luxury, I dine alone, order a mutton cutlet, cuite à point, with a bottle of Burgundy on one side, and Ovid's epistle of Penelope to Ulysses on the other, and so I read, and eat, and cry to myself. And then he repeated with enthusiasm― "Hanc tua Penelope lento tibi mittit Ulysse: his eyes glistening as he recited the lines; he made me feel their beauty without understanding a word of their sense. "Strangest, and happiest of men!" I thought as I looked at him, "that after living seventy years in this world, can still have tears to spare for the sorrows of Penelope!" Well our next resting place was Cologne. MEDON. You pause?-you have nothing to say of Cologne? No English traveller, except your professed tourists and guide-book makers, ever has; of the crowds who pass through the place, on their way up or down the Rhine, how few spend more than a night or day there! their walk is between the Rheinberg and the cathedral; they look, perhaps, with a sneering curiosity at the shrine of the Three Kings; cut the usual jests on the Leda and the Cupid and Psyche;* glance at the St. Peter of Rubens; lounge on the bridge of boats; stock themselves with eau-de-Cologne, and then away! And yet this strange old city, which a bigoted priesthood, a jealous magistracy, and a variety of historical causes, have so long kept isolated in the midst of Europe, with its Roman origin, its classical associations, the wild gothie superstitions of which it has been the theatre; its legion of martyrs, its three kings and eleven thousand virgins, and the peculiar manners and physiognomy of the people, strangely take the fancy. What has become of its three hundred and fifty churches, and its thirty-thousand beggars?-Thirty thousand beggars! Was there ever such a splendid establishment of licensed laziness, and consecrated rags and wallets! What a magnificent idea does it give one of the inexhaustible charity, and the incalculable riches of the inhabitants! but the French came with their besom of purification and destruction; and lo! the churches were turned into arsenals, the convents into barracks; and from its old accustomed haunts, "the genius of beggary was with sighing sent." I really believe, that were I again * Two celebrated antique gems, which adorn the relics of the Three Kings. to visit Cologne, I would not be content with a mere superficial glance, as heretofore. ALDA. And you would do well. To confess the truth, our first impressions of the place were exceedingly disagreeable; it appeared a huge, rambling, gloomy old city, whose endless narrow dirty streets, and dull dingy-looking edifices, were anything but inviting. Nor on a second and a third visit, were we tempted to prolong our stay. Yet Cologne has since become most interesting to me, from a friendship I formed with a Colonese, a descendant of one of the most ancient and distinguished families of the place. How she loved her old city!-how she worshipped every relic with the most poetical, if not the most pious veneration!-how she looked down upon Berlin with scorn, as an upstart city, "une ville ma chére, qui n'a ni histoire, ni antiquité." The cathedral she used to call "mon Berceau," and the three kings "mes trois pères." Her profound knowledge of general history, her minute acquaintance with the local antiquities, the peculiar customs, the wild legions, the solemn superstitions of her birthplace, added to the most lively imagination and admirable descriptive powers, were to me an inexhaustible source of delight and information. It appears that the people of Cologne have a distinct character, but little modified by intercourse with the surrounding country, and preserved by continual intermarriages among themselves. They have a dialect, and songs, and ballads, and music, peculiar to their city; and are remarkable for an original vein of racy humour, a 'vengeful spirit, an exceeding superstition, a blind attachment to their native customs, a very decided contempt for other people, and a surpassing hatred of all innovations. They never admitted the jurisdiction of the electors of Cologne, and although the most bigoted people in the world, were generally at war with their archbishops. Even Napoleon could not make them conformable. The city is now attached to Prussia, but still retains most of its ancient privileges, and all its ancient spirit of insubordination and independence. When, in 1828, the king of Prussia wished to force upon them an unpopular magistrate, the whole city rose, and obliged the obnoxious president to resign; the government, armed with all its legal and military terrors, could do nothing against the determined spirit of this half-civilized, fearless, reckless, yet merry, good-humoured populace. A history of this grotesque revolution, which had the same duration as the celebrated trois jours de Paris, and exhibited in its progress and issue, some of the most striking, most characteristic, most farcical scenes you can imagine, were worthy of a Colonese Walter Scott. How I wish I could give you some of my friend's rich graphic sketches, and humourous pictures of popular manner! but I feel that their peculiar spirit would evaporate in my hands. The event is celebrated in their local history as "la Revolution du Carnival:” and this reminds me of another peculiarity of Cologne. The carnival is still celebrated there with a degree of splendour and fantastic humour, exceeding even the festivities of Rome and Naples in the present day; but as the season of the carnival is not the season for flight with our English birds of passage, few have ever witnessed these extraordinary Saturnalia. Such is the general ignorance or indifference relative to Cologne, that I met the other day with a very accomplished man, and a lover of art, who had frequently visited the place, and yet he had never seen the Medusa. MEDON. Nor I, by this good light!-I never even heard of it! |