APPENDIX B Heidelberg Castle

Heidelberg Castle must have been very beautiful before the French battered and bruised and scorched it two hundred years ago.  The stone is brown, with a pinkish tint, and does not seem to stain easily.  The dainty and elaborate ornamentation upon its two chief fronts is as delicately carved as if it had been intended for the interior of a drawing-room rather than for the outside of a house.  Many fruit and flower clusters, human heads and grim projecting lions’ heads are still as perfect in every detail as if they were new.  But the statues which are ranked between the windows have suffered.  These are life-size statues of old-time emperors, electors, and similar grandees, clad in mail and bearing ponderous swords.  Some have lost an arm, some a head, and one poor fellow is chopped off at the middle.  There is a saying that if a stranger will pass over the drawbridge and walk across the court to the castle front without saying anything, he can made a wish and it will be fulfilled.  But they say that the truth of this thing has never had a chance to be proved, for the reason that before any stranger can walk from the drawbridge to the appointed place, the beauty of the palace front will extort an exclamation of delight from him.

A ruin must be rightly situated, to be effective.  This one could not have been better placed.  It stands upon a commanding elevation, it is buried in green words, there is no level ground about it, but, on the contrary, there are wooded terraces upon terraces, and one looks down through shining leaves into profound chasms and abysses where twilight reigns and the sun cannot intrude.  Nature knows how to garnish a ruin to get the best effect.  One of these old towers is split down the middle, and one half has tumbled aside.  It tumbled in such a way as to establish itself in a picturesque attitude.  Then all it lacked was a fitting drapery, and Nature has furnished that; she has robed the rugged mass in flowers and verdure, and made it a charm to the eye.  The standing half exposes its arched and cavernous rooms to you, like open, toothless mouths; there, too, the vines and flowers have done their work of grace.  The rear portion of the tower has not been neglected, either, but is clothed with a clinging garment of polished ivy which hides the wounds and stains of time.  Even the top is not left bare, but is crowned with a flourishing group of trees and shrubs.  Misfortune has done for this old tower what it has done for the human character sometimes—­improved it.