And, NOVEMBER 2d, in four columns, marches towards Torgau;to Schilda, that night, which is some seven miles on the southward side of Torgau. The King, himself in the vanguard as usual, has watched with eager questioning eye the courses of Daun's advanced parties, and by what routes they retreat; discerns for certain that Daun has no views upon Duben or our little Magazine; and that the tug of wrestle for Torgau, which is to crown this Campaign into conquest of Saxony, or shatter it into zero like its foregoers on the Austrian part, and will be of death-or-life nature on the Prussian part, ought to ensue to-morrow. Forward, then!
This Camp of Torgau is not a new place to Daun. It was Prince Henri's Camp last Autumn; where Daun tried all his efforts to no purpose; and though hugely outnumbering the Prince, could make absolutely nothing of it. Nothing, or less; and was flowing back to Dresden and the Bohemian Frontier, uncheered by anything, till that comfortable Maxen Incident turned up. Daun well knows the strength of this position. Torgau and the Block of Hill to West, called Hill of Siptitz:--Hulsen, too, stood here this Summer; not to mention Finck and Wunsch, and their beating the Reichspeople here. A Hill and Post of great strength; not unfamiliar to many Prussians, nor to Friedrich's studious considerations, though his knowledge of it was not personal on all points;--as To-morrow taught him, somewhat to his cost.
"Tourists, from Weimar and the Thuringian Countries," says a Note-book, sometimes useful to us, "have most likely omitted Rossbach in their screaming railway flight eastward; and done little in Leipzig but endeavor to eat dinner, and, still more vainly, to snatch a little sleep in the inhuman dormitories of the Country.
Next morning, screaming Dresden-ward, they might, especially if military, pause at Oschatz, a stage or two before Meissen, where again are objects of interest. You can look at Hubertsburg, if given that way,--a Royal Schloss, memorable on several grounds;--at Hubertsburg, and at other features, in the neighborhood of Oschatz.
This done, or this left not done, you strike off leftward, that is northward, in some open vehicle, for survey of Torgau and its vicinities and environs. Not above fifteen miles for you; a drive singular and pleasant; time enough to return and be in Dresden for dinner.
"Torgau is a fine solid old Town; Prussian military now abundant in it. In ancient Heathen times, I suppose, it meant the GAU, or District, of THOR; Capital of that Gau,--part of which, now under Christian or quasi-Christian circumstances, you have just been traversing, with Elbe on your right hand. Innocent rural aspects of Humanity, Boor's life, Gentry's life, all the way, not in any holiday equipment; on the contrary, somewhat unkempt and scraggy, but all the more honest and inoffensive. There is sky, earth, air, and ******* for your own reflections: a really agreeable kind of Gau; pleasant, though in part ugly. Large tracts of it are pine-wood, with pleasant Villages and fine arable expanses interspersed.
Schilda and many Villages you leave to right and left.
Old-fashioned Villages, with their village industries visible around; laboring each in its kind,--not too fast; probably with extinct tobacco-pipe hanging over its chin (KALT-RAUCHEND, 'smoking COLD,' as they phrase it).
"Schilda has an absurd celebrity among the Germans: it is the Gotham of Teutschland; a fountain of old broad-grins and homely and hearty rustic banter; welling up from the serious extinct Ages to our own day; 'SCHILTburger' (Inhabitant of SCHILDA) meaning still, among all the Teutsch populations, a man of calmly obstinate whims and delusions, of notions altogether contrary to fact, and agreeable to himself only; resolutely pushing his way through life on those terms: amid horse-laughter, naturally, and general wagging of beards from surrounding mankind. Extinct mirth, not to be growled at or despised, in Ages running to the shallow, which have lost their mirth, and become all one snigger of mock-mirth. For it is observable, the more solemn is your background of DARK, the brighter is the play of all human genialities and coruscations on it,--of genial mirth especially, in the hour for mirth. Who the DOCTOR BORDEL of Schilda was, I do not know: but they have had their Bordel, as Gotham had;--probably various Bordels;industrious to pick up those Spiritual fruits of the earth. For the records are still abundant and current; fully more alive than those of Gotham here are.--And yonder, then, is actually Schilda of the absurd fame. A small, cheerful-looking human Village, in its Island among the Woods; you see it lying to the right:--a clean brick-slate congeries, with faint smoke-canopy hanging over it, indicating frugal dinner-kettles on the simmer;--and you remember kindly those good old grinnings, over good SCHILTBURGER, good WISEMEN OF GOTHAM, and their learned Chroniclers, and unlearned Peasant Producers, who have contributed a wrinkle of human Fun to the earnest face of Life.
"After Schilda, and before, you traverse long tracts of Pine Forest, all under forest management; with long straight stretches of sandy road (one of which is your own), straight like red tape-strings, intersecting the wide solitudes: dangerous to your topographies,--for the finger-posts are not always there, and human advice you can get none. Nothing but the stripe of blue sky overhead, and the brown one of tape (or sand) under your feet: