Years had never quenched in him the love of knowledge. At sixty he was
still at work upon his _History of Alsacian Antiquities_, and never
allowed himself to write a complete account of a ruined and defaced
monument, or any relic of former days, until he had examined it a hundred
times from every point of view.
"No man," said he, "who has had the happy privilege of being born in the
Vosges, between Haut Bar, Nideck, and Geierstein has any business to
think of travelling. Where are there nobler forests, older fir and beech
trees, more lovely smiling valleys, wilder rocks? Where is the country
with richer possessions in memorable story? Here, in olden times, used
the high and powerful lords of Lutzelstein, Dagsberg, Leiningen, and
Fenetrange, to fight clad in mail from head to foot. Here the eldest son
of the Church and the rulers of the Holy Roman Empire exchanged blows in
the Middle Ages with swords two yards long. What are our wars compared
with those terrible battles where warriors fought hand to hand, where
they hammered upon each other's skulls with huge battle-axes, and drove
the dagger between the bars of the closed visor? Were not those heroic
feats of arms? was not that a courage worthy to be chronicled to all
posterity? But our young people want to see new things; they are not
satisfied with their own native land: they must wander through Germany,
make tours in France.
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