Prince George Samuel of Nassau-Idstein was fired with the ambition of founding a city, and calling it after his own name. But, when he counted the cost, he discovered that he did not possess funds sufficient. Well, if not a city, at least a village. And, as Louis XIV had reared his Versailles on the most unsuitable spot he could find, so Prince Nassau-Idstein looked about him for an equally unfavourable site, and pitched upon a bald, stony mountain top, such as God had not created for this purpose. There he constructed Georgenborn. But the foundation so little answered expectation, that in 1723 it was resolved to abandon the place and let it fall into ruins. However, before it had been reduced to desolation, by a freak of fortune it began to look up, acquire inhabitants and develop facilities for existence. Standing 1856 ft. above the sea, it would long ago have perished but for its proximity to Schlangenbad, and the opportunity thereby afforded of furnishing the visitors to the baths with produce for their consumption. At any rate it stands as a proof that villages cannot be called into life at the whim of a prince, nor does the withdrawal of his Serene Highness's favour ensure their downfall.
These artificial capitals built away from the trade-routes were peopled by courtiers, officials, and all kinds of vagabonds such as thrive by hanging on to Courts. Trade, manufacture were discouraged, and revenues that might have been expended with advantage on the natural capitals and centres of commercial activity were wasted on these trumpery and ugly toys.
Mannheim, which had been a small place, mostly peopled with Netherlanders, was beseiged by Melac in 1688 and after seventeen days capitulated, when it, with eleven other towns in the Lower Palatinate, was utterly destroyed. It owes its present condition mainly to the Elector Charles Philip, who made of it his residence in 1720, and it was further adorned—or uglified—by Charles Theodore. It remained the residential seat of the Electoral Court till 1777.
The town is one of the most regularly built in Germany. The streets are perfectly straight, and cut each other at right angles, so that the town is divided into one hundred and ten blocks.
We left Mannheim on May 4th, 1841. Thence we went to Heidelberg, at a time when the woods were carpeted with lilies of the valley, and already over the Gesprengte Thurm of the
