Abird’s-eye view of any country must always be unsatisfactory. Still it is better than nothing, and in the absence of a human view, one may be thankful for it. My view of Wurtemberg was of the most bird’s-eye kind. The first thing that strikes one is the absence of all fences except in the immediate neighbourhood of towns. Even the railway has no fence, except for a few yards where a road crosses the line, and here and there a hedge of acacia, or barberry bushes (the berries were hanging red ripe on the latter), which are very pretty, but would not in any place keep out a seriously-minded cow or pig.
Wurtemberg is addicted to the cultivation of crops which minister to man’s luxuries rather than to his necessities. The proportion of land under fruit, poppies, tobacco, and hops, to that under corn, was very striking. There was a splendid hemp crop here also. They were gathering the poppy-heads, as we passed, into sacks. The women and girls both here and in Bavaria seem to do three-fourths of the agricultural work; the harder, such as reaping and mowing, as well as the lighter. The beds of peat are magnificent, and very neatly managed. At first I thought we had entered enormous black brick-fields, for the peat is cut into small brick-shaped pieces, and stacked in rows, just as one sees in the best managed of our brick-fields. As one nears Stuttgart the village churches begin to show signs of the difference in longitude. Gothic spires and arches give place to Eastern clock-towers, with tops like the cupolas of mosques, tinned over, and glittering in the hot sun. I hear that it was a fancy of the late Emperor Joseph to copy the old enemies of his country in architecture; but that would not account for the prevalence of the habit in his neighbour’s territory. I fancy one begins to feel the old neighbourhood of the Turks in these parts. The houses are all roomy, and there is no sign of poverty amongst the people. They have a fancy for wearing no shoes and scant petticoats in many districts; but it is evidently a matter of choice. Altogether, the whole fine, open, well-wooded country, from Bruchsal to Munich, gives one the feeling that an easy-going, well-to-do people inhabit and enjoy it.
As for Munich itself, it is a city which surprised me more pleasantly than almost any one I ever remember to have entered. One had a sort of vague notion that the late king had a taste for the fine arts, and spent a good deal of his own and his subjects’ money in indulging the taste aforesaid in his capital. But one also knew that he had been tyrannised over by Lola Montes, and had made a countess of her—and had not succeeded in weathering 1848; so that, on the whole, one had no great belief in any good work from such a ruler.
Munich gives one a higher notion of the ex-king; as long as the city stands, he will have left his mark on it. On every side there are magnificent new streets, and public buildings and statues; the railway terminus is the finest I have ever seen; every church, from the Cathedral downwards, is in beautiful order, and highly decorated; and it is not only in the public buildings that one meets with the evidences of care and taste. The hotel in which we stayed, for instance, is built of brick, covered with some sort of cement, which gives it the appearance of terra-cotta, and is for colour the most fascinating building material. The ceilings and cornices of the rooms are all carefully and tastefully painted, and all about the town one sees frescoes and ornamentation of all kinds, which show that the people delight in seeing their city look bright and gay; and every one admits that all this is due to the ex-king Lewis. But he has another claim on the gratitude of the good folk of Munich. The Bavarians were given to beer above all other people, and the people of Munich above all other Bavarians, long before he came to the throne; and former kings, availing themselves of the national taste, had established a “Hof-Breihaus,” where the monarch sold the national beverage to his people. King Lewis found the character of the royal beer not what it should be, and the rest of the metropolitan brewers were also falling away into evil ways of adulterating and drugging. He reformed the “Hof-Breihaus,” so that for many years nothing but the soundest