Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850

The view from the tower, eighty feet in height, over the great Rhine plain, is immense and splendid, including two hundred villages, towns, and cities. The windings of the magnificent Rhine lie mapped out below you, and on its banks are seen, as objects of peculiar interest, the cathedral of Speier, the lofty dome of the Jesuits’ church at Mannheim, and the four towers of the noble cathedral of Worms. In the remote distance, as a fitting termination to this noble landscape, are seen the heights of the Donnersberg, the Vosges, and the Schwarzwald.

The policeman, who followed us up into the tower, mentioned the time when the inhabitants of that district had hastened thither to watch the approach of the French armies, and pointed out the spot where they were first seen, and described their approach, and the terrors and anxieties of the people, in the most lively and touching manner.

The wind was strong on this lofty height, and the rattling of the shutters in the look-out windows in the tower, and of their fastenings, would have been dismal enough on a stormy night, and gave quite a wildness to it even then. The view over the Odenwald was beautiful. Half covered with wood, as far as you could see, with green, winding straths between them, distant castles, and glimpses of the white walls of low-lying dorfs or villages, it gave you an idea of a region at once solitary and attractive. The whole was filled with the cheerful light of morning, and the wooded hills looked of the most brilliant green. We descended, and pursued our way through the forest glades with that feeling of enjoyment which the entrance into an unknown region, pleasant companionship, and fine weather, inspire. When we issued from the woods which clothe the sides of Melibocus, we sate down on the heathy turf, and gazed with a feeling of ever-youthful delight on the scene around us. Above us, and over its woods, rose the square white tower of Melibocus; below, lay green valleys, from among whose orchards issued the smoke of peaceful cottages; and beyond, rose hills covered with other woods, with shrouded spots, the legends of which had reached us in England, and had excited the wonder of our early days – the castle of the Wild Huntsman – the traditions of the followers of Odin – and the strongholds of many an iron-clad knight, as free to seize the goods of his neighbors as he was strong to take and keep them. Now all was peaceful and Arcadian. We met, as we descended into the valley, young women coming up with their cows, and a shepherd with a mixed flock of sheep and swine. He had a belt around him, to which hung a chain, probably to fasten a cow to, as we afterward saw cows so secured.

We found the cottages, in the depths of the valleys, among their orchards, just those heavy, old-fashioned sort of things that we see in German engravings; buildings of wood-framing, the plaster panels of which were painted in various ways, and the windows of those circular and octagon panes which, from old association, always seem to belong to German cottages, just such as that in which the old witch lived in Grimm’s Kinder und Haus Märchen; and in the Folk Sagor of Sweden and Norway. There were, too, the large ovens built out of doors and roofed over, such as the old giantess, Käringen som vardt stekt i ugnen, was put into, according to German and Scandinavian legends. The people were of the simplest character and appearance. We seemed at once to have stepped out of modern times into the far-past ages. We saw several children sitting on a bench in the open air, near a school-house, learning their lessons, and writing on their slates; and we wept into the school.

The schoolmaster was a man befitting the place; simple, rustic, and devout. He told us that the boys and girls, of which his school was full, came, some of them, from a considerable distance. They came in at six o’clock in the morning and staid till eight, had an hour’s rest, and then came in till eleven, when they went home, and did not return again till the next morning, being employed the rest of the day in helping their parents; in going into the woods for fuel; into the fields to glean, tend cattle, cut grass, or do what was wanted. All the barefooted children of every village, how ever remote, thus acquire a tolerable education, learning singing as a regular part of it. They have what they call their Sing-Stunde, singing lesson, every day. On a black board the Lied, song, or hymn for the day, was written in German character in chalk; and the master, who was naturally anxious to exhibit the proficiency of his scholars, gave them their singing lesson while we were there. The scene was very interesting in itself; but there was something humiliating to our English minds, to think that in the Odenwald, a portion of the great Hyrcanian forest, a region associating itself with all that is wild and obscure, every child of every hamlet and cottage, however secluded, was provided with that instruction which the villages of England are in a great measure yet destitute of. But here the peasants are not, as with us, totally cut off from property in the soil which they cultivate; totally dependent on the labor afforded by others; on the contrary, they are themselves the possessors. This country is, in fact, in the hands of the people. It is all parceled out among the multitude; and, wherever you go, instead of the great halls, vast parks, and broad lands of the few, you see perpetual evidences of an agrarian system. Except the woods, the whole land is thrown into small allotments, and upon them the people are laboring busily for themselves.

Here, in the Odenwald, the harvest, which in the great Rhine plain was over in July, was now, in great measure, cut. Men, women, and children, were all engaged in cutting it, getting it in, or in tending the cattle. Everywhere stood the simple wagons of the country with their pair of yoked cows. Women were doing all sorts of work; reaping, and mowing, and threshing with the men. They were without shoes and stockings, clad in a simple, dark-blue petticoat; a body of the same, leaving the white chemise sleeves as a pleasing contrast; and their hair, in some instances, turned up under their little black or white caps; in others hanging wild and sunburnt on their shoulders. The women, old and young, work as hard as the men, at all kinds of work, and yet with right good-will, for they work for themselves. They often take their dinners with them to the fields, frequently giving the lesser children a piece of bread each, and locking them up in their cottages till they return. This would be thought a hard life in England; but hard as it is, it is better than the degradation of agricultural laborers, in a dear country like England, with six or eight shillings a week, and no cow, no pig, no fruit for the market, no house, garden, or field of their own; but, on the contrary, constant anxiety, the fear of a master on whom they are constantly dependent, and the desolate prospect of ending their days in a union work-house.

Each German has his house, his orchard, his road-side trees, so laden with fruit, that if he did not carefully prop up, and tie together, and in many places hold the boughs together with wooden clamps, they would be torn asunder by their own weight. He has his corn-plot, his plot for mangel-wurzel or hay, for potatoes, for hemp, etc. He is his own master, and he therefore, and every branch of his family, have the strongest motives for constant exertion. You see the effect of this in his industry and his economy.

In Germany, nothing is lost. The produce of the trees and the cows is carried to market. Much fruit is dried for winter use. You see wooden trays of plums, cherries, and sliced apples, lying in the sun to dry. You see strings of them hanging from their chamber windows in the sun. The cows are kept up for the greater part of the year, and every green thing is collected for them. Every little nook where the grass prows by roadside, and river, and brook, is carefully cut with the sickle, and carried home, on the heads of women and children, in baskets, or tied in large cloths. Nothing of any kind that can possibly be made of any use is lost. Weeds, nettles, nay, the very goose-grass which covers waste places, is cut up and taken for the cows. You see the little children standing in the streets of the villages, in the streams which generally run down them, busy washing these weeds before they are given to the cattle. They carefully collect the leaves of the marsh-grass, carefully cut their potato tops for them, and even, if other things fail, gather green leaves from the woodlands. One can not help thinking continually of the enormous waste of such things in England – of the vast quantities of grass on banks, by roadsides, in the openings of plantations, in lanes, in church-yards, where grass from year to year springs and dies, but which, if carefully cut, would maintain many thousand cows for the poor.

To pursue still further this subject of German economy. The very cuttings of the vines are dried and preserved for winter fodder. The tops and refuse of the hemp serve as bedding for the cows; nay, even the rough stalks of the poppies, after the heads have been gathered for oil, are saved, and all these are converted into manure for the land. When these are not sufficient, the children are sent into the woods to gather moss; and all our readers familiar with Germany will remember to have seen them coming homeward with large bundles of this on their heads. In autumn, the falling leaves are gathered and stocked for the same purpose. The fir-cones, which with us lie and rot in the woods, are carefully collected, and sold for lighting fires.

In short, the economy and care of the German peasant are an example to all Europe. He has for years – nay, ages – been doing that, as it regards agricultural management, to which the British public is but just now beginning to open its eyes. Time, also, is as carefully economized as every thing else. They are early risers, as may well be conceived, when the children, many of whom come from considerable distances, are in school at six in the morning. As they tend their cattle, or their swine, the knitting never ceases, and hence the quantities of stockings, and other household things, which they accumulate, are astonishing.

We could not help, as often before, being struck in the Odenwald with the resemblance of the present country and life of the Germans to those of the ancient Hebrews. Germany, like Judea, is literally a land flowing with milk and honey: a land of corn, and vine, and oil. The plains are full of corn; the hill-sides, however stony, are green with vineyards; and though they have not the olive, they procure vast quantities of oil from the walnut, the poppy, and the rape. The whole country is parceled out among its people. There are no hedges, but the landmarks, against the removal of which the Jewish law so repeatedly and so emphatically denounces its terrors, alone indicate the boundaries of each man’s possession. Every where you see the ox and the heifer toiling beneath the primitive yoke, as in the days of David. The threshing-floor of Araunah often comes to your mind when you see the different members of a family – father, mother, brother, and sister, all threshing out their corn together on the mud floor of their barn; but much more so when you see them, in the corn-field itself, collect the sheaves into one place, and treading down the earth into a solid floor, there, in the face of heaven and fanned by its winds, thresh out on the spot the corn which has been cut. This we saw continually going forward on the steep slopes of the Odenwald, ten or a dozen men and women all threshing together. A whole field is thus soon threshed, the corn being beaten out much more easily while the ear is crisp with the hot sun.

Having taken leave of the schoolmaster, his scholars, and his bees, with whose hives nearly all his house-side was covered, we pursued our way to the Jägerhaus on the top of the Felsberg, one of the highest hills in the Odenwald. The day was splendid, with a fine breeze, and all around was new, cheerful, yet solitary, bright and inspiriting. The peasants in the harvest-fields, the herds watching their cattle, gave us a passing salutation, and when within sight of you, took off their hats, even at a field’s distance. We walked on in great enjoyment, here sitting to look back on the scenes we had left, or to drink from the glittering waters that we had to pass.

Just as we were about to enter the woods again, we met an old woman slowly wandering on from some cottages among the trees by the wood-side. She had a leathern belt round her waist, and a cord fastened to it, by which she led her cow to graze in the thickets and by the foot-path, while her hands were busy with her knitting. A boy, about seven years old, was leading a kid by a chain, letting it crop the flowers of the hawkweed in the grass. The old woman saluted us cheerfully; told us that the boy’s father was in America, and his mother gone out to service, and that he was intrusted to her care. Could there be any thing more like a scene in the old Märchen, or less like one in England?

[From Howitt’s Country Year-Book.]

THE MYSTERIOUS PREACHER

In one of those strolls which I have always loved to take into different and little frequented parts of these kingdoms, I fell in with a venerable old man, dressed in black, with very white hair, and of a mild, somewhat melancholy and intelligent look. It was a beautiful scene where I first encountered him – in a wood, on the banks of a noble river. I accosted the old man with a remark on the delightfulness of the time and place; and he replied to my observations with a warmth, and in a tone, which strongly affected me. I soon found that he was as enthusiastic a lover of nature as myself – that he had seen many of the finest portions of the kingdom, and had wandered through them with Milton or Shakspeare, Herbert or Quarles, in his hand. He was one of those who, reading with his own eyes and heart, and not through the spectacles of critics, had not been taught to despise the last old poet, nor to treat his rich and quaint versification, and his many manly and noble thoughts, as the conceits and rhymes of a poetaster. His reverence for the great names of our literature, and his just appreciation of their works, won upon me greatly. I invited him to continue his walk; and – so well was I pleased with him – to visit me at my rustic lodgment.

From that day, for some weeks, we daily walked together. I more and more contemplated with admiration and esteem the knowledge, the fine taste, the generous sentiments, the profound love of nature which seemed to fill the whole being of the old man. But who and whence was he? He said not a word on that subject, and I did not, therefore, feel freedom to inquire. He might have secret griefs, which such a query might awaken. I respect too much the wounded heart of humanity carelessly to probe it, and especially the heart of a solitary being who, in the downward stage of life, may, perchance, be the stripped and scathed remnant of a once-endeared family. He stood before me alone. He entered into reminiscences, but they were reminiscences connected with no near ties; but had such ties now existed, he would in some hour of frank enthusiasm have said so. He did not say it, and it was, therefore, sufficiently obvious, that he had a history which he left down in the depths of his heart, beyond the vision of all but that heart itself. And yet, whatever were the inward memories of this venerable man, there was a buoyancy and youthfulness of feeling about him which amply manifested that they had not quenched the love and enjoyment of life in him.

On different days we took, during the most beautiful spring, strolls of many miles into distant dales and villages, and on the wild brown moors. Now we sate by a moorland stream, talking of many absorbing things in the history of the poetry and the religion of our country, and I could plainly see that my ancient friend had in him the spirit of an old Covenanter, and that, had he lived in the days of contest between the church of kings and the church of God, he would have gone to the field or the stake for his faith as triumphantly as any martyr of those times. It was under the influence of one of these conversations that I could not avoid addressing to the old man the following youthful stanzas, which, though they may exhibit little poetry, testify to the patriotism which his language inspired:

My friend! there have been men
To whom we turn again
After contemplating the present age,
And long, with vain regret,
That they were living yet,
Virtue’s high war triumphantly to wage.

Men whose renown was built
Not on resplendent guilt —
Not through life’s waste, or the abuse of power,
But by the dauntless zeal
With which at truth’s appeal,
They stood unto the death in some eventful hour.

But he who now shall deem,
Because among us seem
No dubious symptoms of a realm’s decline —
Wealth blind with its excess
’Mid far-diffused distress,
And pride that kills, professing to refine —

He who deems hence shall flow
The utter overthrow
Of this most honored and long happy land,
Little knows what there lies
Even beneath his eyes,
Slumbering in forms that round about him stand.

Little knows he the zeal
Myriads of spirits feel
In love, pure principle, and knowledge strong;
Little knows he what men
Tread this dear land again,
Whose souls of fire invigorate the throng.

My friend! I lay with thee
Beneath the forest tree,
When spring was shedding her first sweets around.
And the bright sky above
Woke feelings of deep love,
And thoughts which traveled through the blue profound.

I lay, and as I heard —
The joyful faith thus stirred,
Shot like Heaven’s lightning through my wondering breast
I heard, and in my thought
Glory and greatness wrought,
And blessing God – my native land I blest.

Now we entered a village inn, and ate our simple luncheon; and now we stood in some hamlet lane, or by its mossy well, with a group of children about us, among whom not a child appeared more child-like or more delighted than the old man. Nay, as we came back from a fifteen or twenty miles’ stroll, he would leap over a stile with the activity of a boy, or run up to a wilding bush, covered with its beautiful pink blossoms, and breaking off a branch hold it up in admiration, and declare that it appeared almost sinful for an old man like him to enjoy himself so keenly. I know not when I more deeply felt the happiness and the holiness of existence, the wealth of intellect, and the blessings of our fancies, sympathies, and affection, than I used to do as this singular stranger sate with me on the turf-seat at the vine-covered end of the old cottage, which then made my temporary residence, on the serene evenings of that season, over our rustic tea-table, and with the spicy breath of the wall-flowers of that little garden breathing around us, and held conversation on many a subject of moral and intellectual speculation which then deeply interested me. In some of those evening hours he at length gave me glimpses into his past existence. Things more strange and melancholy than I could ever have suspected had passed over him, and only the more interested me in him.

Such had been our acquaintance for some months, when, one evening, happening to be in the neighboring town, and passing through a densely-populated part of it, I saw a number of people crowding into a chapel. With my usual curiosity in all that relates to the life, habits, and opinions of my fellow-men, I entered, and was no little surprised to behold my ancient friend in the pulpit. As I believed he had not observed me enter, and as I was desirous to hear my worthy friend, thus most unexpectedly found in this situation, without attracting his attention, I therefore seated myself in the shade of a pillar, and awaited the sermon. My surprise, as I listened to it, was excessive, on more accounts than one. I was surprised at the intense, fervid, and picturesque blaze of eloquence that breathed forth from the preacher, seeming to light up the whole place, and fill it with an unearthly and cloudy fire. I was more astonished by the singularity and wildness of the sentiments uttered. I looked again and again at the rapt and ecstatic preacher. His frame seemed to expand, and to be buoyed up, by his glowing enthusiasm, above the very height of humanity. His hair, white as snow, seemed a pale glory burning round his head, and his countenance, warm with the expression of his entranced spirit, was molten into the visage of a pleading seraph, who saw the terrors of the Divinity revealed before him, and felt only that they for whom he wrestled were around him. They hung upon that awful and unearthly countenance with an intensity which, in beings at the very bar of eternal judgment, hanging on the advocacy of an angel, could scarcely have been exceeded; and when he ceased, and sat down, a sigh, as from every heart at once, went through the place, which marked the fall of their rapt imaginations from the high region whither his words and expressive features had raised them, to the dimness and reality of earth. I could scarcely persuade myself that this was my late friend of the woods and fields, and of the evening discourse, so calm and dispassionate, over our little tea-table.

I escaped cautiously with the crowd, and eagerly interrogated a man who passed out near me who was the preacher? He looked at me with an air of surprise; but seeing me a stranger, he said he thought I could not have been in those parts long, or I should have known Mr. M – . I then learned that my venerable acquaintance was one whose name was known far and wide – known for the strange and fascinating powers of his pulpit eloquence, and for the peculiarity of his religious views. The singularity of those notions alone had prevented his becoming one of the most popular religious orators of his time. They had been the source of perpetual troubles and persecutions to him, they had estranged from him the most zealous of his friends from time to time; yet they were such only as he could lay down at the threshold of Divine judgment; and still, wherever he went, although they were a root of bitterness to him in private, he found in public a crowd of eager and enthusiastic hearers, who hung on his words as if they came at once warm from the inner courts of heaven.

The sense of this discovery, and of the whole strange scene of the last evening, hung powerfully upon me through the following day. I sat on the bench of my cottage window, with a book in my hand, the greater part of it, but my thoughts continually reverted to the image of the preacher in the midst of his audience; when, at evening, in walked the old man with his usual quiet smile, and shaking me affectionately by the hand, sat down in a wooden chair opposite me. I looked again and again, but in vain, to recognize the floating figure and the exalted countenance of the evening.

The old man took up my book, and began to read. A sudden impulse seized me which I have never ceased to regret. I did not wish abruptly to tell the old man that I had seen him in the pulpit, but I longed to discuss with him the ground of his peculiar views, and said,

“What do you think, my friend, of the actual future destiny of the – ?”

I made the question include his peculiar doctrines. He laid down the volume with a remarkable quickness of action. He gazed at me for a moment with a look humbled but not confused, such as I had never seen in him before, and, in a low voice, said,

“You were then at my chapel last night?”