tains of Westphalia; first runs to the east, then takes a sudden turn to the south, and washes the old walls of the university town of Marburg, in Electoral Hesse; then goes to pay a visit to another university, Giessen, in Hesse-Darmstadt territory; turning a sharp corner to the west, it becomes Prussian for a time, passing Wetzlar; then it winds about through Nassau, by Limburg and Ems, ending in the Rhine at Oberlahnstein, not far above the mouth of the Moselle. Between Giessen and Wetzlar, and a little farther on, it is a sluggish stream, sauntering through water-meadows, and sometimes overflowing them, which makes the walk between Giessen and Wetzlar a very long one in winter. Wetzlar itself, as Goëthe bears witness, is an unpleasant town; the streets are narrow and tortuous, with few open spaces, running with red mud when it rains; the houses are very high; and, although all ancient and gabled, for the most part monotonous in look, and often washed with a sickly green colour, and many of the streets are steep and awkward as they rise against the face of the hill; but the whole town is crowned by an ancient and most interesting cathedral, which is itself crowned by the semblance of an imperial crown in masonry, unfortunately not quite in harmony with the rest of the structure. The country round Wetzlar is as lovely as every possible variety of undulating hilly outline can make it, especially to the north, where first occur little outcropping hummocks, with old castles and churches at their tops backed by wavy hills, which are again backed by hills of a more mountainous character. These are not so universally wooded as are most of the mountains of central Germany, but there is wood enough upon them to produce variety of colour, light and shade.
The Lahn, winding through its water-meadows, is a fair object in the foreground. Wetzlar is rich in walks and pleasant places; though one of these, a favourite resort of the inhabitants, was destroyed by a selfish proprietor turning the trees into money, an act of Vandalism similar to that of the Frankfurters, when they gave up the glory of their town, the Mainlust Garden, to the use of the goods department of the railway. It was on an excursion to one of these pleasant places that the mischief occurred to Werther’s heart which ended in his suicide, by his coming to the conclusion that, as one of three persons must die, (which he somewhat unnecessarily assumed,) it was less a crime to kill himself than either of the others.
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The Cathedral, Wetzlar. See page 420.
