g was the Princess Royal of England, and she
inhabited this palace. Being mistaken for English, we were shown her
apartments, in which she died lately, and which were exactly in the
condition in which she left them. She must have had strong family
attachments, for her rooms were covered with portraits of her relatives.
The King of England was omnipresent; and as for her own husband, of
whom, by the way, one picture would have been quite sufficient for any
reasonable woman, there were no less than six portraits of him in a
single room!

As one goes north, the style of ornamenting rooms is less graceful, and
the German and English palaces all have the same formal and antiquated
air. Ludwigsberg does not change the rule, though there was an unusual
appearance of comfort in the apartments of the late Queen, which had
evidently been Anglicised.

While we were standing at a balcony, that overlooks a very pretty tract
of wooded country and garden, the guide pointed to a hamlet, whose
church tower was peering above a bit of forest, in a distant valley, or
rather swell. "Does Mein Herr see it?" "I do--it is no more than a
sequestered hamlet, that is prettily enough placed."--It was Marbach,
the birth-place of Schiller! Few men can feel less of the interest that
so commonly attaches to the habits, habitations, and personal appearance
of celebrated men, than myself. The mere sight of a celebrity never
creates any sensation. Yet I do not remember a stronger conviction of
the superiority enjoyed by true over factitious greatness, than that
which flashed on my mind, when I was told this fact. That sequestered
hamlet rose in a moment to an importance that all the appliances and
souvenirs of royalty could not give to the palace of Ludwigsberg. Poor
Schiller! In my eyes he is the German genius of the age. Goethe has got
around him one of those factitious reputations that depend as much on
gossip and tea-drinking as on a high order of genius, and he is
fortunate in possessing a _coddled celebrity_--for you must know there
is a fashion in this thing, that is quite independent of merit--while
Schiller's fame rests solely on its naked merits. My life for it, that
it lasts the longest, and will burn brightest in the end. The schools,
and a prevalent taste and the caprice of fashion, can make Goethes in
dozens, at any time; but God only creates such men as Schiller. The
Germans say, _we_ cannot feel Goethe; but after all, a translation is
p