( 590 ) 



LETTERS FROM A CONTINENTAL TOURIST. 



. ("Continued from page 501 J 



AFTER leaving the cathedral we paid a visit to the tomb of the 

 Mareschal Saxe in the church of St. Thomas. It certainly is impos- 

 ing in its appearance, but would excite little attention in any but 

 a provincial town, where every thing hors du commun is viewed 

 through microscopic glasses. It represents the marshal, surrounded 

 by allegorical figures, stepping into the grave, which is held open by 

 a skeleton for his reception. No doubt it is skilfully executed, but it 

 is very far from being, as they call it, unique. A far more interest- 

 ing sight was the mummy of a count of Nassau, whose body had been 

 embalmed some four hundred years since, and was still in a state of 

 perfect preservation, even to the lineaments of the face : nay, the hair 

 on the upper lip was distinctly perceptible. The shoes were the same 

 he actually wore ; something like what we call Blucher boots in their 

 cut, but with heels three inches high. The rest of his clothes were 

 made after the model of those he was found in, and consisted of a very 

 ordinary pair of brown breeches, with a doublet of the same, ruffles, 

 frill collar, and slate -coloured silk stockings. In another glass-covered 

 coffin near at hand was his daughter. The face was much decayed. 

 Perhaps it had not been varnished, as was the case with the father. 

 Be that how it may, all the flesh had rotted away and left the bones 

 only behind. The hands, however, were remarkably perfect, and on 

 one of the fingers was, or seemed to be, a brilliant ring. The dress, 

 which had not been changed, was of a light-blue silk, ornamented 

 with flowers. Four centuries had not much injured the tints or tex- 

 ture of the robe, and the colours of a bouquet attached to the forehead 

 were scarcely faded. 



After the labours of the day (for even pleasure is fatiguing) both 

 my companion and myself required some refreshment, and for that 

 purpose entered the most respectable cafe we could find. Nothing 

 could be more characteristic than this scene. At each of two billiard 

 tables were posted two players, each of them smoking, not even lay- 

 ing aside the pipe to make their stroke. Around them stood other 

 smokers, watching and commenting on the games. At one of the 

 tables was a party, smoking of course, but two of them, a sub-officer 

 and]a burgher, engaged in a game at cards. As the fortune varied, so 

 varied their tempers ; and every turn in the favour of one seemed to 

 give rise to an angry reclamation on the part of the other, or an ap- 

 peal to the decision of the lookers-on. There was not an individual 

 in the room who was not sucking tobacco smoke. Indeed, the pipe 

 is a necessary appendage to a German ; and the Alsatians, though 

 French by law, are in manners and habits, in nature and appearance, 

 thorough Germans. The pipe, I say, is as necessary an append- 

 age to a German as a shirt to an Englishman. Morning, noon, and 

 night, they are whiffing the vile weed through a foul tube redolent of 

 the stale residue of successive years' smoking, and scattering around 

 them an effluvia indescribably offensive to the less blunted organs of 

 their more cleanly visitors. 



