The medieval poets felt deeply
enough the poetic beauty of the forest, but men saw it with the
appreciative eye of the artist only when they had gone away from the
forest, when they had become more unfamiliar with it, and the woods
themselves had begun to disappear. Thus the peasant in the folk-song
knows how to reveal poetically many a tender charm of the beauty of
nature; but, on the other hand, he very seldom has an eye for the
picturesque beauty of natural scenery. As regards the latter it is with
him as with the late Pastor Schmidt of Werneuchen who when describing in
hexameters the spectacle of a barley field to the Berliners, called it
"a marvelous view." When the forest was still the rule in Germany and
the field the exception, the uprooted parts of the forest, the oases of
cleared land, the free open spaces, undoubtedly passed for the most
attractive landscapes; whereas we, who have acquired too much of the
open, are more attracted by the oases of the forest shade.
Only he who takes this into consideration can understand for example,
how it is possible that the palace of Charlemagne at Ingelheim could
have passed for a perfect country-seat, situated in what must have been
considered in those days an extremely charming and picturesque spot.
Seen through modern eyes these plains of the left bank of the Rhine with
their fields, vineyards, sandy wastes and stunted pine-woods are
intensely uninteresting, and one fails to comprehend why an emperor
should have chosen Ingelheim as a country-seat, when he needed only to
cross the river, or to proceed down stream for a few hours in order to
build his palace in a region of imperishable natural beauty.
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