The name of Goslar rings so pleasantly, and there are so many very ancient and imperial associations connected therewith, that I had hoped to find an imposing and stately town. But it is always the same old story when we examine celebrities too closely. I found a nest of houses, drilled in every direction with narrow streets of labyrinthine crookedness, and amid which a miserable stream, probably the Gose, winds its sad and muddy way. The pavement of the town is as ragged as Berlin hexameters. Only the antiquities which are imbedded in the frame or mounting of the city—that is to say, its remnants of walls, towers, and battlements—give the place a piquant look. One of these towers, known as the "Zwinger," or donjonkeep, has walls of such extraordinary thickness that entire rooms are excavated therein. The open place before the town, where the world-renowned shooting matches are held, is a beautiful large plain surrounded by high mountains. The market is small, and in its midst is a spring fountain, the waters from which pours into a great metallic basin. When an alarm of fire is raised, they strike several times on this cup-formed basin, which gives out a very loud vibration. Nothing is known of the origin of this work. Some say that the devil placed it once during the night on the spot where it stands. In those days people were as yet fools, nor was the devil any wiser, and they mutually exchanged gifts.

The town hall of Goslar is a whitewashed guard-room. The Guildhall, hard by, has a somewhat better appearance. In this building, equidistant from roof and ceiling, stands the statues of German emperors. Blackened with smoke and partly gilded, in one hand the sceptre, and in the other the globe, they look like roasted college beadles. One of the emperors holds a sword instead of a sceptre. I cannot imagine the reason of this variation from the established order, though it has doubtless some occult signification, as Germans have the remarkable peculiarity of meaning something in whatever they do.

In Gottschalk's Handbook I had read much of the very ancient cathedral, and of the far-famed imperial throne at Goslar. But when I wished to see these curiosities, I was informed that the church had been torn down, and that the throne had been carried to Berlin. We live in deeply significant times, when millennial churches are destroyed and imperial thrones are tumbled into the lumber-room.

A few memorials of the late cathedral of happy memory are still preserved in the church of St. Stephen. These consist of stained glass pictures of great beauty, a few indifferent paintings, including a Lucas Cranach, a wooden Christ crucified, and a heathen altar of some unknown metal. The latter resembles a long square coffer, and is upheld by caryatides, which in a bowed position hold their hands above their heads in support, and are making the most hideous grimaces. But far more hideous is the adjacent large wooden crucifix of which I have just spoken. This head of Christ, with its real hair and thorns and blood-stained countenance, represents, in the most masterly manner, the death of a man—but not of a divinely-born Savior. Nothing but physical suffering is portrayed in this image—not the sublime poetry of pain. Such a work would be more appropriately placed in a hall of anatomy than in a house of the Lord.

The sacristan's wife—an artistic expert—who led me about, showed me a special rarity. This was a many-cornered, well-planed blackboard covered with white numerals, which hung like a lamp in the middle of the building. Oh, how brilliantly does the spirit of invention manifest itself in the Protestant Church! For who would think it! The numbers on this board are those of the Psalms for the day, which are generally chalked on a common black tablet, and have a very sobering effect on an esthetic mind, but which, in the form above described, even ornament the church and fully make up for the want of pictures by Raphael. Such progress delights me infinitely, since I, as a Protestant and a Lutheran, am ever deeply chagrined when Catholic opponents ridicule the empty, God-forsaken appearance of Protestant churches.

* * * * *

The churchyard at Goslar did not appeal to me very strongly, but a certain very pretty blonde-ringleted head which peeped smilingly from a parterre window did. After dinner I again sought out this fascinating window, but, instead of a maiden, I beheld a glass containing white bellflowers. I clambered up, stole the flowers, put them quietly in my cap, and descended, unheeding the gaping mouths, petrified noses, and goggle eyes, with which the people in the street, and especially the old women, regarded this qualified theft. As I, an hour later, passed by the same house, the beauty stood by the window, and, as she saw the flowers in my cap, she blushed like a ruby and started back. This time I had seen the beautiful face to better advantage; it was a sweet, transparent incarnation of summer-evening breeze, moonshine, nightingale notes, and rose perfume. Later, in the twilight hour, she was standing at the door. I came—I drew near—she slowly retreated into the dark entry. I followed, and, seizing her hand, said, "I am a lover of beautiful flowers and of kisses, and when they are not given to me I steal them." Here I quickly snatched a kiss, and, as she was about to flee, whispered soothingly, "Tomorrow I leave this town, probably never to return." Then I perceived a faint pressure of the lovely lips and of the little hand and I—hurried smilingly away. Yes, I must smile when I reflect that unconsciously I uttered the magic formula by which our red-and blue-coated cavaliers more frequently win female hearts than by their mustachioed attractiveness—"Tomorrow I leave, probably never to return."

* * * * *

During the night which I passed at Goslar, a remarkably curious occurrence befell me. Even now I cannot think of it without terror. I am not cowardly by nature and Heaven knows that I have never experienced any special anguish when, for example, a naked blade has sought to make acquaintance with my nose or when I have lost my way at night in a wood of ill repute, or when, at a concert, a yawning lieutenant has threatened to swallow me—but ghosts I fear almost as much as the Austrian Observer⁵². What is fear? Does it originate in the brain or in the emotions? This was a point which I frequently disputed with Dr. Saul Ascher, when we accidentally met in the Café Royal in Berlin, where for a long time I used to take dinner. The Doctor invariably maintained that we feared anything, because we recognized it as fearful, by a certain process of reasoning, for reason alone is an active power—the emotions are not. While I ate and drank my fill, the Doctor continued to demonstrate to me the advantages of reason. Toward the end of his demonstration, he was accustomed to look at his watch and remark conclusively, "Reason is the highest principle!" Reason! Never do I hear this word without recalling Dr. Saul Ascher, with his abstract legs, his tight-fitting transcendental-grey long coat, his forbidding icy face, which could have served as frontispiece for a textbook of geometry. This man, deep in the fifties, was a personified straight line. In his striving for the positive, the poor man had, by dint of philosophizing, eliminated all the splendid things from life, such as sunshine, religion, and flowers, so that there remained nothing for him but the cold positive grave. The Apollo Belvedere and Christianity were the two special objects of his malice, and he had even published a pamphlet against the latter, in which he had demonstrated its unreasonableness and untenableness. In addition to this, he has written a great number of books, in all of which Reason shines forth in all its peculiar excellence, and as the poor Doctor meant what he said in all seriousness, he was, so far, deserving of respect. But the great joke consisted precisely in this, that the Doctor invariably cut such a seriously absurd figure when he could not comprehend what every child comprehends, simply because it is a child. I visited the Doctor of Reason several times in his own house, where I found him in company with very pretty girls; for Reason, it seems, does not prohibit the enjoyment of the things of this world. Once, however, when I called, his servant told me the "Herr Doctor" had just died. I experienced as much emotion on this occasion as if I had been told that the "Herr Doctor" had just moved.

To return to Goslar. "The highest principle is Reason," said I soothingly to myself, as I slid into bed. But it availed me nothing. I had just been reading in Varnhagen von Ense's German Tales, which I had brought with me from Clausthal, that terrible story of the son who went about to murder his father and was warned in the night by the ghost of his mother. The wonderful truthfulness with which this story is depicted, caused, while reading it, a shudder of horror in all my veins. Ghost-stories invariably thrill us with additional horror when read during a journey, and by night in a town, in a house, and in a room where we have never been before. We involuntarily reflect, "How many horrors may have been perpetrated on this very spot where I now lie!" Meanwhile, the moon shone into my room in a doubtful, suspicious manner; all kinds of uncalled-for shapes quivered on the walls, and as I raised myself in bed and glanced fearfully toward them, I beheld—

There is nothing so uncanny as when a man accidentally sees his own face by moonlight in a mirror. At the same instant there struck a deep-booming, yawning bell, and that so slowly and wearily that after the twelfth stroke I firmly believed that twelve full hours must have passed and that it would begin to strike twelve all over again. Between the last and next to the last tones, there struck in very abruptly, as if irritated and scolding, another bell, which was apparently out of patience with the slowness of its colleague. As the two iron tongues were silenced, and the stillness of death sank over the whole house, I suddenly seemed to hear, in the corridor before my chamber, something halting and shuffling along, like the unsteady steps of an old man. At last my door opened, and there entered slowly the late departed Dr. Saul Ascher. A cold fever ran through me. I trembled like an ivy leaf and scarcely dared to gaze upon the ghost. He appeared as usual, with the same transcendental-grey long coat, the same abstract legs, and the same mathematical face; only this latter was a little yellower than usual, the mouth, which formerly described two angles of 22-1/2 degrees, was pinched together, and the circles around the eyes had a somewhat greater radius. Tottering, and supporting himself as usual upon his Malacca cane, he approached me, and said in his usual drawling accent but in a friendly manner, "Do not be afraid, nor believe that I am a ghost. It is a deception of your imagination, if you believe that you see me as a ghost. What is a ghost? Define one. Deduce for me the conditions of the possibility of a ghost. What reasonable connection is there between such an apparition and reason? Reason, I say, Reason!" Here the ghost proceeded to analyze reason, cited from Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, part II, section I, book 2, chap. 3, the distinction between phenomena and noumena, then went on to construct a hypothetical system of ghosts, piled one syllogism on another, and concluded with the logical proof that there are absolutely no ghosts. Meanwhile the cold sweat ran down my back, my teeth clattered like castanets, and from very agony of soul I nodded an unconditional assent to every assertion which the phantom doctor alleged against the absurdity of being afraid of ghosts, and which he demonstrated with such zeal that once, in a moment of distraction, instead of his gold watch he drew a handful of grave-worms from his vest-pocket, and remarking his error, replaced them with a ridiculous but terrified haste. "Reason is the highest—!" Here the clock struck one, but the ghost vanished.

The next morning I left Goslar and wandered along, partly at random, and partly with the intention of visiting the brother of the Clausthal miner. Again we had beautiful Sunday weather. I climbed hill and mountain, saw how the sun strove to drive away the mists, and wandered merrily through the quivering woods, while around my dreaming head rang the bell-flowers of Goslar. The mountains stood in their white night-robes, the fir-trees were shaking sleep out of their branching limbs, the fresh morning wind curled their drooping green locks, the birds were at morning prayers, the meadow-vale flashed like a golden surface sprinkled with diamonds, and the shepherd passed over it with his bleating flock.

* * * * *

After much circuitous wandering I came to the dwelling of the brother of my Clausthal friend. Here I stayed all night and experienced the following beautiful poem—

 
  Stands the but upon the mountain
    Where the ancient woodman dwells
  There the dark-green fir-trees rustle,
    Casts the moon its golden spells.
 
 
  In the but there stands an arm-chair,
    Richly carved and cleverly;
  He who sits therein is happy,
    And that happy man am I.
 
 
  On the footstool sits a maiden,
    On my lap her arms repose,
  With her eyes like blue stars beaming,
    And her mouth a new-born rose.
 
 
  And the dear blue stars shine on me,
    Wide like heaven's great arch their gaze;
  And her little lily finger
    Archly on the rose she lays.
 
 
  Nay, the mother cannot see us,
    For she spins the whole day long;
  And the father plays the cithern
    As he sings a good old song.
 
 
  And the maiden softly whispers,
    Softly, that none may hear;
  Many a solemn little secret
    Hath she murmured in my ear.
 
 
  "Since I lost my aunt who loved me,
    Now we never more repair
  To the shooting-lodge at Goslar,
    And it is so pleasant there!
 
 
  "Here above it is so lonely,
    On the rocks where cold winds blow;
  And in winter we are always
    Deeply buried in the snow.
 
 
  "And I'm such a timid creature,
    And I'm frightened like a child
  At the evil mountain spirits,
    Who by night are raging wild"
 
 
  Silent falls the winsome maiden,
    Frightened by her own surmise,
  Little hands, so white and dimpled,
    Pressing on her sweet blue eyes.
 
 
  Louder now the fir-trees rustle,
    Spinning-wheel more harshly drones;
  In their pauses sounds the cithern,
    And the old song's simple tones:
 
 
  "Do not fear, my tender nursling,
    Aught of evil spirits' might;
  For good angels still are watching
    Round thy pathway day and night."
 
 
  Now the fir-tree's dark-green fingers
    Tap upon the window low,
  And the moon, a yellow listener,
    Casts within her sweetest glow.
 
 
  Father, mother, both are sleeping,
    Near at hand their rest they take;
  But we two, in pleasant gossip,
    Keep each other long awake.
 
 
  "That thou prayest much too often,
    Seems unlikely, I declare;
  On thy lips there is a quiver
    Which was never born of prayer.
 
 
  "Ah! that heartless, cold expression
    All my being terrifies—
  Though my darkling fear is lessened
    By thy frank and honest eyes.
 
 
  "Yet I doubt if thou believest
    What is held for truth by most;
  Hast thou faith in God the Father,
    In the Son and Holy Ghost?"
 
 
  "Ah, my darling! when an infant
    By my mother's knee I stood,
  I believed in God the Father,
    In the Ruler great and good.
 
 
  "He who made the world so lovely,
    Gave man beauty, gave him force,
  And to sun and moon and planets
    Pre-appointed each its course.
 
 
  "As I older grew, my darling,
    And my way in wisdom won,
  I in reason comprehended,
    And believe now in the Son—
 
 
  "In the well-loved Son, who, loving,
    Oped the gates of Love so wide;
  And for thanks—as is the custom—
  By the world was crucified.
 
 
  "Now, that I in full-grown manhood
    Reading, travel, wisdom boast;
  Still my heart expands, and, truly
    I believe the Holy Ghost,
 
 
  "Who bath worked the greatest wonders—
    Greater still he'll work again;
  He bath broken tyrants' strongholds,
    Broken every vassal's chain.
 
 
  "Ancient deadly wounds he healeth,
    He renews man's ancient right;
  All to him, born free and equal,
    Are as nobles in his sight.
 
 
  "Clouds of evil flee before him,
    And those cobwebs of the brain
  Which forbade us love and pleasure,
    Scowling grimly on our pain.
 
 
  "And a thousand knights in armor
    Hath he chosen and required
  To fulfil his holy bidding—
    All with noblest zeal inspired.
 
 
  "Lo! I their precious swords are gleaming,
    And their banners wave in fight!
  What! Thou fain would'st see, my darling,
    Such a proud and noble knight?
 
 
  "Well, then, gaze on me, my dearest;
    I am of that lordly host,
  Kiss me! and you kiss a chosen
    Champion of the Holy Ghost!"
 
 
  Silently the moon conceals her
    Down behind the sombre trees,
  And the lamp which lights our chamber
    Flickers in the evening breeze.
 
 
  But the starry eyes are beaming
    Softly o'er the dimpled cheeks,
  And the purple rose is glowing,
    While the gentle maiden speaks.
 
 
  "Little people—fairy goblins—
    Steal away our meat and bread;
  In the chest it lies at evening,
    In the morning it has fled.
 
 
  "From our milk the little people
    Steal the cream and all the best;
  Then they leave the dish uncovered,
    And our cat drinks up the rest.
 
 
  "And the cat's a witch, I'm certain,
    For by night, when storms arise,
  Oft she seeks the haunted hill-top
    Where the fallen tower lies.
 
 
  "There was once a splendid castle.
    Home of joy and weapons bright,
  Where there swept in stately pageant
    Lady, page, and armèd knight.
 
 
  "But a sorceress charmed the castle,
    With its lords and ladies fair;
  Now it is a lonely ruin,
    And the owls are nesting there.
 
 
  "But my aunt hath often told me,
    Could I speak the proper word,
  In the proper place up yonder,
    When the proper hour occurred,
 
 
  "I should see the ruins changing
    Swiftly to a castle bright,
  And again in stately dances
    Dame and page and gallant knight.
 
 
  "He who speaks the word of power
    Wins the castle for his own,
  And the knight with drum and trumpet
    Loud will hail him lord alone."
 
 
  So the simple fairy pictures
    From the little rose-mouth bloom,
  And the gentle eyes are shedding
    Star-blue lustre through the gloom.
 
 
  Round my hand the little maiden
    Winds her gold locks as she will,
  Gives a name to every finger,
    Kisses, smiles, and then is still.
 
 
  All things in the silent chamber,
    Seem at once familiar grown,
  As if e'en the chairs and clothes-press,
    Well of old to me were known.
 
 
  Now the clock talks kindly, gravely,
    And the cithern, as 'twould seem,
  Of itself is faintly chiming,
    And I sit as in a dream.
 
 
  Now the proper hour is striking,
    Here the charm should now be heard;
  Child, how would'st thou be astonished,
    Should I speak the magic word!
 
 
  If I spoke that word, then fading
    Night would thrill in fearful strife;
  Trees and streams would roar together
    As the mountains woke to life.
 
 
  Ringing lutes and goblin ditties
    From the clefted rock would sound,
  Like a mad and merry spring-tide
    Flowers grow forest-high around.
 
 
  Thousand startling, wondrous flowers,
    Leaves of vast and fabled form,
  Strangely perfumed, wildly quivering,
    As if thrilled with passion's storm.
 
 
  In a crimson conflagration
    Roses o'er the tumult rise;
  Giant lilies, white as crystal,
    Shoot like columns to the skies.
 
 
  Great as suns, the stars above us
    Gaze adown with burning glow;
  Fill the lilies' cups gigantic