Onward by "dreary moory Frankfurt" on the Oder, whence they reconnoitred
"the field of Kunersdorf, a scraggy village where Fritz received his
worst defeat," they reached the Prussian capital on the last evening of
the month. From the British Hotel, Unter den Linden, we have, October
1st:--
I am dead stupid; my heart nearly choked out of me, and my
head churned to pieces.... Berlin is loud almost as London,
but in no other way great ... about the size of Liverpool,
and more like Glasgow.
They spent a week there (sight-seeing being made easier by an
introduction from Lady Ashburton to the Ambassador), discovering at
length an excellent portrait of Fritz, meeting Tieck, Cornelius, Rauch,
Preuss, etc., and then got quickly back to London by way of Hanover,
Cologne, and Ostend. Carlyle's travels are always interesting, and would
be more so without the tiresome, because ever the same, complaints. Six
years later (1858) he made his second expedition to Germany, in the
company of two friends, a Mr. Foxton--who is made a butt--and the
faithful Neuberg. Of this journey, undertaken with a more exclusively
business purpose, and accomplished with greater dispatch, there are fewer
notes, the substance of which may be here anticipated. He sailed (August
21st) from Leith to Hamburg, admiring the lower Elbe, and then went out
of his way to accept a pressing invitation from the Baron Usedom and his
wife to the Isle of Ruegen, sometimes called the German Isle of Wight.
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