HISTORICAL PICTURES OF THE MIDDLE AGES.
A LADY traveller, arriving at Basle, seems to have been struck with its remains of antiquity, and to have remained there, as Washington Irving sojourned at Grenada, surveying its old buildings, listening to traditions connected with them, examining museums and curiosity-shops, (not so . readily found in Spain,) and going from modern histories to abstracts of chronicles, and thence to the chronicles themselves, which told of the deeds that had been done in or near the places she had visited. With this strong impression of the external on her mind, and full of the knowledge she had acquired by reading, the fair traveller determined to write a book in which the facts should all be true, but the medium of presentation, and perhaps something more than the medium, the writer's own. Her model seems to have been Washington Irving's historiettes, or perhaps his nephew's Conquest of Florida. Her actual production more nearly resembles those historical imaginings in which modern travellers and topographers indulge when at a loss for living matter, and where the real historical events are out of all proportion to the writer's reflections and reveries, while perhapsings and supposings occupy no small space in the story. Had this been the sole error in these Historical Pictures, it might have been easily overlooked ; but the fair writer commits the further fault of " not sticking to her text." Having read a good deal in reference to her subjects, and being unwilling to lose any of her labour, she ramifies her theme, rather than extends or expands it. The first story is called " The Nuns' War" : it relates to a dispute between a convent of noble nuns and the Dominican friars of Basle, who claimed a right to oversee them, and by means of a Papal bull endeavoured to dispossess them of their property, for alleged immoralities : but the Dominicans were finally baffled by female diplomacy, after a contest in which the neighbouring nobility and the etizens of &Isle were respectively engaged with less spiritual weapons. The incident is curious, and was worth telling; but, not satisfied with the particulars essential to the Nuns' War, the writer wanders into all kinds of extraneous matter —the story of the convent and the family that founded it, with too elabOrate notices of every person that appears upon the scene. Hence, the narrative is perpetually crossed and cut up, and the reader's attention distracted from the main subject.. With a closer style this fault might have been less felt; but the writer's composition, though elegant, is flimsy, and the extraneous matter provokes the reader's impa- tience.
" The Abbots' War" is a less peculiar, incident, though curious and characteristic enough as a specimen of churchmen in a very church mili- tant age ; and not devoid of interest in the characters of the persons and some of the incidents. But as one Abbot took the side of the Emperor Henry, and the other of Hildebrand, Pope Gregory, the story of the rival
Abbots is almost lost in the history of the general war—one of the best- .
known events of the middle ages. f6 The Passage of the Great St. Ber- nard " is an account of Napoleon's exploit, introduced because the pas- sage had been made by an Emperor of Germany in 1077. The last story is a biographical notice of the good Queen Berth, who in the tenth century ruled over a portion of Switzerland, and by virtue of her marriages over portions of France and Italy. The story is partly founded upon record, partly upon tradition, and is less disturbed than the pre- ceding narratives by extraneous matter, but perhaps more overdone as regards undue expansion. Want of closeness both to the subject and in the style is the great fault of this elegantly written and in parts curious and interesting publication. Froissart was perhaps the original author of that personal or par- ticular history which ends with itself, in opposition to that larger narra- tive which deals with public events as a concatenation of causes. The original popular illustrator of history was Scott, first in his notes to his poetical volumes at the beginning of the century, subse- quently upon a larger and more manufacturing scale. The interest of these notes induced many who had neither the knowledge nor the judg- ment of Scott to pounce upon what seemed an easy mode of bookmaking. But the kind of matter was fitted for a note, not a book : it shone by a reflected light, illustrating something in which we were already inte- rested, but the topics could scarcely create an original interest. Such is mainly the character of Historical Pictures. So far as it goes it is a storehouse of notes ; we are pleased with particular parts, not with the whole.
As an example of the kind of curious reading to be found in the vo- lumes, here is part of the funeral of Anne first wife of the Emperor Rudolph, founder of the house of Hapsburg, who was buried in Basle Cathedral, 1282.
" The Emperor, who was ever greatly attached to this amiable woman, not- withstanding some infidelities which had a little clouded her brilliant destiny, (for jealousy injunctions the single fault of which Anne was ever accused,) prepared to fulfil her last njunctions with the pomp and circumstance which he deemed befitting his love and her rank. The body, after being slightly embalmed with aromatic drugs, and the face, hands, and feet, rubbed with some peculiarly precious oint- ment, was splendidly attired, and then enclosed in a strong coffin, or rather coffer, made of boxwood lined with velvet, skilfully sculptured with representations drawn from sacred history; stone, at that early epoch, not being so usual on the Continent as wood. The great distance also from Vienna to Basle, when roads were hardly practicable for heavy carriages, might have led to the use of this more frail material. When these preliminary preparations were completed, the coffer was fastened by three padlocks, and reposed in a state apartment hung with black till early in March; when, the heart of winter being over, it was placed in a sort of triumphal chariot, covered with escutcheons, crowns, banners, and heraldic devices. Four monks, two bare-footed and two Dominican brethren bearing torches, walked on each side, escorted by forty cavaliers. Three rudely constructed but magnificent carriages followed, containing the ladies of the Eta- press's suite; and a strong detachment of four hundred chosen soldiers, armed at all points, led and closed this melancholy procession from Vienna into Switzerland.
"All the clergy of the diocese of Basle received invitations to be present at this august solemnity; and on Thursday the 19th of March 1282, the Bishop issued from the gates of the EpNeopal palace at the head of twelve hundred ecclesiastics, (of whom six were abbots,) priests, conventual and secular, each bearing a lighted waxen torch, to meet the funeral cavalcade at some distance from the city-gates. The Imperial corpse was received at the door of the cathedral, with all the state and ceremony peculiar to Papal pomp, by three other bishops awaiting its arrival, with a minor host of dignitaries; and from thence (amid the chanting of litanies and the chiming of bells) conveyed into the choir; where the coffin was opened, and the deceased Empress was placed upon a magnificent throne, which had been erected on a raised platform, surmounted by a dais or canopy of crimson velvet fringed with gold. Her ladies and the distinguished personages who took a pro- minent part in the procession, dressed in deep mourning, ranged themselves on either side; whilst the four bishops performed a solemn mass before the awe- stricken multitude, assembled in thousands to witness so strange and appalling a sight. Sumptuous robes of rich silk and velvet enveloped the inanimate form of departed majesty. A veil of white silk floated from her head, and a small but elegant crown of silver gilt rested on her forehead. A collar of gold curiously wrought, containing a rich sapphire and other precious stones, was round her neck; and on the pale fingers of her lifeless hands, crossed over her bosom, glittered many costly gems. When the solemn service for the dead was finished, the body was again recommitted to the coffin, and entombed, amid the weeping of her at- tendants, in the choir close to that of the young Prince Charles." The following brutality in the guise of punishment, for an offence of which it was doubtful if the man was guilty, makes us hug our civiliza- tion.
"By a refinement of cruelty, Busselin, Baron von Wartz's faithful servant, was broken alive on the wheel at Enaigheim in his presence, that he might have a foretaste of his own sufferings; and a few weeks afterwards he was dragged by wild horses to the scene of his own execution, the spot where Albert fell. When delivered into the hands of Duke Leopold, he boldly dewed his guit, and demanded that in virtue of his rank be should be permitted to defend his innocence by his sword, according to the customs of chivalry, which allowed a nobleman to offer wager of battle if accused of crime. When this aristocratical privilege was de- nied him, he lost courage, and interceded for his own life and that of his foster- brother with bitter tea-5 and strong cries.' But when the horrible doom of Russelin, who was repeatedly put to the torture to obtain some shadow of evi- dence against himself, convinced him all hope of pardon was futile, he recovered his native firmness, and awaited the dreadful summons to death with manly for- titude. He had then no measures to keep; and he declared, that although per= fectly ignorant of the crime imputed to him, and convinced that it was unpreme- ditated on the part of Duke John of Swabia, he considered it a just punishment of the Emperors cruel conduct towards his orphan nephew; and, farther, avowed his belief in a popular suspicion that Albert bad himself caused the death of his predecessor the Emperor Adolphus of Nassau.
" The miserable man was extended on the scaffold, on the point of receiving the first blow, when the horror-stricken crowd, assembled to witness this fearful sight, made way for a female in deep mourning, whose wan pale face and eager efforts to approach the scene of suffering overcame all obstacles to her desire. She walked steadily forward, and dropping on her knees implored the executioner to permit her to remain. She was the wife of the victim ! • • • "She was present during all the sickening details of his horrible sentence, sup- porting him through his agonies by the assurance of her unabated attachment and belief in his innocence; and when the executioner had finished his fatal office, and one by one the silent multitude withdrew as night closed in, she crept under the wheel where he was left to die in lingering torments; the coup de grace, or final blow of mercy, by which the sufferings of the victim were usually finished when each limb was broken, having been expressly fvbidden. "Morning dawned on the miserable pair. Wartz was in the prime of life, of noble athletic form; and though each member was doubly fractured, his vital energy remained. Three nights and three days, without food, without sleep, she watched in the valley of the shadow of death,' suffering neither the birds of the air to rest on him by day nor the beasts of the field by night': wiping from his dying brow the big drops of anguish that burst from every pore. Nature wrestled long with death; on the third evening he grew too faint to thank her for her love; and as the morning of the fourth day dawned, he died. Her earthly task was accom- plished: she rose from her knees and directed her tottering steps to Klingenthal, whose prioress was the baron's sister. How she got there she could not tell: she fainted at the portal, and was carried in as an object of charity, so emaciated by famine, so changed by wo, that the prioress for some time had no recollection of her person."
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