10 MAYENCE. CATHEDRAL. The massy red stone Towers and pinnacles of the Cathedral are venerable objects in a dirty wretched square in the centre of the town, filled with the barrows and baskets of a littering market, and thronged with passengers of all qualities. The meanness of the lower ranks, the white Austrian, and the blue Prussian, uniforms, here and there a prowling gendarme, are, however, the predominant features. The Cathedral has nothing very striking in its architecture beyond a heavy massive grandeur; and after the superb Gothic edifices of the Netherlands it is by no means remarkable. It contains some interesting and handsome monuments of the Electors, in whose arms the old Sacristan begged us to remark the wheel taken from the first Elector, who exercised the profession of a wheel-wright. Besides. Albert, of Brandenburg and other men of celebrity, Fastrada, the wife of Charlemagne, is buried here, and honoured by an inscription, which I was not linguist enough to decypher. We did not omit paying due respect to the small stone erected to Henry Frauenlob, Anglice, "Praise the Ladies," the old Minnesinger and Canon, whose MAYENCE. -OLD PRINTERS. 11 surname vouches for the gallantry of his poems. The fair Ladies of Mayence showed their appreciation of their Bard by bearing him to his Grave, and inundating his bier with tears and red wine. You know the celebrity which Mayence has acquired by the invention of Printing. The scite of Gutenberg's, the Printer's house, is now not unappropriately occupied by the Casino and the Cabinet de Lecture, while Faust's is degraded into a low inn. Just at the invention of Printing broke out the terrible war for the Electorate between Didier of Isenbourg and Adolphus of Nassau. The printers were obliged, among others, to emigrate, and this helped to spread the infant art among the cities of Germany. 12 CROSS THE RHINE. -CASSEL. LETTER II. WE crossed the Rhine by the fine bridge of boats from Mayence to Cassel, a small but fortified place, where neat new houses are starting from the black ruins of the last bombardment. The Rhine has here a majestic appearance: it is at least half a mile broad, and its stately bed lies before the eye for a considerable reach each way. Opposite Mayence, the Main unites its tranquil stream, which any where but by the side of the Rhine would be a noble river. Both sides of the Rhine are now once more German; but it is not till you have passed the river that you begin to feel yourself fairly in Germany. As far as Mayence, francs and Napoleons are more in circulation than the German money; but the toll is demanded on the opposite side in kreutzers, a little coin, sixty of which make a florin. At Mayence you find French CROSSING THE MAIN. 13 cafés, French restaurateurs, and are pestered with the little blackguard commissaires whose manifold resources of activity seem exclusively of French growth. Every body at Mayence speaks French, bad or good; at Cassel, only here and there an individual; and after passing the Main at Kostheim, you would be puzzled to find one in a hundred who could answer the simplest question. It is difficult to describe the change of character which many features of the scene present on arriving on the right bank. You appear in another world, as you touch the commencement of the sandy plains which seem to assure you, you are really in Germany. The boat in which you pass the Main on the road to Darmstadt, affords specimens of that stillness and slowness with which every thing here is transacted. One quarter of an hour is occupied in expectation of its arrival from the opposite side; another in passing a river about half as wide and rapid as the Thames at Windsor. Your postilion drives in. You are punted across by three or four heavy boatmen, without the exchange of a syllable. The fare is fixed-no more is demanded; you pay it, and receive neither thanks nor murmurs. The postilion cracks his whip; his horses blunder their own way out; while he draws forth the fungus and flint, with which a German pocket is always supplied, and lights his pipe to beguile the seven leagues journey, through a sea of sand to Darmstadt. The country, in spite of its soil, is cultivated and moderately fertile, rich in orchards, the roads lined with luxuriant fruit-trees. The peasants were at plough in their quaint cocked hats and blue jerkins, and the women quite as industriously employed without the same advantage of shoes and stockings luxuries with which the German housewives dispense in summer, though neat in their appearance, and with few symptoms of poverty. We were now again in the Grand Duchy of Hesse, announced by the Hessian Lion on the posts of the Chaussée Geld (Turnpike) houses, having entered the Duchy of Nassau at Cassel, and quitted it on passing the Main, the boundary between the two Principalities. leagues from Darmstadt, we About two entered a |