History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 20 [49]
with Elbe on your right hand. Innocent rural aspects of Humanity, Boor's life, Gentry's life, all the way, not in any holiday equipment; on the contrary, somewhat unkempt and scraggy, but all the more honest and inoffensive. There is sky, earth, air, and freedom for your own reflections: a really agreeable kind of Gau; pleasant, though in part ugly. Large tracts of it are pine- wood, with pleasant Villages and fine arable expanses interspersed. Schilda and many Villages you leave to right and left. Old-fashioned Villages, with their village industries visible around; laboring each in its kind,--not too fast; probably with extinct tobacco-pipe hanging over its chin (KALT-RAUCHEND, 'smoking COLD,' as they phrase it).
"Schilda has an absurd celebrity among the Germans: it is the Gotham of Teutschland; a fountain of old broad-grins and homely and hearty rustic banter; welling up from the serious extinct Ages to our own day; 'SCHILTburger' (Inhabitant of SCHILDA) meaning still, among all the Teutsch populations, a man of calmly obstinate whims and delusions, of notions altogether contrary to fact, and agreeable to himself only; resolutely pushing his way through life on those terms: amid horse-laughter, naturally, and general wagging of beards from surrounding mankind. Extinct mirth, not to be growled at or despised, in Ages running to the shallow, which have lost their mirth, and become all one snigger of mock-mirth. For it is observable, the more solemn is your background of DARK, the brighter is the play of all human genialities and coruscations on it,--of genial mirth especially, in the hour for mirth. Who the DOCTOR BORDEL of Schilda was, I do not know: but they have had their Bordel, as Gotham had;--probably various Bordels; industrious to pick up those Spiritual fruits of the earth. For the records are still abundant and current; fully more alive than those of Gotham here are.--And yonder, then, is actually Schilda of the absurd fame. A small, cheerful-looking human Village, in its Island among the Woods; you see it lying to the right:--a clean brick- slate congeries, with faint smoke-canopy hanging over it, indicating frugal dinner-kettles on the simmer;--and you remember kindly those good old grinnings, over good SCHILTBURGER, good WISE MEN OF GOTHAM, and their learned Chroniclers, and unlearned Peasant Producers, who have contributed a wrinkle of human Fun to the earnest face of Life.
"After Schilda, and before, you traverse long tracts of Pine Forest, all under forest management; with long straight stretches of sandy road (one of which is your own), straight like red tape- strings, intersecting the wide solitudes: dangerous to your topographies,--for the finger-posts are not always there, and human advice you can get none. Nothing but the stripe of blue sky overhead, and the brown one of tape (or sand) under your feet: the trees poor and mean for most part, but so innumerable, and all so silent, watching you all like mute witnesses, mutely whispering together; no voice but their combined whisper or big forest SOUGH audible to you in the world:--on the whole, your solitary ride there proves, unexpectedly, a singular deliverance from the mad railway, and its iron bedlamisms and shrieking discords and precipitances; and is soothing, and pensively welcome, though sad enough, and in outward features ugly enough. No wild boars are now in these woods, no chance of a wolf:"--what concerns us more is, that Friedrich's columns, on the 3d of November, had to march up through these long lanes, or tape-stripes of the Torgau Forest; and that one important column, one or more, took the wrong turn at some point, and was dangerously wanting at the expected moment!--
"Torgau itself stands near Elbe; on the shoulder, eastern or Elbe- ward shoulder, of a big mass of Knoll, or broad Height, called of Siptitz, the main Eminence of the Gau. Shoulder, I called it, of this Height of Siptitz; but more properly it is on a continuation, or lower ulterior height dipping into Elbe itself, that Torgau stands. Siptitz Height, nearly a mile
"Schilda has an absurd celebrity among the Germans: it is the Gotham of Teutschland; a fountain of old broad-grins and homely and hearty rustic banter; welling up from the serious extinct Ages to our own day; 'SCHILTburger' (Inhabitant of SCHILDA) meaning still, among all the Teutsch populations, a man of calmly obstinate whims and delusions, of notions altogether contrary to fact, and agreeable to himself only; resolutely pushing his way through life on those terms: amid horse-laughter, naturally, and general wagging of beards from surrounding mankind. Extinct mirth, not to be growled at or despised, in Ages running to the shallow, which have lost their mirth, and become all one snigger of mock-mirth. For it is observable, the more solemn is your background of DARK, the brighter is the play of all human genialities and coruscations on it,--of genial mirth especially, in the hour for mirth. Who the DOCTOR BORDEL of Schilda was, I do not know: but they have had their Bordel, as Gotham had;--probably various Bordels; industrious to pick up those Spiritual fruits of the earth. For the records are still abundant and current; fully more alive than those of Gotham here are.--And yonder, then, is actually Schilda of the absurd fame. A small, cheerful-looking human Village, in its Island among the Woods; you see it lying to the right:--a clean brick- slate congeries, with faint smoke-canopy hanging over it, indicating frugal dinner-kettles on the simmer;--and you remember kindly those good old grinnings, over good SCHILTBURGER, good WISE MEN OF GOTHAM, and their learned Chroniclers, and unlearned Peasant Producers, who have contributed a wrinkle of human Fun to the earnest face of Life.
"After Schilda, and before, you traverse long tracts of Pine Forest, all under forest management; with long straight stretches of sandy road (one of which is your own), straight like red tape- strings, intersecting the wide solitudes: dangerous to your topographies,--for the finger-posts are not always there, and human advice you can get none. Nothing but the stripe of blue sky overhead, and the brown one of tape (or sand) under your feet: the trees poor and mean for most part, but so innumerable, and all so silent, watching you all like mute witnesses, mutely whispering together; no voice but their combined whisper or big forest SOUGH audible to you in the world:--on the whole, your solitary ride there proves, unexpectedly, a singular deliverance from the mad railway, and its iron bedlamisms and shrieking discords and precipitances; and is soothing, and pensively welcome, though sad enough, and in outward features ugly enough. No wild boars are now in these woods, no chance of a wolf:"--what concerns us more is, that Friedrich's columns, on the 3d of November, had to march up through these long lanes, or tape-stripes of the Torgau Forest; and that one important column, one or more, took the wrong turn at some point, and was dangerously wanting at the expected moment!--
"Torgau itself stands near Elbe; on the shoulder, eastern or Elbe- ward shoulder, of a big mass of Knoll, or broad Height, called of Siptitz, the main Eminence of the Gau. Shoulder, I called it, of this Height of Siptitz; but more properly it is on a continuation, or lower ulterior height dipping into Elbe itself, that Torgau stands. Siptitz Height, nearly a mile