Heidelberg: A Romance. Volumes I, II & III

The realities of the world are few and small; the illusions many and vast. Not a sense that we possess, and hardly a faculty of the mind, but serves to deceive us; wholly in some cases, and partially in all. Yet, strip nature and life of these deceits, and what would earth become?--what our existence here? See a small fly stepping over the irregularities of a looking-glass and thinking the polished surface but a rough and rugged plain, and we have some idea of what the world would be, if we saw it as perhaps it is.

Amongst the sweetest and most friendly delusions, of all the many, is the landscape-painting of imagination. Love, himself, I believe, does not cheat us more, or more pleasantly. Let any traveller ask himself, when he sets eyes upon a scene which he pronounces, at once, most beautiful, how much of the loveliness is added by fancy. It may be a grand, an expansive view, over a wide and varied country; but what is the mind doing while the eye is contemplating it? Peopling it with villages--laying it out in corn-fields and vineyards--filling it with busy life and gay enjoyment; not distinctly, not tangibly; but still the associations rise up in a golden mist, and spread a lustre over all. It may be, on the contrary, a narrower scene: a cottage in a deep glen, with old oaks overshadowing, and the thin blue smoke rising up amongst the green leaves. There too, is imagination busy, with the thoughts of calm retirement from a troublous world, and still, quiet contemplation--the labourer's repose after his labour--the sweet domestic home--the tender joy of tongues and faces loving and beloved.

There is but one great magician left on earth, and that is Imagination.

Reader, I very often draw from my own heart and its experience--more often than the world knows; and even now, I can conceive the sensations of those two horsemen as they come at a foot pace over the edge of the hill, where the splendid valley of the Neckar, with its castled town and ancient woods, and giant mountains, first breaks upon the eye. See how the sunshine of the summer evening, softened by the light smoke of the city, pours through the long tall streets and over the high walls and towers of massive stone: see how it catches on each rocky point or prominent crag, as rounding the granite mass of the King's Seat, in its decline towards the west, it covers the brows of all his mountain peers with coronets of gold; and lo! where high raised above the town, upon its platform of stone, stands out the lordly castle in bright light and shade. The green, green Neckar, flowing along in the midst, winds on through the long waving valley, showing ripples of gold wherever, in the sunshine, the winds stir it or the rocks obstruct, and, at each calmer spot, serves as a mirror to the loveliness around; giving back the bright tints of hills and woods, and town and bridge, with a lustrous clearness no other stream can match. Even that boat, with its many coloured crew of peasantry, shines out upon the face of the river in red and blue, and white and brown, as if the very hues acquired a finer dye from the water that but reflects them; and the fishing eagle, swooping down upon his finny prey, strikes at it the more fiercely when he sees the image of himself rushing to seize it also from below.

On a fine summer evening then, in the year 1619, two horsemen, coming along the Bergstrasse, or mountain road, suddenly drew in their horses as they reached the top of that little spur of the mountain called the Heiligenberg, on which stands the village of Neunheim, and there paused, gazing, as if in wonder and admiration, at the scene presented to their eyes. For a moment or two neither spoke, for the height of every emotion is silent; and ere a word was uttered, a small party, which had followed, came up and took place behind them.

In those days great men drew their importance from the number of their attendants. 'Tis the same even now, but the display is made upon a different stage.

The horsemen who came first, however, were but accompanied by two ordinary servants, two grooms or horseboys, each leading a baggage horse heavily laden, and a page; small equipage for a man of station at that period. Nevertheless there was that about the appearance of each, which made the peasantry who passed them in numerous bodies, and in their holiday clothes, take off their broad-brimmed hats and give the strangers two looks ere they walked on. The reason why they did this was not very apparent; for the persons who thus attracted the attention of the good boors had nothing to excite admiration in their dress. It is true, indeed, gentlemen were not at that time, any more than at present, to be distinguished by their galligaskins; but still the apparel of the two was rather plain than otherwise, consisting of a common riding suit of dark cloth, with a small line of gold, and boots and breeches of untanned leather. Their horses, indeed, were fine, powerful, spirited beasts as ever were mounted; and though the dust, that dimmed their glossy coats, showed that they had journeyed far on a hot day, yet not a sign of fatigue was visible, and the outstretched leg, ready to start again, the high raised head, and expanded nostril, as they snuffed the air of the river, proved that they had no expectation of their day's journey being yet, near an end.

There might be, indeed, some reason assigned why the country girls took a second look before they went on, for the two travellers were both young and handsome men; the one very dark, and three or four years older than the other, who might perhaps be one-and-twenty, or thereabouts, and whose face, though bronzed by exposure to sun and weather, appeared to have been originally fair, if one might judge by the clear, deep-blue eye and the rich brown hair, and moustache of that peculiar hue which shows a golden gleam when the sun shines upon it. He was tall and well formed, long in the arms, broad in the chest, and spare in the waist and flank. The head and face were small, and the features delicate, though not effeminate; the chin somewhat projecting, and the eyes large and full, with a thick and strongly marked eyebrow. When at rest the whole countenance had an expression of gravity and decision beyond his apparent years, and there was something in his air as he sat his horse, a look of command and free thoughtful power, which seemed to bespeak one who, notwithstanding his youth, had been long accustomed to regulate his own conduct and act upon his own views.

The other was very different, yet still a handsome man, much darker in complexion, not quite so tall, with a keen sharp black eye, under a wide and somewhat projecting brow, marked gracefully by a dark, arching, and somewhat raised line of eyebrow. The lips were thin, and the line from the wing of the nose to the corner of the mouth strongly marked, so as to give the ordinary expression of the countenance a slight, a very slight touch of sarcasm; and yet there was a sort of sparkling joyousness about it whenever he spoke, which we may as well notice once for all, as it was the predominant look and was exceedingly winning, although the cast of the mere features was stern and determined.

As they paused and gazed, the face of the younger and fairer of the two was full of admiration, pure, simple, and high; too deeply felt to admit even of a smile. The other gazed over the landscape too, but then for a moment turned his eyes with a half laughing glance, withdrawn as soon as given, to his companion's face, as if he and his feelings afforded as much matter for thought and examination as the beautiful scene which had just presented itself.

At length, after a pause, of about two minutes, the younger exclaimed,--

"How beautiful! how enchanting! and bursting upon us thus, it seems like magic."

"Very lovely, indeed," replied his companion, with a smile; "and I doubt not we shall find still lovelier things within those old grey walls--at least let us fancy it; for fancy is the goddess that embellishes all things, and is, even now, doing wonders in your mind, Algernon, for the fair city of Heidelberg."

"I know not what fancy has to do with it," replied the other, gravely; "methinks never was there a congregation of more beautiful objects presented to the eye of man. Nature does everything here, William, we have no need of fancy. Look at that town, that castle, those lordly mountains, those green waving woods, the river gliding----"

"Like a golden lizard, you would say, amongst the stones," rejoined his companion, interrupting him. "In pity let us have some figure of speech to show that your admiration has not at least benumbed imagination. A simile, a trope, a metaphor, even a hyperbole will do. Can you not call them godlike towers? or figure me the mountains as giant Titans, with a bushy beard of oaks and beeches? What has become of all your flowers of rhetoric? You will never be able to keep pace with the doctors and poets of the university, if you go on in this dull style. Or is it that you have expended all the riches of your poesy upon the fair dames you left behind in Italy, and have not got a beggarly tester of fine words for the fair town of Heidelberg? or, again, are you afraid of the exchequer running low, and are hoarding your smart speeches with miserly avarice, to let love, like the miser's son, squander them by-and-by upon the lovely dames of the Electoral court?"

"Good faith!" replied the other, "I doubt much, my friend, whether I shall see anything in any court so lovely to my eyes as that fair range of mountains, out there upon the right, looking like sapphires on a sky of gold."

"Improved! improved!" cried his companion, dropping his rein and clapping his hands; "those sapphires and that gold come out most splendidly. The poor Haardt, with her stony rocks, would be grateful to you, doubtless, for thus enriching her; but let us on, I am for living loveliness. Of all the landscapes I ever saw, the most beautiful has been a rosy cheek and alabaster throat; the brightest waters in the world for me, lie in the deep well of a dark blue eye; and in all the sun-rises or sunsets that ever covered the sky with crimson, there is nothing like the warm blush upon a young face, or the dawning smile upon a rosy lip. Let us on, let us on, I say; pleasure is the pursuit of life; let grave thoughts follow us, they will catch us soon enough if we do not make haste and get before them."

"'Twere a good philosophy, could it but last," answered his companion, with a smile, touching his horse gently with the spur, and in a moment more they were winding on by the side of the Neckar towards the old bridge, which, like many another building there, was not destined to see the present day.

Perhaps the younger of the two travellers felt that his companion was right in what he had said regarding the ornamental powers of fancy, when they passed the gates of Heidelberg and entered the town itself. The sunshiny splendour of the valley was lost in the narrow streets and tall dark houses; but still the shade was pleasant, for the evening was hot; and there was something in the long lines of the quaint, many-storied buildings, with their ornamented gables to the streets and every here and there a gleam of sunshine breaking across through an aperture--something in the gay crowds of people, in the ringing laugh and cheerful buzz, even in the baskets of fruits and flowers that obstructed every turning, which did much with a young and enthusiastic mind, to compensate for the picturesque beauty of the valley which they no longer beheld; and still, at the end of many of the streets, the towers and walls of the castle were seen looking down from its proud rock, with the green branches and rugged crags of the mountain, towering up beyond.