Page:The Overland Monthly Volume 5 Issue 3.djvu/33

 pear in two different tiers, upon two sides of the building: under the terraces and around the corner, above the river, from where the brazen tongues of the cannon could leap out across the water, where still more territory was to be protected from the enemies of the prelate reigning within the walls. A specimen of what these walls were, is still to be seen at the end of the building forming the corner where the river flows into the moat. It is colossal, and would furnish ample material for full five miles of sea-wall around Fort Point.

In Luther's time, the town, with the castle of Petershagen, was a place of much greater size than at present; and, next to the bishopric of Bremen, it played a most important part in the religious wars; as, indeed, at all times previous to the dismantling of the fortifications, the fastness must have been a terror to the besieging host. Let us go to the

upper terrace, in front of the main en

trance (of the present day). It is said that all the land in sight, from this point, on this side of the river and that, at one time belonged to the lprd of the castle; and the peasants farming it were in duty bound to deliver their tithes into his granary. Highly favored were these peasants, when, by paying, in money and fruits, their tithes for ten years in advance, at one time, they were afterward at liberty to keep for themselves what they had raised by the sweat of their brow. Not only every tenth sheaf of grain in the field was claimed from the peasant, I am told, but a certain number of eggs from the hens in his barnyard, and sausages and hams from the "porker" he had fatted and killed; and, besides this, he must leave his own ground unplowed and unsowa, till "his lordship's" farms and gardens had been put in order by the peasant and his work-cattle. Jurisdiction and law-making were also in the hands of these little kings, who judged and sentenced their Vor. V— 16,

subjects before the courts established on their domains. Only since 1848 has this oppression been done away with; long after the time of the prince-bishops, every civil officer under the King who occupied the castle still claimed a certain amount of tithes, and unpaid labor, from the peasants living within a certain distance of the castle.

I almost hated the old, stubborn-looking thing, while listening to the stories of wrongs and cruelties practiced here, under the cloak of religion and cover of the Bishop's hat. And still a flood of sunshine streams into my heart with the memory of a bright, June morning, spent under the linden-trees on the upper terrace. Three hundred years old were these trees, and fastened with iron chains to the walls beyond, so that the wind should not tear them from their time-honored places. Heine says that the Linden should be the emblematical

'tree of the Germans, for every leaf of

the foliage is heart-shaped. Not the foliage of these hoary giants alone made them dear to me, though it was very, very beautiful to see the shadow of each leaf, as it moved in the soft wind, falling on, and playing hide-and-seek with, the gray, moss-covered statues, that stood in the niches of the wall.

The ivy clung fast to the wall, and around the pedestal of the stone figures; and the shadow of the linden-leaves flaked the deep niches, and the forms of the gods and nymphs, who had watched, with their sightless eyes, the growth of the once slim striplings, now pelting them with green leaves and snowy blossoms. Not the foliage alone attracted me toward the linden-trees; but the soft, vibrating music of an AZolian harp, hidden among the branches.

Like a new revelation seemed the poetry of Uhland, Wolfgang Miiller, Mosen, Arentschild, as I stood under the lindentrees on the terrace, and my eye roamed.

"Weit hin Uber's sonnige Land,"