15 
THE NORTHERN HARZ MOUNTAINS. 
(ILLUSTRATED BY THE LANTERN). 
By J. A. OSBORN, Burnley. January 16th, 1906, 
It was through reading Heinrich Heine’s ‘‘Reisebilder,”’ 
that the lecturer first formed a desire of visiting the Harz 
Mountains. For many long years this desire remained ungrati- 
fied, until in July, 1905, an opportunity occurred of visiting 
this interesting part of Europe in the company of Mr. George 
Rawcliffe. 
Heine made his tour of the Harz in 1824, five years before 
the first railway was built, and some fifty years before any rail- 
road found its way into these remote mountains. In later life 
the poet spoke of this work as “‘ the prettiest thing that I have 
ever written,” and the more one knows of his later writings, 
the more readily will that opinion be endorsed. Prose and 
verse are alike exquisite in style, full of humour and pathos ; 
and as the young poet was not yet embittered by the trials of 
his after life, he shows himself in full sympathy with all that is 
touching and noble in the lives of the miners and peasants. 
But any one who visited the Harz to-day thinking to find it like 
Heine’s description of what it was eighty years ago, would 
soon be wofully disappointed. It is true, as a German guide 
book says of a certain valley in the Tyrol, this beautiful 
neighbourhood is not yet spoilt by the English. But if ever 
a region was spoilt by the Germans themselves it is the Harz. 
Leaving Harwich for the Hook of Holland on Aug. Ist, 
Rotterdam was reached the next morning, and they proceeded 
via Leyden, Utrecht and Hanover, to Brunswick, thence to 
Halberstadt, where they were on the foothills of the Harz. 
The beautiful Cathedral and the Church of our Lady deserved 
more time than could be given to them ; the latter especially, 
being one of the finest examples of Romanesque architecture 
in a part of Europe where there are many others. The 
Rathaus, too, with its Ratskeller below, and its curious 
gigantic statue of Roland at the corner—a local symbol 
of municipal jurisdiction and a palladium of civic liberty— 
__was very interesting. 

