Page:The Works of J. W. von Goethe, Volume 5.djvu/41

Rh templation as well as the memory, extricates one's self in the surest manner from the geological and political labyrinth. With these observations, I took a solemn farewell of my beloved Alsace, as the next morning we meant to turn our steps toward Lorraine.

The evening passed away in familiar conversation, in which we tried to cheer ourselves up under a joyless present by remembrances of a better past. Here, as in the whole of this small country, the name of the last Count Reinhard von Hanau was blessed above all others: his great understanding and aptitude had appeared in all his actions, and many a beautiful memorial of his existence yet remained. Such men have the advantage of being double benefactors: once to the present, which they make happy, and then to the future, the feeling of which and courage they nourish and sustain.

Now as we turned northwestward into the mountains, passed by Lutzelstein, an old mountain tower, in a very hilly country, and descended into the region of the Saar and the Moselle, the heavens began to lower, as if they would render yet more sensible to us the condition of the more rugged western country. The valley of the Saar, where we first reached Bockenheim, a small place, and saw opposite to it Neusaarwerden, which is well built, with a pleasure-castle, is bordered on both sides by mountains which might be called melancholy, if at their foot an endless succession of meadows and fields, called the Huhnau, did not extend as far as Saaralbe, and beyond it, farther than the eye can reach. Great buildings, belonging to the former stables of the Duke of Lorraine, here attract the eye: they are at present used as a dairy, for which purpose, indeed, they are very well situated. We passed through Saargemünd to Saarbrück, and this little residence was a bright point in a land so rocky and woody. The town, small and hilly, but well adorned by the last prince, makes at once a pleasing impression, as