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Chap. I.
THE DANNEBROG.
15
us much had we not arrived direct from Lubec, but we
are spoiled for quaint architecture and tumbledown
gables, and now look on them as matter of course, just
as you do on the stucco and porticoes of Belgravia.
The grim old Schloss, ancient palace of her Counts
and Dukes in their day, barrack - like, is relieved
from downright ugliness by two tall, slender, octagonal
towers, the one capped with a Muscovite onion; as a
whole it stands out grand from among the fine old elms
and limes li taillés en voüte ” of its formal garden.
The city too is now in its dullest mood ; her natives
absent at the various baths, her students in full vacation.
We visited the library of the University,* some 95,000
books open to the world at large, not to be alone read
on the premises, but even strangers, on presenting a
proper “ caution,” are permitted to carry off three
volumes at a time to their own residences. I wish we
had any such privilege in England. This custom is not
peculiar to Kiel alone, but general through the north
of Europe, in towns, too, scarcely to be placed on a par
with our own cathedral cities. Kiel is not a town of
sights: in her Marienkirche once hung suspended the
Dannebrog, the red banner, with its white cross, which
miraculously fell from heaven, leading the victories
of the second Valdemar against the heathen Wends.
This celebrated banner was lost, all save one rag, in
the battle against the Ditmarsken in 1550, and what
became of that remaining rag I don’t know; so, the
glory of her church departed, nought remains in Kiel,
even to swell the description of a guide-book. We were
♦ That the Danes bear no love to this Holstein College the
following proverb will show :—“ To lie is always a science, as the devil said
when he frequented the University of Kiel.”
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