Page images
PDF
EPUB

those of the feminine gender, but also that they use their knowledge of it to some purpose. Bare arms, bare shoulders, and their usual accompaniments, a pretty bare face, wreathed in a most enchanting smile, and rouged in a very inartistic and unnatural manner, indicate that she is determined to carry all who look at her by storm. We object to, and enter our protest against, the rather primitive style of dress which the young lady has adopted, as unsuited to high latitudes, and our strict notions of female propriety and what the minimum of dress ought to be.

We may now say, that we have seen nearly all that is noteworthy in the places we have visited. We have seen the solitary one horsewoman mounted on an Orange county milk-white steed; as she may be seen at any time of the day, probably, or on any chill evening in autumn, about to slowly ascend a hill, not very far distant, it is supposed, just as the last rays of the setting sun are gilding the western sky, and bathing the whole landscape, fields, forests, and streams, in such a golden flood of light, as even the mines of California could not surpass unless they tried very hard. We have seen the omnipresent Japanese Embassy, the inevitable family-groups, the inseparable seven aged sisters, in black dresses and white caps; and the seven quarreling brothers, in affectionate proximity to each other. We have seen our valorous militiacaptains and generals, files, troops, companies, regiments, and brigades of them, all armed to the teeth, and looking their fiercest. We have seen our jolly dogs of war, the Zouaves, and our brave citizen soldiery, in the tented field and out of the tented field; surrounded by all the pomp, and circumstance, and guns, drums, and bayonets of their glorious calling. We have seen the pictures of romantic young ladies, and matter-of-fact, and fat, old ladies, and ladies whose age is doubtful, and ladies whose age is unquestionable. We have seen very weighty old gentlemen, and very lean young gentlemen, and a great many who had nothing of the gentleman about them. In short, specimens of all kinds of humanity and vanity, from prize-fed babies of twenty pounds weight, to old gentlemen good for half-a-ton, in gross; each one in the most laughter-provoking position he could ignorantly, and without intending to make a fool of himself, assume; every body seemingly so weak as to need a table to lean upon, if he sat down, or a chair, or plaster-paris column of the Corinthian order, if he were standing up; every person apparently so given to literature that he must have at least a large octavo volume, and perhaps at most a good-sized library contiguous to him; every other young gentleman with his arms folded, and, to all appearances, in so moody and so stern a frame of mind, as to strike fear into any person not possessing uncommon courage, who would venture to look at him; every other young lady making the most extensive display of jewelry, teeth, and curls possible; and every other politician or lawyer, with his coat buttoned primly up to his throat, and his right hand thrust in his shirt-bosom, as if he had some tremendous and weighty state secret there, which he was afraid would burst out, and proclaim itself abroad, unless he held it fast. We have seen, finally, that when people are getting their likenesses taken, they generally make fools of themselves during the operation, and, as the result of our observations, we have also come to the conclusion, that if there is the

[ocr errors]

slightest spark of vanity alive in a person in such a case, it is sure to get fanned into a ridiculous conflagration, painfully perceptible to the naked eye, if that organ be in a normal condition.

If the philosopher craves for a fresh and sweet morsel to ruminate on; if the student of physiognomy wants a new field for research; or if the lover of the ludicrous desire to gratify his propensity to fun to the fullest extent, let him take such a stroll as this we have taken, and if it does not repay him for his efforts, we are ourselves mistaken, and will admit that we are all wrong, and will consider it a great kindness to be set right again.

[blocks in formation]

THE PRIVATE LIBRARY OF WILHELM IV.,

LATE KING OF PRUSSIA.

In four great halls, in the Royal Palace in Berlin, in twenty colossal cases, are collected and exhibited the books, and prints, and manuscripts of Wilhelm IV., late King of Prussia. We find some account of them in a foreign journal, which may be of interest enough to repeat here over seas; for the library of a king fond of letters and art, and of a king of Prussia also, whose capital may count among the most enlightened places of earth, in our age, is worth looking into in a leisure moment. Thus, too, in these august halls, silent but for the voices which seem to come to you tarrying there, as if somehow the great thought of the past flowed together in one stream of melody, audible to all men if they will but listen, but drowned for the most part by the noise of crowds, and the tumult of passions one may pause to breathe, and to remember that the great task of war which it lies upon us to discharge, and with our might, is yet not the greatest task: rather is it but the passing wrath which treason may kindle in the good patriot; the storm which clears the air, and makes room for the healthful activity of the soul; whose triumphs are in the higher things of religion, of law, of science, and of art.

In three separate rooms are the works, sixteen thousand in number, which the King bought by way of patronage of their authors, to keep from starving the learning which ornamented his kingdom, and for distribution among scientific societies. Among them are the works of Overbeck, Stillfried, and Hefner; Minutoli and Möllhauser, and the travels of Barth-as many as fifty copies of each. Among the theologians who shared this princely aid, were: Hengstenberg, Professor of Theology in the University of Berlin, who has also diverted himself with philosophical and Oriental studies, but of widest influence through his theological writings; Krummacher; Sartorius, Director of the Consistorium in Königsberg; Stier, and others of like sort; Bunsen standing alone of liberal theologians among them.

In the wide fields of art and ancient learning, there are to meet you Rauch, first German sculptor perhaps of the age, unless, as some have suggested, Rietschal, so lately dead in Dresden, shall go before him; Schadow, who first, with Cornelius and others, half a century ago, in Rome, developed the art of fresco-painting for our times; Stüler, pupil of Schinkel, architect of the New Museum in Berlin; Pessius, Petavel, Pettrich, Klaproth, a famous Orientalist and traveller in the Caucasus, afterward professor of the Asiatic languages in the University of Paris; Kugler, the well-known writer on the art of all ages, except his own; and Dorew, and Rumohr.

The catalogue of copper-engravings, and original drawings, contains more than six thousand numbers, with many duplicates ; among them drawings and paintings by princes and princesses; the King's own sketches and plans being deemed by the best critics worthy of the first place among these royal efforts. In belles-lettres the library shows many omissions. The King's taste was

peculiar, and his collection illustrates himself. Brentano, and Rückert, and Tieck, are named among the writers whom he read most. After them Chamisso, Fouqué, and Gaudy. You look in vain for the writings of Heine, Freiligrath, and Kinkel. Nor does one wonder at that. Not to speak of the two former, Kinkel took a violent part in the revolution of 1848, which threatened to shake the Prussian throne. Captured by Prussian troops, in Baden, in 1849, he was liable to the punishment of death, but instead was condemned to imprisonment in a fortress for life. That was commuted by the King into imprisonment in jail, in which he was compelled to work as a criminal. In November, 1850, with the help of Carl Schurz, then a student in Bonn, also implicated in the revolution, he escaped to England. Wilhelm IV. is now dead, after long and painful eclipse of reason. Carl Schurz is Minister of the United States to

Spain.

With Rückert the King in his earlier days seems to have had much literary intercourse; drawn to him perhaps by a common taste for Oriental lore, as well as by his extraordinary endowment of style. Thus, August first, 1838, Rückert writes from Erlangen to the Crown Prince: 'Your Royal Highness has made me indeed happy, by your beautiful present. The Sanscrit word kritagnatâ, on the reverse of your likeness, is of double meaning. Originally it imported, 'Recognition of what has been done;' and I am proud to discover therein a permanent token of your acknowledgment of my efforts; again, it signifies usually, gratitude, that is, recognition and acknowledgment, and in this sense I may be permitted to appropriate it.

'NUR um zu danken denk' ich Dein;

So lang ich denke, werde ich dankbar seyn.'
Only to thank, do I e'er think of thee;

And while I think shall I most thankful be.

Such play on words, which our language is too feeble to perfectly reproduce, was much to the taste of the monarch. Rückert's works were always by him, as well in his 'hand-libraries' at Erdmannsdorf and Sans Soucie, as in Berlin. But poetical friendship of this sort is not always the smoothest, as we have been taught by many examples. When later, Rückert withdrew from Berlin, he published a collection of poems, which recal to mind, it is said, the correspondence between Humboldt and Varnhagen von Ense, although there was nothing personal against the King. Of the sarcasms touching Berlin, and the Spree, (the little river on which Berlin is situated,) we find this: 'It dives in like a swan in order to come out on the other side like a swine.'

Among the most interesting literary memorials of the library, are those which pertain to the King's connection with Alexander Humboldt. It was the King's custom to refer to Humboldt for his critical opinion of all works sent to him. Humboldt's reading had been enormous, it continued gigantic; he turned off speedily the works thus submitted to him, with his written opinion, which determined their fate. His judgment was usually expressed with the utmost brevity, in a note upon the title-page. Thus, upon a work by one Dohrn, an entomologist, and at present deputy for Stettin, Humboldt writes: A learned

but conservative joke by the talented president of the vermin.' his opinions were not always so mild, it is remarked!

[ocr errors]

But

In honor of the great Master of Science, the King had collected all his works, preserved in a separate case, which was ornamented with Humboldt's likeness, worked in silk. The collection, which is absolutely perfect, it is claimed, contained the work upon Humboldt's travels in America, which cost two thousand two hundred and fifty dollars, and a perfect copy of which Humboldt himself seemed not to have possessed, for it was not found among his books after his death. And the wish is expressed, that this collection may be preserved as a peculiar and worthy reminiscence of Humboldt for Berlin and Germany; and, like that of the memorials of Schiller, be made accessible to all.

Of female writers, the King seems to have bestowed the greatest patronage upon Frau von Paalzow. She was born in Berlin, in 1788, and died there in 1847, sister of the painter Wach, and wife of a Prussian staff-officer. Her anonymous romances, 'Godwin Castle,' followed by 'St. Roche,' won for her sudden and great popularity. She lived in the immediate neighborhood of the Court, and wrote the greater part of her mediæval romances in a corner chamber of the Bellevue Palace in the Thiergarten, on the Spree, much complimented by princes and princesses, and on very familiar terms, one infers, with the royal family. There were heterogeneous Corypheuses in the Berlin Court in those days, says our authority. The great people in Berlin bent the knee then to art, and literature, and science, and would win a glory which should eclipse the nations. What hopes! and what is left of it all now ? sighs our phantom. When the Frau von Paalzow entered the charmed circle of the Court, her power faded, and she also, from the sight of contemporaries; for 'with every new work, and at every stage of it, my only thought is, what will the King say of it?' she writes. 'She had asked better, what will the critic say of it?' growls an unknown voice.

There is a complete set of the works of the Countess Hahn-Hahn, although that proud writer never showed herself at Court. And poets are not wanting, whose names will sound strange perhaps to the ears of many of us. Lenau, Grün, Eichendorf, Hangewitz, Platen, Zinzendorf, Jellachich, Majlath, and writers of religious poems. There are also countless and worthless theological writings; sermons, for the most part in manuscript, delivered to the King, after the service, or on his birth-day, and religiously preserved. The scientific manuscripts, by Ancillon, Delbrück, the Humboldts, Niebuhr, Radowitz, Raumer, and others, are represented as valuable.

men.

There are also many rare works of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries, and many which contain the autographs of celebrated Among them a prayer-book, with a yellow, illegible writing in it; it belonged to the unfortunate Katte, whose tragical fate is related in such dramatic way by Carlyle, in his history of 'Friedrich II. called the Great;' and these words, whatever they may be, were written there the evening before his execution. The official documents touching this episode in the history of the young Friedrich have recently been published in Berlin, proving that the exe. cution was in direct opposition to the sentence of the court-martial; a violent

« PreviousContinue »