FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   88   89   90   91   92   93   94   95   96   97   98   99   100   101   102   103   104   105   106   107   108   109   110   111   112  
113   114   115   >>  
th our Royal Master, one secretly fears! Baltimore's finances, I can guess, were not in too good order; mostly an Absentee; Irish Estates not managed in the first style, while one is busy in the Fred vineyard! 'The best and honestest man in the world, with a good deal of jumbled knowledge,' Walpole calls him once: 'but not capable of conducting a party.'" [Walpole's _Letters to Mann_ (London, 1843), ii. 175; 27th January, 1747. See ib. i. 82.] Oh no;--and died, at any rate, Spring 1751: [_Peerage of Ireland_ (London, 1768), ii. 172-174.] and we will not mention him farther. BIELFELD, WHAT HE SAW AT REINSBERG AND AROUND. Directly on the rear of these fine visitors, came, by invitation, a pair of the Korn's-Hotel people; Masonic friends; one of whom was Bielfeld, whose dainty Installation Speech and ways of procedure had been of promise to the Prince on that occasion. "Baron von Oberg" was the other:--Hanoverian Baron: the same who went into the Wars, and was a "General von Oberg" twenty years hence? The same or another, it does not much concern us. Nor does the visit much, or at all; except that Bielfeld, being of writing nature, professes to give ocular account of it. Honest transcript of what a human creature actually saw at Reinsberg, and in the Berlin environment at that date, would have had a value to mankind: but Bielfeld has adopted the fictitious form; and pretty much ruined for us any transcript there is. Exaggeration, gesticulation, fantastic uncertainty afflict the reader; and prevent comfortable belief, except where there is other evidence than Bielfeld's. At Berlin the beautiful straight streets, Linden Avenues (perhaps a better sample than those of our day), were notable to Bielfeld; bridges, statues very fine; grand esplanades, and such military drilling and parading as was never seen. He had dinner-invitations, too, in quantity; likes this one and that (all in prudent asterisks),---likes Truchsess von Waldburg very much, and his strange mode of bachelor housekeeping, and the way he dines and talks among his fellow-creatures, or sits studious among his Military Books and Paper-litters. But all is loose far-off sketching, in the style of _Anacharsis the Younger;_ and makes no solid impression. Getting to Reinsberg, to the Town, to the Schloss, he crosses the esplanade, the moat; sees what we know, beautiful square Mansion among its woods and waters;--and almost nothing that we do not know, exc
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   88   89   90   91   92   93   94   95   96   97   98   99   100   101   102   103   104   105   106   107   108   109   110   111   112  
113   114   115   >>  



Top keywords:

Bielfeld

 

London

 

transcript

 

beautiful

 

Walpole

 
Reinsberg
 

Berlin

 

evidence

 

sample

 
environment

streets

 
Avenues
 

straight

 

creature

 

Linden

 

prevent

 

mankind

 

Exaggeration

 

adopted

 

fictitious


ruined

 

pretty

 

gesticulation

 

reader

 

comfortable

 

afflict

 

uncertainty

 

fantastic

 

belief

 

invitations


Younger

 
Anacharsis
 

Getting

 

impression

 

sketching

 
litters
 

Schloss

 

waters

 

Mansion

 

esplanade


crosses

 

square

 

Military

 

studious

 

quantity

 

dinner

 
parading
 

drilling

 

statues

 

bridges