Obrazy na stronie
PDF
ePub

pensate one for the delay. But where it is, there is nothing to be seen but a cluster of huts and three hundred heavily laden team-wagons on their way to Laybach, where the Vienna railroad begins. I say three hundred wagons, because Bison counted them, as they were all gathered in a heap waiting the sign manual of the officials. They are the carriers of all the external commerce of Austria.

Just beyond the Karst or Carso commences a wild desolate tract of calcareous geology, in which no tree or house cares to grow. It is eaten away, on all sides, into huge clefts, holes, basins, and pitfalls, over and along which the road runs, like a great white tapeworm. At certain seasons, the famous Bora, or north wind, rages here with fearful violence, overturning and carrying with it vehicles and pedestrians, and digging up the very crust of the earth. The soil seems as sterile and dry as a chip, and we were glad to get rid of it before nightfall.

It was nine o'clock when we reached Adelsberg, and I proposed to go to bed; but Bison would hear of nothing of the sort, insisting that we should visit the caves. "What, at midnight?" said I.

"Certainly," he replied, "for they are as dark as a dungeon at any hour, and may be seen as well now as in the day time."

Guides were drummed up; two dozen extra kerzen or torches procured; and then we stumbled for a mile or more over broken rocks and stumps. At the base of a tall cliff, which Ritter Schnapps told us, in detestable German, while he waved his light on high in a vain attempt to prove his words, had a ruined castle on the top, we crawled into a hole in the rock. A sound of rushing waters saluted us, as we passed into the long narrow gallery. "It is the river Poik," said the Ritter, "which dives down under the mountain outside, like a duck, and comes up on the inside."

66

"Arethusa!" I exclaimed. "No," rejoined Bison, we are not through, sir, by a long shot."

But he was mistaken, for suddenly we entered an immense hall, apparently some three hundred feet long, and one hundred feet high, and broken into irregular chambers and corridors. The guides, who preceded us, had stationed themselves along the sides, by means of rude steps cut in the wall, and threw the light of their blazing torches through the whole cavern. As the flames flashed against enormous stalactites, casting heavy shadows beyond, and the smoke rolled in billowy masses against the ceilings, it seemed like the mouth of some Devildom

while the uncouth figures of the men, gliding through the lurid twilight, with their brigand faces, resembled the black dwarfs and gnomes and cobalds who forge mischief in the bowels of the mountains. All my old readings of the Scandinavian Diablerie, came back to the mind; every moment I expected to see the wicked elves start from the crevices; I shuddered at my own imaginations; and at last I shouted, "For heaven's sake, Ritter, Gassenbuben, Bison, let us return!"

But Bison was busily chipping off fragments of an enormous stalagmite in the midst of a shower of expostulations from his transparency Herr Rath Gassenbuben, chief of the guild of the guides, who called a thousand devils to witness that it would be the death of him if the Herr Hoch-ober-hölle - virmögens-ampt-mann, or some other unpronounceable authority should hear of the pillage. My excellent friend, cherishing a free and independent disdain of all languages but his own, worked quietly on, in spite of the devils and hard names, filling his pockets with stone.

Not caring to wait for the others, I set off in the direction of a narrow passage with a strong light beyond, which I supposed the exit from the dismal den, but when I had reached it, I found that it only penetrated deeper into the cave. A rude wooden bridge passed me over a black sullen river that might have been the Styx. Flitting white forms, like the ghosts of the departed, rushed in and out, and up and down among the irregular and tortured columns. Chamber opened into chamber; corridor followed corridor, in vast interminable mazes. "Hold there," exclaimed the Ritter, flinging the glare of his torch forward. I stopped on the verge of a cliff, and looked down into what seemed a bottomless abyss. In a moment more my imaginations of the Stygian lake and the palaces of the gloomy Dis, might have been a ghastly reality.

Bison and the rest of the party soon came up, and cautiously looked over into the pit. Far down a roar and hissing of waters, like the suppressed murmurs and sighs of giant spirits in pain, made the boldest of us tremble with awe. "What an inferno!" said the former, only in honest bad Saxon, and turned away.

The lights were collected, and we again moved on, stopping at intervals to gaze at halls,

"Where crystal columns sent forth slender shafts, And curving arches; and fantastic aisles Frown'd from the sight in darkness and were lost."

Their sides wreathed and ruffled in beautiful traceries, and broken into alcoves; their high fretted roofs hung with

branching chandeliers; and the great pillars, cut and incrusted into a thousand fanciful reliefs, gave them the appearance of vast Gothic cathedrals. A mass of stone, heaped in one place, took the form of a pulpit, from which Herr Nimmersatt improvised a four minutes' sermon, which had all the discursiveness, but none of the wit, of good Abraham a Sancta Clara. In another place, a long white curtain, drooping in transparent folds, seemed to bar the way to a mysterious recess. Over against a butcher's stall stood the throne of a subterranean monarch, and near by a solid bell-like cone, when struck, sent its sharp metallic sounds down the void distances. If troops of witches had come out at the signal, to dance their wild Walpurgis dance, it would all have been in character.

At last, after ascending towards a region of warmer and balmier air, the most magnificent saloon opened lithe, glittering, and graceful, with a floor like the purest marble, or a broad overarching canopy of satin. "It is the ball-room," shouted the Ritter, "where on Whit Monday the young men and maidens dance." All night they dance, it is said, gathering to the festival from the remotest districts,from the far Dalmatian shore.-from the plains of Hungary,-from Carniola and Styria, or the mountains of Salsburg. All the peasantry come, hunters, vinedressers, woodmen, sailors, with their sweethearts, and sisters; the Oriental in his turban or capote; the Tyrolese in his lofty hat; the Croatian with embroidered coat; all the wild roses of the mountains, and all the sweet lilies of the valleys, all are there, and beneath the red illumination of a thousand torches, grow frenized in a delicious whirl of merriment and love.

"Our cold northern races," I remarked philosophically to the Great Western, 'know nothing of the real intoxication of life. They get mad on brandy, or fuddle themselves with beer and wine, and reel and shout in bacchanal abandonment, but of genuine pleasure, spontaneous; freehearted, delirious joy,-the gay holiday of the senses, they are as ignorant as cabbages! But that reminds me, where is the Englishman?"

[ocr errors]

Sure enough!" rejoined Bison, with a look of gathering amazement. Where is he?"

"Bull!" I shouted at the top of my lungs, but the only reply was an infinity of long-drawn " Bu-uh-uh-ul-s," that went echoing round the aisles of the cavern.

"Heaven! can he be lost?" "Strayed away, perhaps," suggested Bison.

"Or been precipitated from a cliff," choked out Gassenbuben.

"Or is now gurgling and rolling in the dark waters below!" blubbered Nimmersatt.

Instantly our little company was in a panic of motion. Some ran behind the columns; others hastily ascended the steps in the rocks; others cast their torches into holes and clefts; and all cried, "Bull, Bull," till the roars of Bashan were renewed. But no Bull came; we pursued the search for an hour, and still the unhappy Bull was missing. Finally, with sad and heavy hearts, we made our way out into the starlight, and thence to the Ungarischen Krone.

"Oh Bull!" said I, as I encountered that comfortable gentleman, sitting in the eating-room with a meerschaum in his mouth, and a tall flask of Bavarian ale by his side, "what a fright you have given us! "

"The fact is," he replied, lifting up his coat tails and turning his back to the fire, "I saw that it was going to be a naasty job; and so I quitted you at the gate. But I have read Murray's account of the Cave, in this book, which I dare say is better than any you will ever write of it!" Envious Bull.

Bison refused to speak to the fellow after that, and insisted on going directly on to Laybach, which we did, giving Bull's spare seat to a young German woman who was exceedingly anxious to reach the railroad. I had the satisfaction of riding all night with her head on my shoulder, and received the next morning a Danke for my services, which Bison, mistaking the word for Donkey, said was ungrateful.

A new country opened upon us with the sun. For some time I could scarcely rid myself of the impression that I had awaked in the northern part of New Jersey, the appearance of every thing was so like. A "rich champaign," as the novelists always say, stretched away towards green hills in the distance; comfortable one-storied farm-houses with barns attached, and snug little gardens around, stood by the road-side; and what I had not seen before in Europe, picket fences made enclosures for cattle. It would be a curious research to discover whether any of the ancestors of our honest old Jersey Dutchmen had come from these parts.

But a band of straggling soldiers whom we met, dressed in dusty gray frocks, and each with a hunk of bread at his mouth, soon gave me a "realizing sense" that we were still among the despotisms. They were recruits ont heir way from Laybach to some other point, whither their kind masters had ordered them, to help

bastinado some Hungarian woman, perhaps, or get stuck under the short ribs themselves by a loving Italian compatriot. These paternal governments do take such fatherly care of all their poor suffering children!

Laibach we reached in time for a late but edifying breakfast. I should like to have gone to the Lake of Zirknitz, not far away, a sheet of water some four miles wide and long, which takes a notion to vanish entirely once in a while; but Bison argued that if the lake should chance to have disappeared there would be nothing to see, except a heap of dead fish, which are no curiosity; while on the other hand, if it remained, it was not much of a lake to see; and I was convinced by his logic. "If we could only catch it in the act of disappearing," he added, "that might be something."

We accordingly repaired to the Station of the imperial railroad, passing on the way a pillar erected in the market-place to Mademoiselle the "Mondbezwinge rinn," or Crescent Conqueress, a famous statue of a Virgin, who when the infidel Turks were besieging the town, walked from her pedestal, like the Commandatore in Don Juan, put herself at the head of the native troops, and led them to glorious victory. Bison, the coarse, unimaginative creature, no better than an infidel Turk himself, said boldly that he didn't believe a word of the story.

While we were loitering in the firstclass saloon (Americans always travel in the first-class cars, though it is just as comfortable and much cheaper to take the second), two ladies entered, with a little girl about four years of age. The latter was attracted by the great gold chain and pendent jewelry that Bison always wears, and went towards him; thereupon he took her on his lap and caressed her. The mother, as I supposed one of the women to be, simled graciously: and I began to envy the easy way in which the man was insinuating himself into the good graces of both parent and child. All at once a huge Croat of a fellow, in a frowsy gray moustache, and impenetrable whiskers, his coat befrogged and begilt like that of a Circus-Master, and a long sword dangling at his heels, came into the room, accosted, the ladies with a bow like a Mandarin's and then seeing Bison with the child, rushed across the room, caught her off his lap, and strode away with a look as ferocious as Bluebeard's.

"What the devil!" said Bison, puffing into a small undischarged thunder-gust, "what does that overgrown baboon mean?"

The baboon, meantime, had solemnly

VOL. 1.-12

deposited the child with its mother, and then sent back a series of annihilating frowns at poor Bison. It would have been all day with him, if a man could be killed now, as in the times of the basilisk, by shots from the eye-batteries.

Pre

But just then the horn blew, and the locomotive snorted, and I hurried my valorous Yankee into the cars. Every body, I noticed as we entered, was looking out of the windows at one side. "What is going forward?" asked I of a broad-bottomed old Austrian that in his eagerness had thrust precisely one half of his person outside, but he gave me no answer. sently the two ladies and the child, accompanied by the whiskers and frogged coat, appeared on the platform. All the people raised their hats and bowed, and our broad-bottomed Austrian friend exclaimed, quite overcome, "Ach mein Gott! see, see her serene-transparent-high-wellborn, illustrious and never-to-be equalled Highness, the Princess!"

"The Princess who?" I asked timidly.

The Austrian, with great contempt grunted out, "What Princess? why, the Princess Louise D'Este!!!”

I was not overwhelmed nor was Bison, though I thought that model democrat looked a little self-complacent when he was told that he had been hugging the daughter of a Princess, and the near relation of I don't know how many Emper

ors.

"Who knows," he remarked inquiringly, "but the chap in the huge whiskers, was the Emperor of Russia himself? I've heard that he is on a visit to these parts!"

"More likely the chief-cook and bottlewasher of Her Highness's suite," I suggested, but Bison did not relish a suggestion which deprived him of the glory of having had an encounter with the Great Bear. It would have been such a story to tell amid the night-watches on Red River.

All the way along the imperial car, with the Crown on the top, attracted great attention, and wherever the Princess got out, for any purpose, she was received by a file of soldiers under a present arms, and long lines of admiring people. We were ourselves, indeed, so taken up with these movements and the talk excited by the noble party, that we saw nothing of the country through which we rode. But we fortunately left them at Grätz, and then recovered our self-possession. Bison was anxious to stop, but when I told him that there was nothing to see in this chieftown of Styria, but a Mausoleum of that famous hunter of Protestants, Ferdinand II., who burned ten thousand heretical

books in the square, and aided in the murder of his successful champion Wallenstein, he consented to give up all hope of further acquaintance with the Princess, and go on.

This railroad we found one of the best in the world. It was constructed mainly by the Austrian Government, is substantially built, and owing to the mountainous nature of the region through which it runs, has had to overcome difficulties that are almost incredible. It is also wellmanaged, and the cars of the first-class are as sumptuous as the saloons of the Sultan. All the way along the scenery is magnificent; sometimes we were coursing the banks of the rapid Mur, sometimes whirling around the base of precipitous crags, castle-crowned, or covered with dark firs that shot elean up into the skies: again, beaming valleys stretched away into the blue distance where cities slumbered, or the mountains rose into the snows: here, the Styrian damsels, in their bright costumes, came out of the station-houses, to serve us with the creamy Styrian ale, of which Bison always took two glasses, not for the love of it, but to get a longer look at the mountain Ganymedes; there, a stupendous viaduct, with noble galleries, sculptured from the primitive rock, divided the hills, or passed under giant fortresses on the brows;-in short, every where, at every turn, grand and picturesque objects caught the eye,-ruined abbeys, rockbuilt castles, gloomy defiles, impending cliffs, vast fir-woods, grotesque villages in the plains or on the mountain sides, graceful cascades, rushing streams.

The road is not completed, however, we found herds of women as well as men working upon it, as we approached Murzzüschlag, whence the Eilwagen carries

passengers over the Soemmering to Glocknitz. It was already dark when we got there, and I was separated from Bison; but jumping into the rotonde of the only coach unoccupied, I left him to take care of himself. There was only one passenger, whose face in the darkness I did not see. After a while, as he was smoking and I did not care to sleep, I ventured a little conversation.

"Wann Denkie Sie, Mynheer, das Wir ankommen werden? (When shall we get there?") I asked in tolerable Ger

man.

"No-chaw pees-co," he replied in intolerable Italian.

"Eh bien! Monsieur! Donc vous parlez le Français;" I continued courageously, determined to address him in his vernacular; " Ung pugh;” he replied; and so we contrived to keep up a costive and exhausting talk in execrable French for an hour or more.

What countryman he took me for, I did not know; but I had made up my mind that he was a Hindoo, or some other Oriental not familiar with the European tongues.

Just as we reached Glocknitz, my companion lost his cigar, and uttered an unmistakable d- -n.

"Sir," exclaimed I," do you speak English?"

[blocks in formation]

"OUR BEST SOCIETY."

to talk much of the "old families" and of your aristocratic foreign friends; to despise labor; to prate of "good society;" to travesty and parody, in every conceivable way, a society which we know only in books and by the superficial observation of foreign travel, which arises out of a social organization entirely unknown to us, and which is opposed to our fundamental and essential principles; if all this were fine, what a prodigiously fine society would ours be!

IF gilt were only gold, or sugar-candy (you being yourself a cobbler's daughter); common sense, what a fine thing our society would be! If to lavish money upon objets de vertu, to wear the most costly dresses, and always to have them cut in the height of the fashion; to build houses thirty feet broad, as if they were palaces; to furnish them with all the luxurious devices of Parisian genius; to give superb banquets, at which your guests laugh, and which make you miserable; to drive a fine carriage and ape European liveries, and crests, and coats-of-arms; to resent the friendly advances of your baker's wife, and the lady of your butcher

This occurred to us upon lately receiving a card of invitation to a brilliant ball. We

were quietly ruminating over our evening fire, with D'Israeli's Wellington speech, "all tears," in our hand, with the account of a great man's burial, and a little man's triumph across the channel. So many great men gone, we mused, and such great crises impending! This democratic movement in Europe; Kossuth and Mazzini waiting for the moment to give the word; the Russian bear watchfully sucking his paws; the Napoleonic empire redivivus; Cuba, and annexation, and slavery; California and Australia, and the consequent considerations of political economy; dear ine! exclaimed we, putting on a fresh hodful of coal, we must look a little into the state of parties.

As we put down the coal-scuttle there was a knock at the door. We said, "come in," and in came a neat Alhambra-watered envelope, containing the announcement that the queen of fashion was "at home" that evening week. Later in the evening, came a friend to smoke a cigar. The card was lying upon the table, and he read it with eagerness. "You'll go, of course," said he, "for you will meet all the 'best society.""

Shall we, truly? shall we really see the "best society of the city," the picked flower of its genius, character, and beauty? What makes the "best society" of men and women? The noblest specimens of each, of course. The men who mould the time, who refresh our faith in heroism and virtue, who make Plato, and Zeno, and Shakspeare, and all Shakspeare's gentlemen, possible again. The women, whose beauty and sweetness, and dignity, and high accomplishment and grace, make us understand the Greek Mythology, and weaken our desire to have some glimpse of the most famous women of history. The "best society" is that in which the virtues are most shining, which is the most charitable, forgiving, long-suffering, modest, and innocent. The "best society' is, in its very name, that in which there is the least hypocrisy and insincerity of all kinds, which recoils from, and blasts, artificiality, which is anxious to be all that human nature can be, and which sternly reprobates all shallow pretence, all coxcombry and foppery, and insists upon simplicity, as the infallible characteristic of true worth. That is the "best society," which comprises the best men and wo

men.

Had we recently arrived from the moon, we might, upon hearing that we were to meet the "best society," have fancied that we were about to enjoy an opportunity not to be overvalued. But unfortunately we were not so freshly arrived. We had received other cards, and

171

had perfected our toilette many times, to
meet this same society, so magnificently
described, and had found it the least "best"
of all. Who compose it? Whom shall
we meet if we go to this ball? We shall
meet three classes of persons: 1st, those
who are rich, and who have all that mo-
ney can buy; 2d, those who belong to
what are technically called "the good old
families," because some ancestor was a
man of mark in the state or country, or
was very rich, and has kept the for-
tune in the family; and 3dly, a swarm
of youths who can dance dexterously, and
who are invited for that purpose. Now
these are all arbitrary and factitious dis-
tinctions upon which to found so profound
a social difference as that which exists in
American, or, at least, in New-York so-
ciety. 1st, as a general rule, the rich men
of every community who make their own
money are not the most generally intel-
ligent and cultivated. They have a shrewd
talent which secures a fortune, and which
keeps them closely at the work of amass-
ing from their youngest years until they
are old. They are sturdy men, of simple
tastes often. Sometimes, though rarely,
very generous, but necessarily with an al-
together false and exaggerated idea of the
importance of money. They are a rather
rough, unsympathetic, and, perhaps, selfish
class, who, themselves, despise purple and
fine linen, and still prefer a cot-bed and a
millions. But they are married to schem-
bare room, although they may be worth
ing or ambitious or disappointed women,
whose life is a prolonged pageant, and they
are dragged hither and thither in it, are.
bled of their golden blood, and forced into
a position they do not covet and which
they despise. Then there are the inherit-
ors of wealth. How many of them in-
herit the valiant genius and hard frugality
which built up their fortunes; how many
acknowledge the stern and heavy respon-
sibility of their opportunities; how many
refuse to dream their lives away in a Sy-
barite luxury; how many are smitten
with the lofty ambition of achieving an
enduring name by works of a permanent
value; how many do not dwindle into
dainty dilettanti, and dilute their man-
hood with factitious sentimentality instead
of a hearty, human sympathy; how many
are not satisfied with having the fastest
horses and the "crackest"
an unlimited wardrobe, and a weak affec-
carriages, and
tation and puerile imitation of foreign
life?

And who are these of our 2dly, these
"old families"? The spirit of our time
and of our country knows no such thing,
but the habitué of "society," hears con-
stantly of "a good family."
It means,

« PoprzedniaDalej »