The Wine-ghosts of Bremen

The Wine-ghosts of Bremen
Вильгельм Гауф

Wilhelm Hauff

The Wine-ghosts of Bremen

PREFACE

When Mr. Carlyle endeavoured to introduce Jean Paul Richter to the English public, it seems to us that he was more than usually unsuccessful. The literary publics of the England and the Germany of those days were very different, and perhaps the errors of taste, which each professed to find in the other, were not in truth wholly upon the side of John Bull. We feel, (with much deprecation of our own impudence in challenging such a comparison,) in a somewhat similar position, and dread in our more diffident moments a far colder reception and far greater depth of oblivion for our present attempt to render into English a good German story about STRONG DRINK. German humour is often more rollicking than that of our own countrymen; it is also occasionally more subtle. But it has always been a matter of some wonder to us that Hauff's acknowledged masterpiece should be unknown to English readers, and we have therefore made the following attempt; praying the courteous reader only that he will not throw the story down in disgust till he gets to the best part: of the location of which we allow him to be the best judge.

Wilhelm Hauff was born on the 29th November, 1802, at Stuttgart, where his father held various high posts, with various high-sounding double and treble official names, under the paternal government of the Elector Frederick, the first of his name and house who attained 'serenity.' It was this same ruler who three years later, after refusing a passage to Napoleon's troops for some time with great show of patriotism, allowed himself to be 'convinced,' as soon as the Emperor himself appeared and offered him a considerable extension of territory and a Royal Crown; and who confessed with some naïveté 'that since Frederick the Great he had never met any one so good at talking a man over as Napoleon; that the latter had in fact the same "tournure de l'esprit" as Frederick.' But His Serene Highness was, in common with many of his contemporaries, in the habit of allowing himself to be talked over by any one with a good strong army at his back. 'C'était leur nature de complaire aux plus forts.' Therefore he now openly joined, in 1805, as he had practically done in '95 and '99, the row of princely traitors to the cause of Germany, and began to dance with his fellows on the fast-closing grave of the Holy Roman Empire. It must however be remembered that his country was one of the few German principalities that still possessed an active 'Landstände' or system of Estates: this was indeed of the most rudimentary order, and consisted chiefly of representatives of the nobles, craft gilds, and ecclesiastical corporations; but it is worthy of note that, as in the Tyrol, there was a Peasants' Estate in Württemberg, and that these Estates did possess, though they rarely made good, the right of voting or withholding supplies from His Serenity. On the occasion referred to, when he expressed some doubts as to whether his Estates would agree to the proposed treaty, Napoleon, who had methods of his own for dealing with refractory representatives, answered that 'he would settle all that.' The Elector then got his crown from Napoleon; but in November, 1813, a very similar scene was enacted at Stuttgart, (with Alexander in place of Napoleon,) when the confederation of the Rhine was dissolved, and Bavaria had already made her peace with the allies by the treaty of Ried. Then the magnanimous King Frederick threw in his lot with the winning side again, in return for that fatal guarantee of absolute sovereignty and territorial indemnification for his losses, (for he was obliged to disgorge some of the spoils of his neighbours,) which proved such an obstacle in the way of the long-deferred restoration of Germany.

Growing up under influences like these, it is wonderful that young Hauff and his brother Hermann (his senior by two years) should ever have discovered that they were Germans at all; but they lost their father in 1809 and do not afterwards appear to have had any political connection with the government: and by 1815, when Wilhelm was only thirteen, the worst was over and the people of Stuttgart were left face to face with their amiable monarch; who surprised them and all the world by granting them of his own grace and favour an absolutely free constitution. This, however, on the principle of 'Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes,' was too much for the Württembergers, who profoundly mistrusted him: but before the matter could be settled King Frederick died, and King Wilhelm I, the husband of a Russian princess, and a brave soldier and able diplomatist, who had stood up for the rights of Germany in the deferred Elsass question, gave to his people, after much preparation, a very respectably constitutional form of government with two chambers, which included a representation both of clergy and old-imperial nobility, backed up by a strong Executive. This was in 1822, and the remaining five years of W. Hauff's life were passed in a happy country that had no history. It is usual of course to account for the excessively fertile development of literary culture in Germany at this time by the fact that the system of repression was so strong and effective as to drive all the moderate minds away from politics; but this will hardly hold good in Württemberg. Yet the educated classes there seem to have been completely indifferent to such politics as there were. But there were very few.

Those who want to discover the conditions under which Hauff's earlier life passed should read (1) Goethe's Autobiography in Wahrheit and Dichtung, and (2) Histoire d'un Conscrit; and, by mixing the two well together, may arrive at some sort of idea what life was like in a small German state, on which were grafted the new horrors of a military despotism. It is not a pleasant picture, but if it bred a good many souls as dead to patriotism as Goethe's and Heine's, it also bred not a few Müllers and Uhlands and Arndts; and it bred Wilhelm Hauff. That Hauff, in his later years at least (if a man can be said to have later years who died at twenty-five), had caught much of the spirit of the heroes of the War of Liberation, is best seen from the few soul-stirring lyrics which he has left, especially the two odes which he wrote in 1823-4 on the anniversary of the battle of Waterloo; even more perhaps it is seen in his admiration for W. Müller, and in the affecting story that when on his deathbed he heard the news of the battle of Navarino, he cried, 'What news! I must go hence and tell it to Müller,' who preceded him to the grave by a few weeks.

Hauff and his brother were voracious readers. Their maternal grandfather, 'a learned jurist,' (one trembles to think what a learned German jurist must have been like in the first decade of this century,) had a good library, consisting chiefly of old Law and History books, but including also a considerable number of romances; 'Smollett, Fielding, and Goldsmith were there,' says his biographer, Gustav Schwab, in the life which he prefixed to the 1837 (first collected) edition of Hauff's works. Schwab relates, not without humour, how the boys would play at fortress building and sieges with some of the more ponderous of the volumes, and the delight which they took in battering down a breastwork composed of the 'Acta Pacis Westphalicæ,' perhaps at the very time at which the Congress of Vienna was engaged upon the same job. But in the way of reading, they battened chiefly upon the old German historical romances, Hardleder's 'Ursache des Deutschen Krieges' especially, and it was from works like these that Wilhelm caught that old-imperial swing and flow of ideas which carries us so powerfully through Lichtenstein and the 'Phantasien.' The plan of turning a boy loose in a library is sometimes justified by results, although not always in the way expected. But although Wilhelm got a certain amount of classics drilled into him at the cloister school of Blaubeuern, and afterwards studied 'Philology, Philosophy, and Theology,' from 1820-1824, at the University of Tübingen, 'more,' says Schwab, 'to please his mother than from any leaning of his own to those subjects,' he never could write Greek or Latin verses like his brother, or pass for anything but an essentially poor scholar. But several other people who have afforded some pleasure to the world at large have been essentially poor scholars.

This deficiency did not affect him much; his mother, though apparently not wealthy, had good interest, and procured for him, when he left the University, the position of private tutor in the family of 'the at that time War's-council's-President, later War's-minister von Hügel' at Stuttgart, where he remained two years, with apparently abundant leisure for exercising his talent for writing poetical romances and fairy tales, of which during the last two years of his life he poured forth an incessant stream. It is worth while noting that in one of these–the first part of the 'Memoirs of Satan' (not the completed edition of these memoirs as they now stand)–is a passage in which the author falls foul of the great Autocrat of German Literature apropos of some lines in Faust; which was a more daring thing for a young fellow of four-and-twenty to do than it is possible for a man living in a free country to imagine. The rash youth afterwards repented, and expunged the obnoxious passage when he finished the memoirs of his black Majesty.

Perhaps it would have been as well if there had been no expunging, at least we may dare to say so on this side of the water, where less and less divinity hedges the person of the great man-god of letters every day. Hauff, however, had a tender heart, and did not like to see what a big hole he had made by casting a stone at the man-god; and with the modesty of twenty-four he begged pardon. History does not say whether the man-god took any notice of him.

It is not, however, with the Memoirs of Satan, or with any but one of Hauff's works that we are now concerned. The 'Man in the Moon' was a scathing satire upon a school of story-book makers, popular at the time, and headed by one H. von Clauren, whose works we have not perused. 'Lichtenstein,' which has been dramatised, is not inferior to an inferior Waverley novel. These and many more are well known to English readers, but the 'Phantasien im Bremer Rathskeller' has never been translated, no doubt because of its dreadfully Rabelaisian morality in the matter of strong drink. What can you think of a man who dedicates his book to the 'lovers of wine,' and takes for his motto the passage from Othello which appears at the head of the story? We do not intend to defend him; we ourselves are by no means the pair of ultra-Pickwickian topers, that a cursory perusal of the motto and dedication would lead the reader to believe: and we are quite aware that there are to be no more cakes and ale in this world; we are a little sorry for it, that is all. As for Hauff we will let him speak for himself; we have no reason whatever to believe that he had more than a poetical and literary affection for the juice of the grape.

Hauff had grown tired of being a private tutor in 1826, and spent the profits of Lichtenstein in a journey to the North of Germany and to Paris in the latter half of that year. It was upon that occasion that he visited Bremen, although not upon the errand imagined in the text. On his return to the South in 1827 he became Editor of the 'Morning News for the Educated Classes,' to which his brother, who succeeded him in the editorship, was already a contributor. This paper survived till 1865, when it expired a few months after the death of Hermann Hauff, whom from all we know of him we imagine to have been a much more business-like editor than Wilhelm. Contemporarily with this responsible post Wilhelm took to himself a wife, one of his own cousins, who bore him a daughter but a few days before his death. He died of fever on the 18th November, 1827. Prefixed to the edition of 1853 is a very pretty little poem of L. Uhland's on the occasion, and also a funeral oration by Mr. Court Chaplain Grüneisen, who was his cousin, both of which were recited over his grave in true German fashion. If we could believe all that this worthy priest said–and we have not a scrap of evidence to the contrary–Wilhelm Hauff's life must indeed have been a bright and happy one; 'Wonnezeit voll holder Träume,' as he himself called the season of youth. Apparently he made no enemies, and he made every one whom he chose his friend; his tender affection for his mother seems to have been the mainspring of his existence; to his bride he had been long attached in a half playful spirit, that wanted only the shadow of a difficulty to withdraw their love into those regions of romance in which his mind delighted to dwell. It was about a month before his death that he produced, as a reminiscence of his northern journey, the following story, entitled–

'The Wine-Ghosts of Bremen.'

NOTE (written before the late incorporation of the Hanse towns with the Empire).

It may seem a little superfluous here to attempt to describe the Rathskeller at Bremen, for it is well known to many travellers. But from the method by which travellers are usually conducted through the vaults, in which Hauff spent his grandfather's Schalttag in that bygone October, little acquaintance with the object of his story is to be derived. The Rathhaus at Bremen, then, is by far the most conspicuous object in the town. It contains some of the most beautiful of the German efforts, both in stone and wood carving, of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Whether there is any connection between the fact that the fifteenth century preferred stone, the sixteenth wood, and the other fact that the former of these centuries was to the Hanse towns the epoch of glory, the latter the epoch of decay, we must leave for Mr. Ruskin to decide. Anyhow, the men who embellished that Rathhaus inside were as little conscious of the decay of their city as those who built it and decorated it outside. So far as Germany is concerned, even in the best examples of Lübeck, Augsburg, or Nuremberg, the force of Art could no further go. But descend the steps on the left of the building, and you will find a very different state of things. The cellar is built as a cellar should be, strictly with a view to the practical–that is, to the comfort of its inhabitants, the mighty spirits imprisoned in the mighty casks. For the comfort of those who came to commune with those mighty spirits, a broad oak settle with strong arms would and did suffice; and the steps were made strictly with a view to be easy of ascent. Since Hauff's time, and partly in consequence of his story, the internal arrangements appear to have been much altered. Some of the cellar chambers have been painted in the true modern German style, about which we should prefer not to say too much. Some of the mural paintings profess to be representations of scenes in the story. There is no longer a passage straight through from the Apostle cellar to the boudoir of Frau Rosa herself, and of the other vaults the cellar of Bacchus is alone unaltered. Bacchus, indeed, is the hero of the place. No better description could possibly be given of him than that which Hauff gives, and therefore we will not attempt to amplify it. But the same Bacchus does not actually 'in the wood,' so to speak, sit there. He was taken down ten years ago, and a new one put up in his place–why, I failed to discover. His cask is, however, like all the other casks except Frau Rosa (who has disappeared altogether), the old one, a veritable Thirty Years War cask, beautifully carved with fantastic figures in relief. In the Apostle cellar all the wine is Hochheimer or Rüdesheimer, and the names are still graven on each cask, and 'Herr Judas, 1729,' is said to contain the best wine. But from a somewhat limited experience it is difficult cordially to endorse the reported opinion of the late King Ludwig of Bavaria, that the finest Rhine wines would keep for ever. Let the man who wishes to know what wine can be, by all means go daily for a few weeks to the Rathskeller in Bremen. Let him pay due homage to the worthies of old time there by tasting them, one glass of each per diem; but let him not fail to wash them down speedily with a bottle of twenty-year old Niersteiner or Rüdesheimer. If you ask, thirsty reader, why these things are to be found at their best in Bremen, we can only say that North Germany is a right conservative country; and because the Burgomasters of Bremen thought it their duty in the seventeenth century to lay down cask upon cask of the best vintages, their successors think it is their duty likewise; which is a very practical and righteous feeling. Bacchus, however, and the two mighty casks which guard his right hand and his left (like those trusty comrades who stand up in the halls of the Colleges of our Universities on each side of the drinker, when the loving cup is passed round, to prevent his being stabbed in the back), are now empty. The right hand cask was broken open and drained by the French soldiers in 1806, after the defeat of Prussia at Auerstädt; a loss which one can well imagine that the Town Council of Bremen bore less philosophically than many another act of power of those merciless freebooters. Bacchus himself, who dates from 1624, has been empty for 100 years. But what has become of the Rose herself? There are many old casks in the cellar called after her, but none that I could identify with the heroine of the story. She is still painted on the ceiling–a sufficiently ugly specimen (of the variety known as 'La France,' she appears to be)–very fat and round, with very dirty green foliage, and round her the following inscription:–

'Cur Rosa Flos Veneris Bacchi depingitur antro,
Causa quod absque mero frigiat ipsa Venus.'

Other bad hexameters follow in other parts of the vault known as the Rose cellar; as for instance:

'Haec Rosa Luminibus Veneres Nectarque Palato
Objicit, exhalans pocula grata cadis:
Vina vetusta tenet, grandævi munera Bacchi;
Sint procul hinc juvenes; vos decet iste senes.'

They are in fact the sort of verses that the traditional Eton boy, who wrote verses for the whole of his Dame's house, could turn out at the rate of a couplet a minute, adding a few false quantities and concords by desire of the accomplice for whom they were written, 'because if you don't, you know, my tutor will never believe they're my own composition.' Finally, over the entrance door, on the other side of which is a medallion of Hauff, erected in 1876, comes the following:–

'Was Magen, Leib und Herz, Saft, Kraft, und Geist kann geben,
Betrübte trösten mag, halbtodte kann beleben,
Theilt diese Rose mit, sie hat von hundert Jahren
Den Preis ein edles Oel mit Sorgfalt zu bewahren.'

More could be quoted, but this breathes the spirit of the eighteenth century quite sufficiently for our purpose.

As for Roland, he is still in the marketplace, a wonderful fourteenth-century stone figure, nearly twenty feet high, not standing on a pillar, but simply on a pedestal about two feet from the ground. He would certainly find it remarkably difficult to sit down, even on a cask, for he has iron spikes to his knees, which would make him extremely uncomfortable if he bent them. He did not bow his head to me as I went away as he did to Hauff, which I felt deeply. It is generally believed that he only bows his head to those departing visitors who have had enough Nierstein to appreciate the compliment.

    C. R. L. F.

THE WINE-GHOSTS OF BREMEN

'Come, come, good wine is a good familiar creature if it be well used.'–Othello, ii. 3.

'There's nothing to be done with the fellow,' I heard them say, as they stumped down the stairs; 'nine o'clock and he is going to doze away his evening like a dormouse. He wouldn't have been like that four years ago.' They were not far wrong from their point of view, good fellows; for this evening there was to be a most brilliant musical tea and muffin fight with dancing and recitation, and these gentlemen had come to invite me (who was a stranger to the High Life of Bremen) to go with them. But I did not feel up to it. Some one, whom I had come to Bremen on purpose to visit, was not to be there, and what's the use of going anywhere where Some one isn't? Besides, I knew I should have to sing if I went, and I didn't choose to sing if she wasn't to be there to hear me. I should only spoil all their fun by looking sulky. I preferred to let them curse me for a dull dog for a few minutes on the steps, rather than let them bore themselves from nine to one in talking to my body only, while my soul would be whole streets off wandering about in the neighbourhood of the Frauenkirche.

It wasn't sleepiness though. I am not a habitual dormouse, and don't like being called one. No, I meant to be thoroughly awake that night, and one of my friends–it was you, Hermann–said as much when he got outside. 'He didn't look sleepy,' I heard him say, 'with those bright eyes of his. But he looked like a man who had been drinking either too much or too little, which probably means that he is going to make a night of it with the bottle, and alone.'

Prophetic soul! Did you know that my eyes were sparkling yet proleptically with the thought of old Rhenish? You didn't know that I had a permit from their High Mightinesses to greet my Lady Rose and the Twelve Apostles. And you certainly didn't know that it was my 'Retreat.'[1 - Schalttag, lit. 'intercalary day'–used of the 29th of February in leap years–impossible to translate except by a circumbendibus. Hence we have borrowed from ecclesiastical phraseology a word which, to a certain extent, possesses the same meaning in English. So far as we are aware Hauff is peculiar in using Schalttag in this sense.]

In my opinion the habit which I inherit from my grandfather of blazing, so to speak, the tree of life here and there with a notch, and spending a quiet day of meditation over each notch, is not a bad one. To keep the ordinary festivals of the Church only is hardly sufficient; one becomes commonplace, and one's thoughts are too apt to become commonplace on such days. But let the soul that keeps an anniversary of its own making keep it alone; look inwards for a few hours in the year instead of always outwards; sit down at the long table d'hôte of memory, people it with the shadows of the past, and then set to and make out the bill conscientiously. Such days as these my grandfather always kept, and called his 'retreats.' He didn't prepare a banquet for his friends, or pass the time in festivity at all; he simply sat down and feasted his own soul and talked to her in that inner chamber which she had occupied for five-and-seventy years. Even now I can trace, long as it is since the dear old man was laid in the churchyard, the marked passages in his Elzevir Horace which he always read on such days; and as I read, I can see his large blue eyes wandering thoughtfully over the yellow leaves of memory's book. He takes up his pen. Slowly and hesitatingly he draws the black cross beneath the name of some dear departed friend. 'The master is keeping his Retreat,' whispered the servants to us, as we grandchildren were running gaily and noisily up the stairs; and we repeated the words to each other, and imagined that he was making himself Christmas presents, and wondered how he managed to light up his own Christmas tree. And we were not far wrong. They were the tapers of affection that he was kindling upon the tree of Unforgetfulness, each taper the symbol of happy hours of a long life. And when his hours of solitude were passed, and we were admitted in the evening, he sat still and quiet in his chair as if he rejoiced like a child in the Heaven-sent Christmas gifts of the past.

And it was on his Retreat day that he was borne by loving hands to his last resting-place. For the first time for many years, (for he had been confined to his room,) it was 'out into the air,' but it was also 'into his grave.' And again, 'I could not choose but weep they should lay him in the mould.' I had often walked with him along the same road; but when they turned off across the black bridge and laid him deep in the earth, I knew that he was keeping his real Retreat. I was a little boy, and I wondered as they threw a lot of stones and turf on him whether he would ever come up again. He did not. But his image remained in my memory, and when I grew up my favourite pieces in the long picture-gallery of Reflection were his Retreats.

And isn't to-day mine? The First of September? And am I to go and drink weak tea and listen to bad music to-day? No! I have a better prescription in my pocket, directed to the best apothecary in the world–somewhat under the world in fact he dwells. Down therefore to him, and Fiat, sum., haust. ad lib.

It was striking ten o'clock when I descended the broad steps that lead to the noble vault, which with all its contents is the ancient and perpetual inheritance of their High Mightinesses the Corporation of Bremen. There was every probability of my having my drink to myself, as there was a fearful storm raging outside and no one about in the streets. The cellarman stared at me as I presented a slip of paper, signed and sealed by a town-councillor:–

'Admit the Bearer to Drink. Sep. 1st.'

'So late and To-night?' says he. 'It is never late before twelve and never too early after that for good wine,' says I. He looked at the signature and seal, and not without hesitation led the way through the vaults. What a noble sight was there! His lantern shone over long rows of casks, and threw strange forms and shadows on the arches of the cellar; and the pillars seemed to float in the background like busy coopers plying their staves. My companion wanted to open for me one of those smaller rooms where six or eight friends at the most can pack in with comfortable space to let the bottle circulate: and a very proper thing it is, when your companions are the right sort, to sit close together; but when I am to be alone I love free space, where my thoughts and my body can find room to expand. So I chose an old vaulted hall, the largest we passed into, for my solitary banquet-room. 'You expect company?' said the attendant. 'No.' Some have who do not expect,' said he, with an uneasy glance at the shadow on the wall. 'What do you mean?'

'Nothing. It's the first of September.... By-the-bye, there was Mr. Councillor Pumpernickel here a while agone, and he bade me get out some samples for you–samples of my Lady Rose and of the Twelve Apostle casks'; and he began to take down some pretty little bottles with long strips of paper on their necks. 'You don't mean to tell me I am not to be allowed to drink out of the casks themselves.' 'Your honour couldn't possibly be allowed that privilege except in the presence of a town-councillor. Let me fill your honour's glass from this bottle.' 'Not a drop here then,' said I; 'if I mayn't drink from the cask head I will drink at the cask side at least. Come, old fellow, pick up your samples, and give me the light.' He still kept fidgeting about, and shoving the bottles into and out of his pockets, which irritated me much, as I was longing to be off to the Apostle cellar; and at length I spoke quite sharply, 'Come now, march.' This gave him courage apparently, and he answered with some firmness, 'It won't do, sir, really it won't–not to-night.' Thinking he was merely angling to raise his price, I pressed a substantial douceur into his hand, and took him by the arm to lead him along. 'No, no, it wasn't that I meant,' said he, trying to reject the proffered coin; 'but no one shall take me into the Apostle cellar on the night of the first of September, not for love or money!'

'Stuff and nonsense! What do you mean?' 'I mean that it's an uncanny thing to go in there on Frau Rosa's own birthday.' I laughed till the vault rang. 'I've heard of a good many ghosts before now, but never heard of a wine-ghost: fancy an old man like you believing such tales: but I tell you, friend, I am serious. I have permission from their High Mightinesses to drink in the cellar tonight, time and place at my own discretion; and in their name I order you to lead me to the cellar of Bacchus.' This finished him. Unwillingly, but without answering, he took the taper and beckoned me to follow. We went first back through the great vault, then through a number of smaller ones, till our path came to an end in a narrow passage. Our steps echoed weirdly in the hollow way, and our very breath as it struck on the walls sounded like distant whisperings. At last we stood before a door, the keys rattled, with a groan the hinge opened, and the light of the candles streamed into the vault. Opposite me sat friend Bacchus on a mighty cask of wine: not slender and delicate like a Grecian youth had the cunning old wood carvers of Bremen made him; no, nor a drunken old sot with goggle eyes and hanging tongue, as vulgar mythology now and then blasphemously represents him (scandalous anthropomorphism I call it!). Because some of his priests, grown grey in his service, have gone about like that; because their bodies may have swelled full of good humour, and their noses been coloured by the burning reflection of the dark red flood; because their eyes may have become fixed through being constantly turned upwards in silent rapture,–are we to ascribe to the god the qualities of his servants? The men of Bremen thought differently. How cheerily and gaily the old boy rides on his cask: the round blooming face, the little bright eyes that looked down so wisely and yet so mockingly, the wide laughing mouth that has been the grave of so many a cask, the whole body overflowing with comfortable good living. It was his arms and legs, however, that specially delighted me. I almost expected to see him snap his chubby fingers, and hear his voice sing out a gay hurrah! Why, he looked as if at any moment he might jump off his seat and trundle his cask round the cellar, till the Rose and the Apostles joined in the merry dance, and chased each other round whooping. 'Merciful powers,' cried the cellarmaster, clinging tightly to me, 'I saw his eye roll and his feet move!' 'Peace, you old fool!' said I, feeling however rather queer, and looking anxiously at the wine god; 'it's only the dancing reflection of your taper. Well, we'll go on to the Apostle cellar, the samples will taste better there.' But as I followed the old man out of Bacchus' private room, I looked round, and the figure certainly seemed to nod his little head, and stretch out his legs, and give a shake as if from an inward giggle. One ascends from Bacchus to a smaller vault, the subterranean celestial firmament I called it, the seat of blessedness, where dwell the twelve mighty casks, each called after an apostle. What funeral vault of a royal race can compare with such a catacomb as this? Pile coffin on coffin, trim the everlasting lamps that burn before the ashes of the mighty dead, let black-on-white marble speak in epigrammatic phrase the virtues of the departed: take your garrulous cicerone with his crape-trimmed hat and cloak, listen to his praises of Prince This, who fell at the battle of That, and of Princess Tother on whose tomb the virgin myrtle is intertwined with the half-opened rosebud; see and drink in all the associations of such a place; but will it move you like this? Here sleeps, and has slept for a century, the noblest race of all. Dark-brown their coffins, and all unadorned–no tinsel, no lying epitaphs, simply their names inscribed on each in large plain letters, as I could see when the old fellow placed the taper on them. ANDREW, JOHN, JUDAS, PETER, and here on the right PAUL, on the left JAMES, good James. Paul is Nierstein of 1718, and James Rüdesheim, ye gods! Rüdesheim of 1726!

Ask not of their virtues; no one has any right to ask: like dark-red gold their blood sparkles in my glass; when it was first ripened on the hills of St. John it was pale and blonde, but a century has coloured it. What a bouquet! quite beyond the power of words to express. Take all the scents from all the flowers and trees, and all the spices of Araby and Ind, fill the cool cellar with ambergris, and let the amber itself be dissolved into fumes–and the result will be but poor and scentless compared to the liquid sunshine of Bingen and Laubenheim, of Nierenstein and Johannisberg. 'Why do you shake your head?' said I to my companion at last; 'you've no reason to be ashamed of these old fellows here. Come, fill your glass and here's good luck to the whole Twelve of them!'

'Heaven forbid that I should do anything of the kind,' he replied; 'it's an uncanny toast and an uncanny night for it. Taste them, sir, and let's pass on, I shiver in their presence.' 'Good-night, then, gentlemen–remember that I am everywhere and for ever at your service, most noble Lords of the Rhine.' 'Surely,' said the old fellow, 'those few drops haven't made you so drunk that you would raise the whole crew of sprites already? If you talk like that again I shall be off, though I should get the sack for it: I tell you that on this night the spirits imprisoned in these casks rise and hold infernal carnival here in this very spot, aye, and other spirits besides! I wouldn't be here after twelve o'clock for worlds.' 'Well, I'll be quiet, you old driveller, if you'll only take me on to my Lady Rose's apartment itself.' At last we reached it, the little garden of the queen of flowers. There she lay in all her majestic girth, the biggest cask I ever saw in my life, and every glass worth a golden guinea. Frau Rosa was born in 1615. Ah, where are the hands that planted her parent vine? where are the eyes that watched the ripening clusters? where the sun-browned feet that hurried to the festival when she was pressed in the sunny Rheingau, and streamed a pale gold rivulet into the vat? Like the waves of the stream that lapped the base of her cradle, they are gone no one knows whither. And where are their High-Mightinesses of the Hansa, who ruled when the Hansa was a League indeed, those worthy senators of Bremen who brought the blushing maiden to this cool grot for the edification of their grandchildren? Gone too–with two centuries over their heads, and we can only pour wine on their tombs.

Good luck to you, departed High-Mightinesses, and good luck to your living representatives, who have so courteously extended such hospitality to a Southerner! 'And goodnight to you, my Lady Rose,' added the old servant more kindly. 'Come along, sir, we can get out this way without going back, mind you don't stumble over the casks.' 'My good man, you don't imagine I'm going away, do you?' I replied. 'I have only just begun my night. Bring me some of that special '22, two or three bottles, into that big room behind there. I saw that wine growing green and saw it pressed, and now I'm going to prove to my palate that we can still grow something worth drinking.' The old boy expostulated, entreated, threatened, swore nothing should induce him to stay;–who wanted him to stay? Swore he daredn't leave me here;–did he think I was going to carry off Frau Rosa in my arms? Finally he agreed to let me remain if he might padlock me into the big room, and come at six o'clock tomorrow to wake me and receive his reward. Then, with a heavy heart, he put three bottles of the '22 on the table, wiped the glass, poured me out a little, and wished me good-night, double-locking and padlocking the door behind me, more apparently out of tender anxiety for me than out of fear for his cellar. The clock struck half-past eleven as I heard him say a prayer and hurry away. When he shut the outer door of the vaults at the top of the stairs, there was an echo like the thunder of cannons through the halls and passages.

So now I was alone keeping Retreat with my soul down in the bosom of the earth. Slumber above me and slumber around me, for the spirits of the dead are asleep by my side. I wonder if they dream of their brief childhood on the distant mountains, and the nightly lullabys sung to them by old Father Rhine; or the kisses of their tender mother the sun when they first opened their eyes in the bright spring air, of their first leafy garments which reflected themselves in their old Father's eyes.

Ah! my soul, I too have rosy days of youth to look back upon, spent upon the soft vine-clad hills and by the blue rivers of my native Swabia; ah the days and the day dreams of glory! What games, what picture-books, what mother-love, what gigantic Easter eggs, what armies of tin and paper! And then, my soul, think of the first little trousers and collars in which your mortal covering, so proud of its size, was dressed; think how your father gave you rides on his knee, and your grandfather lent you his long bamboo cane with a golden head to use as a hobby horse.

Another glass! And then look on a few years. Do you remember the sad morning when you were taken to see all the mournful solemnities of grandfather's funeral? Ah! what would you not have given to get him back. Peace, 'tis but for awhile that he slumbers. And then the delightful hours in the old library filled with folios that were evidently bound in leather for no other purpose than that of forming huts to protect you and your imaginary sheep and cattle from the imaginary rain. How roughly you treated the Higher Literature of your native land. Why, I remember throwing a quarto Lessing at my brother's head, for which he beat me unmercifully with 'Sophy's Journey from Memel to Saxony.' Rise too, ye walls of the old castle, with your half-ruined passage, your cellar, your gate, your courtyard, all of which served only as a playground for a squad of boys; soldiers and robbers, nomads and caravans we were. I didn't much care whether I represented Platoff or a Cossack trooper, Napoleon or Napoleon's charger. Scattered all over the world, in every rank of life, and the sport of every kind of fortune is now the little knot of boys who were the companions of my childhood; and you and I, my dear soul, being alone too erratic to turn soldier, chamberlain, artisan, or parson, have become that remarkable thing called Doctor of Philosophy, having had just sufficient brains between us to write a dissertation. Brains enough to find our way into the Bremen cellars, however.

Another glass! Sure there's an affinity between wine and the tongue. It goes quite straight till it comes to the throat; here, however, is set up a finger-post, directing 'To the Stomach' and 'To the Head.' The latter is the path of the nobler particles of the grape-juice; the pure spirits that inhabit it will ever soar, and sensible, peaceful people they are for the most part, if there are not too many of them there together; but you know the best philosophers will quarrel when half a dozen of them of different intellectual complexions are closely packed in a small room.

How fair is that fourth period of life, (which we begin with the fourth glass.) Fourteen years old, my soul; but the boyish games are left behind, and you are steeped to the lips in reading–especially Goethe and Schiller, over whom you pore without understanding much. You think, however, you understand it all, and you have already kissed Elvira behind the cupboard door, and broken Emma's heart. Perjured villain! she may be another Charlotte, and she may possibly even have read some of Clauren, and be deeply in love with thee (and him). Let the scene change. I blow a greeting to that dear Alpine valley [Blaubeuern] where I spent so many years at school; the cloister roof, the walks over the brasses of dead abbots, the church with the wonderful high altar, the images dipped in the bright gold of sunrise. Thanks be to the strong Alpine air that I was ever full fledged and can fly as well as most people.

Another glass! Another period. That is a better glass than the last, I think–there's an aroma about it that the other lacked. And what a period that was! My college days! High, noble, savage, inharmonious, rough, fair; all opposites and contrasts that ever existed, blended then. No outsider can ever know the delights, and an outsider can hardly choose but laugh at the follies. Mixed with all the dross we bring up from thence there are generally some particles of fine gold. The music of our life would be strange indeed to one who had not sung and laughed with us. I know well what my granddad felt when he crossed the name of some fellow-collegian in his Book of Memory. God bless them all!