sheep, or goat, and what is more singular, The style of living among the us among the peasants of Wales. places cutting grass with a small hook, or smooth edged sickle, and carrying it away on their heads in baskets for their cows. You see the grass on the lawns of good houses, or grass plots, and in shrubberies, very long and wild, and when you ask why it is not kept closer mown, the reply is that it is given to the milkwoman, often for a consideration, who cuts it as it is wanted. You see other women picking the long grass out of the forests, or under the bushes on the hill sides, where the slopes have been mown, for the same purpose. Nettles, cheroil, cow parsnip, which in England are left to seed and rot, are all here cut for the imprisoned cow. You go down to the river side to fish, and a peasant's son with you, chattering and gesticulating, pointing to your feet and to the grass it is to let you know that you are not to angle there, because it treads down the grass; and accordingly in Germany, with rivers full of fish, you seldom see an angler; if you do, he is pretty sure to be an Englishman," &c. German boors, seems much as it is with "Their houses are commonly strongly built, dull* and uninviting to an English eye. The perpetual employment of every member of the family in the fields, destroys all the domestic neatness and ornament which one sees in the rural class in England. And to their houses are no gardens full of flowers: up their walls are trained no roses, no jasmines or honeysuckles, diffusing their fragrance around. On the contrary, the houses of the peasantry are generally so built that the cow or cows, the pigs and hens, with their family utensils, occupy the ground-floor; and in front, or on one side, grows, instead of wallflowers and polyanthus, a The manner of life in the country Early hours and simple living distinguish the Germans. Three meals a-day are the usual order. The common people are astir extremely early, especially in summer, when waggons and carriages begin to roll about at two o'clock; and after that time, every hour becomes more lively with the country people proceeding to the town with articles for market. The cooks and good housewives are off to market to make their purchases for the day at five and six o'clock. The peasant girls, of course, before that hour are going along manure heap. In the house itself, a black stove, instead of a bright fire, gives a cheerless look to the apartment. It is dirty, and often pestiferous with unsavoury smells, of which the inhabitants appear totally unconscious. There is, as in country cottages in England, a dresser and set of shelves, on which are ranged their plates, &c. A spinning-wheel is still a regular part of the furniture, and it is only in these rustic cottages that you see beds with curtains: through the whole country besides, amongst all classes, the people occupy those small beds without posts, and adapted to one person." is thus described : in streams, with their tubs or baskets on their heads, full of vegetables, milk, eggs, fruits, &c. Men who get up early to study or work, often take some coffee directly they come down, and then breakfast with the family at six or seven, in the summer. This breakfast is generally simply coffee, and bread mostly without butter. Dinner is on table at twelve or one. The German cookery abounds with soups, vegetables, and sausages of various kinds, and sour kraut, of course, salads of as many kinds, amongst which a particular salad, made of *The darkness of the cottages in Wales is striking; to which the inhabitants are so accustomed, that they have refused to have larger windows inserted, and, in some cases in our knowledge, have insisted on the one small light being replaced.-REV. cold potatoes with vinegar and anchovies, is a great favourite. Their meat, like most continental meat, is very lean. Their beef, though lean, good. Their bullocks very fine, but killed just at the state in which we should begin to feed them. Their mutton is generally very bad, the sheep being kept principally for the wool, and never fed like ours. Veal is killed at about a week old, and is very poor and tasteless. Hood's description of a big man, with a big stick, and a big dog, driving a weak dying calf, is of eyery-day realization in the street. Lamb has no resemblance to that most princely of luxuries in England; and what is worse, the green peas are always spoiled by being gathered before they have any kernel, and by being cooked with sugar. Fowls they have in plenty, and cheap, but never well fed. Geese, on the contrary, are crammed when alive with Indian corn, and are stuffed in their cooking with chesnuts. They are often, however, to our taste spoiled by the plentiful addition of raisins. Hares are cheap, the common price being a shilling, and are good. Cheese is very indifferent, and little eaten at table. Their beer is a weak table-beer, very strong of the hop, very wholesome, and, with a little use, very agreeable but in wine districts, wine is much more drunk at table, being quite as cheap, and in summer being very pleasant, from its weakness and its subacid flavour. Tea is by no means a general afternoon Of the servants we have the following account : "Of German servants we may here say a word. The genuine German maid servant is one of the most healthy, homely, hard-working creatures under the sun. Like her fellows who work in fields, barns and woods, she is as strong as a poney, and by no means particular as to what she has to do. She wears no cap or bonnet at home or abroad. Has face and arms as stout and red as any that our farm girls can produce, and scours and sweeps and drudges on like a creature that has no will but to work, and eat, and sleep. She goes to market with a bare head, and in a large cloak. She turns out on Saturday afternoon, with all the rest of her tribe, with buckets and besoms, into the street, and then about three or four o'clock makes a perilous time of it in the city. Before every door water is flowing, and besoms are flirting the dirty puddles about. Each extends her labour not only to the pavement, if there be one, but to the middle of the street; so that they are, in fact, the city scavengers. German housewives complain dreadfully of their maids; but the maids certainly lead hard and most laborious lives, such as our servants would The not do. They address you with a sort of family familiarity which would be thought strange in England, but yet without anything like insolence, and are much more willing than English ones. On the other hand, German servants have customs and privileges that would astonish both servants and mistresses in England. They have their public balls, and their invitation to the tradesmen's balls. These they expect to attend just as much as they expect to have their daily food. At least twice in the winter is stipulated for. They have carriages sent to fetch them and bring them back, and go off as smart as their masters or mistresses would. The girls have their ball-books, wherein to enter their engagements for the dance, just as well as any of their young ladies, and, in short, for these evenings are as much ladies as the best of them. At the burgher balls the maid-servants will often dance with some of the most respectable of the young tradesmen, and, of course, feel no little proud of it. An English housemaid whom we brought to Germany with us, being about to return to England again, we were surprised to find that the nursemaid had made her a parting present of a ball-book, the said housemaid never having learnt a step in her life, and never being likely to require her ball-book in England," &c. "We have already seen how perseveringly the women and children gather grass and weeds everywhere for the cows. Nothing that can possibly be made use of is lost. The children may be seen standing in the stream in the villages carefully washing weeds before they are given to the cattle. As we meet them and the women with large bundles of grass on their heads tied in large cloths, we cannot but call to mind the immense quantities by our highway sides, and great green lanes in England, and bywood-sides, which grow and wither, and which might support many a poor man's cow. But with the German peasant it is not merely grass, it is every thing which is collected and appropriated. The cuttings of his vines are dried and trussed-up for winter fodder. The very tops and refuse of his hemp are saved for the bedding of his cattle; nay, the rough stalks of the poppies, after the heads are gathered, serve the same purpose, and are all converted into manure. When these are not sufficient, the children gather moss in the woods, and in summer you constantly meet them coming down out of the hills with their great bundles of it. In autumn they gather the very fungi out of the woods to sell for poisoning flies, and the stalks of a late species of grass to sell for cleaning out their large pipes. Nothing is lost: the leaves in the woods are raked up as they fall, and are brought home before winter for bedding for cattle. The fir cones, which with us all lie scattered in the forest, are as carefully collected to light their fires, or are carried in sacks and sold in the cities for that purpose. The slops from their yards and stables are all preserved, and carried to the fields in water-carts to irrigate their crops. The economy and care of the German peasants afford a striking lesson of utility to all Europe. Time is as carefully economized as everything else. The peasants are early risers, and thus obtain hours of the day's beauty and freshness which others lose. As they herd their cattle and swine, or as they meet to chat, the everlasting knitting-needles are at work, and the quantities of stockings which they accumulate is astonishing. The English of the working class can indeed form no conception of the hardy, unceasing out-of-door labour of continental women all the year round: there is not an hour of that year in which they do not find unceasing occupation," &c. "As regards field-sports: hunting as we do in England is out of the question. A thousand bauers would raise a fiercer outcry against gallopping over their green crops and springing wheat, than ever was heard in a year of rebellion. The popular division of the land is a decided hindrance to hunting. It has been here and there attempted, and English packs of hounds have been imported by the princes, but the peasants put it down wherever it appeared in a very little time. The German bauers, or farmers, have no faith, and it is quite impossible to persuade them, as it has been attempted in England, that it does their corn good to have it in winter ridden over and torn to pieces by a troop of horsemen. On the contrary, they insist on wild-schaden, or damages done by game, whenever deer, hares, or other game are encouraged by the nobility to the injury of their crops: and the laws support them strongly in this, and give them damages strictly; so that many nobles and princes have yearly large sums on this score to pay. All field-sports, therefore, in Germany, resolve themselves into shooting. What they call the jagd, or hunt, is mere shooting; of this treib-jagd, or battue, is the most striking. In Austria, Moravia, Bohemia, &c. where the estates are large, and rather in the hands of the nobles than of the people, where, in fact, over vast extent of lands the people are serf and property themselves; here game reaches the acme of abundance, and the love of field-sports is ardent and universal. The Allgemeine Zeitung, on the fieldsports of Austria, presents a tolerable conception of its wealth. We deduct (it says) from this statement the unusual appearance of lynxes, bears, wolves, &c. which in individual instances, and in par ticular provinces, only present themselves. We speak not of the elk or ibex, which are totally extinct. The last ibex, so far as I know, was shot by the French Marshal Marmont in the hostile invasion in 1803, in Illyria. Since this period the author has not been able to discover that a single one has been met with throughout Austria. In the Alps of Styria and Upper Austria the chamois now in most quarters grow scarce, yet draw together in herds and look down into the blue mirror of lakes which roll their waves at their feet. The Archduke John, a celebrated mountain-hunter, and like all the princes of his house a celebrated shot, has in his preserves alone more than three thousand herd of chamois,* of which three hundred are yearly shot. Wild swine, in the hereditary states of the monarchy, are found This should be "a herd of more than three thousand chamois," and not, as in the text, 66 more than three thousand herd."-REV. only in close preserves, but here in multitudes. Deer of all kinds are for the most part in the open forests, and they are especially in the wide thick-grown meadows of the Danube, the March, Taja, and in Bohemia, the vast open mountain woods, which are stocked with them. * * In respect to the abundance of game, Bohemia may stand first, then Moravia, then Lower Austria, and after these the other provinces. According to the shooting-lists of the four imperial hunting grounds, the Prater, Archof, Wolkendorf, and Laxenburg, there were shot in 1836, stags 784, fallow deer 60, black deer 709, roes 109, hares 12,880. In the year 1840 the total amounted to 20,559; and in 1841 to 23,075 head. From documents furnished by the forest master, it appears that there were delivered from his office, of red, fallow and black deer, in 1822, 1182 head; in 1825, 1419 head; in 1827, 1228 head; and in 1828, 1280 head. There are hundreds of preserves in Moravia where from 1000 to 2000 hares are killed in a single battue. Six or seven persons, who a few years ago spent the season with Prince Frankmansdorf, shot by the middle of January about 15,000 head of all kinds. At a great battue with the Prince Schwartzenberg, where about forty shooters were present, were 6000 head of game killed. Roe and deer, however, are the chief game, and give the greatest interest to the sportsman over the greater part of Germany. The good old wild boar hunt is now in most places extinct, and where it remains it is generally a battue of the most harmless description. This is in the parks of the princes and nobles. The drivers beat up the woods, the wild swine run till they come in contact with a fence, often a fence of boards stretched across the park for the purpose. About the centre of this fence, at an opening in the wood, is raised a sort of stage, where the sportsmen stand and fire at the swine* as they run past in face of the fence. "There are no people on the face of the earth that all summer long enjoy themselves like the Germans in their gay capitals; but autumn approaches, and the great climacteric of the year is reached. The whole nation is astir, not a man or woman can rest long, every one must fly in quest of change, and pleasure, and health. The whole population is like one huge hive of bees at the point of swarming, there is one vast motion, buzzing and hum. Every soul must have his Herbstreise, his autumn tour; he must visit the watering-places, and drink aud bathe-he must traverse the Rhine, the Elbe, the Danube he must climb the mountains of the Tyrol and Switzerland. Steamers are every where loaded to sinking; inns are full to suffocation, and landlords stand shaking their heads, gabbling German, French, English, Italian, and Russian, and bowing away disconsolate travellers and dusty carriages from their doors. Railway trains are enormous in length, and a smoking and talking are going on in them that are astounding to the stranger. Baden, Baden-baden, Wisbaden, all the Badens; Schlangen-bad, Carlsbad, Wildbad, Alexisbad, all the Bads; Ems, Ischl, Bad-Gastein, every watering place, is full. Meeting in the early morning, and drink. ing of the sulphureous or effervescing water in the Kursaal, or holding a five-o'clock gossip in the warm genial baths, men and women together; plunging into hot and cold baths in private; making drives to the neighbouring castles and scenery; sitting for two hours at tables-d'hote, purchasing nosegays, and paying musicians; the parade, the splendid conversationhouse, the ball, the réunion, the gambling in the evening; and thus it goes at the watering-places. But every spot of country which is attractive, every mountain district, every gay town, every fine stream, is alive with the ever-moving throng of pleasure-tourists. The heights and castles of the Rhine and Danube, the vales and defiles of the Saxon Switzerland, the romantic regions of the Saltzburgh, the Noric and the Swabian Alps, the Franconian and Thuringian forests; in short, every spot of gaiety or beauty receives the temporary visits of these wanderers. The Germans travel comparatively little abroad, some go to Rome and some to Paris, and a very few to England; but through their own father-land they circulate like the life blood in the living system, and, as their enormous stretches of railroad are completed, will do so much more," &c. There is no speaking of Germany without placing Munich in the front of our thoughts. * The author obtained a sight, when at Vienna, of the wild boar park of the Emperor at Hüttelsdorf, beyond Hitzing. (See the account of the visit, p. 379.) The old German jäger was formerly both keeper and forest-master, but now the offices are divided, and all public woods are put under public administration, and each large town has its Forst-Verwaltung, or wood-officer. "Munich (says our author) has, now in the present age, a distinct name and character among the German cities of the most splendid kind, which there is no danger of being confounded with that of any other. Vienna may be the gay capital of pleasure, the Paris of Germany; Dresden of sober gentility, and of pride in its gallery of old paintings; Leipsic of trade and books; Prague of a stately eastern dignity; Berlin, if it will, of sand and rank kennels, or, if it prefers it, of its modern assemblage of learned professors; Frankfort and Augsburg of their bankers, and of their king-aiding Jews; Cologne of its dome and carnival; Carls ruhe of its profound repose; Stuttgard of its Dannecker, Schiller, and its thousands of lightning conductors; Heidelberg of its Tun; Weimer of its Goëthe; Saltzberg of Mozart and its mountains ;-but Munich is the unrivalled queen of modern art in sculpture and painting; and in these respects is not only the first city of Germany, but unquestionably of modern Europe. And this she owes to one manthe King." We cannot afford room for any description of the magnificent palace of the King, either die neue Konigsvau, or die neue Residenz, with all its frescoes by Cornelius, and Schnorr, and Kaulbach, and its statues by Schwanthaler, and its halls embellished with paintings of the Odyssey, and the Argonauts, and antichambers resplendent with designs from the Greek tragedians, as the Hall of Beauties, or even the new Hof Capelle, which is said to be a perfeet model of the beauties of architecture, painting and sculpture; but we must give in abridgment some account of the Glyptothek and Pinacothek. "The former was built by Von Klenze for the present King, when Crown Prince, and at his own cost; it was begun in 1806 and completed in 1830. It is of the purest Grecian style, with Ionic portico. The building is a large square, including a court, apparently of one story, lighted from above; and without, instead of windows, are niches containing statues of the most celebrated sculptors. The front is wholly faced with red and white marble; it contains twelve splendid halls, all floored with marble, and the walls lined with scagliola. Many of them are embellished with designs from Cornelius, painted by him, Schlohauer, Zimmerman, and with relievos by Schwanthaler. The mere mass of marble employed here is astonishing; Inglis, who saw it when it was scarcely finished, said that he had seen the marbles at St. Escuriel, and others of the most celebrated palaces of Europe, but none of these were to be compared to the marbles of the Glyptothek. In twelve halls you have illustrated the rise, progress, decline and revival, of the art of sculpture; you have first the remains of Indian and Egyptian art, then the most ancient Greek and Etruscan, then the Ægina marbles, filling up the period preceding Phidias; then those of the very time, and probably from the hand of Phidias's master, the chief the colossal Apollo Citheroides; then in the halls of Bacchus and the Niobedæ, those of the period of perfect Grecian art. The halls of the Gods and of Troy, appropriated to the frescoes of Cornelius, illustrative of the Grecian mythology and the Trojan wars; the hall of heroes contains statues and busts, Greek and Roman. To these succeed the hall of coloured works, and of the moderns. The Ægina marbles form the gem of the ancient collection, and which, by some mistake that we never could hear explained, were deposited at Munich instead of London, though our commission exceeded the price at which they were bought by two thousand pounds. In the hall of the moderns are the Venus and Paris of Canova; the Sandal Binder, and the beautiful Victoria Caldoni of Schadow; the bust of Iffland by the father, George Schadow; Rauch's Admiral Von Trump; Carle's Winckelman; the bust of the King, by Thorwaldsen; Adonis, by the same; Love and the Muses, by Algardi; Napoleon, by Arveschi; and the kneeling Christ Child, by Algardi, &c. "The Pinacothek, which stands not far distant, is a building in the Roman style; it has its nine halls and twenty-three cabinets, all full of paintings, from the first to the last. The old Byzantine, the old German, Italian, Netherland, French, Spanish, and all from great masters among them. Rubens has a whole hall and cabinet to himself, containing no less than ninety-five paintings, great and small, under his name. The lives of the great painters by Cornelius are seen on the walls of the loggia of the corridor; here are also 300,000 Engravings." Mr. Howitt visited the atelier of Kaulbach, the painter, and of Schwan thaler, the famous sculptor. Gent. Mag. VOL. XIX. C |