Rhine Countries in particular?
Potsdam, Wittenberg, Leipzig, the wheels rush rapidly on, stage succeeding stage; and early in the afternoon we are at Leipzig—never looking out at Luther's vestiges, or Karl V.'s, or thinking about Luther, which thou and I, good English reader, would surely have done, in crossing Wittenberg and the birthplace of Protestantism. At Leipzig we were thinking to have dined. At the Peter's Gate there—where at least fresh horses are, and a topographic Crown-Prince can send hastily to buy maps—a General Hopfgarten, Commandant of the Town, is out with the military honors; he has, as we privately know, an excellent dinner ready in the Pleissenburg Fortress yonder, [Fassmann, p. 410.]—but he compliments to a dreadful extent! Harangues and compliments in no end of florid inflated tautologic ornamental balderdash; repeating and again repeating, What a never-imagined honor it is; in particular saying three times over, How the Majesty of Saxony, King August, had he known, would have wished for wings to fly hither; and bowing to the very ground, "as if, in the Polish manner, he wished to clasp your feet," said Friedrich Wilhelm afterwards. I can fancy Friedrich Wilhelm somewhat startled! How, at the first mention of this idea of big August, with his lame foot, taking wing, and coming like a gigantic partridge, with lame foot and cocked-hat, Friedrich Wilhelm grinned. How, at the second mention, and Polish threat of your feet, Friedrich Wilhelm, who hates all lies, and cares not for salutations in the market-place, jerks himself impatiently and saves his feet. At the third mention, clear it is, Friedrich Wilhelm utters the word, "ANSPANNEN, Horses!"—and in very truth takes to the road again; hungry indeed, but still angrier; leaving Hopfgarten bent into the shape of a parabola, and his grand dinner cooling futile, in what tragic humor we can imagine. [Ib. p. 411.] Why has no Prussian Painter done that scene? Let another Chodowiecki, when another comes, try whether he cannot.
Friedrich Wilhelm regretted the dinner, regretted to hurt the good man's feelings; but could stand it no longer. He rushes off for Meuselwitz, where Seckendorf, with at least silence, and some cold collation instead of dinner, is awaiting him. Twenty miles off is Meuselwitz; up the flat valley of the Pleisse River towards Altenburg; through a region memorable, were we not so hungry. Famed fights have had their arena here; Lutzen, the top of its church-steeple visible on your right, it is there where the great Gustavus fell two hundred years ago: on that wide champaign, a kind of Bull-ring of the Nations, how many fights have been, and will be! Altenburg one does not see to-night: happy were we but at Meuselwitz, a few miles nearer; and had seen what dinner the old Feldzeugmeister has.
Dinner enough, we need not doubt. The old Feldzeugmeister has a big line Schloss at Meuselwitz; his by unexpected inheritance; with uncommonly fine gardens; with a good old Wife, moreover, blithe though childless;—and he is capable of "lighting more than one candle" when a King comes to visit him. Doubtless the man hurls his thrift into abeyance; and blazes out with conspicuous splendor, on this occasion. A beautiful Castle indeed, this Meuselwitz of his; the towers of Altenburg visible in the distance; Altenburg, where Kunz von Kauffungen stole the two little Princes; centuries ago;—where we do not mean to pause at this time. On the morrow morning—unless they chose to stay over Sunday; which I cannot affirm or deny—Seckendorf also has made his packages; and joins himself to Friedrich. Wilhelm's august travelling party. Doing here a portion of the long space (length of the Terrestrial Equator in all) which he is fated to accomplish in the way of riding with that Monarch.
From Meuselwitz, through Altenburg, Gera, Saalfeld, to Coburg, is our next day's journey. Up one fork of the Leipzig Pleisse, then across the Leipzig Elster, these streams now dwindling to brooks; leading us up to the water-shed or central Hill-countries between the Mayn and Saale Rivers; where the same shower will run partly, on this hand, northward by the Elster, Pleisse or other labyrinthic course, into the Saale, into the Elbe; and partly, on the other hand, will flow southward into the Mayn; and so, after endless windings in the Fir Mountains (FICHTEL-GEBIRGE), get by Frankfurt into the Rhine at Mainz. Mayn takes the south end of your shower; Saale takes the north—or farther east yonder, shower will roll down into the same grand Elbe River by the Mulde (over which the Old Dessauer is minded to build a new stone bridge; Wallenstein and others, as well as Time, have ruined many bridges there). That is the line of the primeval mountains, and their ever-flowing rain-courses, in those parts.
At Gera, dim, old Town—does not your Royal Highness well know the "Gera Bond (GERAISCHE VERTRAG)"? Duhan: did not forget to inform you of that? It is the corner-stone of the House of Brandenburg's advancement in the world. Here, by your august ancestors, the Law of Primogeniture was settled, and much rubbish was annihilated in the House of Brandenburg: Eldest Son always to inherit the Electorate unbroken; after Anspach and Baireuth no more apanages, upon any cause or pretext whatsoever; and these themselves to lapse irrevocable to the main or Electoral House, should they ever fall vacant again. Fine fruit of the decisive sense that was in the Hohenzollerns; of their fine talent for annihilating rubbish—which feat, if a man can do it, and keep doing it, will more than most others accelerate his course in this world. It was in this dim old Town of Gera, in the Year 1598, by him that had the twenty-three children, that the "GERA BOND" was brought to parchment. But indeed it was intrinsically only a renewal, more solemnly sanctioned, of Albert Achilles's HAUS ORDNUNG (House-Order), done in 1478, above a century earlier.—
But see, we are under way again. His Prussian Majesty rushes forward without pause; will stop nowhere, except where business demands; no Majesty of his day travels at such a speed. Orlamunde an hour hence—your Royal Highness has heard of Orlamunde and its famed Counts of a thousand years back, when Kaiser Redbeard was in the world, and the Junior Hohenzollern, tired of hawking, came down from the Hills to him? Orlamunde (OrlaMOUTH) is not far off, on our right; and this itself is the Orla; this pleasant streamlet we are now quitting, which has borne us company for some time: this too will get into the Saale, and be at Magdeburg, quite beyond the Dessauer's Bridge, early to-morrow. Ha, here at last is Saalfeld, Town and Schloss, and the incipient Saal itself: his Serene Highness Saalfeld-Coburg's little REZIDENZ;—probably his Majesty will call on him, in passing? I have no doubt he does; and transacts the civilities needful.
Christian Ernst, whose Schloss this is, a gentleman of his Majesty's age (born 1683), married an amiable FRAULEIN not of quality, whom indeed the Kaiser has ennobled: he lives here—I think, courting the shade rather; and rules conjointly with his younger Brother, or Half-Brother, Franz Josias, who resides at Coburg. Dukes of Saalfeld-Coburg, such is their style, and in good part their possession; though, it is well known to this travelling party and the world, there has been a Lawsuit about Coburg this half-century and more; and though somewhere about 200 "CONCLUSA," [Michaelis, i. 524, 518; Busching, Erdbeschreibung, vi. 2464; OErtel, t. 74; Hubner, t. 166.] or Decrees of Aulic Council, have been given in favor of the Saalfelders, their rivals of Meiningen never end. Nor will end yet, for five years more to come; till, in 1735, "206 CONCLUSA being given," they do end, and leave the Saalfelders in peaceable possession; who continue so ever since to this day. [Carlyle's Miscellanies, vi.? PRINZENRAUB.] How long his Majesty paused in that Schloss of Saalfeld, or what he there did, or what he spake—except perhaps encourage Christian Ernst to stand by a Kaiser's Majesty against these French insolences, and the native German, Spanish, English derelictions of duty—we are left to the vaguest guess of fancy, And must get on to Coburg for the night.
At Coburg, in its snug valley, under the FESTUNG or Hill Castle—where Martin Luther sat solitary during the Diet of Augsburg (Diet known to us, our old friend Margraf George of Anspach hypothetically "laying his head on the block? there, and the great Kaiser, Karl V., practically burning daylight, with pitiable spilling of wax, in the CORPUS-CHRISTI procession there), [Antea, vol. v. p. 197.]—where Martin Luther sat solitary, and wrote that celebrated Letter about 16 Crows holding THEIR Parliament all round," and how "the pillars of the world were never seen by anybody, and yet the world is held up, in these dumb continents of space;"—at Coburg, we will not doubt, his Majesty found Franz Josias at home, and illuminated to receive him. Franz Josias, a hearty man of thirty-five, he too will stand by the Kaiser in these coming storms? With a weak contingent truly, perhaps some score or two of fighters: but many a little makes a mickle!—remark, however; two points, of a merely genealogical nature. First, that Franz Josias has, or rather is going to have, a Younger
