Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen — Volume 2Tytler, Sarah
History
Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen — Volume 2
Tytler, Sarah
Victoria, Queen of Great Britain, 1819-1901
The Queen and the Prince stopped at the quaint little town of
Eisenach, which Helen of Orleans was yet to make her home. They were
received by the Grand Duke and Hereditary Duchess of Saxe-Weimar, with
whom the strangers drove through the autumn woods to the famous old
fortress of the Wartburg, which, in its time, dealt a deadly blow to
Roman Catholicism by sheltering, in the hour of need, the Protestant
champion, Luther. Like the good Protestants her Majesty and the Prince
were, they went to see the great reformer's room, and looked at the
ink-splash on the wall--the mark of his conflict with the devil--the
stove at which he warmed himself, the rude table at which he wrote and
ate, and above all, the glorious view over the myriads of tree-tops
with which he must have refreshed his steadfast soul. But if Luther is
the hero of the Wartburg, there is also a heroine--the central figure
of that "Saint's Tragedy" which Charles Kingsley was to give to the
world in the course of the next two or three years--St. Elizabeth of
Thuringia, the tenderest, bravest, most tortured soul that ever
received the doubtful gain of canonization. There is the well by which
she is said to have ministered to her sick poor, half-way up the
ascent to the Wartburg, and down in the little town nestling below,
may be seen the remains of an hospital bearing her name.
From Fulda, where the royal party slept, they journeyed to Goethe's
town of Frankfort, where Ludwig I., who turned Munich into a great
picture and sculpture gallery, and built the costly Valhalla to
commemorate the illustrious German dead, dined with her Majesty.
At Biberich the Rhine was again hailed, and a steamer, waiting for the
travellers, carried them to Bingen, where their own little vessel,
_The Fairy_, met and brought them on to Deutz, on the farther
side from Cologne. The Queen says naively that the Rhine had lost its
charm for them all--the excitement of novelty was gone, and the
Thuringerwald had spoilt them. Stolzenfels, Ehrenbreitstein, and the
Sieben-Gebirge had their words of praise, but sight-seeing had become
for the present a weariness, and after Bonn, with its memories, had
been left behind, it was a rest to the royal travellers--as to most
other travellers at times--to turn away their jaded eyes, relinquish
the duty of alert observation, forget what was passing around them,
and lose themselves in a book, as if they were in England. Perhaps the
home letters had awakened a little home-sickness in the couple who
had been absent for a month. At least, we are given to understand
that it was of home and children the Queen and the Prince were chiefly
thinking when they reached Antwerp, to which the King and Queen of the
Belgians had preceded them, and re-embarked in the royal yacht
_Victoria and Albert_, though it was not at once to sail for
English waters. In gracious compliance with an urgent entreaty of
Louis Philippe's, the yacht was to call, as it were in passing, at
Tréport.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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