LEGEND OF THE SERPENT'S BATH. 109 skin, reducing it almost to marble whiteness. The most inveterate wrinkles and the roughest skin become smooth and white under the wonderful effects of this water. Acting as a sort of corrosive, it literally scours a man white, and then soaks him soft and smooth. Says Francis Head, “I one day happened to overhear a fat Frenchman say to his friend, after he had been lying in one of these baths a half an hour: Monsieur, dans ces bains ou devient absolument amoureux de soi même.' So 'Sir, in these baths, one absolutely becomes enamoured of himself."" great is the effect of this water on the skin, that it is bottled and sent to the most distant parts of Europe as a cosmetic. The Germans have some mysterious origin to every thing, and what the Italians refer to the Madonna, they attribute to some indefinite mysterious agency. This spring, they say, was discovered by a sick heifer. Having been wasting away a long time, till her bones seemed actually to be pushing through her skin, and she was given up by the herdsman to die; she all at once disappeared and was gone for several weeks. No one thought of her, as it was supposed she was dead, but one day she unexpectedly returned, a sleek, fat, bright-eyed and nimble heifer. Every evening, however, she disappeared, which excited the curiosity of the herdsman so that he at length followed her, when to his surprise he saw her approach this spring, then unknown, from which having drank, she quietly returned. Not long after, a beautiful young lady began to waste away precisely like the heifer, and all medicines and nursing were in vain, and she was given over to die. The herdsman who had seen the wonderful cure performed on one of his herd being told of her sickness, went to her and besought her to try the spring. Like a sensible man, he thought what was good for the heifer was good for the woman. She consented to try the remedy, and in a few weeks was one of the freshest, fattest, plumpest young women in all the country round. From that moment, of course, the fame of the spring was secured, and it has gone on increasing in reputation, till now the secluded spot is visited by persons from every part of Europe. The duchy of Nassau is a beautiful portion of Germany, and 110 DESPOTISM OF THE DUKE OF NASSAU. if the Duke would only abrogate, like a sensible man, some of his foolish tyrannical feudal laws, and become a father to his subjects, it would be a delightful spot every way. But the petty prince of every petty province seems to think he is more like a king the more despotic he behaves. MAYENCE. 111 XXI. MAYENCE-THE RHINE. MAYENCE or Mainz lies at the upper termination of the fine scenery of the Rhine. From this to Coblenz, nearly sixty miles, this river is lined with towns, and convents, and castles, as rich in association as the ruins around Rome. Rob Mayence has its sights for the traveller, among which are the cathedral, the ruins of an old Roman structure, a museum of paintings, several monuments, &c., which I will pass over. There are two things worth recording of Mayence. It was here the famous Hanseatic League (the result of the Rhenish League) was formed by a confederation of cities. It was the first effectual blow aimed against unjust restrictions on commerce. ber chieftains had lined the Rhine from Cologne to Mayence with castles, which frowned down on the river that washed their foundations; and levied tribute on every passing vessel. In the middle ages there were thirty-two "toll-gates" of these bold highwaymen on the river. Now the only chieftain on the Rhine who is still allowed to hold and exercise his feudal right, is the Duke of Nassau. Under this strong confederation, the haughty castles one after another went down, and there is now scarcely a ruin that does not bear the mark of the Emperor Rudolph's stroke. Commerce was freed from the heavy exactions that weighed it down, and sailed with spreading canvass and fearless prow under the gloomy shadows of the castles that had once been its terror and destroyer. Byron looked on these castles with the eye of a poet, and felt vastly more sympathy for the robber chieftains that lived by violence, than for the peaceful traders whose bodies were often left floating down the Rhine. It is well for the world that those who formed the Hanseatic League were not poets of the Lara, Childe Harold, and Manfred school. Seeing very little romance in having their peaceful inhabitants fired upon by robbers who were fortunate enough to live in castles, they wisely concluded to put a stop to it. Had they not taken this practical view of the matter, Byron would probably not have been allowed to poetise so much at his leisure and with such freedom of expression, as he did when he sung of the "chiefless castles breathing stern farewells." "And there they stand as stands a lofty mind, Worn but unstooping to the baser crowd, Or holding dark communion with the cloud. There was a day when they were young and proud, But they who fought are in a bloody shroud, Beneath those battlements, within those walls, Doing his evil will, nor less elate Than mightier heroes of a longer date. What want these outlaw conquerors should have, But history's purchased page to call them great? A wider space an ornamented grave, Their hopes were not less warm, their souls were full as brave. In their baronial feuds and single fields But thou, exulting and abounding river! THE FIRST PRINTING PRESS. Through banks whose beauty would endure forever Nor its fair promise from the surface mow With the sharp scythe of conflict, then to see Thy valley of sweet waters, were to know Earth proved like Heaven; and to seem such to me, Even now what wants thy stream?-that it should Lethe be. A thousand battles have assailed thy banks, But o'er the blackened memory's blighting dream 113 Thus mused the haughty misanthropic bard along the Rhine;and these few sentences, by the conflicting sentiments that pervade them, exhibit the perfect chaos of principle and feeling amid which he struggled with more desperation than wisdom. One moment he expresses regret that those old feudal chiefs have passed away, declaring, on the faith of a bard, that they were as good as their destroyers, and the next moment pouring his note of lamentation over the evils of war. The other notable event in the history of Mayence is the first printing press was established here. There is a monument here to Gensfleisch (goose flesh), called Gutemberg, a native of the place, who was the inventor of moveable types. This first printing office, occupied by him between the years 1443 and 1450, is still standing. One could moralize over it an hour. From the first slow arrangement of those moveable types to the present diffusion of printed matter, what a long stride! He who could hear the first crippled movement of that miniature press, the only one whose faint sound rose from this round earth; and then catch the din and thunder of the "ten thousand times ten thousand" steam presses that are shaking the very continents on which they rest with their fierce action; would see an onward step in the progress of the race more prophetic of change |