Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 20, August 1877

Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 20, August 1877

Coblenz is the place which many years ago gave me my first associations with the Rhine. From a neighboring town we often drove to Coblenz, and the wide, calm flow of the river, the low, massive bridge of boats and the [Pg 138]commonplace outskirts of a busy city contributed to make up a very different picture from that of the poetic "castled" Rhine of German song and English ballad. The old town has, however, many beauties, though its military character looks out through most of them, and reminds us that the Mosel city (for it originally stood only on that river, and then crept up to the Rhine), though a point of union in Nature, has been for ages, so far as mankind was concerned, a point of defence and watching. The great fortress, a German Gibraltar, hangs over the river and sets its teeth in the face of the opposite shore: all the foreign element in the town is due to the deposits made there by troubles in other countries, revolution and war sending their exiles, migrs and prisoners. The history of the town is only a long military record, from the days of the archbishops of Trves, to whom it was subject, to those of the last war. It has, however, some pleasanter points: it has long been a favorite summer residence of the empress of Germany, who not long before I was there had by her tact and toleration reconciled sundry religious differences that threatened a political storm. Such toleration has gone out of fashion now, and the peacemaking queen would have a harder task to perform now that the two parties have come to an open collision. There is the old "German house" by the bank of the Mosel, a building little altered outwardly since the fourteenth century, now used as a food-magazine for the troops. The church of St. Castor commemorates a holy hermit who lived and preached to the heathen in the eighth century, and also covers the grave and monument of the founder of the "Mouse" at Wellmich, the warlike Kuno of Falkenstein, archbishop of Trves. The Exchange, once a court of justice, has changed less startlingly, and its proportions are much the same as of old; and besides these there are other buildings worth noticing, though not so old, and rather distinguished by the men who lived and died there, or were born there, such as Metternich, than by architectural beauties. Such houses there are in every old city. They do not invite you to go in and admire them: every tourist you meet does not ask you how you liked them or whether you saw them. They are homes, and sealed to you as such, but they are the shell of the real life of the country; and they have somehow a charm and a fascination that no public building or show-place can have. Goethe, who turned his life-experiences into poetry, has told us something of one such house not far from Coblenz, in the village of Ehrenbreitstein, beneath the fortress, and which in familiar Coblenz parlance goes by the name of "The Valley"the house of Sophie de Laroche. The village is also Clement Brentano's birthplace. ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 29575
Author: Various
Release Date: Aug 2, 2009
Format: eBook
Language: English