nd like that of our
Presbyterians at home, consists in a hymn, a portion of Scripture read
out, and--what is considered the greatest point of all--a sermon, half
prayer, half dissertation, which concludes the whole. Even when the
Pastors are eloquent men, which they rarely are, I doubt much if German
be, a language well suited for pulpit oratory. There is an eternal
involution of phrase, a complexity in the expression of even simple
matters, which would for ever prevent those bold imaginative flights by
which Bossuet and Massillon appealed to the hearts and minds of their
hearers. Were a German to attempt this, his mysticism--the "maladie
du pays"--would at once interfere, and render him unintelligible. The
pulpit eloquence of Germany, so far as I have experience of it, more
closely resembles the style of the preachers of the seventeenth century,
when familiar illustrations were employed to convey such truths as
rose above the humble level of ordinary intellects; having much of the
grotesque quaintness our own Latimer possessed, without, unhappily, the
warm glow of his rich imagination, or the brilliant splendour of his
descriptive talent. Still the forcible earnestness, and the strong
energy of conviction, are to be found in the German pulpit, and these
also may be the heir-looms of "the Doctor." as the Saxons love to call
the great reformer.

Some thoughts like these suggested a visit to the Wartburg, the scene of
Luther's captivity--for such, although devised with friendly intent, his
residence there was; and so abandoning the Brocken, for the "nonce," I
started for Eisenach.

As you approach the town of Eisenach--for I'm not going to weary you
with the whole road,--you come upon a little glen in the forest, the
"Thuringer Wald," where the road is completely overshadowed, and even
at noonday, is almost like night. A little well, bubbling in a basin
of rock, stands at the road-side, where an iron ladle, chained to the
stone, and a rude bench, proclaim that so much of thought has been
bestowed on the wayfarer. As you rest from the heat and fatigue of the
day, upon that humble seat, you may not know that Martin Luther himself
sat on that very bench, tired and wayworn, as he came back from Worms,
where, braving the power of king and kaiser, he had gone manfully to
defend his opinions, and assert the doctrines of the Reformation.

It was there he lay down to sleep--a sleep I would dare to say; not the
less tranquil, be