Elustrated article. EHRENBREITSTEIN.* THE waters of the Rhine have long maintained their pre-eminence, as forming one of the mightiest and loveliest among the highways of Europe; and now that they have been polluted by the noisome, but seemingly attractive accommodations of the Dampschiffe, the beauties of the Rhenish shores have been visited by pilgrims from our own country, more numerous and more zealous than ever knelt before the shrine of Becket, or of our Lady of Loretto. Many, indeed, and various are the charms, by which the prince of rivers continues to allure the wanderings of the idle, the restless, and the rich. The quaint old world cities, which reflect themselves in its waves,offering the same contrast to their modern suburbs, that a beauty in coif and farthingale would oppose to a Parisian grisette, and the tree-tufted villages, which, with their rustic spires and whitened walls, might represent a third Grace, in the guise of a fair peasant,-enliven the F 5-VOL. IV. Colburn. banks of the Rhine with a characteristic population. In the misty distance, the seven mountains display the rich and romantic grouping of their lofty summits; while, nearer to the shore, and apparently springing from the blue depths of the river, gigantic and pinnacled rocks spread their darkening shadows over the waters. Of these, many are crowned with the mouldering towers of feudal pride; others are adorned with a fringe of beech-trees, which, springing from their shelving ledges, enliven the granite with their bright overhanging boughs; and some, and those the most inaccessible, have been transformed by the hand of industry into thriving vineyards, where the light foot of the winzer or vintager, bounded to his labours, appears to emulate the perils of the samphiregatherers of our native cliffs. Here, the spires of some lonely monastery surmount the highest crags of the rocky bank ;there, the cloistered votaries have sought a still more isolated seclusion, upon the very bosom of the waves. The towers and defences of obsolete warfare are contrasted with the iron strength of modern 89 fortresses; and the embattled keep of some Lord of Chivalry frowns upon the greenshuttered lust-haus of the living Burgmeister. Thus rich in every variety of landscape, animate and inanimate, the successive scenery of the Rhine boasts an intensity of interest scarcely to be surpassed. But among all its united trophies of art and nature, there is not one more brightly endowed with picturesque beauty or romantic associations, than the fortress of Ehrenbreitstein. When the eye of our Childe Harold rested upon its "shattered wall," and when the pencil of Turner immortalized its season of desolation, it had been smitten in the pride of its strength by the iron glaive of war; and its blackened fragments and stupendous ruins had their voice for the heart of the moralist, as well as their charm for the inspired mind of genius. But now that military art hath knit those granite ribs anew,-now that the beautiful eminence rears once more its crested head, like a sculptured Cybele, with a coronet of towers,-new feelings, and an altered scale of admiration wait upon its glories. Once more it uplifts its giant height beside the Rhine, repelling in Titan majesty the ambition of France; once more, by its united gifts of natural position and scientific aid, it appears prepared to vindicate its noble appellation of "the broad stone of honour." But those unto whom the varying destinies which have bannered its walls are intimately known, are tempted to consider its renovated condition as in some respects a loss. There was a small ruined chamber among the shattered fraginents of its darker hour, which connected itself with a legend of no ordinary interest. In the course of the campaigns immediately following the French Revolution, the fortress of Ehrenbreitstein experienced on more than one occasion, the unequal fortunes of war; and was compelled to submit to the superior force, or superior skill, of a conquering army. After the passage of the French troops under Hoche, effected at Weisse Thurm, in 1797, a blockade, which endured until the peace of Loeben, harassed its devoted garrison. It was then abandoned to the possession of the troops of the Elector of Mayence; and although the little town of Thal, situated at its base, had been sacrificed in the course of the siege, Coblentz, whose position on the opposite bank, at the confluence of the Moselle with the Rhine, derives its best security from the fortress, was thus restored to tranquillity and a hope of happier times. The confusion of an ill-disciplined and inexperienced army, had indeed rendered abortive to the Rhenish shores those local advantages by which they ought to have been secured from devastation; and the prolonged disorganization and disunion prevalent in the adjacent provinces, had, by the most impolitic inconsistency, embarrassed every branch of public business; and while agriculture was driven from the ravaged plains, and commerce from the ensanguined waves of the Rhine, civil discord had embroiled the citizens of almost every town of mark along its course. But affairs were now beginning to wear a more promising aspect. The Congress of Rastadt had already opened its negociations, and despair on one side, and exhaustion or weariness on the other, had succeeded in cooling the heat of those national feuds which had brought the ruinous footsteps of advancing and retreating armies to trample the bosom of an afflicted country. That there were some among its sons overeager to avenge the deep scars thus inflicted, the murder of the French deputies, at the very gates of Rastadt, terribly attests. It chanced that some days previous to the opening of the Congress, a French noble, the Count d'Aubigny, with his wife and son, had been arrested, on their return to their native country, by the authorities of Coblentz; who, judging from the passports and papers in his possession that he had high influence, and an important connection with the Directory, secured him in the fortress of Ehrenbreitstein as a valuable hostage for the interests of their city. The Count, who had sought safety in emigration during the short supremacy of one of the earlier and more furious factions of the republic, had been recently recalled to fill an appointment of dignity and honour under the new government. Galling as it was to his feelings to be thus thwarted and restrained upon the very threshold of France, yet his trust in the efficacy of an appeal which he had forwarded to the Congress, prevented him from giving way to the natural impatience of his mind. A deeper feeling, however,- -a feeling of horror and desperation,-soon superseded his irritation and regrets a body of French troops presented itself before the fortress, menacing its garrison and luckless inhabitants with all the horrors of a protracted siege. It was in vain that D'Aubigny recalled to his own mind, and whispered to his fair companion, that the fortress was bombproof, and casemated with unequal art; and still more vain were his entreaties to Colonel Faber, its brave but sturdy commandant, that his wife and child might be conveyed under a flag of truce to Coblentz. The Colonel, to whom his prisoner was both nationally and individually an object of distrust, persisted that the interest of his command forbade the concession. "Your ladies of France," said he,"God give them grace!-are too nimble. tongued to be trusted in an enemy's camp; and Moritz Faber will scarcely be tempted to enable the fair countess to carry tidings of the nakedness of the land and of the impoverished resources of the fort, unto a band which bears the tri-coloured rag as its ensign, and treachery as its pass-word. No, no!-abide in the old eagle's nest.— Our galleries are a surety from your friends in the valley; and when our provisions fail,-which fail they shali, ere I yield the charge committed to my hand unto a gang of marauding cut-throats, countess and her son shall honourably share our fare and our famine. Perhaps the plea of a lady's sufferings may more promptly disperse your gentle countrymen yonder, who write themselves preus chevaliers, than falconet or culverin!" the Count d'Aubigny, finding persuasion fruitless, and knowing that resistance might even less avail him, could only pray, that either the return of his own estafette from Rastadt, or of that dispatched by Colonel Faber, might bring a mandate of intelligence between the besieging and besieged. A few days sufficed to show, and the expiration of several weeks tended most horribly to prove, that the fortress had indeed been surprised in an hour of security and consequent destitution; he looked tremblingly to the result, and marked the daily diminution of their appointment of provisions, with a sense of dread he dared not reveal to his companions in misfortune. If any woman, however, could be gifted to receive with fortitude an announcement of evil severe as that anticipated by the Count, it was Evéline-his lovely and most beloved wife; for her mind was as firm and elevated in its character, as her demeanour and disposition were femininely gentle; and her attachment to the young Eugène, the son of D'Aubigny by a former marriage, partook of a conscientious devotion to his interests, such as the mere tenderness of maternal love could not have alone suggested. It was for him, it was for that fair boy, who had loved her so fondly, that her first apprehensions of the horror of their position became terrible to her mind. Eugène was frail and delicate, and had been nurtured with the softest tending; he had attained neither the strength of body or mind essential to the endurance of an evil from which his high condition might have seemed to secure him; and his parents, for they were equally so in affection for the child, had not courage to forewarn and inure him to the approaching calamity. They saw him from the first reject with silent, but evident loathing, the coarse food tendered for his support. They marked his soft cheek grow wan under the deprivation—his little voice gradually weaken, his step bound less playfully along the rude pavement of their chamber; and they looked into each other's faces with tearful eyes as they first noted the change; but dared not interrogate the boy, or utter one audible comment. Soon, however,-fatally soon, the miserable fact became too loudly a matter of comment in the garrison, for even the child to remain in ignorance of their threatened destiny. Day after day passed, and brought nothing but sights of death and sounds of lamentation; and the wasting strength of the prisoners rendered their minds still more susceptible of terror and despair; but neither their wants, nor the murmurs of the soldiery, could influence by the weight of a feather the stern determination of the commandant to yield but in his hour of death. Let those who limit their consciousness of the pangs of hunger by the loss of an occasional meal, which may have rendered restless their luxurious couch, affect to underrate the agonies of starvation, and to attemper according to Adam Smith's theory of morality, their arguments for the indecency of bewailing a vulgar lack of food. But the actual sense of famine,the gnawing, irritating sense, which confuses the ears with strange sounds-the body with sickness-the heart with perturbation-the head with dizzy bewilderment-these are sufferings which defy the mastery of mental fortitude! 66 D'Aubigny was the first to give utterance to his feelings, for they were solely urged by the suppressed torments he was condemned to witness. 'My Evéline!" said he, "my sweet, my heavenly minded wife, could I have believed when I sought your hand, amid the lofty pomp of your high estate, that I should but win it to share in the horrors of my evil destiny, -could I have dreamed, when I wept my first glad tears over this boy's cradle, that I should live to wish him unborn-to see him perish-slowly-horribly-" "Hush! D'Aubigny, he sleeps; his head hath sunk upon my knee." "No! mother," said the boy, very faintly, "I am not sleeping; I am listening quietly to my kind father's voice." "It is exhaustion! by the God of mercy! it is exhaustion which hath bowed his head!" exclaimed the Count, taking his son into his arms, and gazing with an indiscribable thrill upon his attenuated countenance; then rushing forwards, in despite of the outcry and resistance of the various sentries, he forced himself into the presence of Colonel Faber, still straining his child to his bosom. 66 "Look on him!" said he, with a voice broken by sobs; " 'Tis my only child, look upon him, and if you have the heart of a man, deny not my petition. It is not yet too late,―send him from Ehrenbreitstein." "It cannot be," answered Faber, resolutely; although the manifest condition of the lovely boy brought a deep flush even to his temples. “I will give him up my own share of provisions with pleasure, Count d'Aubigny; but not a living soul must leave the fortress!-I am deeply responsible to my country; and the famishing condition of my soldiers-my children,-might otherwise prompt me to desert a trust which the Congress of Radstadt appears so little interested to protect. My duty, Sir, is one of sternness; I cannot grant your request." "Do not weep, father," murmured the child, faintly. "I never saw tears of thine before; do not let them fall for Eugène. I will be better; I will feed heartily on the food we can still procure; do not weep, father." And with an effort mighty at his age, the child did indeed force between his lips the loathsome morsels which fell scantily to their share. Every domestic animal within the walls had been sacrificed; and the obscene flesh of dogs and horses had become a delicacy beyond the soldiers' power of purchase! and on such revolting aliments did Evéline-the gentle-the noble Evéline-force herself to feed, in order to entice and deceive the boy's enfeebled appetite. But all would not do ; already many of the least hardy of the garrison had fallen a sacrifice to want of wholesome food; and the failing strength and tremulous lips of Eugène and his mother, proclaimed that they were soon Yes they were dying of to follow. starvation! Again the Count attempted to move the feelings of Faber in their behalf; but he no longer bore denial with resignation. Moved beyond his patience, he raved, threatened, and even attempted violence; and as the scene had many witnesses, the commandant felt it due to himself to punish the offender with solitary confinement. "Thus, too," thought the staunch old soldier, "I shall spare this unfortunate parent the misery of looking upon sufferings which he cannot alleviate." The wretched chamber inhabited by the Countess d'Aubigny, was situated in one of the loftiest and most secure towers of the fortress; and when the sun, which had lost its power to cheer the desponding prisoners, dawned through the arrow-slits on the day succeeding that of D'Aubigny's imprisonment, Evéline rose to drag her failing, quivering limbs towards the morning air, and resting her head beside the narrow opening, looking down upon the blue, glassy, dancing, free waters of the Rhine, that rippled far, far below the fortress, and prayed that they might rise and overwhelm her. But she instantly reproved the thought, as she had already done the proposal of her husband, that they should anticipate their inevitable and horrible end. "This child," she had replied, " is a sacred deposit in our hands, we have no right to leave him orphaned, to his sorrow; and you could not-no! you could not attempt his little life!" "What seest thou yonder, mother?" faltered the boy, whom her movement had disturbed, but who was now too weak to approach the soupirail refresh ment. "I see Heaven's mighty sunshine, dear Eugène, bright as if it shone upon no human misery. I see the white city of Coblentz, backed by its green plantations, and sending up the smokes of a thousand hearths. Beside them there is happiness, Eugène,-smiles and food, child;-and with us abideth nought, save trust in the mercy of God. Think upon it,-think, beloved child, that we shall soon be free from pain and grief!" "I cannot think, mother; my head swims strangely. But there is still feeling in my heart, and it is all for thee and for my father." "Eugène ! should we survive this peril, and thou hast the strength of youth in thy favour,-let this remembrance become a pledge for the tender mercies of thy future life; so that the poor and the hungry may not plead to thee in vain." "Mother! thy words reach not my failing ears; draw nearer, mother, for I would die with my hand in thine." On that very day the destinies of the fortress were accomplished; and the sacrifice, which had been made, was made in vain :-the fiat of the Congress of Rastadt-commanded the brave Faber to open its gates to the enemy of his country. The noble brother of Evéline D'Aubigny, whose anxiety for her liberation had motived in a great measure the blockade of Ehrenbreitstein, was the first to rush into the chamber of the captive. No living thing stirred there!-The boy had died first, for his face was covered, and his limbs composed; and Evéline,-if the fair wasted thing which lay beside him might claim that name,-had perished in executing that last duty! Romances of Real Life. THE MIDNIGHT REVIEW.* At midnight, from his grave, The drummer woke and rose, And beating loud the drum, Forth on his round he goes. Stirred by his fleshless arms, So strangely rolls that drum, Below the mud of Nile, And 'neath Arabian sand; Their burial place they quit, And soon to arms they stand. And at midnight, from his grave, A loud shrill blast he blows. The cavalry are seen, Beneath the casque their blanch'd skulls Their long sharp swords they bear. And at midnight, from his tomb, At his left side hangs free. For. Quar. Rev. |