There are many other ruined castles in this vicinity. That of Hardenberg, near Nörten, is the most beautiful. Even when one has, as he should, his heart on the left—that is, the liberal side—he cannot banish all melancholy feeling on beholding the rocky nests of those privileged birds of prey, who left to their effete descendants only their fierce appetites. So it happened to me this morning. My heart thawed gradually as I departed from Göttingen; I again became romantic, and as I went on I made up this poem:
Rise again, ye dreams forgotten;
Heart-gate, open to the sun!
Joys of song and tears of sorrow
Sweetly strange from thee shall run.
I will rove the fir-tree forest,
Where the merry fountain springs,
Where the free, proud stags are wandering,
Where the thrush, my darling, sings.
I will climb upon the mountains,
On the steep and rocky height,
Where the gray old castle ruins
Stand in rosy morning light.
I will sit awhile reflecting
On the times long passed away,
Races which of old were famous,
Glories sunk in deep decay.
Grows the grass upon the tilt-yard,
Where the all-victorious knight
Overcame the strongest champions,
Won the guerdon of the fight.
O'er the balcony twines ivy,
Where the fairest gave the prize,
Him who all the rest had vanquished
Overcoming with her eyes.
Both the victors, knight and lady,
Fell long since by Death's cold hand;
So the gray and withered scytheman
Lays the mightiest in the sand.
After proceeding a little distance, I met with a traveling journeyman who came from Brunswick, and who related to me that it was generally believed in that city that their young Duke had been taken prisoner by the Turks during his tour in the Holy Land, and could be ransomed only by an enormous sum. The extensive travels of the Duke probably originated this tale. The people at large still preserve that traditional fable-loving train of ideas which is so pleasantly shown in their "Duke Ernest." The narrator of this news was a tailor, a neat little youth, but so thin that the stars might have shone through him as through Ossian's misty ghosts. Altogether, he was made up of that eccentric mixture of humor and melancholy peculiar to the German people. This was especially expressed in the droll and affecting manner in which he sang that extraordinary popular ballad, "A beetle sat upon the hedge, summ, summ!" There is one fine thing about us Germans—no one is so crazy but that he may find a crazier comrade who will understand him. Only a German can appreciate that song, and in the same breath laugh and cry himself to death over it. On this occasion I also remarked the depth to which the words of Goethe have penetrated the national life. My lean comrade trilled occasionally as he went along—"Joyful and sorrowful, thoughts are free!" Such a corruption of text is usual among the multitude. He also sang a song in which "Lottie by the grave of Werther" wept. The tailor ran over with sentimentalism in the words—
"Sadly by the rose-beds now I weep,
Where the late moon found us oft alone!
Moaning where the silver fountains sleep,
Once which whispered joy in every tone."
The hills here became steeper, the fir-woods below were like a green sea, and white clouds above sailed along over the blue sky. The wildness of the region was, as it were, tamed by its uniformity and the simplicity of its elements. Nature, like a true poet, abhors abrupt transitions. Clouds, however fantastically formed they may at times appear, still have a white, or at least a subdued hue, harmoniously corresponding with the blue heaven and the green earth; so that all the colors of a landscape blend into one another like soft music, and every glance at such a natural picture tranquilizes and reassures the soul. The late Hofmann would have painted the clouds spotted and chequered. And, like a great poet, Nature knows how to produce the greatest effects with the most limited means. She has, after all, only a sun, trees, flowers, water, and love to work with. Of course, if the latter be lacking in the heart of the observer, the whole will, in all probability, present but a poor appearance; the sun is then only so many miles in diameter, the trees are good for firewood, the flowers are classified according to their stamens, and the water is wet.
A little boy who was gathering brushwood in the forest for his sick uncle pointed out to me the village of Lerrbach, whose little huts with gray roofs lie scattered along for over a mile through the valley. "There," said he, "live idiots with goitres, and white negroes." By white negroes the people mean "albinos." The little fellow lived on terms of peculiar understanding with the trees, addressing them like old acquaintances, while they in turn seemed by their waving and rustling to return his salutations. He chirped like a thistle-finch; many birds around answered his call, and, ere I was aware, he had disappeared amid the thickets with his little bare feet and his bundle of brush. "Children," thought I, "are younger than we; they can remember when they were once trees or birds, and are consequently still able to understand them. We of larger growth are, alas, too old for that, and carry about in our heads too many sorrows and bad verses and too much legal lore." But the time when it was otherwise recurred vividly to me as I entered Clausthal. In this pretty little mountain town, which the traveler does not behold until he stands directly before it, I arrived just as the clock was striking twelve and the children came tumbling merrily out of school. The little rogues, nearly all red-cheeked, blue-eyed, flaxen-haired, sprang and shouted and awoke in me melancholy and cheerful memories—how I once myself, as a little boy, sat all the forenoon long in a gloomy Catholic cloister school in Düsseldorf, without so much as daring to stand up, enduring meanwhile a terrible amount of Latin, whipping, and geography, and how I too hurrahed and rejoiced, beyond all measure when the old Franciscan clock at last struck twelve. The children saw by my knapsack that I was a stranger, and greeted me in the most hospitable manner. One of the boys told me that they had just had a lesson in religion, and showed me the Royal Hanoverian Catechism, from which they were questioned on Christianity. This little book was very badly printed, so that I greatly feared that the doctrines of faith made thereby but an unpleasant blotting-paper sort of impression upon the children's minds. I was also shocked at observing that the multiplication table—which surely seriously contradicts the Holy Trinity—was printed on the last page of the catechism, as it at once occurred to me that by this means the minds of the children might, even in their earliest years, be led to the most sinful skepticism. We Prussians are more intelligent, and, in our zeal for converting those heathen who are familiar with arithmetic, take good care not to print the multiplication table in the back of the catechism.
I dined at The Crown, at Clausthal. My repast consisted of spring-green parsley-soup, violet-blue cabbage, a pile of roast veal, which resembled Chimborazo in miniature, and a sort of smoked herring, called "Bückings," from the inventor, William Bücking, who died in 1447, and who, on account of the invention, was so greatly honored by Charles V. that the great monarch in 1556 made a journey from Middleburg to Bievlied in Zealand for the express purpose of visiting