Latest / Around the Clock in Europe : A Travel Sequence / HEIDELBERG—9 P.M. TO 10 P.M.
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- 0:01Section nine of Around the Clock in Europe a Travel Sequence. This is a
- 0:06LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information
- 0:12or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox Doddle red by Beeswax Candle Around the Clock
- 0:19in Europe A Travel Sequence by Charles fish Howell, Heidelberg, nine p m
- 0:25to ten p m. There stands an ancient castle on yonder mountain height,
- 0:31where fenced with door and portal, once tarried steed and night begone a door
- 0:37and portal, and all is hushed and still oh ruined wall and rafter I
- 0:42clamber as I will Girta's castle on the mountain, when the sun has gone
- 0:48down behind the blue Alsatian mountains, and the last stain of color is faded
- 0:52from the skies of the Rhenish plain. When clocktower has answered clocktower, an
- 0:57evening bell responded to evening bell from the mountain, and streams in the mill
- 1:00wheels of the old and vault to the busy squares of Mannheim and the quiet
- 1:06and gentle valley of the nechar takes on a peculiar piece in glory that is
- 1:11exquisite and marvelous and Heidelberg and its lordly ruins seem set in a veritable fairy
- 1:17ring of delicate charm and beauty. So tranquil and lovely is this region in
- 1:22the early evening that even the latest comer soon feels a comforting sense of having
- 1:26turned aside from out of the rush and fever of life, into a singularly
- 1:32placid and protected corner of the earth, a hushed and happy vale of temper.
- 1:38The sense of rest and seclusion is one of Heidelberg's strongest appeals, and
- 1:42her appeals, though few, are all emphatic, for there are no sights
- 1:48here the castle excepted the quaint old town is friendly and genial, though not
- 1:53more so than many others of this comfortable German fatherland, and nor is the
- 1:59Sura nechA so exceptional as to occasion pilgrimage. Hadelberg's appeals are to the mind,
- 2:07the heart, and the senses. The mind is inspired by her impressive
- 2:12achievements in learning, the heart is touched by her tragic history, and the
- 2:16senses are spell bound by the exceptional charm of her natural beauty. She is
- 2:22never so fair as in the early evening, with the soft fall of night.
- 2:25Each blemish fades away, and what remains to see and feel is altogether
- 2:31rare and lovely. When the valley clocks are booming nine with muffled strokes,
- 2:38it is delightful to be up in the castle's ruins, lounging on the great
- 2:42balcony as the crumbling Friederic palace, with a broad coping for a seat,
- 2:46and the rustling ivy of the hollow walls for a pillow. Behind and about
- 2:52one is the vast ruddy wreckage of the nightly halls and towers of this far
- 2:57famed a lumber of Germany, and fluttering plains of tree tops are billowing upward
- 3:02on every hand, to the dark heights of the Kernig Stewed on the opposite
- 3:07side of the valley. Across the river, dense forests of oak and chestnut
- 3:12glitter in the moonlight, sweeping aloft to the summit of the storied Saint's Mountain.
- 3:17Just below our balcony, the clustered spires and steep roofs of the huddled
- 3:22old town House, their fifty thousand happy people, between the wooded hillsides and
- 3:27the shimmering neckar that bans the middle distance on its placid rhine journey, like
- 3:32a silver ribbon on a velvet cloak. In its bright waters, hills and
- 3:38trees are luminously mirrored, along with the inky, motionless shadows of its bridge,
- 3:44and the sober reflections of shuttered house fronts along its verge. In the
- 3:49dewy coolness and the still of the evening, the guardian oaks breathe a recurrent
- 3:53lullaby, now softly agitated, now as hushed and ghostly and motionless as the
- 3:59hills in which they are rooted, And one understands how such a soothing environment
- 4:03could have softened even the impetuous, fiery, war loving young kerner to indict
- 4:09so gentle a benediction as his beautiful good night, good night, to which
- 4:15weary toil worn white. Now the day so sweetly closes, every aching brow
- 4:20reposes peacefully till morning light good night home to rest, close the eye and
- 4:29calm. The breast stillness through the streets is stealing, and the watchman's horn
- 4:33is pealing, and the night calls softly haste home to rest up in the
- 4:40castle ruins. One is seldom alone after midnight, and not even then,
- 4:44as the melancholy specter of Rupert's tower is disposed to walk abroad. In the
- 4:48early evening, the good people of Heidelberg, the kindliest and most contented of
- 4:54Germans, stroll with vast light under the lindens of the castle gardens, and
- 4:59groups of careless students loiter mirrorely along the terraces, adding bright touches of color
- 5:03with their peaked caps and broad core ribbons. Bits of song and bursts of
- 5:10laughter give a homely suggestion of habitation to these staring walls. One could fancy
- 5:15the dead and gone old nobles at wassail again, with minstrels in the banquet
- 5:19hall, and perkeo the jesters whispering jokes in the ears of the count Palatine.
- 5:26Under the tree tops, Sangirta is quiet. Now there is a low,
- 5:30sad sound of night breeze and the ivy. The swallow darts through a
- 5:35paneless window. A back zigzags among the echoing arches of a tower, like
- 5:42phantom sentinels. The stone statues of the old electors stand white and impressive in
- 5:46niches on the palace fronts. Fragrance of flowers drifts in from the castle gardens,
- 5:54and the delicate plash of falling water comes from a terrace fountain. The
- 5:59lamps of the city rim the river below, and villas beyond the farther bank
- 6:02are marked by tiny dots of light in the purple of the groves behind Neuenheim.
- 6:09Across the neckar Cut gulf of shadow, the chestnut crowned summit of the
- 6:13Heiligenberg stares down solemnly at us, and not all the songs of its blithest
- 6:18nightingales can banish thoughts of its ancient Roman sacrifices, nor divert the credulous from
- 6:25vigils over the blue grave, lights around the Benedictine cloister, where they buried
- 6:30the sainted Abbot of Herschall. Up through the dark billows of this tree top
- 6:34ocean rises a strain of Wagner's music from some cheery hidden woodland inn. And
- 6:41under the magic spell of the night, one could fancy the golden haired sea
- 6:45freed approaching on a new Rhine journey, following the wind in Neckar up the
- 6:50broad Rhenish plane, the tan hell Mazetta's belt, the world ward a ring
- 6:57on his finger, and the moonlight flashes dreadfully from the glittering blade of Noutung
- 7:01as the hero's horn wends notes of arrival under the walls of our stout castle
- 7:08and its Especially at such an hour as this, that one realizes how easy
- 7:12it is for the man who thoroughly knows Heidelberg to acknowledge a delightful and lifelong
- 7:17bondage. A large number of the most eminent literati of the world have agreed
- 7:23in this Gert ascribed to her ideal beauty. Macaulay pronounced her environment one of
- 7:30the fairest regions of Europe. The father of German poetry, Martin Opitz,
- 7:35loved her dearly in his student days here three centuries ago, and wrote affectionately
- 7:41of her all the rest of his life. The prolific Teak found time between
- 7:45novels to lament the destruction of a few of her oaks. Aloy Schreiber turned
- 7:49from his poetry and history to grieve over the loss of a lime tree.
- 7:54Von Scheffel praised her in prose and verse, and hailed her in seven Songs
- 7:59of his Guards. La Fontaine could not conceive a more ideal surroundings in which
- 8:05to reunite his Clara Duplessis and her devoted Claren G. P. R.
- 8:09James in his favorite romance Heidelberg, wrought prodigies of sentimentality here of the heroic
- 8:16Algernon Gray and the emotional Agnes Matheson, immortalized himself by his elegy in these
- 8:24ruins. All who have read Alexandre Duma's dramatic cream Sileebre will recall the young
- 8:31fanatic Carl Ludwigsand and his assassination of the poet Kotzube in our neighboring city of
- 8:37Mannheim. But they may not have heard of how Kotsubwe once said. If
- 8:41an unhappy individual were to ask me what spot to live and to get rid
- 8:45of the cares and sorrows which pursue him, I should say Heidelbert. And
- 8:50a happy one asks me what spotty would choose to adorn with fresh wreaths the
- 8:54joys of his life, I should still say Heidelberg. Gerta loved the Neckar
- 9:01and scarcely less its famous old bridge. In an interpretive mood, he once
- 9:05observed, the bridge shows itself in such beauty as is perhaps not to be
- 9:09equalled by any other in the world. And indeed it is an easy thing
- 9:15to divide enthusiasm between bridge and river. Nothing is jolly. Are then loafing
- 9:18against the broad balustrades of this solid, old veteran as the students love to
- 9:22do, and lazily take note to the river's tinted reflections, the ripple and
- 9:28eddy about the piers, the mirroring of the arches, and perfect reverse,
- 9:31and watch the deep green shadows of the hills creep out and steal across.
- 9:37Great rafts come down stream, laden with the output of the oldenbaudt and black
- 9:41forest, and swift steamers hurry under the massive arches, bound up stream for
- 9:46the mountain towns, or downward to Mannheim. Fairies ply beside it, fishermen
- 9:52drift beneath it, and throngs of townspeople and countrymen stroll along it with now
- 9:58and then a burpetticoata peasant girl from the oldenvat, whose fair hair is hidden
- 10:03underneath a huge black coif. How redolent it is of Rhenish life. One
- 10:09lingers beside the great statue of its builder, the old Elector, and gazes
- 10:13with unwearying satisfaction on the strange medieval gateway, loophold and port colourst and wonders
- 10:20where too, other such queer round towers can be found with such odd bell
- 10:24shaped capitals and such slender little spires. Terrible and tragic experiences have befallen the
- 10:31sturdy old Hero and its antique towers are pitted from the riddling of French and
- 10:37Swedish and German bullets. Fire has swept it, cannons shaken it, Floods
- 10:43grappled with it, and blood drenched it from shore to shore. One processions
- 10:48of famine stricken people have dragged themselves across its paving stones, and its gateways
- 10:54have re echoed with groans and prayers and curses. To night we see it
- 11:00as defiant as ever, battle scarred and unshaken, with head bloody but unbowed,
- 11:05striding its river with broad and shapely arches, as real a part of
- 11:09Heidelberg as the very hills above it. One looks down from the castle on
- 11:16the twinkling lights of the cramped old town and notes how it has ambitiously spread
- 11:20at suburbs even beyond the opposite bank, and that its villa lamps sprinkle their
- 11:24way in the distance toward that little hamlet with the great mouthful of a name,
- 11:30hunt Schulzheim. In the hills. It is there. Could we see
- 11:35it that the tumble down hut stands that sheltered Luther when he escape from the
- 11:39tile devils of Verms. At a side of it, one wonders if he
- 11:43did not exclaim here as it did at the Deer. Here, I take
- 11:46my stand. I can do no otherwise, God help me. In Heidelberg
- 11:52itself, the shops of that one long street Helpstrasse send up a wavering,
- 11:56crooked path of softened light. But the moore e wagan on Lager is discreetly
- 12:01reserved, with all its hotels and imposing homes. One distinguishes little at this
- 12:05hour of the peaked tile roofs and faded shutters of the venerable town, a
- 12:11little awning shops, somber cafes, steuben and restaurants, or the excited appearance
- 12:18of an occasional side street that starts with all enthusiasm at the river, loses
- 12:22heart in a block or two, and comes suddenly to a discouraged end in
- 12:24a tangle of trees and forest paths. We only know that Emperor William the
- 12:30first canters is bronze steed with its capacious girth along the middle of ludwicks Platz
- 12:37right up to the university building, where as celebrated professors had their readings before
- 12:41their frisky young biner Helen, and that the market place is probably as shabby
- 12:46and gloomy as usual. The corn marked subsided again to its customary listlessness,
- 12:52since the last of the evening crowds have taken the mountain railroads there for cool
- 12:54trips to the Kernigstud or the Molkenkur, or for a trout dinner at the
- 13:00distant Volfsbrun. Out of this cramped nest of roofs, the shadowy Gothic tower
- 13:05of Saint Peter's Church rises, boldly, challenging beholders to forget if they can.
- 13:11How Jerome of Prague once nailed his theses on its doors and defended them
- 13:16before excited multitudes, calling, besides, on the distant and indifferent to sometimes
- 13:22have a thought of the famous university scholars who lie under the weeping willows of
- 13:26its churchyard. A neighboring bidder for consideration, the famous Heiliggeistkercher thrusts a lofty
- 13:35spire skyward above the dark tree tops, till its weather vein is almost on
- 13:39a level with our feet. There is little need for this ecclesiastic to feel
- 13:43any apprehension on the score of being forgotten. So renowned has it been for
- 13:48half a thousand years, as once the foremost cathedral of the Palatinate, celebrated
- 13:54for richness of endowment, extent of revenues, the beauty of its art treasures,
- 13:58and the learning of its prebendaries. As it appeals to us to night,
- 14:03it is as one fallen far from its former high estate. And yet
- 14:07the very eagles that saw over Heidelberg must have enough knowledge of religious controversy to
- 14:13recall its past amusing dilemmas of divided orthodoxy. The stranger in the castle ruins
- 14:18will smile as he thinks of what he is read of the days when both
- 14:22Protestants and Catholics worshiped there at one and the same time. Through the effective
- 14:28device of a partition wall thrown up to separate choir from nave, the elaborate
- 14:33Catholic ceremonials of the altar necessitated the reservation of the choir for them, while
- 14:39the Protestants got on very nicely with the pulpit built at the end of the
- 14:43nave. What unusual entertainment might have been contrived by Neutrals to the controversy,
- 14:48had a brick or two been removed from the partition wall and an ear applied
- 14:52alternately to either servers on one side, ave maries and paternosters on the other.
- 14:58Hymns of the Lutherans here the wailing Confitiore and passionate agnes Day, and
- 15:05the triple sound of the acolyte's bell as the host is elevated above the kneeling
- 15:09praying throngs in the nave, A rapt absorption of the new significance of old
- 15:15truths and lengthy discourses by stern and ascetic expounders for one congregation, a glittering
- 15:22altar, sacred images, flaming candles, and a dured monstrance, stiff pews
- 15:28in a painted pulpit for the other. For the Catholics, flocks of priests
- 15:33in choirboys, deacons and subdeacons sumptuously vested an orb and stoled and gorgeous chasuble.
- 15:39For the Protestants, one solemn man in black Neutrals at the dividing wall
- 15:46could have rendered both congregations of service by loosening a brick or two and letting
- 15:50a little incense beauty pass to the dissenter's side, and some word of wisdom
- 15:54concerning a release from dogma get throat of the Catholics at America's new policy of
- 16:00church unity existed, then he would have advocated doing away with the wall altogether
- 16:04and finding some compromise for approaching a common God in a common way. Time
- 16:11the Great Umpire has settled the contest as a draw for the partition waters come
- 16:17out and the rival camps with it. The present occupants are old Catholics,
- 16:22a sect with which either side has little sympathy and less patience. The evening
- 16:27lounger in the old Castle will doubtless have more than one thought of the famous
- 16:32seat of learning that has for five and a quarter centuries invested the name of
- 16:36Heidelberg with so much luster and glory. He will of course have heard it
- 16:41called the cradle of Germanic science, and will have been told that of all
- 16:45Germanic universities, and who those at Prague and Vienna are older than this.
- 16:51He can form some conclusion as to its rich contributions to human knowledge by merely
- 16:56recalling the names of its famous scholars. Reuchlinn the Langthon, the Seness voss
- 17:02Helmholtz, Bunsen, Kunol Fisher, and the rest, and will gauge its
- 17:07present standing by the acknowledged eminence of its faculties in medicine, law, and
- 17:11philosophy. One thinks of its long eras of philosophic speculation, always deeply earnest,
- 17:18if not invariably profitable, and applauds the force of longfellows Simile and Hyperion
- 17:26when he compared them to roads in our western forests that are broad and pleasant
- 17:30at first, that eventually dwindled to a squirrel track and run up a tree.
- 17:34If the loiterer be a Presbyterian, he will want to acknowledge indebtedness to
- 17:38order Senus for that celebrated Heidelberg Catechism of three hundred and fifty years ago that
- 17:44supplied the Westminster Assembly with a model for the shorter Catechism in use to day.
- 17:49That the university has survived the destructive rigors of so many fierce wars is
- 17:56perhaps sufficient proof of its vitality and the estimate men have set on its usefulness.
- 18:02Tilley carried off its library and presented it at the Pope when he conquered
- 18:06Heidelberg in the Thirty Years War, but although only a small portion of it
- 18:10has ever been returned, it has today half a million volumes and documents,
- 18:14among which are original writings of Martin Luther and manuscripts of the Miniscingers. The
- 18:19pleasant summer semester attracts students here being allowed under the Frei height system to exchange
- 18:26Alma martyrs, and then one may count up perhaps two thousand scholastics transients in
- 18:30Heidelberg. To many visitors, the equipment will appear meager for accepting the main
- 18:37building in ludwigs Plats, the library building, medical institution and botanical gardens.
- 18:41There is little in sight to remind one of its existence in winness, of
- 18:45which there is the popular joke about a new arrival who inquired of a passer
- 18:48by where the university might be. Don't know was the reply or the student
- 18:53myself. The presence of the jovial student, however, is too much in
- 18:57evidence at this time of the evening, through distant shouts and songs, to
- 19:02leave any one in doubt about the university being somewhere hereabouts. But when are
- 19:06they not in evidence at any hour of the day and night, You come
- 19:11across them in the cafes, on the streets, loafing on the bridge,
- 19:14or upping the castle, or returning or departing on their favorite recreation of walking
- 19:18trips through the hills. Their smart peaked caps and broad core ribbons the scenic
- 19:25features of the neighborhood. You wonder when they study, and how much time
- 19:29they ever spend in the private rooms they call their vulneramen. In spite of
- 19:33the appearance of extreme hauteur conveyed by their invariable and ceremonious punctilio, these ruddy
- 19:40faced boys are highly sociable and take a prodigious delight in smoking, drinking,
- 19:45and singing together. A cafe concert is entirely to their liking, and even
- 19:51more a jolly cagil barn supper in some forest restaurant at the end of a
- 19:55long tramp, most of all which is amazing. They relish this dupit k
- 20:00Nipen, where every friendly draft of their weak beer is preceded by a challenge
- 20:03to drink, and where the only redeeming feature is the fine singing still that
- 20:10commerce. As one hears the time hodered fox chorus, what comes there from
- 20:14the hill, Even the pet vice of jeweling might be mildly defended on the
- 20:18ground that German students have no such athletic contests as their brothers of America in
- 20:22England, and that each looks to the sword in consequence as an arbiter of
- 20:26courage and prowess, from the Fuchsa who are freshmen, to the Burschen who
- 20:33are seniors. Granted that the occasional saber jewel is really dangerous, still injuries
- 20:38are trifling in the ordinary encounters. After Mensur fought with the thin basket hilted
- 20:44Schleger and preferably on the pulch burden of the famous hirsch Gasse tavern up the
- 20:48little valley across the River Blood Apart, it is rather amusing than otherwise to
- 20:53watch the contestants in their pads and goggles, the second straddling between them with
- 20:57drawn swords, and the callous umpire keeping merry count of the wounds. Few
- 21:03topas and bullies here, but vigorous, wholesome youth. The outlook from the
- 21:08grand balcony is upon a sea of foliage so vast as completely to surround castle
- 21:14gardens and terraces and convert them into just such an enchanted island as spring so
- 21:18naturally out of the pages of the Arabian nights, evidence of sorcery and magic
- 21:25multiplies. We make the rounds of our fortress, for voices and music come
- 21:29out of the tremulous green depths, and companion aisles emerge in the moonlit distance
- 21:33that lifted far above us, is set on prodigious wave shoulders of steadily increasing
- 21:37height. The loftiest of these rocks we know to be the famous kernig stoud
- 21:44A name there have vainly been trying to change to kaiser stud since the visit
- 21:48of Emperor Frances of Austria a hundred years ago and Emperor Alexandra of Russia.
- 21:53From the eerie perch, one looks abroad by day, and a very considerable
- 21:57portion of the wide, wide world. The distance covered is only limited by
- 22:02the imagination of the observer. Then the Neckar Valley is at one's feet.
- 22:07Little farther off is the Rhine, and away yonder of the Hart Mountains and
- 22:11the somber edges of the Black Forest. The faint blur on the southwestern horizon
- 22:15set to bespare, where the followers of the Reformation with first Court Protestants,
- 22:21and the lofty pinnacle of the cathedral, rising above the tombs of its imperial
- 22:25dead, quickens thoughts of that mellifluous doctor whose writings were a river of paradise,
- 22:30the Crusade preacher Saint Bernard, to whom the Madonna is credited with having
- 22:34revealed herself in that very church. Our mortal eyes may confirm the identity of
- 22:41this much from the Kernish Stew's observation tower, but we can only envy the
- 22:45miraculous vision of those who see the spire of the Strasbourg Cathedral sixty miles away.
- 22:52Doubtless they could distinguish the identical tree of the famous oldenwaldt Rhine. It
- 22:56stands a tree in the olden vault with men see a bough so green neath
- 23:02which my own true love and eye a thousand joys have seen. Another of
- 23:07the companion aisles of this moonlit tree top ocean is the popular mulcam cur,
- 23:11a modern way cure that flourishes on the princely site of the earliest stronghold of
- 23:18this whole region. To those who are strolling its broad terrace and reflecting,
- 23:22perhaps upon the tragic history of the place seven centuries roll back, and Barbaross's
- 23:26brother, the savage Conrade of Hohenstaufen, climbs the forest trail with archers and
- 23:33spearmen, returning to his mountain retreat from a rubber raid along the rhine.
- 23:37And perhaps the visitor fancies even hears the roar of that historic explosion that rained
- 23:42the wreckage of old Conrad's fortress on town and river, or sees the blinding
- 23:48lightning stroke that crumbled this dread stronghold into a stalking ground for the shuddering phantoms
- 23:53of winter Fireside legends, reflections that penetrate still farther back into the gloaming of
- 24:00local tradition, will precede Comrade's fortress with the temple of the enchantress Yetta.
- 24:06And could we distinguish in the distance the rock where the cozy inns the Volsbrunnen
- 24:11perches and serves its rare dinners of mountain trout. We should see the very
- 24:15spot where the wolf slew Yeta in judgment of the goddess Hebba, who was
- 24:21properly indignant that her priestess should have fallen in love with a mortal The nearer
- 24:26waters of the billowy forest sea that ripples around the ruined castle walls, containing
- 24:30their dark cool depths. A picturesque tangle of woodland paths and romanted walks,
- 24:36thickets are fragrant flowers, a shattered arch, half cloaked with ivy, and
- 24:41many A pleasant wayside cafe opened to the sky and gay with its little German
- 24:45band for those who emerge from the shadows and come up like undines into the
- 24:49moonlight that streams in the silver mist on terrace and garden as fair a picture
- 24:55reveals itself as can be seen in any part of our world. Here are
- 25:00lakes and grottoes, and fountains and statues, all flecked with the heavy shadows
- 25:04of linens and beeches. Here are crumbling towers and vine mantled turrets, and
- 25:10shattered moss grown arch and cornice. Even lovelier today are these gardens, and
- 25:15scarcely they're celebrated than three hundred years ago, when old Solomon Decaus, architect
- 25:22and engineer of the Count's Palatine and first profit of the power of steam,
- 25:26leveled the mountain tops and filled up the valleys, as he has recorded in
- 25:30a Latin inscription in one of the older grottos, and built these plantations,
- 25:36and made them the haunts of singing birds, and filled them with orange trees
- 25:40and rare exotic plants, and ornamented them with statues and with fountains that made
- 25:45music as they played. The ruined castle is embreced and unfolded in these beautiful
- 25:49gardens, as an ailing child by its mother's arms. The ravages of fire
- 25:55and war have scarred and wrecked it beyond man's redemption. But the sturdy walls
- 25:59still opposed their twenty foot masonry to the attacks of time, as stubbornly as
- 26:03did the Great Rent Tower when it defied the powder blasts of the detest Count
- 26:08Melach and his devastating Frenchmen. As the hour of ten draws near, we
- 26:15returned through the vaulted passage from the great Balcony and enter the grass grown central
- 26:19courtyard. Outside, the facades were grim and bleak, and built to meet
- 26:25an enemy's blows. But toward the courtyard the castle turned faces of ornament and
- 26:30beauty on fields at once, the force of the saying that this is not
- 26:33the ruin of a castle, but of an epoch. It slowly flowered through
- 26:38the five hundred years that Heidelberg was the capital of the Palatinate, and all
- 26:42the development of those intervening times is expressed in its varying architecture. Pomp and
- 26:48circumstance are written big across it. For its masters and builders were counts and
- 26:52princes, kings and emperors. One feels the love and pride they took In
- 26:57these deserted palaces now masters in the pale moonlight, whole rows of effigies of
- 27:03the illustrious dead stand boldly forth, and niches of the hollow, staring walls
- 27:07and medallion heads peer curiously. Out of pediment recesses and history and allegory find
- 27:14expression and lifelike statue and carven bust, delicate arabesques and fanciful conceits wreathed themselves
- 27:22in stones of portal and cornice, and the armorial chequers of Bavaria and the
- 27:26Lion of the Palatinate oppose the lordly eagle of the Empire. Time has modulated
- 27:33the discordant keys of architecture at divergent periods into a common and mellow harmony,
- 27:38so that the first rude stones laid by Old Rudolph seem a consistent part of
- 27:44an assemblage that includes the finest example of Renaissance architecture in all Germany. Otto
- 27:49Heinrich's wonderful ruddy Palace set with its yellow statues on things of proud and the
- 27:55Battle of the White Hill. As he sees the ill starred Frederic's massive country
- 28:00beauty and wonders why this beautiful realm could not have enticed him from playing that
- 28:04tragic role of winter. King Frederick's palace rooms impressively by night, in its
- 28:11varied architecture and majestic effigies of the House of Visseelsbach, one feels the propriety
- 28:17of having here a comprehensive levy upon the building knowledge of all previous time,
- 28:22as an adequate and appropriate expression of the Catholic culture of the lords of the
- 28:26Palatinate. And indeed one reflects there was need for both strength and beauty to
- 28:33a fortress that was to play so momentous a role in the fierce dissensions of
- 28:37its time. In that dungeon, a pope once lay a prisoner in this
- 28:42chamber, huss found refuge in yonder Chapel, Luther has preached, and all
- 28:48the foremost spiritual lords of the hour. This courtyard has echoed, were shouts
- 28:53for the Emperor Sigismund when he tarried here en route to play that perfidious part
- 28:59at the Council of Constance, and as rocked with wild applause as wicked Fritz,
- 29:03returning in triumph from the battlefield of Sekenheim, marched in his captive princes,
- 29:10these staring walls have blazed with royal fates. In the hush and desolation
- 29:15of tonight, one feels a deep sadness in contrast in the ominous silence that
- 29:19pervades them now, with the splendor and uproar that vitalized them when a princess
- 29:25was wedded in this crumbling chapel, when Emperor Maximilian came up from his coronation
- 29:30at Frankfort, when the foremost figure of his era, Emperor Charles the Fifth,
- 29:34and a cellar little son who was let to fill up the second feasted
- 29:38and reveled here for days at a time. We look up at the Gothic
- 29:44balconies, and it seems as though we could almost see some early lord of
- 29:48the Stronghold peering down through painted windows at the athletic sports of his hardy sons,
- 29:53and a certain unreality takes phantom form and substance, and the sentinel figures
- 29:59deced men solemnly from their niches, as a train of valorous knights, and
- 30:03pages issues from Otto Heinrich's broad portal with music and laughter. There is the
- 30:08scrape and tread of mailed feet, and the shouts of a gallant company,
- 30:12as fair haired women in shimmering silks and high peaked head dresses award prizes of
- 30:18the tourney to kneeling men in glittering armor, and the trumpets sound, the
- 30:22torches flare, and the noble retinue sweeps into the great banquet hall, while
- 30:29the merry councilor, who brings up the rear makes us a profound and mocking
- 30:32bough. As the door is closed and we are alone with the statues in
- 30:37the moonlight, the empty, silent courtyard is spectral and sad. T is
- 30:41an hour for reverie, for apprehension. The pale silver of the moon whitens
- 30:47into phantom life. Two sides in a corner. The rest is a deep
- 30:52hushed shadow. A cushion of ivy stirs in the faint night air. A
- 30:56bat flashes over a shattered cornice stone detaches itself exhaustedly, and falls with a
- 31:02tinkle of sand, making a protest of little echoes. One steals away,
- 31:07silently, resigning ward of all the senile decay to faithful per care, who,
- 31:12in wooden effigy still companions as huge empty tons in the darkness of the
- 31:18cellars, the little red haired, faithful jesture, who alone remains constant to
- 31:22his master, of all the army of attendants that throng these palaces for half
- 31:27a thousand years. We passed the old stone canopied well, whose columns once
- 31:33for Charmain's past, the ponderous clock tower, and the moat bridge, and
- 31:38enter the fragrant gardens. As the valley bells sound ten, and the purple
- 31:42mists arising from the neckar it is impossible to escape a feeling a profound melancholy.
- 31:49Where now are the powerful princes, whose rusted swords may not strike back?
- 31:53Were I to raise a hand of destruction against the halls they reared and
- 31:56loved, and guarded with such might, the fate of every man, said
- 32:01the korn have we bound about his neck? It is depressing to think that
- 32:07such a glory power and beauty as once were here should have flourished so wonderfully
- 32:12and come to so little? Was all this magnificence created merely for destruction?
- 32:17Can nothing less suffice grim time to build him an eerie for bats and swallows.
- 32:22Was von Matheson right, And the judgment he expressed in the sad and
- 32:25sympathetic elegy he penned in these Ruins. Must we conclude with him that temporal
- 32:31glories but ashes, and that the darkness of the grave adorns impartially the proud
- 32:37brow of the world ruler and the trembling head that shakes above the Pilgrim's staff.
- 32:43Hohits ere marked un rum Saint ethel Anes wertgibtzs strotzer scheitel und ein zittend
- 32:51helped arm pilgrishtab decked mitt einer dunkel height das grab end of section nine.