church, built in the old German style, on the spot once occupied by the castle chapel, contains banners, and paintings, and numerous monuments and tablets to the memory of the princely personages buried beneath, and some admirable specimens of oak carving. To read their names as you pass along is a lesson in Saxon genealogy. Among them is that of the Electress Margaret, whose remains, after a rest of more than three centuries, were removed to the Princes' Vault, the door to which, studded with iron stars, you may see in the nave. But, in 1846, Duke Joseph caused the old tomb to be cleared out and repaired, and honouring the memory of her whose name is yet revered in Saxony, had her coffin restored to its former place with solemn ceremony.
From the balconies or the tower you have a good view of the town lying beneath on a steep hill-slope, with its large ponds, and many ups and downs. And all around lie fields, and gardens, and rich pastures, bearing fruitful testimony to the good husbandry of the Wends.
The main approach to the castle is by a road winding with an easy slope up the steep side of the hill. Its upper extremity is crowned by a gateway in the Romanesque style, and where its lower end sinks to the level of the road stand two obelisks—pyramids as they are called—bearing on their pedestals a statue of Hercules and Minerva.
The streets were full of life and bustle, for it was market day, and the Wends coming into the town from all quarters increased the novelty of the sight by their singular costume. The men wear a flat cloth cap, a short tight jacket drawn into plaits behind, and decorated in front with as many buttons as may be seen on the breast of a Paddingtonian page, loose baggy breeches, and tight boots up to the knee. You will, perhaps, think it a misfortune that the breeches are not longer, for all below is spindle-shanky, in somewhat ludicrous contrast with the amplitude above, and the broad, big foot. How such a foot finds its way through so narrow a boot-leg is not easy to guess. The men are generally tall, with oval faces of a quiet, honest expression.
But the women!—they are something to wonder at. Most of them are bareheaded: some wear a close plain cap, which throws out their round chubby faces in full relief; some display a curiously padded blue horseshoe, kept in place by a belt that hides the ears, from which two red streamers hang down their back; and others content themselves with a ribbon, tying their hair behind in a flat wide bow. Their gown is long in the sleeves and short in the skirt—short as a Highlander's kilt, which it very much resembles, and is in most instances of a carpet-like texture. Plum-colour, blue, pink, and green, dotted with bright flowers or crossed by stripes, are the prevailing patterns; their gay tints relieving the sombre blue and black of the men. The skirt is made to fit pretty closely, much more so, indeed, than the men's breeches, and as it descends no lower than the knee, you can see that if Nature is niggard to the men she is generous to the women. Such an exhibition of well-developed legs in blue worsted stockings I never before witnessed.
Some of the younger ones had put on their summer stockings of white cotton, and, with bodice and skirt of different patterns, went strutting about apparently well pleased with themselves. But they have another peculiarity besides the kilt: they all, young and old, wear a species of cuirass, secured at the waist and rising to their chin. I judged it to be made of light wood, covered with black stuff. It gives them a grotesque appearance when looked at from the front or sideways; suggesting an idea of human turtles, or descendants of a race of Amazons. Some sat at their stalls with their chin resting on it, or face half hidden behind; and many times did I notice the breastplate pushed down to make room for the mouth to open when the wearer wished to speak—the pushings down being not less frequent than the shrugs of ladies in other places to keep their silly bonnets on. Even little girls wear the cuirass, and very remarkable objects they are.
The spacious area of the market-place, enclosed by antique houses, was thronged. Wendish women sitting in long rows behind their baskets of cherries and heaps of vegetables; others arriving with fresh supplies on low wheelbarrows, their white legs twinkling everywhere in the sunshine. And many more who had come to buy roving busily from one wooden booth to another among all sorts of wares—books, ironmongery, jewelry, cakes and confectionery, coarse gray crockery, tubs and buckets, deep trays and kneading troughs chopped from one block; but the drapers and haberdashers, with their stores of gaudy kerchiefs and gay tartans and piles of stockings, attracted the most numerous customers. There was a brisk sale of sausages and bread—large, flat, round loaves (weighing 12lb. English) of black rye bread, at one groschen the pound, which was considered dear.
The men wandered about among the scythes, rakes, and wooden shovels, or the stalls of pipes and cutlery, or gathered round the ricketty wagons laden with small sacks of grain and meal which were continually arriving, led by one of the tribe in dusty boots. And all the while the townsfolk came crowding in to make their weekly purchases till there was scarcely room to move.
Such a scene is to me far more interesting than a picture-gallery. I went to and fro in the throng hearkening with pleasure to the various voices, watching the buying and selling, and noting the honest, cheerful faces of many of the women. Then escaping, I could survey the whole market-place from the rising ground at its upper end, and contemplate at leisure the living picture, framed by houses and shops in the olden style, among which, on one side, rises the ancient Rathhaus. It was built in 1562 with the stones of a church given to the corporation by Duke Johann, whose portrait you may see hanging in the hall inside among electors and dukes, and their wives; and, ever since, it has been used for weddings, dances, and religious meetings, as well as for the grave business of the council and police. Opposite the entrance, the date 1770, inserted with black pebbles into the paving, marks the spot where the last beheading took place under authority of the council.
The Wends are the descendants of a Sclavonic tribe, which, according to ethnologists, migrated from the shores of the Adriatic more than a thousand years ago, carrying in their name (Wend or Wand) a proof of having once lived by the sea. They are remarkable for the tenacity of their adherence to ancient habits and customs, which may, perhaps, account for their still being a distinct people among the Germans by whom they are surrounded. And they are not less remarkable for honesty, health, and an amount of agricultural skill, which distinguishes them from their neighbours. They are clever and successful in rearing cattle; they get on, and save money; and the women have the reputation of being most excellent nurses. The Bohemian peasant on the farther side of the mountains used, if he does not now, when his children were born, to stretch them out, sometimes at the end of a pole, towards the country of the Wends, that the infant might grow up as able and lucky as they. One of their immemorial practices, still kept up, is to talk to their bees, and tell them of all household incidents, and especially of a death in the family. Their number is two hundred thousand, all within the limits of Lusatia.
A much-frequented promenade is the dam of the Great Pond—Grossen Teich—on the southern side of the town, which, planted with chestnuts and limes, forms a series of green and shady alleys, with a pleasant prospect across gardens and meadows to the village of Altendorf. Swans glide about on the surface of the water, which covers sixteen acres, and a gondola plies to a small wooded island in the centre, resorted to by lovers and picnic parties. A short distance northwards lies the Little Pond, bordered by rows of poplars, and three other ponds in different parts of the town are also made to contribute to its attractions.
Another pleasure-ground is the "Plateau," on an eminence between the railway station and the road to Leipzig, from which you may wander through shady alleys to the old ruin of Alexisburg. The cemetery, on a hill to the west of the town, is worth a visit for a sight of some of the tombs, among which appears the entrance to the new Princes' Vault, constructed in 1837, in the form of a small chapel, lighted by richly-stained glass windows, through the floor of which the coffins are lowered to the vault beneath. On St. John's Day the cemetery is thronged by the townsfolk, decorating the graves of their departed friends with flowers.
After a visit to all these places, and a peep into the two churches in which Luther once preached—the Bartholomäikirche and the Brüderkirche—I travelled on to Zwickau, and as there is little to be seen on the way besides fields, low hills, and the tall-chimneyed, smoking,
