But poems, no less than proverbs, have been inspired by the belief in this untiring wanderer, whose imaginary existence has proved so propitious to the practices of vagabondage and the encouragement of credulity. At the commencement of the seventeenth century, a complaint was penned, which, though inserted by Louvet in his erudite historical volumes, if of any value, is only so as indicative of the popular taste of the period. In biographical and historical compositions, moreover, the Wandering Jew is a notable personage. Gustave Brunet, of Bordeaux, in his "Notice Historique et Biographique sur la Légende du Juif Errant," relating how he was met by two citizens of Brussels, in the Forest of Soignes, says: "He was clad in a costume extremely ragged, and cut in the antique fashion; he entered with them into an auberge; he drank, but would not sit down; he told them his story; said that his name was Isaac Laquedem; and left them terribly frightened," adds the chronicler, with naïveté. About the same period, a high-flown, romantic narration appeared in Belgium, under the title of "Histoire admirable du Juif Errant," describing, at length, the adventures of the renowned traveler in different regions, and followed by "a canticle," of even less merit than the "complaint." At schools and academies, moreover, the Jew was the subject of discussion, and his history gave rise to many a learned dissertation, the most singular upon which," says Gustave Brunet, "is that of Droscher: this Sachem, deeming the thing proved, pretends to establish, that Ahasuerus and Cartaphilus are two distinct persons, and stands up for the existence of two Wandering Jews." Possibly, this enlightened champion of superstition had his own especial evidence, having met the Merchant of Rotterdam and Cartaphilus in companionship together on their travels! 66 though invoked by the painter, the romancer, and the poet, and often selected as the favorite theme of the drama and the opera. Not less than ten French productions of this kind bear his name, from the play of "Caignez," represented at La Gaieté, in 1812, to the opera of MM. Scribe and St. Georges. Numerous poems are dedicated to him, preeminent among these the productions of Schubert and Quinet; but distinguished above all others, the noble song of Béranger, melodiously accompanied by the music of Ernest Doré. Pierre Dupont has added to these his admirable composition, the subject of which is peculiarly adapted to elicit the characteristic genius of Gustave Doré, so strikingly manifested in the splendid illustrations of the present work. The tradition, as adopted by Dupont is that of Ahasuerus, the shoemaker, condemned to perpetual wandering until the Judgment. Infinite diversity in situation, incident, and emotion, is afforded by the poet's theme, the changes of which resemble the variations to an air-the measure ever distinctly heard through the intricacy of harmonies inseparable from and attendant on it. Thus, amidst the most contrasted localities, seasons, and circumstances, all which are apprehended and vividly depicted to the minutest details by the artist, the shadow of the Cross ceaselessly appears over the path of the wanderer, who, toilworn and weary, if reposing for an instant, is urged irresistibly on by the beckoning hand of the aveng ing angel. The graphic interpretation of this marvelous legend, through the skill of Doré, immortalizes it anew. As we have said, it is suited especially to his particular or der of talent. His fancies, wondrously bold, not to say grotesque, powerfully express the extravagance of the subject. His genius does not, with the accuracy of a Durer, appeal so much to the actual as After his welcome in the Forest of to the ideal conceptions of the poet. Soignes, it was confidently hoped that the Mountain, valley, ocean, appear transfigwanderer would visit alternately the vari-ured into a dream of poetry by his penous towns of Germany; but not until the year 1772, on the 22d of April, was the expectation fulfilled by his entering into Brussels at six in the evening, as the date is carefully preserved. Since that period, whatever was his reception by the good citizens, he has not been induced by it to visit Europe again in the character of either Cartaphilus, Joseph, or Ahasuerus, cil, yet are vividly natural. The grandeur of architecture, the gloom of forests, the busy life of cities, groupings of age and youth and infancy, the terrors of the battle or the storm, sacred awe and quaint humor, are alike truthfully delineated by the creative versatility of his imagination, which blends the most incongruous elements into one harmonious whole. The very surprises, ingeniously bold and fanciful, which in his pieces awaken admiration, would exite only ridicule if attempted by a less able artist. lation of his pilgrimage might increase the entertainment and jollity of the evening, and, uproarious at his resolution to depart, essay different temptations to induce him First among the twelve magnificent de- to remain. One reveler holds up a glass signs of M. Doré, he has chosen to repre- of beer; another, clicking the lid of his sent the moment of the malediction. On flagon, shouts an intoxicated ditty; and the adjacent hill crosses are seen erected; the buxom landlady is at her wits to maina busy crowd hastens to assemble round tain order. The reckless mirth of these the scene of suffering. Pharisees, execu- wassailing Flemings at the inn, and the tioners, legionaries, women, boys, and all blaze and bustle of its interior, contrast the rabble of the city are collected, afford- forcibly with the gloom of the night withing ample scope to the artist for the por- out, into which the exile is hurried by intrayal of physiognomy, who improves it exorable mandate-a burning and ever to the exhibition of the Jewish face under present remorse within his breast. The the varying aspects of an Absalom, a Cai- pathos of Guido, the truthfulness of Holaphas, a Barabbas, a Judas, and a Saul. bein, and the humor of Hogarth, are conAhasuerus, the cobbler, stands, boot in centrated in this picture. hand, beneath his shop-sign. He hears the fearful doom in answer to his taunt as the Saviour toils toward Calvary, and remains immovable for an instant with horror-then hurries on the hopeless wandering. The Jew is next seen emerging from a town of an antique stamp. The steeples of its buildings are in view, and a cross by the wayside arrests his agonized gaze. It is a bitter night, and the rain dashes remorselessly; a tempest glooms in the sky; the trees groan as though in pain; a rough wind bears the exile onward, his garments and long flowing beard fluttering in the gale. A ghastly light is reflected on the figure of the Saviour. Desolation is impressed on the entire scene. The city of Brussels next appears. Towers, domes, gables, windows, and bell-turrets, all bespeak the lavish architecture of the age. Opulent burghers surround the remarkable stranger in order to interrogate him, and are joined by a motley group of boys and animals, one of which, the saleman's ass, mistaking the flowing beard of the Jew for hay, nibbles at it. The varying phases of the throng, the burgesses with wigs and queues, doffed hats and ceremonial antics, the ignorant tradesboy in gaping wonder, the stoic regarding all contemptuously, are graphically described, and form an excellent specimen of the picturesque. The fourth illustration represents the traveler consenting to an invitation to rest awhile in an inn, forgetful momentarily, it is inferred, of his doom, but instantaneously recollecting it, is seen breaking away from his companions, urged forward by the figure of the angel. All are eager to detain him in order that the reVOL. XLI.-NO. II. The traveler is next seen hurrying along the Rhine, the waters of which reflect the vision of Calvary and himself in an attitude of reviling, as with figure bent and head bowed down, he pursues his ceaseless course. The landscape is grand and of vast extent. Caves, rocks, and trees appear, black as night. The relics of feudal banqueting-halls and dungeons are seen in the ruined towers crowning the steeps and glimmering far in the blue horizon. Among them, on a rocky eminence, rises a chapel spire. Over all is the cheerful sky fleeced with sailing clouds. The Jew then enters a graveyard decorated with urns and amaranthine garlands. Epitaphs tell either of vanity or affection. The white tombs glisten against the somber blackness of yew and cypress. The church-tower tolls a knell, and the wanderer wishes it were for him. But no; in his own gaunt shadow on the turf, in the waving grass, on the earth, in the sky, in mountain, wood, or torrent, in light and in darkness, the Cross is before him ever. The curiously woven aspects of the clouds have for him a symbolic meaning, and their irregular outline pictures to him the memorable procession. He sees the Saviour goaded onward by the crowd, whose yells still echo in his ears. He rushes on through the lofty Swiss valleys, where fir-darkened slopes lead up to snowy peaks. Torrents gush from out the forests. The scream of the eagle rings among the defiles. Suddenly the pines and stones take hideous shapes. Faces are formed by the boughs. The treetops appear like menacing axes; indentations in the trunks yawn into a ghastly smile; the leafless branches wrestle together 15 in fierce anguish; when glittering against or fights with his sword in his mouth. The ninth illustration exhibits a widely dissimilar vein of Doré's imagination. It is a battle-piece. Here all is action and turmoil. A town is besieged by an army in the medieval age. Fortified heights of feudalism occupy the background. Before is seen an array of clashing spears. All the horrors of the struggle are graphically described, often with a morbid and fantastic extravagance. Enemies have hewn each other to pieces in the fierceness of their malice, and mangled limbs strew the ground. One invincible warri He toils on through the Andes. Lions, serpents, wild beasts fail to destroy him. Snakes and river-monsters crowd his path, but no sting can harm him. The snowy peaks of the mountains are here portrayed above the dense shade of thickly-growing palms, and the dark, sunless river widened by the trail of the alligators. At length, after ages of wandering, the Jew is summoned to repose. The trump of the Last Judgment is heard by the awestricken universe, and the Jew welcomes it with a shout of wild laughter as, leaning on a stone, he tears off his time-worn boots. The very act of reposing is a millennium to him, and is greeted by an irresistible burst of merriment. A mingled crowd of demons, saints, and mortals, are here represented; and all the reckless ingenuity of the artist is invoked for the description of the scene. Amidst the vast array of the resurrection, kings, popes, and priests are seen, some in antique costume, some in the various peculiarities of more modern attire. The center of the picture is a chaos of flames and blackness. shower of light streams from above, and myriads of rejoicing angels cleave the air. In spite of certain eccentricities of fancy, dignity and pathos characterize this illustration. It is adequately conceived, as a whole, when we consider the difficulty of worthily representing a subject which not even the genius of Angelo could depict unalloyed by error and extravagance. A STUDIES From the Leisure Hour. IN HISTORY. WALLENSTEIN. CHAPTER I. THE great conflict between the Roman Catholic and Protestant parties in Germany, known as the Thirty Years' War, was the longest war of which history contains any record, and, looking to its results, was the most important of modern times, not excepting even that of which the first Napoleon was the instigator and the head. It was that enduring contest which secured for Protestantism a firm and lasting political basis, while it taught the House of Austria to know its own place in the great German family of nations more than that, it tended, above all other events, to consolidate the dominion, and to establish while it limited the authority and influence of the other European potentates. These advantages, not of the most palpable kind, and hardly recognized at the period, but which were to be reaped by succeeding generations of men, were purchased at a price which it is terrible to contemplate. They cost Germany the lives of millions of her people, thousands of millions of dollars, and such a sum of human misery, produced by human barbarity and atrocity, as the world had never till then witnessed, and which it is affecting to recall. With the exception of Gustavus Adolphus, of Sweden, who appears to have fought solely in the interests of the Protestant faith, the chief actors in this miserable drama were nearly all men of unbridled and unprincipled ambition; and to none of them, perhaps, unless it were to Ferdinand II., the Emperor of Austria, is this character more applicable than to the man whose name stands at the head of this sketch. But Wallenstein's is a character which it is difficult, if not impossible, to judge precisely, owing to the want of evidence upon the most important points. His history has been written for the most part, by his enemies, and very much from testimony furnished by those who first partook largely of his bounty, and then forsook or betrayed him. That they should accuse him of treachery was but the natural sequence of their own treason, which needed the foulest crimes on his part to justify their own conduct; but, in spite of this consideration, the weight of circumstantial evidence against him is so strong, when the known character of the man is taken into account, that his vindication from this particular charge appears to us almost hopeless. We shall have occasion to allude to this subject again; and in the meanwhile we leave the reader to form his own conclusions from the facts of Wallenstein's life, which, with all consistent brevity, we proceed to lay before him. Albert Winceslaus Walstein, or Wallenstein, was born in Bohemia, on September 14, 1583, and was the son of Henri de Walstein, a Protestant. As a boy, he was educated by a minister of the Protestant religion and in youth he displayed extraordinary talents, which were, however, combined with a spirit of obstinacy and insubordination which defeated all endeavors to repress it. This unmanageable quality in the youth induced his preceptors to beg the parents to withdraw him from their tuition—a request which was complied with; and the young lad was transferred to the household of Charles, Margrave of Burgan, son of the Archduke Ferdinand, where he served in the quality of a page. It was while in this service that he fell accidentally from a considerable height, and, when the bystanders supposed him to be killed by the fall, arose from the ground unhurt. The Jesuits, by whom he was surrounded, persuaded him that he owed his miraculous preservation to the direct interposition of the Virgin, and under this conviction he embraced the Roman Catholic faith. On leaving, shortly after, the service of the Margrave, young Wallenstein went to Prague, and there he abandoned himself to all kinds of follies and extravagant vices and excesses, mingling with the worst characters in the city, and, at the same time, devoting the hours of the night to the hard and persevering study of mathematics and astrology-studies which he continued to pursue for the whole of his life. On his return to Bohemia, he paid court to a widow of the family of Wiezkova, a woman possessed of enormous property, and married her. The union, as might be expected, was the reverse of a happy one; the unfortunate lady died without issue before four years had expired, leaving him the possessor of her almost boundless wealth. At this epoch, a war broke out between the Archduke Ferdinand and the Venetians. Wallenstein, at his own expense, raised and equipped a troop of three hundred cavaliers, and offered them to that prince, who received him with particular favor. He distinguished himself greatly in the war which followed, and was raised to the rank of colonel by Ferdinand, who had, by the election of the German princes, succeeded to the imperial throne. Wallenstein was now dispatched upon an expedition to Moravia, where he was again successful, and where he unscrupulously enriched himself by abstracting a large sum from the public chest-twelve thousand crowns of which he kept for himself, making over the rest to the Emperor. With the plunder thus acquired, he raised a regiment of Walloons, a thousand strong, and offered them also to his sovereign, who accepted them with gratitude. In the year 1618, the Bohemians raised the standard of revolt-an act which was virtually the commencement of the Thirty Years' War. Wallenstein was immediately commissioned by Ferdinand to appease the troubles in Bohemia. His military reputation and his great wealth made him of importance, and his Protestant countrymen tried every endeavor to win him back to his first faith and their righteous cause; but these efforts were without success. On the other hand, his own attempts to appease the rebellious spirit of the Bohemians were equally fruitless; and the Protestants, finding him deaf to their arguments, even confiscated the estates which he possessed in their territory. It is considered by some of his biographers that Wallenstein's conduct in this mission is open to suspicions of self-interest, and that he trifled with both parties, with an eye to procuring for himself the crown of Bohemia, which the hesitating and imbecile Frederic was too weak to defend. On his return from this unavailing negotiation, Wallenstein, by a new present to the Emperor of two regiments of infantry, acquired fresh popularity and additional favor at court, and was dispatched with a command into Bohemia, where he carried on the war several years with his usual success-a war which was virtually terminated by the Battle of Prague, which deprived the pusillanimous Frederic of his crown and kingdom, and where Wallenstein fought as a colonel under Maximilian of Bavaria. In 1621, he was again dispatched into Moravia, where, by superior tactics, he foiled the efforts of Bethlem Gabor, and added considerably to his own reputation. The Emperor, in return for his services, advanced him to the post of Major-General, and conferred on him the confiscated estates of the rebels. Wallenstein was now almost fabulously rich; but at the same time his successes made him enemies among the German princes, and his unscrupulousness gave a color to the grave charges they brought against him. He silenced these accusations, however, for a time, by the lavish distribution of his prodigious wealth, gained the friendship of the most considerable men in Ferdinand's court, and married a daughter of the Count of Harrach, a favorite of the Emperor. After the victory of Prague, Ferdinand might have made a peace, and put an end to the miseries of his country. He preferred rather to prosecute his own ambitious schemes. The success which attended him for a period, and for which he was mostly indebted to the arms of Bavaria, at length began to wane. The approach of the King of Denmark, and the ravages of Count Mansfeld, while they rendered him more than ever dependent on the League, threatened a disagreeable crisis, from which nothing could free him but a powerful army under his own orders; but war had already exhausted his dominions, and they were unequal to the expense of such a levy. |