Read Delphi Complete Works of Ann Radcliffe (Illustrated) Online
Authors: Ann Radcliffe
The three superior points of the Seven Mountains, which contribute so much to the distinction of Goodesberg, are called Drakenfels, Wolkenbourg and Lowenbourg, and have each been crowned by its castle, of which two are still visible in ruins. There is a story faintly recorded, concerning them. Three brothers, resolving to found three distinguished families, took the method, which was anciently in use for such a purpose, that of establishing themselves in fortresses, from whence they could issue out, and take what they wanted from their industrious neighbours. The pinnacles of Drakenfels, Wolkenbourg and Lowenbourg, which, with all assistance, cannot be ascended now, without the utmost fatigue, were inaccessible, when guarded by the castles, built by the three brothers. Their depredations, which they called successes in war, enriched their families, and placed them amongst the most distinguished in the empire.
They had a sister, named Adelaide, famed to have been very beautiful; and, their parents being dead, the care of her had descended to them. Roland, a young knight, whose castle was on the opposite bank of the Rhine, became her suitor, and gained her affections. Whether the brothers had expected, by her means, to form a more splendid alliance, or that they remembered the ancient enmity between their family and that of Roland, they secretly resolved to deny the hand of Adelaide, but did not choose to provoke him by a direct refusal. They stipulated, that he should serve, a certain number of years, in the war of Palestine, and, on his return, should be permitted to renew his suit.
Roland took a reluctant farewell of Adelaide, and went to the war, where he was soon distinguished for an impetuous career. Adelaide remained in the castle of Drakenfels, waiting, in solitary fidelity, for his return. But the brothers had determined, that he should not return for her. They clothed one of their dependents in the disguise of a pilgrim, and introduced him into the castle, where he related, that he was arrived from the holy wars, and had been desired by Roland in his latest moments to assure Adelaide of his having loved her till death.
The unhappy Adelaide believed the tale, and, from that time, devoted herself to the memory of Roland and to the nourishment of her sorrow. She rejected all the suitors, introduced by her brothers, and accepted no society, but that of some neighbouring nuns. At length, the gloom of a cloister became so necessary to the melancholy of her imagination, that she resolved to found a convent and take the veil; a design, which her brothers assisted, with the view of placing her effectually beyond the reach of her lover. She chose an island in the Rhine between her brother’s castle and the seat of Roland, both of which she could see from the windows of her convent; and here she passed some years in the placid performance of her new duties.
At length, Roland returned, and they both discovered the cruel device, by which they had been separated for ever. Adelaide remained in her convent, and soon after died; but Roland, emulating the fidelity of her retirement, built, at the extreme point of his domains towards the Rhine, a small castle, that overlooked the island, where he wasted his days in melancholy regret, and in watching over the walls, that shrouded his Adelaide.
This is the story, on which the wild and vivid imagination of Ariosto is said to have founded his Orlando.
AFTER spending part of two days at Goodesberg, we set out, in a sultry afternoon, for the town of Andernach, distant about five-and-twenty English miles. The road wound among cornlands towards the Rhine, and approached almost as near to the Seven Mountains, as the river would permit. Opposite to the last, and nearly the tallest of these, called Drakenfels, the open plain terminates, and the narrower valley begins.
This mountain towers, the majestic sentinel of the river over which it aspires, in vast masses of rock, varied with rich tuftings of dwarfwood, and bearing on its narrow peak the remains of a castle, whose walls seem to rise in a line with the perpendicular precipice, on which they stand, and, when viewed from the opposite bank, appear little more than a rugged cabin. The eye aches in attempting to scale this rock; but the sublimity of its height and the grandeur of its intermingled cliffs and woods gratify the warmest wish of fancy.
The road led us along the western bank of the Rhine among vineyards, and corn, and thick trees, that allowed only transient catches of the water between their branches; but the gigantic form of Drakenfels was always seen, its superior features, perhaps, appearing more wild, from the partial concealment of its base, and assuming new attitudes as we passed away from it. Lowenberg, whose upper region only had been seen from Goodesberg, soon unfolded itself from behind Drakenfels, and displayed all its pomp of wood, sweeping from the spreading base in one uninterrupted line of grandeur to the spiry top, on which one high tower of the castle appears enthroned among the forests. This is the loftiest of the Seven Mountains; and its dark sides, where no rock is visible, form a fine contrast with the broken cliffs of Drakenfels. A multitude of spiry summits appeared beyond Lowenberg, seen and lost again, as the nearer rocks of the shore opened to the distance, or re-united. About a mile further, lies the pleasant island, on which Adelaide raised her convent. As it was well endowed, it has been rebuilt, and is now a large and handsome quadrangle of white stone, surrounded with trees, and corn, and vineyards, and still allotted to the society, which she established. An abrupt, but not lofty rock, on the western shore of the Rhine, called Rolands Eck, or Roland’s Corner, is the site of her lover’s castle, of which one arch, picturesquely shadowed with wood, is all that remains of this monument to faithful love. The road winds beneath it, and nearly overhangs the narrow channel, that separates Adelaide’s island from the shore. Concerning this rock there is an ancient rhyme in the country, amounting to something like the following:
Was not Roland, the knight, a strange silly wight,
For the love of a nun, to live on this height?
After passing the island, the valley contracts, and the river is soon shut up between fruitful and abrupt hills, which rise immediately over it, on one side, and a series of rocky heights on the other. In the small space, left between these heights and the Rhine, the road is formed. For the greater part of the way, it has been hollowed in the solid rock, which ascends almost perpendicularly above it, on one hand, and sinks as abruptly below it, to the river, on the other; a work worthy of Roman perseverance and design, and well known to be a monument of both. It was made during the reign of Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus; and as the inscription, whose antiquity has not been doubted, dates its completion in the year 162, it must have been finished in one year, or little more, Marcus Aurelius having been raised to the purple in 161. The Elector Palatine having repaired this road, which the Electors of Cologne had neglected, in 1768, has caused his name to be joined with those of the Roman Emperors, in the following inscription upon an oblisk: ‘VIAM
SUB M.
AURELIO
ET L. VERO
I. M. P. P.
ANNO CHR.
CLXII
MUNITAM
CAROLUS
THEODORUS
ELECTOR PAL.
DUX BAV. JUL. CL. M.
REFECIT
ET AMPLIAVIT
AN. M. DCCLXVIII
CURANTE JO. LUD. COMITE
DE GOLDSTEIN
PRO PRINCIPE.’
We did not sufficiently observe the commencement and conclusion of this road, to be certain of its exact length; but it is probably about twelve miles. The rock above is, for the most part, naked to the summit, where it is thinly covered with earth; but sometimes it slopes so much as to permit patches of soil on its side, and these are carefully planted with vines. This shore of the Rhine may be said to be bounded, for many miles, by an immense wall of rock, through which the openings into the country behind are few; and these breaks shew only deep glens, seen and lost again so quickly, that a woody mountain, or a castle, or a convent, were the only objects we could ascertain.
This rock lies in oblique
strata,
and resembles marble in its brown and reddish tints, marked with veins of deeper red; but we are unable to mention it under its proper and scientific denomination. The colouring of the cliffs is beautiful, when mingled with the verdure of shrubs, that sometimes hang in rich drapery from their points, and with the mosses, and creeping vegetables of bright crimson, yellow, and purple, that emboss their fractured sides.
The road, which the Elector mentions himself to have widened, is now and then very narrow, and approaches near enough to the river, over which it has no parapet, to make a traveller anxious for the sobriety and skill of his postillion. It is sometimes elevated forty feet above the level of the Rhine, and seldom less than thirty; an elevation from whence the water and its scenery are viewed to great advantage; but to the variety and grandeur of these shores, and the ever changing form of the river, description cannot do justice.
Sometimes, as we approached a rocky point, we seemed going to plunge into the expanse of water beyond; when, turning the sharp angle of the promontory, the road swept along an ample bay, where the rocks, receding, formed an amphitheatre, covered with
ilex
and dwarfwood, round a narrow, but cultivated level stripe: then, winding the furthest angle of this crescent, under huge cliffs, we saw the river beyond, shut in by the folding bases of more distant promontories, assume the form of a lake, amidst wild and romantic landscapes. Having doubled one of these capes, the prospect opened in long perspective, and the green waters of the Rhine appeared in all their majesty, flowing rapidly between ranges of marbled rocks, and a succession of woody steeps, and overlooked by a multitude of spiry summits, which distance had sweetly coloured with the blue and purple tints of air.
The retrospect of the river, too, was often enchanting, and the Seven Mountains long maintained their dignity in the scene, superior to many intervening heights; the dark summit of Lowenburg, in particular, appeared, for several leagues, overlooking the whole valley of the Rhine.
The eastern margin of the river sometimes exhibited as extensive a range of steep rocks as the western, and frequently the fitness of the salient angles on one side, to the recipient ones on the other, seemed to justify the speculation, that they had been divided by an earthquake, which let the river in between them. The general state of the eastern bank, though steep, is that of the thickest cultivation. The rock frequently peeps, in rugged projections, through the thin soil, which is scattered over its declivity, and every where appears at top; but the sides are covered with vines so abundantly, that the labour of cultivating them, and of expressing the wine, supports a village at least at every half mile. The green rows are led up the steeps to an height, which cannot be ascended without the help of steps cut in the rock: the soil itself is there supported by walls of loose stones, or it would fall either by its own weight, or with the first pressure of rain; and sometimes even this scanty mould appears to have been placed there by art, being in such small patches, that, perhaps, only twenty vines can be planted in each. But such excessive labour has been necessary only towards the summits, for, lower down, the soil is sufficiently deep to support the most luxuriant vegetation.
It might be supposed from so much produce and exertion, that this bank of the Rhine is the residence of an opulent, or, at least, a wellconditioned peasantry, and that the villages, of which seven or eight are frequently in sight at once, are as superior to the neighbouring towns by the state of their inhabitants, as they are by their picturesque situation. On the contrary, the inhabitants of the wine country are said to be amongst the poorest in Germany. The value of every hill is exactly watched by the landlords, so that the tenants are very seldom benefited by any improvement of its produce. If the rent is paid in money, it leaves only so much in the hands of the farmer as will enable him to live, and pay his workmen; while the attention of a great number of stewards is supposed to supply what might be expected from his attention, had he a common interest with his landlord in the welfare of the estate. But the rent is frequently paid in kind, amounting to a settled proportion of the produce; and this proportion is so fixed, that, though the farmer is immoderately distressed by a bad vintage, the best will not afford him any means of approaching to independence. In other countries it might be asked, ‘“But, though we can suppose the ingenuity of the landlord to be greater than that of the tenant, at the commencement of a bargain, how happens it, that, since the result must be felt, the tenant will remain under his burthens, or can be succeeded by any other, on such terms?”’ Here, however, these questions are not applicable; they presume a choice of situations, which the country does not afford. The severity of the agricultural system continues itself by continuing the poverty, upon which it acts; and those, who would escape from it find few manufactures and little trade to employ them, had they the capital and the education necessary for either. The choice of such persons is between the being a master of day-labourers for their landlord, or a labourer under other masters.
Many of these estates belong immediately to Princes, or Chapters, whose stewards superintend the cultivation, and are themselves instead of the farmers, so that all other persons employed in such vineyards are ordinary servants. By one or other of these means it happens, that the bounteousness of nature to the country is very little felt by the body of the inhabitants. The payment of rents in kind is usual, wherever the vineyards are most celebrated; and, at such places, there is this sure proof of the wretchedness of the inhabitants, that, in a month after the wine is made, you cannot obtain one bottle of the true produce, except by favour of the proprietors, or their stewards. How much is the delight of looking upon plenteousness lessened by the belief, that it supplies the means of excess to a few, but denies those of competence to many!
Between this pass of cultivated steeps on one side of the river, and of romantic rocks on the other, the road continues for several miles. Being thus commanded on both sides, it must be one of the most difficult passages in Europe to an enemy, if resolutely defended. The Rhine, pent between these impenetrable boundaries, is considerably narrower here than in other parts of the valley, and so rapid, that a loaded vessel can seldom be drawn faster than at the rate of six English miles a day, against the stream. The passage down the river from Mentz to Cologne may be easily performed in two days; that from Cologne to Mentz requires a fortnight.
The view along this pass, though bounded, is various and changeful. Villages, vineyards and rocks alternately ornament the borders of the river, and every fifty yards enable the eye to double some massy projection that concealed the fruitful bay behind. An object at the end of the pass is presented singly to the sight as through an inverted telescope. The surface of the water, or the whole stillness of the scene, was very seldom interrupted by the passing of a boat; carriages were still fewer; and, indeed, throughout Germany, you will not meet more than one in twenty miles. Travelling is considered by the natives, who know the fatigue of going in carriages nearly without springs, and stopping at inns where there is little of either accommodation or civility, as productive of no pleasure; and they have seldom curiosity or business enough to recompense for its inconveniencies.
We passed through two or three small towns, whose ruined gates and walls told of their antiquity, and that they had once been held of some consequence in the defence of the valley. Their present desolation formed a melancholy contrast with the cheerful cultivation around them. These, however, with every village in our way, were decorated with green boughs, planted before the door of each cottage, for it was a day of festival. The little chapels at the road-side, and the image, which, every now and then, appeared under a spreading tree, were adorned with wreaths of fresh flowers; and though one might smile at the emblems of superstition, it was impossible not to reverence the sentiment of pious affection, which had adjusted these simple ornaments.
About halfway to Andernach, the western rocks suddenly recede from the river, and, rising to greater height, form a grand sweep round a plain cultivated with orchards, garden-fields, corn and vineyards. The valley here spreads to a breadth of nearly a mile and an half, and exhibits grandeur, beauty and barren sublimity, united in a singular manner. The abrupt steeps, that rise over this plain, are entirely covered with wood, except that here and there the ravage of a winter torrent appeared, which could sometimes be traced from the very summit of the acclivity to the base. Near the centre, this noble amphitheatre opens to a glen, that shews only wooded mountains, point above point, in long perspective; such sylvan pomp we had seldom seen! But though the tuftings of the nearer woods were beautifully luxuriant, there seemed to be few timber trees amongst them. The opposite shore exhibited only a range of rocks, variegated like marble, of which purple was the predominating tint, and uniformly disposed in vast, oblique strata. But even here, little green patches of vines peeped among the cliffs, and were led up crevices where it seemed as if no human foot could rest. Along the base of this tremendous wall, and on the points above, villages, with each its tall, grey steeple, were thickly strewn, thus mingling in striking contrast the cheerfulness of populous inhabitation with the horrors of untamed nature. A few monasteries, resembling castles in their extent, and known from such only by their spires, were distinguishable; and, in the widening perspective of the Rhine, an old castle itself, now and then, appeared on the summit of a mountain somewhat remote from the shore; an object rendered sweetly picturesque, as the sun’s rays lighted up its towers and fortified terraees, while the shrubby steeps below were in shade.