “the vilest under heaven.” The
street is quite unusual—one side a terraced valley, the other a
splendid line of shops, clubs, and hotels, with gay awnings. Paris
and London novelties fill the windows. A throng of vehicles bustles
up and down—motor-busses, double-decked trolley cars, taxi-cabs,
hired Victorias, two-wheeled carts, brewery wagons, station lorries,
tourists’ _chars-à-bancs_ with drivers in scarlet liveries, private
carriages and bicycles. The stream of people on either pavement is
of the holiday cheeriness that comes with the luncheon recess from
office and shop, though here and there one may occasionally discover
some “sour-looking female in bombazine” that recalls R. L. S.’s “Mrs.
McRankin” and who appears as ready as she to inquire whether we
attend to our “releegion.” The restaurants are plying a brisk trade,
contenting their tarrying guests, speeding the parting and hailing
the coming. Whole coveys of pretty shop-girls with brilliant cheeks,
wholesome and vivacious, come chattering and laughing out of tea- and
luncheon-rooms and flutter back to work with frequent enthusiastic
stops before alluring windows. Workmen in tweed caps and clerks in
straw hats pass by, to or from their occupations, and always with
lingering looks toward the Princes Street Gardens, so that one can
accurately guess whether they are coming from or going to office by
applying the reliable Shakespearean formula—

  “Love goes to Love as schoolboys from their books,
  And Love from Love to school with heavy looks.”

The air is rhythmic with the up-and-down slur of this speech of
“aye” and “na.” Curious faces flash past. Threadbare lawyers argue
pompously as they saunter back arm in arm toward Parliament Close,
and the ruddy-cheeked girls, by contrast, seem so distracting that a
foreigner rages at the sentiment that “kissing is out of season when
the gorse is out of bloom.” Occasionally, even at so early an hour,
there is evidence of the passion for drink. “Willie brew’d a peck o’
maut” flashes to mind, and one fancies the unsteady ones are trying
to hum, “We are na fou, we’re no that fou, but just a drappie in our
ee.” When night comes on, sober men in the streets have reason to
frown censoriously; and if it be a Saturday night, they may even feel
lonesome.

A passing regiment is a welcome interruption and a brave spectacle.
It is always hailed with shouts of joy. All Edinburgh turns in its
bed Sunday mornings at nine to see the Black Watch come out from the
Castle for “church parade” at St. Giles’s. Nothing stirs Princes Street
on any week day like a military display. It is a thrilling moment to
a stranger, perhaps, when he has his first glimpse of a young Tommy
Atkins, and he stops stock-still to take in the bright scarlet,
tailless jacket, the tight trousers, the “pill-box” perilously cocked
over an ear, and the inevitable “swagger cane” with which he slaps his
leg as he braves it along. But what is that to the passing of a company
of Highlanders! Along they come, kilts and plaids, sporrans swinging,
claymores rattling, and jolly Glengarry bonnets poised rakishly to the
falling point. Ten pipers are droning and three drummers are pounding;
and one watches, as they pass, for the holly sprig, or what-not, they
wear in their bonnets as a badge of the clan. The best show is made by
the King’s Highlanders from up Balmoral way; and splendid they are in
royal Stuart tartan, with the oak leaf and thistle in their bonnets and
each man carrying a Lochaber axe. If there is anything more inspiriting
than cheery bagpipe music at such a time, no one to laugh foolishly at
it and every one to love it, and the men stepping proudly and the crowd
applauding,—I, for one, do not know it.

Keenness of impressions, as we all know, may depend on the most trivial
circumstances of time and place. I recall, for example, a sharp and
thrilling musical experience in Scotland, with the instrument nothing
more than the despised and humble mouth-organ. Perhaps it was the
mood, perhaps the setting, perhaps the unexpectedness of it; there
was so little and yet so much. At all events, I shall not soon forget
the sparkle and stir of “The British Grenadiers” as it ripped the
sharp night air of quiet Melrose to the approach of three English
soldiers, one with the mouth-organ and the others whistling in time as
they marched briskly along. I shall always remember the rhythmic beat
of their feet as they swung across the murky, deserted square, the
loudness, the thrill, and the lilt of that historic melody, and the
flicker of a lamp in a window here and there and the pleasant sting of
the keen night air.

There is no better place for a stranger to “get his bearings” in
Edinburgh than out on that valley-spanning boulevard they call “The
Mound.” He then has the Old Town to one side and the New Town to the
other, and on opposite corners, as if to maintain the balance, the
Castle and Calton Hill. He also takes note of the several bridges
that clamp the town together, as it were; and he may look down into
the gardens before him and watch the children playing as far as the
promenade-covered Waverley Station, or he may turn and look the other
way and see quite as many more all the way along the pleasant green to
the old battle-scarred West Kirk of St. Cuthbert’s where De Quincey
lies in his quiet grave. Thus he will find himself of a sunny afternoon
between the pleasant horns of a most agreeable dilemma. He must choose
whether to spend his first hour in the New Town or the Old. If he
remembers what Ruskin said he will fly from the New; but then he may go
there, after all, if he recalls the opinion of the old skipper cited
by Stevenson, whose most radiant conception of Paradise was “the New
Town of Edinburgh, with the wind the matter of a point free.” He must
decide whether his present inclination is for latter-day city features,
like conventional streets lined with substantial gray stone buildings
looking all very much alike, for the fashionables of Charlotte Square
and Moray Place and the bankers and brokers of St. Andrew Square, or
the historic ground of crowded old High Street and the Castle and
Holyrood. He would find in the New Town some old places, too, for
it is one hundred and fifty years old, and there are the literary
associations of the last century and the house on Castle Street where
Scott lived more than a quarter-century—“poor No. 39,” as he called it
in his Journal—and wrote the early Waverley Novels, and rejoiced along
with his mystified friends in the tremendous success of “The Great
Unknown.” He would find it a rapidly modernizing city; no longer may
the children salute the lamplighter on his nightly rounds with “Leerie,
Leerie, licht the lamps!” But he would find the most interesting things
there the oldest things, and they all in the Antiquarian Museum—and
what a show! John Knox’s pulpit, the banners of the Covenanters, the
“thumbikins” that “aided” confession and the guillotine “Maiden” that
rewarded it, the pistols Robert Burns used as an exciseman, and the
sea-chest and cocoanut cup of Alexander Selkirk, the real Robinson
Crusoe; and there, too, is Bonnie Prince Charlie’s blue ribbon of
the Garter and the ring Flora Macdonald gave him when they parted.
If historic paraphernalia is alluring, however, the scenes of its
associations are much more so; and our friend would doubtless hesitate
no longer, but turn to the Old Town and trudge up the steep way to the
Castle.

    “You tak’ the high road
    And I’ll tak’ the low road,
    And I’ll get to Scotland afore ye”;—

and if the song had kept to geography it would probably have added,
“And we’ll meet at the bonny Castle o’ Auld Reekie.” Such, at least,
has been a Scotch custom for thirteen hundred years; and with every
reason. Through the long and cruel centuries it has gathered to
its flinty gray bosom memories of every possible phase of national
mutation, desperate or glorious, gloomy or gay. One approaches it with
awe. So long has it gripped the summit of that impregnable rock, half
a thousand feet sheer on three of its sides, that it has blended into
the life and color of its foundations, like a huge chameleon, until one
could scarcely say where rock leaves off and castle begins. A stern and
pitiless object, tolerating only here and there a grassy crevice at its
base, and a clinging tree or two. In the great “historic mile” of High
Street, lifting gradually from Holyrood to this rugged elevation, one
feels the illusion of an enormous scornful finger extended dramatically
westward toward the traditional rival, Glasgow. There is no need to
see Highland regiments drilling on its broad esplanade, or to enter
its sally-port or penetrate the dungeons in its rocky depths to have
confidence that the royal regalia of “The Honours of Scotland” are safe
enough here, on the red cushions in their iron cage. One enters, and
there settles upon him a feeling of sharing in every grim tradition
since the doughty days “when gude King Robert rang.” It is not a visit;
it is an initiation.

Quite worthy of this savage stronghold is the inspiring outlook from
its parapets over hills and rivers and storied glens. One turns
impatiently from “Mons Meg,” which may have been a big gun in some
past day of little ones, to gaze afar over the carse of Stirling
and the trailing silver links of the Forth to where the snow shines
in the clefts of Ben Ledi, or out over the Pentland Hills where the
“Sweet Singers” awaited the Judgment. The sportsman will think of
the grouse-shooting at Loch Earn; the sentimentalist will reflect
that when night settles over Aberdeenshire the pipers will strike
up their strathspeys and there will be Scotch reels by torchlight.
Scotland seems unrolled at your feet and Scottish songs rush to mind
until you fairly bound the region in verse and story: To the north
and northwest, “Bonnie Dundee,” the glens of “Clan Alpine’s warriors
true,” Bannockburn and “Scots wha hae wi’ Wallace bled,” and “The Banks
of Allan Water”; to the north and east, the Firth of Forth where the
fishwives’ “puir fellows darkle as they face the billows”; to the west
and southwest, “The banks and braes o’ bonnie Doon,” “Tam o’Shanter’s”
land, “Sweet Afton” and “Bonnie Loch Leven” whence “the Campbells are
comin’”; and to the south, “The braes of Yarrow,” “Norham’s castled
steep, Tweed’s fair river, broad and deep, and Cheviot’s mountains
lone,” and, most sung of all, “The Border”:—

    “England shall, many a day, tell of the bloody fray
    When the blue bonnets came over the border.”

The afternoon sun rests brightly on the pretty glen in the foreground
where lie the dismal, bat-flown ruins of Rosslyn Castle, loopholed for
archers and shadowed in ancient yews that have overhung the Esk for
a thousand years, and on the delicate chapel of stone-lace where the
barons of Rosslyn await the Judgment in full armor with finger-tips
joined in prayer. And there, too, are the cool, dark thickets of
Hawthornden, recalling the ever-popular

    “Gang down the burn, Davy Love,
    And I will follow thee.”

One cannot forbear a smile as he surveys the noble bridge that spans
the Forth and recalls the insistent pride of Edinburgh in the same.
Here is an achievement over which all visitors are expected to exclaim
in amazement—and engineers, I presume, invariably do. On this point
your Edinburgh man is immovable. He scorns to elaborate and he will not
descend to eulogy. He merely indicates it with a reverent inclination
of the head, and turns and looks you in the eye; you are supposed to do
the rest. Personally, while I give the great structure its dues, which
are many, I like what flows under it more.

And there is one thing about the Forth that Edinburgh people never
forget, nor do the visitors who find it out: “Caller herrin’!” It
must have taxed the resources of even such a genius as Lady Nairne,
whose home one may see if he looks beyond Holyrood to the villas
of Duddingston, to have written two such dissimilar songs as the
heart-melting “Land o’ the Leal” and the cheery “Caller Herrin’.”
There’s the king of all marketing songs. It really compels one to
think with despair of what a dreary mockery life would be were this,
of all harvests, to fail. For love of that song I could defend the
Forth herring against all competitors whatsoever. Loch Fyne herring?
Fair fish, yes; but really, now, you would hardly say they have that
racy flavor we get in the Forth article. Caller salmon? Oh, pshaw, you
are from Glasgow; you have been swearing by caller salmon for five
hundred years; have it on your coat of arms; used to draw it on legal
papers as other people do seals;—but, honestly, have you ever seen a
salmon in the Clyde, anywhere near Glasgow, in all your life? And if
you did, would you eat it? Certainly not! So “give over,” as they say
in England. Certainly there never was such pathos and unction devoted
to just such a subject. And the music, too! How it compels you with its
appealing monotones and rebukes you with the brave huckster cries on
high F! So when you are passing near Waverley Market and encounter one
of the picturesque Scandinavian fishwives, who has trudged in with her
“woven willow” from her little stone house at Newhaven with the patched
roof and quaint fore-stairs, unless you are willing to buy a herring
then and there and carry it around in your pocket, run for your life
before she starts singing:—

    “When ye were sleeping on your pillows,
    Dreamt ye aught o’ our puir fellows,
    Darkling as they face the billows,
    A’ to fill our woven willows!

    “Wha’ll buy caller herrin’?
    They’re bonnie fish and halesome farin’;
    Buy my caller herrin’,
    New drawn frae the Forth.”

To stroll down High Street is to unscroll Scottish history and survey
Edinburgh of to-day at one and the same time. “Hie-gait,” as the
old fellows still occasionally call it, is the “historic mile” _par
excellence_ of Scotland. In its independent fashion it assumes new
names as it meanders along, first Castle Hill, then Lawnmarket, then
High Street, and finally Canongate. Even the afternoon sun ventures
guardedly among the nest of tall, gaunt _lands_ that scowl at each
other across its war-worn way. Bleak and glum to the peaked and gabled
roofs, eight and ten stories above the sidewalk, they have resisted dry
rot by a miracle of mortar and still hang together, doubtless to their
own amazement, huddling a perfect enmeshment of tiny homes like some
ingenious nest of boxes. It would be hard to imagine more drear and
rickety domiciles or any more nervously overshadowed with an impending
doom of dissolution. One looks anxiously about to see some venerable
veteran give it up with a dismal, weary groan and collapse in a vast
huddle of domestic wreckage. Fancy living where you have to scale
breakneck stairs to a dizzy height and then reach your remote eyrie by
a trembling gangway over an air well! The _closes_ or _wynds_ that are
engulfed among these flat-chested ancients are equally surprising. One
passes in from the street through a dirty entrance with a worn stone
sill and a rudely carven doorhead inscribed with Scriptural and moral
injunctions, and finds himself in an inner court fronted by dirty doors
and palsied windows full of frowzy women, a cobbled pavement littered
with refuse and a patch of sky half-hidden by fragments of laundry.
And, mind you, these retreats are not without pride of tradition; many
of them have entertained riches and royalty—but that was not last
week. Lady Jane Grey was once hidden in famous White Horse Close, which
must have fallen further than Lucifer to reach its present condition.
Douglas Tavern was in one of them, where Burns and his brethren of the
“Crochallan Club” were wont to revel with “Rattlin’, roarin’ Willie,
and amang guid companie.” Legends, of course, abound. There was the
case of the two stubborn sisters who quarreled one night and never
spoke to each other again, though they lived the remainder of their
lives together in the selfsame room. There’s Scotch persistence! Deacon
Brodie was another instance, the “Raffles” of his time. He it was who
used to ply his nefarious trade by night on the friends who knew him by
day as a highly respectable cabinet-worker; and if you look furtively
aloft at some dusty, closed shutter you can fancy the dark lantern
glowing and the file rasping and the black mask drawn to his chin.
Happily, they hanged him eventually; and, singularly enough, on the
very gallows for which he had himself invented a very superior drop.

A _close_, therefore, is so cheerless a spot that you could not well
be worse off if you were to dive down the steep, wet steps of a
neighboring slit of an alley and come out on the old Grassmarket of
sinister renown where they hanged the Covenanters of the Moss Hags.
As you gaze about on this ill-omened slum, once the home of many a
prosperous and respected “free burgess,” but now given over to drovers
and visiting farmers, and peer suspiciously up the adjoining West Port
where Burke and Hare conducted their murders to get bodies for the
surgeons, you are very apt to beat a hurried retreat and cry out with
Claverhouse, “Come, open the West Port and let me gang free!”

After one or two such explorations a stranger is content to pursue his
investigation in the broad light of High Street. It seems delightful
then to watch the barefooted boys in the street and the little girls
in aprons and “pigtails.” And happily he may come across a shaggy
steely-eyed old Highlander growling to a comrade in the guttural
Gaelic, or perhaps a soldier in kilts and sporan. At this hour he
will certainly see around Parliament Square groups of advocates and
solicitors and “writers to the Signet,” and, it may be, some judge of
the “Inner House” or “Outer House,” and possibly the Lord President
himself. Otherwise he can take note of the uninviting shop-windows
and the piles of merchandise on the sidewalks, and find entertainment
in such unfamiliar signs as “provisioners,” “spirit merchants,”
“bootmakers,” “hairdressers,” etc., with prices set forth in shillings
and pence, or rejoice in a hostelry with so unusual a name as “The
Black Bull Lodgings for Travellers and Working Men.”

There are pleasant surprises. For instance, you find in the cobbled
pavement the outline of a heart—and you do not have to be told that
you are standing on the site of the terrible old Tolbooth prison, at
the Heart of Midlothian. And what rushes to mind and displaces all
other associations if not the fine story Sir Walter gave us under that
name! Here, then, the Porteous mob swarmed and raged in its struggle
to burn this savage Bastile, and here they tried and condemned poor
Effie Deans and locked her up while the faithful Jeanie turned heaven
and earth to save her, and the heart of old David broke. “The Heart of
Midlothian!” Why, it is like being a boy all over again!

Encouraged by this discovery, like a man who has just found a
gold-piece, you keep a sharp lookout on the pavements, and presently
comes a second reward in the shape of a brass tablet in the ground
marking the last resting-place of stern John Knox. “There!” say you;
“Dr. Johnson said he ought to be buried in the public road, and sure
enough, he is!” What a man! He dared all things and feared nothing.
How many a long discourse did Queen Mary herself supply him a topic
for, and how often did he assail even her with personal rebukes and
virulent public tirades! Thanks to the Free Church, his dwelling stands
intact, farther down the street at the site of the Netherbow; and a
fine specimen it is of sixteenth-century domestic Scotch architecture,
with low ceilings and stairways scarce two feet wide—but, like its
former austere tenant, narrow, cornery, and unpleasant. Implacable,
unbending old John Knox! There is nothing in Browning more shuddering
in imaginative flight than the quatrain:—

    “As if you had carried sour John Knox
    To the play-house at Paris, Vienna, or Munich,
    Fastened him into a front-row box,
    And danced off the ballet with trousers and tunic.”

One makes a long stop before the far-famed church of St. Giles, half
a thousand years old and the battle-ground of warring creeds. Its
crown-shaped tower top is one of the familiar landmarks of Edinburgh.
Within you may study to heart’s content the grim barrel vaulting and
massive Norman piers and the tattered Scottish flags in the nave, but
there is scope for many an agreeable thought outside if one conjures
up the little luckenbooth shops that once clustered between its
buttresses, and imagines Allan Ramsay in his funny nightcap selling
wigs, or “Jingling Geordie” Heriot, of “The Fortunes of Nigel,”
gossiping with his friend King James VI over his jewelry counter. Nor
would you forget Jenny Geddes and how she seized her stool in disgust
when the Dean undertook to introduce the ritual, and let it fly at the
good man’s head with the sizzling invective, “Deil colic the wame o’
ye! Would ye say mass i’ my lug!”

Old Tron Kirk, farther on, is still an active feature of Edinburgh
life, and particularly on New Year’s Eve when the crowds rally here
as the old year dies. Beyond it the Canongate extends itself in a
rambling, happy-go-lucky fashion, lined with curious timber-fronted
houses with “turnpike” stairs. It is like sitting down to “Humphrey
Clinker” once more; or better still, perhaps, to the poems of
Fergusson; and we smile at thoughts of the scowling, early-risen
housewives of other days who would

                “Wi’ glowering eye
    Their neighbours’ sma’est faults descry!”

and fancy how the convivial revelers would foregather by night and

                      “sit fu’ snug,
    Owre oysters and a dram o’ gin,
            Or haddock lug.”

But lingering along the Canongate is a negligible pleasure. There is
nothing in the whole architectural world more jailish and pitiless
than the gaunt Tolbooth and all its grim neighbors. It is as if the
conception of anything suggestive of beauty or ornamentation had been
harshly repressed, and ugliness and the most naked utility sternly
insisted upon. One may, however, if he is interested in slums, pause
a moment to look down through the railings of the South Bridge on the
screaming peddlers and flaunting shame of bedraggled Cowgate, and
behold a district which stands to Edinburgh in the relative position
of Rivington Street to New York, or Petticoat Lane to London, or
Montmartre to Paris.

The end of the Canongate, a few steps farther on, debouches
unexpectedly, and with a sudden unpreparedness for the stranger, on the
great open square before Holyrood. There it stands, black and dismal;
more like a prison than a palace! The Abbey ruins, in the rear, supply
all the atmosphere of romance that the eye will get here. But the eye
is better left as a secondary aid in comprehending Holyrood; history
and imagination do the work. Cowering sorrowfully in its gloomy hollow,
it has the look of a moody, forsaken thing brooding over a neglectful
world. Its memories are of the dead. Its sole companionship is in the
mosses and grassy aisles of the crumbling Abbey chapel, where lie the
bones of Scottish royalty that ruled and reveled here its allotted time
and left scarce a memory behind. It was here they slew Rizzio as he
dined with Queen Mary; and perhaps that is romance enough.

The fumes and cobwebs of murky tradition dissipate in the keen,
vigorous air of Calton Hill. Breezes from over the level shore-sands
of Leith taste sharp of salt and excite bracing thoughts of the sea.
Like a map, the whole environ of Edinburgh lies exposed from the
Pentlands to the Firth. There is the steepled city, rising over its
ridges and dropping down its valleys like billows of a troubled ocean,
and there, too, is the enveloping sweep of suburbs dotted with villas
or cross-thatched with streets of workingmen’s cottages, and farther
still the Meadows and their archery grounds, “the furzy hills of Braid”
and their golf links, Blackford Hill whence “Marmion” and his bard
looked down on “mine own romantic town,” and, on the southern horizon,
the heathery Pentlands, low and shaggy, with the kine that graze over
them low and shaggy too. To the northward, away beyond the cricket
greens of Inverleith Park, the blue Firth sparkles in the offing,
dotted with fleet steamers and the white spread sails of stately ships
laying courses for the Baltic. In the distance, over Leith, looms the
tall lighthouse of the Inchcape Rock that Southey made famous with a
ballad. Beyond the west end of the city a wavy blue line marks the
course seaward of the bustling little Water of Leith, where “David
Balfour” kept tryst with “Alan Breck,” and many a sturdy little “brig”
leaps across it as it hurries along, “brimmed,” wrote Stevenson, “like
a cup with sunshine and the song of birds.” Still farther to the
westward, where the old Queens Ferry Coach Road appears as a faint
white tracing, within many “a mile of Edinborough Town,” thin vapors
of smoke rise from the chimneys of white cottages on peasant greens by
brooksides; and one knows that the rowans there are white with bloom
and the meadows flecked with daisies, and that bees are droning in the
foxglove and blackbirds singing in the hawthorn.

Calton Hill itself scarcely improves on acquaintance, but loses rather.
Its meagre scattering of monuments would barely excite a passing
interest were it not for their conspicuous location and that suggestion
of the Athenian Acropolis. A paltry array—a tall, ugly column to
Nelson, a choragic monument like the one to Burns on a hillside near
Holyrood, an old observatory with a brown tower and a new one with
a colonnaded portico and a dome, and, most mentioned of all, the
so-called “ruin” of the proposed national monument to the Scotch dead
of Waterloo and the Peninsula, which got no farther than a row of
columns and an entablature when funds failed and work stopped. Many
a bitter shaft of scorn and mockery has this ill-starred undertaking
pointed for the disparagers of Scotland. However, in its present
condition it has done more than any other agency to stimulate the
pleasant illusion of the “Modern Athens.” The hill itself is a favorite
resort, lofty, and with a broad, rounded top. The eastern slopes are
terraced and set with gardens, and the western and northern sides
are steep verdant braes. One yields the palm for reckless daring to
Bothwell; not every one would care to speed a horse down such a course
even to win attention from eyes so bright and important as Queen Mary’s.

It was on Calton Hill I had my first experience of the old school of
Scotchmen, in the person of a dry and withered chip of Auld Reekie,
combative, peppery, brusque and sententious, and abounding in that
peculiar admixture of braggadocio and repression so characteristic
of the class. He had evidently been nurtured from infancy on Allan
Ramsay’s collection of Scotch proverbs, for he quoted them continually,
giving the poet credit for their origin. He was sitting in the shade of
Nelson’s column in shirt sleeves and cap, absorbed to all appearances
in a copy of “The Scotsman,” though I suspect he had been regarding
me for some while with quite as much curiosity as I now did him. He
was a grim, self-contained old party, as dignified as the Lord Provost
himself, with gray, shaggy eyebrows and a thin, wry mouth that gripped
a cutty pipe; and he looked so much a part of the surroundings, so
settled and weather-beaten, that one might almost have passed him over
for some memorial carving or, at least, an “animated bust.” Him I
beheld with vast inner delight and gingerly approached, giving “Good
day” with all the cordiality in the world. The reward was a curt nod
and a keen scrutiny from a pair of hard and twinkling blue eyes that
had an appearance under the grizzled brows of stars in a frosty sky.
I observed upon the fineness of the day; he opined “There had been
waur, no doot.” I noted what a capital spot it was for a quiet smoke;
he allowed I might “gang far an’ find nane better.” Here I made proffer
of a cigar and, presumably, with acceptable humility, for he took it
with an “Ah, weel, I dinna mind,” of gloomy resignation—and so we got
things going.

The conversation that followed I venture to give in some detail as
illustrating, possibly, the peculiarities of a type to be encountered
on every Edinburgh street corner—whimsical, conservative, witty,
cautious in opinion, and surcharged with local pride.

“A man can take life pleasantly here,” said I, when we had lighted up.

“Aye, aye,” said he; “even a hard-workin’ one like mysel’, as Gude
kens. But a bit smoke frae ane an’ twa o’ the day hurts naebody, I’m
thinkin’; an’ auld Allan Ramsay was richt eneuch, ‘Light burdens break
nae banes.’”

“You will never be leaving Edinburgh, I’ll warrant.”

“Na, na. Ye’ll have heard tell the sayin’, ‘Remove an auld tree an’ it
will wither.’”

“There’s more money to be made elsewhere, perhaps.”

“I’m no so sure o’ that. Forbye, ‘Little gear the less care.’”

“One wouldn’t find a handsomer city than this, at all events.”

“Aweel, aweel, a’body kens that. Ye’ll no so vera frequently see the
bate o’ it, I’m thinkin’. Them that should ken the best say sae.”

“How many people are there here, sir?”

“Mare than three hunner an’ fifty thoosan’, I’m telt.”

“No more? It is small for its fame. Why, Glasgow must be three times as
large,” I ventured, resolved to stir him up a little.

“Glesgie, is it! Think shame o’ yersel’, mon, to say the same! A
grippie carlin, Glesgie! Waur than the auld wife o’ the sayin’, ‘She’ll
keep her ain side o’ the hoose, and gang up an’ doon in yours.’ Ye
canna nay-say me there. Gae wa’ wi’ ye!”

“But you must admit it is a great port. The receipts are enormous, I’m
told.”

“Aye, an’ it’s muckle ye’ll be telt ye’ll never read in the Guid Buik!
Port, are ye sayin’? Hae ye na thought o’ Leith? Or the bonny sands an’
gardens o’ Portobello? Or Granton, forbye, wi’ the three braw piers
o’ the Duke o’ Buccleuch? Ye’ll no be kennin’ they’re a’ a part o’
Ed’nboro, maybe.”

“But how about the ship-building on the Clyde?”

“An’ what wad ye make o’ that? How ony mon in his senses could gang to
think sic jowkery-packery wi’ the gran’ brewin’ ayont the Coogait is
mair than ever I could win to understan’. It’s by-ordinar, fair! An’
dinna loup to deecesions frae the claver an’ lees aboot muckle things.
’Twas Allan Ramsay himsel’ said, ‘Mony ane opens their pack an’ sells
nae wares.’ It’s unco strange that a body should tak nae notice o’ the
learnin,’ an’ the gran’ courts, an’ the three hunner congregeetions,
an’ a’ the bonny kirks we hae in Ed’nboro, but must ever be spairin’
o’ the siller. Do ye think, noo, it’s sae vera wonderful to ‘Put twa
pennies in a purse, an’ see them creep thegither’? Glesgie may ken a’
sic-like gear, I’m nae sayin’; but there’s no sae muckle worth in that,
as ye’ll be findin’ oot, though ye read in the books til the morn’s
mornin’. It’s a fair disgrace to hae sic thochts. Mon can sae nae mair.”

“At any rate, there’s a fine university there.”

“It’s easy sayin’ sae. Muckle service is it! Gude kens a’ they learn
there! Gin it’s cooleges ye’ll be admirin’, maybe ye’ll no be so vera
well acquaint wi’ our ain toun? There’s nane in a’ Glesgie like the ane
ye see the day. Mon, it’s fair dementit ye’ll be.”

It took time and diplomacy and many a round compliment on Edinburgh to
bring him out of his sulk; but eventually he yielded.

“Aye,” said he, “I believe ye’ll be in the richt the noo. It’s gran’ up
here, dinna misdoot it. Mony’s the braw sicht to be had, that’s a fac’,
an’ I ken them a’ like the back o’ my hand. Sin lang afore yon trees
were plantit, mare than ane fine dander hae I taen mysel’, bonny simmer
days, lang miles o’er the heather. Ye’ll believe me, I’d gang hame and
sleep soun’. It’s na sae pleesant, maybe, in winter, wi’ the dour haars
an’ the fog an’ the east winds. But I aye like it fine in simmer,
wi’ a bit nip o’ wind betimes an’ then fair again. At the gloaming
it’s quaiet an’ cauller, and then aiblins I bide a blink an’ hae a
bit puff o’ my cutty, an’ syne I’ll gang to my bed wi’ an easy hairt.
But, wheesht, mon! It’ll be twa o’ the day by the noo, I’m thinkin’?
Is it so! Be gude to us! Weel, weel, I’ll gang my gait. I maunna be
late to the wark; it’s a fearsome example to the laddies. ‘A scabbed
sheep,’ says auld Allan, ‘smites the hale hirsel’.’ Guid day to ye; an’
keep awa’ frae Glesgie.” And with many a sigh and rheumatic hitch he
shuffled off to the steps.

The old man was right. “Frae ane an’ twa o’ the day” a blither or
more inspiring spot than Calton Hill would be hard to find. What more
could possibly be desired, with a city so fair and famous at one’s
feet and the air tonic with the sweetness of the heather and the brine
of the sea! Fancy plays an amiable rôle and adds to one’s contentment
with shadowy illusions of the Canongate of bygone days acclaiming
Scotland’s kings and queens as they ride forth in pomp and pageantry,
with trains of fierce clansmen from the furtherest Highlands, with
pibrochs screaming, bonnets dancing, and axes and claymores rattling.
And Montrose may pass with his Graham Cavaliers, or Argyle leading the
Campbells of the Covenant. With our eyes on Holyrood, pathetic visions
float before us of fair Mary of many sorrows, over whose gilded gloom
the poets have loved to linger. One moment she looms in the heroic
martyrdom conceived by Schiller, and the next we see her as Swinburne
did in “Chastelard,” with

                                              “lips
    Curled over, red and sweet; and the soft space
    Of carven brows, and splendor of great throat
    Swayed lily-wise.”

Welcome apparitions of later days throng about us on the hill: Ramsay
and his “Gentle Shepherd,” young Fergusson and his wild companions,
Burns with his jovial cronies, the scholarly Jeffrey, the learned
Hume, the inspired Sir Walter, the delightful revelers of the “Noctes
Ambrosianæ,” the gentle Lady Nairne, the eager, brilliant Stevenson,
and Dr. Brown with the faithful “Rab” and Ollivant with “Bob, Son of
Battle.” The crisp sunshine lies golden on Princes Street and all
her flowered terraces; it glints the grim redoubts of the Castle and
lingers on the crooked gables of High Street. From the brown heather of
the Pentlands to the distant sparkle of the Firth stretches a vigorous
and comely land. What man so callous as to feel no joy in “Scotia’s
Darling Seat”!




[Illustration]




ANTWERP

2 P.M. TO 3 P.M.


A table in the lively little Café de la Terrasse, up on the broad stone
_promenoir_ overhanging the Antwerp docks, is one place in a thousand
for the man who is inclined toward any such unusual combination as a
maximum of twentieth-century business activity in a setting of the
Middle Ages. He is fortunate in locality and happy in surroundings. A
Parisian waiter removes the remains of his light luncheon of a salad
of Belgian greens fresh this morning from a trim truck garden beyond
the ramparts, refills the thin tumbler to the taste of the guest with
foaming local Orge or light Brussels Faro or the bitter product of
Ghent or the flat, insipid stuff they boast about at Louvain, and
supplies a light for an excellent cigar made here in Antwerp of the
best growth of Havana. Supposing it to be two o’clock of the usual
mottled, doubtful afternoon,—for Antwerp’s weather, like Antwerp’s
history, is mingled sunshine and shadows,—the loiterer may look out
at his ease on a notable and fascinating panorama. Beneath him and to
either side extend miles of massive docks of ponderous masonry, upon
and about which swarms an ant-like multitude of nimble and active
longshoremen plying a network of ropes and tackle, and directing the
labors of vast, writhing derricks that toil like a mechanical Israel
in bondage. Snuggling close to the grim granite walls are merchant
mammoths from the ends of the earth, and into these, with the ease of
a man stooping for a pin, gigantic steel arms sweep tons of casks and
bales that they have lightly plucked out of long wharf trains lying
alongside. There is a prodigious bustling of porters in long blue
blouses, shouts and cries from the riverful of shipping, trampling
of thousands of hobnailed shoes, and an incessant clatter of the
wooden sabots of little Antwerp boys in peaked caps and baggy blue
trousers and of little Antwerp girls in bright skirts and curious white
headdress.

This sort of thing is proceeding for miles up and down the river front,
and all through the intricate series of locks and _bassins_ and canals
that quadruple the wharfage of this rejuvenated old Flemish city. They
are receiving whole argosies of raw material in the shape of hides,
tobacco, and textiles, and are sending away fortunes in cut diamonds,
delicate laces, linens, beer, sugar, and innumerable clever products
of human hands from fragile glass to ponderous machinery. And they do
it with more ease and, it seems necessary to add, with less profanity
than any other port of Europe. What, then, could have possessed the
genial Eugene Field to pass along that ancient slander on the excellent
burghers of Flanders?

    “At any rate, as I grieve to state,
      Since these soldiers vented their danders,
    Conjectures obtain that for language profane,
      There is no such place as Flanders.

       *       *       *       *       *

    This is the kind of talk you’ll find
      If ever you go to Flanders.”

While I should not wish to take such extreme ground as that assumed, in
another connection, by a New York police inspector, when he observed
that “every one of them facts has been verified to be absolutely
untrue,” still I must say that, as far as I could notice, there is
nothing notable about the Flemish oath as employed to-day. Indeed, it
is more than likely that one could pass a long and pleasant evening
loitering among the _tavernes_ and recreation haunts of the Belgian
soldier and civilian and come across nothing more vocally spirited
than robust guffaws, possibly punctuated discreetly, or heavy fists
thundering the time as a couple of comrades scrape over the sanded
floor in the contagious rhythm of that venerable and favorite waltz of
the Netherlands,—

    “Rosa, willen wy dansen?
    Danst Rosa; danst Rosa.
    Rosa, willen wy dansen?
    Danst Rosa zoet!”

On the other hand, if, with this much of an excuse, a stranger should
go exploring Antwerp between two and three o’clock in quest of
“verkoop men dranken” signs, he would be quite otherwise repaid in
the discovery of charming huddled and crooked streets and a wealth
of architectural quaintness and beauty. He would have no difficulty
in finding _tavernes_ and drinking-places, particularly along the
river front, where they abound. As he passed them he would encounter
robust whiffs of acrid and penetrating odors with tar and fish in the
ascendancy, and catch glimpses of a wooden-shod peasantry fraternizing
with evil-eyed “water-rats” and devouring vast quantities of salmon and
sauerkraut washed down with ale and white beer. There is no charge now,
as once there was, for noise made by patrons. The silk-fingered gentry
overreached themselves here, for when, a number of years ago, they had
carried the robbing of foreign sailors to the point of international
notoriety, the authorities took a hand and devised a system of payment
for Jack ashore; then the American and English ministers and consuls
established and made popular the Sailors’ Bethel on the quay, with its
clean and attractive reading- and amusement-rooms, and the Sailors’
Home on Canal de l’Ancre, where, for fifty-five cents a day, Jack can
have a neat little room to himself and four excellent meals in the
bargain. For these reasons among others, a visitor, even by night,
finds much less of noise and revelry than he had anticipated, and
beholds the thirsty Antwerpian content himself with a final “nip” at
an _estaminet_ or even make shift of a “nightcap” of mineral water
or black coffee at one or another of the city’s innumerable cafés. In
these he will himself be welcome to read the news of the day in the
columns of “Le Précurseur” or “De Nieuwe Gazet,” or, better still,
in the venerable “Gazet van Gent,” one of the oldest of existing
newspapers, with nearly two hundred and fifty years of publication
behind it. The real drinking will have been in progress where the
out-of-town people have been dining _à prix fixe_, and clinking their
burgundy and claret glasses at the great hotels on the Quai Van Dyck,
the Place de Meir, or the Place Verte. The palm should really go to
the amusement seekers of the latter little square; for nothing this
side the capacity of an archery club at a July kermess can compare with
the thirst of the music lovers who throng the tables on the sidewalks
before the restaurants and cafés of jolly Place Verte when the band
is playing, on balmy summer evenings. Instead of dissipation, the
man who explores Antwerp makes constant discovery of unanticipated
delights. He observes about him in the surprising little streets of
the old section an amazing collection of absurd roofs slanting steeply
up for several stories, pierced with owl-like, staring, round windows;
house fronts by the hundreds with denticulated gables stepping upward
like staircases toward the sky; and pots of flowers and immaculate
muslin curtains in tiny doll-house windows peering out from the most
unexpected and impossible places away up among the eaves and chimneys.
He will catch an occasional glimpse of massive old four-poster beds
with green curtains and yellow lace valances; of shining oak chests,
and high-back chairs, and brown dining-rooms wainscoted in polished oak
and most inviting with ponderous side-boards set with Delft platters
and gleaming copper and pewter pieces. From time to time he will see
large, cool living-rooms in which the father enjoys his paper and
meerschaum pipe, while the placid-faced mother employs herself with
lace or embroidery and the fair-haired daughter at the piano tells how

    “Ik zag Cecilia komen
    Langs eenen waterkant,
    Ik zag Cecilia komen
    Mit bloemen in haer hand.”

As I previously observed, there is no better place for a preliminary
impression of Antwerp than along the docks. There one acquires some
adequate idea of the amazing extent of its industrial operations and
enjoys, at the same time, an extraordinary panorama of a river choked
with shipping in the immediate foreground, and, on the opposite bank,
the sombre redoubts of Tête de Flandre and Fort Isabelle keeping watch
and ward over the flat little farms that extend seaward in fields of
pale-green corn and barley. For any one who has done the proper amount
of preparatory reading on Antwerp, it will inspire stirring thoughts
of the musical, artistic, and martial career of this rare old Flemish
town.

If the visitor be a lover of music—of Wagner’s music—the surrounding
uproar and confusion will shortly fade into a charming reverie as he
gazes far down the glittering zigzag of the Scheldt and some distant
glimmer will take the form of the swan-boat of Lohengrin with the Grail
knight leaning on his shining shield. The docks and quays will have
disappeared, and in their place will once more lie the old low meadows,
and, under the Oak of Justice, King Henry the Fowler will take seat
on his throne with the nobles of Brabant ranged about him. Fair Elsa,
charged with fratricide, moves slowly forward, sustained by her dream
of a champion who is to come to her defense; and the heralds pace off
the lists and appeal to the four quarters in the sonorous chant,—

    “Wer hier im Gotteskampf zu streiten kam
    Für Elsa von Brabant, der trete vor.”

And suddenly the peasants by the water’s edge cry out in amazement
and point down the reaches of the river, and there comes glittering
Lohengrin in the “shining armor” of Elsa’s dream. The champion steps
ashore and gives no heed to the awe-hushed company until he has
sung to his feathered steed what now every child in Germany could
sing with him, “Nun sei bedankt, mein lieber Schwan.” And then the
contest rages and the false Frederick falls, and the royal cortège
retires to the neighboring old fortress of the Steen. All night the
treacherous Ortrud and her defeated Frederick plot by the steps of
yonder cathedral, and there, in the morning, Lohengrin weds Elsa and
the immortal Wedding March welcomes the “faithful and true” back to
their fortress home. The black night of mistrust and carnage follows,
and when day dawns Lohengrin bids farewell to his suspicious bride in
these green Scheldt meadows and sails sadly away in his resplendent
boat drawn by the dove of the Grail.

On the other hand, if the visitor has a mind for history, he may
scorn the pretty Grail story and look with stern eyes on this Scheldt
and the battle-scarred city beside it, mindful of the deeds of blood
and fire that fill the hypnotic pages of Schiller, Prescott, and
Motley. The monk of St. Gall could have appropriately dedicated to the
war-ravaged Antwerp of those days his solemn antiphonal “media vita
in morte sumus.” The grim, turreted Steen, just at hand, recalls the
bloody reign of Alva and how he condemned a whole people to death in an
order of three lines. In its present rôle of museum it houses hundreds
of implements of torture that once were drenched in the blood of the
heroic burghers of Antwerp. Not all the horrors of the “Spanish Fury,”
when eight thousand citizens of this town were butchered in three days,
nor the stirring memory of the “French Fury,” with Antwerp triumphant,
can dim the glory of the heroic resistance the “Sea Beggars” made to
the advance of the Duke of Parma up the Scheldt.

[Illustration: ANTWERP, FROM THE SCHELDT]

From the cathedral tower one may see the little towns of Calloo and
Oordam, on either bank of the river; it was between them that Parma
built his bridge to obstruct navigation, and against it the men of
Antwerp sent their famous fire-ships to open up a passage for the
Zeelander allies. Gianibelli, who devised them, and whom Schiller
styled “the Archimedes of Antwerp,” builded better than he knew, for
with one ship he destroyed a thousand Spaniards and heaped up their
defenses into a labyrinth of ruin. Could Antwerp have risen then above
the clash of factions, there would have been no need later to tear down
the dikes and present the strange spectacle of ships sailing over the
land, and their story might have been as triumphant as Holland’s, and a
united Netherlands have issued from those long wars with Spain.

Here where the visitor takes his afternoon ease many a brave pageant
foregathered in the troubled, olden days. In the magic pages of old Van
Meteren’s chronicles we see them pass again: Cold, gloomy, treacherous
Philip stepping from his golden barge to walk under triumphal arches
on a carpet of strewn roses, surrounded by magistrates and burghers
splendid in ruffs and cramoisy velvet; later on, the Regent, Margaret
of Parma, strident and gouty, whom Prescott has called “a man in
petticoats”; and then the bloodthirsty Alva; then the dashing “Sword
of Lepanto,” the brilliant and romantic Don John of Austria; next,
the atrocious Requesens; and, last of all, the revengeful Alexander
of Parma. Hopeful, stolid, impassive Antwerp, ever the sheep for the
shearers, ever believing that at last the worst was over, rejoices in
her welcome to each as though the millennium had finally dawned on all
her troubles and sets cressets to blazing in the cathedral tower and
roasts whole oxen in the public squares.

The scream of a river siren will arouse the visitor from the Past
to the Present, and, with a sigh, he will saunter forth to see the
places that cannot come to him. He will leave with regret this busy,
fascinating river—“the lazy Scheldt” that Goldsmith loved. Excited
little tugs are bustling busily about, queer-coated dock-hands struggle
mightily with their mammoth burdens, and ships of every shape and
pattern throng the roadstead before him. The sharp and trim Yankee
sloop, the ponderous German tramp, the fastidious British freighter,
the clean-cut ocean liner, and, best of all, the round-sterned,
wallowing Dutch craft, green of hull and yellow of sail,—all are here,
and, he can think, for his especial diversion. A canal barge crawls
laboriously by, and in that floating home which she seldom cares to
leave, a much-be-petticoated mother of Flanders busies herself with her
many children and looks after the care of her tiny house;—and looks
after it well, as you may see by the spotless little curtains that
flutter in the windows and the bright pots of geraniums that stand on
the sills. One recalls the keen delight this singular craft afforded
Robert Louis Stevenson at the time he made his charming “Inland Voyage”
from Antwerp. Quoth he: “Of all the creatures of commercial enterprise,
a canal barge is by far the most delightful to consider. It may spread
its sails, and then you see it sailing high above the tree-tops and
the windmill, sailing on the aqueduct, sailing through the green
corn-lands; the most picturesque of things amphibious.... There should
be many contented spirits on board, for such a life is both to travel
and to stay at home.”

Along the front there is also opportunity to expend a couple of francs
to advantage for a ticket on the comfortable little steamer that is
just impatiently casting off from the _embarcadère_, and to go sailing
with her on an hour’s voyage up the river to Tamise to view the
shipping at greater length, to see the merchants’ villas at Hoboken,
and finally the famous picture of the Holy Family at the journey’s end.
Otherwise the visitor may take a parting look up the Quay van Dyck and
the Quay Jordaens, examine once more the striking Porte de l’Escaut
that Rubens decorated, and so turn a reluctant back on the bright life
of the river to thread a crooked street or two, cobbled and tortuous,
and issue forth on the Grand Place before the immense, fantastic Hôtel
de Ville.

In the drowsy early afternoon this quaint and curious old city hall
wears a most friendly and reposeful air. To one who has never before
seen any of these extraordinary Old-World buildings such a one as
this will move such incredulity as mastered the countryman at the
first sight of a giraffe;—“Shucks!” said he when he had looked
it all over, “there never was such an animal!” Fancy a rambling,
picture-book of a structure a hundred yards long, made up of the
oddest combination of architectural orders—massive pillars for the
first story, Doric arcades for the second, Ionic for the third, and
last of all, an abbreviated colonnade supporting a steep, tent-like,
gable-pierced roof! As though some touch of the whimsical might even
so have been neglected, behold a pompous central tower, decorated to
suffocation, arched of window and graven of column, rearing itself
in three diminishing, denticulated stories above the long, sloping
roof, until the singular, box-like ornaments on the very tiptop appear
tiny Greek tombs of a cloud-hung Acropolis. The statues of Wisdom and
Justice could pass for Æschylus and Sophocles, and the Holy Virgin
on the summit might very well be Athena. The friendly air to which I
have referred extends even to these statues, who have the appearance
of shouting down to you to come in out of the heat and have a look
at the great stairway of colored marbles and rest awhile before the
splendid chimney-piece of delicately carved black-and-white stone in
the elaborate Salle des Mariages. Subtle matchmakers, those statues!
And, indeed, if Antwerp is the first steamer-stop of the visitor, he
may well be pardoned for reveling in this Hôtel de Ville as something
that for picturesque beauty he may not hope to better elsewhere. And
yet that would only be because he had not seen the glorious one at
Brussels, or the grim and huddled caprice at Mechlin, or the incredible
Halle aux Draps at Ypres, or the amazing Rabot Gate or Watermen’s Guild
House of Ghent. And even these will fall back into the commonplace
once he has drifted along the Quai du Rosaire of drowsy old Bruges and
been steeped in picturesqueness and color that is beyond any man’s
describing.

No one who cares for structural quaintness and originality can fail
to find especial delight in the surroundings of this venerable
Grand Place. Along one entire side, like prize competitors in an
architectural fancy ball, shoulder to shoulder, stiff and precise,
range the old Halls of the Guilds. The Archers, the Coopers, the
Tailors, the Carpenters, and all the others of that most unusual
alignment, present themselves in full regalia of characteristic
ornament and design. As though in keeping with their ancient traditions
of stout rivalry, there is a very real air of vying between themselves
for some coveted palm for fantastic bizarreness; and all the while with
a solemn innocence of being at all grotesque or unusual. One could
laugh at their naïve unconsciousness of the prodigious show they make,
with sculptures and adornments of bygone days and a combined violent
sky-line slashed with long eaves and bitten out in serrated gable ends.
But there is little of merriment and very much of reverence in the
thoughts they excite of worthy pride in skill of craftsmanship and the
glory their masters brought to this city in the sixteenth century in
winning from Venice the industrial supremacy of the world. In those
days there were no poor in all Antwerp and every child could read and
write at least two languages, and the Counts of Flanders were more
powerful than half the kings of Europe.

But the Grand Place has more to show than the guild halls. The apogee
of the whimsical and fantastic has been attained in the choppy sea of
red-tiled roof-tops that eddies above this huddled neighborhood. Grim
old dormered veterans, queer and chimerical, palsied and askew, have
here held their own stoutly through the centuries. They have echoed
back the shouts of the crusaders, the triumphal cannon of Spanish
royalty, and the free-hearted welcomes to foreign princes come to curry
favor with the Flemish merchant rulers of the world. They have turned
gray with the groans of their nobles writhing under the Inquisition
and rosy with approval of the adroit and courageous William of Nassau.
From their antique windows have leaned the burgomasters of Rubens and
the cavaliers of Velasquez, brave in ruffs and beards; and out of the
most hidden nests of their eaves the wan and pallid faces of their
hunted sons have been raised to watch the approach of the ruthless
soldiery of Requesens and Parma. These old roofs look down to-day on a
rich and happy people whose skill and tireless industry have reared a
commercial fabric that astonishes the world.

At this afternoon hour the Grand Place betrays little of its
early-morning activity, when it is thronged with the overflowing stands
of busy marketmen in baggy trousers, and banks of rich colors of the
flower-women in immaculate linen headdress proffering the choice output
of their scrupulously tilled farms. Scarcely less picturesque are
these oddly garbed country-folk than the famous fish-venders over at
Ostend, and certainly they are a more fragrant people to shop among. A
curious and colorful picture they present with the long lines of gayly
painted dog-carts blazing with peonies and geraniums. Huddled around
the great statue of Brabo they quite throw into limbo the Daughters
of the Scheldt that are disporting in bronze on the pedestal. Brabo
himself, Antwerp’s Jack-the-Giant-Killer, pauses on high in the act of
hurling away the severed hand of the vanquished Antigonus as though
he could see no unoccupied spot to throw it in. Should he let go at
random, and hit house Number 4, he could surely expect to be hauled
down forthwith, for the great Van Dyck was born there, and Antwerp is
nothing if not reverent of the memory of her glorious sons of Art. And
Brabo cannot afford to take too many chances with the security of his
own position, for he himself has a rival; Napoleon the Great was really
a greater champion of Flanders than he, and overthrew a worse enemy
of Antwerp’s than the fabled Antigonus when he raised the embargo on
the Scheldt, that had existed for a century and a half under the terms
of the outrageous Treaty of Westphalia, until scarcely a rowboat would
venture over the silt-choked mouth of the river, and only then to find
the famous capital a forsaken village of empty streets and abandoned
factories. The dredging of the channel, the expenditure of millions in
construction of wharves and quays, and the restoration of the city to
its high place in the commercial world was a greater and more difficult
work than Brabo’s.

The varied and vivid life of Antwerp unfolds itself strikingly in the
early afternoon to one who exchanges the sleepy, mediæval Grand Place
for the broad, curving, crowded boulevard of the popular Place de Meir.
It was just such clean and handsome streets as this that inspired John
Evelyn to write so delightedly of Antwerp two hundred and fifty years
ago, describing them in his famous “Diary” as “fair and noble, clean,
well-paved, and sweet to admiration.” Indeed, everything seemed to
have charmed Evelyn here, as witness his inclusive approval, “Nor did
I ever observe a more quiet, clean, elegantly built, and civil place
than this magnificent and famous city of Antwerp.” Rubens, the name of
names in Flanders, was then too recently dead to have come into the
fullness of his fame; whereas to-day one thinks of him continually here
and likes nothing better than the many opportunities to study him in
the completeness of his wonderful career—“the greatest master,” said
Sir Joshua Reynolds, “in the mechanical part of the art, that ever
exercised a pencil.” Even trivial associations of his activity are
cherished; as we find them, for instance, in the little woodcut designs
he made for his famous friend, Christopher Plantin, the greatest
printer of the era, and which one handles reverently in the old Plantin
house in the Marché du Vendredi—that picture-book of a house, where
corbel-carved ceiling-beams overhang antique presses, types, and
mallets, and great windows of tiny leaded panes let in a flood of
light from the rarest and mellowest old courtyard in the whole of the
Netherlands.

The Place de Meir is Antwerp’s Broadway; and an afternoon stroll
along it affords a constantly changing view of stately public and
private buildings, no less attractive to the average man than those
“apple-green wineshops, garlanded in vines” that delighted Théophile
Gautier on the river front. Little corner shrines, so numerous in this
city, shelter saints of tinsel and gilt and receive the reverence of
a population that has four hundred Catholics to every Protestant. One
must necessarily delight in a street whose houses are all of delicately
colored brick, with stone trimmings carved to a nicety and shutters
painted in softest greens. The imposing Royal Palace is graceful and
beautiful, but human interest goes out to the stone-garlanded house
across the way,—old Number 54,—where Rubens was born and where he
lived so many years and took so much pleasure in making beautiful for
his parents. On either hand one sees solid residences of the most
generous proportions, and all in tints of pink and gray, and busy
hotels with red-faced porters hurrying about in long blouses. Picture
stores and bookshops scrupulously stocked with religious volumes
beguile lingering inspection. There are establishments on every hand
for the sale of ecclesiastical paraphernalia, with windows hung with
confirmation wreaths, crucifixes, rosaries, and what-not. Occasionally,
even here, one discovers, crushed in between more consequential
businesses, the celebrated little gingerbread-shops of which so much
amused notice has been taken. Restaurants and cafés abound. One sees
them on every hand, with their characteristic overflow of tables
and chairs on the sidewalk, always thronged, both inside and out,
with jolly, chattering patrons and gleaming in sideboard and shelf
with highly polished vessels of brass and pewter. Here and there one
passes the confectionery shops, called _pâtisseries_, where ices,
mild liqueurs, and mineral waters refresh a thriving trade. Stevenson
found no relish for Flemish food, pronouncing it “of a nondescript,
occasional character.” He complained that the Belgians do not go at
eating with proper thoroughness, but “peck and trifle with viands all
day long in an amateur spirit.” “All day long” is apt enough, for
Antwerp’s restaurants and cafés are always thronged.

These ruddy-faced and placid Belgians are a very serene and contented
people. It is pleasant and even restful to watch them; they go
about the affairs of life with such an absence of fret and fever.
Spanish-appearing ladies float gracefully past in silk mantillas;
priests by the hundreds shuffle along leisurely in picturesque hats and
gowns; the portly merchant, on his way at this hour to the _moresque_,
many-columned Bourse, proceeds in like deliberate and unhurried
fashion. Street venders, in peaked caps and voluminous trousers,
approach you with calm deliberation and retire unruffled at your
dismissal. On every sunny corner military men by the score “loafe and
invite their souls.” Tradesmen in the shops and cabmen in the open go
about their business as though it were a matter of infinite leisure.
Even the day laborers in the streets, whose huge sabots stand in long
rows by the curb, survey life tranquilly; why worry when a good pair
of wooden shoes costs less than a dollar and will last for five or six
years?

The snatches of conversation one catches betray the confusion of
tongues inseparable from a nation of whom one half cannot understand
the other, and whose cousins, once or twice removed, are of foreign
speech to either. The Dutch spoken in the Scheldt country is said to
be as bewildering to a German, as is the French the Walloons employ
in the valley of the Meuse to a Parisian. But although the Flemish
outnumber their fellow countrymen of Wallonia two to one, still French
is the tongue of the court, the sciences, and all the educated and
upper circles. It is like Austria-Hungary all over again. And French
continues steadily to gain ground in spite of the utmost efforts of the
enthusiasts behind the new “Flemish Movement.” One sees both classes on
the Place de Meir,—the stolid, light-haired man of Flanders and the
nervous, swarthy Walloon. The beauty of the blue-eyed, _belle Flamande_
is in happy contrast with that of the slender, dark-eyed _Wallonne_,
and their poets have exhausted themselves in efforts to do justice to
either side of so delicate and distracting a dilemma. Our grandmothers
heard much of the charms of _La Flamande_ when Lortzing’s melodious
“Czaar und Zimmermann” was so popular, seventy-five years ago:—

    “Adieu, ma jolie Flamande,
    Que je quitte malgré moi!
    J’en aurai la de demand,
    J’ai de l’amitié pour toi.”

The complexion of the life on the Place de Meir changes with the hours.
Between two and three o’clock we find it disposed to adapt itself as
closely as possible along lines of personal comfort. By five it will be
lively with carriages and automobiles bound for the driving in the prim
little Pépinière, or the bird-thronged Zoölogical gardens, or around
the lake in the central park, with a turn up the fashionable Rue Carnot
to the stately boulevards of the new and exclusive Borgerhout section.
At that hour one may count confidently upon seeing every uniform of the
garrison among the crowds of officers who turn out to have a part in
the beauty show. On the other hand, if it were early morning—_very_
early morning—and the sun were still fighting its way through the
mists and vapors of the Scheldt, the Place de Meir would resound with
rattling little carts by the hundreds, bearing great milk cans of
glittering, polished brass packed in straw, by whose sides patient,
placid-faced women would trudge along in quaint thimble-bonnets, with
plaid shawls crossed and belted above voluminous skirts and their
feet set securely in the clumsy wooden sabots of the Fatherland.
Market gardeners in linen smocks and gray worsted stockings would be
bringing Antwerp its breakfast in carts only a little larger than the
milk-women’s, and butcher boys would be scurrying by with meat trays
on their heads or suspended from yokes across their shoulders. And all
the echoes of the city would be forced into feverish activity to answer
the wild clamor of the barking and fighting dogs, shaggy and strong,
that draw all these picturesque little wagons. Assuredly there are few
sights in Antwerp so impressive to the stranger as this substitution of
dog for horse. It has been celebrated in prose and verse, with Ouida
possibly carrying off the palm with her canine _vie intime_, “A Dog of
Flanders.”

As the loiterer continues his afternoon stroll to the large and
central Place de Commune, crosses into the chain of transverse
boulevards, and returns riverward to that choicest spot of all, the
tree-shaded, memory-haunted Place Verte, he is bound to reflect upon
the vast changes that Antwerp, above all other Continental cities,
has experienced in the last quarter-century. He will marvel, too,
that Robert Bell should have lamented in his charming “Wayside
Pictures” the paucity of gay life here and particularly the lack of
theatrical entertainment. It may have been so when Bell wrote, fifty
years ago, but it is decidedly otherwise to-day. So far as theatres
go, they simply abound; nor could city streets be gayer than these,
thronged with a merry, happy people and bright with the uniforms of
artillery-men and fortress engineers, grenadiers of the line and the
dashing _chasseurs-à-cheval_. Every hotel and café has its orchestra;
and in the early evening practically every square of the city has its
concert by a band from a regiment or guild. There is no suburb, they
say, but has its own band or orchestra, or both. Indeed, Antwerp is
nearly as music-mad as art-mad.

The shady aisles of poplars in the cozy Place Verte, the perfumes and
peaceful sounds, the music of the cathedral bells, the homelike hotels
and cafés and the drowsy, nodding Old-World house-fronts combine to
produce a sense of comfort and satisfaction peculiar to this favored
little square. There is, besides, a special and impressive feeling
of something like the personal presence of the great Rubens; partly,
perhaps, from the fact that the city’s chief statue of him, a lifelike
bronze of heroic size, stands at the centre of the Place. Twice the
normal stature of man it is, and its pedestal is five times as high as
one’s head, and the great palette, book, and scrolls are all of more
generous proportions than such things actually ever are;—but there
seems nothing at all disproportionate in that, considering what he
was and what the average man is. The memory of one who could paint a
masterpiece in a day, who stood head and shoulders above every living
artist of his time, and whose work has inspired and delighted mankind
for three hundred years, becomes, like all great objects, positively
prodigious from actual proximity. Such is the inevitable attitude
towards Rubens when one touches the things he touched, walks the
streets of the city where he was born, lived, and lies buried, where
he wrought his greatest artistic triumphs, and where his finest work
is still preserved and reverenced. The most admired cathedral in the
whole of the Netherlands rises out of the fluttering tree-tops of the
square, and the greatest treasures it contains are the product of this
man’s genius. Every one feels the Rubens influence in the Place Verte;
Eugène Fromentin, fresh from his pictorial triumphs of Algerian life,
observed in “Les Maîtres d’Autrefois”: “Our imagination becomes excited
more than usual when, in the centre of Place Verte, we see the statue
of Rubens and further on, the old basilica where are preserved the
triptychs which, humanly speaking, have consecrated it.” Such are the
privileged emotions of the wise and fortunate visitors who pitch their
passing tent in this fair and favored nook.

Reflections over Rubens naturally arouse thoughts of the many sons
of Flanders who won preëminence in the domain of art. No other
city, inexplicable as it is, has, in modern times, seen so large a
proportion of its citizens achieve the loftiest heights of fame in this
glorious activity; nor has any other honored art so unaffectedly in
memorializing their triumphs. In Antwerp there are scores of streets
and squares, and even quays, named after its artists. There are also
fine statues to Rubens, Van Dyck, David Teniers, Jordaens, Quinten
Matsys, and Hendrik Leys, and other memorials to the brothers Van
Eyck, to Memling, Wappers, Frans Hals, Van der Heyden, De Keyser,
and Verboekhoven. In private and public collections the people
have jealously kept possession of the masterpieces of their fellow
countrymen. The Royal Museum of Fine Arts, on the Place du Musée, is as
much a treasure-house of Flemish art as the Rijks Museum at Amsterdam
is of Dutch art. Again Place Verte plumes itself, for just around the
corner was born the great Teniers, wizard depicter of tavern life and
kermesses, and on one side is that tourists’ delight, the graceful,
feathery well-top that Quinten Matsys wrought out of a single piece of
iron, before the days when love inspired him to win the most coveted
laurels of the painter.

However, art aside, Place Verte has distinctions of its own. Something
of interest is always occurring here. Suburban bands hold weekly
competitions in its artistic pavilion and the most skillful musicians
hold concerts here each evening. The sidewalks then are crowded with
chairs and tables, and at the close the people rise and join in the
national hymn “La Brabançonne,” with its out-of-date lament to the
men of Brabant that “the orange may no longer wave upon the tree of
Liberty.” Of an afternoon a regiment may swing through in full regalia,
the red, yellow, and black flag snapping in the van, and the band
crashing out the ancient war-song “Bergen-op-Zoom.” If to-day were
July 21 there would be tremendous enthusiasm and cheering celebrating
the Fêtes Nationales in honor of the Revolution of 1830; as well there
should, for Belgium is the smallest and one of the most desirable
little kingdoms of all Europe, and the national motto, “L’Union fait la
Force,” has to be closely adhered to if the Lion of Brabant would stand
up under the baiting of his powerful and covetous neighbors.

The passing of a Sister of the Béguinage, in sombre black garb and an
extraordinary creation of immaculate white linen on her head, recalls
the many things one has read of this interesting and noble order which
is peculiarly Belgium’s own. Their neat little settlements are a source
of endless admiration to strangers, and quite as fascinating is their
beautiful vesper service which bears the pretty name of the “salut des
Béguines.” Readers of Laurence Sterne, who should be legion, promptly
recall the curious story of “The Fair Béguine” that Trim told Uncle
Toby in “Tristram Shandy,” and the valiant Captain’s comment: “They
visit and take care of the sick by profession—I had rather, for my own
part, they did it out of good nature.”

It is one of the proud distinctions of Place Verte to be at the very
portals of Antwerp’s glorious cathedral, the largest, richest, and
most beautiful in the Netherlands. From his café chair the visitor
watches its great shadow steal over him as the afternoon wanes, while
at any moment by merely raising his eyes he may revel in the graceful
outlines of its sweep of ambulatory chapels and let the aspiring tips
of delicate pinnacles and arches entice his vision to the loftiest
point of its one finished and matchless tower. Never was Napoleon so
pat in “fitting the scene with the apposite phrase” as when he compared
this tower to Mechlin lace. It is delightful to look up above the
trees of the Place at the enormous bulk of this tremendous structure,
stained and darkened by the vapors of river and canals, study its rich
carvings and stained-glass windows centuries old, and note how the
blue sky, in patterns of delicate foliation and fragile arch, shines
like mosaics through the clustered apertures of the filmy openwork of
the lofty tower. A hundred bells drip mellow music from that exquisite
belfry every few minutes all day long. You listen, perhaps, to detect
the impression they gave Thackeray of a new version of the shadow-dance
from “Dinorah,” conscious that they are going to haunt you as they did
him for days after you have left Antwerp far behind. It is peculiarly
appropriate that the Lohengrin Wedding March should be a favorite
on the bells of the very cathedral where Lohengrin, according to
the story, was married. Indeed, so many and so varied are the clear
bell-voices of this great _carillon_ that their music seems, as the
neighboring bells of Bruges did to Longfellow,—

    “Like the psalms from some old cloister,
      When the nuns sing in the choir;
    And the great bell tolled among them,
      Like the chanting of a friar.”

Within this treasure-chest of a cathedral are jewels worthy of
such a casket. One goes out of the glare of the afternoon sun into
the coolness and scented gloom of its vaulted, many-aisled, and
multi-chapeled vastness, and there in the hush of worshipers kneeling
in prayer he finds splendid altars that gleam in a profusion of
ornaments of silver, gold, and precious stones, glorious rose-windows,
carven confessionals and choir stalls, life-like figures in wax clad
in silks and crowned in gold, hundreds of masterful paintings, a high
altar of extraordinary splendor blazing in costly decorations under a
golden canopy supported by silver figures, and, at the centre of the
seven aisles, Verbruggen’s far-famed carved wooden pulpit, realistic
in lifelike foliage and birds, and with plump little cherubim floating
aloft with the apparently fluttering canopy. As if this were not enough
to distinguish any one church, here hang three of the most glorious
creations of the hand of man, the masterpieces of Rubens himself. The
Assumption alone could have sufficed; what is it, then, to have the
tremendous glory of the presence of those greater achievements, The
Elevation of the Cross and The Descent from the Cross! One feels he
could easily do as did the hero of Gautier’s “Golden Fleece” and carry
away forever after a hopeless passion for the beautiful, grief-stricken
Magdalen.

The power and appeal of sheer beauty has perhaps never been exampled as
in the case of this cathedral. Through all the sackings and pillages of
Antwerp the savagery and destructiveness of her foes have stopped here.
The most ruthless soldiery could not bring themselves to lay violent
hands upon it. One exception stands out in this remarkable experience,
and that one was quite sufficient. The fanatical “Iconoclasts,”
frenzied against the Church of Rome, fell to a depth of abasement below
the worst villains of Spain. Those atrocious, misguided “Iconoclasts”!
What a frightful page in Antwerp’s history is the one that recounts
the three days of horrors of these frantic and terrible zealots, three
hundred and fifty years ago! Schiller, Motley, and Prescott have told
the story as few stories have ever been told. In the calm of this
afternoon it is impossible to conceive the uproar and confusion with
which these lofty arches then resounded. Fancy a horde of men and boys,
lighted by wax tapers in the hands of screaming women of the streets,
demolishing the altars and rending and destroying every exquisite
decoration and even tearing open the graves and scattering the bones
of the dead. Says Motley: “Every statue was hurled from its niche,
every picture torn from the wall, every wonderfully painted window
shivered to atoms, every ancient monument shattered, every sculptured
decoration, however inaccessible in appearance, hurled to the ground.
Indefatigably, audaciously,—endowed, as it seemed, with preternatural
strength and nimbleness,—these furious Iconoclasts clambered up the
dizzy heights, shrieking and chattering like malignant apes, as they
tore off in triumph the slowly matured fruit of centuries.”

Not the cathedral alone, but every Catholic temple of Antwerp, and four
hundred others in Flanders, were sacked in this sudden revolt against
the Papacy. It is said that King Philip, when he heard of it, fell
into a paroxysm of frenzy and tore his beard for rage, swearing by the
soul of his father that it should cost them dear. How dear it shortly
did cost them, both the guilty and the innocent, we are shown in the
picture Schiller has drawn of Calvinists’ bodies dangling from the
beams of their roofless churches, of “the places of execution filled
with corpses, the prisons with condemned victims, the highroads with
fugitives.” Such was one of the extraordinary experiences through which
this beautiful cathedral passed—one of the maddest, most senseless,
and most frightfully punished outbreaks in all history.

In the company of the doves that nest among the pinnacles and arches
away up in the cathedral tower, one looks out at this hour on a very
considerable portion of the little kingdom—forty miles, they tell you,
with a good glass, in any direction. It is a prospect well worth the
weary climb. Just below, the tiled and gabled roofs rise and fall all
about like a troubled sea. The crooked streets of the old section and
the straight ones of the new, and the _places_ and parks in verdant
spaces here and there have the appearance of some vast topographical
map. The gray Scheldt lies like a string of Ghent flax to Antwerp’s
bent bow. A wrinkled arc of massive and intricate fortifications
wards the rich city from its foes, and just beyond lie numerous tiny
villages all with the exact primness of mathematical problems. An
unusual country view is spread out on every hand. Canals, numerous as
fences and dotted with boats and slowly-moving barges, sear the green
fields like pale-blue scars; and white, dusty roads criss-cross with
their solemn flanking of tall poplar trees. As if this region were the
natural habitat of some strange and monstrous form of animal life, one
beholds everywhere a semblance of motion and activity in the gaunt,
waving, canvas arms of hundreds of plethoric windmills. Diminutive,
trim farms, like little gardens, give the appearance of a general
carpeting by Turkish rugs of vivid and diversified design; each has
its whitewashed cottage roofed in thatch or tile and set in orchards
hedged with box and hawthorn. Fields of corn, wheat, rye, and oats
expand in well-kept richness, and in all this profusely cultivated
region men, women, boys, and girls toil from the faintest dawn to
sunset, and often all night by moonlight, content and even happy in the
winning of enough to supply clothing and shelter and the unvarying fare
of soup, coffee, and black rye bread. Seaward and northward lie sand
dunes, dikes, and polders stretching away to the old morasses where the
valiant Morini faced and stopped even Cæsar. Literary people will see
in all this country the land of “Quentin Durward,” as that greatest
story of Flanders comes to mind, and they will perhaps reflect upon the
characteristics of the good burghers of those days, whom Sir Walter
thought “fat and irritable,” and will see young Durward defying the
ferocious “Wild Boar of Ardennes” in the perilous service of the fair
Lady Isabelle, herself a Flemish countess.

To the northwest one sees the gleaming reaches of the Scheldt emptying
themselves into the distant sea and, nearer at hand, solemn little
Terneuzen where the ships turn into the canal for Ghent—Ghent, the
“Manchester of Belgium,” where old Roland swings in his belfry and
calls

                            “o’er lagoon and dike of sand,
    ‘I am Roland! I am Roland! There is victory in the land.’”

On the east rise the spires of Westmalle, where in their Trappist
convent austere disciples of St. Bruno, garbed in sackcloth and with
shaven heads, pass their voiceless lives and keep watch beside the
open graves in the orchard. To the south is venerable Mechlin on the
many-bridged river Dyle, once famous for such laces as we may still
see in the pictures of its immortal son, Frans Hals. Brussels lifts
its towers forty miles due south, and stretches its broad roads to
Waterloo. And it is there the black forest of Ardennes expands, where
St. Hubert, patron of hunters, intercedes for the health of good dogs,
and which certain Shakespearean editors have fixed upon as the Forest
of Arden of “As You Like It.” Over there lies Namur where the gallant
Uncle Toby of “Tristram Shandy” received the painful wound deplored of
the Widow Wadman, “before the Gate of St. Nicholas,” as the precise
description always ran, “in one of the traverses of the trench,
opposite to the salient angle of the demibastion of St. Roch.”

One lingers long and delightedly over this charming panorama of
fascinating and storied associations, until presently the great clock
beneath us booms the hour of three, and our time is up. We turn
regretfully from this toyland country and the gracious, old-fashioned
town—this placid, music-loving, art-reverencing Antwerp, with its
many gables and its many rare delights. The friendly moon, a little
later, will silver her huddled roofs and serrated fronts, her façades
whose fantastic ends will be steps for White Pierrot to go up to his
chimney-tops, her quiet squares and quaint, twisting alleys, her solid
burgher mansions and vineclad waterman cottages. Serene and chaste, the
delicate spire of the magic cathedral will rear its traceried, guardian
length from out the deep shadows of little Place Verte and look down
all night, with the affection of half a thousand years, on this quaint
and merry Antwerp snuggling up to the languid Scheldt.




[Illustration]




ROME

3 P.M. TO 4 P.M.


Like the lizards in the dusty Forum ruins, emerging from dusky retreats
to warm and blink in the sun and then flash back into some sheltered
refuge, so visitors at Rome issue from dim closing museums at three
o’clock in the afternoon and gaze around in a stupid, dazed fashion on
a sky of cloudless deep blue and on placid streets and squares that
seem fairly to quiver in a golden haze of strong sunshine. After the
cool interiors the sultry heat seems doubly oppressive, and there is
something of the nature of a mild struggle before reality succeeds
in summoning them back from that vague state of disassociation,
that condition of all-mind-and-no-body, produced by an intense and
protracted study of all those wonderful things that great museums
contain. To this confused condition of mind there is generally added a
further disquieting element in the shape of a blank misgiving as to how
the intervening hour can be tolerably passed before joining the four
o’clock promenaders in the Pincian Gardens to see Roman Fashion at its
ante-prandial rites. And yet were strangers merely to remain receptive
and allow their extraordinary surroundings to assert themselves and
supply the diversion with which they are dynamically charged, this is
an hour that might well prove to be one of the most delightful of the
whole twenty-four in Rome.

For the masterful spell of the Eternal City is still world-conquering;
it only asks the chance. Protract your stay as you will, there remains
at last a sense of awe, almost of incredulity, at being, in the actual
flesh, in precincts so ultra-venerated—in dread, historic Rome. It
is only a somewhat milder form of the feeling that overpowered you
the very first morning of your visit when, after the night’s sleep of
forgetfulness, you read with amazed, half-awake eyes the printed slip
on the bedroom door that affirmed your hotel to be on no less august
an eminence than _one of the seven hills of Rome_. Even when you had
rushed to the window for corroboration and stared out in excited
astonishment on a vast shoulder of dusty, reddish brown ruins with pert
vines greening in its loftiest recesses, and a guidebook insisted that
they were the Baths of Diocletian, a reluctant fear remained that you
might only be, after all, in the pleasant toils of the old, recurrent
dream from which you might shortly and miserably awake.

But if, at three o’clock of a summer afternoon, the particular museum
whose doors are remorselessly closing upon your final, lingering look
chances to be that fortunate one on the Capitoline Hill that houses,
among its array of mellow antiques, the pointed-ear original of
Hawthorne’s “Marble Faun,” you could not do better than make use of the
remainder of the admission ticket and have a survey of Rome from the
airy summit of the campanile in the rear. To effect this, one picks
his way among the imposing remains of the ancient record-house of the
_tabularium_, mounts the long flight of iron steps in a corner of its
colonnade, and soon reaches the top of the tower of the Capitol, with
Rome as utterly at his feet as ever it appeared to the eyes of Alaric
and his Goths.

In tones of soft yellow, gray, and dull orange the roof-masses sweep
northward, eastward, and westward, while to the southward and at
your feet lies heaped the earthy, dusty chaos of ruins that crown
the imperial Palatine, the popular Cælian, and the luckless Aventine
Hills. Parks and villa gardens are blotches of dark foliage; and,
within its white embankment walls, the sacred Tiber, in a twisting
yellow band, rushes swiftly down the face of the city in its mad rush
for Ostia and the sea. Beyond the most distant suburbs extend the
rolling plains of the Campagna like an all-embracing sea, until they
seem to wash in a gentle surf about the Sabine foot-hills, away to the
north, and brim southward to the verge of the Alban Hills beyond the
farthest glimpse of the Aqueduct’s long line of broken arches or the
dimming perspective of that taut thread, the Appian Way. From this
vantage-point the city may hide no surface secrets. It lies below us
like an enormous fan, whose converging point is the round Piazza del
Popolo, a good mile to the north. Like three great fingers, there
extend from that focus the Via Ripetta, the Via Babuino, and, in the
centre and running toward us as straight as a ruler, the popular Corso
carrying the old Flaminian Way right through the heart of modern Rome.
By degrees we come to distinguish familiar churches among the hundreds
of spires, towers, and domes; to pick out, here and there, a mediæval
watchtower; to locate well-known squares; to name an occasional
obelisk; to identify a column; and even to particularize some of the
scores of fountains that give latter-day Rome a pleasant distinction
among modern cities. The ribbed, blue-gray dome of St. Peter’s looms
impressively from out the deep green of the Papal Gardens of the
yellow Vatican; the circular bulk of the Castle of Sant’ Angelo and
the columned Pantheon look as familiar as old friends to us—though
they may not be friends to each other, with the latter, under papal
stress, forced in other days to yield its beautiful bronze tiles to
make saints’ ornaments and cannon for the former; the yellow walls of
the Sant’ Onofrio monastery mark where died Tasso, “King of Bards,”
and where they still show his crucifix and inkstand; and yonder is the
great gray church where Beatrice Cenci lies in her nameless grave. If
we turn and look southward we see strange sun-tricks among the bleak
and shadowy corridors of the vast, half-demolished Colosseum, and
crumbling arches of the emperors warm into a venerable dotage. The
sun-baked wreckage of the Forum expands at our feet in rows of column
stumps, shattered arches, isolated shafts with clinging fragments of
cornice and entablature, yawning earthen doorways and dusty heaps of
cluttered brick and _tufa_,—like a gigantic honeycomb,—while all
about it birds are singing divinely in the shade of the laurels. The
famed Tarpeian Rock, just at hand, has little suggestion of a short
shrift for traitors, with rookeries nestling snugly to its base and a
rose-trellised garden on its commodious summit.

Victor Emmanuel II, in the regal cool of bronze, gazes over his
colossal charger in the gigantic monument on the Capitoline slopes
below us and beholds the hills studded with the pretty white villas
of his grandson’s prosperous subjects, and the Quarter of the Fields
carpeted with the neat stucco homes of the poor that used to languish
in the vile slums of the old Ghetto. Had he read Zola’s “Rome” he might
even be justified in frowning at so defamatory a description of so
pleasant a section. But apparently he prefers to watch the afternoon
glow on the gleaming domes and towers and myrtle-set villas of the
Trastevere, where the powerful and violent descendants of the ancient
Romans still dwell; and to take amused note of Garibaldi over there
twisting around on his big bronze horse to keep a wary eye on St.
Peter’s.

It taxes the credulity of the visitor to comprehend that yonder is
the renowned Janiculum, down whose slopes Lars Porsena led his troops
to contend with Horatius Cocles and his intrepid companions as they
“held the bridge”—only a hundred yards from where we are standing.
And, indeed, imagination is quite unequal to the tasks set it on
all this historic ground. Even if we succeed in carrying ourselves
back through the periods of the popes, the emperors, the republic,
the kings, and possibly the shepherds, what is to become of us when
confronted with the statement of Ampère that there were really “nine
Romes before Rome.” It is quite enough to undertake the reconstruction
of ancient Rome to the mind’s eye, such as authentic history describes
it, considering how repeatedly its conquerors sacked it, and how both
Nero and Robert Guisecard burned it; and that the Romans themselves, as
Lanciani insists, have done more harm to it than all invading hosts put
together. “What the Barbarians did not do,” ran the famous pasquinade,
“the Barberini did.” It is, really, asking too much of the man who is
risking “a touch of sun” to see the city from the sweltering top of
the Capitol Tower, to expect him to be communing with himself in terms
of _travertine_ and _peperino_ and reassembling antiquities as an
agreeable pastime. He will probably content himself with a hasty glance
around, and a little irreverent levity over the task of Ascanius, son
of “the pious Æneas,” in building a city on the scraggy ridge of
distant Alba Longa, or the scramble the Roman bachelors must have had
when they scampered down the neighboring Quirinal Hill with their arms
full of their Sabine allies’ wives. As he trudges down the tower steps
and catches periodic glimpses of that ancient Latium that is now the
Campagna, he ought to devote a moment to self-congratulation that the
pestilence no longer stalks there by night and noon-day, or that the
evil _campagnards_ of Andersen’s “Improvisatore” no more terrorize with
impunity, or wild beasts imperil the wayfarer; but rather that these
latter themselves flee, especially the foxes, what time the red-coated
gentlemen of the English Hunt round on them among the shattered tombs
of the Appian Way.

And yet, if the visitor is a sentimentalist, no Italian sun is going to
rob him of his reverie: he will be hearing the cries of the Christian
martyrs at a Colosseum matinée, and beholding the pride and beauty of
ancient Rome loitering along the palace-lined streets on their way to
the afternoon diversions at the Baths of Caracalla. And the Forum will
bustle with the state business of the world, Cicero will mount the
rostrum, and a train of Vestal Virgins pass demurely along the Sacra
Via. He will attend the mournful wails of priests at worship in the
temples of Jupiter and Saturn, and thrill to see a detachment of the
Prætorian Guard dash into the Forum and acclaim some new military hero
as emperor. But this should be sufficient to startle him back to the
Rome of to-day, and as he looks anxiously over to the northwestern
walls, beyond which once stood that infamous camp, he will doubtless
rejoice devoutly that the sober and law-abiding soldiery that drills
there now is something so very different from the uncontrollable
“Frankenstein” that the Cæsars devised to their own undoing. It is,
in consequence, with hearty complacence that he will turn his back on
even the aristocratic treasure-heap of the lordly Palatine, conscious
that if the cry were raised to-day, “Why is the Forum crowded, what
means this stir in Rome?” the reply would be forthcoming, “Tourists and
picture-card sellers and peddlers of cameo pins.”

Parenthetically, it may be observed that, although pathos and bathos
rub elbows in the foregoing reflections, still incongruities come
very near to being the rule in latter-day Rome. What is to be said
of obelisks of the Pharaohs with Christian crosses on their tops? Of
the column of Trajan with St. Peter at its summit, and at its base
those twentieth-century cats that visitors feed with fish bought
from stands at hand for the purpose? Of St. Paul on the column of
Marcus Aurelius, and the sign of an American life insurance company
across the street? Of a modern playhouse in the mausoleum of Augustus
where the emperors were buried? Of the present use of King Tarquin’s
great sewer, the Cloaca Maxima, just as good as it was twenty-five
hundred years ago? Of electric lights where Cincinnatus had his
cabbage-farm? Of a Jewish cemetery above the circus of Tarquin? Of
steam-heated flats in the gardens of Sallust? Of modern houses at the
Tarpeian Rock, and the Baths of Agrippa? Of street cars with the name
of Diocletian? Of automobiles on the Flaminian Way? Of tennis courts
beside the burial-place of a Cæsar? Of motor-cycles around the tomb of
the Scipios? Of an annual Derby down the Appian Way? Of railroad trains
beside the old Servian Wall? Of telephone booths on the banks of Father
Tiber? Modernism is, indeed, with us, as his Holiness laments!

The sultry, torrid hour that lies between three o’clock and four of
a summer afternoon usually sees Rome rubbing her eyes, fresh from
her siesta, that ancient midday nap that Varro declared he could
not live without; and you may be sure the final rub would be one of
vast amusement if she were to see you walking on the sunny side of
the street, where, by the terms of her immemorial observation, only
dogs and foreigners go. The heat is intense on these lava pavements;
one keeps religiously to the shade. But Roman society is not rubbing
its eyes,—at least, not in town,—for _tout le monde_ is passing
the annual _villeggiatura_ at its villa in the hills or by the sea,
economizing for the fashionable expenditure of the winter, and,
incidentally, obliging the people who stay in town with that much more
of elbow room on the Corso and other popular promenades. All of which
helps a little in making the stroll from the Capitoline Hill to the
Pincian Gardens rather more comfortable than moving around the hot-room
of a Turkish bath.

As we pick our way down the Capitoline slope, pass Marcus Aurelius on
his fat bronze steed, and “bend our steps,” as the old novels used
to say, toward the tramway-haunted uproar of the Piazza di Venezia,
the rabble rout of the slum district on the left affords a lively
conception of the element that goes farthest to make Rome howl. Having
been told that this old Ghetto had been swept and garnished, one is
properly indignant at finding the air redolent of garlic and everybody
under conviction that the chief end of man is to amass macaroni and
enjoy it forever. You gaze askance on a universal costume of filth and
rags, and hurry along through it, protesting that, while you would
not invoke the precedent of Pope Paul IV’s sixteenth-century method
of putting gates across the streets, and locking the people in and
making the men wear yellow hats and the women yellow veils, as he did
with the Jews, still some expedient ought to be hit upon for making
the district look a little less like a camp of Falstaff recruits. “A
frowzy-headed laborer,” say you, “shouldering a basket of charcoal, may
seem attractive in Mr. Storey’s ‘Roba di Roma,’ but in real life one
likes to think men can afford shirts, and not have to wear rags over
their shoulders after the manner of a herald’s tabard.” You pause a
moment to watch the disappearance of a yard of macaroni down some red
gullet, and George Augustus Sala’s description of the banquet of the
seven wagoners rushes to mind: “Upon this vast mess they fell tooth
and nail. The simile is, perchance, not strictly correct. Teeth may be
_de trop_. You should never bite or chew macaroni, but swallow each
pipe whole, grease and all, as though it were so much flattery. But
their nails they did use, seeing that they ate the macaroni with their
fingers. What wondrous twistings and turnings-back of their heads, what
play of the muscles of their throats, what straining of their eyeballs
and vasty openings of their jaws, did I study as they swallowed their
food.”

And now we begin to have the usual experience of Roman mendicancy.
Truly, there is no beggar like your Roman beggar. He has raised his
profession to both an art and a nuisance. Appeals to charity take every
form and phase. Evidences of anatomical disaster are utilized to excite
pity at so much per sigh. Tales of misery and misfortune ring all the
changes of fervency and fancy. Their whines are both groveling and
dramatic. “Niente!” they moan, as with woe-begone faces and pathetic
twists of their necks they sidle up with stiff gestures of weary and
hopeless expressiveness; “Illustrissimo! Eccellenza! Per amor di Dio!”
You could not bluff them, though you were armored in all the calloused
nonchalance of the average ambulance surgeon; and your doom is sealed
if you undertake to bandy repartee, for their invective is as searching
as a satire of Juvenal. Whether you give or not, their volubility
and frankness continue unabated; for you are savagely cursed if you
decline, and if you acquiesce are blessed strictly in proportion to
the gratuity. Indubitably, in the social scheme of the beggar we be
brethren all and should each aid the other—after the philosophy of the
Italian, saying, “One hand washes the other, and both the face.” The
Roman, understanding them, passes coolly by; but the foreigner, who is
their special prey, gives up in desperation, on the principle of the
local proverb, “We are in the ballroom and we must dance.”

Parenthetically, again, they say the authorities are helpless to curb
this universal Roman nuisance. It is an institution. These beggars
come of all classes—from the Capuchin and Franciscan lay brothers
who go about in brown robes, rope girdles, and sandals and present a
basket for food, to the dirty urchins of the Appian Way who stop your
carriage with their acrobatic proficiency and then howl for _soldi_ in
the name of all the saints. Many a beggar here is a bank depositor;
and any of them who can retain the monopoly of the door of a popular
church may confidently look forward to affluence. Very likely they are
better business men, in their way, than many who drop coins into their
pathetic, swindling hands. _À chacun son métier._

It would extend a Brooklynite to negotiate the crossing of the Piazza
di Venezia. It is the grand gathering-place of tramcars, busses,
cabs, carts, bicycles, and every other form of conveyance. You will
certainly find a “Seeing Rome” automobile, with the lecturer pointing
out the castellated old Palazzo di Venezia and telling his people that
it was built of stone from the Colosseum, and has been the seat of
the Austrian embassy to the Curia for over a hundred years. So far as
traffic is concerned, this is the heart of Rome. Nothing less than a
whirlpool could be expected in a spot that is the confluence of such
full streams of life as the Corso and the Via Nazionale. One admires
its broad, busy sweep, and the dignity of the solid old gray buildings
that rim it. No mid-afternoon heat lessens the bustle and activity that
rages here; even the experienced natives can be found in large numbers,
jostling their way across it, and visitors pass through in droves to
reach the Cenci Palace or to see the spot where Paul dwelt for two
years “in his own hired house.”

If you stopped, as I did, at one of the hotels near the Baths of
Diocletian, the Via Nazionale will have a friendly suggestion of the
nearest way home. With thoughts of that temporary home the recollection
often comes to me of the mildly stimulating delight I once found in
getting lost by night in this city of superior chance encounters.
It seemed, on the first occasion, as though I had scarcely turned
the corner into the Via Cavour before a delicious conviction of
unfamiliarity with my surroundings assured me I was pursuing a course
that was certain, sooner or later, to lead to artistic discovery
or adventure. Nothing was easier than getting lost, for I was newly
arrived; and yet localities and objects of consequence were not without
significance, for, like every one else, I had a vivid idea of the
landmarks of the famous city. And first of all, I discovered I was
passing the infamous spot where “the impious Tullia” drove her chariot
across the bleeding body of her royal father; whence I hastened on,
with furtive glances. Next, after some speculation I identified an
enormous church to be none other than the famous Santa Maria Maggiore,
whose ceilings, I had read, were crusted with the first gold brought
from the New World, and to whose high altar the popes used to come by
torchlight for New Year’s mass. I thrilled at the incredible reflection
that the street cars crossing that corner would be passing, a moment
later, the site of the gardens of Mæcenas where Horace and Virgil
had mused and read their verses. A few blocks farther on I came to a
halt before the house of Lucrezia Borgia; and I tried to fancy the
circumstances of the night of their quiet family supper there, before
the children took leave of their mother with false words of affection
and Cæsar hurried to gather his bravos and overtook Francesco, and,
muffled in a cloak, sat his horse in easy unconcern while his brother
was done to death and thrown into the Tiber. For relief I turned
across the street to the church of St. Peter-in-Chains, and imagined
how Michael Angelo’s vigorous Moses might be appearing in the dark of
the side aisle, and thought of the master striking the completed work
with his mallet and crying out, “Now, speak!” On I rambled, through a
block or two of darkened shops and gloomy houses, and suddenly a great
open space yawned before me and I was staring at rows of column stumps,
mellowed and battered, and among them a tall, ghostly shaft of marble
with a spiral band of half-mutilated reliefs winding away up to the
summit, where was the dusky outline of a sculptured form. It was the
old school-geography picture come to life! There was I in the heart
of an unfamiliar city, alone, by night, with this vast relic of the
ancients. It was like Stanley finding Livingstone in Africa. I felt I
had honestly discovered it and that it ought to be mine. It was the
Forum of Trajan!

It will seem a violent transition to jump from midnight to
mid-afternoon, but the plunge must be taken. The normal state of
the Corso at three-thirty of a summer afternoon is one of leisurely
activity. The crowds are lethargic, slow-moving, inclined to curiosity.
An interesting social comedy is proceeding, with foreign ladies playing
sight-seeing rôles, clutching their red Baedekers and Hare’s “Walks
in Rome.” Jostling groups of them gather before the beguiling shop
windows, and occasionally one enters and possesses herself of a Roman
pearl or cameo, or perhaps a mosaic or copy of an antique bronze.
Business people pass along in their habitually distrait manner, and
priests beyond number brighten the scene with habits of every hue.
There is little enough of room in the middle of the street and scarcely
any on the sidewalks. Like all Roman thoroughfares, the Corso is clean
and distinguished. Long perspectives of gayly awninged shops extend
toward the Piazza del Popolo, agreeably broken here and there by the
interposition of mellow old palace fronts and richly sculptured baroque
façades; and there is frequent opportunity for passing glimpses into
cool courtyards attractive with foliage and fountains.

Visitors keep forsaking the Corso at every turning to make inspiring
discoveries in the tangled mesh of side streets. We are at liberty
to suspect those who go to the west, of sentimental designs on the
star under the dome of a neighboring church that marks the spot where
Julius Cæsar was assassinated in Pompey’s Senate House; or, perhaps,
of an intention to visit the sombre statue of Giordano Bruno in the
Field of Flowers, and reflect upon what a constant rebuke it must be to
the church that burned him there, three centuries ago, for persisting
in his “modernism” to the outrageous extremity of defending the
astronomical discoveries of Copernicus and like heresies of the hour.

Afternoon walks in Rome should be frequently interrupted, not only
to escape the floods of sunshine, but to find out occasionally what
is behind the mellow garden walls over whose tops glistening, green
foliage droops enticingly down with hints of cool and restful
retreats. Such an opportunity presents itself here in the rare Colonna
Gardens, just around the corner of the great Colonna Palace where
earlier in the day the Titians and Tintorettos ravish the artistic.
Spacious, elegant Rome has nothing more charming and exquisite than
such gardens as these. Art and antiquity are everywhere in restful
profusion—“storied urn and animated bust.” It is even said that
sculptures are to be found almost anywhere underground for the mere
pains of exhuming. One rests with infinite satisfaction in the deep
shade of eucalyptus, cypress, ilex, and laurel, to the sweet singing
of multitudes of birds. There are roses and oranges in bloom, and tall
hedges of clipped box, and musical little cascades tumble down from
terrace to terrace and drip over mossy marble steps. In this particular
garden come thoughts of Michael Angelo and Vittoria Colonna, who so
often strolled along these very paths and communed in their serene and
beautiful friendship. Theirs was a faith that brought its own reward.

And what, pray, without its amazing faith, would this Catholic Rome be,
anyway? _À chaque saint sa chandelle._ Otherwise, what would become
of that marble block from the floor of the Appian Way—which the
stubborn archæologists will insist was really paved with silex—that
is preserved with so much reverence in the church of Domine Quo Vadis,
as showing the impressions of the feet of Our Lord and St. Peter when
they faced each other there on the occasion of the memorable rebuke
of the latter for his proposed flight from Rome? And how about the
_scala santa_—the worn and venerated marble steps in the shrine near
the church of St. John Lateran, which were brought from Jerusalem and
up which we are told Christ passed on his way to the judgment seat of
Pilate? The faithful thank God for the privilege of ascending them on
their knees, praying, and receiving the indulgence of a thousand years
of purgatory; and they were worn thin with kisses long before the day
when Martin Luther got halfway up and suddenly quit and came tramping
down with a voice crying in his ears, “The just shall live by faith.”
And without faith, where would be the use of the miraculous Bambino,
the adored and bejeweled little wooden image that a Franciscan pilgrim
carved from a tree of the Mount of Olives and which is imposingly
domiciled in a glass case in the church of Ara Cœli? They say there
is no disease that the Bambino cannot cure; and when his keepers
accompany him through the streets on his errands of mercy, conveyed
in his magnificent buff coach, people kneel by hundreds and beseech a
blessing. Such blessing may be secured, though possibly of a diminished
efficacy, by buying one of his legended cards at the church and having
the priest rub it across the glass top of the case. Who would eschew
faith and forfeit such advantages? Would we not still have Life’s
puzzle, and without this key? Might we not even be reduced to a plane
as confused and desperate as that of the famous Sultan of Turkey, who
knew so little of music that, when his new Italian band had finished
tuning-up, he shouted in delight to the leader, “Marshallah! Let the
dogs play that tune again!”

At this languorous hour of the afternoon the broad, sunny piazzas with
their many fountains afford incomparably lovely loitering-places on the
way to the Pincio. The one of the Quirinal is a near neighbor to the
Colonna Gardens, and there you may shelter under eucalyptus trees and
dream over the brown old obelisk and the vigorous fountain sculptures
of the “horse-tamers” that once graced the Baths of Constantine, and
philosophize over the irony of fate that converted a papal summer
residence into a royal palace. Or you can thread your way through
narrow streets of the Middle Ages that are lined by ochre-colored
houses with sun-shades, where artists have their studios and transients
their _hôtels garnis_, and down which a belated wine-cart may jangle
or a gayly painted Campagna wagon creak, with its oxen festive in
bells and crimson tassels and its rugged driver clad in blue. Were
you to follow these typical byways of mediæval Rome until you came to
the embankment of the Sant’ Angelo Bridge, you would pass by where
Benvenuto Cellini lived among his goldsmiths, and could identify the
Gothic window of the old Inn of the Bear where Montaigne stopped,
centuries ago.

At this hour the Trevi Fountain is doubly appealing and refreshing,
rejoicing the whole side of its roomy square with sparkling waters that
dash merrily about Neptune and his allies in the wall niches. Devoted
as one may be to the venerable tomb of Cecilia Metella, on the Appian
Way, he will fervently commend Pope Clement for having pillaged some
of its stone to supply this cheery fountain with its dramatic setting.
Were this our last day in the city we should certainly toss a copper
coin over our left shoulder into these boiling waters, to insure a
return to Rome. Of course, one is pretty sure to come again anyhow; but
that makes it a certainty. Besides, it is much less trouble than going
away out to Tivoli to ask the same thing of the Sibyl in the Grotto.

Were you to yield to the fountain habit, you would go bird-hopping all
over town, for no city has so many or such beautiful ones as Rome,
thanks to its huge aqueducts. It is a never-failing delight to turn a
corner and come across one of these sun-deluged pleasaunces with its
crowds of picturesque loungers; its tritons, “rivers,” and sea gods
disporting themselves in attitudes of aqueous grace and gayety; its
flower-girls banked behind fragrant barriers of roses and violets; and
the slender columns of water streaming sideways like tattered flags in
a breeze.

[Illustration: ROME, THE PIAZZA DI SPAGNA]

Mid-afternoon is an admirable time to drop in at the most popular of
all the piazzas, the Spanish Square. One wonders how the jewelers
of the Via Condotti manage to make both ends meet, with such a
superior attraction at hand. It is certainly one of the most charming
nooks in Rome. A heavy golden sunshine glorifies, at this hour, the
broad reach of the Spanish Steps, themselves quite as wide as the
square, that sweep between picturesque parapets like a yellow cascade
from the terraces of the church at S. Trinità de’ Monte to the
boat-shaped fountain in the piazza below. About them, drowsy, dusty,
Old-World houses supply a pleasant background of soft color, and the
crystal-clear Italian sky spreads above like a cathedral dome. The
flower market is the crowning touch, with a flood of fragrant blooms
welling over the lower steps and rimming the fountain edge in brilliant
hues of purple Roman anemones, orange wallflowers, white narcissus,
golden daffodils, snowy gardenias, violets, camelias, hyacinths,
mignonettes, and every fair and odorous blossom. A lovely, sunny,
fragrant spot—this Piazza di Spagna; a place to dream whole days away
in; a well-beloved corner of fascinating Rome, where one may realize to
its fullness the beautiful, consoling reflection of Don Quixote, “But
still there’s sunshine on the wall.”

Literature has had its chosen seat in the Piazza di Spagna. Half the
traveled world of letters has lived or visited there. It invests the
spot with a fresh and human interest to know that it has been the
musing-place of such rare spirits as Byron, Smollett, Madame de Staël,
Cooper, Andersen, Thorwaldsen, Hawthorne, Goethe, Chateaubriand,
Dickens, Scott, Macaulay, George Eliot, Lowell, and Longfellow. One
thinks of the Brownings entertaining Thackeray, Lockhart, and Fanny
Kemble. But, of course, the closest memories are of Keats and Shelley,
who lived in either corner house—those radiant friends whose ashes
repose under myrtles and violets in the cypress-shaded cemetery beyond
the Aurelian Wall. The works of all these authors, as also of the
others who may or may not have seen the Piazza di Spagna,—along with
the idealism of Fogazzaro, the sensuality of D’ Annunzio, the realism
of Verga, and the grace of De Amicis,—are to be had at the celebrated
shops of Piale or Spithöver, in the square; where, also, you may at
little expense become a momentary part of Rome’s bohemia over toast and
muffins in the adjoining tea-rooms.

_Chacun à son goût._ If you are cold to tea there may be something
else to interest in the numerous cafés of the neighborhood that begin
to hum with activity as the hour approaches four. And, indeed, they
may be angels in disguise for such as have tried _pension_ life and
grown sadly familiar with puddings as mysterious as Scotch haggis,
meat that suggested _travertine_, and pies constructed of something
like _silex_ and _tufa_. Besides, in the cafés you can regale yourself
with vermouth, syrups, or ices, and at the same time observe the Roman
at his afternoon ease—thus realizing in yourself the acuteness of
the Italian proverb, “One blow at the hoop and one at the cask.” It
is quite worth the cost to see how quickly the chairs and little
marble-topped tables, out on the sidewalk, are taken by leisurely
_habitués_ bent on gossip; by precise old gentlemen in lavender gloves
who drop in for a tumbler of black coffee and a hand at dominoes; or
by foppish young men in duck trousers, who clatter on the tables for
the _cameriere_ to bring copies of the “Tribuna” so they may sup on
frivolities and horrors along with coffee and tobacco.

A ruder jocundity also, at this time, is making its start for high tide
in poorer sections, where in arbored _osteries_, Tuscan wine-shops, and
_spacci da vino_ straw-covered fiascos of chianti are passing, along
with glasses of local wines whose prices will be found conspicuously
chalked up on the outsides of the taverns at so many _soldi_ per
half-litre.

As we follow the Corso toward the Pincian Gardens we find the
congestion increasing, with a decided addition of carriages all bound
in our direction. It is now the hour of the afternoon _passeggiata_;
and one marvels that the ancient campus Martius should still be the
heart of Rome, and wonders how this narrow street could have held its
crowds when the mad, brilliant scenes of Carnival riot and revelry
were enacted before these old Renaissance palaces. Every restaurant of
the tumultuous Piazza Colonna is working to capacity, and groups of
gay army officers swagger about the corners and over by the marble
basin beside the Column of Marcus Aurelius where the taxi-cabs have
their chief stand. No red-and-white street car dares venture in this
favorite square, but busses and cabs supplant them to distraction.
And who, indeed, does not prefer an omnibus to a street car! It may
want the latter’s business-like directness, but what a holiday air it
has of cozy, informal deliberateness! It is coaching in town. You may
not arrive so soon, but what a lark you had! And if you mock at the
faithful bus, there are the impertinent Roman cabs. Here is speed,
seclusion, and economy. You cannot fail to be suited both financially
and æsthetically, for you may pick between the latest varnished
output of the factory and venerable, decrepit ramshackles that look
to have been contemporary with the Colosseum. The Roman cabmen are an
inconsequent lot; they wear green felt hats and greasy coats, and dash
at one with a reckless scorn of human life that strengthens a suspicion
that they are really banditti of the Campagna, transparently disguised.
The famous Column of the philosophic Emperor never lacks its groupings
of adaptable “rubber-necks,” who are twisting themselves into suicide
graves trying to read the spiral band of reliefs that winds away up to
the statue of St. Paul.

The Corso _passeggiata_ is an interesting affair. Toward four o’clock
it quite fills the street. Young girls are out, with their inevitable
chaperons, kittenish and alert-eyed; Bergamasque nurses, with scarlet
ribbons and extraordinary silver ornaments falling below their snowy
muslin caps; clerks in sober black; Douane men, in short capes
and shining hats with yellow rosettes; hatless women, with light
mantillas over their blue-black hair; the stolid country-folk,—the
_contadini_,—with the men in brown velvet jackets and goatskin
breeches, and the women in faded blue skirts and with red stays
stitched outside their bodices; the despised _forestieri_, with
guidebooks; _carabinieri_, in pairs, resplendent in braided uniforms
and cocked hats; the nervous Bersaglieri, with shining round hats
and glossy cocks’-feather plumes; army officers in cloaks or bright
blue guard-coats, fresh from vermouth at Aragni’s; Savoyards in steel
helmets and gold crests; diplomats in silk hats and Prince Albert
coats; and clericals by the hundreds. The clericals, indeed, may
always be relied upon to supply an effective color-touch anywhere in
Rome. They come along in fluttering groups of every hue: English and
French seminarists in cassocks of black, Germans in scarlet, Scotch
in purple, and Roumanians in orange and blue; it is diverting to see
them raise their black beavers to one another with the quietest and
most serious air imaginable. Solemn lay brethren shuffle past in sombre
brown of Franciscan and Capuchin, or white of the cowled and tonsured
Dominicans. Occasionally, along a side street, one passes slowly,
absorbed in his breviary, like Don Abbondio in “I Promessi Sposi.”
Rome abounds in shovel-hats, shaven heads, sandals, and hempen girdles.
But you must not expect to see them all in a Corso _passeggiata_.

Unless we have yielded too much to the blandishments along the way, we
should be crossing the sunny, somnolent circle of the Piazza del Popolo
and climbing the fountained and statue-set terraces of the Pincian
Gardens as the first strains of the promenade concert usher in the
hour of four. The spectacle that confronts us on the low, broad brow
of the old hill is animated and brilliant. Hundreds of motor-cars,
private carriages and hired cabs roll in a long, gay procession around
the driveways, their occupants arrayed in the last word of Italian
fashion, and a multitude of happy loiterers stroll leisurely in the
mild afternoon sunshine along sylvan paths hedged with box or bordered
with flowers, where long lines of marble portrait-busts of Italy’s
dead immortals extend into the pleasant shade of groves of myrtles and
fragrant acacias. What a contrast in occupation to the scenes that in
olden days were enacted here—the luxury and splendor of the golden
suppers that the war-worn Lucullus gave to Rome’s poets and artists;
or the vicious and voluptuous orgies with which the vile Messalina
indulged the depraved favorites of the Claudian court! Young Rome, this
afternoon, has decked itself in its gayest raiment, and youth vies
with youth in gallantries to the fashionable beauties who prefer the
fascinating town, even in summer, to the listless diversions of the
country. “Visiting” goes on between carriage-parties, which is said to
answer the social requirements of calls at the house. Mild refreshments
are being served in a lively little café to which many repair when
weary with lounging among the brilliant flowers and lovely foliaged
paths; and groups ramble across the new viaduct and stroll among the
sycamores and stone-pines of the neighboring Villa Borghese. The
Pincian Gardens seem very formal and compact and precisely ornate as
compared with our parks at home, but there is much more of sociability
and comfort than is to be found Sunday afternoons in New York’s Central
Park, for instance. That is probably because New York’s pedestrians
are centred in the Mall to hear the band, or around the lakes to watch
the boating, and all her carriage-folk are by themselves in the East
Side Drive. The Pincian promenade mingles both classes into a great
family party. It is a brilliant scene, but it must have been much more
so in other days when the popes joined the company in the great glass
coach drawn by six black horses in crimson trappings, and outriders and
footmen flocked about them.

One wonders whether Pius X does not sometimes think with a sigh of
regret of the liberties of his early predecessors, as he paces the
flowered garden paths of his voluntary prison and lifts his gentle,
shining face toward these pleasant Pincian heights. How often will the
memory recur to me of that mild and friendly man, as once I saw him
in the Vatican’s Court of the Pine, in his snowy robes and the little
cap scarce whiter than his hair. I remember his only ornaments to have
been the famous Fisherman’s ring, and a long gold chain about his
neck from which a great crucifix was pendent. It was the occasion of
a calisthenic drill given by a local orphan asylum for his Holiness’s
special benefit. Each little athlete in gray was burning to do his
very best in so notable a presence, and was, indeed, succeeding, with
the glaring exception of the smallest of the band, whose eager efforts
had resulted only in an uninterrupted series of comical mischances,
to the infinite chagrin of himself and associates and the increasing
amusement of the Pope. In due time the performance came to an end,
and the boys were drawn up facing each other in a double line through
which, attended by cardinals, chamberlains, and members of the Papal
Guard, his Holiness passed extending his hand to be kissed. When he
reached the diminutive and blushing blunderer, he halted his imposing
train and laid his hand on the boy’s head and smoothed his hair and
patted his cheek with affectionate tenderness, whispering the while an
intimate message of good cheer, as though it were something strictly
confidential between himself and that fatherless little waif whose face
was shining with reverence and awe and whose eyes were full of happy
tears. I am, I trust, as confirmed a Protestant as the next, but I
confess that my heart was bowed as well as my head as that white-robed
figure turned, as it disappeared through a door of the Vatican, and
raised a hand toward us in the sign of the cross.

The marble parapet of the Pincio is, at this hour, a prime favorite
among Roman loafing-places. As from an upper theatre box, one looks
precipitously down into the great, peaceful, siesta-drugged circle
of the Piazza del Popolo, the scene in other days of so much cruelty
and often of so much happiness. The stone lions of the fountain spout
patiently to the delighted observation of scores of playing children,
and drowsy cabmen nod on the boxes of the long rank of waiting
victorias. One may indulge to his fullest in moral reflections over the
slender obelisk from the Heliopolis Temple to the Sun, upon which Moses
himself may have gazed in days before Rome was thought of, and when the
celestial consorts, Isis and Osiris, still waved their lotus sceptres
and ruled the quick and the dead. Nineteen hundred years ago Nero,
who should have begun blood-letting with himself instead of ending it
there, was buried in this ground, and you are told how the evil spirits
that haunted the accursed spot were not finally exorcised until yonder
church of Santa Maria had been reared above his tomb. One will find it
more agreeable to look across the piazza at the portal of the Flaminian
Way and re-create the scenes of the triumphant entrance of the noble,
hardy Trajan walking by the side of his fair and amiable wife.

The elm-tops are rustling in the deep groves of the Villa Borghese,
and the yellow Tiber, “too large to be harmless and too small to be
useful,” slips swiftly between the yellow walls of its quays. To the
mind’s eye, in the azure distance Mons Sacer is clear, and Tivoli and
the Sabine Farm of Horace. Like the Archangel Michael on the Castle
of Sant’ Angelo, the sun, too, begins to sheathe his sword, and its
glitter throws a warm mantle over the shoulders of the marble angels on
the bridge. Most conspicuously, as is proper, it lingers on the pale
dome of St. Peter’s, touches into life the sculptured saints of the
portico, and floods obelisk, fountains, and all that vast elliptical
piazza toward which are extended the sheltering arms of Bernini’s
colonnade. How fair, beneath that roof, are the dazzling marbles,
shining tombs, sculptured effigies, and glowing mosaics! But fairer
far is this prospect from the hill, of Rome in her soft coat of many
colors, the velvety ruins of the Palatine, the stone-pines in sentinel
stiffness down the distant Appian Way, the sunny piazzas, the sparkling
fountains, and the verdure and bloom of the slopes of the Janiculum,
under the cloudless blue of a soft Italian sky. _Ave, Roma eterna!_




[Illustration]




PRAGUE

4 P.M. TO 5 P.M.


A brooding, stolid city is Prague; the sombre capital of a restless,
feverish people. It is the hotbed and “darling seat” of all Bohemia;
and Bohemia languishes for her lost independence as Israel did by the
waters of Babylon. She does not, however, pine in hopeless despair like
the Hebrews, but nourishes a keen expectation of regaining her lost
estate, and grits her teeth, in the mean while, with fiery impatience.
She points, and with reason, to the fact that the Slavs—Czechs,
Slovaks, and Moravians—easily outnumber the Hungarians; yet Hungary
is free, and she in bondage. And so Bohemia, for all her exterior
of gracious courtesy, is bitter and hard at heart; a people of a
passionate, thwarted patriotism; a people that has suffered and been
degraded, but that has never for a moment forgotten. Prague is an
expression of all this; in her sullen, gloomy architecture; in the
persistence of national types and characteristics; and peculiarly in
the wild, reckless Moldau, which visualizes the traditional, savage
intolerance that is bred in the bone of the fatalistic Slav.

There are too many daws about for Prague to wear her heart on her
sleeve, so while she bides her time she presents a smiling mask. It
may sometimes be a rather weary smile, and the forests that engulf
her are gloomy and sinister; but her skies are not always lowering
and overcast, and the peace of her fatigue from the national struggle
is profound. It is just this deep, brooding peace that appeals to the
stranger within her gates; and along with it he senses here a wonderful
charm and underlying subtility that invests this curious old city with
a lambent play of the imagination.

It was of Prague that Alexander von Humboldt said: “It is the most
beautiful inland city I have ever seen.” And it must have been of some
such spot that “R. L. S.” was mindful when he expressed the paradox
that “any place is good enough to live a life in, while it is only
in a few, and those highly favored, that we can pass a few hours
agreeably.” Restfulness is surely one of the prime essentials of the
“highly favored” few; and there is no restfulness at all comparable
with that we feel in some venerated spot whose present hush and quiet
is a reaction from its other days of fever and turmoil. One finds these
qualities in Prague, whose calm and serenity seem doubly intense in
contrast with its history of tumult and savagery and the hatred and
violence that racked and convulsed it for hundreds of years. It has
frequently been lightly disposed of as being an “out-of-the-way place”;
but no place is more delightful than an “out-of-the-way” place, and
particularly when it has the natural and architectural beauty of this
one, or has been the theatre of such unusual and stirring occurrences.

Had we but one hour to spend in Prague we should certainly choose the
charmed one between four and five o’clock of an afternoon. The sunshine
is then most languid and golden, and the day declines slowly over
the castled tops of the Hradschin-crowned slope, and the lengthening
shadows of towers and turrets creep out on the river, and the copper
domes and ruddy tiles of the Neustadt glow in bright spots against the
darkling green of the wooded hillsides. If one does not then feel a
profound and elevating sense of tranquillity and translating beauty, it
will be because he has eyes to see yet sees not.

Since Prague rests under the imputation of being “out of the way,”—and
even Shakespeare set this inland kingdom down as “a desert country
near the sea,” and lost his compass completely in the shipwreck in
the “Winter’s Tale” with Antigonus exclaiming: “Our ship hath touch’d
upon the deserts of Bohemia”; and a confused mariner replying, “Aye,
my lord; and fear we’ve landed in ill time,”—we may, perhaps, be
pardoned for observing that in general appearance it is a wooded
valley traversed in its full length by a swift, turbulent river, which
follows a northerly course excepting where it bends sharply to the
east in the very heart of the city. This stream, the Moldau, rushes
along as if in desperate haste to throw itself into the Elbe, and
seems to have the one idea, as it dashes through Prague, of getting
done with its business and on its way at the earliest moment possible.
It has scoured its islands into ovals, slashed the rocky bases of the
hills, and continually assailed its bridges and quays. But through all
its exhibitions of ill humor the Praguers have indulgently condoned
and even extolled it; it was only when the beloved and venerated
Karlsbrücke fell a partial victim to its violence, a dozen years ago,
that patience ceased to be a virtue and the unnatural marauder was
comprehensively anathematized with all the sibilant fury of the hissing
tongue of the Czech. Speed apart, there is little to complain of with
the Moldau; it is broad and of a pleasant deep blue, and the beauty it
supplies to the setting of the city is supplemented by the importance
of its traffic, the amusements on its many little wooded islands, and
the delights of its boating and bathing. In a word, it is a noble
stream—and none the less Bohemian, perhaps, for being a little proud
and head-strong.

As the afternoon sun lies heavy over Prague one notes with delight how
snugly the old city nestles along the river and up the hillsides of
the valley, and with what a natural and comfortable air; not at all as
though trying, as newer cities do, to shoulder its suburbs out of the
way. It seems a perfect type of the mediæval town, with buildings of
solid stone of an agreeable and universal creamy tone, four-square
and enduring. It abounds in quaint, high pitched roofs; in curious,
turreted spires; in red tiles and green copper domes; and in objects of
antique and archaic fascination. Shade trees are everywhere. Indeed,
from the thickly wooded heights of the surrounding hills right down to
the river quays the gray of the houses and the red and green of the
roofs make beautiful color combinations with the feathery foliage.

One stands on the old Karlsbrücke and looks upstream and there he
sees the rocky heights of the Wyschehrad Hill on which the fair and
wise Libussa reared her castle when she laid the foundations of the
city, thirteen centuries ago, and which he will want to visit later to
look over the fortifications and to study the glowing frescoes on the
cloister walls of the Benedictine monastery of Emmaus. In the elbow of
the Moldau, downstream, he will observe the old sections of Prague
huddled together in cramped confusion, with no sign left of the ancient
separating walls that once defined the original seven districts, though
he is to learn, by and by, that the early names remain unchanged—the
Aldstadt, and the Jewish Josephstadt, and around and above them the
Neustadt, which, of course, from an American time-point, is really not
“new” at all. On his left, along the river, he sees the Kleinseite
spread out, and on the hillside above it that far-famed acropolis, the
redoubtable Hradschin, with its dusty, barracks-like royal and state
palaces, and the great bulk of the cathedral of St. Vitus rising out of
it like some man-made mount. Such is the first bird’s-eye impression
of Prague, set in its wooded slopes, stolid and softly colored.
Later on one can scrape acquaintance with its rambling, flourishing,
modern suburbs, to the eastward and downstream, and wrestle at his
pleasure with such impressive nomenclature as Karolinenthal and
Bubna-Holeschowitz.

[Illustration: PRAGUE, THE CASTLE FROM THE OLD BRIDGE]

Between four and five o’clock the visitor will find an especial
pleasure in noting the activities that prevail in the several little
green islands that fret the impetuous Moldau as it hurries through
this “hundred-towered, golden Prague.” The dearest of these to the
sentimental Czech is bright Sophien-Insel, that you could almost leap
onto from the stone coping of the neighboring Kaiser-Franzbrücke. It
always wears a gay and inviting appearance, with café tables set under
fine old oaks, but precisely at four, summer afternoons, the leader of
its military band lifts his baton and launches some crashing prelude,
and the noisy company instantly stills and with nervously tapping
fingers and glowing eyes abandons itself to that music passion which is
the deepest and most intense expression of the Bohemian temperament. It
gives the _dilettante_ a new conception of the power of this inspiring
art to observe the significant and varying expressions that play over
the faces of a Prague audience under its influence. He witnesses
then the profoundest stirring of the Slavic nature and the moving of
emotional depths beyond the conception of the reserved and impassive
Anglo-Saxon. Especially is this so when the music is of a national
character, such as the “Ma Vlast” symphonic poems of Smetana, or a
Slavic dance of Dvorak’s. These Bohemian masters, with their fellow
countryman, Fibich, constitute a trinity that is reverenced in their
native land to an extent that almost passes belief, and that has done
so much in making Prague one of the foremost centres of Europe.

The music from the Sophien-Insel floats down the river to our
vantage-point on Karlsbrücke, mellowed and softened, and contributes
just the right pleasing note to the agreeable mood these picturesque
surroundings excite. The ponderous, antique old structure on which
we stand has the appearance of some full-page color illustration for
a charming Middle-Age romance. For half a millennium it has dug its
broad arches into the bottom of the Moldau, stoutly defiant of flood
or storm. Its massive buttresses are crowned with heroic statues so
deeply revered that pilgrimages are made by the faithful to pay their
devotions before them. For a third of a mile this old veteran strides
the stream, and at each end he lifts an amazing mediæval tower well
worth a journey to stare at. These ponderous structures, weathered
by centuries of storm to a rich brownish black, are pierced by a
deep Gothic archway through which the street traffic pours all day.
Their sides are decorated with colonnades and traceries, armorial
bearings and statues of ancient heroes of the city, and their tops
are incredible creations of slender turrets and of pointed roofs so
desperately precipitate that they seem like long narrow paving-stones
tilted end to end.

Catholic legend and ceremonial run riot on the old bridge. The statues
are almost altogether of a religious character, and two of them,
the Crucifixion Group and the bronze one of St. John Nepomuc, are
practically never passed without the sign of the cross and the raising
of hat or cap; in the case of the latter the devout will touch the
tablet that marks the spot from which he is said to have been cast
into the river, and then kiss their fingers and bless themselves. For
St. John Nepomuc, of all the holy martyrs, was Prague’s very own. The
legend is dramatic. Father John was the queen’s confessor, five hundred
years ago, and when he declined to oblige the king by revealing what
the queen had told under the seal of the confessional, his Majesty had
him summarily cast into the Moldau, from just where we are standing at
the centre of this bridge. The result was far from the expectations
of the king, for not only was the poor priest preserved from sinking,
but—which is quite as hard to believe of so swift a stream as this—he
actually remained floating for four days at the very spot where he
fell, and five bright stars hung above him all the while! When they
took him out he was dead, and to this extent only did the king succeed.
As was perfectly natural, the amazed Praguers could see nothing in
all this but an astounding miracle; and when Catholicism had finally
displaced the Protestantism that followed the Hussite wars for two
hundred years, their clamor for the canonization of Father John
eventually resulted in placing the name of St. John Nepomuc in the
catalogue of Rome. Equipped with a saint all their own, they adroitly
converted the statues of the Protestant John Huss, that stood here and
there about town, into St. John Nepomucs by the simple expedient of
adding a five-starred halo to each.

Now, if to-day were the sixteenth of May, St. John Nepomuc’s special
day, we should behold the greatest festival of all the year. An altar
would be erected beside his statue, here on the bridge, and mass
celebrated before enormous kneeling crowds. Bohemian peasants would
flock into town from miles and miles around, in all the picturesque
finery of the national dress, gala performances would be given at the
theatres, an especial illumination of the city made at public expense,
and fireworks displayed to-night on Schutzen-Insel. It would be an
orderly celebration, too, for the Czechs are more fond of dancing than
drinking; and religious enthusiasm would be practically universal, for
Prague, which for two centuries was exclusively Protestant, now numbers
at least nine Catholics out of every ten of its people.

As we look about us this afternoon we derive a vivid consciousness
of being very far from home, set down in an environment that is, for
Europe, oddly foreign and unfamiliar. The soft, sibilant prattle of
the Czechish speech is heard on every hand, and the names on cars and
corners are outlandish to us, with their profusion of consonants and
curious accent marks like our o and v. One sees a great disproportion
in numbers between the German and Czechish population; only thirteen
to the hundred are said to be German, but in the opinion of Bohemians
that is too many, for the stubborn struggle for the existence of the
old national speech and spirit against the threatening usurpation
of the Teutonic invaders is a real matter of life and death. As we
watch the crowds throng along the bridge the prevalence of the Slavic
type is very noticeable: short of body, heavy of head, and with high
cheek bones and coarse features. The general expression is one of
settled melancholy, bred of their peculiar fatalism. Having heard the
“Bohemian Girl” and read the foundationless libels of popular French
literature, one looks about for gypsies; he will be lucky if he finds
one. Bohemia, as he should have known, is one of the leading industrial
countries of Europe, and Prague is made up of hard-working, skillful
mechanics. Energy and resolution are stamped on these serious, rugged
faces; on the powerful men, the tall, strong women, and even on the
little black-eyed children. And they can do many worthy things well:
they market the country’s rich coal and iron deposits, make garnets
to perfection, and manufacture beet-sugar by thousands of tons. Who
has not heard of Bohemian glass, or Pilsener beer? And shall we
belittle the resourcefulness of Bohemia, with the prosperous resorts of
Karlsbad and Marienbad well within the western boundary of the Böhmer
Wald? If this does not convince, one has only to run over to Dresden,
seventy-five miles away, which he can reach by rail in four hours at
an outlay of but eight florins, and ask any one where the finest farm
produce comes from and what section yields the best fruit and honey,
butter and eggs, milk and cheese.

If now we can manage to look away from the bridge and its crowds,
we shall observe that the afternoon activities of the river-life of
Prague are manifold and highly interesting. There is a prodigious
bustling about of longshoremen on the fine, broad quays, and boats of
many descriptions and diversified cargoes are laboriously struggling
upstream or drifting guardedly down. From time to time huge, unwieldy
rafts pass along to the din of vigorous shouting and hysterical
warnings. Bathers at the riverside establishments are adding their
share of laughter and frolic, their diversions watched with vast
amusement by the afternoon idlers loitering along the embankments. On
our right the shaded walks and trim lawns of the popular Rudolfs-Quai
are comfortably filled with a leisurely company of promenaders and of
nursemaids airing their charges. All this contributes an agreeable note
of homeliness and contentment and seems eminently in harmony with the
prevailing serenity and peace of the surrounding groves. There is at
hand a little chain footbridge which they call the Kettensteg, and in a
beautiful clump of lindens at its end rise the sculptured porticoes of
the classic Rudolfinum, Prague’s noble home of the arts and industries.
Enter it, and you find whole halls devoted to the work of Bohemian
artists, with the school of old Theodoric of Prague represented in
surprising completeness, an entire cabinet filled with the engravings
of that famous Praguer, Wenzel Hollar, and many of the most beautiful
paintings of such celebrated Bohemians as Gabriel Max, Václav Brozǐk
and Josef Mánes.

With artistic bridges arching the river in whichever direction you
look, with music and soft voices welling up from the gay islands, and
with a full and virile life at cry along the quays, you find yourself
about as far removed as possible from the atmosphere of Longfellow’s
“Beleaguered City”:—

    “Beside the Moldau’s rushing stream,
      With the wan moon overhead,
    There stood, as in an awful dream,
      The army of the Dead.”

Assuredly, there is no “army of the dead” at this hour beside the
Moldau, whatever there may be under the “wan moon” in a poet’s eye.
On the contrary, there is an army of the living, a quarter-million of
them, and it marches without resting, day in and day out, along the
Graben and the stately Wenzels-Platz, and through the venerable Grosser
Ring and the narrow, crooked alleys of old Josephstadt.

Walk east across Karlsbrücke, pass under the Gothic arch of the
somnolent Aldstadt Tower, with the stony statue of Karl IV on your
left, and you will shortly emerge on the Grosser Ring and can settle
the matter for yourself. This fantastic Ring is the oldest and most
famous square of the city, still preserving its ancient appearance.
You find it an irregular quadrilateral, surrounded by quaint, gloomy,
colonnaded houses, churches, and dilapidated palaces. There towers
in its centre a sombre memorial column, called the Mariensäule,
commemorating Prague’s liberation from the Swedes at the close of
the Thirty Years’ War. The very first thing to catch the eye is the
singular Teynkirche—the old Gothic church where John Huss so often
preached, where the astronomer Tycho Brahe lies entombed in red marble,
and in whose shadows, through five centuries, many of the bloodiest
events of the city had their inception and execution. The influence of
Huss on the Europe of his day was so great and has continued so long
that it is hard to realize that he had only reached his forty-sixth
year when the Council of Constance sent him and his friend, Jerome of
Prague, to the stake. The old Teynkirche, where he so often attacked
the doctrines of Rome, still rears its battered and darkened bulk
from behind a melancholy row of colonnaded houses and gazes solemnly
and patiently over them at the noisy Ring, its lofty spires curiously
clustered with airy turrets like hornets’ nests on some old tree.
Directly opposite, the modern Gothic Rathaus shoulders up to the
moldering tower of its predecessor whose famous clock has delighted
its thousands with the surprising things the automatic figures do
when the hours and quarters roll around. Just at hand, a portion of
the old Erkerkapelle still stands in excellent preservation, and you
could not find more beautiful Gothic windows in all Prague, nor finer
canopied saints nor more richly sculptured coats of arms. Before this
building—a place of hideous history—the best blood of the city was
spilled after the fall of Bohemian independence at the fateful battle
of the White Hill, three centuries ago, when twenty-seven nobles
were butchered here on the scaffold. A dozen years passed, and again
blood soaked this earth, with the stony-hearted Wallenstein executing
eleven of his chief officers for alleged cowardice at the battle of
Lutzen. Prague still shows the palace of Wallenstein, and those of the
other two famous generals of his period, Gallas and Piccolomini. The
Clam-Gallas Palace is just at hand, in the Hussgasse, distinguished for
its beautiful portal flanked with colossal caryatids and sculptured
urns, and surmounted by a marble balustrade wrought with the perfection
of life. A final note in the Old-World charm of the Grosser Ring is
contributed by the ancient Kinsky Palace, adjoining the Teynkirche,
in the elaborate baroque architecture despised of Mr. Ruskin. People
in the manner and seeming of to-day walk and talk, barter and sell
under the nodding brows of these historic buildings, but the visitor
stands among them unconscious of their noisy presence in the spell such
storied surroundings cast on every phase of fancy and imagination.

There is a peculiar fascination about aimless rambles in Prague. Modern
improvements have come, of course, but many an old and rare landmark
has been reverently preserved, with the result that you can scarcely
turn a corner or cross a square without coming face to face with
some fantastic and blackened architectural fragment that holds you
spellbound with wonder and delight. Whole sections, indeed, are of such
a character; as you would find were you to fare forth from the Grosser
Ring and seek adventures by crossing the Kettensteg and invading the
region beyond the Rudolfinum. With almost the suddenness of tumbling
into a river you would find yourself groping, even at this bright hour
of the afternoon, in the black and twisting mazes of the old Jewish
Ghetto that still goes by the name of Josephstadt. Here you have at
once all the detail and color of a romance of the crusades. Everything
appears aged and eccentric. The time-weary, saddened, ramshackle houses
project their upper stories feebly and seek to rest their wrinkled
foreheads on one another; tortuous, winding alleys that you can
almost span with your outstretched arms reel giddily all ways from a
straight line, plodding wearily uphill and sliding helplessly down. On
all sides there seems to be a general feeling that nothing matters,
that everything comes by accident or caprice. Over the frowzy heads of
slovenly children quarreling in the doorways, glimpses are to be had of
dark and filthy interiors, from which foul odors escape to the street.
Long-coated, unkempt patriarchs of Israel lope solemnly by, with
rounded shoulders and hands clasped behind; and if you follow in their
wake you will sooner or later arrive at a curious, melancholy Rathaus
that is a rare jumble of architectural orders and has an extraordinary
steeple that might once have done time on a Chinese temple. This very
inclusive structure, persisting in its oddities to the end, makes a
great point of staring down at the gaping crowds out of a big belfry
clock that has one dial Hebrew and one Christian. But a single marvel
is as nothing in this old wonderland where, as Alice would have
remarked, things become “curiouser and curiouser.” If your eyes popped
at the Rathaus what will they do at the gaunt, barnlike synagogue next
door! Here is the thing that every visitor to Prague goes straight to
see. Its early history is lost in legends, but you will be disposed to
credit them all—even to that one about the Prague Jews fleeing from
Jerusalem to escape the persecutions of Titus—once you have seen its
doleful walls and breakneck roof, and have passed through the narrow
black doorway into that shadowy tomb of an interior. Brass lamps
depend by long chains from the smoky ceiling, but they only intensify
the gloom with their feeble light and deepen the feeling of creepy
depression. Visitors are told that during the horrors of the Hussite
wars this black hole was literally packed with the bloody corpses of
Jews and that, in a bitter spirit of defiance, no attempt was made for
three hundred years to efface the frightful stains. Little wonder that
the Prague Jews evolved out of their hatred an ancient malediction that
ran: “May your head be as thick as the walls of the Hradschin, your
body grow as big as the city of Prague; may your limbs wither away to
birds’ claws, and may you flee around the world for a thousand years!”

It is like escaping from a sick-bed to come out of this chamber of
horrors and cross the street to the quiet and hush of the wonderful
old Ghetto cemetery. Here we have another of the “sights” of the
Josephstadt. In the refreshing coolness of its elder-trees one looks
about on as extraordinary a three acres as can be found anywhere in
all Europe. The Jews insist that they have buried here for twelve or
fourteen hundred years, and inscriptions can be found that date back
at least half that far. By the simple process of spreading new layers
of earth, this plot has been packed with graves six deep; and all
that was accomplished a hundred and fifty years ago, the cemetery not
having been in use since the middle of the eighteenth century. The
closeness of the black, mossy tombstones, and their toppled and huddled
look, suggest the troubled shouldering of some gigantic, ghoulish mole
at work deep down in the horror-crowded darkness underground. The
ancient tribal insignia of Israel are found graven on these tottering
slabs,—the Hands of Aaron, the Cup of Levi, the Double Triangle of
David, the Stag, the Fish, etc.,—and here and there you come across
those little piles of stones heaped on graves that mark a Jewish act of
reverence for the resting-place of some long-buried ancestor.

Hold to a generally southern direction in your afternoon stroll through
the narrow Ghetto alleys, and shortly you will meet with a fine reward
in the shape of a face-to-face contemplation of one of Prague’s most
cherished antiquities, the Pulverturm. They may have once stored powder
here, as the name implies, or they may not; but almost anything looks
to have been possible to this sturdy, brown survivor of the Middle
Ages, under whose broad Gothic archway the twentieth-century crowds
are passing day and night. Set solidly down in the thickest stream
of traffic, it has the look of those unconquerable obstructions that
have to be tunneled through. It looms above you, a great, dark, dusty
mass, out-of-time in every particularity of design and decoration.
Stubbornness and defiance are expressed in every line; and with its
atmosphere of drowsy aloofness and mystery there is such an element
of loneliness among such modern surroundings that one could almost
believe he sometimes hears the old veteran sigh. Certainly you would
say it is brooding over memories centuries dead, so incongruous and
distrait is its seeming, so anachronous are its whimsical turrets,
fantastic roof, statues, arms, and sculptured traceries. This
impression of isolation is enhanced as one reflects that the most
ultra-modern of Prague’s new buildings all stand within easy range,
could one of the Pulverturm’s ancient archers take up a position in any
of those lofty turrets and wing an arrow from his stout crossbow toward
what quarter of the heavens he chose.

When you have passed under the arch of the Pulverturm, you have entered
the Graben, and so reached the business heart of the city. The Graben
has nothing to-day to suggest the “Ditch” that its derivative source
implies, unless you fancifully regard it as a moat of the modern
commercial ramparts. On the contrary, it presents a busy array of all
the leading hotels, shops, restaurants, and cafés. Overhead-trolley
cars splutter along it, and you see gray stone buildings of irregular
roof-lines with skylight dormers in the tiles, and Venetian blinds in
the windows, narrow sidewalks decorated in mosaic designs, and active
throngs of strong-featured men, and bareheaded, vigorous women whose
chief pride of dress concerns itself with capacious aprons elaborately
embroidered. Were you to visit the second-story cafés, whose gay
window-boxes look so inviting from the street, you would find games of
chess and checkers in progress at this hour, and more than one merchant
who had stolen from his shop to have a look at the “Prager Tagblatt”
over a glass of Pilsener or “three fingers” of the plum brandy they
call _slivovitz_ or a dram of _tshai_—which is tea and rum—or a cup
of _tee_—which is just plain tea and cream. Coffee and chocolate, of
course, would be found in general demand.

One passes out of the Graben into the fine boulevard of the
Wenzelsplatz, and at once exchanges bustle and uproar for the quiet
and dignity of the most beautiful and stately avenue of the city. It
is broad and well-paved, with buildings of elaborate design, with
shop fronts protected by bright awnings and with fine shade-trees
every few yards along its entire length. At the corner of the Stadt
Park, one finds a beautiful cascade fountain, and beside it a noble
building which is the centre of all that is best and most intense in
the new movement for the reviving and vitalizing of the national spirit
among Bohemians—the new Bohemian Museum. Were you to enter it you
would doubtless be astonished to see how many souvenirs of Bohemian
history have already been assembled there,—autographs and documents,
ancient musical instruments, art objects, flails of the Hussites, and
scientific collections. Such is the intellectual Bohemia of to-day.

From this pleasant stroll one wends his way back to the Karlsbrücke,
and as he passes the buildings that still remain of the ancient
famous university, thoughts are kindled of the wonderful renown this
institution had, six centuries ago, when it was easily the foremost
educational institution of the world. Fifteen thousand students, from
every quarter of the earth, gathered to hear its celebrated savants,
and the revels and achievements of those days have gone down in prose
and rhyme. Five thousand students still attend, two thirds of them
Czechs and the others German; but the revelry of to-day is largely the
bitter and bruising encounters that are continually arising between
these conflicting hot-heads. The intellectual impulse is strong in
Prague. It has poly-technic institutes, art schools, and learned
societies, and one of the most famous conservatories of music in the
whole of Europe.

The west bank of the Moldau, the Kleinseite district, was royalty’s
region in the olden time when Bohemian kings and queens dwelt in the
huge Hradschin on the ridge of the hill. Seen from the Karlsbrücke,
toward five o’clock, the long slope rises toward the declining sun
with many more suggestions, even now, of the pomp and circumstance
that have departed than of the modernism that has taken their place.
There is a dreary and saddening array of closed and boarded palaces,
arcaded and many-windowed, whose owners are rich and powerful Bohemian
nobles with a preference for the gayeties and frivolities of the court
life of Vienna. One regards with especial interest the long, rambling
one of Wallenstein, to make room for which one hundred houses had to
be torn down, where this rival of royalty retired in the interval of
imperial disfavor and held magnificent court with hundreds of followers
and attendants. Among the many chambers of that great honeycomb was
one equipped as an astrological cabinet—for Wallenstein always had
faith in his star. How vividly it recalls the Schiller dramas and the
operations of the uncanny Ceni! “Such a man!” exclaims a character at
the conclusion of “Wallensteins Tod.” Born a Protestant, he well-nigh
became their exterminator; turned Jesuit, the Jesuits distrusted and
hated him. With his sword he made and unmade kings and carved out
principalities for himself—and yet he was but fifty-one years old at
the time of his assassination!

Like an aged soldier nodding in his armchair in the sun, the
Wallenstein Palace, once passion-rocked and treachery-haunted, basks
this afternoon in an atmosphere of the intensest calm and peace.
To ramble through it is to learn history from a participant. One
courtyard, in particular, is so serene and lovely as to be really
unforgettable. One entire side of this enclosure is a lofty, echoing
_loggia_ three stories high, with arching spans for a roof supported on
graceful, towering columns. Within the _loggia_ are heavy sculptured
balustrades, and a broad flight of marble steps flanked by huge stone
urns leads to a beautiful open space of soft lawns bordered with simple
flowers. It was a favorite resort of Wallenstein’s, and he called it
his _sala terrina_. In its present mellow and half-deserted beauty it
is a place for a poet to dream away a life in.

Staring gloomily down on the Kleinseite, and set solidly far above it
on a precipitous hill, the rugged old Hradschin, Prague’s acropolis,
warms into mild ruddy tones in the afternoon sun. I have said it
reminds one of a barracks, such an enormous, rambling affair as it
is; though its commanding situation and impressive proportions would
immediately suggest to a stranger some more consequential employment
in other days. Undoubtedly it is the most striking feature of Prague.
One might think it a solid architectural mass, as seen from the
Karlsbrücke, but on closer inspection it resolves itself into a series
of separate structures falling into irregular groups, but which, taken
together, composed the setting of the imperial court during the long
period of Bohemia’s independence. That splendid fragment, the vast
cathedral of St. Vitus, supplies a worthy centrepiece; and is full of
interest, too, with its rich Gothic windows, chapel walls set with
precious stones, marble tombs of the Bohemian kings, and the wonderful
silver monument to St. John Nepomuc. Indeed, the whole Hradschin
abounds in rich surprises. Such, for instance, is the venerable church
of St. George, awkward and archaic, which has stood for nine hundred
years and is the sole memorial in Bohemia of the earliest period of
Romanic architecture. Every one, of course, hurries to see the rude
royal palace of the Hofburg, on the edge of an adjacent steep hill,
from the windows of whose Kanzlei Zimmer the Imperial Councillors were
“defenestrated” and the Thirty Years’ War, in consequence, precipitated
upon the troubled states of Europe. And then there is the archbishop’s
palace, across the quadrangle from the Hofburg, in whose courtyard the
church authorities impotently burned the two hundred Wycliffe books
that John Huss had loaned them with the challenge to read and, if they
could, refute. Two grim towers on the eastern extremity, the Daliborka
and the Black Tower, have no end of creepy legends of tortures and
prison horrors. The former takes its name from a romantic knight,
Dalibor, who is said to have been long confined there and of whom and
his solacing violin we hear at pleasant length in Smetana’s opera of
that name. One of the most curious sights of the Hradschin is the low,
drawn-out Loretto church, with a maximum of frontage and a minimum
of depth, like city seminaries for young ladies. Among the red tiles
of its steep roof, giant stone saints perform miracles of precarious
footing, and out of the centre of the façade, on a base of colossal
spirals, rises an antique belfry spire set with domes and turrets
and bearing aloft a huge clock dial like a burnished shield. Surely,
somewhere in this Hradschin-wonderland occurred the unrecounted events
of that much-interrupted narrative of the “King of Bohemia and his
Seven Castles,” which Trim tried so hard to tell to Uncle Toby Shandy;
and may we not be confident that the charming Prince Florizel, whose
strange adventures Stevenson has so gracefully recounted, once lived
and courted perils in these romantic surroundings!

It is to be hoped that every visitor will have more than one hour in
Prague; and then, of course, he will want to go up to the Hradschin
and loiter through and about it at his leisure. He will find large and
beautiful gardens where he can rest under noble trees and enjoy an
inspiring view of the city in the pleasant companionship of statuary
and fountains. When he has exhausted this viewpoint he can secure quite
another from the colonnaded verandas of the Renaissance Belvedere; or,
perhaps better still, he will journey out to the picturesque Abbey of
Strahow, embowered in blooming orchards that are vocal with blackbirds,
and from its yellow stuccoed walls look down on the dense forests of
the Laurenzberg sweeping in billowy green to the very banks of the
Moldau.

At this hour a sharp point of light, seen from the observation tower
on the summit of the Hasenberg, marks the location of a little white
church on a distant hilltop—and when you have been told all about
what happened there at the fatal battle of the White Hill you will
have listened to the bitterest chapter in the whole history of Bohemia
and will know how the national life of this kingdom gasped itself out,
three centuries ago, in the panic and rout of the “Winter King’s”
ill-managed soldiery before the fierce infantry of Bavaria. There fell
the state won by the flails of a fanatical peasantry whose sonorous
war-hymn, “Ye Who Are God’s Warriors,” had so often struck terror into
the ranks of the finest armies of Europe. Those were the men whom
the furious Ziska led—Ziska, the squat and one-eyed, the friend and
avenger of Huss; “John Ziska of the Chalice, Commander in the Hope
of God of the Taborites.” Such was the terror in which this dread
chieftain was held by his foes that they feared him even after his
death and declared that his skin had been stretched for drum-heads to
summon his followers on to victory.

Since the battle of the White Hill there has been little for Prague in
the way of war except sieges and captures; and it has mattered little
to her whether it was Maria Theresa come to be crowned, or Frederick
the Great come to destroy, or the Swedes of Gustavus Adolphus come
to plague and offend. Suffering has been her regular portion. During
the Thirty Years’ War alone, Bohemia’s population declined from four
millions to fewer than seven hundred thousand.

The stranger on the Karlsbrücke will turn from thoughts of Ziska’s
peasants to regard with increased interest the occasional specimen
of the countryman who strides past along the bridge with no
embarrassment at appearing in the streets of his capital in the costume
of his nation. Behold him in his high boots, tight buff trousers,
well-embroidered, blue bolero jacket with many buttons, broad lapels
and embroidered cuffs, his soft shirt puffed out like a pigeon, and
the jaunty Astrachan cap cocked to one side. And there, too, marches
his wife; boots laced high, bodice bright and abbreviated, petticoats
short and broad and covered by a wide-bordered apron, her arms bare to
the shoulders, and her headdress of white linen very starchy and stiff.
Sometimes one passes wearing a hat that suggests Spain, but he, too, as
they all do, wears the tight trousers and the close-fitting knee boots.
In time one learns to distinguish the Slovaks and Moravians by their
long, sleeveless white coats, tight blue trousers, and white jackets
with lapels and cuffs embroidered in red.

One hears many interesting things about these peasants. Throughout
the year, it is said, they fare frugally on black bread and a cheese
made of sheeps’ milk, to which is added an occasional trout from the
mountain streams. The great age some of them attain speaks well for the
diet. Strangers who go up into the hills to stalk chamois and have a
go at the big game come back with surprising stories of the inherited
deference that is still paid in the country to caste. They will tell
you that the peasant still kisses the hand of the lord of the soil.
The Praguer thinks highly of his country brother, though he finds a
vast amusement in observing his rustic antics when he comes to town on
St. John Nepomuc’s Day and shuffles about the streets, wide-eyed and
gaping, after the manner of _rus in urbe_ the world over.

Curious stories are told of peasant customs. Christmas is their day
of days, and preparations for its proper observance are made long in
advance. They believe it to be a season when evil spirits are powerless
to injure and may even be made to aid. When the great day arrives, the
cottages are scrupulously cleaned, fresh straw laid on the earthen
floor, and the entire household assembled for a processional round
of the outbuildings. In the course of this ceremonial parade, beans
are carefully dropped into cracks and chinks of the buildings, with
elaborate incantations for protection against fires. Bread and salt
are offered to every animal on the place. The unmarried daughters are
sprinkled with honey-water to insure them faithful and sweet-natured
husbands. The family drink of celebration is the plum-distilled
_slivovitz_.

What effective use the great national composers of Bohemia—Smetana,
Dvorak, and Fibich—have made of the native melodies and costumes!
Smetana, a friend and protégé of Liszt,—the master utilizer of
Hungarian folk-themes,—was determined that Bohemia, too, should
have music of a distinctively national character; and in his eight
operas and six symphonic poems, as well as in his beautiful stringed
quartette, the “Carnival of Prague,” he abundantly realized his
ambition. There is no more popular opera played in Prague to-day than
his “Bartered Bride.” One hears a great deal of Smetana in talking
with the people of this city; of his poverty and sadness, his final
deafness, and of how, when fame at last crowned him so completely, he
was dying in an asylum here. Music is a favorite topic of conversation
in Prague. A violin player in one of the local theatre orchestras was
no less a person than the great Dvorak, a pupil of Smetana’s; and he,
too, added to Bohemian musical glory with his Slavonic rhapsodies and
dances and the splendid overture that he constructed on the folk-melody
“Kde Domov Muj.” There was a sort of Bach-like foundation for all these
composers in the early litanies of the talented Bishop of Prague. The
Czech temperament finds its natural expression in music. It is even
insisted that their most popular movement, the polka, was invented by a
Bohemian servant girl.

Certainly there has been no lack of beautiful legendary material on
which to construct effective compositions. These traditional stories
are all full of sadness and superstition, and they always revolve about
simple, natural elements—the rain, the mountains, the valleys, ghosts,
and wild hunters, and, above all, that most recurrent and universal of
themes, love.

Could we win favor with some old Praguer this afternoon and entice him
into the sunny corner of Karl IV’s monument place, beside the bridge,
we should close out our hour with many a captivating and romantic
story that would alone have made our visit well worth while. Such, for
example, is the legend of the “Spinning Girl.” Deserted by her lover,
she wove a wonderful shroud threaded with moonbeams, and in this she
was buried, and by its magic she appeared to him on his wedding night
and lured him to leap to his death in the river. And there is the story
of the “Wedding Shirt”: A girl implores the Virgin either to let her
die or restore her absent lover who, unknown to her, has been dead some
time. The Virgin bows from the holy picture, and forthwith the pallid
lover appears and conducts his sweetheart by a midnight journey to the
spot where his body lies buried. Thereupon ensues a desperate struggle
by fiends and ghouls to capture the soul of the girl, who is finally
rescued by the interposition of the Virgin to whom in her terror she
appeals. The wedding shirts that she had brought as her bridal portion
are found scattered in fragments by the sinister spirits on the
surrounding graves. The flight of the maid and her ghostly lover is
vividly depicted at length, and is expressed, in translation, by such
lurid lines as—

    “O’er the marshes the corpse-lights shone,
    Ghastly blue they glimmered alone.”

One of the most romantic of these legends is the “Golden
Spinning-Wheel.” A king loses his way while hunting and stops for a
drink at a peasant’s cottage. There he finds a marvelously beautiful
girl, to whom he eagerly offers himself in marriage. This girl is an
orphan, with a stepmother and stepsister who are cruel and jealous.
Under pretense of accompanying her to the king’s castle they lure
her into a black forest and slay her, taking great pains to conceal
her identity by removing and carrying with them her eyes, hands,
and feet. They then proceed to the castle and the wicked daughter
successfully impersonates the good one, whom she closely resembles.
Seven days of wedding festivities ensue, at the end of which the king
is called away to the wars. In the mean while a mysterious hermit—a
heavenly messenger in disguise—takes up the dead body in the forest,
dispatches his lad to the castle and secures the eyes, hands, and feet
by bartering for them a golden spinning-wheel, a golden distaff, and a
magic whirl. Thus equipped, he miraculously restores the girl to life
and limb. When the king returns from the wars he invites his false
bride to spin for him with her new golden wheel, and forthwith the
magic instrument sings aloud the whole miserable story. The furious
king rushes to the forest, finds his real sweetheart, and installs her
in his castle, while the murderers are mutilated as she had been, and
cast to the wild wolves.

It may be thought that I have gone somewhat out of my allotted way in
taking such notice as I have of the superstitions, customs, and music
passion of the Bohemians, but I cannot believe that a satisfactory
idea of Prague can be had in this, or any other hour, without some
conception of the fundamental traits that so powerfully sway this
people. For the real significance of the city lies deeper than its
surface-showing of wooded hillsides sown with quaint buildings and
a broad blue river rushing under many bridges; it is its peculiar
raciness of the soil that underlies the Czech’s mad devotion to his
capital. Expressing, as only Prague does, so much that is dear and
beautiful to him, it centres in itself the most burning and passionate
interests of the race. Without some knowledge of this desperate
attachment one would fail utterly to grasp the force and truth of such
a fine observation as Mr. Arthur Symons has made on the devotion of the
Bohemian to this city: “He sees it, as a man sees the woman he loves,
with her first beauty; and he loves it, as a man loves a woman, more
for what she has suffered.”




[Illustration]




SCHEVENINGEN

5 P.M. TO 6 P.M.


Nurtured in the salt sadness of the sea, Scheveningen is a Whistler
nocturne. Its prevailing and distinctive tones are neutral and elusive.
There are, of course, days when the sun is as clear and powerful here
as elsewhere, but more often it is obscured; then the sky becomes
pearly, the sea opalescent, the shore drab and dun. Presently a thin
fog drifts in, or vapors steal over the trees from the inland marshes,
and all tints are rapidly neutralized into a common dimness of that
vague and sentimental mistland so dear to the heart of the painter.
This is the characteristic suspended color note of the average day at
Scheveningen. It harmonizes to perfection with the sentiment of the
environment and invests the region with a marvelous charm—peculiar,
distinctive, and of the finest dignity.

The power of Scheveningen’s attraction, the force of its appeal,
lies largely in its grim aloofness and self-sufficiency. It is
unsympathetic, discouraging. It consistently dominates its visitors,
and, indeed, with an easy insolence and indifference. Wealth and
fashion may abide with it for a few days, under tolerance, but the
impression of the temporary and migratory character of their sojourn
is always present. Undistracted, the fierce and gaunt sea assails
the stark and surly shore, and the grim fishermen stand by and have
their toll of both. Of the presence of the strangers they are all but
unaware. In a brief day the incongruous invaders will have gone, but
this relentless warfare will continue unabated. All the way from Helder
to the Hook glistening seas will hiss over the flat beaches, snarling
and biting at the shoulders of the dunes. All through the long, bitter
winter, without an instant’s intermission, the struggle will go on. It
is, consequently, of the very heart of the charm of the place that one
has the feeling of intruding on battle; of tolerated propinquity to
Titanic contenders.

Loafing at Scheveningen is the apotheosis of idleness. The strong wind
stimulates, the broad beaches delight, the solemn sea inspires. To
this must be added the sense of strong contrasts. It emphasizes the
impression of having dropped, for a time, out of the familiar monotony
of Life’s treadmill; of being away from home; of both resting and
recreating. It is present to the eyes in the eloquent disproportion
between the vast Kurhaus and the diminutive homes of the villagers;
in the incongruity of Parisian finery invading the savage haunts of
the gull and the curlew. In the novel and bizarre activities of the
fisher-folk, as in their theatrical surroundings as well, one finds
just the right touch of the picturesque and the unfamiliar to complete
the full realization of _dolce far niente_.

Of the fabled monsters of the wild North Sea the imaginative man will
believe he sees one certain survivor in that languid sea-serpent of
a pier—the “Jetée Königin Wilhelmina”—that stretches its delicate
length a quarter mile over the waves from off the drab sand dunes of
Scheveningen. Its pavilion-crowned head snuggles flatly on the water.
In the afternoon and evening, when its orchestra is playing, one
fancies the monster is actually singing. At five o’clock, precisely,
we have its last drowsy utterance as it drops off into a three-hours’
nap—quite as Fafner, in the opera, yawns at Alberich and mutters
“lasst mich schlafen!” It must be admitted it is a highly pleasing song
he sings,—a Waldteufel waltz, more than likely,—and we come in time
to recognize in it the closing number of the _matinée musicale_. And
then, like Jonah’s captor, he wearies of his living contents; and we
see them emerge by hundreds, scathless and unafraid, gay with parasols
and immaculate of raiment, and pick their way leisurely along his back
until they have rejoined their friends in the voluble company that
crowds the cafés of the Kurhaus. In a moment more the abandoned monster
is fast asleep; which, by a familiar association of ideas, is a sign to
the multitudes on the beaches that surf-bathing ends in just one hour.

Forthwith, there is a great bustling all along the shore side of the
broad boulevard they call the “Standweg.” Bathers pick themselves up
regretfully from sunbaths in the soft, powdery sand and trot down
for a final dip in the surf, and those already in hasten to convert
pleasure into work with increased energy and enthusiasm. To all such
the implacable watchman shall come within the hour and beckon them out
with stern and remorseless gestures, and the curious little wagons they
call bath-cars will engulf each in turn and trundle them up out of the
water, while the nervous old women who look after the bathing-suits
will hover about with anxious eyes and lay violent hands on the
dripping and discarded garments.

[Illustration: SCHEVENINGEN BEACH]

And now a tremendous clamor arises from all the little Holland
children, who, from early morning, have been indulging the national
instinct for dike-building and surrounding their mothers’ beach-chairs
with scientific sand-bulwarks against the imaginary encroachments of
the sea. For lo! their nurses approach, wonderful in white streamers
and golden head-ornaments, and visions of the odious ante-prandial
toilet rise like North Sea fogs in every youngster’s eye until even
dinner itself appears abhorrent. Vagabond jugglers run through their
final tricks, fold their carpets and steal away. Itinerant peddlers
redouble their efforts and retire disgusted or jubilant as Fortune
may have hidden or shown her face. More than ever does the sea front
take on the appearance of a long apiary, with the hundreds of
tall, shrouded beehives of beach-chairs emptying themselves of their
comfortable occupants and being bundled by bee-men in white linen
to safety for the night. And of all the odd sights of Scheveningen
certainly no other will remain longer in mind than this curious,
huddled colony of beach-chairs. What a pleasing and cheerful spectacle!
Thronging the shore for quite a mile they contribute to the local
picture decidedly its most jolly and fantastic feature. Between the
beach-chairs and the boulevard there is a picket line of prim little
peaked white tents, with the top of each precisely matching all the
others in an edging of stiff, woodeny scallops; now that the flaps are
thrown back and the sides rolled up, we see tables and chairs inside,
with evidence of recent and jovial occupancy.

To the eye of a man taking his comfort at the pretty little Café de
la Plage on the Kurhaus terrace, all this bustle and late afternoon
animation is bound to prove decidedly diverting. The broad, paved
plazas that lie like carpets between him and the dunes are steadily
filling with a considerable proportion of the thirty thousand
Hollanders and Germans who summer here, and acquaintances are
exchanging civilities and joining and taking leave of little groups
in a way to make the general picture a brilliant, restless, and
bewildering interweaving of color. As the open-air tables are filling,
the activity of the waiters approaches hysteria, and the verandas
and saloons of the ponderous Kurhaus begin to hum with the advent
of the evening guests. Copies of “Le Courrier de Schéveningue” pass
from hand to hand as the curious scan the lists of the latest arrivals
or look over the various musical programmes of the evening. Out on
the terraces, the ornate little newspaper kiosks attract groups of
loiterers and gradually take on the character of social centres, and
as these companies increase, one thinks of stock exchanges and the
rallying about the trading standards. The matinée at the Seinpost
concludes and out troops its audience to swell the human high tide.
Bright bits of color are afforded by the blue uniforms and yellow
facings of Holland infantrymen dotted here and there in the press. It
is odd to see the usually arid and monotonous dunes grow brilliant with
an artificial blossoming of fashionable millinery, where by nature
there is nothing better than a scraggy growth of stringy heather, a
little rosemary and broom, or the dry stem of the “miller.”

It is at this hour, when “the quiet-coloured end of evening smiles,”
that the stolid natives array themselves and sally forth, like Delft
tiles come to life, to the amused amazement of the visitors. Your
Scheveningen man is wont to go about his duties, during the day,
flopping vigorously in vivid red knickerbockers, voluminous as sails
and quite as crudely patched; but when he makes a point of toilet he
appears in gray homespun, the knickerbockers cut from the same pattern
as the red ones, but there is a jacket closed up to the chin with two
rows of large buttons, a red handkerchief twisted about the neck, a
small cap with a glazed peak, and, of course, the wooden _klompen_.
Such a display richly deserves attention, but what can the poor man
expect when his wife appears in her full regalia! She, too, is shod
with _klompen_,—though you have to take that on faith in view of the
dozen or two of petticoats that balloon above them,—and her waist
is a gay butterfly of variegated embroidery, while her headgear is
about the most incredible thing conceivable. You might, at a distance,
mistake them for bishops with their mitres tilted back at a rakish
angle. Nor is it always of the one pattern. Usually it is a sort of
long white cap of linen, embroidered at the edges; and the wearer adds
a touch of coquetry in the shape of a long curl hanging at either side.
But not infrequently you see a formidable contrivance of vastly more
consequence; it consists, first, of a skullcap of polished gold or
silver, technically known as a _hoofdijzer_, pierced at the top for
ventilation and cut to leave room for the exposure of the forehead, and
over this is drawn an elaborate cape of lace, with gold ornaments of
spirals and squares dangling over the ears. This triumph of millinery
never fails to elicit cries of delight from feminine visitors, or to
set mere man to chuckling. It is most likely to form a part of the
impressive gear of the nurses from the provinces, who have more money
for such uses than the wives of the fishermen; and the things that are
told to newcomers as to the significance of this or that ornament is
the boldest advantage ever taken of innocent credulity. They undertook
to tell me that you could distinguish between married, single, and
engaged women by glancing at the ornaments—I wonder if you can! It is
said that parents present their daughters with this headdress on the
day of their confirmation; and that it is a fine sight to behold the
array of them at kermesstime with their wearers, six or eight abreast,
arm in arm, rushing down the streets in the odd dances peculiar to
those festivals, droning monotonous tunes.

To my way of thinking the unflagging industry of the Scheveningen women
is a matter of quite as much note. One seldom sees them without their
knitting, even when they are recreating, and as they stroll along,
laughing and chatting together, their fingers, all unnoticed by them,
are flashing with extraordinary speed like things of an independent
volition. Many of the women wear no sleeves and take great pride in
their strong, round arms; and this, I am told, is the case even in
winter when they are cracked and purple from exposure to the cold.

The faces of the elder fisher-folk are studies in wrinkles. Their
eyes are brave and quizzical, but with a certain settled hardness,
not perhaps to be unlooked-for in men and women who come of a stock
that for five hundred years has forced even the savage North Sea to
yield them a livelihood. They show next to nothing of humor, but
rather a stern and weary hopelessness. Strong faces are these, hard,
weather-beaten faces, but eloquent of tenacity and desperate courage.
They have been called “the most poetic and original of all Hollanders.”
They are grave, dignified, and self-reliant; and as they pass you by
they show their invariable courtesy in a bow and a quiet “Goe ’n Dag.”
One has only to see them to feel the propriety and justification of the
boast in their national song:—

    “Wilhelmus van Nassouwe,
    Ben ick van Duijtschen Bloedt!”

Fishermen naturally suggest ships, and if you glance down the beach
you will usually see several of them drawn up to the edge of the
water, with the red, white, and blue of Holland at the masthead.
During the mid-summer season the fishing-fleet is away on the cruise
for red herring off the coasts of Scotland, but there are always a
few that could not get away, and so we have the famous Scheveningen
_bom_ on its native strand. How the artists have delighted in these
lumbering, flat-bottomed tubs, ponderous of mast and weathered of
sail! Mesdag, Maris, Alfred Stevens, and the rest have familiarized
the world with this fantastic and picturesque craft. Who would buy a
painting of Scheveningen unless it showed a _bom_ or two hauled up on
the beach? And that is precisely the _raison d’ être_ of the _bom_—it
can be hauled up on the beach. Otherwise, what should a Scheveningen
fisherman do with a boat, having no deep-water harbor at hand nor
anchorage facility? There have, through the centuries, been many other
styles of Dutch fishing-boats,—busses, loggers, hookers, sloops,
pinken, etc.,—and at times, when the forehanded Hollanders have made
away with the lion’s share of the foreign catch, outsiders have lost
patience and classed them all as “Dutch toads”; but there have been
no _boms_ but Scheveningen _boms_. Nowadays they have had to build
them larger and they do not beach so easily, and it is probably only a
matter of time when steam vessels will supplant them altogether; but
when that evil hour strikes the chiefest picturesque glory of this
little village will have forever departed.

There used to be vast excitement, in the old days, over the first
herring catch of the season, and it was always hurried ashore and
conveyed to the king’s table with no end of flourish and punctilio.
Over at Vlaardingen they used to post a watchman on the church tower,
and when he made out the first boat coming in he would hoist a blue
flag and all the people trooped joyfully down to the wharves shouting
a song called “De Nieuwe Haring.” Scheveningen, indeed, still presents
one of its most picturesque scenes when the returning fishermen arrive
and their catch is auctioned off, down the beach near the lighthouse,
with much more of gusto and excitement than you would imagine these
phlegmatic people could muster. The shrewd Scheveningen fishermen have
learned how to eke out the bare three hundred florins they realize from
a year’s fishing by turning new tricks in the way of rope-spinning,
sail-making, ship-building, and curing and smoking the herring. The
fish go into this latter process as “steur haring” and emerge as
“bokking”—if that means anything to anybody!

The long-beaked curlew that flashes overhead with hoarse, raucous news
of the sea looks down at this hour on pleasant and curious sights as he
wings his swift circle above the Scheveningen neighborhood. The placid
village of twisted alleys, of innumerable “Tabak te Koop” signs, of
queer little gabled houses and unpainted fishermen’s huts, has emptied
its good folk into its narrow main street which, fickle of name,
starts out as Keizer-Straat, almost immediately becomes Willem-Straat,
and within a moment is the Oud-Weg. Here one sees in actual life the
fascinating things he has marveled over in the canvases of Teniers,
Jan Steen, and Gerard Dou,—good Dutch _vrows_ supper-marketing. There
they go, ballooning along, bargaining and bustling from shop to shop,
storing capacious hampers with game and cheeses, and every grim line in
their faces shouts a challenge to the shopmen to best them by so much
as a _stuiver_ if they can. From time to time, quaint little children
like sturdy Dutch toys escape from the press and clatter off home, with
an air of vast responsibility, hugging in both arms a brown loaf of
bread a yard long. How it recalls the bright pages of “Hans Brinker”;
and as you catch a glimpse of the broad canal down the street it is
natural enough to speculate upon the probability of Gretel’s winning
another pair of silver skates before you get back to Scheveningen next
summer.

In the meadows back of the village women in blue shawls are drying
and mending fishing-nets, nor do they so much as raise their heads
as the yellow, double-decked tramway car rumbles past on its trip to
The Hague. If all seats are occupied the car will display a large
sign marked “Vol,” and rattle along oblivious to appeals from any and
all who ask to get on. It is but three scant miles to the beautiful
capital of Holland and the tramway makes it in ten minutes—a notable
concession by leisurely Holland to the time-saving spirit of the age,
in view of other days when they devoted a half-hour to making the same
journey by canal barge. The broad, smooth highway that the yellow
car follows is, as every one knows, one of the favorite roads of
Europe. As the curlew looks down, between five and six o’clock of any
bright summer afternoon, he is sure to find it thronged with handsome
equipages and to see gay companies in each little wayside inn that
peeps out from the deep shade of the noble trees. The desired touch
of the foreign and unusual is supplied to the visitor in the scores
of heavy carts drawn by frisking, barking dogs; in the ever-present
windmills beating the air with long, awkward arms; and in dozens of
storks that cock their wise heads over the edges of their nests and
regard the passing show with philosophic amusement, patient as the old
apple-women of Amsterdam.

The Scheveningen _Bosch_ is one of the most delightful woods
imaginable. It is national property, and no private park could be more
beautifully kept up. A ball would roll with perfect smoothness down its
driveways of crushed gravel, and even Ireland would be taxed to equal
the vivid greenness of its lawns. This whole fair forest is studded
with villas of the aristocracy and even of royalty. Their wide verandas
and orchards and flowery lawns move the most contented to envy a
Hollander the comfort he takes in his _zomerhuis_. To know the _Bosch_
rightly it must be walked through; and the more leisurely and the
oftener, the better. It is not only a lovely woodland set with charming
homes, but everything a fine forest should be. The green and coppery
beeches, the hardy oaks and elms, and the living embroidery of bright
flowers perfume the air with delicate odors; and the wind in the lofty
tops makes sweet and haunting music. Deep down in the clear mirror of
the canals, splotches of broad leaf shadows lazily float and dapple
like drowsy fishes. Through the deep foliage you catch occasional
glimpses of open, sunny meadows, with cows contentedly grazing; and you
come to revel in every vague and tranquil sensation.

In the midst of this beautiful forest, two centuries and a half
ago, the best-beloved and most widely read of Holland’s poets—the
venerable Jacob Cats—composed his madrigals and moral fables, and so
passed the last eight years of his eventful career. Rembrandt loved and
painted him, and a monument stands to his memory in his native town of
Brouwershaven. They say his books are in every peasants’ hut and his
verses in every peasant’s heart. His cottage was at Zorgvliet, a few
steps from Scheveningen, near where the Queen Mother now has her summer
home, and there in the garden of the Café de la Promenade they will
show you the old stone table at which he wrote, with the hole he cut in
it for his inkstand.

Wild game throng the wooded inner dunes. Partridges, hares, and rabbits
abound in the underbrush, and the polder meadows yield the finest grade
of mallard ducks. The pines and firs are resonant with the calls of
cuckoos, pheasants, and nightingales. Farmers clear patches of ground
to serve as finch flats, which they call _vinkie baans_; and there, in
the autumn, they snare chaffinches which they sell for a cent apiece,
to be used as a garnishment in serving other game.

As you look out across the Scheveningen dunes and watch the day
declining, stirring thoughts come trooping to mind of the gallant
scenes these bleak shores have witnessed. Off yonder, two centuries
and a half ago, fell the brave Tromp, hero of thirty-three sea fights.
On the bridge of his lofty-sterned Brederode he died, as every true
warrior longs to die, in the foremost thick of the fray. “I am done;
but keep up a good heart,” were his last words as they carried him into
his cabin. Next day they brought his body to these shores and bore it
away to lie in the old gray church at Delft beside the revered William
the Silent. “The bravest are the tenderest,” and his war-hardened
sailors were not ashamed to weep as heartily for him as the little
children, fifty years before, had wept in the streets for the great
William. Half a dozen years later a shouting multitude thronged this
beach and waved a _bon voyage_ to Charles II of England as he sailed
homeward to his recovered throne, to restore a licentious court and
renew such royal revels as had already cost England a revolution.
Another dozen years roll around, and Scheveningen looks on while the
fleets of France and England are battered to wreckage by the cannon
of Holland’s pet hero, the intrepid De Ruyter. A century or so more,
and once again this village is the storm centre of Holland’s hopes and
fears as William Frederick I eludes the pursuing French troops and a
little Scheveningen fishing-smack bears the whole royal family away
in safety to Germany. And when he came back in triumph, twenty years
later, it was at Scheveningen that he landed, and at the very spot
where yonder gray obelisk now stands in commemoration.

And now through chilly mists the sun, a vast bloated orange, settles
down into the glowing wastes of the desolate North Sea. The roaring
surf spreads glittering carpets far up the beach. It has suddenly
become a region of placid power and glory, something quite other than
the fabled home of monsters and terrors, of tempest and shipwreck.
That vessel in the offing, with the black hull and the crimson sails,
may be the very Flying Dutchman’s own; but still you would like to
be on it and so much nearer the sinking sun. The sky is astounding;
like a glorified Holland! There you see cloud-islands more wonderful
than Walcheren; gray wastes that beggar the Zuyder Zee; sky dunes that
stretch beyond Helder or the Hook; meadows more gorgeous than the tulip
fields of Haarlem; celestial flora more pure and palpitating than any
fairest, faintest bloom in any rarest, dimmest glade throughout the
whole woodland of The Hague. It is Holland _in excelsis_.




[Illustration]




BERLIN

6 P.M. TO 7 P.M.


While the sun is still sinking behind the Potsdam hills that victorious
old Fighting Fritz loved so well, and the hero himself, astride his
bronze charger, in cloak and cocked hat in the statue group on the
Linden, seems riding slowly home to his neighboring palace with the
lengthening shadows, the vast industrial army of the German capital
issues in myriad units from its individual barracks and debouches
on the spacious squares and broad avenues in quest of the evening’s
diversions. It is the lull hour. The long, hard day’s work over,
the amusements of the night are shortly to begin. In this pleasant
interval the bustling, aggressive city seems pervaded with a spirit
of relaxation, and no more opportune moment presents for catching the
Berliner off his guard and really seeing him as his intimates know him.

This man, it should be borne in mind, is a type unto himself. The
light-hearted Rhinelander, the solemn Bavarian, and the plodding,
self-reliant Saxon are only half-brothers to the energetic, systematic,
masterful Prussian whose most boisterous and irrepressible development
is the Berliner. He plays as hard as he works, yielding to none in
the thoroughness of either. He has a strong individuality, but with
something of coarseness in feeling. He is enormously self-assertive,
indefatigable, and patient, but scratch through his veneer of culture
and you find a basis that is rude and often boorish. His optimism is
sublime and his spirits correspondingly high. At work he is engrossed
and determined, but when it is laid aside for the day he enters as
eagerly upon his pastimes; and it is then one finds him witty and merry
to a degree, but, at times, with the loudness and ostentation of a
mischievous, unruly schoolboy. He is the sort of man that has a great
time in zoölogical gardens, and goes picnicking in his best clothes.
Intellectually, he is still as Buckle described him in the “History
of Civilization in Europe,” the foremost man in the world when he is
a scholar and the most ordinary in the main. Europeans dub him “a
practical hedonist”; in America we should refer to him as “rough and
ready.”

As soon as supper is over these joyous and virile people display their
primitive scorn of roofs and flock into the open for fun and frolic;
yet supper, itself, has been one of Gargantuan proportions at which
an observer, recalling Rabelais, might well have trembled for palmers
in the cabbage. From the four quarters they gather in force to hang
about the fountains in the roomy squares or loaf on the Linden benches
until the call of the concert-hall or the comfortable, tree-shaded
beer-garden allures to those bibulous indulgences that old Tacitus,
eighteen centuries ago, noted as peculiarly their own. For silent
now are the forges and furnaces of Spandau, the clothing _Fabriks_
of the northeast suburbs, the factories of the east end, and all the
skilled industries of the south. The artist colony of Moabit may no
longer complain of drilling regiments, and the mammoth business blocks
they call _Höfe_ have swelled the throng of clerks on Friedrich and
Leipziger Strassen. All have supped; and merchant and laborer fare
forth _en famille_ to take the evening air.

With what heartiness and placidity does this multitude enjoy its ease!
It is a trick your highstrung peoples beyond the borders can never
get the hang of. It calms one merely to look on at the contentment
and satisfaction with which they stroll slowly and merrily along,
chattering animatedly in their deep guttural speech, and greeting
friends with punctilious bows and infinite hat-raisings. With every
other word they “bend their backs and they bow their heads,” like the
celebrated character of “Dorothy.” There is an agreeable absence of
rush and hurry. Ponderous and massive, but with an erectness bred of
military training, they wear their sombre, loose-fitting clothes with
palpable relish, for comfort and inconspicuousness are virtues of price
with the Teuton. The stately _gnädige Frau_ treads heavily in rustling
silk, the mincing _Fräulein_ favors ribbons and flounces, and _mein
Sohn_ is dapper in a tight suit, lavender gloves, and the indispensable
little cane. Chaperons, of course, abound; for if a young man were
to walk abroad alone with an unmarried girl in Berlin he would be
consigning her at once to a plane with the painted _nymphe de pavé_.

The surroundings are animated. Motor-cars roll sedately along with the
least din possible and with scrupulous regard for speed limits, and a
prodigious assortment of cheap and comfortable _Droschke_ cabs hovers
expectantly about with their drivers decked out in long coats and
patent-leather hats. From time to time an officer in brilliant uniform
or a diplomat in severe black, with a row of orders across his breast,
posts past hurriedly to dine out in formal state; and with knowledge of
the terrifying discomfort of a German social function comes confidence
that most of them look from their smart broughams with profound envy at
the jovial, care-free crowds that are so boisterously happy along the
way.

The visitor, who is struggling with an uncomfortable suspicion that he
may be missing something in the other two rings of the circus, might do
well to climb the Kreuzberg and take the whole show in like a map. He
has probably already learned that although the city lies prostrate on a
level sandy plain as guiltless of a hill as a billiard table, yet the
indomitable Berliner has repaired this oversight of nature by himself
building a fine little mountain at a convenient spot due south. That
is one of the advantages in rearing your own hills—you can have them
where you want them.

In the sullen red of the dying day one beholds from the battlements of
the Kreuzberg’s Gothic tower a monster plain, twenty-five miles in an
irregular circle, smothered in house-tops, and barred and seamed with
an intricate entanglement of carefully made streets. He sees parks and
squares in surprising profusion, and an abundance of foliage in spite
of the sand; and there is a sluggish river winding a serpentine course,
a _Ringbahn_ encircling the suburbs, an elevated road that dives
underground and becomes a subway, and surface lines without number. One
could fancy a great cross in the centre of the city, whose upright is
the long Friedrichstrasse and whose broad crosspiece is the splendid
Unter den Linden. The last rays of the sun gild the roofs and spires
of each of the “town districts,” which the Prussian Diet has recently
merged into a Greater Berlin of four million souls—Wilmersdorf,
whose “millionaire peasants” became rich overnight by selling their
lands to speculators; Charlottenburg the Pampered, that has increased
tenfold in thirty years; Rixdorf the Prosperous; and Schöneberg the
Renowned—which is well worth a sentimental journey to the graves of
the Brothers Grimm under the cypresses of St. Matthew’s Cemetery, if
only out of gratitude for the familiar versions of “Cinderella,” “Tom
Thumb,” “Little Red Riding Hood,” and so many others of our childhood’s
companions. The sunset glory falls where glory is due—on a region at
our feet of ancient martial fame; the little village that the Knights
Templar held for centuries, and the broad Tempelhofer Feld,—Prussian
drill-ground for two hundred years,—whither all Berliners turn
holiday-faces when the Kaiser reviews the Guards in spring and autumn,
and journey cockishly homeward when the show is over, “snapping their
fingers at the foeman’s taunts.”

In every section that the Kreuzberg looks down upon, and still farther
away under the fading western skies, pleasant signs of recreation
abound. The Linden overflows, the lesser streets are swollen streams,
and every open square is a ruffled lake of leisurely humanity. A
strong tide of loiterers sets through the most popular of Berlin’s
breathing-places—the stately Tiergarten—and ripples there about the
bases of statues and monuments, the marble settles of the Sieges-Allée,
and the sculptured benches of the _Anlagen_ of the Brandenburg Gate.
There is the usual deep eddy before the graceful statue of the adored
Queen Louise, which is half-buried in flowers by a grateful people
every March 10. The bridle-paths teem with lines of aristocratic
riders, with possibly the Kaiser himself among them. Indeed, no other
part of the city may compare with the Tiergarten at this hour, so
beautiful is it in turf and tree and so delightful in heavy fragrance.
No wonder that Berliners have so long regarded it as the best last
glimpse of life—to fight duels in by dawn in other days, and to take
their own lives in now.

[Illustration: BERLIN, UNTER DEN LINDEN]

All Berlin is now out of doors. The millionaires of the exclusive
Tiergarten purlieus are cooling themselves in their villa gardens,
and the middle-class man is beaming at the band at the Zoo, where the
restaurant-terraces are overflowing into the flowered walks among the
trees. There is a boisterous coterie of shouting children to every prim
fountain in the prim squares. Out under the pines and cypresses of
Grunewald crowds returning from the races are gazing admiringly at the
pretty white villas that rim the verges of the placid forest lakes; and
others are turning aside for the spectacular amusements of Luna Park.
At Steglitz the bicycle races are ending and merrymakers are swarming
into the Botanic Gardens to marvel over the cacti and palms of the long
hot-houses. Capital boating is in progress on the Spree, and sailing at
Wannsee, and steamer trips all through the suburbs. Bands are crashing
in the noisy penny-shows of the tumultuous Zeltern; they are having
beer in crowded _Weinhandlungen_, chocolate at dainty _Conditoreien_,
and much besides in the jolly Vienna cafés that open out invitingly to
the street. In every part of the city rise music and laughter and the
sound of early revelry in pretty, tree-shaded summer gardens. It is an
audible expression of the Berliners’ joy of living—their cherished
_Lebensfreude_.

Could we rise with Zeppelin we should find it the same now at
Charlottenburg, and over at Potsdam. Charlottenburg the Prosperous is
having its serene and dignified companies sauntering in quiet evening
talk along the broad, handsome streets. The gay are at the lively
_Orangerie_, the philosophic in the trim, pert little parks, and the
sentimental among the flaming roses and fragrant trellises of the
charming Palace Garden. In solemn and conscious superiority the great
Technical High School and famed Reichanstalt shroud their learned
cornices in the gloaming of tree-tops, and that chiefest mecca of
all, the royal mausoleum, embowers its gleaming marble walls in heavy
shrubbery at the bottom of its avenue of pines. No loiterer, you may be
sure, but thinks reverently of the recumbent snowy effigies of the dead
rulers that lie in the hushed gloom of that dim interior.

Potsdam, Germany’s Versailles, steeped in the melancholy beauties of
the Havelland pine forests, redolent of old Frederick the Great and his
dream of an earthly Sans Souci, thinks nothing of drawing Berliners
twenty miles to its twilight peace and calm. Exuberance tempers to the
dignity and beauty of those parks and palaces where the Kaiser has his
favorite royal seat. Up the broad Hauptweg they stroll by hundreds
and gladden their patriotic eyes with the colonnades, porticoes, and
statues of the vast New Palace that proved to the foes of defiant old
Fritz that the sturdy warrior was far from bankrupt despite the Seven
Years’ War. Nor do they forget that it was here the late emperor,
beloved “Unser Fritz,” learned how

                        “unto dying eyes
    The casement slowly grows a glimmering square.”

The classic Town Palace of Potsdam is receiving its compliments,
as usual, and no less the artistic Lustgarten, opulent in marbles
and fountains; and many will be wandering even out to the cool and
spacious park that lies about the charming Babelsberg Château. But old
Frederick remains the local hero, and there is sure to be a crowd at
the venerable lime-tree where petitioners used to stand to catch the
eye of the king, and a kind of procession will be passing reverently
before the garrison church, where lie his remains in the vault before
which Napoleon outdid himself in eulogy the while he pilfered the old
warrior’s sword. And the leaping column of the Great Fountain will
be the centre of an admiring throng, and scores will be going up and
down the vista of broad stairs and fruited terraces that lead to the
long, low palace of Sans Souci. As to the latter, a stranger might be
pardoned if he were to mistake it for a casino, which it strikingly
resembles, with its flat-domed entrance, line of caryatids like
pedestal busts, and the row of stone urns on the balustraded top of the
façade. At this hour there is no admission, but one may peer through
the low French windows and, in fancy, people Voltaire’s room with a
miserly ghost of the crafty old philosopher, see him fraternizing and
quarreling with the king, imagine a royal _soirée_ in progress with
Frederick playing skillfully on the flute, recall the brilliant talk of
the Round Table, and think with pity of the cheerless, childless old
soldier toiling wearily on those histories that Macaulay praised, and
winding his big clock, and yearning all the while to lie buried among
his dogs out on the terrace. To many will come visions wrought from
the extravagant fiction of Luise Mühlbach. What moral observations and
theatrical posings fell to poor Frederick’s lot in her “Berlin and Sans
Souci,” sandwiched in among the woeful loves of Amelia and Baron Trenck
and of the dancer Barbarina and the High Chancellor’s son! But perhaps
such literature helps one to understand the application to Frederick
of the celebrated characterization of a very different personage, the
“wisest, greatest, meanest of mankind.”

In Berlin proper there are two fine squares that best serve the
well-advised as start-and-finish places for the most interesting
evening walk to be had in the city—the Lustgarten before the Royal
Palace and the Königs-Platz at the Tiergarten corner. By this notable
route one arrives, within the smoking of two cigars, at something like
an intelligent comprehension of Berlin and Berliners.

The gracious expanse of the Lustgarten is so appealing in the
melancholy light of sunset that one almost feels, at the very beginning
of the stroll, like going no farther for fear of faring worse, but
rather remaining where he is among the trees and fountains and artistic
shrubbery and watching the children playing _Hashekater_ around the
colossal Granite Basin, or _Ringer-Ringer-Rosa_ at the marble stairs of
Frederick William’s lofty statue. Soft splashes of deep colors warm
the long rows of blinking windows in the Royal Palace on the left, and
flush the domes of the cathedral and the columns of the Old Museum’s
Ionic portico. Hundreds of Berliners are idling along the asphalt walks
that entice to the Palace Bridge that arches the Spree in a double line
of marble groups and so opens up the long, tree-shaded perspective
of the Linden. To see it at this hour one would not guess that this
fair Lustgarten had once been a neglected palace-close and even a
dusty drill-ground; no more than one could believe that the occasional
decrepit church or twisting, narrow street in the district in the rear
is all that marks antiquity in the whole of the city. For the furious
_tempo_ of Berlin’s development has swept everything before it. Three
out of every four buildings, all over town, are garishly modern.
Indeed, it is all so utterly of the present moment that it is hard to
believe that even a group of fishermen’s huts could have stood here
beside the Spree so long as seven hundred years ago. Were one to see no
more of Germany than its capital he might very easily imagine a Chicago
or two somewhere in the empire, but certainly not a Nuremberg.

Sunset imparts an air of cordiality to the ponderous, baroque,
seven-hundred-roomed Royal Palace, whose four stories of regular window
lines suggest an ornate and elaborate factory that had been diverted
from its original purpose by the addition of the chapel dome on the
west wing. However, for those who cross its low terrace and enter the
sculptured portals there awaits a revelation of pomp and majesty, of
throne-room splendors and saloon magnificence, that rivals the best
of Versailles and Vienna. Unhappily we cannot here see the windows of
the royal family’s apartments, for they are on the second floor of the
opposite wing; whence the Kaiser looks out on the Neptune fountain of
the Schloss-Platz and the elaborate façade of the royal stables when
the purple banner that denotes his presence flies from the palace
standard.

In the gloaming the high portico columns, “Lion Killer,” “Amazon,” and
shadowy sculptured groups of the vestibule of the classic Old Museum
gleam through the dark branches of the trees with charming grace and
effectiveness. Not all the imposing galleries on Museum Island, just
beyond, can displace this well-beloved old temple of the arts in the
affectionate regard of Berliners. The commanding Dom, or cathedral,
dominates the Lustgarten and all the city besides, but in the modest
and inoffensive manner that is becoming in an architectural _débutante_
of only six seasons—though that is quite long enough for a building to
become _passé_ in Berlin. Its granite walls, copper domes, high-vaulted
portals, elaborately carved cornices, and profusion of statuary stand
out in beautiful relief against the darkness of the trees beyond.

At this hour the sturdy, besculptured Palace Bridge is thronged with
loiterers leaning over the broad balustrades to admire the festoons
of lichen on the opposite masonry embankment or gaze down into the
languid blue Spree. These waters have journeyed wearily all the way
from distant Saxony, and with little enough to delight them along the
road, excepting, perhaps, the scenes of the romantic and picturesque
forest—Venice of Spreewald, where the strange Wendish people in
outlandish garb pole flat market-barges through the labyrinth of canals
and jabber to each other in a foreign tongue. Even on reaching the
capital, the career of the Spree continues uneventful and dejected;
and shortly after clearing the city it gives up in discouragement
and empties itself into the Havel at Spandau. One finds a pleasant
evening-life along its masonry banks, however, in spite of the personal
indifference of the stream itself, and sometimes even of a brisk and
important nature, thanks to the shipping from the canals. Beside these
urban embankments one sees, here and there, a narrow sidewalk between
the wall and the houses that instantly recalls the delightful little
_rivas_ along the Venice canals. It is interesting to watch the swift,
pert little steamers that dash up and down the stream and to take note
of the air of bravado with which they plunge under the low bridges.
Then, there are the soldiers washing their linen service uniforms on
floating docks. But best of all are the canal boats. These invariably
have a fat woman at the tiller and an excited dog dancing from end to
end, while a sturdy husband propels a snail-like passage by means of a
long pole which he sets to his shoulder like a crutch and inserts the
other end into niches in the walls and so plods the entire length of
the deck, with the boat advancing slowly under his feet.

Entering Unter den Linden from the Schloss-Brücke, the imposing array
of splendid public buildings on either hand of the expanding vista
suggests the middle of the street as the only adequate viewpoint—and
the majority take it, in the evening. The visitor is bound speedily
to conclude that, unless it be Vienna, no European city can boast a
more beautiful or impressive double line of structures. They have
dignity and solidity in appearance, richness and taste in decoration,
and spaces to stand in of princely proportions. The agreeable effect
of shade trees has been freely made use of, and on all sides one sees
that profusion of sculpture and statuary in which Berlin is as rich as
London, for example, is poor. As if impressed with such surroundings,
the evening crowds move along slowly and observantly, looking up
admiringly at the dark gray fronts—the statue-set façade of the
Arsenal, the stately palaces of Crown Prince and Crown Princess, the
Opera House, the rococo Royal Library, and the palace of old Emperor
William I, from whose famous corner window the conqueror of Sedan
used to look out affectionately on the street life of his people.
With no less of satisfaction must the old emperor have looked over
the heads of the crowds at the University across the way—the proper
toast of all Germany. One notes its open square and wide triple story
and thinks of the ripe scholarship suggested by the surrounding
statues of its savants, Helmholtz, Mommsen, Treitschke, and the great
William and Alexander von Humboldt, whose ashes lie out at Tegel
under Thorwaldsen’s beautiful “Hope.” Here six hundred teachers and
ten thousand students work in the inspiring memory of such masters
as these, and of such others as Fichte and Hegel and Schelling. From
contemplations over the intellectual achievements of Prussia one turns
to martial glory in the form of Rauch’s immortal equestrian statue
of Frederick the Great, about which the crowds are now swarming, and
observes the hero’s head cocked in characteristic defiance and his hand
lightly resting on the hilt of his ready sword. Berliners make great
ado in studying and identifying the numerous eminent men of that period
whose reliefs are exquisitely executed on the four sides of the lofty
pedestal.

And now we pass under the limes and chestnuts of the five-streeted
Linden, keeping to the broad gravel promenade in the centre where the
children play all day and their parents fill the benches half the
night. On its outer streets one may see the finest hotels, theatres,
cafés, and shops of the city. It is amusing to watch the people at this
hour, in settling their arrangements for the evening, cluster about
the poster pillars that they call “Litfassäulen,” and the newspaper
kiosks, scanning announcements and theatre bills. Familiar to them, but
suggestive to a stranger, are the iron standards at important street
intersections supporting placards of the red cross of the hospital
boards to indicate the locations of emergency surgeons, who are always
on the spot. You may rest on a Linden bench a moment, if you like,
but expect thrifty Berlin to tax you for it; and read carefully the
conspicuous placards, so redolent of this systematic city, to learn
just where you may sit; for some are “reserved for women,” some for
“nurses with children,” others for “adults,” and what remain for mere
“men.”

But the well-advised will break the walk when they reach the corner of
Friedrichstrasse for a few minutes of refreshments at the celebrated
Café Bauer, where open house is held for all the world, and where
you may take your ease under the frescoes of Anton Werner, or, at a
balcony table, look down on the cosmopolitan congestion of the streets
and observe ladies having ices across the way at Kranzler’s after the
fatigue of shopping at Tietz’s or Wertheim’s.

The animated scenes of the Café Bauer are those of busy restaurants
the world over, with the possible difference that Berliners make more
of café life than many others, as being an institution essential
to temperaments that crave social diversion, simple enjoyment and
friendliness. So we hear much laughter and find the air vital with
the vociferous rumbling thunder of this deep-lunged speech, and
with continual explosions of “So!” and “Ach!” and “Ja wohl!” and
“Bitte!” and “Entschuldigen!” and “Wunderschön!” and, especially,
“Prosit!” There is an incessant clamoring for waiters by handclaps
and shouts of “Kellner!” to which those distracted functionaries
respond with “Augenblick!”—“in a wink of the eye,”—and dash off
in haste, to return at leisure. The gold that falls in _Trinkgeld_
passes belief; but tipping is like breathing all over Berlin. It is
said that the head waiters pay handsomely for the positions. You will
see few people in the Café Bauer uncompanioned, for sociability is a
national characteristic. The man in the corner reading the “Fliegende
Blätter” or “Illustrirte Zeitung” or any other of the eleven thousand
publications of the city will shortly be joined by some friend for whom
he is waiting and raise his voice in the general “Prosit!” chorus.
Should you address the waiter in English, you will be answered at once
in that language; as you would, for that matter, in any Berlin business
house. The formality on every hand, the bowing and eternal thanking,
is of the Berliner Berlinesque. It is a trick that is soon picked up,
and it is no time at all before you can enter a store with the best of
them, remove your hat and wish the clerk “Mahlzeit,” remain uncovered
until your purchase is made, again bow and say “Mahlzeit,” replace your
hat, and go about your business.

From a balcony table at the Bauer you may study, as you elect, the
diners within or the crowds without. If it be the latter, you doubtless
observe at once the extensive presence of the military element that
so preëminently dominates the empire. There goes a stiff-backed,
narrow-waisted, tight-coated officer jangling his sword and fussing
at his gloves. His chin is tilted at a supercilious angle and his
mustachios are trained to look fierce, like the Kaiser’s. As he
approaches a brother officer he begins a salute a quarter-block away
and keeps it up as far again after passing. He would perish before he
would unbend in public to give the most unofficial of winks at the
pretty, barearmed nursemaid who is tripping demurely by, and yet it is
whispered that in private “Die Wacht am Rhein” is not the only song
he knows. And lo, the humble man of the ranks,—facetiously dubbed
“Sandhase,”—who is saluting and “goose-stepping” to some superior or
other the greater part of the time. You perceive him now to be roaming
about with evident relish; and a familiar bit of local color is the
dark blue tunic and gray trousers and the brass-bedecked leather helmet
with its _Pickelhaube_ top spike. You learn to distinguish the corps,
in time, by the color of the shoulder knots.

Parenthetically, it will be remembered that these husky fellows are
paid just nine cents a day, and out of that go two and a half cents for
dinner. Their only free rations are coffee and the famous black bread.
They carry their “cash balance” suspended about the neck in a bag, and
any time an officer wishes to make sure the “sand-rabbit” has not been
squandering his money too fast, he opens the bag at morning inspection
and examines the contents. Pay is small, all the way up; a second
lieutenant, with heavy and unavoidable social obligations, receives
twenty dollars a month—like an American sergeant. Higher officers must
live in town and keep their horses. “Marry money” becomes the first
requirement of the “silent manual.” But Germany’s exposed borders must
be lined with bayonets, and she has not forgotten that the French war
cost her a hundred thousand men in killed and wounded; so she maintains
an army of a peace-footing strength of six hundred thousand, at a cost
of $175,000,000 a year. The “Defenders of the Fatherland” become, in
consequence, the pets of the court and the social arbiters of the
empire.

On leaving the Bauer it is amusing to dip for a few moments into the
tumult of rip-roaring Friedrichstrasse and sweep along with merchants,
government clerks, shop girls, artists, soldiers, and all the rest of
the jovial, motley company. Out in the middle of the street students
go rushing by, boisterously inviting trouble and waving their hats and
the husky bludgeons they call canes. Conveyances of all descriptions
are coming and going—_Droschken_, stages, double-decked omnibuses,
motor-cars, _et al._ The corner of Leipzigerstrasse is a whirlpool
through which traffic moves like so much drifting pack-ice. Trolley
cars pass gingerly by to come to a stop at the iron posts marked
“Haltestellen.” One notes that the little “isles of safety” in the
middle of the street have each its representative of the omnipresent
police, dressed up like major-generals in military long coats and
nickel-pointed helmets. They could tell you that Leipzigerstrasse is
just as crowded all the way to the tumultuous Potsdam Gate, where
on each sharp corner of the five radiating streets ponderous hotels
project into the maelstrom like pieces of toast on spits. I say the
policemen _could_ tell you that, if they wanted to, but the probability
is they would only wave excited hands and shout “Verboten!”

And that makes you realize that about everything you want to do in
Berlin is forbidden for some reason or other. No yarn of the Mormons
ever conveyed an idea of such perpetual, unwinking vigilance as is
second nature to this police force. Soon after arriving you become
uncomfortably conscious of being secretly and unremittingly watched,
but while this rankles for a while you eventually become acclimated,
as it were, and pass into a hardened stage of moral irresponsibility
where you are scrupulously circumspect and not a little sly. Since the
police have elected to play the rôle of your conscience you determine
to go about without one, like Peter Schlemihl and his shadow, in the
balmy confidence that whatever you are up to must be all right or the
authorities would have notified you that it was “verboten” and had you
up at headquarters for one of those myriad fines that range from two
cents up.

Parenthetically, again, it is the people’s fault. They are
government-mad; intoxicated with bureaucracy. Not for all the gold
reserve at Spandau would they abate one jot of this supervision. There
is a law for everything. Some one has said that for every pfennig the
German pays in taxes he expects and receives a pfennig’s worth of
government. You see it on every hand. Each bus and car is placarded to
announce its exact seating capacity, as well as the precise amount of
standing-room on the platforms; once that space is occupied it would
not stop for you, though you go on your knees. Have you ever taken
notice of the little metallic racks at each end of a Berlin street
car? That is where you leave the cigar you may be smoking when you
enter; putting it anywhere else is absolutely “verboten.” It is the
spirit of the time. Berlin is a “touch-the-button” town—a machine-made
community of deadly rote and rule. System is the thing. Street numbers
have arrows indicating which way they run; letter boxes are cleared
every fifteen minutes; a letter goes by the pneumatic _Rohrpost_ with
the speed of a telegram; packages are sent by the parcel delivery
more quickly and more cheaply than by express; hotels have electric
elevators and vacuum cleaning. It is so all over Germany. Who ever sees
a picture of Düsseldorf, these days, without a Zeppelin airship in the
background? How eloquent it is of the thoroughness of this people whose
boastful “Made in Germany” is expressive of the rankest materialism,
that their warlike capital should be distinguished for the quality and
quantity of its artistic feeling, and excel, besides, in usefulness,
as exemplified in scores of museums that are admittedly the most
instructive of any in the world.

As the last of daylight disappears, Friedrichstrasse’s shops blaze out
brilliantly in every guise of electricity, the present pet scientific
rage. The window dressings are highly attractive, but seldom the
interiors behind them. Americans are finding home products in the kodak
and sewing-machine stores, in penny-in-the-slot establishments, and
at alleged American soda-fountains and bars—all displayed for sale
in business buildings that are better built than the battlements of
Jericho. People need not go out of a single block on Friedrichstrasse
to secure every comfort they require, for in so small a space one finds
fashionable hotels, _hôtels garnis_, _pensions_, or the exemplary
_hospices_ affected by ladies traveling alone; where also you may
dine at establishments to suit your purse—at extravagant cost, or on
the lightest of repasts at a _Conditorei_, or on a heavy seven-course
dinner at a popular restaurant for twenty cents, with a glass of
beer in the bargain. One finds the dance halls largely supported by
foreigners and tourists, of which latter America sends fully forty
thousand annually. It is also speedily apparent that the undertow of
the feverish stream brings its wreckage to the surface, where the
rouged cheek and carmined lip betray the presence of fiercer kinds of
“questing bestes” than ever were recorded in the “Morte d’Arthur.”

Out again under the rustling trees of the Linden one strolls on in
increasing delight. In the growing zest of the evening the prosperous
crowds toss pfennigs to the begging old “Linden Angels” and patronize
the flower-venders and newsboys. Of the Linden’s fivefold boulevard,
the outer streets are rumbling with heavy wagons and cabs, the drive
with carriages, the bridle-path is lively with belated riders and the
broad middle promenade is overflowing with pedestrians. Good Americans,
on passing the United States Embassy headquarters, at the corner of
Schadowstrasse, raise their hats in a sudden welling of patriotic
reverence, and very likely with a wistful sympathy for the _heimweh_
that must frequently oppress the two thousand members of the American
colony that tarry in the pleasant environs of Victoria Louise Platz.
Diplomats are coming and going on aristocratic Wilhelmstrasse, which
sweeps southward at this point, and where the lights are beginning to
sparkle before the double line of government department buildings,
royal palaces, and foreign embassy houses. The famous palace of mellow
gray stone, in which the Iron Chancellor lived and held court like a
king in the heyday of his power, shrouds itself proudly in the deep
green of its garden of thick shrubbery.

But all this fails to hold the stroller’s attention when he glances
about and sees he is at the end of the Linden and that a dozen steps
will carry him to a sudden widening into stately Pariser-Platz, at the
bottom of which, flanked by fountained lateral lawns and light-flecked
in the twilight blur, rises one of Berlin’s chiefest features—the
famed Brandenburg Gate. When the Berlin exile is homesick this is
the picture he always sees—the imposing five-arched gateway, creamy
against the misty deep green of the Tiergarten tree-tops, the dignified
fronts of surrounding embassy houses, flowered grass plots on either
hand, leaping fountains, the long lines of the trees of the Linden, and
through the gateway-portals glimpses of colonnades and white statues in
the cool, dusky _allées_ of the park.

It is an inspiring spot. The classic grace of Greece is present in the
gate itself,—a copy of the Athenian Propylæa,—and the eventualities
of warfare are suggested in Schadow’s bronze Quadriga above it, which
the envious Napoleon carried off to his Paris. These old trees of the
Linden know much of the turning of the wheel of fortune; they shook
to the tread of the conquering legions of Napoleon the Great, after
Jena, when Queen Louise and her little ten-year-old son fled in want
and humiliation; but they also rocked, threescore and five years later,
to the shouting of the armies of a united and triumphant Germany when
that same little boy, become Emperor William I, returned from the
annihilation of Napoleon the Little.

Any German student, adequately inspired, will tell the legend of the
Quadriga; how the Goddess of Victory each New Year’s Eve drives her
chariot and four up the Linden, pays her respects to Frederick the
Great on his bronze horse and is back in her place by 1 A.M. And that
is the night, by the way, that the Great Elector rides his charger all
over the city, taking note of the year’s changes, and returns to his
position on the Kurfürsten Brücke before the stroke of one. Out of
the same Nibelungen Land comes the legend of the White Lady that goes
moaning through the Royal Palace when a Hohenzollern is about to die.
Now we are on Berlin traditions, it may be said that there is more
agreeable flesh and blood to the custom of receiving bouquets from the
witches of the Blocksberg on Walpurgis Nacht (May 1), and an altogether
human foundation for the ancient torch dances at Hohenzollern weddings,
of which Carlyle has given so enthusiastic a description.

Beyond the gate, we face a beautiful picture. The sweeping arc of
the _Anlagen_, rimmed with marble benches, balustrades, and statues,
is spirited with pleasure seekers, and its thick lines of lights are
all glowing brightly, and carriages and cabs are speeding noiselessly
across it. An attractive dilemma presents, as to whether we choose to
reach the adjoining Königs-Platz by the embowered and vernal Path
of Peace—the tree-arched Friedens-Allée through this corner of the
Tiergarten—or by the celebrated War-Way—the Sieges-Allée—between the
double lines of the thirty-two marble groups portraying the rulers of
the House of Brandenburg. There are advantages to either; the first is
shorter and supremely sylvan, but the second presents an opportunity
of settling for one’s self the violent difference of opinion as to the
artistic merits of this elaborate gift of the Kaiser to his capital.
Each of the groups of the latter has a heroic statue of a Prussian
ruler half encircled by a marble bench whose ends are Hermes busts
of eminent men of that period. We are entitled to an opinion. Some
pronounce it incomparable; others think it pompous and insipid, and
very much like a stone cutter’s yard.

In either event one soon reaches the Königs-Platz, and beholds
envisioned the power and glory of the Fatherland. At no hour does it
appear to such advantage as at twilight. The dusky shadows lie heavy
about the great circular field of trees and shrubbery, shrouding the
sculptured mass of the vast Reichstag building until its huge glass
dome looms like a colossal moon in a lake of emerald. Bismarck and Von
Moltke rise above their statue-groups like demigods of bronze, and
the lofty Column of Victory, studded with captured cannon, rears its
brisk and lightly-poised angel to acclaim the glories of Germany to
an invisible world among the skies. Kroll’s neighboring summer garden
is gay in hundreds of colored lights that glow in the grass plots
and dim arbors and hang like pendent fruit from the branches of the
trees. The dusk deepens into gloom, and twilight plays Whistler-tricks
with fountain spray and statue. Distant domes pass, in night wizardry,
for ghostly war-tents of Von Moltke. Faint vapors steal among the
trees of the lower levels, and the dark of dim retreats is deeper
for the brilliance of groups of lights that fade surrounding foliage
into shades of pale olive. Music drifts softly over from Kroll’s,
and the subdued hum of engulfing Berlin conveys a pleasant sense of
companionship and a feeling of admiration and affection.

In the vivid appreciation of all we have just been seeing, one thinks
in amazement, _What a people!_ Harveyized against everything but
progress, they are bending their tremendous energy to the enormous
task of transforming Berlin from the capital of a kingdom into the
capital of an empire. To see what they are accomplishing is to whip
one’s wastrel forces and holystone his resolution. Here is energy and
power of a kind to move mountains. Foreign critics bite their nails in
envy and decry Berlin as “a parvenu among capitals”; they say it lacks
distinction, is solemnly conscious of its new dignity, is “big without
being cosmopolitan, and imposing without being impressive.” That it
is garishly modern is true enough, as in the light of its sudden
apotheosis it could not have otherwise been, and its own people are
first to admit frequent grave errors in artistic taste. But taken all
in all, a fairer, more substantial or more worthy city has never before
been reared in the same length of time in the history of mankind. Nor
is the end yet. The soaring impetus of the capital waxes with its own
effort; gathers strength with each fresh achievement. Germany may be
pardoned for taking pride in having risen as a world power to the very
van of the nations, with her war-lord one of the foremost figures of
the era. That his capital is his special pride is well known, and there
are many who feel that he has gone far to realizing his expressed
determination to make Berlin the most beautiful city of Europe.

One rests in the Königs-Platz, at the foot of Bismarck’s statue, and
regards with wonder the stern features of that man of “blood and iron,”
to whose prescience and indomitable resolution these vast results
are so largely due. The best of Bismarck is not dead, but lives and
increases in the activities of his countrymen. As was said of another,
“Would you see his monument, look about you.” The destiny Germany is
working out is the one he bequeathed her; all this fair fruition is
the flower of his seeding. The Kaiser may continue his idolatry of his
grandfather by sowing the empire with statues of the war emperor, but
the people do not for a moment forget that the man who previsioned and
compelled these results was he at the feet of whose grim statue we
uncover in deep respect in the evening calm of the Königs-Platz. The
hand was the hand of Bismarck.




[Illustration]




LONDON

7 P.M. TO 8 P.M.


It will probably have seemed to many that in London the evening hour
between seven and eight o’clock is the most distinctive and significant
of the twenty-four, the one that is most expressive of the city’s real
life and character. It has something in its mellowness and repose
that stimulates in the spectator a subtle receptiveness and quickens
a special sensitiveness to the trooping impressions of this manifold,
multi-faceted community. One comes nearest then to truly “sensing”
colossal, world-weary, indomitable London, as she relaxes a gracious
hour to catch breath in the turmoil and struggle that has endured for
more than a dozen centuries. For quite the same reason as you would not
say that the ocean is most characteristic in either calm or storm, but
rather when rolling in long and steady swells, so London is not so much
her real self at her most vacant hour of sunrise when the milk carts
clatter where the omnibuses usually are and the street lights turn as
wan and sickly as the tramps on the benches, nor yet at the height of
her turbulence when busy men are dashing hatless about Cheapside and
loaded drays are delayed for hours in traffic blocks, but rather in
the agreeable period of early evening “let-up” while truce is effective
between the working-hours of day and the playing-hours of night.

Of course, “let-up” is meant in a comparative sense only, for in
the bright lexicon of London there is properly no such word; but
there comes at seven o’clock at least as much of a lull as is ever
to be looked for here. The savage roar of the streets is dulled to a
deep growl, the crowds become shuffling and idle and their relative
depletion and the proportionate activity and congestion in restaurants,
_pensions_, and hotel dining-rooms are eloquent of the fact that the
great city is now engaged in solemn rites before the Roast Beef of
Old England. Nor does the altered complexion of things come amiss to
the distracted foreign visitors who, though at odds in everything
else, are of one opinion in this, that, without reservation on the
part of humor, during the greater part of the day they cannot see
London for the people. By that they mean that the life of the streets
is so intense and so varied that it proves a serious distraction
from taking adequate note of the appearance and significance of the
city itself. It is, therefore, with profound satisfaction that they
welcome an hour in which they may devote a portion of their energy to
something more edifying than jostling pedestrians or escaping sudden
and sordid destruction by motor-car, hansom, or bus. It is now that
the town throws off the yoke of its drivers and the very buildings
become instinct with individuality and character. Every little dim and
noiseless square, each broad and lordly park, the massive mansions of
the great whose names have been in history for ages, business blocks
of Old-World charm to which trade seems the merest incident, blackened
pavements and Wren’s slender steeples, every memory-haunted nook and
corner, all wrought by smoke and fog to a blood-brotherhood of neutral
tones, are joining the song Father Thames is singing of dignity, power,
and grandeur,—all breathe the common exultation of being London. It is
more than Self-Assertion. It is Apotheosis!

If this may seem an extravagant idea to some, it is certain there can
be but one mind as to the relief that comes with the “let-up.” It
gives a man a chance to find himself after being lost and daunted and
disheartened all day, and to square off and give the giant a good look
between the eyes and happily attain to some just impression. “Some just
impression” is doubtless within the possibilities, but any complete
one is not. London is so vast in territory, interests, activities, and
history—such a “monstrous tuberosity of civilized life,” as Carlyle
observed—that it effectually defies comprehension. It cannot be taken
in. Look south on it from Hornsey or Primrose Hill, or west on it from
Blackwell or the Greenwich Observatory, or east from the top of the
opera house at Hammersmith, or north from Crystal Palace, and you may
see a vast prairie of house-tops and sharp, aspiring steeples and
irregular, twisting streets, but you also observe quite the same kind
of prairies rolling away under the horizon beyond your ken. If one were
to try such an experiment right at the heart of things, futility would
still be obvious, for either the Victoria Tower of Parliament or the
slightly higher dome of St. Paul’s lifts you only four hundred feet
above the pavement to hang like a lookout in midocean. There might be
hope of a completer impression if you tried an aëroplane; in which case
prostrate London-town would take the seeming of some fabulous “questing
beste” of the “Morte d’Arthur,” in format the traditional lion, rotund,
monstrous, and oddly marked, half-reclining and gazing fixedly seaward
down the Thames. A monster, indeed, fourteen miles by ten, and of a
vitality so expansive that his nebulous aura pervades an area of seven
hundred square miles! Along his grim, grimy side the Thames draws a
crawling blue band with a deep _U_ for the convenience of his paws as
it swings around the Isle of Dogs, the Regent’s Canal marks him lightly
up the shoulder and clear across the upper body, and along the profile
of the head meanders the marshy River Lea. Odd green patches would
stand for the parks—Regent’s on his back, Hyde, Green, and St. James’s
on his flank, and on his right ear, Victoria. At the present hour he
is speckled with a myriad of lights from the tip of his tail to his
chin-whisker, and doubtless in all respects looks wild enough to daunt
Sir Launcelot himself.

To the average visitor London is the Strand, Fleet Street, Regent
Street, the Embankment, Piccadilly Circus, Trafalgar Square, the
British Museum, and the Tower. But tastes differ in this as in other
things, and Boswell was doubtless justified in amusing himself by
noting how different London was to different people. Opinions on the
subject have always been very decided but hopelessly conflicting.
“Sir,” quoth Dr. Johnson to Boswell at the Mitre Tavern, “the happiness
of London is not to be conceived but by those who have been in it.”
Note Heinrich Heine, on the other hand, observing in his “English
Fragments”: “Do not send a philosopher to London, and, for Heaven’s
sake, do not send a poet. The grim seriousness of all things; the
colossal monotony; the engine-like activity; the moroseness even of
pleasure; and the whole of this exaggerated London will break his
heart.” There is wisdom, as always, in a happy mean; and one might do
worse than to go about his sight-seeing with the whetted curiosity and
flaming imagination of those country children once described by Leigh
Hunt as fancying they see “the Duke of Wellington standing with his
sword drawn in Apsley House, and the Queen, sitting with her crown on,
eating barley-sugar in Buckingham Palace.”

To such a mood as this, evening impressions are fresh and vivid, and
the goggle-eyed stranger, suddenly set down at seven o’clock before the
Shaftesbury Fountain in the centre of Piccadilly Circus,—“feeling in
heart and soul the shock of the huge town’s first presence,”—would
probably have his own opinion of any intimation that there was really
very little doing at that time in view of the hour and the absence
of Londoners in the country. He would rather incline to the view of
the Chinese prince who took one look at the wave of humanity sweeping
across London Bridge and went back to his hotel and wrote home that
he had reached the spot where all human life originates. Certainly
the stranger at Piccadilly Circus would need but one wild glance at
the glare and blaze of lights, the excitement around the “Cri,” the
beckoning bill-boards of the Pavilion, the dazzle of shop windows in
the sweeping curve of the Regent Street quadrant and the tremendous
interweaving of carriages, swift hansoms, delivery bicycles, lumbering
busses, “taxis,” “flys,” and “growlers,” to start him shouting to the
nearest “Bobby” through the roar of the wild surge for safe passage to
the sidewalk—which would be readily and obligingly accomplished by
that calmest and most tranquil of officials, the mere lift of whose
hand is as miraculously effective as the presence of a regiment at
“charge.”

And yet the intimation to the stranger would be entirely within
the facts, for a good proportion of Londoners are too far away to
hear the seven o’clock bells ring in town. The Briton’s passion
for out of doors leads him far afield. Thousands are at this hour
in the surf at Brighton or strolling on the terraced streets of
the chalk cliffs there; hundreds are at Harrow enjoying the wide
prospect beloved by the boy Byron; others in the pleasant villages of
Hatfield and St. Albans; some are spying for deer in Epping Forest;
and a happy multitude is turning from the “Maze” and Dutch Gardens
of Hampton Court to roll homeward by brake and motor-car along the
incomparable chestnut avenue of Bushy Park, among the placid deer of
Richmond, and the manifold delights of Kew Gardens. For hours the
“tubes,” surface cars, and busses have been working to capacity to
get business men home, and loaded trains have been groaning out of
Charing Cross, Euston, Paddington, St. Pancras, Victoria, and Waterloo.
They have all arrived by now at their various destinations—around
the picturesque Common of Clapham, the breezy heights of Highgate,
the river greens of Hammersmith, the lush meadows of Dulwich, the
stuccoed villas of Islington, the quietude of Bethnal Green, or the
wooded gardens of Brixton Road. Fancy residential property, in every
guise of architectural surprises, is drowsing in the shade of elm
and oak and poplar and humming to the contented chatter of reunited
families. The fortunate stranger whom Sir Launcelot has “asked down”
to “Joyous Garde” is reveling in the generous roast that makes its
august appearance between courses of Scotch salmon and Surrey fowl,
and presently there will be politics and Havanas after the ladies have
left, and later on a general assembling in a serene walled garden
with light laughter and low-voiced talk and mild discussion of
water-parties, dinners, and dances.

The London parks are in full revelry now, with bands at play and
tens of thousands of loiterers crowding the benches and moving along
broad, graveled walks under the deep shadows of old elms and in the
fragrance of trim flowerbeds. At Hampstead Heath, for example, not so
much as the ghost of a highwayman haunts the bracken-carpeted hills,
and East-Enders are out there in force along “Judge’s Walk,” and in
the “Vale of Health” that Keats and Leigh Hunt admired, or up at the
“Flagstaff” inspecting “Jack Straw’s Castle,” as Dickens so often did,
or speculating upon the sources of the ponds with as much aplomb as
ever did Mr. Pickwick himself.

Down on rugged and untamed Blackheath the band is playing at “The
Point,” and in all that region where Wat Tyler and Jack Cade stirred
Kent to rebellion the talk is now of London docks and the latest scores
of the golfers.

Up at airy Victoria Park the swans in the ponds and the chaffinches in
the hawthorn bushes are performing to enthusiastic audiences, and the
Gothic Temple of the Victoria Fountain is rimmed with rough gallants
and the “Sallies of their Alleys” who betray no inclination to “attempt
from Love’s sickness to fly.”

The cyclists are foregathered at picturesque Battersea Park and
chatting with their sweethearts over tea in the refreshment rooms,
while hundreds of unemployed who can afford neither bicycle,
sweetheart, nor tea gaze gloomily on the gorgeous blooms of the
sub-tropical garden, loll over the balustrade of the long Thames
embankment, and end up by sprawling face down on the grass or dozing
fitfully on the benches.

Perhaps the largest outpouring of all is at ever popular Regent’s Park,
preferred by the substantial middle-class,—long noted, like George
I, for virtues rather than accomplishments. Doubtless they are now
rambling through the Zoo, exploring the Botanic Gardens where flowered
borders and large stone urns are spilling over with brilliant color,
watching the driving in the “Outer Circle,” or swelling the throng on
the long Board Walk. Hundreds on these shady acres are taking their
ease with all the unction of Arden:—

    “Under the greenwood tree
    Who loves to lie with me,
    And tune his merry note,
    Unto the sweet bird’s throat.”

In all probability tremendous admiration is being expressed at
aristocratic Hyde Park, as usual, for the broad reaches of velvety
turf and the venerable oaks and elms. More than one will indulge a
pleasant reverie over the dead and gone who have braved it there—Pepys
in his new yellow coach, dainty ladies in powder and patches flashing
sparkling eyes on the gallants, and the scented, unhappy beaux who have
sighed with Shenstone along these _allées_:

    “When forced from dear Hebe to go
    What anguish I felt at my heart.”

Across the Serpentine in the children’s paradise of Kensington Gardens
we should find that the Board Walk and the “Round Pond” lose none of
their drawing-power with the years and that the fountains and flowers
are as beautiful and as highly prized as ever. There is the additional
attraction of having a chance, by keeping a sharp eye on the tops of
the tall ash-trees, of catching a glimpse of Peter Pan preparing to fly
home to his mother’s window.

The exclusive shades of Green Park and St. James’s have a convenient
nearness that entices hundreds from the roaring thoroughfares of the
neighborhood, and at this hour their old elms and graceful bowers
give impartially of their repose and peace to hearts that are heavy
and hearts that are gay. It would seem inevitable that thoughts must
come of the royal and princely companies that once trod these ways—of
Charles II, at least, strolling in St. James’s surrounded by his dogs,
pausing a while to feed his ducks and then tripping gayly up the
“Green Walk” for a chat with Nell Gwynn over the garden wall, while
scandalized John Evelyn hurries home to make note in his journal of “a
very familiar discourse between the King and Mrs. Nelly.”

The London social season being at its height during May, June, and
July, while Parliament is in session, belated clerks wending homeward
between seven and eight o’clock find the great houses occupied and
dinner-parties in progress with as much universality as a New York
clerk, under like circumstances at home, would expect to see in
December. All Mayfair, Belgravia, and Pimlico is indulging in feasting
and merriment, and the austere aloofness of their retired squares,
with central parks high-fenced in iron from contact with the “ordinary
person,” is broken by the whirl of the carriages and motors of arriving
guests. The sudden flood of soft lights from the reception hall as
Hawkins throws open the door, and the quick and noiseless disappearance
of the conveyances, is all of a moment and our clerk finds himself
disconsolately gazing at the frowning front of some solid, ivy-grown,
and altogether charming old mansion, through whose carefully-drawn
window draperies only the slightest of beams dares venture forth to
him. Were he to indulge such a passion for walking as characterized
Lord Macaulay,—said to have passed through every street of London in
his day,—he would find the same thing in progress at this hour in all
the exclusive region that lies in the purlieus of Buckingham Palace.
Dignity, riches, elegance, and power would be his in hasty, grudging
glimpses—and then the dim square again and the high iron fence. The
London square, indeed, seems decorative only—trees, turf, flowers, and
the fence, and the surrounding houses playing dog-in-the-manager. This
is not always without its bewilderment to foreigners; and so confirmed
a traveler as Théophile Gautier puzzled over the matter considerably
before he dismissed it with the conclusion that it is probably
satisfaction enough to the owners to have kept other people out.

If our clerk were to take the “tube” at Brompton Road and come out at
Whitechapel Station in the East End, he would see the other side of the
story with a vengeance. To quote Gautier again, “to be poor in London
is one of the tortures forgotten by Dante.” Here the air is stifling
with dirty dust, and thousands of miserable, unkempt creatures with
wan and pasty faces feed, when they can muster a penny, on a choice
of “black puddings,” pork-pies, “sheep-trotters,” or the mysterious,
smoking “faggots.” In old Ratcliffe Highway, which is now St. George
Street, they make out by munching kippers carried in hand as they go
their devious ways. An occasional stale fish from Billingsgate is that
much better than nothing. Yiddish seems to be the prevailing national
tongue east of Aldgate Pump, and if you understand it there will be
no trouble over the signs and announcements. With characteristic
Hebrew thrift it is always “open season” for buyers. Each product
has its special habitat. Toys or other sweatshop articles come from
Houndsditch, shoes from Spitalfields, leather goods from Bermondsey,
beef remnants from Smithfield, left-over poultry from Leadenhall,
vegetable “seconds” from Covent Garden, birds are to be had in Club
Row, meat and clothing in Brick Lane, and a general outfitting in
Petticoat Lane which the reformers have rechristened Middlesex Street.
As for a “screw o’ baccy” or a “mug o’ bitter,” the “pub” of any corner
will answer. The University Settlement workers of Toynbee Hall are
doing what men can to better conditions, but so have others tried for
ages—yet here is the malodorous East End practically as unwashed and
unregenerate as of old. The glimpses one catches of squalor and filth
up narrow passages and of the damp and grimy “closes” that remind you
of Hogarth’s drawings are apt to content the most curious, unless he be
an insatiable investigator, indeed, and is willing to take his chances
of being “burked.” Hand on pocket you thread narrow alleys where people
are said to have been offered attractive bargains on their own watches
when they reached the other end. Here after the day’s work is over and
the “moke” and barrow safely stabled for the night, with a “Wot cher,
chummy; ’ow yer ’oppin’ up?” our industrious coster friends, ’Arry
and ’Arriet, make merry among pals at a “Free and Easy,” or lay out a
couple of “thri’-p’ny bits” for seats in a local theatre, whence they
emerge between acts for a “’arf-en’-’arf” or a “pot-o’-porter” with
instant and painfully frank opinions if “it ’yn’t fustryte.” Dinner at
“The Three Nuns,” of course, is only for state occasions. They are the
people, just the same, to get most out of Hampstead Heath on a Bank
Holiday or a picnic at Epping Forest any time. With them originated
in days gone most of the catchy street-cries for which London was long
curiously noted. But one hears no more “Bellows to Mend!” or “Three
Rows a Penny Pins!” or “Cockles and Mussels, Alive, Alive oh!” or
“Sweet Blooming Lavender, Six Bunches a Penny!” or “One a Penny, two
a Penny, Hot Cross Buns!” or the traditional tune of “Buy a Broom!”
or the barrow-woman’s “Ripe Cherries!” and “Green Rushes O!” You may,
however, have a chance at “’Taters, all ’ot!” or “Three a Penny,
Yarmouth Bloaters; ’ere’s yer Bloaters!” After all, it takes a very
limited inspection of the East End to wish them all in Hyde Park, as
the flag falls at seven-thirty, to join the hundreds of men and boys
there who are out of their clothes before the signal is barely given
and taking an evening plunge in the Serpentine.

Between the truffles of Mayfair and the “faggots” of Whitechapel lies
the region of the menu with which the average Londoner is most familiar
and which he is now exploring with profound earnestness according to
his lights and shillings. Dining, as every one knows, is an important
expression of the British conscience, a solemn rite of well-nigh
religious momentousness. The traditional fate of the uninvited guest is
his in double measure who ventures to intrude between the Briton and
his beef. One might “try it on,” perhaps, on the Surrey Side where they
incline to “dining from the joint” around six o’clock—though nothing
short of compulsion should take a sight-seer to South London after
nightfall. The shabby Southwark shore of dingy wharves and grimy sheds
is half concealed in drifting shadows raised by the uncertain light of
flickering gas jets and the net results are not worth the trouble of
walking London Bridge, unless we except the picture of quiet dignity
and mellow beauty presented by the ancient church of St. Saviour. This
rare old survivor finely expresses by night the subtle sense of a
long-continued veneration and the finger-touches of the passing years.
And to think that St. Saviour’s was doing parish duty and was a delight
to look upon long before the Globe Theatre of Shakespearean fame had
reared a neighboring head! But the gloom of the Surrey Side is thicker
and more discomforting than the fog. Long, monotonous, cheerless
streets, poorly lighted and scantily employed after dark, emerge from
drab perspectives of gloaming and fade sullenly away into others. The
scattered pedestrians one encounters reflect by solemn countenance the
prevailing depression and seem able to take but little heart of courage
as they go their melancholy ways. The whole region appears given over
to breweries, potteries, factories, and hospitals. By night Lambeth
Palace itself takes on the universal brewery aspect. You even detect
a vatish look to the Greenwich Observatory and mistrust some trace of
beer in the famous meridian. And then the tarry hotels of Greenwich
must add their quota to the general dejection by offering everything
in the world in the way of fish excepting its celebrated whitebait,
which was, of course, the one thing you had come for. The lights of St.
George’s Circus—the Leicester Square of South London—may be few in
point of fact, but they seem highly exhilarating down there; nor are
you to scorn the good cheer of the comfortable old tavern hard by that
rejoices in the extraordinary name of “The Elephant and Castle.” There
may also be a kindly feeling for the Old Kent Road where Chevalier’s
coster “knock’d ’em,” but otherwise the breweries win. There is one
on the sacred site of the old Globe Theatre, something like one where
stood the Tabard Inn whence Chaucer started his immortal Pilgrims for
Canterbury, and you will find a brazen gin palace if you search for
“The White Hart Inn,” of “Henry VI” and “Pickwick Papers.” Poor old
Southwark! Her glorious days of light have passed!

    “And ‘she’ shakes ‘her’ feeble head,
    That it seems as if ‘she’ said,
    ‘They are gone.’”

Even Southwark is not much duller at this hour than that ancient
nucleus that is still styled the “City.” Where the leading commercial
centres and money markets of the world were in frenzied activity,
two or three hours ago, a few belated pedestrians now go clattering
along echoing and deserted streets with an unhappy air of apology.
No section of London undergoes so amazing a transformation each
day; nor is any other so drear and cheerless by the suddenness of
contrast—attesting the keenness of Lowell’s observation that nothing
makes so much for loneliness as the sense of man’s departure. There is
little dining now in the region where Falstaff once reveled at “The
Boar’s Head” and the Shakespearean coterie at “The Mermaid Tavern.”
The low, windowless, stolid Bank of England gropes like a blindman
toward Wellington on his horse before the lofty Corinthian portico
of the Royal Exchange, and the massive, sombre Mansion House of the
Lord Mayor suggests some ruined temple of Paestum. “Gog” and “Magog”
slumber in the dusty recesses of the old Guildhall, and the pigeons
nest in its blackened eaves unstartled by the impassioned oratory of
government ministers at banquets. But it is the time of times to attend
the sweet chiming of Bow Bells, under the dragon in the beautiful tower
that Wren built for St. Mary’s, and one could almost wish to have
been born cockney if only to have heard them ringing from babyhood.
The winding and gloomy little streets whose names recall so much in
the lives of the Elizabethan literati entice one craftily, like so
many Bow runners, into the purlieus of the Tower, within the shadows
of whose momentous walls cabmen drowse securely on the boxes of dusty
four-wheelers. To the imaginative stranger its bright fascination by
day suffers a night-change into something gruesomely repellent, and
the “beef-eaters” do not protect the crown jewels half so effectively
as do the headless shades of Lady Jane Grey and Henry’s unhappy
queens, Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard. Doubtless there are safer
thoroughfares on earth than Lower Thames Street in the early evening,
but they would not lead to as diverting a neighborhood. The wharves
and storehouses may not be as tumultuous as by day, but the fastidious
wayfarer encounters at Billingsgate enough strength of language and
odor to satisfy. Tom Bowling is entertaining Black-eyed Susan at some
East End “hall,” but the “pubs” are roaring with “the mariners of
England that guard our native seas.” Still, cutty-pipes are glowing
at Wapping Old Stairs, and the heaving turmoil of the shipping in the
“Pool,” with swaying riding-lights dotting the vast tangle of masts and
cordage, prepares you for the shock of the amazing human wave that is
ever surging with a ceaseless roar across old London Bridge. Caught in
the strong current of that billow one washes back to Wellington and his
horse and drifts aimlessly along under the raised awnings of the tailor
shops of Cheapside, with scarce time for a grateful hand-wave to hushed
and shadowed St. Augustine’s for the “Ingoldsby Legends” its former
rector gave us, before he finds himself high and dry in Paternoster
Row and the bookish churchyard of St. Paul’s. The great cathedral is
imposing, without doubt, and no one would think of saying that Wren
did not earn the two hundred pounds per annum he received during the
thirty-five years it took him to build it;—and yet it can hardly be
expected to appear over-cheerful by night, when it is chill and gloomy
and repellent by day with the sun powerless to warm the tessellated
floor and stiff, gloomy monuments with the brightest colors of its
stained-glass windows—futile to rival even the moon in that vision of
Keats as she

    “Threw warm gules on Madeline’s fair breast,
    Rose-bloom fell on her hands, together prest,
    And on her silver cross soft amethyst,
    And on her hair a glory, like a saint.”

The moon, however, will aid us now in quickening into life the rich
memories that adhere to the surrounding churchyard and to Paternoster
Row, where so many generations of authors and publishers in dingy shops
and inns and coffee-houses have debated the launching of immortal
books. Every English-published volume must still start its race from
neighboring Stationers’ Hall.

The foolish stranger who chooses such an hour for a tramp about the
“City” will breathe more freely, after he has exorcised the last
whimpering shade of Newgate and “the poor prisoners of the ‘Fleet,’”
as he hurries along Ludgate Hill and attains unto his heart’s desire
at Fleet Street. Thence on, it is all the primrose way. No matter what
the hour or season, he can never be companionless in the “Highway of
Letters” for its very excess of material and immaterial presences.
In its brief and narrow course of a few hundred yards, the richest
in literary associations of any region on earth, the weather-beaten,
irregular fronts of its old stone houses look down affectionately, and
perhaps pityingly, on hurrying journalists and anxious authors, as
they have been doing for ages. The leisurely diner of the old school
who clings to the mellow places of inspiring associations is pretty
sure to be going along Fleet Street at this time, intent on a chop and
kidneys and a mug of stout at “The Cock,” preferred of Tennyson, or a
beefsteak-pudding and toby of ale at the sand-floored “Cheshire Cheese”
palpitant with memories of autocratic and snuffy Dr. Johnson exploding
with “Sirs,” of good-natured Goldsmith, crotchety Reynolds, impassioned
Burke, merry Garrick, and all the others of that deathless company. The
usual evening idler and aimless stroller always makes Fleet Street a
part of his pleasant itinerary, and it matters little to him that the
sidewalks are narrow and the crowd uncomfortably large, when he can
beguile each yard or two by lingering glances up dim and fascinating
little rookery courts full of mysterious corners and deep shadows whose
paving-stones have reëchoed the tread of so many sons of fame. The
lights may not be as bright nor as numerous as in the Strand, nor the
shops as attractive, but they are non-existent to the sentimentalist
who is seeing Izaak Walton in his hosier shop at the Coventry Lane
corner and Richard Lovelace in dingy quarters up Gunpowder Alley, and
is peering wistfully through the arched gateway to the Temple for a
glimpse of Lamb’s birthplace or Fielding’s home or Goldsmith’s grave or
a sight of those delightful “old benchers,” brusque “Thomas Coventry,”
methodical “Peter Pierson,” and gentle “Samuel Salt.” Doubtless he is
able even to detect the rich aroma of the chimney-sweeps’ sassafras tea
in the neighborhood of “Mr. Read’s shop, on the south side of Fleet
Street, as thou approachest Bridge Street.”

The shadows fall away with startling suddenness as Fleet Street becomes
the Strand at Temple Bar. The jolliest uproar of all London storms
impetuously along that modern Rialto all the way into Trafalgar Square.
Brilliant lights, shop displays of every description, theatres, hotels,
and restaurants create a profusion of excitement for the gay and
jostling crowd that harries you perilously near to the curb and the
heavy wheels of the ponderous busses.

And what an amazing institution the London bus is! The Strand might
still be the Strand if St. Mary’s and St. Clement Danes were effaced
from its roadway, but what if the busses went! Gladstone’s partiality
for these archaic contrivances was extreme, which naturally disposed
Disraeli to take the other side and champion the fleeting hansom—“the
gondola of London,” as he aptly styled it. And, indeed, much may be
said in commendation of the omnipresence, economy, and convenience
of the latter, and of its friendly way of flying to one’s aid at the
merest raising of the hand to whisk you away at breakneck speed and
through a thousand hairbreadth escapes to any possible destination
you may indicate. But the majority vote with Gladstone, nevertheless,
and take their ease on a bus-top. It is true that in the profusion
of advertising signs you may not always be certain whether you
are bound for Pear’s Soap or Sanderson’s Mountain Dew, but with
blissful indifference you pocket the long ticket, and, ensconced
among the glowing pipe-bowls in the dusk of a “garden-seat,” “rumble
earthquakingly aloft.” What a delight it is to hear the cockney
conductor drawl “Chairin’ Crauss,” “Tot’nh’m Court Rauwd,” “S’n
Jimes-iz Pawk,” and the rest of it! From your heaving perch beside
the ruddy-faced driver in his white high hat you observe that your
ark keeps turning to the left,—the English rule of the road,—and
that now you must look down instead of up to find the placards on the
trolley posts that mark the stopping-places of the trams. You see
belated solicitors and barristers hurrying out of the great gray courts
of justice, and above the heads of the pedestrians you may study the
gloomy arches of Somerset House or the ornate Lyceum where Sir Henry
Irving reigned or the neat little Savoy where Gilbert and Sullivan won
spurs and fortune. It is a great satisfaction to look down in comfort
on the elbowing throng you have escaped, with its jostling and its
stereotyped “I’m sorry,”—the top-hats and the caps, the actors,
bohemians, professional men, tourists, tramps, beggars, thieves, Tommy
Atkins in “pill-box” and “swagger,” blue-coated and yellow-legged boys
of Christ’s Hospital, red-coated bootblacks, barmaids in turndown
collars, well-dressed and shabbily-dressed women, as well as that
particularly flashy brand to whom you return a “_Vade retro, Satanus!_”
to her “Come to my arms, my slight acquaintance.” No wonder when
Kipling’s “Private Ortheris” went mad of the heat in India that he
babbled of the Adelphi Arches and the Strand!

In the lull before the turning of the evening tide toward the opera and
the theatre there is opportunity for each to indulge his _penchant_.
What the shops of Fleet Street and the Strand show in general, the
windows of specialists elsewhere are presenting in particular and
with increased elaboration. Regent Street will draw the fanciers of
pictures, leather goods, perfumes, and jewelry; Bond Street, rare
paintings and choice porcelains; Wardour Street, curios and antiques;
Stanway Street, silver and embroidery; Charing Cross Road, old
bookstalls; and Hatton Garden, diamonds,—the same Hatton Garden that
Queen Elizabeth gave a slice of to a favorite courtier and threatened
the Bishop of Ely in a brief but sufficient note to hurry up with the
necessary details or “I will unfrock you, by God!” This methodical
fashion of grouping certain interests in definite localities is carried
even further; as, for example, should you feel the need of a physician
it is not necessary to wade through the thirty-five hundred pages of
Kelly’s Post-Office Directory, but take a taxi to Harley Street where
any house can supply you. No matter where you ramble, surprises and
delights await you. It will be found so to those in particular who
stroll down Oxford Street—with thoughts, perhaps, of De Quincey when a
starved and homeless little boy groping a timorous and whimpering way
down this street as he clutched the hand of his new acquaintance; or
of Hazlitt’s dramatic struggle with hunger and poverty—and suddenly,
on reaching High Holborn, catch their first glimpse of the picturesque
beauty of mediæval Staple Inn. There are few lovelier spots in all
London, and the sparrows still chatter there as clamorously every
evening as they did when Dr. Johnson frowned up at them from the
manuscript of “Rasselas,” or when Dickens lived and worked there, or
when Hawthorne visited and revisited it with increasing delight.

The princely spaces in the neighborhood of Buckingham Palace are quite
as attractive at this hour as when the afternoon sun is warm along
fair Piccadilly—“radiant and immortal street,” said Henley—and
the gay coaches clatter back toward Trafalgar Square with blasts of
horn and jangling chains. The Mall, the Grand Walk for ages, fairly
exhales class and pride in the deepening dusk of the late English
twilight. The clubmen of Pall Mall and St. James’s Street, in their
fine, imposing old houses, are taking up the question of the evening’s
amusements with as much bored listlessness by the aristocrats at
Brooks’s as rakish enthusiasm by the country gentlemen of Boodle’s.
Signs of approaching activity are even to be observed in the stately
mansions of exclusive Park Lane—a street that half the business men of
London hope to be rich enough to live in some day; so effectually has
time effaced the memory of Jack Sheppard and Jonathan Wild and the rest
of the air-dancing specialists who figured here in chains in the days
when Tyburn Hill was a name to shudder over.

But the appeal of the “halls,” which began when the curtains of the
Alhambra and the Pavilion went up at seven-thirty, grows almost
imperative as the hour wears around toward eight. The rank of waiting
cabs up the middle of Haymarket is thinned to the merest trickle.
“Heavy swells” of clubdom and the West End are strolling in groups
across the wide, statue-dotted expanse of Trafalgar Square, stopping
to scratch matches on the lions of Nelson’s Column or General Gordon’s
granite base. The artists are forsaking the studios of Chelsea, the
real bohemians—not the pretenders of the Savage Club and the Vagabond
dinners—the cheap restaurants and the performing monkeys of Soho, the
students their quiet quarters in Bloomsbury and the forty miles of
book-shelves of the British Museum, the musicians their Baker Street
lodgings up Madame Tussaud’s way, the literary people their charming
Kensington, and even the gay Italians are deserting the organ-grinding
on Saffron Hill and the disorder of St. Giles—and all are rapidly
moving on Leicester Square, Piccadilly Circus, and the Strand. There
they will view the elaborate ballets according to their means; from
the “pit” for a shilling, or from a grand circle “stall” for seven
shillings sixpence, with another sixpence to the girl usher for a
programme loaded with advertisements. It is the hour when Pierce Egan
would have summoned “Tom and Jerry” to be in at the inaugural of the
night life of the great city, and Colonel Newcome would have marched
Clive out of the “Cave of Harmony” to hear less offensive entertainers
at the “halls.” It is the time Stevenson’s “New Arabian Nights” has
invested with the richest potentiality for adventure, and when, in
consequence, any polite tobacconist is likely suddenly to disclose
himself as a reigning sovereign in disguise. Sherlock Holmes and Dr.
Watson, you may be sure, are never in their Baker Street lodgings at
such a time as this. In the preliminary uproar about the bars of the
favorite cafés and in the flashing of electric signs, glare of lights,
and rush of hansoms and motors, one may discern the beginnings of “a
night of it” for many whom the early sun will surprise with bleared
eyes and battered top-hats about the coffee-booths of Covent Garden.
And, indeed, unless you have access to a club, night-foraging is a
highly difficult undertaking in London. Every restaurant closes down at
half an hour after midnight; and thereafter, unless you come across a
chance “luncheon-bar” that defies the authorities, or a friendly cabman
introduces you to a “shelter,” you may have to content yourself with a
hard-boiled egg at a coffee-stall. Many a sturdy Briton trudging along
behind his linkman could have found better accommodation two hundred
years ago when the watch went by with stave and lantern and cried out
that it was two o’clock and a fine morning.

With Big Ben in Parliament Watch Tower throwing his full thirteen tons
into an effort to advise as many Londoners as possible that it is eight
o’clock at last, and with a band concert in progress in the Villiers
Street Garden of the Embankment, as agreeable a lounging-place as one
could desire is the beautiful expanse of Waterloo Bridge. Not only
is the prospect fair and inspiring, but the great bridge itself is
worthy of it. Said Gautier, “It is surely the finest in the world”;
said Canova, “It is worthy of the Romans.” Pallid and broad and long,
and so level that its double lines of fine lights scarcely rise to the
slightest of arcs, it rests with rare grace on its nine sweeping arches
and spans the Thames just where the great bend is made to the east. One
looks along it northward and sees the lamps of Wellington Street fade
into the blurring dazzle of the Strand and Longacre, and southward to
find the converging lights of Waterloo Road sending a bright arrow
straight to the heart of Southwark. The greensward of the flowered
and statued Embankment sweeps across and back on either side of its
northern end, and palace hotels, Somerset House and the huge glass roof
of Charing Cross Station bulk large at hand. Eastward the Ionic columns
of Blackfriars Bridge and the strutting iron arches of Southwark Bridge
stalk boldly across the serene river, and southwestward the broad arch
of Westminster Bridge offers Parliament cheer to glum Lambeth. It would
be the most natural mistake in the world to suppose the trim buildings
of St. Thomas Hospital, on the Surrey bank, a favored row of handsome
detached summer villas, with owners of strong political influence to be
able to build on the fine long curve of the Albert Embankment, having
no less a vis-à-vis than the terraces and glorious Gothic pile of
Parliament buildings on their thousand feet of “noblest water front in
the world.”

Only the mind’s eye may look farther on to Chelsea and take note of the
tall plane-trees of Cheyne Walk, and re-people the red brick terraces
and homely old houses with Sir Thomas More entertaining Erasmus
and Holbein, with Addison and Steele in revelry at Don Saltero’s
coffee-house, with Byron at home in the amazing disorder of Leigh
Hunt’s cottage, with Tennyson smoking long pipes with Carlyle, with
Turner and Whistler bending over their palettes, and with Rossetti,
Swinburne, and Meredith courting the Muses under a common roof and in a
common brotherhood.

[Illustration: LONDON, ST. PAUL’S FROM UNDER WATERLOO BRIDGE]

To the observer on Waterloo Bridge the deep roar of the city comes
out dulled and subdued. Bells chime softly and the whistles of the
river-craft sound, from time to time, with sudden and startling
shrillness. Long shafts of light shake out from either bank and spots
of color from signal lamps dot the nearer rim. All outside is a
bright dazzle, with patches of deep shadow and heavy ripples from the
brown-sailed lighters and pert steamers that move across the shining
reaches. The gloomy Southwark shore is blurred and uncertain in light
mists, and the roof masses of the frowning city lift the ghostly
fingers of Wren’s slender spires and cower beneath the indistinct and
cloudlike silhouette of the dome of St. Paul’s. The prospect is that
of a vast, confused expanse of indistinguishable, shadowy blending of
buildings and foliage whose remoter verges merge into a soft violet
blur, and over all of it rages a wild snowstorm of tiny pin-point
lights. Under the arches of the bridge old Father Thames moves serenely
seaward, the most ancient and yet ever the youngest member of the
community. From his continual renewal of life one could believe that
in some long-forgotten time he had won this reward when he, too, had
achieved the Holy Grail among the stout knights up Camelot way “in
the dayes of Vther pendragon when he was kynge of all Englond and so
regned.” With true British reserve he whispers to a stranger no word
of such secrets as once he confided at this bridge to Dickens, of the
savagery and cruelty of this London that has driven so many of its
desperate children to peace within his sheltering arms,—

    “Mad with life’s history,
    Glad to death’s mystery
    Swift to be hurled—
    Anywhere, anywhere,
    Out of the world.”

Looking from one of these bridges on the proud, powerful,
self-sufficient city, Wordsworth was once moved to exclaim that “earth
has not anything to show more fair.” Certainly it has few things
to show more stirring and impressive, few to move the heart more
profoundly, few that in achievement, resourcefulness, and power embody
more completely to men of to-day

  “The grandeur that was Rome.”




[Illustration]




NAPLES

8 P.M. TO 9 P.M.


Drifting lazily of a summer evening over the Bay of Naples in a brown
old fishing felucca with a friendly ancient boatman for companion,
careless of time or direction; the night winds soft; the moon clear;
indolent boating-parties in joyous relaxation all about; languorous,
plaintive songs of Italy near by and far away; Vesuvius glorious and
mysterious in the purple offing, and the gray old city, touched with
silver, beaming down from all her crescent hillsides,—here, indeed,
is the stuff of which day dreams are compounded! Chimes in shadowy
belfries take soft, musical notice of the hour; and my thoughts recede
with those fading echoes and retrace the bright and pleasant stages
that have led me this evening into an environment of such charm and
romance.

Thus, then, it was. Two hours ago, as I loitered along the crowded
Via Caracciolo on the Bay front and watched Neapolitan Fashion
take the air, I again encountered my Old Man of the Sea at his
landing-place,—swarthy, wrinkled Luigi of the hoop earrings and
faded blue trousers rolled to the knees. Little was he bothering
his grizzled head over the frivolity that fluttered above him; and
yet it was, in fact, a charming show. Old Luigi makes a mistake, in
my opinion, in ignoring the elegant _passeggiata_; for afternoon
promenading on the Caracciolo is something that most of Naples will do
more than lift its head to see. Besides, what an attractive setting it
has! The boasted park, the Villa Nazionale, arrays the western front
in a pleasant old woods of broad and shady trees, along the water
side of which stretches the handsome boulevard of the Caracciolo. The
distinguishing mark is thus supplied to divide society between the
carriage set who hector it here and along the Villa’s winding drives,
and those lesser lights who venture to raise their heads secure from
snubs in the promenading spaces under the trees and before the cafés
and bandstand. With the latter, as the elders salute friends, renew
acquaintances, and exchange civilities with jubilant exclamations,
delighted shrugs, and storms of exultant gestures, the younger men,
in flannel suits and foppish canes, flirt desperately by twirling
their waxed little mustaches, and the snappy-eyed signorinas respond
in kind by a subtle and discrete use of the fan. The contemplative
promenader will stroll along the cool, statue-lined _allées_, issuing
forth from time to time to enjoy the brisk music of the band. The
hardened idler will take a mean delight in penetrating the retired
and romantic retreats in the neighborhood of the Pæstum Fountain and
thus arousing whole coveys of indignant lovers who have regarded this
region as peculiarly their own from time immemorial; in the event of
threatened reprisals the disturber can seek sanctuary in the renowned
Aquarium, just at hand, and there spend his time to better advantage in
contemplating octopi and sensitive plants, and all sorts of astonishing
fishes. But the real show, of course, is _en voiture_. With a clatter
and dash along they come: The _jeunesse dorée_, with straw hats cocked
rakishly, shouting loudly to their horses and sawing desperately on
the reins; young beauties in the latest word of milliner and modiste
loll back in handsome victorias, reveling in the sensation they are
creating, and with great black eyes flashing in curious contrast to the
studied placidity of their quiet faces; consequential senators down
from Rome; fat merchants trying to appear at ease; and all the usual
remnants of the fashionable rout. On the wide sidewalks the promenaders
proceed leisurely and with more good-humored democracy: prim little
girls with governesses; romping schoolboys in caps of all colors;
back-robed students; long-haired _artisti_; and priests by the score
strolling sedately and gesturing earnestly with dark, nervous hands.

To all this brave parade Luigi turns a blind eye and a deaf ear;
but he always manages to see me, I have noticed. This afternoon his
programme was the attractive one of a sail down to the Cape of Posilipo
for a fish-dinner at a rustic little _ristoranti_, with the table to
be spread under a chestnut-tree on a weathered stone terrace at the
water’s edge where the spray from an occasional wave-top could spatter
the cloth and I might fleck the ashes of my cigar straight down into
the Bay. This old fellow can interest any one, I believe, when he
wrinkles up into his insinuating and enthusiastic grin and plays that
trump card, “And after dinner, if the signore wish, we can drift about
the Bay or sail over toward Capri and Sorrento.” Naturally, this is my
cue to enter. Into the boat I go; off come hat, coat, collar, and tie,
and up go sleeves to the shoulder. I am allowed the tiller, and the
genial old fisherman stretches at his ease beside the slanting mast
and lights a long, black, quill-stemmed cheroot. Now for comfort and
romance and all the delights of Buchanan Read’s inspired vision:

          “I heed not if
          My rippling skiff
    Float swift or slow from cliff to cliff;—
          With dreamful eyes
          My spirit lies
    Under the walls of Paradise.”

[Illustration: THE BAY OF NAPLES]

From all garish distractions our little boat bore us in rippling
leisure along the picturesque Mergellina front and under the long,
villa-dotted heights of the Posilipo hillside, whose shadows crept
slowly out on the waters as Apollo drove his flaming chariot beyond the
ridge to seek the dread Sibyl of Cumæ. Nature has always been partial
to her gay, irresponsible Naples, and this afternoon she seemed
resolved to outdo herself in clothing it with charm and beauty. Under
the setting sun the entire sky over Posilipo became a gorgeous riot of
crimson and gold, and the opposite Vesuvian shore basked with indolent
Oriental listlessness in a brilliant deluge that penetrated the deepest
recesses of its vineyards and fruited terraces. Through this magic
realm of richest color we floated lightly, silently responsive to the
varying phases of the calm and glorious sunset hour. In deepest content

          “my hand I trail
    Within the shadow of the sail.”

The region to which we lifted our eyes is one of veritable
poet-worship. How incredible to think that on this hillside Lucullus
has lived and Horace strolled and Virgil mused over his deathless
verse! Look again, and under a clump of gnarled old trees one sees the
latter’s venerated tomb. Over these waters came the pious Æneas with
his Trojan galleys to question the Cumæan Sibyl; and since the age of
fable what fleets of Carthage have passed around Cape Miseno, what
barks of savage pirates, what brazen triremes of Rome, what armadas of
Spain and navies of all the world! It staggers the mind to attempt to
recall the scenes of war and pillage that have been enacted under the
frowning brows of these storied hills during the last three thousand
years.

The wonderful sail was all too brief, and almost before I was aware
the goal was at hand, and I stepped ashore at the _ristoranti_
approved of Luigi and entered upon the promised joys. It was all as
he had predicted; with possibly the exception of a few details he
had discreetly neglected to warn me against. That it required four
determined efforts and a threat of police to get the proper change when
I came to settle the bill is really no jarring memory at all. It is the
usual experience with the “forgetful” Neapolitan restaurant keeper. And
what are foreigners for, anyway? And was it not worth something extra
to have dined face to face with this glittering Bay, with the panorama
of Naples on one hand and a sunset over Cape Miseno on the other? So
with many bows and mutual civilities I parted with the zealous boniface
and rejoined the waiting felucca. A light shove, and the shadows of
the terrace fell behind us and we were out again on the Bay. Such are
the alluring stages, among others, that may bring one eventually to an
evening’s moonlight sail at Naples.

Just now the bells rang eight. Luigi grows sentimental. Again he
declines my cigars, stretches at his ease and produces another quilled
specimen of government monopoly such as, when at home, he lights at the
end of a smouldering rope dangling in a tobacco shop of the Mercato.
In the gathering gloom one sees little now of the trellised paths of
Posilipo, the white marble villas with their balconies and terraces, or
the brilliant clustering roses gay against the glossy green of groves
of lemons and oranges. In the darkness of the firs each cavern and
grotto of this legend-haunted headland disappears and one can barely
make out the wave-washed Rock of Virgil, at the farthest extremity,
where, the Neapolitans will tell you, the poet was wont to practice his
enchantments. The ruddy sky pales over the mouth of Avernus and the
Elysian Fields, and Apollo abandons us to Diana and the broad flecking
of the lights of Parthenope. We swing a wide circle in the offing.
Between us and the distant rim of water-front lamps hundreds of light
craft are idly floating. Romantic, pleasure-loving Naples has dined
and taken to the water, to cheer its heart with laughter and song.
Like glowworms the lights of the little boats lift and sway with the
movement of the waves; while seaward, the drifting torches of fishermen
flare in search of _frutti di mare_.

Like an aged beauty Naples is at her best by night, when the ravages of
time are concealed. Lights glitter brightly along the shore line from
Posilipo to Sorrento and all over the hillsides, and even beyond Sant’
Elmo and the low white priory of San Martino the palace-crowned heights
of Capodimonte, where the paper-chases of early spring afford so much
diversion to the young gallants of the court. Popular restaurants up
the hillsides are marked by groups of colored lights. A thick spangle
of lamps proclaims the progress of some neighborhood _festa_. The moon
is full; the sky brilliant with enormous stars. In the distance the
curling smoke of Vesuvius glows with a sultry red or fades fitfully
into gloomy tones, as suits that imperious will which threescore of
eruptions have rendered absolute. But, as all the world knows, this
aged beauty of a city that “lights up” so well by night is far from
“plain” by day. Then appears the charm and distinction of the original
way she has of parting her hair, as it were, with the great dividing
rocky ridge that runs downward from Capodimonte to Sant’ Elmo and then
on to Pizzofalcone, “Rock of the Falcon.” She even secures a coquettish
touch in the projecting point, like an antique necklace pendant, at the
centre of her double-crescented shore, where juts a low reef and at its
end rests the ancient, blackened Castello dell’Ovo,—on a magically
supported egg, they say,—the accredited theatre of so many extravagant
adventures. And by day she looks down in indolent content through the
half-closed eyes of ten thousand windows and surveys a glorious sea of
milky blue, brimming tawny curving beaches crowned with white villas
in luxuriant groves and vineyards, expanding in turquoise about soft
headlands and dim precipices, and bearing, on its smooth, restful bosom
in the far, faint offing, magical islands of pink and pearl that seem
no more than tinted clouds.

A shoal of skiffs hangs under the black hull of a belated liner, whose
rails are crowded with new arrivals delighted at so picturesque and
enthusiastic a reception, and whose silver falls merrily into the
inverted umbrellas of the boys and girls who are singing and dancing
in the little boats by the light of flaming torches. Very shortly these
visitors will learn that the interest they excite in Neapolitans is
to be measured very strictly in terms of ready cash. Secretly, they
will be despised. There is no smile-hid rapacity comparable with that
encountered here. The incoming steamer has not yet warped into her
berth before the Neapolitan has begun his campaign for money. Beggars
crawl out on the pier flaunting their hideous deformities and wailing
for _soldi_, and insulting cabmen lie in ambush at the gates. At no
other port does a foreigner disembark with so much embarrassment. He
goes ashore feeling like a lamb marked for the shearing, and lives
to fulfill the expectation with humiliating dispatch. It has to be
admitted, on the other hand, that the customs-officers occasionally
catch strange flashes of transmarine interests that must puzzle them
not a little. As an instance, the first person to land from the steamer
I was on was a young American athlete in desperate quest of the latest
daily paper, and bent, as we presumed, upon securing instant word of
some matter of great and immediate importance. He succeeded; but what
was our astonishment to behold him a minute later leap and shout for
joy and announce to every one about him that Princeton had again won
the Yale baseball series and remained the college champions!

Naples, to-night, is vibrant with song; faithful to her ancient
myth of the nymph Parthenope, whose sweet singing long lured men to
destruction until Ulysses withstood it and the chagrined goddess cast
herself into the sea and perished and her body floated to these shores.
Parthenope’s children here do not destroy people by their singing now,
but rather delight and revitalize them. Mandolins and guitars are
throbbing softly on every hand and the old familiar songs of Naples
fill the air. “Traviata,” “Trovatore,” and the “Cavalleria” reign
prime favorites. To be sure, there is no escaping the linked sweetness
of the wailing “Sa-an-ta-a Lu-u-ci-a,” nor that notion of perpetual
and hilarious youth conveyed in the ubiquitous “Funiculì-Funiculà.”
In martial staccato, as of old, Margarita, the love-lorn seamstress,
is jestingly warned against Salvatore,—“_Mar-ga-rì, ’e perzo a
Salvatore!_”—and the skittish “Frangese” recites for the millionth
time the discouraging experience of the giddy young peddler who
undertook to barter his “pretty pins from Paris” in exchange for kisses
that would only bring “a farthing for five” in Paradise. More than one
singer is deploring the heartless coquetry of “La Bella Sorrentina,”
while as many more appeal amorously to the charming Maria with promises
of “beds of roseleaves,”—

          “Ah! Maria Marì!
    Quanta suonna che perdo pe te!”

We take an æsthetic interest in the Pagliaccian ravings of Canio, and
grieve for the “little frozen hands” of “La Bohème”; while, by way of
contrast, all the peace and serenity of moonlight comes to us in the
chaste, stately measures of the pensive “Luna Nova.” Serenades seem
twice serenades when breathed in the soft, lissome dialect of Naples.
There is no tiring of the impassioned refrain of “Sole Mio”:—

    “Ma n’ atu sole
      Cchiu bello, ohinè,
    ’O sole mio
      Sta nfronte a te!”

And what sufficient word can be said of the lovely “A Serenata d’ ’e
Rrose”? It is impossible not to rejoice with these soulful tenors in
that

    “The glinting moonbeams look like silver pieces
    Flung down among the roses by the breezes,”—

or to respond to the plaintive intensity of the appealing cry:—

    “Oj rrose meje! Si dorme chesta fata
    Scetatela cu chesta serenata!”

Like old Ulysses, the swift little felucca soon stops its ears to these
fascinating distractions, and bears Luigi and me off into the purple
darkness. The prison-capped rock of Nisida drops astern with all its
august memories of Brutus and his devoted Portia, and its repugnant
ones of Queen Joanna, the very bad, and King Robert, the very good.
In the moonlit path the distant cliffs of Procida, isle of romance
and beauty, loom afar, but we distinguish no faintest echo of the
bewildering _tarantella_ music that is danced there in its perfection.
What a different spectacle its observers are enjoying from the stale
perfunctory performances of the Sorrento hotels, which the tourists
see at two dollars a head. For the _tarantella_, well done, is the
intensest and most expressive of dances. All the emotions of the lover
and his coquettish sweetheart are aptly portrayed—the advances,
rebuffs, encouragements, slights, and final triumph. The Procida dance
is a revelation when rendered out of sheer delight—_con amore_, as the
Italians say.

An occasional faint light marks dissolute Rome’s favorite place of
revelry, Baiæ the magnificent. In its heyday every house, as we read,
was a palace; and it has been said that every woman who entered it a
Penelope came out a Helen. Through their faded green blinds no light
may be seen in the yellow stone houses of neighboring Puteoli where
Paul, Timothy, and Luke took refuge in the early days of the Faith.
Stolid pagan Rome had little time for them, considering that Cumæ was
just around the headland, with Dædalus landing from his flight from
Crete and the frantic Sibyl, at the very Jaws of Avernus, screaming her
“Dies iræ! Dies illa!”

Distant Ischia appears a huge ghostly blot, mysterious and solemn.
Scarce an outline can be caught of its fabled, crag-hung castle,
chambered as the very nautilus and eloquent of the unhappy Vittoria
Colonna. How often has Michael Angelo climbed with sighs that old stone
causeway where now the fishermen mend their blackened nets! Ischia
never wants for devotees, however, and already a quarter-century has
sufficed to dull the horror of that July night when Casamicciola paid
its quota of three thousand lives to the dread greed of the earthquake.
To-day one lingers, undisturbed by such memories, amidst the pretty
whitewashed cottages set in olive groves and vineyards, loiters among
the picturesque straw plaiters of Lacco, or dreams to the drowsy tinkle
of goat bells in the myrtle and chestnut groves on the slopes of Mont’
Epomeo.

Shadowy Capri, isle of enchantment, lies soft and dim off the Sorrento
headland as we swing our little vessel toward the city. It seems only
a delightful dream that a few mornings ago my _déjeuner_ was served
on a cool terrace of the Quisisana there, and that I looked down over
the coffee-urn on olive groves and sloping hillsides green with famous
vineyards. With joy I relive the row around its precipitous shores, the
eerie swim in the elfland of the Blue Grotto, the drive down the white,
dusty road from the lofty perch of Anacapri to the pebbly beaches of
Marina Grande, before a fascinating, unfolding panorama of verdant
lawns, fruited terraces, snowy villas, and bold cliffs crowned with
fantastic ruins. Sinister Tiberius and his unspeakable companions have
small place in our permanent memories of Capri; one is more apt to
recall the charming blue and white Virgin in the cool grotto beside the
old Stone Stairs.

A faint rim of lights on the mainland marks Sorrento, and a patch
nearer the city, Castellammare; and were we nearer, the great white
hotels would doubtless be found brilliant and musical. Could we but
see it now, we should find the moonlit statue of Tasso in the little
square vastly more tolerable than by day, and this would be a pleasant
hour to spend on the old green bench before it absorbed in stirring
thoughts of the “Gerusalemme Liberata” in the place where its author
was born. Monte Sant’ Angelo looms above Castallammare spectre-like
in night shadows, and the royal ilex groves must be taken on faith.
The crested hoopoes, crowned of King Solomon, have long been asleep on
the mountain-sides, but Italian Fashion, devoted to its Castellammare,
having idled and rested all day in the _bagni_, now flirts and dances
at the verandaed _stabilimenti_. An occasional faint breath of
fragrance recalls the floral luxuriance that is so notable here—the
gorgeous scarlet geraniums, snowy daturas, cactus, and aloe, festoons
of smilax, and the carmine oleanders that they call “St. Joseph’s
Nosegay.”

Far away to the southeastward, vague and ghostly headlands are dimming
toward regions of rarest beauty—Amalfi, Majori, Cetara, Salerno.
In our happy thoughts the smooth, white Corniche road lies like a
delicate thread along the green mountain-sides,—those Mountains of the
Blest, whose rounded brows home the nightingale, whose shoulders are
terraces of fruits of the tropics and whose storied feet rest eternally
on white beaches that glisten in the blue waters of a matchless bay.
A memory this, compounded of pebbly, curving shores sweeping around
soft, distant headlands; lustrous groves of pomegranates and oranges;
picturesque fishing hamlets of little stone houses nestled away in
deep, shady inlets; the patter and shuffle of barefooted women trotting
steadily through the dust under great hampers of lemons; sunburned
workmen singing homeward through the dusk; the shouts and laughter
of bare-headed fishermen drawing their red-bottomed boats up on the
shore; and the low, contented singing of your Neapolitan coachman
who, as twilight falls, looks long and dreamily out to sea and no
longer cracks his whip over the weary little Barbary ponies that are
drawing you up the dusty heights toward the cool rose-pergola of the
Cappuccini. Visitors, reluctantly departing, will never forget this
land “where summer sings and never dies,” and must ever after feel with
Longfellow:—

    “Sweet the memory is to me
    Of a land beyond the sea,
    Where the waves and mountains meet,
    Where, amid her mulberry-trees,
    Sits Amalfi in the heat,
    Bathing ever her white feet
    In the tideless summer seas.”

We distinguish Torre Annunciata, abreast of our speeding boat, by
the evil redolence of its swarming fish markets and the boisterous
shouting of its many children at _mora_; and, in striking contrast, one
thinks of grim Pompeii, farther inland,—“la città morta,”—hushed and
prostrate in moonlit desolation. At the neighboring Torre del Greco we
can fancy the coral fishers, who may not yet have left for the season’s
diving off Sicily, to be smoking black cheroots along the wharves and
planning lively times when they market their coral and Barbary ponies
in November. Certainly there is little to suggest the peace that
Shelley found here. Few shores are more dramatic than those of this
Vesuvian Campagna Felice. Resina hangs gloomily over the entrance to
the entombed Herculaneum, and Portici lights up but half-heartedly,
abashed that all her royal Bourbon palaces should now be housing only
schoolboys. About both villages and for miles inland any one may see
the wrath of Vesuvius in dismal evidence in twisted lava rock of
weird and sinister shapes. But there is a fullness of life on these
shores to-night, increasing as our boat advances; individual houses
multiply into villages, and villages overlap into a solid mass that
is Naples’s East End. We pick our way among the clustering boats, and
around long piers with little lighthouses at their ends, and presently
Luigi abandons his cheroot, stands up by the mast and shouts shrill and
mysterious hails, and shortly up we come to our landing at a flight of
dripping stone steps at the tatterdemalion Villa del Popolo, sea-gate
to the noisiest, dirtiest, most crowded (and so most characteristic)
section of all Naples. A passing of silver from me, from Luigi a
twisted smile and a regretful “buon riposo,”—the last, I fear, that I
shall ever hear from him,—and I take leave of my amiable companion for
the sputtering lights and exciting diversions of the swarming Carmine
Gate and Mercato. From the tide-washed Castello dell’ Ovo to the prison
heights of Sant’ Elmo and the charming cloisters of San Martino, and
from the huts of the Mergellina fishermen to far beyond where I am
standing on the eastern front of the city, all Naples is sparkling with
lights and humming with an intense and multi-phased tumult.

Lucifer falling from Paradise must have experienced some such
contrast as those who exchange the serene evening beauty of the Bay
of Naples for the odors, uproar, and confusion of the Mercato. But
does not the saying run, “See Naples and die”? And to miss visiting so
characteristic a district by night is almost to fail to see “Naples”
at all; though it may, perhaps, appear at first glance to assure the
“and die.” The quay of Santa Lucia is the only other section that even
attempts to rival this in preserving unimpaired the “best” traditions
of Neapolitan uproar and picturesque squalor. And it must be remembered
that one’s interest in this city is like that felt for a pretty,
bright, and amiable child who is, at the same time, a very ragged
and dirty one. Life, as it is found in the Mercato, is exuberance
_in extenso_; the most complete conception possible of a “much ado
about nothing.” It is an irrelevant tumult in which matter-of-fact
inconsequences are expressed with an incredibly disproportionate use
of shoulders, fingers, and lungs. An inquiry as to the time of day
is attended with a violence of gesticulation adequate to convey the
emotions of Othello slaying Desdemona; an observation on the weather
involves a pounding of the table and a wild flourish of arms like the
expiring agony of an octopus. Even work itself seems half play in its
accompaniment of romantic posturing, eloquent and profuse gestures, and
continual over-bubbling of merriment, quarrels, and song. All this is
of the very essence of the Mercato—hopelessly tattered and unkempt,
artlessly unconscious of its picturesque rags, and altogether so
frankly frowzy and disheveled as to become, upon the whole, positively
charming. No one equals the Neapolitan in expressing the full force of
the Scotch proverb, “Little gear the less care.”

In appearance the Mercato is a rabbit-warren of tortuous chasms lined
with dowdy structures in every advanced stage of decrepitude. Even its
lumbering churches of Spanish baroque rather add to than detract from
this effect. No money is squandered on upkeep. The cost of initial
construction is here like an author’s definitive edition,—final.
Little, cramped balconies, innocent of paint, blink under the
flapping of reed-made shades, shop signs are illegible from dirt and
discoloration, and the weathered house-fronts shed scales of plaster
as snakes do skins. The very skies are overcast with clouds of other
people’s laundry. Dead walls flame with lurid theatre posters, unless
warned off by the “post-no-bills” sign—the familiar “è vietata l’
affissione.” Cheap theatres are completely covered with life-size
paintings illustrating scenes from the play for the week. Lottery signs
abound. Certain window placards, by their very insistence, eventually
become familiar and homelike; as, for instance, the “first floor to
let,” the omnipresent “si loca, appartamento grande, 1^o primo,” for
which one comes in time to look as for a face from home. Religion
contributes a garish and tawdry decorative feature in the little gaudy
shrines on street corners and house-fronts, where, in a sort of shadow
box covered with glass, candles sputter before painted saints. The
government monopolies, salt and tobacco, the Siamese Twins of Italy,
are inseparable with their ever-lasting “Sale e Tabacchi” signs and
dwell together everywhere on a common and friendly footing, like the
owls, snakes, and prairie dogs in Kansas.

Curiosity fairly plunges a man into so promising a field, and Adventure
stalks at his elbow. He finds the narrow, squalid streets brimming
with a restless, noisy, nervous swarm. Picturesque qualities are
brought out in the play of feeble street lamps and the dejected,
half-hearted lights of dingy, cavernous shops and eating-places. A
_comme il faut_ costume for men appears to be limited to trousers
and shirt, with the latter worn open to the belt. The women affect
toilettes of a general dirty disarray which their laudable interest
in the life around frequently leads them absent-mindedly to arrange
in the quasi-retirement of the doorways, the front sill itself being
reserved for the popular diversion of combing the hair of their spawn
of half-naked children. To traverse an alley and avoid stepping on some
rollicking youngster _in puris naturalibus_ is vigorous exercise of
the value of a calisthenic drill. Still, it is possible to escape the
babies, but scarcely the fakirs and beggars. The fakir has odds and
ends of everything to sell and teases for patronage for love of all
the saints; one even awaits the Oriental announcement, “In the name of
the Prophet, figs!” The beggars, of course, are worse; crawling across
your path and dragging themselves after you to display their physical
damages, often self-inflicted, in quest of a _soldo_ of sympathy.
Express compassion in other than monetary terms and you get it back
instanter, along with a dazing assortment of vitriolic maledictions. As
the visitor’s patience gives way under the strain, it presently becomes
a very pretty question as to whose language is the most horrific, his
own or the beggar’s.

Women dodge through the streets carrying great bundles on their
heads, and pause from time to time for friendly greetings with frowzy
acquaintances tilting out of the upper windows where the laundry
hangs. It is from these mysterious upper windows that the housewife
in the morning lowers a pail and a bit of money wrapped in a piece of
newspaper, and bargains with the leather-lunged _padulano_ when he
comes loafing along beside his panniered donkey, crying his wares in
that “carrying voice” we all admire in our opera singers. Those are
the hours of trying domestic exaction, when the woman who does not
care for water in the milk watches the production of the raw material
with the cow standing at the doorway, or from the frolicsome goat
that nimbly ascends every flight of stairs to the very portal of the
combined kitchen and sleeping-room. But just now neighbors are shouting
conversations in those same upper windows, or calling down to the women
and girls who go shuffling along on the lava pavement below in wooden
sabots that look like bath-slippers—if, indeed, one has imagination
enough to think of bath-slippers in this vicinity.

Restless activity prevails. The most unnatural things are the statues,
chiefly because they do not move. One catches glimpses of them now
and then in the niches of the motley-marbled churches,—churches of
memories grave and gay, of Boccaccio’s first glimpse of Fiammetta, or
the slaying of the young fisherman-tribune, Masaniello, whom Salvator
Rosa delighted to paint. There is buying and selling, eating and
drinking. There are fruit stands and lemonade stalls and macaroni
stores and dejected little shops with festoons of vegetables pendent
from the smoky ceilings over whose home-painted counters weary women
await custom with babies in their arms. A brisk demand prevails for the
famous cheese-flavored biscuit called “pizza,” set with little powdered
fish, and those who desire can have a slice of devilfish-tentacle
for a _soldo_, which the purchaser dips in the kettle of hot water
and devours on the spot. Should this latter fare disagree with any
one, there will be access on the morrow to the miracle-working “La
Bruna”—the picture of the Virgin in the church of St. Mary of the
Carmine—which every child in Naples knows was painted by St. Luke;
and if that should fail, there is still the liquefying blood of St.
Januarius in the inner shrine of the cathedral.

Happily, the senses are more than four; and when seeing, smelling,
tasting, and feeling fail from over-exertion in the Mercato, still
hearing remains, so that one may study the Sicilian-like prattle of the
Neapolitan in all its ramifications from a whisper to a shriek. The
character of the man is expressed along with it; and thus one observes
that while a Piedmontese may be steady and industrious, a Venetian
gossipy and artistic, a Tuscan reserved and frugal, and a Roman proud
and lordly, the Neapolitan is merry, loquacious, generous, quarrelsome,
superstitious, and, too frequently, vicious. Thus the Mafia flourishes
with him, and the Camorra, an unbegrudged possession, is wholly his
own. His _vendetta_ may, perhaps, be mildly defended on the ground that
it is, at least, only a personal affair, and certainly less foolish
and reprehensible than the perennial jealousy of an entire people, as,
for example, the ancient feud between Florence and Siena, where an
inherited antagonism is still devoutly cherished and the old battle of
Montaperti refought with fury every morning. The Neapolitan had rather
spend that time on the lottery, dream his lucky numbers, look them up
in his dream-book, and go to the Saturday afternoon drawings with a
fresh and stimulating interest in life.

It is a nice question whether the Mercato loves singing best, or
eating—when it can get it. At night one inclines to the latter view.
There is a prodigious hubbub around all the open-air cooking-stoves and
in every smoky _trattoria_ and family eating-place. One would scarcely
hazard an opinion as to the number of bowls of macaroni, quantities
of _polenta_, and whole nations of snails and frogs that are being
devoured between appreciative gestures and puffs of cigarettes, and
washed down unctiously with _minestra_ soup and watery wines. But as
all these good people have probably breakfasted solely on dry bread and
black coffee, no one would think of begrudging them the delight they
are taking in dining so gayly and at so modest an outlay. If stricter
economy becomes necessary later, they will patronize the charity
“kitchens,” where soup, vegetables, meat, and wine are supplied at
cost, or perhaps some friend will give them a voucher and they will be
able to get it all for nothing.

So far as economy is concerned, they know all there is to be learned
on the subject. Several families of them will live in a single room;
and when that room is the damp, foul cellar they call _fondaco_, it
is something one does not care to think of a second time. When they
indulge in street-car riding they never neglect to take the middle
seats, because they are the cheapest. They know all about the market
for restaurant scraps and cigar stumps, where quotations are governed
by length.

Their extraordinary generosity to one another in times of distress is
almost proverbial. Misery both fascinates and touches them, perhaps
because it is never very far from their own doors. One morning I
shouldered my way into the middle of a strangely silent crowd and found
there a weeping crockery vender whose entire stock in trade had been
demolished by some mishap. It meant his temporary ruin, as could be
seen from the faces of the painfully silent and sympathetic audience.
The peddler seemed utterly stunned by his misfortune and lay on the
ground with his face in his arms. How touching it was to see the little
cup that some one had significantly set beside him, and to know that
every copper-piece that fell into it came from Poverty’s Very Self,
and bore the message, “It’s hard, poor fellow; we know how hard; but
here’s a little something—try again.”

But, as Thomas Hardy’s peasants say, it is time to go “home-along.”
Emerging from the noisy congestion of the Mercato the quiet and cool
of the water front is rather more than refreshing. The shipping
along the Strada Nuova stands out stately and picturesque, silvered
toward the moon and black in the dense shadows. Harbor lights sparkle
brightly under the solemn eye of the _molo_ lighthouse. The military
pier points a long, black finger warningly toward Vesuvius. Along the
Strada del Piliero one has pleasant choice of viewing on the left the
animated steamer piers and the secure anchorage where the great ships
for Marseilles and the Orient tug mildly at their hawsers, or seeing
on the right the ceaseless activity of swarming little streets, some
glowing in arbors of colored lights in celebration of a neighborhood
_festa_ and others observing a milder form of the same noisy programme
we have just forsaken. On the broad Piazza del Municipio the massive
and heavy-towered Castello Nuovo rears a sombre and storied front; and
farther along we pass the vast gray bulk of the famous Teatro San Carlo
and the lofty crossed-arcade of the Galleria Umberto I, and skirting
the corner of the Royal Palace enter the broad and brilliant Piazza del
Publiscito.

Contrasts again! What a different crowd from that of the poor Mercato.
Here is a groomed and well-conducted multitude that has come out
to enjoy its coffee and cigarettes as it listens to the band in the
pavilion on the western side or the open-air melodrama in that on the
east. And what a change in surroundings! Palaces and splendid churches
and public buildings, now. Solemn effigies of departed kings stare
stonily down from niches in the moonlit façades. A fringe of dark-eyed
boys lounges in indolent content around the coping of a fountain.
Hundreds of chairs and tables throng the open space, and we gladly rest
on one of them and experiment with Nocera and lemon juice, preparatory
to a good-night stroll up the Toledo. Enthusiasm prevails here, too.
Familiar melodies from the old operas are welcomed with storms of
applause and shouts of “Bravo” or “Bis”; whereupon the conductor bows
profound gratification and selects the music for the next number with a
face glowing with pride. Politeness abounds. The air is gracious with
“grazie,” and like expressions of courtesy. Ask a light for your cigar,
and the Neapolitan raises his hat and thanks you, supplies the match,
raises his hat and thanks you again, though all the while he has been
doing the service. Indeed, he seems capable of expressing more civility
by a touch of the hat than we can by completely doffing ours. One looks
about and concludes that the women are not particularly pretty and that
good dressing is a lost art with them. The men, as a rule, impress one
more favorably; though they are perversely inclined to spoil their good
looks by waxing their mustaches to a needle-point and trimming their
long beards square, like bas-reliefs of Assyrian kings.

It is nearly nine o’clock. I settle for my drink, leave the usual
centesimi with the bowing waiter, and plunge into the Broadway of
Naples, the renowned Toledo. Its map-name is Via Roma, but the “Toledo”
it has been for ages and as such it will remain to many Neapolitans
to the end of time. It is a busy and peculiar street. Rows of raised
awnings in two long, converging lines dress the feet of tall, dark
buildings that are studded with shallow iron balconies filled with
pots of flowers. It is comparatively narrow and with sadly straitened
sidewalks, but no street in Naples is so long or so continually used;
if it is followed, through all its changes of names, it will carry one
past the Museo and away up to the very doors of the summer palace at
Capodimonte, running due north all the way. Shops of all descriptions
line it, and it is thronged to the overflow of the sidewalks and the
hysterical abuse of distracted cabmen in the middle of the street. One
thinks of Paris when he sees the newspaper kiosks and the many bright
little stands decked out with fruit and gay trifles. The shops satisfy
any taste and any purse, for it is the common gathering-ground of
Naples.

It is vastly diverting to step aside and take note of the varieties
of people that troop along this brilliant highway. One sees jaunty
naval cadets from Leghorn; street dandies in white duck and tilted
Panamas; delivery boys in long blue blouses; tattered and bare-headed
bootblacks, with sleeves rolled up in business fashion; _artisti_ in
greasy coats; minor government officials in spectacles and rusty black,
trying to be rakish on four hundred dollars a year; sub-lieutenants,
with their month’s thirty dollars in hand, off to lose it at cards
at some _circolo_; swarthy _contadini_, the farmer “Rubes” of Italy,
having disposed of their poultry and their wives’ straw plaiting, are
here “doing the town”; groups of impoverished laborers from near-by
estates, lamenting with despairing gestures the impending failure of
the olive crop and charging it to ghosts and the evil eye; venders of
coral and tortoise shell; resplendent Carabinieri in pairs, fanning
themselves with their picturesque chapeaux; thrifty policemen pursuing
street peddlers, with an eye to a per centum of the fines; heroic
school-ma’ams, trying to forget that their miserable one hundred and
fifty dollars per annum is not likely to save them from such distress
as De Amicis tells of in his impressive “Romanzo d’ un Mestro”; that
odd military _rara avis_, the Bersagliero, pruning his glossy feathers
and looking quite equal to a trot to Posilipo and back; rioting
students, still unreconciled to having been “ploughed” at the recent
examinations, or having failed of the coveted _laurea_ degree when,
frock-coated and nervous, they discussed their theses unsuccessfully
before the jury of examiners; the pompous syndic of some commune;
priests in black cassocks and fuzzy, broad-brimmed hats; some prefect
returning from a many-coursed dinner, intent upon political _coups_
when the Government’s candidates come up for election; and, most
dejected and dangerous of all, the unemployed men of education, the
_spostati_, who will hunt government jobs while there is any hope and
then turn Socialists in Lombardy or Camorristi in Naples.

All along the way the soda fountains are sputtering and the “American
Bars” bustling. Bookstores fascinate here, as everywhere, and shining
leather volumes cry out for attention in the names of D’Annunzio, De
Amicis, Verga, and Fogazzaro. “Il Trionfo della Morta” lifts its slimy
head on every counter, side by side with the breezy Neapolitan stories
of Signora Serao. I always look curiously, but so far unsuccessfully,
to find a single bookstore window that does not contain that national
family table ornament, the “I Promessi Sposi” of Manzoni—the man for
whom Verdi composed the immortal Requiem Mass.

The Toledo tide runs northward for twenty blocks or so from where we
entered it, swings around the marble statue of Dante in the poet’s
piazza, and sets south again. At nine o’clock it begins to diverge
into the Strada di Chiaja, where there is music and promenading until
midnight.

Detecting this hint of the hour, I hail a venerable, loose-jointed cab
and bargain to be taken to my great, sepulchral, marble-floored room on
the Corso Vittorio Emmanuele. Now, cabs are cheap in Naples—after you
have paid a penalty of extortion for the first few days’ experience;
the real expense concerns the tailor as much as the cabman, in wear
and tear to clothing, trying to keep on the seat as you bounce along
over these volcanic-block pavements. This evening the cabman starts the
usual trouble by demanding threefold the legal fare, and as we work it
down to the tariff rate he insults me pleasantly and volubly, and I
try to do as well by him. At length we arrive at a quasi-satisfactory
basis; he shrugs contemptuous acceptance of my terms and I relax to the
point of conceding that his ponies are only a little worse-groomed than
the average and have, as far as I can see, all the mountainous brass
fixtures prescribed by custom, along with the coral horn that will save
me from the evil eye. So in I clamber. There is an infantry volley of
whip-cracking and a burst of wild invective at the obstructing crowd
and my head snaps back with sufficient force to keep me quiet to the
journey’s end.

On the pleasant little balcony of my room I dare not linger long
to-night. Well I know the busy programme of the departure on the
morrow. There will be a hurried stop for one last hasty look into the
Museo, with my luggage on the waiting cab outside; then, at my urgent
“Fa presto,” some reckless Jehu will rattle me over the stones to the
station; I will go down into my pocket again, in the old familiar way,
for seventy centesimi and an additional _pourboire_ to the cabby; and
twenty more for the spry old porter who will shoulder my grips into
the smoker; and the conductor will blow a horn, and the station bell
will ring, and the engineer will blow a whistle,—in their rare Italian
manner,—and the wheels will begin to squeak and groan, and I shall be
off for Rome.

And that is why a cigar lacks its usual solace on my balcony to-night;
the last I am to smoke in Good Night to this fascinating city. The
subdued hum of cheery, happy revelry, mingled with music and song,
drifts up from the bright squares and animated streets. The minutes
multiply as I dwell over the varying phases of old Vesuvius, or gaze
long and lingeringly over the star-lit Bay and all the romantic
playground of these grown-up children. One cannot bring himself to
say a definite farewell to this beautiful Region of Revisitors. With
a yearning hope of returning some other day, he moderates it to a
heartfelt Good Night and a tentative “till we meet again”:—

 “A rivederci, Napoli! Benedicite e buon riposo!”




[Illustration]




HEIDELBERG

9 P.M. TO 10 P.M.

    There stands an ancient castle
    On yonder mountain height,
    Where, fenced with door and portal,
    Once tarried steed and knight.

    But gone are door and portal,
    And all is hushed and still;
    O’er ruined wall and rafter
    I clamber as I will.
GOETHE’S “Castle on the Mountain.”

When the sun has gone down behind the Blue Alsatian Mountains and the
last stain of color has faded from the skies of the Rhenish plain, when
clock tower has answered clock tower and evening bell responded to
evening bell from the mountain streams and mill wheels of the Odenwald
to the busy squares of Mannheim, then the quiet and gentle valley of
the Neckar takes on a peculiar peace and glory that is exquisite and
marvelous, and Heidelberg and its lordly ruins seem set in a veritable
fairy-ring of delicate charm and beauty. So tranquil and lovely is
this region in the early evening that even the latest comer soon feels
a comforting sense of having turned aside from out of the rush and
fever of life into a singularly placid and protected corner of earth,
a hushed and happy Vale of Tempe. This sense of rest and seclusion is
one of Heidelberg’s strongest appeals—and her appeals, though few, are
all emphatic. For there are no “sights” here, the castle excepted. The
quaint old town is friendly and genial, though not more so than many
others of this comfortable German father-land; nor is the serene Neckar
so exceptional as to occasion pilgrimage.

Heidelberg’s appeals are to the mind, the heart, and the senses: the
mind is inspired by her impressive achievements in learning; the heart
is touched by her tragic history; and the senses are spellbound by the
exceptional charm of her natural beauty. She is never so fair as in the
early evening. With the soft fall of night each blemish fades away, and
what remains to see and feel is altogether rare and lovely.

[Illustration: HEIDELBERG, FROM THE CASTLE TERRACE]

When the valley clocks are booming nine with muffled strokes it is
delightful to be up in the castle’s ruins, lounging on the Great
Balcony of the crumbling Friedrich Palace, with a broad coping for a
seat and the rustling ivy of the hollow walls for a pillow. Behind
and about one is the vast, ruddy wreckage of the knightly halls and
towers of this far-famed “Alhambra of Germany,” and fluttering plains
of tree-tops are billowing upward on every hand to the dark heights of
the Königsstuhl. On the opposite side of the valley, across the river,
dense forests of oak and chestnut glitter in the moonlight, sweeping
aloft to the summit of the storied Saints’ Mountain. Just below our
balcony the clustered spires and steep roofs of the huddled old town
house their fifty thousand happy people between the wooded hillsides
and the shimmering Neckar that bands the middle distance, on its
placid Rhine journey, like a silver ribbon on a velvet cloak. In its
bright waters hills and trees are luminously mirrored, along with the
inky, motionless shadows of its bridges and the sober reflections of
shuttered house-fronts along its verge.

In the dewy coolness and still of evening the guardian oaks breathe a
recurrent lullaby—now softly agitated, now as hushed and ghostly and
motionless as the hills in which they are rooted; and one understands
how such a soothing environment could have softened even the impetuous,
fiery, war-loving young Körner to indite so gentle a benediction as his
beautiful “Good Night”:—

          “Good night!
    To each weary, toilworn wight,
    Now the day so sweetly closes,
    Every aching brow reposes
    Peacefully till morning light.
          Good night.

          “Home to rest!
    Close the eye and calm the breast;
    Stillness through the streets is stealing,
    And the watchman’s horn is pealing,
    And the Night calls softly ‘Haste!
          Home to rest!’”

Up in the castle ruins one is seldom alone before midnight, and not
even then if the melancholy spectre of Rupert’s Tower is disposed
to walk abroad. In the early evening the good people of Heidelberg,
kindliest and most contented of Germans, stroll with vast delight under
the lindens of the castle gardens, and groups of careless students
loiter merrily along the terraces, adding bright touches of color with
their peaked caps and broad corps ribbons. Bits of song and bursts of
laughter give a homely suggestion of habitation to these staring walls;
one could fancy the dead-and-gone old nobles at wassail again, with
minstrels in the banquet hall, and Perkeo, the jester, whispering jokes
in the ear of the Count Palatine.

“Under the tree-tops,” sang Goethe, “is quiet now.” There is a low
sad sound of night breeze in the ivy; a swallow darts through a
paneless window; a bat zig-zags among the echoing arches of a tower.
Like phantom sentinels the stone statues of the old electors stand
white and impressive in niches on the palace fronts. Fragrance of
flowers drifts in from the castle gardens and the delicate plash of
falling water comes from a terrace fountain. The lamps of the city
rim the river below, and villas beyond the farther bank are marked
by tiny dots of lights in the purple of the groves behind Neuenheim.
Across the Neckar-cut gulf of shadow the chestnut-crowned summit of
the Heiligenberg stares down solemnly at us, and not all the songs of
its blithest nightingales can banish thoughts of its ancient Roman
sacrifices nor divert the credulous from vigils over the blue grave
lights around the Benedictine cloister where they buried the sainted
Abbot of Hirschau. Up through the dark billows of this tree-top ocean
rises a strain of Wagner’s music from some cheery, hidden woodland
inn—and under the magic spell of the night one could fancy the
golden-haired Siegfried approaching on a new Rhine Journey, following
the winding Neckar up the broad Rhenish plain; the Tarnhelm is at his
belt, the World-Warder Ring on his finger, and the moonlight flashes
dreadfully from the glittering blade of “Nothung” as the hero’s horn
winds note of arrival under the walls of our stout castle!

It is especially at such an hour as this that one realizes how easy
it is for the man who thoroughly knows Heidelberg to acknowledge a
delightful and lifelong bondage. A large number of the most eminent
literati of the world have agreed in this. Goethe ascribed to her
“ideal beauty.” Macaulay pronounced her environment “one of the fairest
regions of Europe.” The father of German poetry, Martin Opitz, loved
her dearly in his student days here, three centuries ago, and wrote
affectionately of her all the rest of his life. The prolific Tieck
found time between novels to lament the destruction of a few of her
oaks. Alois Schreiber turned from his poetry and history to grieve
over the loss of a lime-tree. Von Scheffel praised her in prose and
verse and hailed her in seven songs of his “Gaudeamus.” La Fontaine
could not conceive of more ideal surroundings in which to reunite his
“Clara du Plessis” and her devoted “Clairant.” G. P. R. James, in his
favorite romance “Heidelberg,” wrought prodigies of sentimentality here
with the heroic “Algernon Grey” and the emotional “Agnes.” Matthisson
immortalized himself by his “Elegie” in these ruins. All who have read
Alexandre Dumas’s dramatic “Crimes Célèbres” will recall the young
fanatic, Karl Ludwig Sand, and his assassination of the poet, Kotzebue,
in our neighboring city of Mannheim, but they may not have heard of
how Kotzebue once said: “If an unhappy individual were to ask me what
spot to live in to get rid of the cares and sorrows which pursue him,
I should say Heidelberg; and a happy one asks me what spot he would
choose to adorn with fresh wreaths the joys of his life, I should still
say Heidelberg.”

Goethe loved the Neckar, and scarcely less its famous old bridge. In
an interpretative mood he once observed, “The bridge shows itself
in such beauty as is perhaps not to be equaled by any other in the
world.” And, indeed, it is an easy thing to divide enthusiasm between
bridge and river. Nothing is jollier than loafing against the broad
balustrades of this solid old veteran, as the students love to do, and
lazily take note of the river’s tinted reflections, the ripple and eddy
about the piers, the mirroring of the arches in perfect reverse, and
watch the deep green shadows of the hills creep out and steal across.
Great rafts come downstream laden with the output of the Odenwald and
Black Forest, and swift steamers hurry under the massive arches bound
upstream for the mountain towns or downward to Mannheim. Ferries ply
beside it, fishermen drift beneath it, and throngs of townspeople
and countrymen stroll along it, with now and then a be-petticoated
peasant girl from the Odenwald whose fair hair is hidden under a huge
black coif. How redolent it is of Rhenish life! One lingers beside
the great statue of its builder, the old Elector, and gazes with
unwearying satisfaction on the strange mediæval gateway, loopholed and
portcullised, and wonders where two other such queer round towers can
be found with such odd bell-shaped capitals and such slender little
spires. Terrible and tragic experiences have befallen this sturdy old
hero, and its antique towers are pitted from the riddling of French
and Swedish and German bullets. Fire has swept it, cannon shaken it,
floods grappled with it, and blood drenched it from shore to shore.
Wan processions of famine-stricken people have dragged themselves
across its paving-stones, and its gateways have reëchoed with groans
and prayers and curses. To-night we see it as defiant as ever,
battle-scarred and unshaken, with “head bloody but unbowed,” striding
its river with broad and shapely arches—as real a part of Heidelberg
as the very hills above it.

One looks down from the castle on the twinkling lights of the cramped
old town, and notes how it has ambitiously spread its suburbs even
beyond the opposite bank and that its villa-lamps sprinkle their way
in the distance toward that little hamlet with the great mouthful of
a name,—Handschuhsheim,—in the hills. It is there, could we see it,
that the tumbledown hut stands that sheltered Luther when he escaped
from the “Tile-Devils” of Worms; at a sight of it one wonders if he
did not exclaim here as he did at the Diet: “Here I take my stand. I
can do no otherwise. _God help me!_” In Heidelberg itself, the shops
of that one long street, Hauptstrasse, send up a wavering, crooked
path of softened light, but the more elegant _Anlage_ is discreetly
reserved with all its hotels and imposing homes. One distinguishes
little at this hour of the peaked tile roofs and faded shutters of the
venerable town—the little awninged shops, sombre cafés, _Stuben_, and
restaurants; or the excited appearance of an occasional side street
that starts with all enthusiasm at the river, loses heart in a block or
two, and comes suddenly to a discouraged end in a tangle of trees and
forest paths. We only know that Emperor William I canters his bronze
steed with its capacious girth along the middle of Ludwigs-Platz right
up to the university building where the celebrated professors have
their “readings” before their frisky young “Meine Herren”; and that
the market-place is probably as shabby and gloomy as usual, and the
Kornmarkt subsided again to its customary listlessness since the last
of the evening crowds have taken the mountain railroads there for cool
trips to the Königsstuhl or the Molkenkur or for a trout dinner at the
distant Wolfsbrunnen.

Out of this cramped nest of roofs the shadowy Gothic tower of St.
Peter’s Church rises boldly, challenging beholders to forget—if
they can—how Jerome of Prague once nailed his theses on its doors
and defended them before excited multitudes; calling, besides, on
the distant and indifferent to sometimes have a thought of the
famous university scholars who lie under the weeping-willows of
its churchyard. A neighboring bidder for consideration, the famous
Heilig-Geistkirche, thrusts a lofty spire skyward above the dark
tree-tops until its weather vane is almost on a level with our feet.
There is little need for this ecclesiastic to feel any apprehension
on the score of being forgotten, so renowned has it been for half
a thousand years as once the foremost cathedral of the Palatinate,
celebrated for richness of endowment, extent of revenues, the beauty of
its art treasures, and the learning of its prebendaries. As it appeals
to us to-night it is as one fallen far from its former high estate,
and yet the very eagles that soar over Heidelberg must have enough
knowledge of religious controversy to recall its past amusing dilemmas
of divided orthodoxy. The stranger in the castle ruins will smile
as he thinks of what he has read of the days when both Protestants
and Catholics worshiped there at one and the same time, through the
effective device of a partition wall thrown up to separate choir from
nave. The elaborate Catholic ceremonials of the altar necessitated
the reservation of the choir for them, while the Protestants got
along very nicely with a pulpit built in the end of the nave. What
unusual entertainment might have been contrived by neutrals to the
controversy had a brick or two been removed from the partition wall
and an ear applied alternately to either service! On one side, _Ave
Marias_ and _Pater Nosters_—on the other, hymns of the Lutherans;
here, the wailing _Confiteor_ and the penitential breast-beating of
_mea culpa_—there, grim scorn of all ritual and ceremony; in the
choir, the intoning of versicle and response, reiterations of “_Dominus
Vobiscum_” and “_Et cum Spiritu tuo_,” the solemn _Tantum Ergo_, the
passionate _Agnus Dei_, and the triple sound of the acolyte’s bell as
the Host is elevated above the kneeling, praying throngs—in the nave,
a rapt absorption in the new significance of old truths, and lengthy
discourses by stern and ascetic expounders; for one congregation,
a glittering altar, sacred images, flaming candles, and a jeweled
monstrance—stiff pews and a painted pulpit, for the other; for the
Catholics, flocks of priests and choir boys, deacons and subdeacons,
sumptuously vested in alb and stole and gorgeous chasuble—for the
Protestants, one solemn man in black. Neutrals at the dividing wall
could have rendered both congregations a service by loosening a
brick or two and letting a little incense and beauty pass to the
Dissenters’ side, and some word of wisdom concerning a release from
dogma get through to the Catholics. Had America’s new policy of church
unity existed then, it would have advocated doing away with the wall
altogether and finding some compromise for approaching a common God
in a common way. Time, the great umpire, has settled the contest as a
draw; for the partition wall has come out and the rival camps with it:
the present occupants are “Old Catholics”—a sect with which either
side has little sympathy and less patience.

The evening lounger in the old castle will doubtless have more than one
thought of the famous seat of learning that has, for five and a quarter
centuries, invested the name of Heidelberg with so much lustre and
glory. He will, of course, have heard it called the “cradle of Germanic
science,” and will have been told that of all Germanic universities
only those at Prague and Vienna are older than this. He can form some
conclusion as to its rich contributions to human knowledge by merely
recalling the names of its famous scholars,—Reuchlin, Melanchthon,
Ursinus, Voss, Helmholtz, Bunsen, Kuno Fischer, and the rest,—and
will gauge its present standing by the acknowledged eminence of
its faculties in medicine, law, and philosophy. One thinks of its
long eras of philosophic speculation, always deeply earnest if not
invariably profitable, and applauds the force of Longfellow’s simile
in “Hyperion” when he compared them to roads in our Western forests
that are broad and pleasant at first, but eventually dwindle to a
squirrel-track and run up a tree. If the loiterer be a Presbyterian,
he will want to acknowledge indebtedness to old Ursinus for that
celebrated “Heidelberg Catechism” of three hundred and fifty years
ago that supplied the Westminster Assembly with a model for the
“Shorter Catechism” in use to-day. That the university has survived the
destructive rigors of so many fierce wars is perhaps sufficient proof
of its vitality and the estimate men have set on its usefulness. Tilly
carried off its library and presented it to the Pope, when he conquered
Heidelberg in the Thirty Years’ War, but although only a small portion
of it has ever been returned it has to-day a half-million volumes
and documents, among which are original writings of Martin Luther
and manuscripts of the Minnesingers. The pleasant summer semester
attracts students here,—being allowed, under the “Freiheit” system, to
exchange _alma maters_,—and then one may count up perhaps two thousand
scholastic transients in Heidelberg. To many visitors the equipment
will appear meagre, for, excepting the main building in Ludwigs-Platz,
the library building, medical institution, and botanical gardens,
there is little in sight to remind one of its existence. In witness of
which there is the popular joke about a new arrival who inquired of a
passer-by where the university might be: “Don’t know,” was the reply:
“I’m a student myself.”

The presence of the jovial student, however, is too much in evidence at
this time of the evening, through distant shouts and songs, to leave
any one in doubt about the university being somewhere hereabouts.
But when are they _not_ in evidence? At any hour of the day and
night you come across them in the cafés, on the streets, loafing on
the bridge or up in the castle, or returning or departing on their
favorite recreation of walking-trips through the hills. Their smart
peaked caps and broad corps ribbons are scenic features of the
neighborhood. You wonder when they study, and how much time they ever
spend in the private rooms they call their _Wohnungen_. In spite of
the appearance of extreme _hauteur_ conveyed by their invariable and
ceremonious punctilio these ruddy-faced boys are highly sociable,
and take a prodigious delight in smoking, drinking, and singing
together. A _Kaffeeconcert_ is entirely to their liking, and even more
a jolly _Kegelbahn_ supper in some forest restaurant at the end of a
long tramp. Most of all, which is amazing, they relish their stupid
_Kneipen_ where every friendly draft of their weak beer is preceded
by a challenge to drink, and where the only redeeming feature is the
fine singing. Still, at _Commerces_, one hears the time-honored Fox
Chorus, “What comes there from the hill.” Even the pet vice of dueling
might be mildly defended on the ground that German students have no
such athletic contests as their brothers of America and England and
that each looks to the sword, in consequence, as an arbiter of courage
and prowess—from the _Füchse_ (who are freshmen) to the _Bürschen_
(who are seniors). Granted that the occasional sabre duel is really
dangerous, still injuries are trifling in the ordinary encounters
_Auf der Mensur_, fought with the thin, basket-hilted Schläger, and
preferably on the _Paukboden_ of the famous Hirschgasse tavern up the
little valley across the river. Blood apart, it is rather amusing
than otherwise to watch the contestants in their pads and goggles,
the seconds straddling between them with drawn words, and the callous
umpire keeping merry count of the wounds. Few topers and bullies here,
but vigorous, wholesome youth.

The outlook from the Grand Balcony is upon a sea of foliage so vast
as completely to surround castle, gardens, and terraces and convert
them into just such an enchanted island as springs so naturally out
of the pages of the “Arabian Nights.” Evidences of sorcery and magic
multiply as we make the rounds of our fortress, for voices and music
come up out of the tremulous green depths, and companion isles emerge
in the moonlit distance, but lifted far above us and set on prodigious
wave-shoulders of steadily increasing height. The loftiest of these
rocks we know to be famous Königsstuhl, a name they have vainly been
trying to change to Kaisersstuhl since the visit of Emperor Francis
of Austria, a hundred years ago, and Emperor Alexander of Russia.
From this eyrie perch one looks abroad by day on a very considerable
portion of the wide, wide world, and the distance covered is only
limited by the imagination of the observer. Then the Neckar valley is
at one’s feet, and a little farther off is the Rhine, and away yonder
are the Haardt Mountains and the sombre edges of the Black Forest. The
faint blur on the southwestern horizon is said to be Speyer, where the
followers of the Reformation were first called “Protestants,” and the
lofty pinnacle of the cathedral, rising above the tombs of its imperial
dead, quickens thoughts of that “mellifluous doctor” whose writings
were “a river of Paradise,” the crusade preacher, St. Bernard, to whom
the Madonna is credited with having revealed herself in that very
church. Our mortal eyes may confirm the identity of this much from the
Königsstuhl’s observation tower, but we can only envy the miraculous
vision of those who see the spire of the Strassburg Cathedral, sixty
miles away. Doubtless they could distinguish the identical tree of the
famous Odenwald rhyme:—

    “There stands a tree in the Odenwald,
      With many a bough so green,
    ’Neath which my own true love and I
      A thousand joys have seen.”

Another of the companion isles of this moonlit, tree-top ocean is
the popular Molkenkur, a modern “whey-cure,” that flourishes on the
princely site of the earliest stronghold of this whole region. To
those who are strolling its broad terrace and reflecting, perhaps,
upon the tragic history of the place, seven centuries roll back and
Barbarossa’s brother, the savage Conrad of Hohenstaufen, climbs the
forest trail with archers and spearmen, returning to his mountain
retreat from a robber raid along the Rhine. And perhaps the visitor
fancies he even hears the roar of that historic explosion that rained
the wreckage of old Conrad’s fortress on town and river, or sees the
blinding lightning stroke that crumbled this dread stronghold into a
stalking-ground for the shuddering phantoms of winter fireside legends.

Reflections that penetrate still farther back into the gloaming of
local tradition will precede Conrad’s fortress with the temple of
the enchantress Jetta; and could we distinguish in the distance the
rock where the cozy inn of the Wolfsbrunnen perches and serves its
rare dinners of mountain trout, we should see the very spot where the
wolf slew Jetta in judgment of the Goddess Hertha, who was properly
indignant that her priestess should have fallen in love with a mortal.

The nearer waters of the billowy forest-sea that ripples around the
ruined castle walls contain in their dark, cool depths a picturesque
tangle of woodland paths and romantic walks, thickets of fragrant
flowers, a shattered arch half cloaked with ivy, and many a pleasant
wayside café opened to the sky and gay with its little German band.
For those who emerge from the shadows and come up like Undines into
the moonlight that streams in a silver mist on terrace and garden, as
fair a picture reveals itself as can be seen in any part of our world.
Here are lakes and grottoes and fountains and statues, all flecked with
the heavy shadows of lindens and beeches. Here are crumbling towers
and vine-mantled turrets and shattered, moss-grown arch and cornice.
Even lovelier to-day are these gardens and scarcely less celebrated
than three hundred years ago when old Solomon de Caus, architect and
engineer of the Counts Palatine and first prophet of the power of
steam, “leveled the mountain-tops and filled up the valleys” (as he
has recorded in a Latin inscription in one of the older grottoes),
and built these “plantations” and made them the haunts of singing
birds, and filled them with orange-trees and rare exotic plants, and
ornamented them with statues and with fountains that made music as they
played. The ruined castle is embraced and enfolded in these beautiful
gardens as an ailing child by its mother’s arms. The ravages of fire
and war have scarred and wrecked it beyond man’s redemption, but the
sturdy walls still oppose their twenty-foot masonry to the attacks of
Time as stubbornly as did the great Wrent Tower when it defied the
powder blasts of the detested Count Mélac and his devastating Frenchmen.

As the hour of ten draws near, we return through the vaulted passage
from the Great Balcony and enter the grass-grown central courtyard.
Outside the façades were grim and bleak and built to meet an enemy’s
blows, but toward the courtyard the castle turned faces of ornament
and beauty. One feels at once the force of the saying that this is not
the ruin of a castle, but of an epoch. It slowly flowered through the
five hundred years that Heidelberg was the capital of the Palatinate,
and all the development of those intervening times is expressed in its
varying architecture. Pomp and circumstance are written big across
it, for its masters and builders were counts and princes, kings and
emperors. One feels the love and pride they took in these deserted
palaces, now masterless. In the pale moonlight whole rows of effigies
of the illustrious dead stand boldly forth in niches of the hollow,
staring walls, and medallion heads peer curiously out of pediment
recesses, and history and allegory find expression in lifelike statue
and carven bust. Delicate arabesques and fanciful conceits wreathe
themselves in stones of portal and cornice, and the armorial chequers
of Bavaria and the Lion of the Palatinate oppose the lordly Eagle of
the Empire. Time has modulated the discordant keys of architecture of
divergent periods into a common and mellow harmony, so that the first
rude stones laid by old Rudolph seem a consistent part of an assemblage
that includes that finest example of Renaissance architecture in all
Germany—Otto-Heinrich’s wonderful ruddy palace set with its yellow
statues. One thinks of Prague and the battle of the White Hill as he
sees the ill-starred Frederick’s massive contribution, and wonders
why this beautiful realm could not have enticed him from playing that
tragic rôle of “Winter King.” Frederick’s palace looms impressively by
night; in its varied architecture and majestic effigies of the House
of Wittelsbach one feels the propriety of having here a comprehensive
levy upon the building-knowledge of all previous time as an adequate
and appropriate expression of the catholic culture of the lords of the
Palatinate.

And, indeed, one reflects, there was need for both strength and beauty
to a fortress that was to play so momentous a rôle in the fierce
dissensions of its time. In that dungeon a pope once lay a prisoner; in
this chamber Huss found refuge; in yonder chapel Luther has preached,
and all the foremost spiritual lords of the hour. This courtyard has
echoed with shouts for the Emperor Sigismund when he tarried here _en
route_ to play that perfidious part at the Council of Constance, and
has rocked with wild applause as “Wicked Fritz,” returning in triumph
from the battlefield of Seckenheim, marched in his captive princes.
These staring walls have blazed with royal fêtes—in the hush and
desolation of to-night one feels a deep sadness in contrasting the
ominous silence that pervades them now with the splendor and uproar
that vitalized them when a princess was wedded in this crumbling
chapel; when Emperor Maximilian came up from his coronation at
Frankfort; when the foremost figure of his era, Emperor Charles V, and
his sallow little son who was later Phillip II, feasted and reveled
here for days at a time.

We look up at the Gothic balconies, and it seems as though we could
almost see some early lord of this stronghold peering down through
painted windows at the athletic sports of his hardy sons; and a certain
unreality takes phantom form and substance, and the sentinel figures
descend solemnly from their niches as a train of valorous knights
and pages issues from Otto-Heinrich’s broad portal with music and
laughter; there is the scrape and tread of mailed feet and the shouts
of a gallant company as fair-haired women in shimmering silks and
high-peaked headdresses award prizes of the tourney to kneeling men
in glittering armor; and the trumpets sound and the torches flare and
the noble retinue sweeps into the great banquet hall, while the “merry
councilor” who brings up the rear makes us a profound and mocking
bow as the door is closed—and we are alone with the statues in the
moonlight.

The empty, silent courtyard is spectral and sad; it is an hour for
reverie, for apprehension. The pale silver of the moon whitens into
phantom-life two sides and a corner; the rest is a deep, hushed shadow.
A cushion of ivy stirs in the faint night air; a bat flashes over a
shattered cornice; a stone detaches itself exhaustedly and falls with a
tinkle of sand, waking a protest of little echoes.

One steals away silently, resigning ward of all this senile decay to
faithful Perkeo, who, in wooden effigy, still companions his huge empty
tuns in the darkness of the cellars—the little, red-haired, faithful
jester who alone remains constant to his master, of all the army of
attendants that thronged these palaces for half a thousand years.

We pass the old stone-canopied well whose columns once were
Charlemagne’s, pass the ponderous clock tower and the moat bridge, and
enter the fragrant gardens as the valley bells sound ten and the purple
mists are rising from the Neckar.

It is impossible to escape a feeling of profound melancholy. Where now
are the powerful princes whose rusted swords may not strike back were I
to raise a hand of destruction against the halls they reared and loved
and guarded with such might? “The fate of every man,” said the Koran,
“have We bound about his neck.”

It is depressing to think that such glory, power, and beauty as once
were here should have flourished so wonderfully and come to so little.
Was all this magnificence created merely for destruction? Could nothing
less suffice grim Time to build him an eyrie for bats and swallows?
Was Von Matthisson right in the judgment he expressed in the sad and
sympathetic “Elegie” he penned in these ruins, and must we conclude
with him that temporal glory is but ashes and that the darkness of
the grave adorns impartially the proud brow of the world ruler and the
trembling head that shakes above the pilgrim’s staff?

    “Hoheit, Ehre, Macht und Ruhm sind eitel!
    Eines weltgebieters stolze Scheitel
    Und ein zitternd Haupt am Pilgerstab
    Deckt mit einer Dunkelheit das Grab!”




[Illustration]




INTERLAKEN

10 P.M. TO 11 P.M.


THE top of the evening at brisk and bracing Interlaken is certainly ten
o’clock. Vigorous, vitalizing air breathes down on the lush meadows
from towering Alpine snowfields, and languor and ennui fall away from
her dispirited summer idlers and a refreshing life interest reasserts
itself. It is then one may see the deep, flowered lawns that front the
great hotels of the broad Höheweg pleasantly thronged with animated
guests, modishly and immaculately groomed; and each little street and
quiet lane has its quota of vivacious strollers who prefer the keen
night air and the inspiring mountain-prospect to the conventional
attractions of the brilliant Kursaal or the round of mild social
diversions that is in progress in the hotel apartments. Then, too,
there is a certain subdued note of expectancy in the air, for this is
the little village’s fête hour; and almost as the valley clocks are
striking the hour the celebration is heralded with a burst of rockets
from the open field of the Höhenmatte, in the centre of the town, and
there is a general rush of chattering guests to see the display and to
exhibit prodigious approval. All are aware of the fact that this is
merely an expression, in terms of Swiss thrift, of the appreciation
the seventy-five hundred villagers feel for the lucrative presence of
thousands of guests, and yet it admirably serves as a mid-break in the
evening’s diversions. There is little enough to the celebration, to be
sure, excepting the exaggerated importance such an event always assumes
to isolated summer people, but you would think it was a pyrotechnic
marvel, to judge by the enthusiasm.

To see Interlaken then is to behold her at her gayest. Bridge-parties
forsake their cards, late diners their ices, and billiardists their
cues. Each little balcony on the hotel fronts is promptly crowded,
orchestras strike up lively Strauss waltzes, troops of delighted guests
hurry across the Höheweg and pour into the meadow, until one might
fairly conclude there was a carnival on, from the overflow of laughter
and merrymaking. It is always a great moment at the Kursaal. There the
excitement seekers have been wandering from parlors to lounging-rooms
and ending up in the cheery gaming-hall, where a toy train on a long
green table darts around a little track, laden with the francs and
merry hopes of modest challengers of fortune, and comes to an exciting
and leisurely stop before some station with the name of a European
capital. Just then, like as not, as the _croupier_ begins raking in
the scattered piles of silver and the losers are being gleefully
accosted by their friends, somebody suddenly shouts “Fireworks!” and
forthwith all run hurrahing into the gardens and cry out like summer
children in vast delight over the rockets that go hurtling skyward
from the Höhenmatte. It is all quite of the nature of a very elegant
international fête to which the Old World and the New have accredited
their most _recherché_ representatives.

There is seldom a lack of keen activity at Interlaken, but at this
hour it is most abounding; nor will the new arrival fail to note the
contrast between the sharp alertness of this company and the lethargic
listlessness that depresses, for instance, the bored idlers who bask
in the dusty olive gardens of the Riviera. In the intermittent glow
of the fireworks, cottages and distant hotels spring out of the
surrounding darkness. The top of a hillside sanatorium appears of
a sudden white against the dark pines, the packsaddle roof of the
church tower discovers itself, a turret shows with the red field and
white Greek cross of the Swiss flag lazily unfolding above it, and
one looks anxiously for just one glimpse of the old cloister’s round
towers and cone-shaped roofs that reminded Longfellow of “tall tapers
with extinguishers.” Music drifts down from remote cafés and pavilions
nestling in wooded nooks. The air is heady and buoyant with the scent
of pine and fir. Life seems at high tide; and then just as suddenly it
is all over, and the gay company resumes its interrupted activities
with infinite laughter and handclapping.

There is a positive spell to all this Alpine comedy. No new arrival
will feel inclined to return at once to hotel conventionalities, with
a soft purple mist shrouding the Lauterbrunnen Valley, and the distant
Jungfrau lying pallid and wan in the moonlight. He will gaze about him
in wonder at the snow-crowned peaks that hem in the little Bödeli plain
where Interlaken snuggles, and will feel how wonderful it is that the
boisterous Lütschine and its fellow torrents could ever have filled in
this alluvial barrier between the deep lakes that fought them inch by
inch. He will think of the enchanted regions of the Bernese Oberland
that lie just before him, and of the contrasting beauty of the inland
seas that stretch away on either hand: Lake Brienz, mysterious and
austere, scowling at its precipitous mountain shores, roaring welcomes
to its thundering waterfalls, and begrudging standing-room for the
tiniest of hamlets; Lake Thun, “the Riviera of Switzerland,” with
lovely vistas of green meadows, châteaux-dotted hillsides and distant
snowy summits, all breathing such mildness and serenity as befitted
the former abode of the holy hermit of St. Beatenberg. And doubtless
he will seek out some tree-embowered path that winds along the Aare,
and there indulge in contemplative thought of this glittering blue link
between the lakes. Nor could he do better, for this arrogant stream is
an illustrious instance of a reformed rake. Of evil repute for riotous
cascade and brawling torrent all the way up to its home by the Grimsel
Pass, it responds to the touch of civilization at Interlaken and
meekly accepts the bondage of steam for the remainder of its career.
What a gratifying example of reform it presents as it proceeds demurely
along from this scene of moral crisis, laving thankful little towns,
reporting conscientiously to the proper authorities at Bern, and, after
an exhibition review-sweep around the capital, flowing sweetly on to
Waldshut and modestly laying down its burden on the broad bosom of the
Rhine. The stranger will perceive that virtue has its rewards, with
rivers as with humans, when he takes note of the extravagant petting
and eulogy that has followed the repentance of the Aare at Interlaken,
its adornment with promenades, gardens, and artistic bridges, and the
choice of much excellent society, particularly at night, on the part of
ruminating savants and romantic lovers of all ages.

Strolling along the river paths carpeted with sweet-scented pine
needles, the delighted new arrival has only to lift his eyes to
discover how picturesquely the little city lies in its bed of lush
and fertile meadows. It will seem to him like a great stage set for a
mammoth spectacle. For background there is the black and flinty Harder,
set with the grim rock face of the scowling Hardermannli, rugged in
boulders and sheer cliffs and hiding its base in treacherous, grassy
slopes; the Aare skirts it fearfully, and the pretty little cottages
of Unterseen shrink close to Lake Thun on its farther side. Prostrate
Interlaken lies supine before it, gazing appealingly through its
innumerable windows across the open Höhenmatte, over the beeches and
firs of the protruding shoulder of the Rugen, and on up the dodging,
narrow Lütschine Valley to the remote and sympathetic Jungfrau. The
scene is ready for the curtain when you have dotted the mountain slopes
with châlets.

Or perhaps, if the stranger is fanciful, he will conceive the
Alpine ravens thinking it some enormous eagle swooping toward the
Lauterbrunnen Valley, with clustered houses for an attenuated body and
two lakes for powerful blue wings beating out and back. Or, again, he
may be reminded by this group of huge hotels of some fleet of old-time
ships-of-the-line that started down the valley to bombard the Jungfrau.
Early in the action formation was lost and the great hulks drifted
about in hopeless confusion. Several, apparently, went promptly aground
on the banks of the Aare right under the precipices of the Harder; all
of the big ones foundered in a row along the Höheweg; a number became
desperately entangled in the square before the Spielmatten Island;
some trailed southward in what we call Jungfraustrasse, and others
in Alpenstrasse; here and there one lies at anchor along the farther
meadows, waiting for signals from the flagship on the Höheweg; and at
least one, in the guise of an ugly white church, was caught in some
violent cross-current and tossed up high and dry on the brow of the
fir-smothered Gsteig.

The evening guest who does not fancy reveries along a mountain stream,
nor yet the quiet pacing of the neat lanes that are so characteristic
of this immaculate republic of “spotless towns,” whose very flag
appropriately suggests the Red Cross Society’s familiar emblem of
sanitation, will find it amusing to loiter among the little shops
of the village and see the curious wooden trifles of Brienz, the
delicately tinted majolica ware of Thun, exquisite ivory carvings, and
rare _bijouterie_ of filigree silver wrought with infinite patience and
skill. Tiring of these, he may ramble under the fine old walnut-trees
of the Höheweg and congratulate himself that he is not under the
horse-chestnuts of Lucerne to look out on inferior mountain prospects
and breathe a less intoxicating air.

The most approved form of evening entertainment is a round of calls
among friends scattered over the broad lawns of the hotels, when
one may divert himself with summer orchestras or itinerant bands of
Italian singers in crimson sashes, or revel in a rare profusion of
beautiful flowers; and, from time to time, look gladly up at a crisp
sky splendid with great luminous stars whose tremulous ardor, in Walter
Pater’s famous phrase, “burns like a gem.” It is a capital place to
gather impressions of what life at Interlaken means and what goes
forward each day among its votaries. It is perfectly plain that this
must be a great place; everybody is so bubblingly cheerful and so
devoutly grateful for being just here and no possible spot else. You
will hear them insisting that Interlaken, being halfway between, is
an admirable combination of the complacent “prettiness” of Geneva and
the austere solemnity of the vaunted Engadine Valley. Or there will
be fragments of conversation reaching you about tennis matches on the
Höhenmatte, lake bathing in Brienz, motor-bus runs from the golf links
of Bönigen, where the residents plant a fruit tree whenever a baby is
born, or of desperate scrambles up the zigzag trails of the Harder
beloved of Weber, Mendelssohn, and Wagner, with rapturous accounts
of the inspiring view from the _Kulm_. Some, you will gather, have
passed the day uneventfully among the park walks of the Rugen, gazing
down on Lake Brienz from the Trinkhalle Café, or on Lake Thun from the
Scheffel Pavilion, or on both from farther up on the belvedere of the
Heimwehfluh. Others again, it seems, have actually crossed the mild
Wagner Ravine and ascended the lofty Abendberg of the Grosser Rugen;
and for this pitiful adventure you hear them pose as veteran mountain
conquerors who will carry their alpenstocks home with them and forever
after speak familiarly of edelweiss and the flora of the summits.
There even appear to have been romantic souls, familiar with Madame de
Staël’s accounts of St. Berchtold festivals, who have spent the hours
in dreams of Byron’s “Manfred” down by the old round tower of the
dilapidated wreckage of Unspunnen Castle—in truth, the most abject
of ruins, and quite as forlorn as Mariana’s Moated Grange. Not a few
will have the courage to confess that they have done nothing more
heroic than stroll by the shaded Goldei promenades along the Aare until
they came to Unterseen, where they deliberately sat down and gazed to
satiety at the curious toy houses with the long carved balconies and
amazing roofs that project beyond all belief.

[Illustration: INTERLAKEN, ON THE HOTEL LAWN]

Thus, by merely catching flying ends of talk, a stranger may imbibe the
proper amount of enthusiasm and gather some rambling notion of the fine
things Interlaken has in store for him.

But the real evening-heroes must be looked for at the Kursaal. That is
where you hear the great champion talkers of the world! What was the
amiable Tartarin to such as these? Or Baron Munchausen? Or Sir John
Mandeville? On such deaf ears fell the warning ignored of “Excelsior”:—

    “Beware the pine-tree’s withered branch!
    Beware the awful avalanche!”

Behold them at their ease in wicker chairs in the lounging-room,
stretching the weary limbs that have borne them in safety through a
hundred Alpine perils. For all who will listen, what tales may be heard
of desperate daring amid the imminent deadly breach of crevasse and
avalanche! Under the vivid hand of the actual participant one fairly
sees the progress of the proud mountain-queller—follows with bated
breath the slow and tedious early stages, the hazardous upward advance,
the surmounting of final barriers by dint of ice-axe and life-rope,
and so enters into the joy of the ultimate conquest of the wild, bleak,
wind-swept summit. Who would have the hardihood in such a presence to
speak a word of such contemptible contrivances as mountain tramways and
funicular railroads! It is enough that the uninitiated should realize
in the shuddering depths of his soul that there still remains _terra
incognita_ to the listless, the fat, and the asthmatic. Later on, of
course, we come to view these hardy characters in a somewhat truer
perspective; but that will be after we have talked with their guides,
or ourselves turned heroes and bluffed at like hazards.

All the same, there is no denying the satisfaction a newcomer has,
in the beginning, in attending the impressive conversation of these
desperate and intrepid Kursaal adventurers. He certainly feels that
he has at last reached a region of hardy men and genuine mountain
hand-to-hand struggles. He hears, with popping eyes, of the lofty
little hamlet of Mürren, away up in cloudland, whose tiny cottages
stagger under broad, stone-freighted roofs and where vast, sublime
Titans scowl awfully from inaccessible heights. They tell him it is a
region of eternal dazzling whiteness, with patches of black here and
there that are really forests half buried in snow, and where the air is
stifling with the constant odor of ice and frost. A truly shuddering
place, they say, where men cannot hear themselves talk for the
incessant thundering of plunging avalanches, and where the herdsman
seldom ventures and the sunrise is never heralded by the alphorn of
the hardy _Senn_. Later on, to be sure, we journey luxuriously to this
same Mürren in a comfortable mountain railway and with considerably
less of peril than attends going to office by elevator in a sky-scraper
at home; and we find it a green and peaceful retreat, well supplied
with hotels and gratefully affected by delicate old ladies with weak
lungs. Just the same, we would not have missed the thrills of that
first Kursaal account. Alas for all disillusionment, anyway! Most of
the beautiful white, velvety edelweiss these rocking-chair climbers
produce from their pockets in proof of their presence in frightful and
remote ravines has really been bought for a franc on the Höheweg, and
the chamois they stalked in summit passes generally dwindle down to the
little ivory ones you find in the shops of Jungfraustrasse.

The truth of the Kursaal, when you get it, is stranger than its
fiction; as when the talk turns to the progress of the construction
work on the Jungfrau Railway, that imperishable monument to the genius
and patience of the late Adolf Guyer-Zeller, of Zurich. It is then
you hear of the loftiest tunnels in the world, eight and ten miles
long, through icy mountain shoulders ten thousand feet above the sea;
of gradients of one in four; of squirrel locomotives so ingeniously
contrived that if the electric power were suddenly to fail they could
generate enough by their own weight to clap on brakes and come down
in safety; of searchlights in the stations on the peaks so strong
that a man can read by them away over at Thun; of powerful telescopes,
free to patrons, through which you may observe the occupations of the
crowds on the Rigi and Mount Pilatus at remote Lucerne; of roomy and
luxurious stations blasted out of the depths of the mountains, whose
floors are parquetry and whose light and heat are electricity, with
twenty-foot windows piercing the rock and appearing, even from across
the neighboring abyss, like tiny pin-pricks in the perpendicular cliff;
of the highest post-office on earth, from whose windows you look out
on twenty glaciers. Of the truth of all this you are to learn later
on when you make the unforgettable run to Eismeer—“sea of ice”—the
farthest point so far attained in the steady progress of this marvelous
railway toward the summit of the Jungfrau, now only a mile or two
beyond, and which had been the despair of mountain climbers of all time
until the Meyer brothers conquered it, one hundred years ago.

One finds the evening gossipers of the Kursaal scarcely less
fascinating when they focus their talents on nearer regions; for
“distant meadows” are not always “the greenest.” Agreeable things are
to be heard of Schynige Platte, whither, it appears, you journey by
cogwheel railway up steep gradients in an observation car behind a
violently puffing locomotive, past pretty toy stations, around dizzy
corners, through the startling blackness of unexpected tunnels, and
so on out and up to the giddy plateau and an overpowering prospect
of snowfields, misty valleys, gorges, and cataracts upon which
you gaze in spellbound astonishment from the comfortable terrace
of the “Alpenrose.” From no other viewpoint, they tell you, does
the stupendous Mönch (Monk) seem to stand out so squarely in the
middle distance in his cowl of snow, playing his traditional rôle of
discouraging duenna between the coveted Jungfrau and the eager Eiger
whom he repels with an eternal arm of glittering, blue ridge-ice.

When the conversation takes up Grindelwald, it becomes so attractive
that you make a mental note to go there the first thing in the morning.
It seems you are to take one of those droll little coaches of the
Bernese Oberland Road marked “B.O.B.,” and proceed delightedly up the
green valley of the Lütschine. Very soon will loom before you the
bleak shoulders of the Wetterhorn, seared and precipitous, capped and
pocketed with snow; the overwhelming pyramid of the Eiger, fearful with
gorge and chasm; the regal Jungfrau, immaculate and stupendous; and,
most uncommon spectacle of all, the awe-inspiring glacier—a frozen
tumble of scarred boulders and grimy icebergs, pierced by glittering
ice grottoes and ridged with terraced ways from which you stare down
into yawning black gulfs that are fringed with giant icicles pendent
from the frozen ledges. What was it Coleridge said of glaciers?

    “Torrents, methinks, that heard a mighty voice,
    And stopped at once amid their maddest plunge!
    Motionless torrents! silent cataracts!”

But many there will be at the Kursaal to tell you such tales of the
enchanted Lauterbrunnen Valley as to incline you to reconsider any
resolution about going first to Grindelwald. There, it is clear, we
are to find quality rather than quantity: a narrow ravine through the
mountains, carpeted with the greenest of turf and hung with glorious
waterfalls that come tumbling down from lofty limestone precipices.
We are to drive beside a turbulent stream set with occasional châlets
whose projecting roofs will suggest broad-brimmed hats jammed down
over their eyes, and here and there we shall come across a white stone
church. Shortly there will be raging, leaping torrents all about us,
vaulting down great cliffs of strange and startling appearance, and
a vista of wonderland will open before us with the stately Steinberg
enthroned in the midst. Next, climax on climax, the incomparable
Staubbach! Before this queen of cataracts every other “hanging thread”
is instantly and hopelessly dwarfed, as it launches its “wreaths of
dangling water-smoke” from a thousand feet above. We will think this
“dust brook” a mere feathery spray fluttered in a capricious breeze,
so astonishing is the evidence of the resistance of the air and the
friction of the rocks back of it; but once we have gone behind it and
observed the “perpetual iris” made by the sun in shining through, it
will appear a wonder beyond classification. Byron fancied it “the tail
of the White Horse”; Wordsworth called it “the sky-born waterfall”; and
Goethe’s dripping song of it runs:—

    “In clouds of spray,
    Like silver dust,
    It veils the rock
    In rainbow hues;
    And dancing down
    With music soft,
    Is lost in air.”

Lesser lights are to be found among the Kursaal heroes who will confess
to nothing more unusual in the way of activity than salmon-fishing in
the neighboring lakes or bagging red partridge and hazel hens in the
upper meadows. But these, by contrast, appear sportsmen of so mean an
order that the stranger who has fed fat on the succulent yarns of the
Munchausens receives with impatience information for which, in fact, he
should be grateful. For instance: that in the winter the thermometers
of the higher settlements get down to fifty-four below freezing and
yet the dry air keeps people warmer than in the valleys, and that the
snow falls in such incredible quantities that artificial lights have
to be used in the lower stories of the houses all day and trenches cut
for exit; that up there when the terrific Föhn blows from the south
no man can make headway against it, but must lie flat on his face and
hang on and then jump up and dart forward a few yards between gusts;
that those people can foretell the weather by changes in the color of
the ice—blue meaning fine, green for snow, and white for fog; that
the Alpine crows of the summits are dark blue, with yellow beaks and
red feet, and the “wall-creepers” are gray as mice, with white and
red spots on their wings and with beaks shaped like awls. At some
such point as this the stranger will rise with a yawn and go away
in disgust, annoyed at being taken for a credulous fool. The seed,
however, has been sown and it flourishes like the fabled mustard. The
new arrival becomes a confirmed zealot and burns with all the ardor
of a convert; albeit his brain is a confused and bewildered muddle of
harsh-sounding mountain names, all, apparently, ending in _horn_.

When he comes out on the lawns he finds the guests still thronging the
verandas, although it is nearly eleven and prodigies of mountaineering
are slated for the morrow, and he hears the bands still engaged with
Puccini and the latest Vienna successes. In the fragrant, dewy gardens
fountains are playing, and lovers are discreetly screening behind
clumps of flowering shrubs. Returning excursionists are excitedly
vocal over the illumination of the Giessbach, whence they have just
arrived in one of those pompous lake steamers whose sure and cautious
pace reminded the satirical Victor Tissot of “the dignified motion of
a canalboat.” To hear these enthusiasts, this appears to have been
one more of those exceptionable occasions that the absent are always
missing, and that the renowned waterfall never before roared and
tumbled and foamed half so extravagantly in making its long, mad plunge
through the dusky, dark-green firs. Out on the Höheweg a walking-party
in knickerbockers and hobnailed shoes, and with edelweiss stuck in
green felt hats, are flourishing their alpenstocks and driving bargains
with sunburned guides whose names, undoubtedly, are either Melchior or
Mathias; these latter, we are to learn, are of a fearless but canny and
laconic nature, “economical as gypsies and punctual as executioners.”

How keenly people take their pleasures in the sparkling evenings of
Interlaken. How sharp and distinct are sounds and sights, and how
varied the night life. Each little street is as gayly illuminated as
though for some special celebration, and so hearty with good cheer that
one looks for some band of Bernese wrestlers, returning in triumph
from a festival, to round the next corner and strike up that clarion
anthem “Stehe fest, O Vaterland.” It would seem as though the “Fête du
Mi-Été” must actually be in full swing right here, instead of afar in
the upland pastures. Even at this hour a joyful multitude still streams
along under the Höheweg’s century-old walnuts, hatless, radiant, and
babbling in every European tongue. They flock about the confectioners’
stands and in and out of the curiosity-châlets, greeting acquaintances
with eager pleasure and proposing jolly plans for to-morrow. Each
little shop seems selling to capacity. Occasionally a peasant girl
passes, brusque and stolid, in short skirt and bright bodice, with
V-shaped rows of edelweiss buttons. Out on the green Höhenmatte lively
groups loiter about aimlessly, and somewhere in the vague distance
some one is singing the ever-popular “Trittst im Morgenrot daher.” The
thickly-wooded Rugen seems a colossal black mastiff asleep with his
head between his paws. Away up the misty valley, whose vital air is so
sweet with refreshing odors and so soothing with soft music, the regal
Jungfrau looms in dim and spectral outline, as ghostly and deceptive as
any faint feathering of cumulus clouds.

A distant _Jödel_ or the lilt of a plaintive _Ranz des Vaches_ excites
cordial thoughts of this fair Helvetia and her strong and devoted
people. “I wonder,” a friend once said to me at Interlaken, “if
these men and women really appreciate how lovely their country is.”
Perhaps the best answer is to be found in the desperate resolution
with which they have held it for six hundred years. Hard necessity has
taught these brawny mountaineers, whom Mr. Ruskin ungenerously called
“ungenerous and unchivalrous,” that to be “painfully economical” is
wiser than to chance privation. One thinks with wonder of the hardships
endured by the herdsman away up in the mountain pastures, eating his
sweet-bread and draining his milk-filled wooden bowl in a rude pine
hut, with goats and kine for comrades, and, for his sole diversion,
an occasional glimpse of a leaping chamois, a sly mountain fox, a
white hare, or the whistling, rat-like, shadowy marmot. With his long
alphorn he calls the cattle home or sounds the vesper hour, until the
loud echoes shout back from snowfield and ice gorge and the great
ravens swerve in their swimming flight. In summer, fluttering clouds of
butterflies will drift above the pansies and Alpine roses and gentians
on his meadow; but in winter the pallid, velvety edelweiss is all the
huntsman will find on those frozen ledges. What a wild and tragic
region it must be when the last _Senn_ has driven his herd down into
the valleys and old Winter is in undisturbed possession of his “dear
domestic cave.” The herdsman may rejoice that he is not there then; for
it becomes a world of black and white, of illimitable snow and blotches
of black forests, of death and waste and the frightful stillness of
stupendous heights. Then it is a deserted realm of ice and snow set
with pitfalls of treacherous crevasses and dreadful perils from hidden
gulfs and pitiless avalanches; a shuddering space of cloud banks and
waving vapor-scarfs; a haunted borderland of sinister shapes in the
writhing mists like wraiths of Alpine legends.

Even so, hundreds of failing foreigners go a long way up in those
forbidding regions in winter for an “enthusiasm of the blood” and a
“fairy titillation of the nerves.” And when the days are bright and of
their peculiar crystal clearness, and the skies are a cloudless blue
and the sunshine a deluge, these invalids revel in skating and curling
and the hockey they call “bandy”; and will even try appalling flights
by ski and toboggan through the “nipping and eager air,” over smooth
trails of glistening snow, rivaling the records of the “blue-ribbon”
Schatzalp course at Davos, where they do the two-mile run in something
under four minutes. There is a chance observation in “Silas Marner”
that “youth is not exclusively the period of folly!”

Of a summer evening, however, it might not be altogether unpleasant in
some parts of that cloudland. Could we return with the happy little
mule-boy who has just now come “jödeling” down from the passes,
doubtless we should find the sound of goat bells both romantic and
soothing up there, and might even in time muster a respectable show of
excitement over the passage of the four-horse diligences as they rattle
by in storms of dust. Certainly we should come across many a charming
little wayside inn far up those winding roads that climb to solitude,
and they would have overhanging eaves and carved wooden balconies and
boxes of rich orange nasturtiums before the tiny windows with the
lozenge panes; and when we pushed open the door and walked in, there
would be a great stone stove in a bar parlor and the face of William
Tell on an old clock behind the door.

One reads in “Hyperion” of a stolid Englishman so far forgetting his
cherished reserve as to exclaim: “This Interlaken! This Interlaken! It
is the loveliest spot on the face of the earth!” It is a nice question
as to whether any one might not easily be guilty of like enthusiasm,
provided the time were evening, and that he were capable of responding
to something of such passionate sympathy for mountain and valley as
breathes through Schiller’s “Wilhelm Tell.” It is impossible not to
be moved by such unusual beauty or uplifted by such sublimity. Here
jangled nerves recover rhythm and dulled interests vitality. Boredom
and ennui fall away, and work and responsibility acquire new value and
lustre. In the still of these pine-scented evenings, luminous with
enormous stars, a keen and sobering joy of life takes full and welcome
possession. Here, if anywhere, the sun of youth will have its afterglow.

There is something like benediction in a night-vision of the magic
Jungfrau—peerless “bride of quietness.” With such an appealing
spectacle in view, what wonder that the houses have so many windows,
or the night “a thousand eyes.” It is the master touch to Interlaken,
completing and glorifying the picture as it banks the far end of
the valley with towering clouds of snow. Neither Mont Blanc nor the
Matterhorn may rival this queen of the Alps, so charming in outline,
vast in bulk, and ravishing in purity. It could not fail to dominate
any region of earth, and Interlaken acknowledges its supremacy with a
completeness that is not without a certain flavor of proprietorship.
Each hillside has its view-pavilion, belvedere, or simple clearing,
like so many chapels for devotion. We come each morning for our
sunrise view, pass the day in adoration, marvel at sunset and the
afterglow, and close the evening with a wonderwist contemplation of
the phantom peak in moonlight. Of these “stations” of the mount, the
afterglow is the climax. Nor is the reason far to seek, once you have
stood among the awed and reverent throng that crowds the Höhenmatte
each late afternoon, and have seen black night about you in the valley,
while, for an hour or more after, the snowfields of the Jungfrau’s
summits still continued to blaze brilliantly in full sunshine. And
then, as we watched, there came the color-miracle of glittering white
merging into every hue of the rose, into scarlet stains and a deluge of
crimson, into deepening tints and sombre shades of blue, and finally
fading gradually to a misty, grayish, cloudy shadow as the last fires
burned out and the great mountain paled to a phantom of the night.

          “When daylight dies,
          The azure skies
    Seem sparkling with a thousand eyes,
          That watch with grace
          From depths of space
    The sleeping Jungfrau’s lovely face.”

How spirit-like, how faint and fair the magic mountain swims at night
among its silver cloud veils! What serenity and majesty invest it! Did
God here plan another flood, and stay His hand when He had heaped an
angry ocean into this dread tidal wave and left it piled in suspended
motion, with giant frozen seas, furious with foam, mounting to that
appalling crest that seems to dash its icy spray against the very
skies? No man may look with undaunted heart upon the chaos of its
glittering snowy plains, vast, chaste, and spectral in the moonlight.
How base and contemptible appear the petty pursuits of man in the
presence of such thrilling sublimity! It reconciles him to his lot in
life, where his “much” is really so very little; and inspires courage,
and shames the heart from low, ignoble ends.

There is reverent awe in thoughts of the breathless hush of the far,
white vales no man has trod; the remote and shuddering abysses into
which the very birds of the air look down with affright. There is
magic of inspiration in its sublime aloofness—as with those “unheard
melodies that are sweetest,” those supremest joys that lie beyond
attainment. Through the hidden, echoing caverns of this fair, pallid
mount wan spirits of Snowland may even now be dancing; along its
lonely, lovely glades are “horns of elfland faintly blowing.” Of its
profoundest and most secret mysteries not even the friendly moon may
have too curious knowledge—mysteries unknown of man since first the
morning stars sang together.




[Illustration]




VENICE

11 P.M. TO MIDNIGHT


A July moon over, a gondola under, a tenor lilting a _barcarolle_,
thousands with you on the Grand Canal—Venice _a festa_! From a near-by
belfry, a clock booms eleven. Eleven! and we are only to the Foscari
Palace. An hour ago we started at the Rialto, a thousand gay gondolas
with bunting, lanterns, and greens, everybody jostling, singing, and
shouting, and in the centre, like the queen-jewel of a tiara, the
brilliant _barca_ filled with orchestra and singers and ablaze in a
myriad of colored lights. This is a great occasion, the _serenata
ufficiale_. The _festa_ of the Redentore is near its close. Church
portals hang with mulberry branches begged by the monks of St. Francis,
and the people have feasted royally on the luscious black fruit bought
at the little stands on the Giudecca quays. Last Sunday the priestly
procession in full canonicals crossed the bridge of boats to the
Giudecca on its annual pilgrimage to the church of the Redentore.
Venice thus sustains her reputation as a reverencer of traditions;
they are burning lamps still in San Marco Cathedral for an innocent
man who was put to death hundreds of years ago. And so the church of
the Redentore is packed to suffocation at least one day of the year,
and after that, with the religious rites off her mind, Venice suddenly
gives up trying to look solemn and bursts out into the joy and tumult
of the “Official Serenade.”

This year it is splendid. Every moment belated gondolas are arriving
like flocks of black swans, with fresh quotas of enthusiasm and an
increase of gayety and confusion. What laughter and fun! The Canal is
a hopeless jam. Dancing lanterns play light and shade on thousands
of bright faces, and the gondoliers, in fresh white blouses and blue
sailor collars, look like shadows as they lean silently on their long
oars. In the intervals of the music there is something weird and
frantic to both their labor and their language as they agonize to
protect their beloved boats from scratches and smashes and at the same
time retain positions of vantage in this ice-floe of a tangle as the
_barca_ struggles forward a few difficult yards to its next point of
serenade. There are ten or a dozen of these serenade-points, and at
each the writhing flotilla pauses, and singers and orchestra provide
the entertainment. It is finest to be afloat, but, oh, the land!
Red-and-green fire throws into enormous relief fairylike towers and
turrets that have figured in song and story for a thousand years; and
in windows, terraces, balconies, and tops there throngs a multitude
that none of us may number. Every face is turned toward the _barca_;
every handkerchief waves our way. An occasional searchlight darts
impartially over them and us, picks out a spot in sudden brilliance and
as suddenly drops it back into blacker obscurity. But in that brief
flashing, scattered friends have discovered friends, and gondolas are
started inching toward each other, and presently parties are joined and
ice boxes uncovered. After covertly studying the apparently aimless
movements of our own gondola I finally unearthed a dark conspiracy
in the reunion line that interested only Paolo, our gondolier, and
an occasional crony at a neighboring oar. Paolo’s face and manners
are innocence itself, but his guile is fathoms deep. We could not
understand why he did not get us nearer to the _barca_, the universal
objective, until we saw the bottle pass between him and a raven-haired,
flashing-toothed athlete at the nearest oar and surprised the quick
greeting and low, musical laugh of congratulation and content. But who
minds, with Venice _a festa_! And Venice is Paolo’s—not ours, alas!

Night on the Grand Canal! What a realm of witchery! “The horns of
elfland faintly blowing.” What lullaby could soothe more sweetly
than the dip of the oar or the soft plash of the dark water under
the gondola’s prow! The charm of unreality invests the shadowy,
spiritualized palaces rising like silver wraiths from the quivering
stream. The summer moon touches each carven arch and column, each
stone-lace balcony, each fretted embrasure, each delicate ogive window
and sculptured capital, and lo, a magician’s wand has reared a
dream-land of unearthly beauty!

In the soft and odorous darkness the birds that love this Venice are
securely nesting—the gulls, that in winter whirl up the canals with
harsh clamors of the coming storms, are now at rest along the beaches
of their blue Adriatic; the swallows and pigeons are sleeping among
the red tiles of the crooked gables; the sparrows are aloft among the
mulberry-trees of the Giudecca and the sycamores of the Public Gardens;
the canaries are dim spots in fragrant magnolia-trees or in spreading
beds of purple oleander; and the ortolans, robins, and blackbirds
nestle among azaleas and the heavy festoons of banksias. All their
music now is hushed, and they are as mute and soundless to-night as
were their awe-struck sires, long centuries since, when gentle St.
Francis read them his offices under the cypresses of Del Deserto.

The night is fragrant with the breath of roses, carnations, and
camellias from palace gardens and with spicy honeysuckle from the
neighboring Zattere. Visions of stirring romance and adventure crowd in
on the mind. Down the pebbly paths of yonder garden surely some lover
has just passed, brave in velvet doublet and silken hose, from laying
his roses at the satin-slippered feet of his lady! Presently he will
drift this way in his cushioned gondola and the soft night winds will
bear her the mellow throb of his guitar and many a plaintive sigh
of love and Venice. But hush! from out that old black watergate, in
bravo’s cloak and with muffled oar, who bears the helpless lady away
through the deep shadows under the garden wall? Hard with your oar,
my gondolier! A purse of golden ducats if you speed me to San Marco!
I shall slip this scribbled note into the Lion’s Mouth! Ho, for the
vengeance of The Ten!

[Illustration: VENICE, GRAND CANAL FROM THE PIAZZETTA]

If it were day, what a different scene we should have on this twisting
sea-serpent of a Grand Canal. Venice would then be a sparkling vision
resplendent with every sea charm, tinted with pinks and opals and
pearls, and as changeful and full of caprice as any other coquette.
Instead of this spangle of stars above, we should have a vast expanse
of pale-blue sky, cloudless and glittering, and the misty reflections
that now sink faintly deep down into these dark waters would vanish
before a stream so azure and brilliant that it would seem as if a
portion of the sky above had been cut and fitted between the palace
fronts below. And how these mellow old churches and houses would glow
and their wavering shadows shake in the stream! The exquisite traceries
on balcony, arch, and column would seem carven of ivory, and from
under the red-tiled eaves grim heads of stone would stare down over
sculptured cornices and peep out through delicate quatrefoils and
creamy foliations. And into these wonder-palaces the eager sun would
peer to see the lofty ceilings all frescoed and gilded, the floors of
colored marbles, the carven furniture and faded rich hangings, and the
deep and arched recesses that overlook the gardens in the rear. And
what gardens! Mellow brick walls festooned in pale-blue wistaria and
lined with hedges of white thorn, a solemn cypress in either corner,
clumps of fig-trees and mulberry and golden magnolia, airy grapevine
pergolas of slender, osier-bound willow, little paths snugly bordered
with box, trellises of gorgeous roses, and here and there some antique
statue or rude stone urn half hidden in color masses of scarlet
pomegranates and snowy lilies.

The day-life of this famed waterway is very gay and picturesque. Here
is both energy and idleness, and jolly friendships and laughter and
light-heartedness. Deep-laden market scows pass ponderously by, piled
high with fruits and vegetables, the rowers singing at their oars or
shouting voluble greetings. Fishermen step slowly along, balancing
baskets on their heads. Swarthy, black-eyed women, in dark skirts and
gay neckerchiefs and with mauve-colored shawls falling gracefully from
head to waist, throng the _riva_ shops and bargain over purchases with
violent gestures and eager earnestness. Priests returning from mass in
rusty black cassocks loiter among the noisy groups and are received
with profound bows and reverent touches of the cap. Husky, barefooted
girl water-carriers, known as the _bigolanti_, stride by with copper
vessels hanging from the yoke across their shoulders and offer you a
supply for a _soldo_. Up the intersecting canals endless processions
are passing over the arching bridges, and you pause, perhaps, to
observe the varied life from a place by the rail: girl bead-stringers
with wooden trays full of turquoise bits; garrulous pleasure parties
off for the Lido; laboring boatmen, breaking out into song; old men
and women shuffling along to gossip and quarrel around the carven
well-heads of the little _campi_; and now and then some withered old
aristocrat on his way to have coffee and chess at Florian’s and then a
solemn smoke over the “Gazetta di Venezia” before the Caffè Orientale
in the warm morning sun of the _riva_ of the Schiavoni.

How well the Foscari Palace, there, looks by night. The Foscari
Palace—poor old Foscari! It is a sad but glowing chapter his name
recalls. Here lived the great Doge, the least serene of all their
Serenities. Grown old in power and worn with foreign wars, his heart
broke over the treason of his worthless son, and the helpless, sobbing
old man, no longer of use, was deposed by The Ten in his tottering
age. The very next day he died—and there, in that palace. Just now,
when the red-fire glowed, a pale campanile stood out of the gloom to
the right and beyond the palace; that is where they buried him, in the
church of the Frari. With belated reverence and remorseful at having
dishonored him a few hours since, they proceeded to make history in
Venice with the splendor of his obsequies. They clothed him in cloth of
gold, set his ducal cap upon his head, buckled on his golden spurs,
and laid his great sword by his side. And thus in solemn pomp, attended
by nobles and lighted by countless tapers, the pageant passed out of
San Marco, crossed the Rialto, and came at last to the church of the
Frari. And there what is left of Doge Foscari lies to this day. It
is not a poor place to be in, either. The bones of Titian and Canova
are beside him, a Titian masterpiece glorifies the choir, and on the
opposite wall are two altar pieces of Bellini’s so lovely as to mark
the very zenith of Venetian art.

A pause in the music of the serenade brings us suddenly back to the
Venice of to-night. A vast scramble is in progress. We jostle and
scrape forward another few yards. The _barca_ sends a light hose-spray
to right, left, and in front in a desperate effort to clear a passage.
Dilatory or helpless gondoliers are lightly sprinkled, and all those of
us who a moment since had been envying their good positions now basely
give way to howls of joy. No use to struggle: all gondoliers are alike
in such a crush. A champion Castellani is no better than Paolo, if he
_is_ strong enough to bend copper _centesimi_ pieces between thumb and
finger. Presently we stop. The tumult rages, good-naturedly and jolly,
as the jockeying goes on for improved positions. And then there falls a
sudden silence. A tenor is singing the “Cielo e Mar” of “La Gioconda.”
You lie at full length on the cushions, the gondola lifting slowly with
an indolent sway, and under the spell of the dreamy, witching music
you watch the smoke of your cigar as it drifts up and over and out and
away toward the little streets in the dark.

Ah, little streets of Venice; under whatever name of _calle_ or _corto_
or _salizzada_, you are just the same—bedraggled and delightful! What
rare surprises are always reserved for each revisit—an overlooked
doorway, a balcony, some sculptured detail! If the house-fronts are
plastered and patched—still they are picturesquely discolored. If the
fantastic windows are out of plumb the gay shutters, nevertheless, are
charmingly faded and there are pretty faces behind the bars. The roofs
let in the rain—but how rookish and rickety they are. The battered
doors are low—but they have knockers that are ponderous and imposing.
Name plates are surprisingly large and keyholes deep and cavernous. The
stirrup-handled bell-wires run almost to the tiny iron balconies, away
up under the oval windows of the eaves—those little balconies that for
ages have never refused sympathetic regard for the hum of slippered
feet on the stone pavements below. And there are weathered store-fronts
with corrugated iron shutters and gilt signs on black boards; and under
your feet in the pavement are odd little slits for water to run off
in, that remind you of openings in letter-drops at home. There, too,
are the shops whose modest output arrays the Venetian poor to such
advantage, and there are the stores and markets where they bargain
for _frittole_ of white flour and oil, or _polenta_ of ground corn,
and personally pick out their sardines at ten for a penny, or indulge
in a fine _brunrino_ as large as a trout. There one sees picturesque
lanterns and gay little window-boxes full of flowers away up among
the chimneys and tin waterpipes. The rooms, perhaps, seem dark and
gloomy to us of modern houses, but you stop with a thrill of delight
at the happiness in the voice that carols a gay air from “Traviata”
somewhere in their depths, and you look up with a smile at the bright
bird that loves that dark cage. Some carping and fussy visitors may
compare these rude homes to the dungeons under the “Leads” beyond the
Bridge of Sighs, but how could they consistently be other than they
are, venerable and dirty, with splotches of paint and charcoal markings
and half-effaced pencil-drawings, of cracked plaster full of holes,
and all toned down by time and weather to a uniform mellow gray! Of
course, such critics accept, with all Italy, the proud ones with the
marble tablets that tell that Marco Polo lived there, or Petrarch,
or Titian, or Garibaldi, but the nameless and undistinguished many
are quite as worth preserving. Thus one appreciates the inspiration
of the authorities and applauds their industry in profusely tacking
up those little ovals of blue tin with the jealous warning in white
letters, “Divieto di Affisione”—that is, “Don’t spoil these walls
with placards!” So, peace, harping Philistine, to whom nothing is ever
hallowed! Though your emotions are thin and your enthusiasms a-chill,
respect these little byways; and if not for themselves, then for where
they bring you—to fascinating curiosity shops of the antiquarians
up the back courts; to charming _campi_ where you stand by graven
well-heads, wonderwist in the lengthening shadows of historic churches;
to lichen-grown bridges, themselves pictures, arched over sunny canals
overhung by gabled windows and flanked by garden walls pale blue with
wistaria; or (could you have forgotten?) to nothing less than the great
Piazza itself and glittering San Marco, the supreme jewel-casket of the
world.

But the wistful “Cielo e Mar” is ended, and we move along to opposite
the Accademia, treasure-temple of Venetian art. You uncovered just
then, my comrade of the night, and out of reverence to the Titian
Assumption, I dare say. I uncovered, too, but it was to the madonnas
and saints of Giovanni Bellini. Do you know them well? No? Not the
Santa Conversazione? Ah, then life still holds a delight in reserve for
you.

A sudden great and universal hush has fallen on canal and shore.
Another tenor, sweet and vibrant as a bell, breathes that tenderest of
all serenades, the one from “Don Pasquale.” At all times irresistible,
it seems doubly so now. The faces that you see are grave and eager and
transported. The silence and rapt attention is a tribute beyond words
to composer and singer; and where else but in Italy would a multitude
hush to a whisper when music sounds, and break into wild tumult when
it ceases? A few weeks here, and one comes to understand that music
is the very breath and life of these people. The vagabond Venetian,
penniless but happy, comes out of his doze in a corner of a sunny
_riva_ and before his mouth has settled from its yawn it is rounded
into a song. A bottle of cheap wine, a loaf of bread, and a guitar
provide joy enough for an army in the family parties of the poor that
float out on to the lagoon in rough market gondolas at sunset. Verdi
and Rossini make work light for women, walk to business with the men,
and hum comfort and courage all day. And so one needs to be discreet
and silent when a solo begins or be prepared for an instant and
tempestuous rebuke. But there seems little need for a warning to-night,
with the hand of Venice so strong upon us.

Between serenades one takes his ease on the cushions and looks about
on the people around him. Some one begins to whistle the jolly old
“Carnival of Venice,” and it is promptly taken up on all sides, bolder
spirits even venturing upon the variations. A German gives us the
Fatherland’s version, about the hat that had three corners. An enormous
Spaniard near at hand bellows a fragment of “I Pagliacci,” and is
thunderously applauded. His friends, embarrassed but elated, urge him
on to a second effort, which is received with indifference. On his
third attempt he is hissed. Such is the caprice of an open-air audience
in Italy.

The jolly stag party in the gondola to the right presses upon us the
hospitality of the capacious hamper, which we decline with a thousand
thanks and in gestures more intelligible than our pidgin-Italian.
At our elbow two slender American women in black provide excellent
eavesdropping entertainment. Here is talk to our liking, thrilling with
the names of men of fame who knew and loved this Venice. “Just over
there, Helen, is the palace where Browning lived and died. What an
elaborate place for a poet! Howells lived next door, you know, when he
wrote his ‘Venetian Life.’ These places are ever so much finer than the
one farther down where Goldoni wrote his comedies. Oh, don’t you know
the Goldoni house? It is this side the Rialto, just opposite the Byron
Palace with the blue-striped gondola posts.” “I think,” says the other,
“that the memories are quite as rich farther on. At the Hotel Europa,
you remember, Chateaubriand once lived, and so did George Eliot; and
from there you can see the Danieli where George Sand and Alfred de
Musset sought happiness but only found misery.” At mention of the
Europa the face of her friend is transfigured and our own hearts beat
high in sympathy with the reverence of the lowered voice: “Wagner wrote
‘Tristan und Isolde’ at the Europa. He died in the palace where the
three trees stand, away down beyond the Rialto.” Oh, deathless Venice!
Oh, universal Love! They marvel at this elfin world—the English
father, mother, and son in the gondola ahead.

“It is a mode of mind.”

“Or a form of hypnosis; a psychological phase.”

The boy turns from the distant fairy candles of San Marco and regards
them with amaze and disapproval. His enthusiasms are keen and a-quiver
and the freshness of life’s morning is on his face. “Don’t analyze,”
he says. “Just breathe it and feel it.” The parents exchange amused
glances and smile indulgently. “‘Out of the mouth of babes and
sucklings,’” quotes the father under his breath; but we know, and they
know, that they have been answered.

Gorgeous silks and priceless tapestries and rare Oriental stuffs have
doubtless often hung from the balconies of the palace on the right in
the great gala days of the wonderful past when the Carnival lasted
half a year. The law had not yet ruled that all gondolas must be a
uniform solemn black, and the cradle-like boat of to-day, for all its
brass dolphins and carven scenes from the “Gerusalemme Liberata,” would
have cut a sorry figure beside the sumptuous ones of an earlier time,
with their mountings of silver and gold, profusion of rich colors,
upholstery of enormous value, and bearing owners of fabulous wealth
whose names were written in the city’s Book of Gold. Ah, those were
the triumphant days when foreign princes waited, half a hundred at a
time, to have the judgment of the Venetian Senate on the affairs of
their states; when royalty was no unusual spectacle on the Piazza of
San Marco; when the argosies of the world, “with portly sail,” came
to anchor in these waters; when Dante and Petrarch were received as
ambassadors; when the Admirable Crichton would be tossed a hundred
ducats for amusing the Senate with an extemporized Latin oration; and
when his Serenity, the Doge, on Ascension Day fared forth in dazzling
splendor to espouse the sea from the throne of his sumptuous Bucentoro.
The glory of that old and powerful Venice can never pass from the
memory of men. Whole libraries preserve it in imperishable record. It
is interesting, too, to note how it affected bygone visitors just as it
does us to-day—as when one turns the pages of John Evelyn’s “Diary”
and smiles to see how soon it was after his “portmanteau” had been
“visited” at the Dogana customs-offices that he pronounced the Merceria
to be “one of the most delicious streets in the world for the sweetness
of it,” and learned with amaze of the skill and rapidity of Venetian
artisans who, while King Henry III of England was one day visiting the
Arsenal, built a galley, rigged, and finished it for launching, and
cast a cannon of sixteen thousand pounds and put it on board,—and
all while his Majesty was having luncheon. There was, indeed, a great
deal of the marvelous about men who could contrive glass goblets so
sensitive as to betray the presence of poison, or who could at so early
an age make such exquisite books as the Aldine classics, to the despair
of publishers for hundreds of years to follow.

Just now, in the fitful glare of red-lights, hundreds of eager Venetian
faces, transported as always by the spirit of Carnival, were seen
in excited groupings in every nook and corner of the neighboring
_fondamente_. One thinks how different is the present scene from
those these people are accustomed to look upon on other nights. You
would find them then in the little family squares whose corners are
shrines of the Virgin set with flowers and illumined with candles.
Husband and wife will, perhaps, have spent the early evening in
gallery seats at the Teatro Goldoni, and Giovanni, weary with a long
day at the _traghetto_, would have finished thumbing the headlines
of the day’s “L’ Adriatico” and would now have his friends about
him, and Maria would let the _bambino_ stay up a little longer, and
all would feast with prodigious merriment and satisfaction on the
ever-popular _soupe au pidocchi_,—which is mussel-broth flavored with
spices,—to be followed by Chioggia eels and white wine of Policella.
Neighboring women would, of course, drop in for their dearly loved
gossip, hatless, with silver pins fastening their blue-black hair,
coral beads around their necks, and draping shawls thrown over their
bright waists. And presently some withered old coffee-roaster would
drag himself in with his fragrant ovens glowing, the bright flames
leaping, and toffee-venders would plead for sales. With the ease of
sleight-of-hand a guitar suddenly makes its appearance out of nowhere
and everybody enthusiastically joins in some haunting, languorous,
dreamy _villotte_ dear to the hearts of Venetians. Just around the
corner lounging groups would be scattered before café doors and voices
would be humming in low, eager talk. The usual wrangling and bargaining
would be in progress at the cooking-stalls piled high with fish and
garlic, _polenta_, cabbages, and apples. In near-by _trattorie_ with
sanded floors artistic bohemia, with ambition numbed by the latest
African sirocco, battens on bowls of macaroni in a turmoil of smoke and
confusion. In the dark interior of a neighboring wineshop one would
find the wonderful golden-browns that Rembrandt loved, as a single
oil lamp glows on the weathered faces of a circle of old cronies.
And somewhere, just at hand, a gondolier’s weird and fascinating cry
of “Ah, Stalì!” would be heard; and all about them Venice would be
crooning her ancient lullaby in the ceaseless, low lapping of water on
stone steps.

All together and forward once more, to opposite the church of the
Salute. We have lost our recent neighbors and have an entirely new
set. The changes in the grouping are like the shuffling units of a
kaleidoscope. A brilliant company is gathered on the balconies of
Desdemona’s Palace, but Othello is not among them—another piece of
calculated devilty, no doubt, on the part of the crafty Iago! Still,
Portia is there from flowery Belmont and with her are Jessica and
Lorenzo. The music is now from melodious old “Dinorah,” charmingly
rendered and just as soothing as the first time one ever heard it.
The Salute stands out impressively in her great domes and elaborate
spirals. It is beautiful, of course, by night, but then if it were day
we might run inside and revel in Titians and Tintorettos. The fantastic
columns fade and flash as the red and green fires smoulder or flame,
and the gilded Fortuna on the dome of the adjoining Dogana catches some
of the glitter and generously sends it on to the Seminario in the rear.

Some one calls my name from among the oleanders of the Britannia
terrace, just opposite. What a delight to be known by name in this
charmed city! I look up at the adjoining hotel and there are the
windows of my room, and I know that within in the dark my clothing and
articles of travel lie about. With secret wonder I whisper to myself
that I, after all the years of waiting and hoping, _I_ am actually a
part of Venice!

One might think there could not possibly be any more gondolas in all
the city outside of to-night’s tremendous gathering; but even now you
could find them floating lazily about the lagoons, or away out toward
the Lido where the moist winds are ruffling the water and the distant
Bride of the Sea seems only some sort of bright exhalation. Theirs is
a languorous and listless drifting and their dim lamps waver slowly
like glowworms. Little need there for the musical wails of “Ah, Premì!”
“Ah, Stalì!” Little of such complaint as Byron made that gondoliers are
songless, for one could not ask for more plaintive and soothing melody
than the low, passionate crooning of the barefooted boy at the oar.
And, perhaps, in the musky dark of silent canals more gondolas than one
are even now stealing lightly and with love’s devious purposes under
the fretted balconies of the star-eyed daughters of Venice, while Beppo
muffles his oar to the warning of Tom Moore:—

    “Row gently here, my gondolier;
    So softly wake the tide,
    That not an ear on earth may hear
    Save hers to whom we glide!”

It seems weeks since, in the cool of this very morning, out at the
little island of Burano, I lunched under shady locusts in the quiet
garden of “The Crowned Lion.” It was a pleasant stop on the way to
deserted old Torcello—Torcello that mothered Venice, but now sleeps,
a clutter of grass-grown ruins, in the appalling stillness of her
weedy canals and thickets of blackberry hedges. Within a cable length
of where our gondola is now resting a black, tarry fishing-bark tugs
at anchor. If it were day and her sails were set, one could not help
being delighted over the oranges and reds and blues of her patched
and weathered canvas, the curve of the elaborately painted bow, and
the spirited air of the curious figurehead. Unchanged survivors of
the fading Past are these sturdy old _bragozzi_ of Chioggia, and one
could not ask for a braver show than they present when they hoist their
painted sails to dry in one long line from the Public Gardens to the
Doge’s Palace.

It was at Chioggia that we loitered, a few days back, and fed on
picturesqueness to satiety. We have but to close our eyes—and there
are the grizzled old fellows in red _berrettas_, trousers rolled to
their wiry brown knees and great hoops of yellow gold in their ears.
When the midday sun was hottest we found them sitting in the shade of
their fishing-boats’ sails, mending their nets with wooden bodkins and
brown twine. In the old days, when the hand of Venice was all-powerful
in this part of the world, the Chioggians were the gayest and most
picturesque people of these islands. Artists still consider them the
purest types of Venetians, but they are a sad and melancholy lot now,
as if burdened with the heritage of glorious memories. It seemed to me
that the old men were the happiest living things in Chioggia; then,
perhaps, came the boys, then the girls, and last of all the women—and
the older the women the gloomier. The flirt of a sober mantilla is the
nearest they ever come nowadays to gayety.

We shall never forget, nor ever want to, that wonderful sail back from
Chioggia to Venice. Listening to the music on the Canal to-night the
memory of it seems compact of dreams, or as the florid cloister-fancy
of a Middle-Ages monk that we had read in some illuminated old volume
bound in vellum and clasped with gold. There was all the vitalizing
pageantry of sunset about us, all the immensity of sky and sea, and
many a bright little island rising out of the rippling lagoon this
side the marshy wastes. The yellow strips of Pellestrina and Malamocco
topped the waves in two long lines, like half-submerged reefs of gold.
Above was a vast dome of turquoise glinted with pinks and grays, and
with here and there a little heap of snowy clouds. Every phase of the
wonderful sky was reproduced in the water. The sun reflected a second
sun of no less ruddy fire which burned across the sea in a broad
highway of shaking light that rolled to our very feet. The piled and
fleecy clouds were steeped in gold, and bands of purple mists across
Shelley’s Euganean Hills were pierced by it through and through.
Venice, a mirage of the azure sea, rose slowly as we drew nearer, a
witchery of towers, campaniles, palaces, painted sails, and drifting
gondolas. As the dimming beauty faded with the brief Eastern twilight
and we were gazing in awe on the enchanting panorama, there suddenly
loomed a fresh and added glory, for just above the topmost pinnacle of
stately San Giorgio floated a young summer moon!

Beauty has here an abiding-place. Venice is doubtless a fairer vision
now, with its myriad lights, than when the only illumination was
from flickering tapers before the corner shrines of the Virgin. More
comfortable it surely is than when St. Roche himself was baffled by
more than seventy plagues. The jaunty boatman and his peerless gondola
still charm us, and dustless and noiseless the city continues musical
with the cheery hum of voices and the soft shuffle of feet. In the
cool twilight of the churches marvels of sculpture and immortal
canvases still inspire and enthrall. Time has added new charms to the
marbles of bell tower, church, and palace, and nature still employs
a witchery scarce equaled elsewhere in decking the Sea City with
flowers. From the water-lilies of the Brenta, the flaming begonia
trumpets of the Giudecca, the pale sea-lavender of the Dead Lagoon, the
rose-pergolas and oleander-cloisters of San Lazzaro, the primroses and
sea-holly of the Lido wooded with odorous acacias and white-flowered
catalpas, and carpeted with crimson poppies and the snowy Star of
Bethlehem, away out to the sand dunes and lush grasses of Triporti,
there continually rises an inexhaustible incense of fragrance and
beauty.

The serenade is nearly ended. Anticipating the coming rush at the
San Marco Piazza, a word to Paolo starts us laboriously toward the
outskirts of the flotilla. From the Royal Gardens to the _molo_ is a
matter of only a dozen plunges or so of the stout oar, spurred by an
offer of extra _lire_ for extra speed. Off flies our gondola, frowning
as superbly as ever did swan in the eye of Keats. We dart alongside
the wet quay beyond the Bridge of Sighs and one of those superannuated
old gondoliers called _rampini_ earns a _pourboire_ by steadying the
prow as we jump ashore at the base of the column of San Marco’s winged
lion. St. Theodore looks down placidly from the vantage-point above
his crocodile as we pass between these storied pillars—“fra Marco
e Todaro,” as the Venetians say when they mean “between pillar and
post.” The _piazzetta_ is already crowded and our hope of a table at
Florian’s is dwindling. Never did the stately Sansovino Library or the
airy colonnades and warm Moorish marbles of the Palace of the Doges
look finer, but past them we speed with no time for the scantiest of
glances at the famous quatrefoils and the thirty-six pillars with the
renowned capitals, and in we hurry to the broad and glorious piazza
and its flooding of light and life. Florian’s is in a state of siege.
Every table seems taken and hungry people by hundreds are clamoring
for places. The Quadri, across the square, would probably have had to
content us had not the efficacy of frequent past tips saved the day,
and my nightly waiter welcomes us with his dry and mirthless smile
and slips us into a snug harbor under the very guns of the enemy. My
companions are officers of the American squadron now lying at Triest
and they pass their professional opinion that the strategy was capital.
But though officers, they are _young_ officers, and Venice has captured
them hand and foot. Scarcely have we completed our supper-order when
the flowing strains of the Coronation March from “The Prophet” roll in
from the _molo_ in the _barca’s_ good night, and, as if it were riding
in on that splendid musical tide, the noisy, jubilant host of the
_festa_ comes pouring upon us.

And what a fascinating spectacle does this grand, unrivaled old square
then present! Were Byron here to-night he would still have to call
it “the pleasant place of all festivity.” No chance now to study the
designs in this vast flooring of marble or to coax a half-persuaded
pigeon on to your shoulder. In every part of its two hundred yards of
arcaded length, set with storied architecture so inspiring by beauty
and association that it moved even the self-contained Mr. Howells to
exclaim, “It makes you glad to be living in this world,” and under the
blaze of its rimming of clustered lights and shops and thronged cafés,
there storms and chatters a vigorous, cheery, light-hearted multitude
fresh from the stimulus of the glittering water pageant. It comes in
through the _piazzetta_ with such a rush that one looks for the band
and band-stand, too, to be swept the full length of the square and out
under the arches of the Royal Palace. Such laughing and uproar! Such
a sirocco of gestures and hailstorm of crackling exclamations! This
human tidal wave of the Adriatic pours down the middle, seethes along
the edges, and swirls and eddies in the remotest corners. One sees in
it happy, voluntary exiles from almost every part of the world, but
to-night the _festa_-loving Venetians predominate. Every local type
is here; from the languid patrician, come in from her country estate
and now sipping anise-water here at Florian’s, and the vapid and
scented fashionable youths with carnations in their buttonholes, to the
flashing, black-eyed shop-girls with red roses in their crisp black
hair and graceful mantilla shawls dropping back from their tossing
heads, and the vigorous, smiling artisans, easy and jaunty of gait,
with soft hats pushed back at every rakish angle on their curly heads.
How happy and transported Maria is to-night, in her new black skirt and
crimson bodice, and how the sultry red smoulders through the olive of
her cheeks as her little hands whirl in a tempest of gestures and the
lightnings of excitement play in her midnight eyes! And no less carried
away is Giovanni, beside her,—proud as Colleoni on the big bronze
horse,—though he lets her do most of the talking and contents himself
with approving in quick, expressive shrugs. All classes of society
are with us—“rich man, poor man, beggarman, thief”; and old Shylock
himself, who was most of these, “dreaming of money-bags.” Scraps of
gay, slurring song are continually bubbling over and flashes of wit and
snappy repartees go flying to and fro. Flower-girls thread the press
and insist upon pinning _boutonnières_ on the men, and street merchants
move about offering everything from curios to caramel-on-a-stick. A
crowd gathers about a blind old troubadour thrumming a dirty guitar
and struggling to force his rusty voice along the melodious course of
some popular _villotte_, and presently he will be led among the tables
before the cafés and _centesimi_ and silver _lire_ will jingle into his
ragged hat.

It is little enough to say that no scene ever had a more romantic
setting. The quaint old Venetian quatrain does this famed spot scant
justice:—

    “In St. Mark’s Place three standards you descry,
    And chargers four that seem about to fly;
    There is a timepiece which appears a tower,
    And there are twelve black men who strike the hour.”

In the moonlight the sculptured and arcaded old buildings glow like
mellow ivory around three sides of it, and it is warmed and vitalized
by bustling cafés and brilliant shop windows set with tempting snares
of artful jewelry and cunningly wrought glass. Strong and proud the
great Campanile towers upward into the clear night, away above the tops
of the three tall flag-staffs. The sumptuous Cathedral, in its wealth
of glowing color and lavish adornment, makes one think of a vast heap
of glittering treasure piled up by returning Venetian pirates in answer
to the accustomed question, “What have you brought back for Marco?”
One can scarcely take his eyes off its lofty, yawning portals, its
gates of bronze, its forest of columns, its sweeping arches glowing in
every color of brilliant mosaics, its profusion of creamy sculptures,
its canopied saints and statued pinnacles and its great Byzantine
domes billowing into the purple sky. On the ancient clock tower of the
Merceria the fierce winged lion of St. Mark’s holds a resolute paw on
the open Gospels, and the bronze bellringers swing twelve ponderous
blows and hang up the hour of midnight on a dial of blue and gold.
As they pause at the completion of their labors and look down on the
sea of faces turned toward them from the Piazza they seem so nearly
galvanized into life that it would scarcely surprise one to hear them
shout, “What news of the argosies of Antonio?”

With the sparkling beauty of Venice so irresistible it is a terrible
temptation to my companions to hurry straight back to Triest and come
over with their battleship and, like dashing naval Lochinvars, force
an espousal of this incomparable Bride of the Sea. Vain thought! It is
Venice herself who has always done the espousing; fully to possess her
it must be on her own conditions of complete surrender.

How inevitable it seems at night that you must take the step; must cry
out, once and for all, to fellow voyagers on the Dead Lagoons of Life:
“Ho, brothers! No more of the drab and wretched wastes for me! I am for
beauty and romance—‘in Venice, all golden, to dream!’ I shall dwell in
this enchanted realm of _dolce far niente_ and float with my gondola
into the final Sunset. Companions on Life’s waters, ‘Ah, Stalì’!”




[Illustration]




PARIS

MIDNIGHT TO 1 A.M.


Like a practiced coquette, Paris, the world’s _enchanteresse_, reserves
for the supreme moments of midnight her rarest resources of gayety and
charm. Her last laughs are her best. And decidedly, she is dangerous
when laughing. Beyond question, her glowing eyes at midnight are
wonderfully sweet and beguiling; and hers is the skill to touch the
bright hours with the most delectable _couleur de rose_. There is
satisfaction for each desire. “Would monsieur sup?” The most amazing
cuisine in the world awaits your pleasure. “Would monsieur stroll?”
The sparkling lights and rustling trees of the fairest of boulevards
fairly drag you their way. “Would he drive?” You raise your hand; a
_fiacre_ dashes up; and soon the Bois and the Champs-Élysées, cool,
scented, dewy, receive you gladly to their enchanting retreats. “Would
he join a revel—just a little one?” _Cabarets_, _cafés-chantants_,
_bals publics_ were designed for no other purpose. “Would he look on
at life?” “_Garçon vite! Une demi-tasse—une; sur la terrasse!_”—and
heart could not ask for a madder, merrier, more absorbing spectacle
than that which will whirl and surge by the very edge of your little
round table. “Eh? Monsieur has a fancy for nature and solitude? _Mon
Dieu! C’est un original, celui-là! Mais_”—and you will find nowhere
gardens lovelier than those of the Tuileries, elegant with statues and
carpeted with flowers. Thus at every point the charmer wins. What is
left but surrender? She seems the very Queen of Heart’s Desire.

Of course, the night side of Paris is her most trivial side. But then
visitors have always refused to take her seriously at any time. No
matter how many wonderful achievements have been crying out to them all
day that this is one of the most extraordinary and advanced communities
to be found anywhere on the face of the earth, still they stubbornly
cling to the conviction that all is frivolity here and that night is
Paris’s supreme period and pleasure seeking her most conspicuous and
characteristic rôle. Accustomed to the droll ideas of foreigners,
and bothering little about them except to find occasional amusement,
Paris shrugs her shoulders in indifference and turns on more lights.
Brilliant, charming, and ingenious she creates what she prefers—an
atmosphere of gayety and beauty. And the visiting world purrs about
her in joy of a fascination it cannot find elsewhere and salves its
own patriotism with the conclusion that this is her principal _raison
d’être_.

As a matter of fact, the Parisians are masters of the art of living.
As their kitchen is the best, so is their drawing-room and study.
All the affairs of every day are handled with ease and grace, with
imagination and a kind of poetic skill that adorns even the ugly
and commonplace and invests them with attractiveness and charm. The
cheery light-heartedness that is a fundamental trait of Parisians
converts the life of their streets and parks into scenes delightful
either to contemplate or share. Indeed, they often seem to be only
grown-up children, so gracefully have they retained the fresh and
stimulating enthusiasm of youth—so rueful and pouting over a rainy
day; so exuberant over a bright one. And the best of it is that there
is an infection to their high spirits that passes into the observer
and clears his perception of the folly of worry and depression, and
shows him the value and availableness of optimism and good cheer. Such
is the glorious influence of a people whose attitude toward life is
essentially one of hope and zest.

No one is going to deny that the Parisian is vain. Indeed, his attitude
toward the rest of the earth, while patient and polite, is at bottom
patronizing and even a little supercilious. And sometimes, it must
be confessed, this gets on the visitor’s nerves. One cannot give out
admiration forever and rest content with getting none back. It is
easy to understand the mood of bitter derision into which even so
enthusiastic an admirer as Edmondo de Amicis fell when he wrathfully
wrote: “Three hundred ‘citizens’ hang over the side of a bridge to
see a dog washed; if a drum passes, a crowd collects; and a thousand
people, in one railway station, make a tremendous uproar by clapping
their hands, shouting, and laughing because one of the guards of the
train has lost his hat!” Yet De Amicis came shortly to see that this
is only the Parisian temperament, which he admired in so many other
of its manifestations, and that under it lie solid qualities of the
highest and rarest order. So he forgave Paris, as everyone does, and
took her again to his heart—albeit, I mistrust, with reservation and
a lingering grain of suspicion and perhaps something of the foreign
conviction that she is not always to be taken quite seriously.

[Illustration: PARIS, ON THE BOULEVARD]

To the vast majority of visitors Paris by night means the boulevards.
The beauty of these famed thoroughfares, the cosmopolitan and
fascinating sea of humanity that flows through them, the means
of amusement that abound, and all the many little refinements of
comfort and elegance to be seen on every hand place them in a class
by themselves among the city streets of the world. In the matter of
virility the life of the boulevards is amazing. Every one seems to be
at his keenest when he walks there. Anticipation is fairly skipping
on tiptoe. The old _boulevardier_, the traditional _flâneur_, has not
been disappointed of his evening’s diverting on-look these forty years
or more, and he can, therefore, clothed and gloved and caned _à la
mode_, proceed with his stroll in unhasting dignity, confident that the
usual amusing spectacle will unfold itself in good time. But the new
arrivals and the visitors of a few weeks show in their eager faces
that nothing is going to escape them and that a thorough debauch of
pleasure is the least they propose to make out of all the bewildering
light and life about them. From the Place de la Concorde to the Place
de la République a laughing, brilliant, light-hearted multitude pours
along all night with infinite bustle and chatter. Between twelve and
one o’clock it is at its gayest. The theatres and _cafés-concerts_
have emptied their audiences into the stream, which is swollen to the
very curb, and the driveways are whirling with an enormous outpouring
of busses, motors, and cabs. The size of the loads the hired victorias
and _fiacres_ will accommodate is determined solely by the inclination
and interest of the impertinent fat _cocher_ in the varnished plug
hat; and it is nothing to see a conveyance, that ordinarily carries
but two people, trundling merrily along behind a sprung-kneed nag,
with a man and several girls piled inside and all waving hands to the
crowd with the vastest _camaraderie_ imaginable. This is of a piece
with the universal high spirits and good humor that prevail along the
boulevards. It is all fun and frolic, and everybody is in it. The rows
of chairs and tables on the sidewalks before the cafés really make
the spectators a part of the show; and the groups before the artistic
little newspaper kiosks and the comfortable sitters on the green
benches along the curb are, in spite of themselves, part and parcel of
the big family, with something of the intimacy and allied interest of a
village street at fair-time. And it always seems fair-time in Paris by
night. The profusion of lights that have won it the title of “La Ville
Lumière” gives it an appearance of being perpetually _en fête_, and the
ebullient crowds complete the illusion.

But the Grand Boulevards have no monopoly of the night attractiveness
of the city. All over town stretch broad, clean streets with shade
trees and double lines of lights and rows of stone and stucco
houses. In the main these houses resemble each other rather closely;
slate-colored, Mansard-roofed, and with shallow iron balconies running
full length of the second, fourth, and fifth stories. By night they
fairly exhale an atmosphere of tranquillity and peace. There are,
besides, hundreds of beautiful roomy squares, flooded with light
and set with comfortable benches that are seldom without contented
occupants. Such a notable one as the Place de la Concorde is without
its equal in any city. It costs the three and a quarter millions of
people who live in and about Paris more than $70,000,000 a year to
maintain their city’s reputation for beauty; and not a sou of it is
begrudged. For Paris is the whole world to most of them, and many a
Parisian politician had rather be Prefect of the Seine and rule this
town than president of the whole Republic. And with what reason! “It
is a world-city,” said Goethe, “where the crossing of every bridge or
every square recalls a great past, and where at every street corner a
piece of history has been unfolded.”

Whoever turns from the boulevards for a space will learn of other kinds
of life that are in full cry at midnight. What of the studio revelries
of the Quartier Latin? There abound jollity and earnestness and strong
friendships with few of the gilded accessories of the _Rive Droite_.
The brightest of these scenes are often the most meagre in setting. A
group of jovial, smoking, singing companions—and about them an easel
and sketching-board, a dingy divan, a few battered chairs, a stove in
the corner with the remains of the last meal, a huddle of draperies and
hangings, fragments of casts and uncompleted sketches on the walls, and
a corner table piled with a dusty litter of squeezed-out paint-tubes,
broken brushes, magazine illustrations, a dog-eared book or two, and a
generous strewing of cigarette butts. The cleanest things in sight are
a freshly scraped palette and a sheaf of brushes stuck in a half-filled
jar of water. With so much of equipment your merry, care-free artist
squeezes the orange of life to its smallest drop, and cares not a sou
how the whole world wags, provided all is well between the Place de
l’Observatoire and the Seine.

Then, again, were you to pass some pleasant house on a quiet avenue
where an evening’s party is ending, you could not help but linger under
the windows in delight to hear some tender song of Massenet’s, some
soothing _berceuse_ of Ropartz’s, a haunting plaint of Saint-Saëns or a
vitalizing torrent of Chaminade’s.

And perhaps where you might most expect just such a scene as this,
behind the closely-drawn window draperies of some handsome apartment,
there is gathered around a broad green table a group of flushed,
excited men to whom a hard-eyed _croupier_ is singing the abominable
siren song of “Faites vos jeux,” “Les jeux sont faits,” “Rien ne va
plus.” It seems quiet and peaceful enough. You could scarcely believe
that there hangs above it the shadow of the little gray Morgue down
behind Notre-Dame!

Before returning to the giddy boulevards for a final _petit-verre_
and an exchange of pleasantries with café acquaintances, one likes
to finish a cigar in an aimless ramble through such placid scenes as
these. Not only may he so indulge the pleasing diversion of speculating
over the kinds of home life that go on within these houses, but
incidentally he escapes the tumult of the maelstrom for a few calm
moments, and eventually sees for himself what a pity it is that so many
night fascinations should abound in Paris and be enjoyed by so few.
He may like to draw moral conclusions from the peace-loving pigeons
nesting in the war-glorifying reliefs of the gigantic and towering Arc
de Triomphe, or take satisfied note of the monuments of the victories
of peace that dot the broad avenues that radiate from it. One such
monument is always under the eyes of the _boulevardiers_ in the form
of that most glorious of all temples to music, the Paris Opera House.
It is especially impressive by night, with the shadows blending
columns and statues in bewildering beauty, and high-lights from the
street lamps glinting on sculptured balustrades and cornices, chalking
the edges of half-hidden arches and penciling the delicate detail of
medallions and reliefs. Nor, it must be allowed, are devotees often
wanting for that fair Greek temple of La Madeleine—so chaste and of
such imposing dignity, rimmed with giant columns and embowered in
verdure.

After like fashion does night enhance the beauty of the great, rambling
Louvre—though this may only be Diana’s way of paying tribute to the
Arts and of venerating the sacred shrine of a sister divinity, that
serenest and sublimest of goddesses, the Venus de Milo. There is
certainly something of almost ethereal comeliness by night to those
long vistas of columns and arcades, to the shadowy sculptures of the
pavilions, the lines of graceful caryatids and the blustering triumphal
groups of the pediments. One might fancy the Louvre wearing a look of
grave disapproval over the hubbub that drifts in from the boulevards
were he not aware how carefully it treasures so many pictorial
skeletons in its own closets. Boucher and Watteau are on record with
infinitely worse scenes than these. But now it has the appearance of
some palace capitol of Shadowland; and before it in perfect sympathy
lies its beautiful dream-kingdom, the hushed and fragrant gardens of
the Tuileries,—fair as the golden Hesperides,—fresh with fountains,
silvered in patches with little shining lakes, marquetried in flowers,
and peopled with shadowy forms of pallid marble.

From a Seine bridge one notes the wizard liberties the reckless
moon takes with the colonnaded dome of the sombre Panthéon. And,
more astonishing still, the magic tricks it plays with the adorned
and enormous bulk of Notre Dame—now veiling, now revealing massive
buttress and delicate rose-window, some recessed arch tucked full
of sculptured saints all snugly foot to head, or a goblin band of
hideous gargoyles that leer ghoulishly down from out the purple
haze of the towers. One could well wish, however, for a closer view
of that exquisite survivor of the Valois kings, the peerless Tour
Saint-Jacques, at the first sight of which the most indifferent exclaim
with delight over so rare a vision of grace and lace-like beauty, over
long slender windows delicately foliated, over traceries of stone
like petrified festoons, and an ensemble so suggestive of some dainty
ivory-carving a million times enlarged. With a glimpse of the round
pointed towers of the dread Conciergerie comes something of the horror
of the days of the Terror, and one fancies ghastly forms beckoning him
at the windows with white, frightened faces and hanging hair and eyes
with hideous rings, and delicate praying hands upheld to passers-by,
and iron bars clutched by the little white fingers of Marie Antoinette
and her court.

From such a gruesome fancy it is a relief to turn and look down on
the dark rippling Seine and watch the wavy ribbons of light swim
quiveringly out from the bridge lamps. And there in the cool of their
stone wharves, still panting and perspiring from the violent exertions
of the earlier evening, lie the fat little open-deck steamers that
haul the lovers home. For many a happy pair this day has been dining
deliciously _à deux_ under the gay terrace awnings of one or another
of the romantic, flower-embowered inns that overlook the river all the
way from Charenton to gray old Argenteuil, where Héloïse in her nunnery
fought her losing fight against love and the memory of Abélard. Some of
these steamers appear alarmingly apoplectic, so that one wonders how
they have managed to wheeze safely under all those low arches with the
garlanded “N’s” and past so many formidable buttresses all sculptured
cap-a-pie.

If now you turn and look upward and about you, lo! the heaped
and cluttered roofs of Paris—the most fantastic and romantic of
spectacles! It is singular, almost startling, to see how they stare
down as though to study you, and with apparently as much curious
intentness and dark suspicion as you do them. There must be whole
volumes of stories to each of them. Out of the ponderous Mansard roofs
impudent, leering little dormer windows wink down and squint up, each
with his rakish peaked roof like a jockey cap over one ear. And up
above even them are whole groves of blackened chimney-stacks leaning
all askew, like barricades for _sansculottes_. You look expectantly to
see miserable white Pierrot come forth, guitar in hand, and sing sadly
of Colombine to the pallid moon.

Suddenly, to the right, the lift of a cloud unveils the bronze dome of
the solemn Hôtel des Invalides, and your heart beats high with thoughts
of the marvelous man who lies under it among his tattered battle-flags
on a pavement inscribed with his victories. It is a sobering reflection
that now in the darkness and stillness of that chamber the only eyes
that are looking down on his porphyry sarcophagus are those of the
bronze Christ that hangs on the cross in the little side chapel of the
tomb.

“Tout-Paris,” as smart society calls itself, spends the early summer
at Trouville. All the most exclusive names of the two-volume Bottin
are then inscribed in the hotel registers of this _recherché_ resort,
nor are their owners to be looked for in town again until long after
the derbies have reappeared in the hatters’ windows. But while Fashion
is flirting on the beaches and betting on the little wooden horses of
the Trouville Casino, what is left at home after “All Paris” has gone
is quite sufficient to keep the boulevards lively. What walking-space
remains is eagerly employed by the tens of thousands of visitors. One
may not, therefore, see the fashionable show of winter, but he finds
an acceptable substitute in the vivacious summer throngs with their
perpetual atmosphere of Mardi Gras.

As midnight wanes and the multitude waxes, it is amusing to speculate
upon the scattered sources of the innumerable tiny streams that come
gradually trickling in. The outlying attractions hold firmly enough up
to this hour, but the magnet of the boulevards is strongest in the end.

Montmartre, you may be sure, has been up to her old tricks. What “La
Butte” has to learn about promiscuous entertaining may be classed among
the negligible quantities. Somewhere in that honeycomb of _moulins_,
_cabarets_, penny-shows, spectacles, _revues_, tiny theatres with
sensational rococo façades and cafés with fantastic names dedicated to
the riotous and the _risqué_, diversion is bound to be forthcoming for
any amusement hunter _blasé_ with the usual. All the way down from the
quaint little shops and crooked, cobble-stoned streets of the rustic
upper region above the Moulin de la Galette to the blazing purlieus of
the Place de Clichy and the Place Pigalle, there is always something
on hand at midnight to amaze the neophyte. You may indulge or not, as
inclination dictates, but you are pretty apt to be astonished, when you
look at your watch, to see how long you have lingered. French ingenuity
has lavished itself on every form of “attraction” from vaudeville and
_bals publics_ to papier-maché establishments devoted to parodies of
Heaven and Hell. The Boulevard de Clichy is the heart of “La Butte,”
but the life it pumps along its arteries flows principally from one
show to another. You may settle down on a bench under the trees, if
you like, and resolve to view life only in the open in defiance of
all the devils rampant in the neighborhood, but presently a flashing
electric sign shrieks out an overlooked novelty and you find yourself
saying, “Oh, well, since I am in Paris,” etc., etc., and off you go.

The excuse of being in Paris covers a multitude of sins. To do as the
Parisians do serves purposes rarely indulged by Parisians themselves.
It must be because “everything is different here.” The frolicsome party
in pink stockings who dropped her heel playfully on my bashful friend’s
shoulder in an aside of the “quadrille” at the Moulin Rouge was merely
turning one of the tricks that pass as _chic_ on Montmartre. She was of
the assured and robust type that supports the “pyramid” in acrobatic
feats, and the effect this had of dazing my friend arose rather from
astonishment at its unconventionality than delight at its skill.
This much I gathered when he seized my arm and hurried me away and
eventually choked out, “Do you know, I have to keep saying to myself
‘_Mullen, can this be you!_’” I think it was quite as hard on him at
the Jardin de Paris, on the Champs-Élysées, when he saw beautifully
gowned Paris girls step out of the crowd and go down the chutes on
their shoulders, screaming with laughter, in a whirl of skirts and
flash of lingerie. _In Paris!_ What American would dream of trying the
tricks at home that he accomplishes with the ease of an expert on and
under the tables of the “Rat Mort” or the Café Tabarin? It is a pretty
problem as to whether he has saved up a special surplus of buoyancy for
this city alone, or whether he has become infected with the natural
high spirits of the Parisians and discovers too late that he is unable
to control them as they do. The men who want “one more fling” before
settling down head straight for Paris. It is probable if they could not
get here that they would dispense with the fling altogether.

Nor is the _Rive Gauche_ without its votaries at midnight. If the Latin
Quarter stands for anything it is for unconventionality and comfortable
enjoyment. If it is Thursday night the famous Bal Bullier is in full
blast, and visitors are gazing down from the encircling boxes upon a
jolly whirl of students in velvet coats and black slouch hats cutting
fantastic capers in the quadrilles with their latest _bonnes_ and
pretty models. Mimi and Musette are on the arms of Rudolphe and Marcel,
“contented with little, happy with more.” Those so disposed need not
long remain uncompanioned if they take a turn among the tables under
the trees of the enclosed garden, where from any cozy corner a soft
voice at any moment may ask you for a cigarette. With so auspicious a
start there is no reason, if you are that sort, why you should not be
swearing eternal devotion before you have finished one _citron glacé_.

And no matter what night it is there is the old “Boul’ Miche’” as
always, the resort and delight of artists and students from time
immemorial. Would you sup, there are cafés, _tavernes_, _brasseries_,
and restaurants of every price and description. You can have a _plat
du jour_ of venerable beef and a quantity of _vin ordinaire_ for the
modest outlay of one franc fifty; and your payment is received with
many a cheery “Merci, monsieur,” and “S’il vous plaît,” and hearty “Bon
soir,” and all the rest of that captivating civility that prevails to
the last corner of the city. It is perhaps more agreeable to join the
few remaining Henri Murger types among the crowds on the terraces of
the Taverne du Panthéon or the Café Soufflot and listen to the vigorous
talk that goes on over the little glasses of anisette and vermouth.
It always seems to be that “hour of the apéritif” pronounced by
Baudelaire,—

    “L’heure sainte
    de l’absinthe.”

When the flower-women and peddlers become too numerous before
the café and you are weary with declining nuts and nougats and
ten-olives-for-two-sous, you may have a look into Les Noctambules or
some other smoke-laden _cabaret_. The old-timers will grin behind
their cigars at your “stung-again” expression when the polite _garçon_
adds to the price of your first refreshment a franc or so for the
_consommation_ of what was advertised as a free show; but shortly you
get the run of things and settle down to attend the _chansonnier_,
who is the ox-eyed gentleman in the long beard who strides up to the
consumptive piano and pours forth an original and impassioned rhapsody
to our old friend “Parfait Amour.”

A little of this goes a long ways. When you have politely heard him
through, you are apt to think better of the boulevards and to start
bowing your way into the street. How still and deserted the familiar
places appear where by day is so much life and stir—such bustling
about of stout market-women in aprons, such racing of delivery-boys
in white blouses shouldering trays and boxes, such a concourse of the
little fruit wagons they push and the two-wheeled carts they haul! In
the little wineshops that dot the side streets one sees the portly
proprietors in shirt-sleeves behind the shining zinc bars polishing
glasses and chatting with their patrons, who are workmen in jerseys
and corduroy trousers and cabmen in glazed hats and whips in hand. The
loveliness of the Luxembourg Gardens fairly shouts for appreciation.
One could scarcely linger too long under the chestnuts and sycamores,
among the puffing fountains, the bronzes and marbles, the beds of
dahlias and geraniums, the oleanders of the Terrace and the great
stone urns that drip petunias and purple clematis. As you cross the
Seine by the old Pont Neuf and lean a moment on its broad balustrade,
kindly thoughts go out to the garrets that may now be sheltering those
pathetic stooping figures that bend all day above the long lines
of book-shelves along the quays, and never buy, and you wish “good
luck” to the good-natured book-sellers who never annoy them with
importunities, but sit indulgently oblivious on the benches opposite
and smoke their pipes and read their papers. So great a love of books
will at least insure the old _habitués_ from ever being included in
that dread toll of two-a-day that the Seine regularly pays into the
Morgue.

It is like getting home to be back on the boulevards,—gay, gleaming,
brimming, and confused. The air hums with the incessant shuffle of feet
on the asphalt sidewalks and the pounding of hoofs on the wood-paved
streets. The eyes ache with trying to miss none of the faces that
flash past or any of the good-fellowship that abounds. The bubbling
current drifts one along by little kiosks all a-flutter with magazines
and newspapers, by advertising pillars flaming in play-bills of many
colors, by crowded curb benches, glowing shop windows and table-lined
café fronts. The wise drop out where the red lights mark tobacco
_bureaux_ and replenish their cigar-supply from government boxes with
the prices stamped on them, rather than pay double for the same article
in a restaurant later on. As you proceed to your favorite café it is
immensely diverting to catch the glimpses of good cheer from those
you pass. It is the same sort of thing in each case and yet somehow
always different. On the red divans that extend around the rooms,
with mirrors at their backs and _petits verres_ on marble-topped
tables before them, one beholds formidable arrays of _bons vivants_,
all taking their ease with as hearty a will as the very kings of
Yvetot. Military men with red noses and white imperials, politicians
with pervasive smiles, litterati bearded like the Assyrian kings and
wearing rosettes of the Legion of Honor, fat merchants in fat diamonds,
and pot-hatted _élégants_ who advertise smart tailors with as much
exuberant grace as Roland himself. Happily for Paris, champagne is
never out of season, and popping corks are held by many to make sweeter
music than some of the orchestras in restaurant corners. The tide of
life appears at flood. La Belle Ninette, of the Folies, _très fêtée
et très admirée_, fares daintily on out-of-season delicacies, thanks
to the enduring ardor of the _distingué_ Marquis opposite, and drops
candied fruits with the prettiest air imaginable into the nervous
mouth of her favorite poodle, who is himself rejoicing in a new silver
collar set with garnets. _La séduisante_ Gabrielle, at an adjoining
table, having once been a _blanchisseuse_ herself, appropriately excels
in a toilette of cloudlike gossamer, and is quite the adored of the
rheumatic old party beside her, who has probably been doting on the
ballet for two generations. The talk is largely of _la belle_ this and
_la belle_ that, of the latest display of extravagance, the most recent
spectacle, the most promising plays for the fall, or the drollest
freaks of the new fashions. One sees foreign faces from all quarters
of the earth, as though it were some kind of international congress,
with both hemispheres fully represented. Long accustomed to seeing
the world without leaving home, nothing surprises Paris. A Chinese
admiral, a Bedouin sheik, a Spitzbergen Eskimo, a lotus-lover of
Tahiti, a Russian Grand Duke, or a millionaire hemp-grower of Yucatan
pass practically unremarked. It would be a matter of no comment if
“the Owl and the Pussy Cat went to sea in a beautiful pea-green boat.”
_L’amour_ is the point of common contact, and even so one has little
chance against a rich old _roué_ in the eyes of a _première danseuse_
or a far-visioned _chanteuse_ of the Marigny. Business flourishes in
the cafés. The harried waiters are kept bowing right and left and hurry
off crying “tout de suite.” Each open door sends out its vision of
fluttering hands and shrugging shoulders and one hears an incessant
rapid fire of “Bien!” “Dis donc!” “Écoutez!” “Mais non!” “Précisément!”
“Allons!” “Oh, là là!”— and so on and on. At Maxim’s and the Olympia
you would think there was a riot. Ice pails are as numerous as
pulse-beats.

When you reach your café at last, on the corner by the Opera House,
perhaps, the ponderous _maître d’hôtel_ assigns you a _garçon_, whose
name is doubtless François, Gustave, or Adolphe, and who is very
businesslike in short jacket and white apron. To him goes your order
for a _filet de bœuf_, or perhaps a _fricandeau_, or, better still, a
sole with shrimp sauce; and as you await its preparation you think with
satisfaction of the self-appreciative observation of Brillat-Savarin,
“One eats everywhere; one dines only in Paris.”

The life you then see about you is the usual thing here; to a
stranger, novel and amusing; to a Parisian, altogether important and
absorbing—an indispensable part of his existence. The setting is of
soft carpets, palms, red velvet divans, chandeliers, and a crush of
small, marble-topped tables. The place is crowded to the point of
discomfort. A thin veil of smoke hangs over all. There are people in
all kinds of street clothes and evening dress, ladies in opera cloaks
and gentlemen in immaculate white waistcoats. There are ordinary
individuals and fantastic “types”; ruddy, portly _bourgeois_ who shout
“mon vieux” at each other and make a prodigious racket generally;
and nervous old _beaux_ in _toupées_ who fancy themselves in drafts.
Occupations vary. Ladies are dining on champagne and truffles; the
man at your elbow is writing a letter; another is looking through the
illustrated papers; another has called for ink and paper and is casting
up the day’s expenditures; rubbers of dominoes and écarté are being
played out; there is a continual running to the telephone-booths and
you hear the muffled calls of “Allô!”—and all the time an orchestra is
holding forth in the corner. The clatter of chairs and dishes and the
confused rattle of conversation is amazing. Wit whets on wit. Everybody
has an opinion and is anxious to back it. Politicians bang their
fists on the tables and address one another as “citoyen.” Philosophers
have it out, Cartesian against Hegelian. Poets quote from their latest
lyrics and are tremendously applauded. Novelists dispose of rival books
with a scornful shrug and a withering _mot_. And the playwright, by
universal concession, is supreme cock of the walk.

Presently you move a little out of all this and have a seat near the
outer edge of the terrace, and begin to accumulate a pile of cups and
saucers each with the price of the order burned in the bottom. So
far as out of doors goes, you are now the audience and the passing
crowd the show. The number has dwindled, but in characteristics it
remains the same—sociable, good-humored, easy in manner, and quick
in intelligence. It will be seen to differ from the night throngs
of other cities not only in variety and exuberance, but in dramatic
qualities as well. _Camelots_ rush up to you crying the latest editions
of the evening papers, and suddenly, with furtive glances over their
shoulders, thrust some questionable commodity under your nose and
protest it is a bargain. Jolly parties sweep along, arm in arm, in
lines that cross the sidewalk from house to curb. Lady visitors, with
eyes full of excited delight, pause for a wistful glance down Rue de
la Paix where the establishments of famed milliners and modistes stand
in gloom, little dreaming that they may be touching elbows this minute
with the very _chefs des jupes_, _corsagères_, and _garnisseuses_ that
they are to visit in the morning. _Chic_ grisettes trip smilingly by,
who have dined frugally at Duval’s on chocolate and bread, to have
another rose to their corsages. There are _blasé_ clubmen from the
exclusive _cercles_ of Place de la Concorde and the Champs-Élysées, and
supercilious representatives of the American colony of the Boulevard
Haussmann. Here comes D’Artagnan himself, capable and alert, arm in
arm with blustering Porthos. Ragged _voyous_ with shifty looks run to
open the carriage doors. From time to time there saunters by in cap and
cape that model policeman, the affable and accommodating _sergent de
ville_, and if you look around for a _camelot_ then, you will find him
attending very strictly to business. And so the fascinating procession
troops merrily by: roaring students from the Boul’ Miche’, black-eyed
soldiers in shakos and baggy red trousers, members of the Institute,
pretty working-girls who handle their skirts with the captivating
grace of _comediennes_, the shapely dress-models they nickname
“quails,” conceited _figurantes_ from the _cafés-concerts_, famous
models, _cocottes_,—frail daughters of Lutetia,—with complexions
like Italian sunsets, impudent _gamins_ chattering in unintelligible
_argot_, _dilettanti_, _poseurs_, and the usual concomitants of beggars
and thieves. What a jumble of happiness and misery! What an amazing
spectacle, with the shimmer of silks and the glint of pearl ranged
beside the mendicant in his rags!

What a wealth of material, too, for the capable! One sees how Balzac
found the best types of his “Human Comedy” on the boulevards; why
Victor Hugo tramped them day and night and read shop signs by the hour
in search for characters and the names to fit them; where Zola got the
misery that he put between covers; where Molière secured impressions
that he transplanted so effectually to the stage. How Dumas must have
known these streets! And Flaubert and De Maupassant! Nor are they
exhausted yet; or ever will be. Where the entire gamut of the emotions
is so incessantly run as here, vital, human material can never be
lacking.

As one o’clock wears round, it is easy to distinguish a change in the
appearance of the crowd.

    “The tumult and the shouting dies,
    The captains and the kings depart.”

Something of that wan and forlorn look is beginning to appear that
makes even these buildings themselves seem dejected and remorseful, by
the time the street cleaners advance to flood the boulevards and the
sky beyond Père-Lachaise is paling to dawn. The heart says, “Let’s keep
it up”; the body says, “To bed.” And now, too, the crasser comedies of
the fag end of the night receive their _premières_. Amaryllis has lost
her Colin and laments loudly with Florian:—

    “C’est mon ami,
    Rendez-le moi;
    J’ai son amour,
    Il a ma foi.”

Mlle. Fifi demands her carriage and bundles out into it, with the
red-faced Baron hurrying after, carrying her amazing hat; and off
they go toward the Champs-Élysées. A stag party of revelers hails a
victoria and sinks limply onto its cushions; and they, too, head for
the Champs-Élysées with one hanging onto the _cocher_ and reciting
dramatically:—

  “Au clair de la lune,
  Mon ami Pierrot.”

Everyone smiles, for they know whither, they are bound. For Pré
Catelon, of course, in the Bois de Boulogne, where they will chase the
ducks and chickens around the little farmyard and make speeches to the
mild-eyed cows and recover themselves gradually on mugs of cold milk.

Clearly, it is time to depart. One does not want the lees of this
sparkling cup. A man is a fool to abuse his pleasures—though this
may sound naïve at one o’clock in the morning. Go, while everything
is still charming and delightful. The seasoned _boulevardier_ can do
it, for he has a viewpoint that is all his own; it is by no means that
of France, nor yet that of Paris by day, but of Paris by night—_his_
Paris. It is opportunism applied to society. Not the mad, reckless
_après-moi-le-déluge_ folly rout of the late Louises, but rather a
conception of the importance of few things and the inconsequence of
many. He sings with Villon: “Where are the snows of yester-year?” He
searches the classics, and has “Carpe Diem” framed. He skims Holy Writ
and puts his finger on “Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.”
“Life is poetry,” quoth he, “in spite of a limping line here and there!
Why fuss over Waterloo, or the Place de Grève, or the guillotine, or
the tumbrils that rattled up the Rue Royale? The present alone is ours;
enjoy it to the uttermost! Life is beautiful and of the moment. Lights
are sparkling. Fountains are splashing. The night is delicious with
fragrance and enchanting with music and laughter. Join me!” he cries.
“I raise my glass: _To the lilies of France and the Bright Eyes of the
Daughters of Paris!_”


THE END

  The Riverside Press
  CAMBRIDGE. MASSACHUSETTS
  U. S. A.



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