Democratic Sentinel, Volume 2, Number 41, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 November 1878 — THE WONDERS OF EUROPE. [ARTICLE]

THE WONDERS OF EUROPE.

European Marvels to an American Eye—Some Notes and Observations. A gentleman who writes under the initials “J. P. L.” contributes the following interesting article to the Boston Christian Register: To the American there seem more wonderful things in Europe than Kings and their castles, Popes and their cathedrals. There are already enough palaces built between the Atlantic and the Mississippi. Our stone and iron bridges, aqueducts, furnaces, mills and factories, warehouses, city halls and churches rival those of the Old World in size if not in beauty. We land in Europe to be amazed, not at parks and zoological gardens, but at the great white horses of Normandy and the colossal bays of Flanders, marching like elepnants in front of and apparently indifferent to loads for which we should employ a long string of mules, with much cracking of whips and execrations; and at the surly dogs harnessed beneath the bread-wagons of Brussels; at loaves of bread in Paris six feet long, carried by serving maids as if they were pikes; at wicker-baskets slung on women’s shoulders and loaded with manure, carefully collected with the fingers from the turnpikes of Auvergne ; at single stalks of Indian com and single barberry bushes, and single stalks of mullein, cultivated as rare and beautiful exotic plants in the gardens of Germany; at vistas of windmills slowly turning their great vanes to the hardly-perceptible wind coming from the English channel and the North sea; and at the vast stretches of flax fields which sustain the industry of the 500,000 inhabitants of Lille and its closely surrounding circle of dependent towns. The marvels of Europe to an American eye are not marvels of grandeur, but of detail; not of construction, but of method.

It is strange to see such multitudes of people at rest, comparatively speaking ; that is, moving about within the narrowest social, political, ecclesiastical and business circles; traveling scarcely at all; reading newspapers which have no news in them; working and shopping Sundays and all days alike; satisfied with bread and a half-flask of thin, sour wine as their day’s flood; living huddled within the 500-year-old village wall, and walking five miles to till strips of land—each 20 feet wide and 100 long, unfenced, unditched, unhedged—all calling them farms. Yet since 1789 these people have learned about as much as we Americans know respecting right and wrong in private, and the rights and wrongs of the public. But it is a prime marvel to the traveler how this slow but steady enlightenment accomplishes itself under such conditions of life. Another of the wonders of Europe is its fuel. Out of England there is not much mineral coal. The peat bogs are numerous, but small. The great forests have nearly disappeared. Evidently the planting of trees has been reduced to a science; but so has their destruction; consequently the traveler never sees a large tree, but millions of small ones. To save space they are planted along the roadsides. To avoid shade on the fields they are trimmed nearly to the summit, so that they look starved. Every year one in twenty is cut and sold. Artificial fuel made from coal-dust, saw-dust, pent, everything that will burn, furnishes an enormous supply of fuel to the railways and factories. But the people enjoy very little of that surplus of flame and smoke which characterizes an American home; consequently their clothes are made thick, and are worn doubled. Their wooden shoes are not only cheap and everlasting, but moreover warm, being stuffed with hay to prevent corns, and to make them stay on when the shuffle turns to a run. But the standing wonder of Europe to the American eye is the multiplicity and übiquity of soldiers, and priests, and sisters of charity. In Germany, and Switzerland, and France every boy must serve, say, three years, and then be placed in the reserve until 45 years of age. The clergy are, however, exempt from military service. In England the same system has recently been adopted, but with tlie important modification that the service is voluntary, and the pay continues, so as to command the reserves.

Tell these people that the whole army of the United States numbers scarcely 25,000 soldiers, and they stare at you in silence, unable to believe. The soldier is as much and as prominent a feature of European life as the horse, the winebottles, the basket, or the, plow. Passing Ath the other day, I noticed a field, with many cows in the middle of it tended by a boy, and a ditch around it. At the end of the ditch, close to the embankment (which was high here), crouched a man in uniform, with a gun, as if watching his chance to shoot a cow. Fifty paces beyond him, along the ditch, crouched another; and more, at regular intervals, as far as the field extended. “ They are making their .exercise,” said a fellow traveler. By which I comprehended that they cared nothing about the cows, which would all be killed in due time by the butcher, but that they were being taught how to kill men (Germans or other) without getting killed themselves. Every young fellow in all Europe is regularly instructed how best and most safely to kill his fellow-men. And in this devil’s school he is compelled by law (and public sentiment) to waste at least three years of his fresh life. In these three years he lives in barracks (casernes) with older murderers, who teach him also many other things not written in the rules of war—drunkenness, profanity, licentiousness, contempt for steady labor, etc. Those that become priests have a better chance to become good men. One is amazed at the number of priests and seminarians in every railway train. They get in and get out at every little station on every line of railroad, and seldom alone. They are evidently well-fed, well-clothed and are very full of business. In the Tyrol one notices that flocks of monks take the place of flocks of priests elsewhere. Our coachman said one day: “ There are too many of those fellows; they are good for nothing but to eat and drink and make love.” On the contrary, the hundreds and thousands of sisters of charity (of all orders and styles of dress) which the traveler meets are a rather delightful astonishment to him. They also travel enormously. Iu the high Alps every diligence carries one or more. I counted sixteen, tbe ptbw day, awaiting tbe

opening of the second-class waitingroom at a railway station in Picardy. They are perpetually shifted by their superiors from one convent to another. They are all the time going to or coming from some village or private house where sick people need them. They are universal favorites, and treated with the sincerest respect and affection by all classes of people. They live well, but work hard, and are of the utmost value to the population. But the wonder of wonders which Europe offers to the eye of the American traveler is its Babel of languages. France alone has eighty-six well-defined dialects. Switzerland has twenty-eight. The list in Germany has never been made out, but must amount to at least 100. As modem enforced popular education takes effect, all thefie will gradnaily disappear. and be replaced liy a few—French, German, Dutch, Basque, Bretonnais (Armorican), Polish, Bohemian, Moravian, Danish, etc. Walloon and Flemish are both dying out (very slowly) in Belgium. In all the open countries a common language will take possession of the whole ground during the course of the next three or four generations; but in the mountain districts the old dialects may survive for many centuries.