" There he met
Neuberg, and they went together to Rolandseck, to the village of Hunef
among the Sieben-Gebirge, and then on to Coblenz. After a detour to Ems,
which Carlyle, comminating the gaming-tables, compared to Matlock, and
making a pilgrimage to Nassau as the birthplace of William the Silent,
they rejoined the Rhine and sailed admiringly up the finest reach of the
river. From Mainz the philosopher and his guide went on to Frankfort,
paid their respects to Goethe's statue and the garret where _Werther_ was
written, the Judengasse, "grimmest section of the Middle Ages," and the
Roemer--election hall of the old Kaisers; then to Homburg, where they saw
an old Russian countess playing "gowpanfuls of gold pieces every
stake," and left after no long stay, Carlyle, in a letter to Scotsbrig,
pronouncing the fashionable Badeort to be the "rallying-place of such a
set of empty blackguards as are not to be found elsewhere in the world."
We find him next at Marburg, where he visited the castle of Philip of
Hesse. Passing through Cassel, he went to Eisenach, and visited the
neighbouring Wartburg, where he kissed the old oaken table, on which the
Bible was made an open book for the German race, and noted the hole in
the plaster where the inkstand had been thrown at the devil and his
noises; an incident to which eloquent reference is made in the lectures
on "Heroes.
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