A NEW ZEALANDER ABROAD. HANNOVER AND ENGLAND.

Otago Witness, Volume 23, Issue 2684, 23 August 1905, Page 78

A NEW ZEALANDER ABROAD. HANNOVER AND ENGLAND.

By Gamma,

When Queen Anne died, leaving no hciv to succeed her, it was to Hannover Unit England tinned for her Eext Sovereign. For just before the close of Anne's reign the J-Clectress Sophia was still alive — the grand daughter of James I, being the daugluter of his ohild Eliznbeth. She alone of the Stuart line was a Protestant, therefore the Act of Settlement, decreed thaL the crown of England should pass to her and heT heirs. And so it fell out that, is Sophia died before Auto, Sophia's son O-eorge was called in 1714 to become King of EnglaawJ. Thins for 123 yeai-s the Electors of Hannover -n^ere Kings of England; to that extent is our history bound up with that of this little principality. But with the accession of Que&n Victoria, in 1837 this state of things was changed ; the t'alio law precluded her becoming Electressof Ha mover, and the nearest male heir of George 111, Ernest Augustus, Duke of Cumberland, took that part of the* inheritance. One is reminded of all this the moment one arrives in Hannover, for immediately on issuing from the station one is confronted by a great equestrian statue of this same Ernst August — erected '"by a faithful people, to the father of the land." He w.is a good ruler, and perhaps it counted for something that he was resident amang them; for, though all the Kings but George 111 had paid' visits to Hannover, stall a visiting King is not. quite the same tiling as a ruler who dwells with his people. But the King who- followed Ernst August, the blind George* V, brewed trouble for h'mself in the day when h© tcok sides with Austria against Prussia. The result of the great defeat inflicted on him and his ally was that the Kingdom of Hannover was annexed by Prussia, and her Kino- made an exile. The son of George V, another Ernst August, still claims io> be King of Hannover ; and there are to this day in Han nover many who, having never approved - of this annexation by Prussia, remain Guelphs at heart. All this was but to show how closely united Eng 7 and and Hannover have b©en, since Hannnover first gave to England a King, and later England did the same service for Hannover. But this never oaused much mingling of the peoples, and Hannor&r is perhaps ona of the least English of the larger cities of Germany. It has its pensions, where Englisih and Americans congregate, and it has also its fsmall and _ sp&r&eiy-attenxl&d English church; yet it is a rare enough thing to hear English spoken on the street. In so far as it is frequented by English people, it is usually by those who are desirous to learn the German language, which is Ljea-e spoken with exceptional distinctness and pvrity of accent. The only dialectic peculiarity is in the sounding of "st," which is pronounced by the Hannoverians as written, but by other Germans as "shit." Thi9 quality of the vowel "a" is also slightly different ; for the rest, the best of German is- spoken here, better than In Dresden or Berlin. Of course the educated classes, no matter where, speak exactly the same language, but among the people the differences are so wide as to he very embarrassing to the newly-arrived foreigner. This is not a great city for sightseeing, according to the ideas of tine tourist, who rushes to a gallery or cathedral with his Baedeker and conies back, having "done" it. The Art Gallery here forms a part of the Museum, and, though tinere are many very fine pieces of modem work, the older masters there seemed always to me to have the air of being rejects from more .important collections. The Museum that shelters them is a very fine building, as yet not nearly fulll; it boasts one exceeding great treasure — the find of Roman vases and GiTiaments of chased and wrought silver of exquisits workmanship, their •beauty still preserved intact through their centuries of sojourn underground.

There is no cathedral in Hannover; but what it lacks in cathedrals it makes up in churches. They greet you everywhere— in the old quarter of the town, with all the softened beauty of age, the red tints of the walls and the greys and. greens that Lave grewn like mioss on the copper roofs making a feast of colour for th© eye. Within, they are for the most part still and musty, sometimes adorned with faded wall-pamtings, sometimes with painted ■vrooclen frescoes or carvings; they are not great enough or old enough, to be hoary or venerable witJi age, but are only as yet at th'it epoch when the past clings like an oppression. Dampness and tombs of the dead ; the sombre evangelicalism of the people rather accentuates than mitigates these. In one of these churches we Tvent back at cne leap to the MMdfe Ages, for the pastor who preached wore round his neck that curious manner of ruffle that is like a dahlia or a collection of pokebags, all stiffly starched and' white. I had never seen it, until tlien, but in pictures of the Dutch school; it made this modeaTi man at once mediaeval.

In Hannover we celebrated the great Festival of the Reformation. On that day Protestant Germany commemorates tlio work begun, by Lutlier; all preachers preach of his Trork, and all congregations join in his magnificent rugged hymn "Ein> fester Burg." It is inspiring to hear these grave, self-contained Teutons — for they a,re of our blood, and, like us, suppress their emotions — roll out the grandeur of its verse and music. Here in the ohur&hes one learns how ma.6i\ music is a part of the people. More often than not a choir will sing a number through without acco-m paniment, and remain true of pitch at the enict. The- music in the Schlosskirche is especially famous, though ttuat was not its only attraction for us. It alone of the Protestant churches in Hannover had service at 11, whereas the othess have theirs

at half-past 9 or 10. We generally found it doing too much violence to our English Labits to be in church at those hours, but the hospitable doors of the Schlosskirche would, we knew, be standing open at a reasonable hour; and its music, too, made weight in the balance on its behalf.