The fair, such as we understand by the name, commenced in the afternoon, and was a scene of much noise and some drollery. The whole town teemed with itinerant musicians, whose violent strains would sometimes burst from the very ground under your feet, as it appeared, issuing as they did from the open mouths of beer and wine-cellars. Quiet coffee-houses there were, in which grave citizens smoked and read; and admirable concerts in saloons, and in the open air. To one of these latter I was seduced by the mendacious announcement of a certain Wagner of Berlin, that a whole troop of real Moors would perform fantastic tricks before high heaven; and on paying the price of admission, I had to run the gauntlet through a score of black-headed Teutons, who salaamed and grinned as they ushered me into the blank space beyond, containing nothing more interesting than a few tables and chairs, a dumb brass band, and a swarm of hungry waiters. I saw no dance-houses, such as there were in Hamburg; and by nine o’clock the festivities of the day were at an end. The Easter fair lasted some five or six weeks, and at its termination its merriment disappeared. The wandering minstrels wailed their last notes as they departed, and the quiet city was left to its students and the pigeons.
So much for my experiences of Protestant Germany as regards Sunday occupation. I have, however, said nothing of museums or picture galleries. I should be sorry to misrepresent the kindred commercial cities of Hamburg and Leipsic; but I think they may shake hands on this question, seeing that, at the period of my visit, they possessed neither the one nor the other. I do not say that there were no stored-up curiosities, dignified with the title of museums. But, as far as the public instruction was concerned, they were nearly useless, being little known and less visited, and certainly not accessible on the Sunday. Schwerin, in Mecklenburg, possesses a noble ducal museum of arts and sciences, but this also was closed on the weekly holiday; and in Berlin, where the museum, par excellence, may vie with any in Europe, and which city is otherwise rich in natural and art collections, the doors of all such places were, on the Sunday, strictly closed against the people. Of the good taste which authorises the display of stage scenery and decorations (and that not of the best), and yet forbids the inspection of the masterpieces of painting; of the judgment which patronises beer and tobacco, yet virtually condemns as unholy the sight of the best evidences of nature’s grandeur, and the beautiful results of human efforts in art, it is not necessary to treat here.