We
Ascended Through A Court Yard, Full Of Little Children, By Some Steps
Into A Gallery, Where A Woman Came Out With Her Keys.
We passed first
into a great hall, the walls of which were adorned with Holbein's
Dance of Death.
From this hall we passed into Luther's room - a little cell, ten feet
square; the walls covered with inscriptions from his writings. There
we saw his inkstand, his pocket Testament, a copy of the Bible that
was presented to him, (by whom I could not understand,) splendidly
bound and illuminated. But it was the cell itself which affected me,
the windows looking out into what were the cloisters of the monastery.
Here was that struggle - that mortal agony - that giant soul convulsing
and wearing down that strong frame. These walls! to what groans, to
what prayers had they listened! Could we suppose a living human form
imperishable, capable of struggling and suffering, but not of dying,
buried beneath the whole weight of one of these gloomy cathedrals,
suffocating in mortal agony, hearing above the tramp of footsteps, the
peal of organs, the triumphant surge of chants, and vainly striving to
send up its cries under all this load, - such, it would seem, was the
suffering of this mighty soul. The whole pomp and splendor of this
gorgeous prison house was piled up on his breast, and _his_
struggles rent the prison for the world!
On a piece of parchment which is here kept framed is inscribed in
Luther's handwriting, in Latin, "Death is swallowed up in Victory!"
Nothing better could be written on the walls of this cell.
This afternoon I walked out a little to observe the German Sabbath.
Not like the buoyant, voluble, social Sunday of Paris, though still
consecrated to leisure and family enjoyment more than to religious
exercises. As I walked down the streets, the doors were standing open,
men smoking their pipes, women knitting, and children playing. One
place of resort was the graveyard of an antiquated church. A graveyard
here is quite different from the solitary, dismal place where we lay
our friends, as if to signify that all intercourse with them is at an
end. Each grave was trimmed and garlanded with flowers, fastened with
long strings of black or white ribbon. Around and among the graves
men, women, and children were walking, the men smoking and chatting,
not noisily, but in a cheerful, earnest way. It seems to me that this
way of treating the dead might lessen the sense of separation. I
believe it is generally customary to attend some religious exercise
once on Sunday, and after that the rest of the day is devoted to this
sort of enjoyment.
[Illustration: _of the Wartburg._]
The morning we started for Eisenach was foggy and rainy. This was
unfortunate, as we were changing from a dead level country to one of
extreme beauty. The Thuringian Forest, with its high, wooded points
crowned here and there with many a castle and many a ruin, loomed up
finely through the mist, and several times I exclaimed, "There is the
Wartburg," or "That must be the Wartburg," long before we were near
it.
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