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820
KETCHES
OF
J RAVEL
IN JcrERMANY.
By Professor Blackie.
PART III.
Having learnt at Berlin that the grand triumphal entry of the troops
■returned from the late war, was not to take place till about the middle
of June, I made a short excursion to Russia, and on my way thither
passed through the good old Prussian town of Königsberg, known
to corn merchants by its flourishing corn trade, but to me interesting
chiefly for very different things.
Here, first I called on Professor
Lehrs, and found in his powerful eye and strong well-chiselled features
exactly those evidences of fine Roman strength which I had derived, at
a distance, from the perusal of his ‘ Aristarchusa work which for
soundness of view, and masculine vigour of expression, will maintain its
place in the libraries alongside of the great Latin masterpieces of
Wolf, Hermann, Ruhnken, and Wyttenbach.
After being ciceronized
by this excellent scholar through the stately and commodious new
buildings of the University, I passed through the small narrow street
which contains the house once inhabited by Immanuel Kant, a meta
physician, who had the singular merit of teaching European thinkers to
believe in their souls, after my subtle, self-puzzling countryman, David
Hume had fairly lost his identity in a whirl of unstable impressions
and ideas which he had spun out of the juggling phraseology of the
schools. Rounding the corner of this little street, I came suddenly, at
the top of a short descent, called Kant Street, on the bronze statue of
the venerable thinker. Here he stood, with his cocked hat under his
left arm, and bag-wig on his head, peering out curiously into the unsym
pathetic world of merchants, corn-dealers, and ship captains, in the
midst of whom it was his destiny, for so many years, persistently to
philosophise.
But Immanuel was too wise a man to complain of this
want of sympathy, as a mere technical metaphysical professor might
have done. As not only a thinker, but a really wise man, he knew that
nothing is so prejudicial to sound thinking as habitual confined inter
course with only one class of men. ‘ Nothing,’ he said, ‘ is so intolerable
�SKETCHES OF TRAVEL IN GERMANY.
321
as a company Consisting only of learned men;’ so he dined every day
at the common table of the principal inn, 'with sailors and ship captains,
and in this singular way added to the narrow limits of his solitary
thinking the large range of experience which belongs to the mercantile
and commercial classes.
After taking off my hat before this most
reputable philosopher, I proceeded to make an inspection of the old
Schloss, Castle, or Palace of the Prussian kings. I had in my memory
the humorous picture drawn by Carlyle of the coronation which took
place here of the first King of Prussia, in the first year of the last
■century, on which august occasion, his philosophical spouse, Sophia,
solaced her soul for the extreme weariness of the prolonged ceremonial
by publicly injecting a familiar pinch of snuff into her nose, beneath
the sublime frown of her royal lord.
So what fixed itself in my
memory principally was the room in which this coronation took place,
with the very throne on which self-created majesty placed the crown
{like the Czar of Russia) with his own hands on his own head, and a
¿significant environment of royal portraits hung on the walls. But my
■.eye was also attracted by a splendid dining hall or reception room, nearly
.three hundred feet long, or as long as some of our finest cathedrals,
which, with a necessary addition to its height (expected to be realised
when the present Crown Prince becomes kaiser-king), will certainly be
■ one of the largest and most imposing halls in Europe.
So much for
Königsberg. Want of time prevented me from an intended visit to the
battle-field of Eylau, which lies some considerable distance to the south
east of the town ; so I proceeded on through a grey and grim monotony
•of sand, and bogs, and blasted pines, for a space of nearly six hundred
miles, to the city of the Czar, and on the road, according to my custom,
.amused myself by spinning into verse my meditations on Immanuel
Kant, as follows :
Who’s here? a strange, old-fangled German Heir,
With hat three-cornered and bag-wig behind ;
Who peers with curious gaze, as if he were
New wafted from the moon by some stray wind
On the strange earth ! Ah ! now I know the man,
The sage who from this outmost Teuton station,
Marked their just bounds to all the thinking clan,
And pruned their wings to sober speculation.
Happy who, humanly, with human kind,
Works human work, well pleased from day to day,
Nor dares with high-plumed venture unconfined
Through trackless voids to push his plunging way !
God laughs at lofty thoughts ; but whoso proves
His ponder’d j ath, and walks by faith, He loves.
■vol.
II.—NO.
IX.
R
�322
SKETCHES OF TRAVEL IN GERMANY.
After a fortnight of very magnificent panoramic views of a. great
country, and very suggestive glimpses into social states, very far
removed from British, I returned from Moscow and St. Petersburg,
through Warsaw, to Berlin.
At Warsaw, the whole style of architec
ture, and the long rows of poplar trees along the turnpike roads,,
declared plainly enough that, though still under Russian sway, I was.
no longer in a Russian atmosphere. The civilization of Poland comes,
from the west, that of Moscow from the east ; and this contrast spoke
plainly out from every house-top, and from every street corner,
notwithstanding the forced Russian appearance given to the signs of
thé shops, which, by police order, are printed first in Russian charac
ters, and then in the native Polish, as of inferior dignity, below. But
my business here is only with Germany.
A railway rattle of about
fifteen hours’ duration brought us to Berlin, early on Wednesday
morning (the 14th), two days before the great military entry, and in.
time to learn that apartments in the best inns had risen from a dollar
a night—their usual rate—to a Frederick d’or.
I, of course, had
expected this, and, by travelling second class (contrary to Murray’s,
advice), all through Russia, had left my pocket in a comfortable flow
of cash, quite up to the need of the great foreseen pressure on the.
hotels.
But I am a Sonntagskind, as the Germans say, and always,
fall on my feet.
A kind friend took compassion on me, and opened,
his door for my shelter ; so that a week’s stay in Berlin cost me
nothing in the way of cash, and was a great gain to me in the way of
balmy and brilliant sociality. Now, no one, of course, expects that I
am here to attempt a detailed description of the grand patriotic display
which we call the Einzug : the newspapers have done the thing to satis
faction, and even to satiety ; and achtnn agere is as little my business at.
any time as it can be anybody’s pleasure at this time ; so with regard to
this matter, I will only set down one or two remarks with regard to the
general tone, effect, and significance of the affair, as it struck me. My
German friend had kindly procured for me a seat on the platform or
gallery raised in front of the University, and looking into the grand
open place, circled writh palaces and monuments, into which the Unter
den Linden opens at its east end : certainly the most pictorial point in
the otherwise somewhat monotonous and wearisome stateliness of Berlin
architecture. From this post—for which I paid only three dollars—I
had a broad unhindered view of the different regiments of the Guard,
that to the number of between forty and fifty thousand came spreading
forth their steely ranks from the comparatively narrow line of the Lin
den j and unquestionably, for the eye of a grey civilian accustomed only
to sober sights, this was a grand spectacle to see. For nearly three
hours the mighty palatial space filled and emptied itself again with
�SKETCHES OF TRAVEL IN GERMANY.
323
close-packed glittering rows, now of the severe bine infantry, now of the
^bright mailed Cuirassiers gleaming in the sun, now of the rapid-trotting
Uhlans, with their black and white pennons fluttering on their long
lances. These last were not only the most picturesque, but the most
loudly cheered : cheers well merited, as anyone who has even hastily
gleaned the newspaper history of the war will understand. If in the
first decisive battles of the campaign the Germans knew what they were
about while the French did not, it was all owing, after Moltke’s admirable
geographic and strategic studies, to the dexterity and daring shown by
thefr reconnoitring horsemen. If this, thought I, be only some forty or
fifty thousand men, what a spectacle must the military array of a great
battle be,' such a battle as that at Leipzig in October, 1813, when Napo
leon, with 150,000 men, stood in an inner circle, with 400,000 Prussians,
Russians, Austrians, and Swedes in his front. Nevertheless, as a mere
spectacle, one could not but say that the Einzug was deficient in two
important respects—in colour and variety. I have seen not a few more
brilliant shows. But the real show, perhaps, was not the march of the
military, with their arms glittering in the sun, but the pomp of festal
decoration in the town, the endless rows of flag and banner and historic
picture, patriotic sculpture, significant device, and suggestive motto of
every kind. This really was a burst of vivid gaiety well calculated both
to please the eye and to satisfy the mind anywhere, but especially in the
grey and grave regions of the frosty North. Of the illuminations which
closed the great festive day I will say nothing; they were good, very
good, perhaps, of their kind; but I am Stoic enough to think there is
something childish in this cumbrous attempt to light up the night with
an artificial imitation of the day. But what chiefly moved me in this
affair of the Einzug, and will remain with me among the deepest and
most fruitful experiences of my life, was the moral and political signifi
cance of the display. Many shows are mere shows, with emptiness or
even hollow, false pretence behind; mere gilded lies, beneath which the
scratch of a pin will expose the depth of foulness and rottenness which
such rare varnish was necessary to conceal. But the Berlin show was
all reality, and the sign of a greater reality. The reality before me was
effective military strength; the reality of which it was the sign is the
solidity, firmness, and systematic consistency of the German people and
the Prussian Government. There rode the stout old soldier King, pre
ceded by his three mighty men, all dressed in the white livery of his
favourite Cuirassiers, Bismark, Moltke, and Roon, the one the eye of his
policy, the second the brain, and the third the arm of his soldiership.
What a reality was there! What a speaking commentary on the famous
words of Bismark (which some hasty people were forward to misunder
stand), that great social revolutions of a certain kind are not to be
R 2
�324
SKETCHES OF TRAVEL IN GERMANY
achieved by mere talking, but that the obstinacy of the tough old ma
terial can be moulded into a new shape only by the stern compulsion of
‘blood and iron.’ Now everybody admits that Bismark and the King,
or rather the King and Bismark (for if the King had been a weakling in
the ‘conflict of 62’ Bismark would have had no game to play), were
right in keeping up the strength of the army against the peddling eco
nomies of the Berlin Liberals; the success of the war, therefore, and the
glory of the triumphal entry, were the legitimate fruit of clear counsel,
firm will, and manly consistency of purpose on the part of those who
had the guidance of public affairs in Prussia. Whatever other excel
lencies the champions of the French in this country may see or imagine
in their petted friends, they must at least confess to two great faults—
their fretful irritability took high offence from no sufficient occasion, and
their hasty insolence_made war without adequate preparation. But no
faults of this kind can be laid to the charge of the Germans. They
knew they had an insolent and treacherous neighbour to contend with;
they had known him in this character for four hundred years; and they
were determined that, so soon as the real outbreak of his itching vanity
and imperious insolence should take place, it would not find them, as in
1806, unprepared and divided. The outbreak did come sooner than
even Bismark’s astuteness had anticipated; he was taken by surprise no
less than his European enemies, who accused him of complicity; but he
was surprised in the midst of his earnestness, as the French in their
insolence; and backed by the firm resolve of a serious, honest, and
laborious people, the whole character of the war on his side was as
satisfactory to the moralTas to the intellectual nature of the impartial
observer. The same attitude of reality and honesty was presented in
the person of the stout old King, a monarch in all points the antipodes
of the French Emperor, who was driven into an unequal war by the
necessity of a position which his own unscrupulous ambition and utter
want of political conscience had created. Only continued success could
seem to justify a rule which every one knew was founded on a crime;
and the dramatic necessity of getting up some glory, to titillate French
vanity and gratify French ambition, sent him with a light start and boast
ful parade into the midst of a struggle, of which the issue, even with
the most complete preparation and most thoughtful circumspection, was
extremely doubtful. How different the moral position of the King of
Prussia ! The hereditary holder of a throne firmly rooted in the loyal
allegiance of a sober-minded and intelligent people, who knew how to
value the strength derived from a firm central rule, even when it
pressed a little severely sometimes on individual liberty, he neither
needed to cater by unworthy means for a popularity which he already
possessed, nor if a storm of adverse fortune should seize the state, was
�SKETCHES OF TRAVEL IN GERMANY.
325
he in danger of being thrown ont as a Jonah to propitiate the wrath
of the sea-god. He was known to be a soldier and a lover of soldiers ;
but he did not require to pander to a fretful appetite, either in his army
or his people, by aggressive acts upon the territories of his neighbours.
The wars in which he had been engaged were purely matters of
domestic arrangement between Germans and Germans ; the changes
which, by the instrumentality of ‘blood and iron,’ he had effected
within the limits of Fatherland, if violent, were absolutely necessary for
the restoration of that imperial unity the loss of which had been
historically identical with the humiliation of Germany beneath the
fraud and force of unscrupulous kingcraft in France. To this firm
political position King William added the wTeight of a personal character
such as the solid and sober-minded Germans knew how to respect. In
‘the conflict ’ with the Parliament in 1862 he showed a firmness of will
which, whatever else may be wanting, must ever be held as a prime
requisite in a ruler of men; in his habits, like his excellent father, he
was plain and unostentatious ; and, like his father also, he was sincerely
and unaffectedly religious. This element in his character I am, of
course, aware it has been the fashion in this country to deride; but
there is not a man in Germany, to what ever party he belongs, who
would insinuate that the devout expressions of thankfulness used by the
King in his despatches were anything else than the genuine utterance
of a natural and unaffected piety. It is indeed a vulgar habit of the
English mind to honour the expression of devout feeling only when it
appears in the stereotyped forms of the national Liturgy ; and beyond
the conventional homage of a Sunday forenoon service, or the question
able zeal for church paraded on the political platform at an election,
many an Englishman seems more than half ashamed of his religion, and
carries no more natural fragrance of piety about him than a cold tulip
does of warm vegetable aroma.
Hence the uncharitable judgments
passed upon good King William : judgments that only prove, if not the
absolute ungenerousness and ungentlemanliness, certainly the frigid
narrowness and formalism of the persons who made them. The real
fact of the matter is, both that there is a fundamental vein of devout
feeling (a portion of their characteristic Gemiitli) in the German mind,
and that the late war, in its motive and occasion essentially a repetition
of the great national struggle of 1813, was inspired by the same fine
combination of devout and patriotic feeling which distinguished its
prototype. The sure instinct of this led the King at the outbreak of
the struggle to re-establish the Order of the Iron Cross, a decoration
which symbolises in the most chaste and significant way that combina
tion of manly endurance, public spirit, and active piety by which the
campaigns of 1813 and 1870 have been so prominently characterised.
�326
SKETCHES OF TRAVEL IN GERMANY.
Sitting in the railway carriage one day, between Gottingen and Halle, I
had before me a young soldier decorated with this expressive symbol,
which, if widely distributed, is so only because, as Bismark said, it is
v’idely deserved ; and, as I am not a smoker, I amused the tedium of the
road by articulating the following lines :
Prussian, that iron cross upon thy breast,
Which thou with manhood’s modest pride dost wear,
I ask not by what deed above the rest,
Dashing or daring, it was planted there ;
I know that when the insolent heel of Gaul
Tramped on all rights to thee and Deutschland dear,
Thou rose regenerate from thy plunging fall
By vows devout and discipline severe.
Thus blazed thy bright noon from a tearful morn,
Blessing from bane sprang, and great gain from loss,
While in thy hand the avenging steel was borne,
And in thy heart was stamped the patient cross :
Thus Spartan pith and Christian grace were thine,
Born in one day, and bodied in one sign.
And now, what more have I to say ? I might tell Mr. Bull not only that
he ought to believe reverently in the moral grandeur of the Iron Cross,
whether as symbolical of the great struggle of 1813, in which himself
took a prominent part, or of the yet greater struggle of 1870, in which
he took no part ; but I would tell him also that the universal arming
of the people, however Lord Derby might call it a retrogression, is a
part of social organisation equally congruous with Spartan discipline,
Athenian freedom, Roman strength, and Christian grace ; that, in fact,
it is a grand nursery of national virtue and patriotic devotion, more
powerful than schools and churches, because it deals in deeds, and not in
words. But I know well that Mr. Bull would not listen to me in this
matter. If I had M.P. after my name, perhaps he might be willing to
lend me a respectful audience for an hour; as it is, I am silent.
�PRESERVATION OF THE NATIONAL HEALTH.
835
un cleanness of every kind, let us tear-down the fever-nests and open up
the pauper warrens to the free light and blithe air, let us sternly treat
as public crime the avarice that distributes poisoned water to swell divi
dends, and that "which refuses to drain villages lest the rates should rise.
Resolute war against dirt, waged under the conduct of scientific enemies
of disease, would soon make this a different country for the poor at least
to live in. If we decline to accept this issue how shall we justify our* solves to the helpless masses whom we are allowing to perish like rotten
sheep ?
Edward D. J. Wilson.
It is just to say here that though the common theory of cholera and its propaga
tion is popularly summarised above, it does not pass unchallenged. - Dr. Chapman, in
a very ingenious work, with the logic oj: which no fault can be found, but which may
be thought to rest on too narrow an induction, has endeavoured to show that cholera
is generated not by any morbid poison but by hyperasmia of the nervous centres dis
tributed along thej spine. He maintains that the disease can be controlled by modify
ing the temperature of these nervous centres, and cites some remarkable cases in which
he has recovered patients far gone in choleraic collapse by the application of ice to the
spine. The method may be useful, even though Dr. Chapman’s theory be unsound,,
and as medical science is confessedly powerless to cope with cholera when once it has
seized on a patient, it will be worth while to give the proposed treatment a fair trial/'
in the public hospitals in case of another cholera epidemic.
�
Dublin Core
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Title
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Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
Creator
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Pamphlet
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Sketches of travels in Germany. Part 3
Creator
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Blackie, John Stuart
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: [London]
Collation: 320-326 p. ; 23 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. From The Dark Blue 2 (November, 1871). Attribution of journal title and date: Virginia Clark catalogue. The Dark Blue was a London-based literary magazine published monthly from 1871 to 1873.
Publisher
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{s.n.]
Date
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[1871]
Identifier
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G5338
Subject
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Germany
Literature
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<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (Sketches of travels in Germany. Part 3), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
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application/pdf
Type
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Text
Language
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English
Conway Tracts
Germany
Travels