Transcriber's Note: To improve readability, dashes between entries in the Table of Contents and in chapter subheadings have been converted to periods.

GERMANY,

BOHEMIA, AND HUNGARY,

Visited in 1837.

By

THE REV. G. R. GLEIG, M.A.,

CHAPLAIN TO THE ROYAL HOSPITAL, CHELSEA.

IN THREE VOLUMES.

VOL. II.

LONDON:
JOHN W. PARKER, WEST STRAND.

M.DCCC.XXXIX.

CONTENTS OF VOLUME II.

GERMANY, BOHEMIA, and HUNGARY,
in 1837.

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CHAPTER I.

THE GULDEN KRONE. COUNT THUN'S CASTLE AND GROUNDS. GLORIOUS SCENERY. THE MARCH RESUMED. SUPERSTITIONS OF THE BOHEMIANS NOT IDOLATRY. STATE OF PROPERTY. OF THE AGRICULTURAL POPULATION. KAMNITZ. THE COW-HERDS. STEIN JENA. HAYDE.

We had quitted home not unprepared for the suspicious looks which innkeepers might be expected to cast upon us, strangely equipped as we were, rude of speech, and so very humble in the style of our travel. We were, therefore, nothing daunted by the somewhat cold reception which our host of the Golden Crown vouchsafed; and boldly questioned him relative to his means of supplying our wants, namely, supper, a bottle of wine, and a good bed-room. The confidence of our tone seemed to restore his; for he forthwith conducted us upstairs; and we were ushered into a snug little apartment, in which stood two beds, a table, a chest of drawers, and four or five chairs. This was all, in the way of lodging, of which we were desirous; and the next point to be settled was supper. What could they produce? Had they any mutton? No. Beef? None. Poultry? Nothing of the sort. What then? Veal, or, as it is elegantly termed, calf's-flesh, which could be served up within the space of an hour and a-half, either gokocht,—that is, boiled, or grebraten,—i.e., roasted. And here let me observe once for all, that he whose taste or whose stomach cannot be satisfied with veal, had better not travel in Germany. For veal is to the Germans what beef is to us,—the everyday diet of such as devour animal food at all; whereas beef they seem to use only at large hotels as materials for soup-making, while mutton is a luxury. Neither is it difficult to account for this. There are no extensive pasturages, even in the mountain districts of Germany, as there are in the Highlands of Scotland, and in the fens of Lincolnshire and Kent. Wherever the land has been cleared of wood, it is laid under the plough; wherever the wood continues, the utmost care is taken to prevent cattle and sheep from breaking in, and so destroying what is the principal fuel of the country. The consequence is, that people cannot afford to rear more cattle than is absolutely necessary for working the land, and supplying the dairies,—nor, indeed, if they could afford it, would the means of doing so be attainable. Hence the poor little calves, while yet in that state of innocence which entitles them among the Irish to the generic appellation of staggering bobs, are in nine cases out of ten transferred to the butcher, whose stall, if it contain nothing else, is sure to furnish an abundant supply of dead animals, which you might easily mistake for cats that have perished by atrophy.

Being fully aware of these important particulars, we expressed neither surprise nor regret when the solemn announcement was made to us, that we might have roasted veal for supper; but having ordered it to be prepared, together with an eyer-kuchen, or egg-souffle, as a supporter, we set about changing our attire preparatory to a ramble through the town. My friend, the Honourable Francis Scott, having kindly introduced me to Count Thun, I sent my card by the waiter to the castle, and learned, to my great disappointment, that the family were all in Prague. It is needless to add, that, in the absence of the owners, I was conducted over the castle and grounds by a very intelligent domestic, or that, returning on another occasion, I stand indebted to its owner for much kindness. I do not think, however, that there is any justification for the practice which too much prevails, of first accepting the hospitality of a stranger, and then describing the mode in which it was dispensed. I content myself, therefore, with stating that everything in the household of Count Thun corresponds to his high rank and cultivated tastes; and that he who has once enjoyed, even for a brief space, as I did, the pleasure of his conversation, will desire few things more earnestly, than that another opportunity of so doing shall occur.

The castle of Tetchen is a very noble thing, and its situation magnificent. It crowns the summit of a rock overhanging the Elbe, and commands, from its windows, one of the most glorious prospects on which, even in this land of glorious scenery, the eye need desire to rest. Originally a baronial hold, it has, in the progress of time and events, gradually changed its character. It now resembles a college or palace, more than a castle. You approach it from the town by a long gallery, walled in on both sides, though open to the sky, and are conducted to an extensive quadrangle, round which the buildings are erected. They do not belong to any particular school, unless that deserve to be so designated, which the Italian architects, some century and a-half ago, introduced, to the decided misfortune of the proprietors, into Germany. Thus, the schloss of which I am speaking, is not only cut up into different suites of apartments, but each suite, besides being accessible by a door that opens to the court, is surrounded along the interior by an open gallery, into which each individual chamber-door opens. The consequence is, that in winter, at least, it must be next to impossible to keep any part of the house warm, for the drafts are endless, and the exposure to the atmosphere is very great.

When we visited Tetchen for the second time, the contents of a very valuable green-house appeared to have been brought forth into the central court. The effect was most striking; for all sorts of rare and sweet-smelling shrubs were there; and flowers of every dye loaded the air with their perfume. The gardens, likewise, which lie under the rock, and in the management of which the count takes great delight, were beautiful. One, indeed, a fruit garden, is yet only in its infancy; but another, which comes between the castle and the market-place, reminded me more of the shady groves of Oxford than of anything which I have observed on the Continent. Count Thun, moreover, having visited England, and seen and justly appreciated, the magnificent parks which form the characteristic charm of our scenery, seems willing, as far as the different situations of the two countries will allow, to walk in our foot-steps. He has enclosed a rich meadow that runs by the bank of the Elbe, and treats it as his demesne. All this is the more praiseworthy on his part, that even in his own day the castle of Tetchen has suffered most of the calamities of war, except an actual siege. Twice during the late struggle, was it seized and occupied as a post, a garrison put into the house, and cannon mounted over the ramparts; nay, the very trees in the garden, which it cost so much pains to cultivate, and such a lapse of time to nourish, were all destined to be cut down. Fortunately, however, an earnest remonstrance from the count procured a suspension of the order, till the enemy should make his approaches; and as this never happened, the trees still survive, to afford the comfort of their shade both to their owner and his visitors. The havoc occasioned by the throwing up of batteries was not, however, to be avoided; and it is only within these three or four years that the mansion has resumed its peaceful character.

There is an excellent library in the castle of Tetchen, of which the inmates make excellent use. It contains some valuable works in almost all the European languages, with a complete set of the classics; and as the tastes of the owner lead him to make continual accessions to it, the hall set apart for its reception, though of gigantic proportions, threatens shortly to overflow. I must not forget, however, that even by these allusions to the habits of my host, I am touching upon the line which common delicacy seems to me to have prescribed; therefore when I have stated that a brighter picture of domestic affection and happiness has rarely come under my observation than that with which my hurried visit to Tetchen presented me, I pass to other matters, not perhaps in themselves either more important or more interesting, but affording freer scope to remark, because not calculated to jar against individual feeling.

To wander amid these beautiful gardens, and gaze from the summer-house along the course of the Elbe, occupied all the space of time which my companion and I had set apart for the preparation of our evening meal. We accordingly returned to the inn, fully disposed to do justice to the viands which might be served up to us. They were well dressed, and the bottle of Hungarian wine which accompanied them was excellent, so that when we sallied forth again to examine the town, it was in the most benevolent temper of mind imaginable. Every object was seen through a highly favourable medium. The little quiet square and market-place, with its ever-flowing but very dirty fountain, appeared emblematical of the contented and happy lot of the people who dwelt round it. The Elbe, glowing in the rich and varied hues of sunset, had about him a thousand charms, for which language has no power of expression; and finally, the view from a small chapel which stands on the summit of a rock about an English mile below the town—that as it would have delighted even a hungry man, was to us enchanting. Seriously, and without attributing too much to the genial influence of a change of habiliments, and a good supper, I have seldom looked upon a scene altogether so fascinating as that which now lay before me.

Our sleep that night was sound and refreshing. We had ordered breakfast at half-past five, and till five nothing occurred to disturb us; but then the old and well-nigh forgotten habits of the campaigner seemed to come back upon me, for I awoke to a second at the time which I had fixed upon. Up we sprang; arrayed ourselves in our walking-dresses, stowed away our more gentlemanlike habiliments in the knapsacks, and addressed ourselves to breakfast. In Germany, as has been stated elsewhere, this is but a sorry affair of a meal at the best; it consists of nothing more than a cup or two of coffee, with some sweetish cakes; but we took care to order, over and above, a moderate supply of white bread and butter, and we consumed it all, much to our host's surprise and edification. Then came the settling of the bill, which seemed to please him better, and we were once more en route.

Our point to-day was Hayde, a town which our informants described as distant from Tetchen about seven stunden,—that is to say, seven hours' good walking, in other words, from twenty-one to twenty-four English miles. There was nothing in this announcement calculated to alarm us, for we had compassed the day before at least five-and-twenty miles, and though somewhat over-wrought when we first came in, we were now fresh and vigorous. But I am bound to add that either the miles proved more numerous than we had been led to expect, or that we were in bad case for walking. I have seldom suffered more from blistered feet and positive weariness, than I did on my march to Hayde.

The sun was shining brightly in a cloudless sky, when we quitted Tetchen. The cool air of the morning still, however, blew around us, and the landscape which seemed so fair even in the last glimmering of twilight, appeared now more beautiful than ever. Our route lay up the face of one of the hills by which, on all sides, Tetchen is surrounded, and we saw before us the long and regular sweep of the high road by which it behoved us to travel. For a brief space, however, a foot-way through a succession of green fields, all of them sparkling with the dew, was at our command, and we gratefully availed ourselves of it; for it is one of the advantages which a pedestrian enjoys over the traveller, either in a carriage or on horseback, that, provided he be sure of the direction in which his object lies, he may cast both highways and bridle-paths behind him.

The effect which is produced upon a Protestant traveller by the frequent recurrence, in Catholic countries, of crucifixes, chapels, and images, both by the road-side and elsewhere, has been frequently described. At first, you are affected with a sense almost of awe; which even to the last does not wholly evaporate; especially if you find, as we did this morning, that by the inhabitants, these symbols are held in profound veneration. In passing from Hernskrietchen to Tetchen, such objects had repeatedly crossed our view; and we had seen the country people lift their hats and cross themselves as they neared them. To-day we found a rustic on his knees before a chapel, within which, gaudily painted and dressed, were waxen images of a Virgin and child. Was this idolatry? I cannot believe it. Even if his prayer were addressed to the Virgin, which I have no right to assume that it was, should I be justified in charging this poor man with a breach of the second commandment in the Decalogue, merely because he besought the mother of Christ to intercede for him with her Son and his Redeemer? Absurd and unmeaning such prayers to saints unquestionably are; for where is the ground for believing that they hear us; or even if they do, what right have we to suppose that they can or will presume to interfere in matters which nowise concern them? And when, over and above all this, we found upon a practice in itself so unmeaning, the monstrous doctrine of human merit, then, indeed, that which was originally foolish, becomes presumptuous and wicked. But the accusation of idolatry is by far too grave to be lightly brought against any class of persons whose creed is, in all essential particulars, the same with our own, and who err only in this, that they believe a great deal too much. It is, therefore, to be regretted, that in their zeal to remove error, so many well-intentioned persons should exaggerate the faults which they combat; for, independently of the wound which is thereby inflicted upon Christian charity, prejudices are but confirmed in proportion as indignation is roused. "You may demonstrate to me, if you can, that we are mistaken in supposing that the souls of the faithful hear us; but why allege that we put our trust in them, because we pray to them? Don't you get your ministers to pray for you when you are sick? Don't they pray for you in your churches; and is our purpose in addressing the saints different from yours in your dealings with your pastor? We only beseech the Virgin, or St. John, to do that for us, which you get a man of like passions and frailties with yourself to do for you."

Such is the Roman Catholic's mode of repelling the charge of idolatry which we bring against him; and in good truth I do not see how his argument is to be set aside. But take other grounds with him, and behold how the case stands. "I don't accuse you of idolatry, far from it; but I do assert that you are acting very absurdly. For, first, there is nothing in Scripture which justifies us in believing that the spirits of the deceased are aware of what is passing on earth at all; and secondly, were it otherwise, such creatures could not, unless they possessed the faculty of ubiquity, pay the smallest attention to petitions which are addressed to them at the same time from perhaps an hundred or a thousand different places. If St. John, for example, be at this moment listening to a devotee in the island of Sincapore, how can he hear me who am calling to him out of Bohemia? Our minister, on the other hand, acts but as our mouth-piece, and it is expressly ordered in the New Testament that the church shall pray for her sick members." Now here is a dilemma out of which I cannot understand how the saint-worshipper is to escape. For St. John is either a creature, or he is not. If he be a creature, it is impossible that he can be present in two spots at one and the same moment. He cannot, therefore, attend at once to me, who address him in Bohemia, and to the saint-worshipper who solicits his aid from the banks of the Mississippi. If he can be present with us both, and with tens of thousands besides, then he must possess the attribute of ubiquity, and is, of course, not a creature. In the latter case, what is he? This, then, I humbly conceive to be the weapon with which errors in the Roman Catholic's faith may most appropriately be assailed, for though it inflict a temporary wound upon men's self-love by questioning the powers of discrimination, leaves, at least, their moral and religious intentions unquestioned, and themselves, as a necessary consequence, unfettered by the strongest of all shackles, that of outraged principle.

By the time we had reached the chaussée, or main road, the morning was considerably advanced, and each new hour brought with it a wonderful accession of heat. Not a cloud was in the sky, and for a while, we were entirely destitute of shade. For though here, as elsewhere in Germany, the waysides be planted with rows of trees, the trees were as yet too young to prove essentially useful to the wanderer, and, to add to our misery, we had a long and toilsome ascent before us, with a broad, smooth, macadamised causeway, by which to accomplish it. It is true, that as often as we paused to look round, the glories of that magnificent scene gave us back our courage. Nevertheless, nature in this situation, as she is wont to do in most others, would have her way. We became exceedingly weary, and were fain, on reaching a wood near the summit, to sit down and rest.

Early as it was when our journey began, we soon found that we had no chance of getting the road to ourselves. Many wayfarers were already abroad, among whom were several women, loaded like jackasses, with enormous panniers filled with I know not what species of evidently heavy goods. The tasks, indeed, which custom has imposed upon the lower classes of women in Germany, create in a stranger extreme surprise, if not indignation. I have spoken of the effects of this ungallant arrangement as they display themselves in Saxony; and I am bound to add that, in Bohemia, the same system is pursued, and the very same results produced. Besides a large portion of the field-work, such as hoeing, weeding, digging, planting, &c., it has fallen to the Bohemian women's share to be the bearers of all burdens; whether fire-wood be needed from the forest, grass, butter, eggs, and other wares required in the market-place, or trusses of hay lie abroad in the fields which it is necessary to fetch home. The inevitable consequence is, that, generally speaking, a woman ceases to have even a trace of youth about her by the time she has passed thirty. At three or four-and-twenty, she becomes brown and wrinkled, a year or two later, she loses her teeth, and last of all comes the goitre, which, by utterly destroying the symmetry of her form, leaves her, at thirty, little better than a wreck. As to the really old folks, the grandams and maiden aunts of the community, these are, at all moments, in a condition to play with effect the characters of Macbeth's witches; and when, as not unfrequently happens, they judge it expedient to go about bareheaded, the resemblance which they bear to the respectable individuals just alluded to, is complete. Yet in youth, not a few of the girls are extremely pretty; which makes you the more regret that the customs of the country, by subjecting them to such severe hardships, should rob them of their bloom before their time.

Having rested under the shadow of our friendly grove sufficiently long to permit my making a rough sketch of the valley beneath us, we resumed our march, and rounding the hill, opened out a new prospect, scarcely inferior in point of beauty, though widely different in kind, from that which had passed from our gaze. We looked down upon a sort of basin, fertile, and cultivated to the minutest corner, round which, like sentinels on duty, were gathered a succession of mountains, covered to their peaks with foliage. The dark hue of the fir was here beautifully intermixed with the fresher green of the birch and hazel; while occasionally, an enormous rock raised his bald front over all, more after the fashion of a huge ruin, the monument of man's vanity, than of a fabric of nature's creation. But the circumstance which more than all others surprised us, was the density of the population. Of large towns there seem to be, in Bohemia, very few; but every vale and strath is crowded with human dwellings, village succeeding village, and hamlet treading on hamlet, with the most remarkable fecundity. On the other hand, you may strain your eyes in vain in search of those species of habitations which give to our English landscapes their peculiar charm. There is no such thing in all Bohemia,—I question whether there be in all Germany,—as a park; and as to detached farm-houses, they are totally unknown. The nobility inhabit what they term schlosses, that is to say, castles or palaces, which are invariably planted down, either in the very heart of a town or large village, or at most, a gunshot removed from it. No sweeping meadows surround them with their tasteful swells, their umbrageous covers and lordly avenues; no deer troop from glade to glade, or cluster in groups round the stem of some giant oak, their favourite haunt for ages. But up to the very hall-door, or at least to the foundations of the wall, which girdles in the court-yard, perhaps twelve or twenty feet wide, the plough regularly passes. A garden, the graff generally possesses, and his taste in flowers is good; but it almost always happens that his very garden affords no privacy, and that his flowers are huddled together within some narrow space, perhaps in the very court-yard of which I have already spoken as alone dividing his mansion from the open and cultivated fields.

With respect, again, to the condition of the cultivators, that is, in all respects, so different from the state of our agricultural gentlemen at home, that, even at the hazard of saying over again what has been stated a thousand times already, I must describe it at length. In the first place, then, there is no class of persons in Bohemia corresponding to our English farmer. Nobody hires land in order to make a profit out of it; at least nobody for such a purpose hires a large tract of land; but each individual cultivates his own estate, whether it be of wide or of narrow extent. Thus the graff, or prince, though he be the owner of an entire circle, is yet the only farmer within that circle. He does not let an acre of ground to a tenant. But having built what he conceives to be an adequate number of bouerin-hauses, he plants in each of these a bouerman, and pays him for tilling the ground. These bouerin-hauses, again, are all clustered together into villages, so that the bouerman is never without an abundant society adapted to his tastes; and very happily, albeit very rudely, his days and nights appear to be spent.

The land in Bohemia does not, however, belong exclusively to any one order in the community. Many bouermen are owners of their farms, some of them to the extent of one hundred acres and more; while almost every township has its territories, which, like the noble's estate, are cultivated for the benefit of the burgh. But in all cases it is the owner, and not the cultivator, to whom the proceeds of the harvest belong. These are, indeed, gathered in and housed for him by his representatives, who, in addition to some fixed money-payment, for the most part enjoy the privilege of keeping a cow or two on the wastes belonging to the manor; but all the risk and trouble of converting his grain into money attaches to the proprietor of the soil.

Two results spring out of this order of things alike detrimental to the well-being of society. First there does not exist, at least in the agricultural districts, any middle class of society at all, which is everywhere divided into two orders,—the gentry and the peasantry. In cities and large towns the case is, of course, different; for there the cultivation of letters and of trade has its influence on the human mind; and professions hold something like the rank which ought of right to belong to them when they are what is called liberal. But in the country, even the doctor and the priest seldom find their way to a more lordly board than that of the bouerman; and stand, in consequence, at all times, on a level with the miller, the butcher, and the host of the gasthof. Secondly, the nobles, having little ready money at command, possess no means, whatever their inclination may be, materially to improve the condition of their dependants; while their own time being largely engrossed by the cares of buying and selling, they not unfrequently neglect to cultivate those mental powers in which many of them are naturally rich. Numerous exceptions to this latter rule doubtless everywhere prevail; for I am bound to add, that such of the nobility as honoured me with their acquaintance, were men of refined tastes and very enlarged understandings. But the rule itself holds good nevertheless, and would equally do so in any other country where a similar order of things existed.

Through a succession of these villages, most of them inhabited exclusively by bouermen, we made our way, not without exciting, by the novelty of our costume, a large share of public curiosity. As often as we found it necessary, however, to put a question to one of the wonderers, we never failed to meet with a civil reply: indeed, I must do the Bohemians of all ranks the justice to record, that a kinder, more obliging, and less mercenary people, it has never been my fortune to visit. Illustrations of this fact, I shall have occasion in the course of my narrative, to give, though for the present I content myself with stating the fact broadly.

I do not recollect that anything worthy of mention befel till we reached Kamnitz,—an old town, and the centre of a circle,—through which it behoved us to pass, in order to gain first Stein Jena, and ultimately Hayde. The town itself lies in a hollow, and is begirt near at hand by well-wooded hills; but in itself it offers few attractions to the stranger. Narrow and deserted streets, with shops mean and slenderly stocked, tell a tale of stagnant commerce; indeed, I may observe, once for all, of the country towns in Bohemia, that it is not among them that the traveller will find food for reflection, or sources of gratification. Far removed from the sea, with which their single communication is by the Elbe, the Bohemians have slender inducement to apply their energies to trade, which is, in consequence, not perhaps dead,—for there are manufactures of various kinds in the kingdom, and more than one iron foundry, but exceedingly sickly and torpid.

Kamnitz, like other chief towns of circles, has its schloss,—the property of the emperor,—in which the officials and the subordinates at once reside and administer justice. It can boast, likewise, of a large church and a prison; but as there was nothing in the exterior of these buildings which at all excited our admiration, we did not delay to examine them. With respect, again, to other matters, I am aware of only one custom in the place, of which it is worth while to take notice. Kamnitz, it appears, is very much of an agricultural town; that is to say, many owners of small estates dwell there, and many cattle are kept. During the winter months, both here and elsewhere, the cattle never breathe the air of heaven; but are kept mewed up in their stalls, and fed on hay, and other dry fodder. When the hay crop has been gathered in, and the fields are ready for them, they are sent abroad to graze, but always under the guidance of keepers, who, at least in Kamnitz, are strictly professional persons. Their mode of proceeding is this. At early dawn, there is a flourish of cow-horns in the streets,—a signal for opening the stable-door, and leading forth the cattle to pasture. The animals are then collected in the market-place, and handed over to the charge of their appointed keepers, who, two or three in number, drive the herd abroad, and are responsible that they commit no trespass on the growing corn. At night, a similar process takes place. The cattle are led back by the keepers to the market-place: horns are again sounded; upon which each bouerman either comes in person, or sends his deputy to receive the beasts, and so conducts them to their stalls for milking.

Kamnitz has at one period been a fortified town, though probably that period is very remote,—for against modern artillery a place so situated could not hold out a single day. Its gateways, and some fragments of the old wall, remain,—objects at all times too interesting to be wantonly removed. Beneath a couple of these venerable arches we passed,—first on entering, then on leaving the town,—after which we found ourselves traversing a long and irregular hamlet, which in the form of a suburb lines one side of the road, and so faces a pretty little stream that skirts the other. Crossing the rivulet by a bridge with two arches, we began to climb the hill, on the brow of which Stein Jena is situated, and from which our friend, the young priest of Auffenberg, had given us to understand, that we should obtain one of the most magnificent views in this part of Bohemia. Long and toilsome was this ascent; for though the main road was still beneath our feet, so perfectly had its fabricators set the rules of their art at defiance, that it ran sheer and abrupt, with scarce a trifling deflection, from the base to the summit. The sun, also, beat upon us with a power which we found it extremely uncomfortable to sustain, and our thirst was excessive. And here it may, perhaps, be worth while for the benefit of other pedestrians, to remark, that we began our march, in reference to the victualling department, on an utterly erroneous principle. Breakfasting at half past five or six o'clock in the morning, we made up our minds not to eat a solid meal again till our day's work should be accomplished; in other words, to content ourselves at noon with some slight refreshment, such as a morsel of bread, or a sandwich and a little weak brandy and water, swallowed in the shade of some grove, and to sup heartily when we should come in to our night's quarters, at six or seven o'clock in the evening. The experience of this day sufficed to convince me that in arranging this plan I had not been so successful as the Duke of Wellington used to be with his commissariat. Our bread had become hard and mouldy. Our brandy was as hot as fire, and we could not find a spring of water sufficiently sheltered to cool it. For consistency-sake, however, we twisted down a few mouthfuls, but we could not manage more; and it was unanimously voted, that thenceforth an hour's halt at mid-day in some house of call, would be an arrangement alike conducive to the refreshment of our limbs, and the well-being of our stomachs.

Having reposed about half an hour by the margin of a weedy pond, from which a loud if not an harmonious concert of bull-frogs unceasingly issued, we buckled on our knapsacks once more, and, by a desperate effort, reached Stein Jena about three o'clock in the afternoon. It seldom happens that a natural scene, of which you have been led to form high expectations, does not disappoint you; yet I am bound in justice to acknowledge that in the account which he gave of the view from this point, the interesting curate of Auffenberg used the language of moderation. Elevated to a height of perhaps two thousand feet, we beheld across the valley beneath us, hill above hill arise,—all of them pyramidal, shaggy with forests of pine, beech, and oak, and interlaced one with another, so as to form the wildest yet most graceful combinations. The scene, too, was in one striking respect different from any on which we had yet gazed; namely, that cultivation was almost entirely kept out of view, because our position was such as to throw the depths of the plain behind the screen of their overhanging mountains. It was, indeed, only when we looked to the right, where on a level with ourselves fields of rye were waving, that the fact of our not having wandered into some uncleared and uninhabited region was demonstrated.

Stein Jena itself is a large, straggling, but remarkably neat village, of which the street is on both sides shaded by rows of trees, and where the houses can in many instances boast of being planted within the range of well-kept and tasteful gardens. It was on the top of the common beyond the village, however, that we paused to obtain our view, and to make one of those rude sketches which in such situations the most unpractised hand is induced to attempt; after which we again pushed forward. Ten minutes' walk carried us over the ridge, and then what a spectacle burst upon us! A huge plain was at our feet, green with the most abundant crops of grass and corn, and here and there broken in upon by a tall conical hill, which rose like a thing of art, and stood alone in the level. Surrounding the plain on all sides, were ranges of mountains, those near at hand resembling in their general character the graceful hills upon which we had just turned our backs,—those in the distance more precipitous and rugged, and above all, white along their summits with snow. There needed, in short, but some sheet of water,—a lake or a river winding through the valley, to complete such a picture as Stanfield would love to copy, and the humbler but not less enthusiastic worshipper of nature, gaze upon for hours unwearied. For not only was there wood and pasturage, hill and dale, rock and forest, in abundance,—but the haunts of man, without which a cultivated scene is always incomplete, rose there in abundance. There lay Hayde,—a compact and apparently well-built town; about three miles to the right of it, and nestling back its own cliffs, was Burgstein; while farther off Gabel, Reichstadt, with a countless number of villages besides, told of the busy hands by which these fair fields were tilled and kept in order. Heartily thanking our poetical friend for the instructions which he had communicated to us, and charmed out of all sense of fatigue for the moment, we continued our march, till the shelter of a vast wood received us, at once shutting out the glories of the panorama beneath, and screening us from the sun's rays, which had for some time back beat with inconvenient violence upon us from above.

It was six o'clock when we reached the inn at Hayde, faint, hungry, and foot-sore. Our reception was not very cordial, nor did we this time, I am sorry to say, succeed in perfectly thawing the ice in which the landlady had encased herself; but we took her bad humour patiently, showed her that we were well disposed to be merry, and obtained in five minutes, first a very tolerable apartment, and by-and-by the best room in the house. Perhaps, indeed, it may be as well to state, that our first reception, even in Bohemia, was not always flattering. Yet somehow or another, it invariably came to pass, with the solitary exception of Hayde, where our usual tactics failed us, that before we had been ten minutes under the roof of a Bohemian innkeeper, not only he, but his whole household, were at our devotion. Neither was any marvellous art required to bring this result about. We acted merely as persons of common sense will always act in similar situations. We turned the landlady's ill-humour or stiffness into a joke, spoke bad German, mixed it with French and English, and won her heart by showing that we were neither sensitive nor fastidious. And the landlady's heart being fairly won, all the rest was easy. The husband, as in duty bound, fell into his wife's views, and the servants took their cue from their superiors. In Hayde, however, though we so far gained our end, that a good supper with a comfortable apartment were afforded us, we have no right to boast of our progress in the hostess's affections. She kept cruelly aloof from us during the whole of our sojourn, and made us pay at our departure just twice as much as, for similar fare, we were charged at any other gasthof in Bohemia.

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CHAPTER II.

OUR LANDLADY AND WASHERWOMAN. THE EINSIEDLERSTEIN. ITS DUNGEONS AND HALL. ITS HISTORY. INSCRIPTION OVER THE HERMIT'S GRAVE. LOSE OUR WAY. GUIDED BY A PEASANT. HIS CONVERSATION. MISTAKEN FOR ITALIAN MUSICIANS. GABEL.

Hayde, which is a burgh town, having its burgomaster and other civic authorities, contains a population of between two and three thousand souls, and can boast of a large warehouse, or handlung, in which are exhibited and sold the mirrors and other articles in glass that are fabricated at Burgstein. Like most German towns of the same size which I have visited, it is exceedingly clean, and its environs are laid out with a good deal of taste. For the Germans, while in winter they shut themselves up in their houses, all the doors and windows of which are kept hermetically sealed, seem to live, during the summer months, only in the open air. Gardens are, therefore, their delight,—public gardens, where such things exist,—in which the men may smoke and drink their beer, the women sip their coffee, in society; or failing this, slips of soil, close to the highway side, from which they are separated only by a low railing,—so that the owners may behold from their open summer-houses every object that shall pass and repass. And truly it is a pleasant sight to see an entire population made happy by means so simple and so innocent. For of excesses the Bohemians are seldom, if ever, guilty. The men smoke incessantly, it is true, and some of them consume in the course of a holyday a tolerably large allowance of beer. But the beer is either very weak, or their heads are accustomed to it; for it is as rare to behold a Bohemian peasant drunk at a merrymaking or fête, as it is to find, under similar circumstances, an Englishman of the same class sober.

After adjusting our toilet, and giving some linen to be washed, with the distinct understanding that the articles so disposed of should be restored at seven o'clock next morning, we first ate our supper, and then strolled out. The graveyard, removed, as is usually the case in this country, some little way out of town, attracted our attention, and was admired for the extreme neatness with which it was planted and otherwise kept. From the top of an eminence behind the inn, likewise, we obtained a view of the surrounding country, which we should have pronounced fine, had we not previously looked down upon it from Stein Jena; and a public garden, as yet "alone in its glory," was traversed. But we were too much fatigued to attempt more. We returned, therefore, to our apartment; went to bed with the sun, and slept soundly till half-past six o'clock on the following morning.

Lovers' vows, it is said, are like pie-crusts, made to be broken. So I am sure are the promises of Bohemian washerwomen; at least our linen, which ought to have made its appearance at seven, did not arrive till nearly four hours afterwards, and we were compelled to prolong our halt accordingly. At last, however, the slender, but to us invaluable cargo, made its appearance, though still so imperfectly arranged, that the stockings, being quite wet, we were obliged to sling outside our knapsacks, while the damp shirts were left to dry, as they best might, within. But the precious time which our dilatory laundress had wasted, nothing could recall. We therefore felt ourselves under the necessity of confining our day's operations to the inspection of a hermitage, or einsiedlerstein, near Burgstein, with what was described to us as a short and pleasant walk afterwards, as far as Gabel.

We quitted Hayde without regret; and though still foot-sore with yesterday's travel, contrived to reach Burgstein, which is about three English miles distant, between twelve and one o'clock. It is an inconsiderable village, prettily situated under the felsen, or crags, from which it derives its name; and can boast of its schloss, the residence of Graff Kinsky, as yet a child. Like other buildings of the kind which we had passed in our tour, the schloss at Burgstein resembles a manufactory much more than a nobleman's palace; for it stands close to the high road, is roofed over with flaring red tiles, and shows in its dazzling white front a prodigious number of small windows. Connected with it by an avenue of umbrageous planes, which overshadow, perhaps, a couple of hundred yards of road to the rear, is the mausoleum of the late count,—a most ungraceful pile, evidently constructed after the model of an English dove-cot, and like the schloss, shining in all the splendour of white walls and a scarlet covering. But from such objects the traveller soon turns his eyes away, that he may fix them on the bold and isolated crag, the summit of which is crowned by what he naturally mistakes for masonry; but which, on a more minute inspection, he discovers to be, for the most part, the rock itself. There stands what is now described as the Einsiedlerstein,—that is, the stony dwelling of the hermit; a grievous misnomer surely,—for though the last occupant of that dwelling was doubtless a recluse, its original purpose, which for many ages it served, was that of a strong-hold, or castle. And perhaps nowhere, even in Germany, can a more perfect specimen be pointed out of the sort of nest which used, in the dark ages of feuds and forays, to shelter the robber-knights and barons, to whom forays were at once a business and a pastime.

The Einsiedlerstein, or Hermit's Rock, is a bold and isolated crag, which rises sheer and abrupt out of the plain to the height of, perhaps, one hundred and fifty feet. It is separated from the fells, or rugged hills, which form the northern boundary of the wide vale of Hayde, by a space of about two or three hundred yards; sufficiently wide to place it, in the days of cross-bows and ballistas, pretty well beyond the reach of insult, but by far too narrow to be of the slightest avail against cannon, and even musketry. In the face of the rock a staircase is cut, by which you ascend to a door, of which the key is kept at a cottage close by, where dwells also your cicerone, or guide. The door being opened, you see before you a continuation of the rocky staircase; with this difference in character, however, between what is passed and what is to come,—that whereas you mounted to the threshold under the canopy of heaven, you now move onwards, or rather upwards, through a cavity cut in the face of the solid stone itself. By-and-bye you come to a landing-place, beyond which, at the extremity of a narrow passage, you behold what used to be the armoury of the castle,—an arched hall, chiselled out, like the gallery which leads to it, from the rock. Here are yet the grooves and niches within which warriors, long since dead, used to suspend their spears and battle-axes, their helmets and coats of mail; and here, in the face of the stone, are chiselled out some armorial bearings; probably the devices worn by the lord of the castle on his shield. We find a tiger couchant, for example, not ungracefully executed; a gate or portcullis, I believe in heraldry an honourable device; with the fragments of what have evidently been other symbols, though time has laid on them his defacing fingers so effectually that you cannot trace them out.

From the armoury you proceed round a curvature in the rock, which conducts you into the open air, and gives you a view of the opposite fells, to the dungeon,—a melancholy place, bearing to this hour numberless records of the sufferings and the patience, and even the ingenuity, of those by whom, in old times, it was tenanted. The late Count Kinsky, the proprietor of the castle, caused a breach to be made in the side of the dungeon, which you now enter through an arched passage in the rock, though originally the captive was let down by a rope from above. This arrangement has the two-fold effect of admitting an increase of light into the den, and of affording a ready means of access to such as might scruple to descend, collier-fashion, in a basket. Having passed beneath the arch, you find yourself in a circular cell some twenty feet or more beneath the surface of the earth, and girdled in by walls of solid rock, out of which the hole must, with infinite labour, have been chiselled. These walls are everywhere scratched over with representations of wounded hearts, crucifixes, death's-heads, and even of flowers with broken stems; all of them clearly enough of very old fabrication, though unfortunately none of them dated. How many gallant spirits have here pined and fretted themselves into eternity; how many noble minds and sinewy arms have long confinement and scanty fare, bowed down to this damp floor and withered. What a record of misery and wrong would not these walls give forth, were they for one little hour gifted with the power of speech, like the talking woods in the fairy tale. And yet, evil as the times were, when might, not right, was in the ascendant, they had their redeeming excellencies too. Knightly honour, chivalrous abhorrence of guile, the soul to endure, as well as the temper to inflict; these were the qualities most prized by men, who, born and bred to lives of constant warfare, held danger light, and looked upon peace as inglorious. And then their religious faith! It might be gloomy, it might be wild, it might be altogether misplaced or misdirected,—but it was at least sincere; for it exerted an influence over their most wayward humours; it urged them both to do and to suffer as none but men who believed that they acted aright would have done. Let us not, then, even when standing in the dungeon of a baron's hold, come to the conclusion, that what we call the dark ages were ages of unmitigated wrong. They might produce their tyrants and oppressors, whose power, in proportion as it was resistless, would spread misery around; but they produced also their vindicators of the oppressed; their Bayards and Lancelots, chévalliers sans peur et sans réproche,—of whose spirit of candour, and fair and open and honourable dealing, it might be well if this our intellectual and utilitarian age had inherited even a portion.

It will scarcely be expected that I am to conduct my reader through all the crannies and recesses of the Einsiedlerstein. Sufficient for both our purposes it will be to observe, that everything is in the most perfect state of preservation, and that he who is desirous of obtaining a tolerably accurate notion of the sort of style in which the barons of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries used to live, may find it worth his while to make a journey even as far as Burgstein. Here is the chapel, entire as when last the solemn mass was sung for the spirit of some departed hero. There it is, hollowed out of the rock, with its chancel and its transept, while near it are lodging-rooms of various kinds; and underneath vaulted stables capable of containing perhaps twenty horses. The well, too, that essential ingredient in a strong-hold, still remains, though now it is dry; and on the back of the kitchen fire-place the soot and smoke of other times have left their traces. The only innovations effected, indeed, in the original arrangements of the castle, are those which the hermit began; and which the father of the present lord, the Count Kinsky, of whom I have already spoken, has completed.

The history of the Burgstein, as far as I have been able to trace it, is this. The name being a combination of the words birke and stein, signifies the birchy-rock, an appellation which both now and in remote times, would appear to have justly belonged to it, for its crest is overgrown with birch trees, one at least of which is as fine a specimen of the plant as it would be easy to discover either in Bohemia or elsewhere. Its bold and isolated character seems to have pointed it out as a fit situation for one of those keeps or strong-holds in which even monarchs were, during the middle ages, glad at times to seek refuge, and which constituted the groundwork of their power to chiefs of less elevated rank. So early as the year 1250, a castle accordingly was erected on it, in which the Baron von Ronow, a nobleman of vast influence, held his court, and frequently entertained the King of Bohemia himself, Wenzel I. By the caprice of his grandson, however, it passed into the hands of the Knights Templars, who established there one of their chief colleges, and, according to tradition, enacted many and horrid rites, such as tended not a little to hurry on the ruin of their order. When that catastrophe befel them, the sovereign seems to have restored his prize to a noble of the same lineage with him who willed it away, so that down to the year 1515, we find it in the possession of a long line of Placek von Lippa und Berksteins. But heirs male at length failed, and the heiress marrying a Baron Kollowart, the lordship of this noble keep was transferred to a new line, which transmitted it from father to son in uninterrupted succession, down to the year 1670. To them succeeded, somehow or another, a race of Von Rokortzowas, who again in 1710, made way for the house of Kinsky, and in their possession it has ever since remained, neglected, indeed, till of late, but holding time and decay alike at defiance.

Old chroniclers tell of many a lordly festival having been celebrated within its walls. Repeatedly, too, it has withstood and repelled the attacks of an enemy, once when an army of not less than fifteen thousand men sat down before it, and a second time, when pressed by thirteen thousand. But the invention of gunpowder, and still more effectually the changes in men's manners which followed the discovery of printing, slowly robbed it of its importance, till at last it was deserted by its owners, who transferred their residence to the more commodious, but far less picturesque mansion which they still continue to inhabit. Then began a new race of tenants to occupy the rock, in giving accommodation to whom the Graffs Kinsky doubtless believed that they were benefiting their own souls, and doing their Maker laudable service.

Towards the close of the seventeenth century, while the lordship of the manor yet remained in the hands of the Kokortzowas, a bouerman, or small landed proprietor, distinguished in the circle for his skill in agriculture, suddenly took it into his head to become a hermit, and fixed on the deserted rock as his place of residence. The gräfinn—for a female seems then to have exercised the authority of count, gave immediate attention to his wishes; and fitted up, at her own cost, such a cell as the pious bouerman described. There, for some years, dwelt Brother Constantine, telling his beads at stated periods, both by day and night, and living abundantly on the alms which the pious of all classes bestowed upon him. At his decease, an enthusiastic miller stepped forward to fill the vacancy, and Brother Wentzel, so long as the sands of life continued to run, was, to the good people of Birkstein, and the districts around, all that Brother Constantine had been. To him, in 1720, succeeded Brother Antony, or rather two brothers, Antony and Jacob, who dwelt in cheerful community one with another, praying before the same altar, and conversing during the hours of relaxation, but, in strict propriety, occupying separate cells in the rock. In 1735, however, Jacob died, when one Samuel Görner, a modelist, and perspective maker, took his place. Some ingenious representations of Mount Calvary and the Holy Sepulchre, executed in wood by the hands of Brother Samuel, still remain, and are exhibited to the stranger with becoming pride. And last of all came a weaver, hight Müller, who at the age of twenty-two, devoted himself to a life of seclusion, and dwelt apart upon the rock up to the year 1785. At that time, the strong arm of power was stretched out, and hermits, as well as many communities of monks, disappeared. Yet Joseph, who seems to have been conscientiously attached to his calling and place of abode, was not driven into exile. Being appointed parish-clerk to the church of Birkstein, he continued to hold the office several years; and dying at an advanced age was, by his own desire, buried in a grave which he had dug out for himself in one of the cells on the rock. Such are the circumstances which have contributed to cast into the shade the ancient and warlike name of this curious piece of architecture, and to describe as a hermit's cell, what was, in point of fact, one of the strongest among the many and strong baronial castles with which Bohemia abounds.

The hermits have not sat in the seats of armed men so long, without leaving numerous traces of their sojourn behind them. Three or four caves are hollowed out in the rock, one of which contains a skull, a rosary, and a narrow stone bedstead, overlaid with moss. In another, besides the usual ornaments, such as crucifixes, &c., we found an image of Brother Antony Müller, arrayed in his brown robe and hood, with beads, a long gray beard, and bare feet, just as he is stated to have exhibited himself in the land of the living. A third cave, or cell, contains a representation of the same hermit's dead body, as it lay in state,—for to the rock the corpse was carried both for exhibition and interment; and finally, we have his grave,—a small heap of stones, with a stone cross erected over them, and an epitaph inscribed on the rock at his feet. I subjoin the original, and give, for the benefit of such as may not be acquainted with the German, a loose translation.

Du hällst den Tod für deinen feind,

Du irrst; er ist dein bestest Freund:

Er ummt dir alle leibin ab

Und legt dich sanft in's stille grab.

Befreit dich von dir falschen wilt

Und wenn es dir nur selbst gefällt

So fühst er dich in himmel ein

Sag wellcher Freund kaun besser seyn.

Thou holdest death thy foe to be,

No foe, but best of friends, is he.

He lifts the evil from thy lot,

Lays thee where sorrow reacheth not.

From the false world he sets the free,

And if the progress pleaseth thee,

Guides thee to regions of the blest;

Of friends, then, is he not the best?

There remains one apartment more, which it would be unjustifiable in me to omit particularly to notice, inasmuch as it holds a high place in the estimation of the good people of Burgstein, and will, if it serve no other purpose, force a smile from such young,—aye, and old persons, too,—as may happen to inspect it. An ingenious mechanic, a workman in the looking-glass manufactory hard by, has constructed a piece of mechanism, in which all the known occupations, trades, and professions, in the world, are described. His machine occupies four galleries that surround an apartment built on purpose to receive it; and in the midst is an elevated platform, on which the spectators take their stand. At first they see only a rude representation of mountains and forests, gardens, fallow fields, standing crops, cows, milk-maids, mills and millers, ploughs, ploughmen, oxen, cities, soldiers, horses, carriages, mines and miners, convents, monks, hermits, &c.,—all in a state of quiescence. The pulling of a few strings, however, gives a totally novel aspect to the face of affairs. Inanimate objects continue, of course, at rest; but no sooner is the clock-work set a-going, than music sounds, soldiers march, carriages rattle about, ploughs travel, miners dig, mills go round, monks toll bells, hermits read and nod their heads, milkmaids ply their occupation visibly and effectively before your eyes,—aye, and the very bird-catcher pops out and in from behind his screen, while a rustic having caught a schoolboy in his apple-tree, applies his rod to the young thief's seat of honour, with all the regularity of a drummer beating time. I defy the gravest person living to abstain from laughter, when this universal bustle begins; for no human being appears to be idle, and no single act seems to be performed in vain.

The Graffs Kinsky seem, for some years back, to have paid a good deal of attention to this noble relic of old times. The late count began a chapel, I think in questionable taste, of which the walls now cover the venerable and vaulted cavity, where knights and barons used to worship long ago. He built, likewise, a sort of summer-house hard by,—of which the flooring, red roof, and whitewashed walls, agree but indifferently with the time-worn bearing of the castle itself. But though he has added these excrescences, and erected a sort of platform in front of the last, whence he and his friends might enjoy, at their pleasure, a view of the surrounding country, he has taken nothing away; and the public are much indebted to him, and to his successor, for the liberality with which they are admitted to behold one of the most curious specimens of baronial architecture, which is anywhere to be found.

Nearly two hours having been spent in examining the different objects just described, we began to feel that food and drink would be acceptable; and our guide,—a civil woman,—having assured us that both were to be procured in the cottage below, to it we adjourned. The bill of fare, however, consisted merely of brown bread,—sour, as all German brown bread is, and made of rye,—of butter and beer. Nobody has a right to complain who has at his disposal a competent supply of good brown bread and butter; but to our unpractised palates, the rye-meal, and sour leaven, were not very inviting. Still we set to work, and aided by a cat, and a fine bold fellow of a dunghill cock, both of whom took post beside us, and insisted on sharing our meal, we made a pretty considerable inroad into the good woman's vivres, whose butter and beer were both of them excellent. This, with a rest of half an hour, made us feel up to our work; so we disbursed our groschen or two, strapped on our packs, and pursued our journey.

Gabel was our point, towards which from Hayde a good chaussée runs; but we had no disposition to retrace our steps to Hayde,—so, trusting in part to the map, in part to the directions which our good-natured hostess gave us, we struck across the country at a venture. Probably we did not commit a greater number of blunders than any other persons similarly circumstanced would have done, but the way seemed at once intricate and interminable. I doubt, indeed, whether we should have succeeded in reaching our destination at all, had we not, by good fortune, overtaken in the heart of a wood an honest countryman, who was journeying towards his home in the fair village of Leipsige, and volunteered to be so far our guide. We found him intelligent enough on his own topic of agriculture, and well inclined to communicate to us his family history; but he knew nothing about either Peter of Prague, or the gypsies, and had never seen either Napoleon or his troops. We were, therefore, forced to take his guidance on his own terms, and had to thank him for probably some errors shunned, and a good deal of anxiety avoided.

Leipsige,—our friend's place of abode,—is a long straggling dorf, which extends, I should conceive, a full mile and a-half, along a valley between the two steep green banks that mark out the course of a pretty little stream. There is a bleach-field in it, and a manufactory of linen thread, neither of which we delayed to examine; for the day was wearing on, and, beautiful as the scenery was through which we had to pass, we were desirous of reaching our halting-place as soon as possible. At last, about six in the evening, after traversing several deep forests, and crossing one or two hills, we beheld before us what seemed to be a town of some size, with a large church built in the Italian style, one schloss or palace just outside the suburbs,—and another, much more imposing both in its architecture and situation, some three-quarters of a mile removed. Concluding that this must be Gabel, we made towards it; though, in order to avoid disappointment, we questioned a well-dressed man whom we overtook, and received from him a satisfactory answer. Our informant, however, was not content to give information only,—he desired to obtain some also. What were we? We did not belong to the country, that was certain; what were we? Italian musicians? Now really I had no conception that in this thoroughly English, or rather Scottish countenance, of mine, there had been so much as one line which could induce even a Bohemian to mistake me for an Italian, and I felt proportionably flattered, more particularly as in attributing to me the qualifications of a musician, he paid as high a compliment to my tastes as his first mistake paid to my features. We made a very low obeisance, and assured him that we were neither Italians nor musicians. What then? Were we stocking-weavers; and did our load consist of stockings? This was too much for our gravity; for the transition appeared to us as complete as could well be, so we laughed heartily. But when we told him the truth, that we were English gentlemen, walking for our own amusement, and desiring to make the acquaintance of his countrymen, his manner became more polite and obliging than ever. He directed us where to find the best accommodations, offered to conduct us to the hotel in person, and would hardly be persuaded that such service was unnecessary. We then parted, we pushing on at a brisk rate for Gabel, and he, as we ascertained by an occasional sly peep to the rear, standing on an eminence that he might stare, as long as possible, after objects such as had never met his gaze before,—a couple of Englishmen.

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CHAPTER III.

GENERAL APPEARANCE OF THE PLACE. THE INN. LUDICROUS MISTAKES. THE PUBLIC ROOM. ASTONISHMENT OF THE PEOPLE AT THE SIGHT OF ENGLISHMEN. THE PRIESTS. SCENE IN THE TAP-ROOM. KINDNESS OF THE PEOPLE. OUR FISHING OPERATIONS. A CHASSE, AND A DAYLIGHT BALL.

Gabel, though a place of some extent, and containing a population of three or four thousand souls, possesses no corporate rights. On the contrary, it is subject to the jurisdiction of a noble, whose schloss stands, as I have stated above, close to the suburbs, where it is encircled by a wider space of green than attaches to the dwellings of the Bohemian nobility in general. There is no manufactory in the place, but a great deal of spinning and weaving,—occupations which the people pursue in their own houses; and the streets, with the exception of the market-place, and another which leads from the market-place to the church, are narrow and steep.

We had no difficulty in discovering the inn, to which our informant outside the town had directed us; and we made for it accordingly. The exterior was promising enough; for it had a wide front, many windows, and considerable elevation; so we passed beneath the archway, nothing doubting, and looked round for a door. One on the left stood open, and seeing a staircase before us, we ascended, but soon stopped short when on the landing-place we beheld some men in huge cocked hats, feathers, and swords; while others, in more peaceable attire, were bearing under their arms a parcel of uniforms. "We have mistaken our ground," said I to my companion; "this must be a barrack, or else there is a regiment marching through the town, and these apartments are assigned to them as quarters." Accordingly we hurried back again; and seeing another door, exactly opposite to that which we had first essayed, we pushed it open. We were right this time; for on traversing a narrow passage, we found ourselves in the hall or kitchen.

The hall or kitchen of a third or fourth-rate German inn, may not, perhaps, be familiar to some of my readers; so I will describe it. Imagine, then, an apartment thirty or forty feet long by twenty wide, and perhaps ten or twelve in height. Four or five windows front you as you enter, beside which are arranged, in the old style of our English coffee-rooms, as many deal tables, with benches ranged along three sides of each, and a few chairs covering the other. These leave about half the width of the room free; a portion of which is, however, engrossed by a large temporary closet, while the stove, in the present instance a very capacious machine of the sort, occupies as much more. For there is no visible fire-place any where, and all the cooking that goes forward is conducted at the stove,—or, as the Germans appropriately call it, the oven. Then, again, there is a bench fastened to the side of the oven, where in winter, the wet, and cold, and weary may rest; while finally, at the head of the apartment is a small table, whereon the landlady, almost always one of the inmates of the hall, plies her needle-work and eats her meals.

The hall or coffee-room, when we first looked in, was well nigh empty. One woman, whom we now discovered to be our hostess, was, indeed, sewing at her own table, while another seemed busy in the pantry, but of guests there were only three,—two, manifestly travellers of an humble class; the third, who sat apart with a large glass of beer before him, more deserving of notice. His age might be about sixty. His hair was grizzled; his face, and especially his nose, large and rubicund, and his belly portly. He wore a black frock and dingy white neckcloth; and he made no use of a pipe. All this we noticed while advancing towards the hostess, who, as usual, looked cold upon us for an instant, and then became our sworn ally. Indeed, I do not know that I am justified in laying to that kind creature's charge even a moment's ill-humour; for no sooner had I asked her whether she spoke French or English, than she clasped her hands together, and burst into a laugh, after which her sole anxiety seemed to be lest she should not succeed in making us sufficiently comfortable. But in that she was mistaken. A nicer quarter, in spite of the total absence from it of all approaches to elegance, I never desire to occupy; for all that might be wanting to our fastidious tastes, the real and unaffected kindness of the inmates more than made good.

An apartment was provided for us forthwith; water and other conveniences for dressing were supplied, and supper was ordered. Moreover we were given to understand that the fierce-looking personages whose bearing had impressed us with so much awe, never hurt anybody; inasmuch as they were honest mechanics, a tailor or two, with some musical weavers who composed the town band. Their uniform, it seems, is kept in a spare room in the Hernhause gasthof, and they were in the act of equipping themselves for an evening's performance when we arrived. This was satisfactory enough, because, with all my admiration for the noble profession of arms, I cannot say that I quite enjoy being thrust as a traveller into an inn which happens to be thronged with some hundreds of soldiers on the march; but it was not the only treat that awaited us. My toilet was as yet incomplete, when in walked the landlady, first to demand whether I could speak Latin, and, on my answering in the affirmative, to announce that the priest of the parish was below in the hall, and should be glad to converse with me. I desired her to inform the reverend gentleman that I should make all the haste I could to equip myself; after which I would wait upon him with great pleasure.

Having accomplished the necessary changes in my apparel, and otherwise made myself comfortable, I descended the stairs, and found that the gentleman with the red nose and grizzly head, was none other than the priest who desired to make my acquaintance. Neither his appearance nor his situation,—a conspicuous place in a pot-house, which all the idle and beer-loving members of the community seemed to frequent,—at all prepossessed me in his favour; but I took care to exhibit no symptoms of disgust in my manner, and our conversation began. His reverence spoke horrid Latin, of course; mine, from long disuse, was probably not much better; but as I pronounced all my words according to the accentuation of my schoolboy days, we at least understood one-another. I found him full of curiosity, and wonderfully ill-informed, not only as to the political and intellectual state of England, but even in reference to its geographical situation. But his ignorance manifestly proceeded rather from the lack of opportunity than of the desire to be better informed; for of his questions I began to fear at last that there would be no end.

By this time a whisper was circulating through the town, that two Englishmen were arrived, and as very few of the Gabelites had ever seen an Englishman before, the coffee-room became speedily crowded. Large was then the consumption of beer, and dense and dark the cloud of tobacco-smoke which circled overhead. Yet, to do them justice, the curiosity of these simple people never once prompted them to commit a breach, however trifling, of real good manners. We were, indeed, besought to eat our supper at the table beside the priest, and we readily consented; while by degrees all the vacant spaces were filled up, by another priest, by several well-dressed tradesmen, and, as we afterwards ascertained, by an officer of the Austrian army, who having retired from the service on a pension, had married and settled in the town. But the individual who interested us the most was the postmaster; for whom, as he spoke both English and French fluently, the padre despatched a messenger, and whom we found not only a most agreeable, but a very intelligent and well-informed man. He had travelled much as a merchant; had visited France, Spain, Switzerland, Italy, and Russia; in the last of which countries he had resided several years as chief clerk to an English house at St. Petersburg.

I do not know that I ever felt myself in a situation more amusing, as well as more perfectly novel, than that which I now occupied. The good people, indeed, seemed so eager to obtain information, that I had few opportunities of adding to my own; yet their curiosity, tinctured as it was, throughout, with the most perfect good humour, and even politeness, highly diverted me, and I did my best to appease it. One circumstance, it is true, affected me painfully. I allude to the discreditable figure cut by the priests; who, it appeared to me, had no business in such a place at all, further, at least, than as casual inquirers. Among all the beer-drinkers present, however, my red-nosed acquaintance and his curate were the most industrious. It was quite edifying to see with what rapidity their pitchers were emptied, and how sedulously the hostess,—uninvited, though certainly unchecked,—replenished them; and when I add, that each pitcher contained a good quart, the amount of fermented liquor swallowed by these thirsty souls may be guessed at. Nor, I regret to add, was the tone of their conversation much out of keeping with their habits in other respects. I inquired into the state of morals in this place, and received, in bad Latin, such an answer as I do not choose to translate, and affected scarcely to understand.

Here then was a palpable illustration of the axiom which has so often been laid down,—that, of all the means that ever were devised to degrade religion in the persons of its teachers, the compulsory celibacy of the clergy is the most effectual. In Hernskrietchen and Auffenberg, it is very true, that no such lamentable results have followed; but what then? At the former place a most deserving man is condemned to spend his days uncheered by any of those domestic endearments the influence of which is felt the most where it is most needed. He does not complain, I admit; he has too much principle and even manliness to complain of that which is irremediable. But who can doubt that he feels his lot bitterly, or that his pastoral duties would be discharged just as faithfully, and far more cheerfully, were it different? So also at the latter place: the curate is yet a youth, full of that fire of enthusiastic self-devotion which, while it burns, more than supplies the place of all social and domestic relations. But how long will this last? And see how the system operates in Gabel, aye, in hundreds and thousands of places similarly circumstanced, where no such enthusiasm is at hand to counteract it.

Here are two clergymen, well stricken in years, for the elder cannot be less than sixty, and the younger but a few years short of it. Their home, as they informed me, is in the cloisters of the church; but such a home! Nobody inhabits it who, except for mercenary reasons, would shed one tear were they to die to-morrow. Of books they possess but a slender store, and were it otherwise, who can always live among his books? Their professional vocations wear down their energies, and they stand in need of relaxation. Where do they seek it? Not in the quiet and happy circle of their own families—for they have none, nor among their neighbours, who may esteem and respect, but will scarce unbend before men who are become masters of their most secret thoughts. They therefore betake themselves to the pot-house, and in drinking and ribald conversation, look for that amusement which, under a better state of things, the Reformed pastor is sure to find in the bosom of his own family, and among his friends. I do not mean to justify the individuals, who, on the contrary, deserve utter reprobation; but surely a system which throws such temptations in men's way cannot be seriously defended by any one who has the interest of religion at heart.

From the priests, as they began, under the influence of repeated potations, to exhibit their true character, I gladly turned away, and addressing myself to the postmaster, learned from him, that the church was a collegiate charge, that it had been burned down about forty years ago, that the people, though poor, were contented, and that he himself was but the successor of his father, who had been postmaster before him. We then began to converse about the late war, upon which he informed me, that Napoleon, on his retreat from Moscow, had passed through Gabel, and breakfasted at the post-house; that fifteen or twenty thousand men occupied the town some time; but that, though there had been some skirmishes and frequent alarms, no battle was fought in the neighbourhood. Finally, he undertook to correct my route, which I showed him; mentioned one or two places as deserving of notice, which were omitted from it; and promised to accompany us some way on the road to Oybin, the point which he advised us to visit on the morrow.

It was now getting late, and our supper and usual allowance,—a bottle of light wine between us,—being finished, my companion and I rose to wish our friends good night. Numerous hints were on this thrown out, that it was yet early, and that we should be disturbed by the bands of music, one of which was playing at the inn door, another in a gentleman's house hard by; but we would not attend to them. Having strolled through the street once or twice in order to free our lungs, in some measure, from an atmosphere of tobacco, we retired to our apartment, where, in clean and comfortable beds, we slept soundly, till five o'clock next morning.

Something had passed over-night between the postmaster and myself which left an impression on my mind that he had urged us to stay and spend this day with him; so, having finished breakfast by seven o'clock, we left our knapsacks, packed and ready, and strolled down to the post-house. My imagination had, however, run wild, for no such agreement existed; so, after getting a few hints as to distances, roads, and places of call, we returned to the inn. Here, in the tap-room, were assembled host, hostess, and maid, all of them unaffectedly grieving at our threatened departure, and all ready with cogent arguments, such as might tempt us to halt at least one day longer among them. Nor were these without their effect. Mine host happening to inquire into the uses of the instrument which, enveloped in a brown linen case, I carried in my hand, I told him, and he instantly assured me of as good a day's fishing as old Isaac Walton himself need desire. This was enough for me, whose piscatorial propensities threaten, I am afraid, to be as enduring as those of Paley; and laying aside our loads, which had already been buckled on, we restored them to their places in the chamber. But the astonishment of the innkeeper, aye, and of all his household beside, when I exhibited to him my rod, line, and book of flies, no language is adequate to describe. Such things had never come under their admiring gaze before, and their shouts and exclamations were quite amusing. It would have been cruel, after all this, not to give them a specimen of the style in which we insular anglers coax trout to their destruction; so having ordered supper to be ready at eight, and sent a message to the postmaster that I would be glad if he could come and take part of it with us, we sallied forth, under the conduct of our host, in search of the stream.

The first glance which we obtained of this said stream sufficed to assure us that in the gentle craft, the good people of Gabel were altogether unpractised. There was no stream at all, but a ditch, deep, here and there, and dark enough, but measuring not more than two feet across, and everywhere overhung with bushes. They assured me that it was full of fine trout, and I have no reason to doubt them. But as I could not bring myself to adopt their method of catching the said trout, namely, by tying a cord to the end of a stick, and a hook, with a miserable worm on its blade, to the end of the string, my fishing this day amounted to nothing. Yet the day was, on the whole, very agreeably spent, as the following detail will show.

Our host, a fine handsome man of perhaps forty years of age, with a quick eye, and singularly intelligent gestures, informed me, as we set out from home, that I should find, at the water's side, the same Austrian officer who had sat at our table over-night, "For he is a keen sportsman," added he, "and having no other employment, devotes almost all his mornings either to angling or shooting." I was not sorry to be told this, because I naturally concluded that a stream which could afford amusement all the summer over to one fisherman, so determined, would furnish me with sufficient sport for a single day. My astonishment may, therefore, be conceived, when on stepping over, what I mistook for a drain, our host pointed upwards, and exclaimed, "Aye, there he is, hard at it. He's an excellent fisherman, and would die, I really believe, were the opportunity of angling taken away from him." "Where is he?" cried I; "I don't see either a river or a fisherman." "Don't see!" was the answer, "why he is there, there at the bend in the stream." I followed the direction of the speaker's finger with my eye, and beheld, sure enough, a gentleman seated comfortably on the long grass beside some alder bushes, and smoking his pipe. "You don't mean that the angler is there," exclaimed I. "Yes, I do though," replied mine host, "and see, he has just got a bite." Sure enough the sedentary sportsman put forth one of his hands just as these words were uttered, and grasping the butt of a willow wand, seemed to give it a slight hitch in the air; but no results followed. It was quietly laid aside again, and the smoking resumed.

I now turned round, and with a countenance strongly expressive of horror, begged to be informed if this were really the stream. I received an answer in the affirmative, the solemnity of which was too much, first, for the risible faculties of my young companion, and then for my own. We literally roared with laughter. But we checked ourselves as soon as possible, and having explained to our guide how widely different were our notions of angling from his, had the satisfaction to perceive that no offence was given. We now joined the Austrian officer, and found that he had caught nothing; a fortune which did not improve with him during the two or three hours which we loitered away in his company.

There was no fishing to be had, that was clear enough; but we had brought some bread and butter and wine with us, in a contrary expectation, and these we discussed. Of course our brother sportsman joined us in this operation; and we were not slow in discovering, that though we had failed in finding trout, we had stumbled upon an obliging and intelligent companion. He had served in the campaigns of 1812, 13, and 14; was wounded at the battle of Leipsig; passed a year or two in France during the occupation of that country by the Allies, and was therefore proud to say, had been commanded by the Duke of Wellington. Since the peace, he had spent a year or two at Ancona with his regiment, but in consequence of the rupture of a blood-vessel in his lungs, had since been discharged upon a pension. Since retiring from the service, he had married a woman with some little property; and now lived with his father in Gabel, who held, under government, a license for the sale of tobacco, and farmed a small estate, to which our acquaintance was the heir.

Our gallant friend, apparently chagrined that we should have been disappointed in our fishing, proposed a chasse. I stared again, remembering that it was the month of June, and seeing fine crops of corn waving on all sides of me; but as he appeared serious, I offered no objection. We accordingly walked back to the town; and while Mr. Madder,—so the officer was called,—went home to dinner, I and my companions strolled into the church. It is large and commodious, and can boast of numerous pictures, more to be admired for the excellent intentions of the artists, than for the success which has attended their efforts; and the view from the roof is beautiful. But, except in the crypts below, where

Coffins stand round like open presses,

Showing the dead in their last dresses,

there was little either within or without the pile deserving of notice. The crypt is, however, a fine one; and the old monks and nobles whom the sexton ruthlessly exposes to view, look out upon you grimly enough from among their blackened and decaying habiliments.

Having allowed Mr. Madder what we conceived to be sufficient time for satisfying his appetite, our host of the Hernhause proposed that we should call upon him; and we went accordingly. A remarkably nice-looking old lady, with two younger ones, received us, and were introduced to us by Mr. Madder as his mother and sisters. Wine and coffee were then produced, of which we were obliged to partake, and a request was modestly urged, that we would exhibit the wonderful fishing-tackle. The whole apparatus was accordingly sent for and displayed, quite as much to the edification of the ladies, as to that of their brother, and considerable progress was made in the good opinion of one of them by a present of a casting-line and a couple of flies.

The tackle being put up, a double-barrelled gun and shooting-pouch were handed to me, the former furnished with a leathern sling, the latter made of undressed deer-skin. I slung them on, and Mr. Madder and the innkeeper being equipped in a similar manner, away we marched. But such shooting! Never surely in the annals of sporting has this day been rivalled, unless, indeed, when some city apprentices escaped from the warehouse in Lad-lane, have penetrated into the marshes beyond Hackney, to wage war upon a solitary hedge-sparrow. A dog we doubtless had, and he was large enough for all useful purposes; for he trotted through the rye with the composure of an elephant, and did spring a partridge from her nest. But the partridge happily escaped from three well-loaded barrels, and we never saw more either of her or her companions. Then went we deep into the woods, following the notes of the cuckoo and the ring-dove, only that we might come forth again with hands unstained by the blood of any such innocent creatures.

I was very much amused with all this for a while, but by degrees it began to grow tiresome; and I proposed that, as the sun wore towards the west, we should return home. My wish was law, to my kind companions; and homewards we turned our faces. But as we drew towards a small house, about three or four English miles from the town, the sounds of music were heard, and we found, on approaching, that it was filled with ladies and gentlemen from Gabel, the younger portion of whom were dancing to the notes of a fiddle, a clarionet, and a bassoon. It was our purpose to mix with the people of Bohemia as much as possible; we therefore expressed a desire to stop short for a minute or two, and to become spectators, if not partners in the frolic. Again were our wishes complied with cheerfully. We joined the merry-making, were well and kindly received, and laying aside our guns and pouches, danced with such of the young ladies as happened to be without partners. Nor did we get away from this pleasant little broad-day ball without doing some violence to the hospitable feelings of its founders.

Dancing seems to be a passion with all orders of people in Bohemia. The very cow-herds dance on the high road, to the music of their own voices, and the universal figure is the waltz. Quadrilles and gallopades have, no doubt, their worshippers among the higher classes; but among the lower, the waltz—most truly called the German waltz,—seems to be all in all. The party to which, for half-an-hour, we attached ourselves, belonged to the middle ranks, that is, to such middle ranks as even Germany produces; for there were present the doctor and his wife, a wealthy brewer and his family, with others of Gabel's magnates, and I believe that I had the honour of dancing with the brewer's daughter.

So passed one day at Gabel; to ourselves most pleasantly, and if we might judge from the manners of the people about us, not less agreeably to them. The rest of our story at this stage is told in few words. We returned to the inn, changed our apparel, supped in our own room, with Mr. Madder and the postmaster as our guests; took of them, at ten o'clock, an affectionate leave, and went to bed. We were up next morning, and packed and ready for marching, by six o'clock.

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CHAPTER IV.

OUR LANDLORD BECOMES OUR GUIDE. PECULIAR SCENERY OF THIS PART OF BOHEMIA. A VILLAGE BEER-HOUSE. TRAVELLING MECHANICS. ACCOUNT OF THE TORPINDAS. TOILSOME MARCH. MARCHOVIDES. ENTERTAINMENT THERE.

Up to this moment the elements had behaved towards us with remarkable kindness. We had, therefore, no right to complain, however deeply we might lament the circumstance, when, on drawing up the window-blinds, we ascertained that the rain was falling in torrents; and we felt that we must needs face it. We therefore descended to the tap-room, after discussing our cakes and coffee, and proceeded to bid our landlady farewell. But neither she nor her husband would permit us to budge an inch. The rain could not last. Only wait an hour, and the sky would be clear, when our host himself would be our guide, and put us in a way of reaching Liebenau much more agreeably, as well as with less fatigue, than if we followed the high road. We could not resist this appeal, so we sat still.

At length, about eight o'clock, though the rain had not entirely ceased, the heavens looked so bright that we expressed an earnest desire to push forward. As no mercenary motives had operated to produce the previous opposition of our hosts, so now such opposition was at once withdrawn; and the landlord, slinging his gun and pouch over his shoulder, declared himself at our command. We took leave of the kind landlady, not without tears on her side, and quitted Gabel, in all probability, for ever.

We had been correctly warned as to the probable duration of the storm. The rain, which fell in occasional showers when we first set out, soon ceased entirely, and we had once more a clear and cloudless sky, with a nice cool breeze just sufficiently powerful to refresh without incommoding us. Our walk, likewise, was very interesting; for, independently of the extreme beauty of the scene,—hills and dales, forests and cultivated fields, deep glens and swelling table-lands,—we passed over ground which had witnessed some sharp fighting during the movements of the French army upon Dresden. The Allies, it appears, manœuvred well in this quarter; for, by showing numerous skeletons of corps, they led Napoleon to imagine that a large army of Austrians, Russians, and Prussians was here; and, while he watched them carefully, they had well-nigh cut him off from his line of retreat. During these demonstrations on both sides, foraging parties had been sent out from Gabel, to sweep the neighbouring villages. These our guide had seen, and one of them he followed so as to become eye-witness to an affair which it had near a hamlet which we passed. He described the scattering fire of the jagers, and the occasional dashes of the hussars, with great animation, though, according to his showing, this, like other rencounters of the sort, cost more powder than lives.

Having accompanied us at least two German miles,—that is, full ten miles according to our English mode of computing distances,—the landlord of the Hernhause stopped short, and prepared to take his leave. We shook hands warmly, and I thought I heard his voice quiver when, in return for a cast of flies, he thanked me. Nor must I permit it to be believed, that the regrets were all on his side. I do not know when my feelings have been more engaged among strangers, than by the unaffected kindness of the people of Gabel,—a kindness on which we had no right to calculate, however much we might be justified in looking for civility in return for our money.

Once more, then, the world was before us, and seldom has it shone out beneath the gaze of youth and inexperience more winningly than it did under the influence of that delicious day. The rain of the preceding night, and of the early part of the morning, had given to herb and tree a fresher and a fairer green. The fallows wore no longer a parched-up and dust-like hue, and the rivulets, swollen but not polluted, retained their lucid character as they rolled on their way. From brake and bush, from grove and hedge-row, thousands of unseen choristers filled the air with melody, and the very oxen and horses, as they dragged their ploughs, or toiled onwards with their wagons, seemed to acknowledge the blessed influence which other creatures felt. We sat beneath the shade of a small plantation to enjoy the scene, and then, with spirits unconsciously elevated, and hearts not, I trust, insensible to the glories of nature, and the goodness of nature's God, resumed our pilgrimage.

Our route lay, throughout the whole of this day's progress, through green fields, and over narrow footpaths. Not so much as once were we driven to the necessity of following the high road; but taking our observations carefully, and bearing with wonderful exactness from point to point, we had already arrived within an hour's walk of Liebenau, before we were aware. While compassing the space that intervened between the village where our guide quitted us and this, which had been marked down as our resting-place for the night, we passed many striking and beautiful landscapes, such as I would willingly pause to describe, were human language capable of describing them faithfully. Everywhere around us, bold conical hills stood up, not a few of which bore upon their summits the ruins of old castles, while all were more or less clothed throughout with noble forests. For the portion of Bohemia which we were now crossing, may with perfect truth be represented as a succession of glorious valleys, overshadowed by not less glorious mountains. The straths are all of them fertile to an extraordinary degree, and as I have already stated, both they and the hill-sides abound with inhabitants. Yet is the country a mountain district, in every sense of the word, though the very mountains either are by nature, or have by industry been rendered, uncommonly fertile.

The great defect in Bohemian scenery, is the absence of water. There is scarcely a lake in the whole kingdom, and, with the exception of two or three, such as the Elbe, the Iser, the Bober, &c., the rivers hardly deserve to take rank with the larger class of our mountain streams. Such a defect is sorely felt by him who, looking down from the brow of a lofty hill over a wide plain, beholds perfection in every particular, except that there is no water there; and when from the narrower ravines you miss the lochs and tarns, which give to Cumberland and the Highlands of Scotland their peculiar character, your disappointment scarcely falls short of mortification. Perhaps, indeed, a double motive may have operated with us to produce this feeling. Our eyes pined, in the first place, for the object on which, in such situations, they had been accustomed at home to repose; and secondly, our fishing-rods felt like useless burdens in our hands. But it was not destined to be so for ever, as I shall have occasion, in the course of my narrative, to show.

We had walked well and stoutly,—the sort of half-rest which we enjoyed the day before giving fresh vigour to our limbs,—so that between two and three o'clock we ventured to calculate that Liebenau could not be far distant. Hunger and thirst were, however, beginning to be rather inconveniently felt; and as our calculations might after all be erroneous, we judged it prudent to seek, in a little ale-house by the way-side, such refreshment as could be procured. Our hotel was of the very humblest description; namely, the beer-house of a small hamlet, and could furnish only brown bread, cheese, butter, and beer. These, in the existing state of our appetites, went down famously; and a pipe of good tobacco to wind up withal, was not out of place. Neither was even this unpretending house of call destitute to us of subjects of interest. We found when we entered the tap-room two young men asleep on the benches, and a couple of large packs lying beside them. They awoke shortly afterwards, and proved to be, as we had expected, journeymen mechanics. For in Germany a custom universally prevails, that young men, after serving their apprenticeship to the trade which they intend to practise, go forth upon their travels, and dispose of their wares, not only in remote towns and villages of their native state, but in foreign lands. Some of these journeymen travel from Saxony, for example, as far as Hamburg and Copenhagen. Several make their way into France; and I have even heard of them penetrating both the wilds of Russia, and the classical and fair fields of Italy. The consequence is, that they return home with minds very much enlarged, and an acquaintance, more or less accurate, not only with the systems of commerce, but with the languages of foreign countries, and that a stranger is surprised on entering a shop in Dresden or Zittau, to find that French, and perhaps Italian and English, are understood by the tradesman who keeps it.

The young men whom we found in occupation of the tap-room were by trade cutlers. Natives of some obscure town in Prussian Silesia, of which I have forgotten the name, they were wandering about through Bohemia with the intention by-and-by of proceeding into Saxony, and so round by Berlin and Potsdam to their homes. Their knapsacks, which they hastened according to established usage to unbuckle, contained a plentiful supply of knives, forks, scissors, and razors; but the poor fellows were not successful in driving a bargain, for their charges were exorbitantly high, and their goods of an indifferent quality. Even the host himself bid but one-half their demand, and neither he nor we could bring the merchants to our terms.

While we were haggling about an eighteen-penny clasp knife, the door of the tap-room opened, and there entered an old man, clothed in rags, with a wallet at his back and a long piked stick in his hand; who, uncovering his head, knelt down upon the floor, and began to pray and cross himself with surprising volubility. My young companion gave him a piece of money, which checked his devotions only for a moment; for he merely looked at it, nodded his head again, and resumed his muttering with all possible eagerness. But at the termination of, perhaps, five minutes, his prayers seemed to have been told out,—for he rose and with a loud voice pronounced a benediction on the house and all that were in it. This done, he turned about, and walked away.

The whole affair was to us so novel in its character, that the questions which we put to the landlord were put eagerly, but our eagerness proved to be uncalled for. "Story! God bless you! I have none to tell, Sir." What we mistook for a striking incident, proved to be an everyday occurrence in Bohemia, and our imaginary palmer or devotee but a common beggar. And now, having touched on the subject, we proceeded to sound the depth of our host's information on the subject of gypsies. Where did they horde? how were we most likely to fall in with one of their camps, and what sort of treatment might we expect to receive at their hands? It was with some difficulty that we could make the honest man comprehend the object which we had in view; and when he did catch our meaning, his reply was brief and pithy. "The people you speak of we call Torpindas. They are an idle worthless set of vagabonds. They have no camps in Bohemia of which I ever heard,—neither is Bohemia their home. They come out of Hungary, and beg their way far and near in the summer months; going about in pairs or by threes, and sleeping at nights under sheds, or on the floors of such tap-rooms as are opened to them. I advise you to have as little to say to them as possible. Avowedly, they are mere beggars, but their hands are always prompt for picking and stealing, and they are said not to be over scrupulous in using their knives." Here, then, if our informant spoke correctly, was an end to one of the dreams which had prompted our incursion into Bohemia. But though we gave him full credit for speaking what he believed to be the truth, we took the liberty of questioning the accuracy of his information, particularly in reference to the more tremendous parts of it,—the hints touching the blood-thirsty propensities of the Torpindas. For the Austrian police is a great deal too vigilant to overlook, in any corner of the empire, the commission of murder; at least, the habitual perpetration of such a crime by any class of persons so marked as the gypsies. Though, therefore, we began to fear that we might be pursuing a shadow, and that either there were no gypsy camps to join, or that the excitement of such an adventure would not compensate for the desagrémens attending it, we did not at once lay aside our determination of making up to the first horde whom we should meet, and striving to become their guests for four-and-twenty hours, if not for longer.

We had now rested our allotted period, so we wished our companions good luck, and resuming our march arrived in Liebenau about half-past four o'clock. It is a clean, neat town; built along the side of a hill, and commanding a fine view, across the intervening valley, of a bolder range than its own; but of its means of accommodating strangers I cannot speak. For the day was yet so young, and we felt so unusually fresh and vigorous, that, after a brief consultation, it was agreed between us to push on, if possible, some five or six miles farther. We accordingly proceeded to the post-office; where, on consulting the head of the department, we learned that about two stunden,—that is, about six English miles further, on the way to Hoen Elbe, was a place called Marchovides, where we should find excellent quarters for the night. This was precisely the sort of intelligence which we could have wished to receive, and we lost no time in acting upon it.

Would that I possessed the power of bringing before my reader's eye even a faint representation of the magnificent scenery through which this late march carried us. After climbing with infinite toil a long and steep ridge, by crossing which a prodigious detour was to be saved, we gained a point whence, on one hand, the eye could range over no inconsiderable portion of Bohemia; while on the other, the snowy peaks of the Riesengebirgen bounded the prospect, though still separated from us by a wide breadth of highlands. Close at our feet, on either side, were deep rich valleys, highly cultivated as usual, and swarming with villages; while far away lay town and tower, castle and convent, forest and green meadow, mountain and ravine, producing by their combinations as glorious and diversified a panorama as it has ever been my good fortune to behold. And yet I am not sure that even this scene, striking as it seemed to be, was not cast into the shade, when, after dragging our weary limbs across the hollow, and gaining the opposite ridge, we opened out a prospect, narrower to be sure, but far surpassing, in rugged grandeur, any on which we had as yet gazed. Another deep ravine lay beneath us, dark with the forest which covered its base; beyond which uprose a chain of jagged and pine-clad rocks, resembling in their forms the fragments of some huge castle, or rather of an enormous city of castles, shaken by an earthquake into ruins. Even now I am not satisfied that among these tall and beetling crags there were no remnants of man's handiwork; for the gloom of twilight was upon them when I saw them first, and ere I had ceased to gaze it had well nigh deepened into night.

Extreme fatigue is a serious damper to enthusiasm of any sort, and keen as our relish of nature's more colossal forms might be, I am not sure that we would not have exchanged, at that moment, the view of these wonders, with all the train of thoughts arising out of them, for the interior of a snug room in a village inn, and a mess of calves' flesh, with a bottle of wine to drink after it. Of our village inn we as yet, however, saw no symptoms; and wearily and slowly step followed step, without, as it seemed, bringing us nearer to the object of our wishes. At last, just as darkness had fairly set in, we met, at the brow of a hill, a rustic, and received from him the gratifying intelligence that Marchovides lay about a quarter of an hour's walk distant, in the valley beyond. "And the gasthof," cried we, "what sort of a place is it? Can we get supper, and beds, and a bottle of wine?" "Oh, yes," replied the countryman, "it is a capital quarter. Wine, and every other thing that is good, may be had there for the asking." "This is as it should be," said we one to another, while recalling our energies for a final effort we hitched our packs higher upon our shoulders, and quickened our pace.

We had not walked far along the descent when, through the thickening gloom, numerous lights glancing from cottage windows made us aware that we were approaching Marchovides. We made for one of the first of these dwellings, inquired for the inn, had its situation accurately described to us, and hurried towards it. The first impression made upon us by this "excellent quarter," was far from favourable. It served the two-fold purpose of a mill and a gasthof; and whatever the comparative merits of the mill might be, the gasthof department was clearly not of the highest order. Before the door stood a wagon, which the wagoner was mending by the light of a lantern, while beneath the staircase a huge archway showed itself, filled—as on a nearer inspection I, to my horror, ascertained—with wagons also. "God help us," cried I, "we have travelled far to reach a sorry resting-place; for I am greatly deceived if this be not a house of call for wains, the drivers of which will probably be our companions both at bed and board." First impressions are not, however, at all times to be relied upon; so we did our best to thrust aside the unpleasant anticipations which were beginning to crowd upon us, and recollecting that there was no other alternative than either to lodge here, or pass the night hungry and cheerless in the open air, we put a bold face on the matter, and entered.

We had calculated justly, for things were not quite so bad as the apparition of the wagons had led us to anticipate. The saloon, on the threshold of which we stood, contained of living creatures only one man, somewhat passed the middle of life, who seemed to be in the act of making his toilette; an old woman busily engaged with her needle, three wenches, who moved hither and thither, now poking about the stove, now arranging dirty linen, apparently for the wash-tub, and one or two children. Tables and benches there were, as usual; also water-buckets, a few chairs, and a tub or two, while a line drawn the whole length of the apartment, about a foot and a half from the roof, supported, in graceful disarray, a profusion of coats, trousers, aprons, petticoats, and stockings. To complete the picture, there were no candles burning, not even a rosin taper; but here and there a piece of blazing bog-pine, either stuck in some cranny, or borne about in the hands of a domestic, cast over the scene a dark red light. I dare say we should have been delighted with all this, had we been assured of obtaining an apartment, into which, when tired of the sublime and beautiful, it might be competent for us to retire; but being quite uncertain on that head, our first measure was to question the sempstress touching both her ability and inclination to accommodate us. Never surely was the spirit of patient industry more strikingly illustrated than in the personage whom we now addressed. Her needle did not cease to hold its course one moment; scarcely, indeed, would she lift her eyes above her spectacles; while, in a tone by no means conciliating, she informed us, that she had no chamber, no flesh of any kind, no eggs, no white bread, nor any other article which, in the vanity of our souls, we had rashly named.

"Why they told me these were excellent quarters!" said I, horrified out of the exercise of my usual tactics.

"So they are!" was the answer; "this is a capital quarter."

"But you have no beds nor bed-rooms!"

"Oh yes, we have!"

"Won't you give us one, then?"

"No, I won't!"

"Why, my dear creature? Depend upon it, we will not run away with them."

"Very likely; but we have none to give you all the same."

This was a poser, and my companion and I looked at one another with rueful countenances; At length I resumed:—

"Your house seems to be a large one; how comes it that you have no sleeping accommodation for your guests?"

"This is a large apartment," interposed the half-clad man from his distant table; "we can accommodate plenty of guests that are not too grand for us, here."

"Oho!" exclaimed I, "you can make up beds for us on the floor. That will do well enough; and now for supper."

The facility with which I slid into their peculiar views of comfortable sleeping accommodations seemed to have a very salutary effect upon the tempers of our hosts; for the half-clad man turned out to be the husband of the sewing woman, as well as a person of considerable importance in his own neighbourhood. The old lady discovered that there were some eggs in the cupboard after all, and that certain slices of bacon remained from a stock which had been laid in some time previously. Moreover, the cellar contained some wine; neither very strong nor very high flavoured, certainly, but sound and wholesome, as we discovered on trial, and more acceptable to our palates than beer. To work, therefore, the dame and her maidens went, and in half an hour we saw before us, on a nice clean cloth, and by the flame of a farthing rushlight, half a dozen eggs, sundry lumps of pork, some rye-bread and butter, and a flask of white wine. They did not continue long in the order of their integrity. The eggs disappeared in a twinkling. Several fierce inroads were made into the bread and butter, and even the bacon suffered considerably. As to the wine, it passed away like water spilled upon the ground, which cannot be gathered up again. But there was another enemy pressing us sore, over and above hunger. We had walked upwards of thirty English miles, and my companion especially could scarcely keep his eyes open,—a circumstance which was not slow in attracting the attention of our now obliging hostess, and for which she hastened to provide. Some trusses of good clean straw were brought into the room and spread upon the floor. Over these was laid a sort of mattress, and the youngster, dressed as he was, cast his knapsack down for a pillow, and threw himself on the couch thus prepared for him. In five minutes he was just as happy as if he had rested on his own bed at Schandau.

Meanwhile sundry persons, all of them young men, entered the tap-room, and visions of wagoners snoring on the floor beside me began again to haunt my imagination; when, to my great relief, I ascertained that these were "the miller's men," who, having eaten their supper with the female members of the family, would withdraw to their nests in the cock-loft. And truly this affair of the domestics' supper was curious enough. Heaven knows what the mess might be, which, being brought piping hot from the oven, was planted down in a brown stew-pan, right in the centre of one of the tables; but the appetites of the twelve persons who forthwith gathered round it, spoon in hand, appeared excellent. It was quite edifying to behold the order, and silence, and regularity with which, one after another, they shovelled their respective portions into their mouths; and how patiently they endured the intense heat, which, judging from the hissing of the stew, must have accompanied each ladleful. Finally, the dish being emptied, they rose with one accord, and departed, the young men to their mattresses, or, it may be, to their occupations about the mill,—the young women to fulfil what remained of their daily tasks.

While this was going on, the landlord and I were keeping up an animated conversation, of which I remember nothing more than that it turned chiefly upon the state of his own family and affairs, and tended to impress me with becoming notions of his dignity. Indeed, I may state, once for all, that the landlord of a German inn, whether it be an hotel in a capital, or like this at Marchovides, a beer-shop in a remote village, is in his own eyes a person of very considerable importance. While his wife, poor soul, performs all the menial offices about you, which the domestics either cannot, or are not expected to perform, the host himself is content to keep you in talk, which he not unfrequently accomplishes by sitting down beside you, and helping you to discuss your wine or beer. Nor does it inflict the slightest wound upon your dignity, whatever your station in life may be, to fall in with his humours. If you cut him short, you may miss the opportunity of learning something which you could have wished to learn, and you are sure to suffer from the diminished attention which is shown to you ever after. If you indulge him, you may be bored for a while, it is true; but you have the satisfaction of reflecting, that you neither wounded a private man's feelings, nor offered wanton outrage to the customs of a community.

Like my boy I was by this time getting tired and sleepy; and I cast sundry wishful glances towards the heap of straw. The landlord understood my situation, and hastened to assure me that we should have the whole of the chamber to ourselves, and that if I would lie down, the place should be cleared for us in a quarter of an hour. "For, to tell you the truth," cried he, "we all sleep, my wife, and I, and the children, and these wenches, in a little chamber beyond; the whole house, large as you justly observed that it was, being occupied, either as store-rooms for flour, or with the machinery of the mill." I begged my friend not to put his household to the smallest inconvenience on my account, and lying down beside my companion, closed my eyes.

I soon found, however, that sleep was out of the question. The temperature of the apartment could not be less than a hundred degrees, and there were so many dim lights and strange figures passing to and fro, that all my efforts to abstract myself from them proved fruitless. I therefore opened my eyes again, and lay to observe the issue. In a short time landlord, landlady, and children withdrew. Then followed a sort of clearing-up of odds and ends by the maidens, and last of all a washing of feet and legs. This latter operation amused me exceedingly, and I could not resist the inclination which I felt of complimenting the lasses on their fair proportions. But they did not on that account lower their drapery a jot. On the contrary they laughed heartily, and chatted to me all the time their ablutions went forward, and wished me a sound sleep as soon as they were finished. As they carried with them the last of the torches, their wish was, in some measure, accomplished; for my eyes, after repeated efforts, closed of their own accord, and were not opened again, except during feverish and brief intervals, till five o'clock next morning.

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CHAPTER V.

MARCH RENEWED. SCENERY MORE AND MORE GRAND. A POPULATION OF WEAVERS. HOCHSTADT. THE ISER. MAGNIFICENT RIVER, AND CAPITAL TROUTING. STARKENBACH. EXTREME KINDNESS OF THE INHABITANTS. CARRIED TO THE CHANCELLOR'S HOUSE. FISH THE ISER AGAIN. THE EFFECT OF MY SPORT ON A RELIGIOUS PROCESSION. SUPPER AT THE HIGH BAILIFF'S. GAME AT CHESS. TAKE LEAVE OF OUR KIND HOSTS WITH MUTUAL REGRET.

Our toilet this morning was very speedily completed. A dip of the whole head into a basin of water, and a hasty and imperfect rinse of the hands; these, with the application of tooth-brush, hair-brush, and razor, to their respective departments, put us in marching order; and coffee being served without delay, by six we were en route. Hoen Elbe, not far from the fountain of the mighty Elbe, was our proposed point. But

The best laid schemes of mice and men,

Gang aft awry,

and Hoen Elbe we were destined never to behold.

Our road to-day led over a succession of hills, each of which introduced us to scenery more wild and rugged than before; for each new step was now bringing us nearer and nearer to the loftiest of the Riesengebirg range. Still the population appeared not to diminish. The villages, if poorer and meaner, were not less frequent than ever, and each individual cottage seemed to swarm with inmates. We were, however, greatly struck with the squalid and unhealthy appearance of these poor people. Unlike our own mountaineers, the inhabitants of the Bohemian hills seem to be a race every way inferior to the occupants of the plain. The men are short, thin, and apparently feeble, with pale cheeks and sickly complexions. The women, over and above these disadvantages, are almost all goitred, and the children look like creatures born in sin and brought up to misery. Probably all this is owing as much to the sort of life which these highlanders lead, as to the severity of their climate. They are all either weavers, or spinners and teazers of flax, except the very few whose services are required in the cultivation of a barren soil. Now, were you to shut up even a hardy Argyleshire shepherd, in a heated chamber, where he should be condemned to breathe all day long foul air, abundantly mixed with minute portions of flax and wool, you would probably find, at the end of the year, that he was not what he used to be ere he took to spinning. I think, then, that I am right in concluding that the mountaineers of Bohemia would be like the mountaineers of Scotland, were they similarly employed; and I am quite sure that a more revolting spectacle is not to be seen anywhere than that which a mountain district presents, of which the inhabitants are chiefly weavers.

It is not, however, entirely to their devotion to sedentary pursuits that we are justified in attributing the squalid and unhealthy appearance of these highlanders. They are all manufacturers on their own account. They do not work for any master, nor receive, as a necessary consequence, regular wages; but they card the flax, spin the thread, weave the web, and carry it to market, all at their own risk, and in obedience to the spirit of speculation. If the articles take, then are they well off for a season; if the contrary result ensue, they must carry it home again, and sad, indeed, is their condition. I need scarcely add, that it was by these mountaineers, and their rivals on the Prussian side of the Riesengebirg range, that the most valuable of the German cotton and linen goods used to be produced; and that, till within the last quarter of a century, even our own manufacturers were quite unable to compete with them. The case is now, however, widely different, and they feel and mourn the result bitterly. Nor is it surprising that there should be gendered among them a strong prejudice against the English people. They carry this so far, in many instances, as to believe that the Bohemian and Silesian marks are forged by the manufacturers of Manchester and Glasgow; and that their goods are thrown back upon their hands because an inferior article is palmed off at the great fairs, and sold as if fabricated by themselves.

When people lose their way in other countries, it is for the lack of roads. In Bohemia, the multiplicity of roads is quite perplexing. I am sure that we went this day a full league, if not more, out of our way, from repeatedly following the wrong path, and being as often compelled to retrace our steps. Once, after climbing to the ridge of a lofty mountain, we learned, to our horror, that the road which we ought to have pursued, ran in the very bottom of the glen which we had quitted; and twice the good people's directions were given in a language so barbarous, that we could make nothing of them. But after a good deal of fatigue, and no trifling share of enjoyment, we reached, at twelve o'clock, the town of Hochstadt, the place at which, as it was represented to be only three hours' march from Hoen Elbe, we had resolved to dine. We had timed our arrival admirably; for twelve o'clock is, in Germany, the common hour of dinner; and of the fare which was served up in the neat little inn towards which our steps were turned, we had no right to complain.

Hochstadt, so named from the elevated nature of its situation, stands on the summit of a mountain, and is raised probably not less than three thousand feet above the level of the sea. It commands a magnificent mountain view, with a much larger scattering both of vegetation and culture, than we had any right to expect. Bleak it doubtless must be, in winter, for just across the valley which dips down from it on the west, are hills whose tops retain their snowy coverings till August; while eastward is an immense plain, undulating here and there, but scarcely broken by the wooded cones that are scattered over it. But in the month of June, when we beheld it, the landscape is exceedingly interesting, and the promise of an abundant harvest was bright. There was nothing, however, either in the town or its vicinity, to detain us longer than the space of time that might be necessary to appease our hunger and rest our limbs: so, between one and two, we paid our bill, took our host's directions, and departed. He told us that if we walked well, we might reach the Iser in an hour and a half, after which we could not be more than an hour and a half removed from Hoen Elbe.

Who that has read Campbell's glorious ballad of Hohenlinden, would not feel his imagination warmed by the thought of standing even for an hour, on the banks of "Iser rolling rapidly?" Who, likewise, that is acquainted with Sir Humphry Davy's exquisite Consolations, and has, as the amiable philosopher had, a true relish for the gentle craft of angling, would not begin to put his rod together as soon as Iser's waters met his view? For my own part, I cannot undertake to say which principle operated with me most powerfully,—whether the romantic associations which Campbell's muse must ever call up, or the more matter-of-fact, but hardly less animated description, which Sir Humphry gives of the capital sport which he had in a stream of the same name; but of this fact I am quite certain, that the hopes of discovering the river behind every eminence, or coming suddenly upon it as I emerged from each successive grove, served to render me, during this hour and a half's progress, proof against the encroachments of weariness. And my wishes were gratified at last. Just after we had obtained a glimpse of what we knew to be the iron foundry at Eisenhammer, we beheld rolling his waters beneath us, the Iser himself, not like the Elbe, in a troubled and dingy stream, nor, after the fashion of most of its tributaries, with a mere thread of silver, but roaring and chafing from pool to pool, or else gathered in a black mass under some huge crag, as if intervals of repose were necessary to the element itself, and it could repose only in darkness. And then when we cast our eyes along the banks,—the sides of magnificent mountains,—feathered from their bases with ancient forests, out of which, from time to time, a bald rock projected, truly we were forced to admit, that to obtain this gratification alone, all our fatigues had been well endured, and that here we might stand still without repining. But there was something more to be done than to admire the fair river. Out came the fishing-rods from their cases, down we hurried, loaded as we were, to the river's brink, and flies being selected, such as we judged would suit the state of the water, we set to work. Our sport was admirable. Not a trout rose under three-quarters of a pound weight, and several fell little short of three pounds, so that at the hour's end, all the space which we ventured to allow ourselves, we had laid in an ample stock of fresh fish for supper.

There was no resisting the temptation to which our excellent sport in the Iser had subjected us. It was impossible to leave such a stream behind; so we made up our minds to a halt at Eisenhammer for the night, and after devoting the morrow exclusively to fishing, to add the lost hour and a half to the march of the day following. With this view we crossed the bridge, and entered the sort of hamlet, which consists merely of the foundry, and of a long range of buildings, occupied partly by the superintendents of the works, partly as a gasthof. In this gasthof, however, no separate chamber was to be had, and, though the reverse of fastidious, we could not quite make up our minds to spend a second night as we had done a former one at Marchovides. But we were happily relieved from the dilemma. One of the gentlemen whose duty it is to direct the workmen in the foundry, informed us that we should find at Starkenbach, about an hour's walk to the right, excellent accommodations, and putting us under the guidance of two travelling journeymen who were going that way, expressed his hope that he would see us again on the morrow. To the civility and kindness of that gentleman, we were much indebted both then and afterwards, and I am glad, though he may never be aware of the fact, thus publicly to acknowledge my obligations to him.

We reached Starkenbach about six o'clock, after a pleasant walk through green fields, and made for what had been represented as the best inn, a gasthof in the market-place. The landlady's manner was, as usual, somewhat repulsive at first, but the cloud soon passed from her brow. No sooner was it made known to her that we were Englishmen, travelling for amusement, than she bestirred herself sedulously to provide for our comforts; and we soon found ourselves in possession of a snug apartment, with the prospect before us of a good supper at the hour named by ourselves. But this was not all. An Englishman had never been seen in Starkenbach before, and as it had been at Gabel, so it was here,—multitudes of all ranks and classes flocked to obtain a glimpse of us. Moreover, it soon appeared that they came with more generous intentions than to gratify an idle curiosity, however innocent in itself. The real motive of one of them was, indeed, disguised under an affected anxiety to discharge an irksome duty; but the delicacy which prompted him thus to throw a temporary shade over his kindness, only enhanced the value of the kindness itself in our eyes.

Our landlady had been all civility and attention. Not only were water and other means of dressing supplied in abundance, but we had some difficulty in persuading her that her proposal to wash us from top to toe with her own hands could not be acceded to. We were thus in the midst of our ablutions when in walked a well-dressed young man, who began by saying, in Italian, that he understood we spoke that language, and that he was desired by the landlord to ascertain whether our room was to our liking. We assured him that it was, and expected, of course, that he would leave us free to go on with our dressing operations; but nothing of the sort took place. What were we?—Englishmen, he was aware; but had we any business, or did we come to dispose of any goods? We satisfied him on this head also, upon which he retired for a moment, but soon returned again. There was a gentleman in the next room, the head of the graff's chancery, who spoke French, and would be glad to make our acquaintance. We begged that he might be introduced, and in he came, followed by several others.

"You know, Messieurs," said he, "that we are obliged in this country to act somewhat uncivilly to strangers. You have, of course, a passport?"

I produced my passport at once; it was the only time I ever had occasion to show it in this quarter of Bohemia; but I was immediately taught by his manner of examining it, that the question relative to passports was a mere pretext on the part of the chancellor, for opening with us a friendly conversation; he contented himself by glancing hastily at the signature of the Austrian minister, and laid it down. And now began a discussion which I was reluctantly forced to interrupt by reminding him of the unfinished state of my toilet, and by begging that he would have the goodness to wait for a few minutes in another apartment till it should be completed. He withdrew at once, with numerous apologies, and carried his train along with him.

So far we had good reason to be satisfied with the reception that was awarded us in Starkenbach; but the kindness of its inhabitants was far from stopping here. After loitering about for a quarter of an hour, and receiving no renewed visit from the chancellor, we strolled out, with the intention of taking a survey of the environs while yet daylight lingered; but we had not proceeded far when our friend overtook us, and offered to be our guide. Nor was this all. In the most modest yet hospitable manner imaginable, he said that he would feel highly honoured and flattered if we would make his house our home during our stay in Starkenbach, and when we objected to his proposal on the ground that such a proceeding would not be fair towards the innkeeper, he assured us that that point was settled already. In a word, though he consented to be our guest at supper, which having been actually cooked could not be put aside, nothing short of the removal of our knapsacks from the inn would satisfy him, and we found ourselves in consequence, about ten o'clock at night, under the shadow of his hospitable roof.

The habitation of which we had thus unexpectedly become the inmates, consisted of a suite of apartments in one of the numerous outbuildings attached to the schloss of Graff Horach, the lord of the manor. Though not very commodious, it was both clean and comfortable; and served to satisfy the wishes of its occupant; whose family consisted only of a young wife, and two female servants. For a German of the class to which our friend belongs is not ambitious of living in a style above either his means or his pretensions, and the ideas of Germans, generally, relative to what is essential to the comforts of home, are far more humble than ours. This gentleman and his bride, for example, (and a bride she might be termed, having been married only half a year,) were content to eat and sleep in the same apartment, the elegance of which was little, if at all, broken in upon by the couple of neat box beds with silk coverings, which occupied one of the corners. In like manner the chamber which was assigned to us, at once more capacious and better furnished, led through theirs; a circumstance which not only appeared in no wise to disturb or annoy them, but of which they took advantage to press their good offices upon us. For, as our host would hardly leave us at night till we were ready to step into bed, so, no sooner were we astir in the morning, than in he came, anxious to know how we had rested, as well as to offer his services in supplying any want of which we might experience the pressure. I really never saw, in any country, or among any class of people, such incessant and genuine hospitality.

We had barely time, over-night, to be introduced to the lady of the mansion. In the morning we met her at breakfast, and her first act was to add her entreaties to those of her husband, that we would not think of leaving them that day. What need was there for so much haste? We had been pleased with the scenery of the Iser; why not visit it again? Or if that were not agreeable to us, there were various points in the immediate vicinity of the town, which it might be worth our while to inspect. We could not hold out against such arguments, more especially as they happened to accord exactly with our own wishes; so we agreed to fish the Iser once more, and return to sup and sleep at the chancellor's.

This point being settled to the satisfaction of all the parties concerned, we proceeded to equip ourselves in our travelling costume, and, rod in hand, bent our steps towards Eisenhammer. A more unpropitious day for the angler can scarcely be imagined; for a cold east wind blew, and from time to time a thin drizzling rain beat in our faces. Still we determined to make the attempt, and truly we had no cause to repent of our resolution. In the course of four hours, which we devoted to the sport, we caught upwards of ten pounds of trout; the number of fish killed being at the same time only eleven,—a clear proof that the Bohemian Iser deserves just as much praise as Sir Humphry Davy, in his charming little book, has bestowed upon its namesake near Munich. But killing the trout constituted by no means the sole amusement which we that day enjoyed. An English fishing-rod and English tackle were objects quite as novel to the good folks of Eisenhammer, as they had been to the citizens of Gabel; and the consequence was, that we had the entire population of the village and hamlets round, in our train. And the astonishment of these simple people, first at the machinery, and then at our mode of using it, I have no language to describe. When first I hooked a trout, there was a general rush to the river-side,—the movement being produced, manifestly enough, by alarm lest the line should break; and though the animal was floundering and springing about in twelve feet of water at least, two or three young men could scarcely be restrained from jumping in. But when they saw the monster, and a very large fellow he was, after running away with some fathoms of line, and bending the rod like a willow-wand, gradually lose his strength, and sail reluctantly towards the shore, I really thought they would have gone crazy with delight. They jumped about, swore, and shouted like mad people, and made such a plunge into the shallows, to bring him out, that we had well-nigh lost him. The scene was altogether quite irresistible.

There was no work performed that day in the iron foundry. Every soul belonging to it, from the superintendent down to the errand-boy, came forth to swell our train; and we walked up the Iser, attended as never Highland chief was, even in the good old times of heritable jurisdictions. Nor was this all. A religious procession, that is to say, a numerous body of peasants from some of the villages near, bound on a pilgrimage to the shrine of St. James in Starkenbach, happened to descend the hill just as I was playing a fish, and the effect produced upon them was quite as miraculous as could have been brought about by the saint himself. The sound of their psalmody ceased. The crucifix was lowered, and man and woman, boy and maiden, breaking loose from their ranks, flocked down, en masse, to ascertain the cause of so strange a phenomenon. I suspect that St. James received but a scanty allowance of worship that evening; at least, I am sure that the number of his votaries became sadly diminished; for when the chant rose again, and the crucifix was uplifted as a signal for moving, the retinue that attended it, came short by at least one-half of that which had followed, with all imaginable decorum, as far as the banks of the Iser.

It was now getting on towards three o'clock, and as the weather, instead of improving, became every moment more boisterous, we determined to abandon our fishing. We accordingly adjourned to the gasthof, where a roasted fowl had been prepared for us, and made a hearty dinner, in the midst of the same crowd which had watched our mode of operations on the river. To them we were obliged to explain the whole process by which rods are unscrewed and put together again, reels turned round, and flies attached to casting lines; and I dare say that to this hour, they have not ceased to talk about the whole affair as an invention, second in point of ingenuity, only to the steam-engine.

This done, we became, in our turn, the querists. We begged to be conducted over the foundry, and our wishes were immediately attended to. It is on a small scale, but apparently very complete, with one furnace and numerous models; and it was stated to supply very many of the manufacturies both in Bohemia and Austria Proper, with the iron-work required for their machinery. As to the ore itself, that is found in abundance among the hills hard by, and is said to be of excellent quality. I need scarcely add, that, though they have pit-coal at their command, they use only coke and charcoal for smelting, because everybody knows that for such purposes charcoal is the most approved species of fuel.

We had had a capital day's sport, and the rain having at length ceased, we turned our faces towards Starkenbach. The fish, with which we loaded a countryman, and conveyed by his means to our host's dwelling, caused almost as much astonishment there, as our mode of catching them had occasioned at Eisenhammer. Not only our hosts, but their domestics, and not they alone, but the people in the streets as we passed, shouted and clapped their hands at the spectacle. But the chancellor had other and more agreeable occupation chalked out for us, than listening to the exclamations of his clients. He led us through the town, took us to call upon the priest,—a respectable-looking old man, who had expressed a wish to be introduced to us,—and informed us that he had ventured to accept in our name an invitation from the grand bailiff, to sup in his apartments. It may be necessary, perhaps, to add, that the grand bailiff is the graff's representative, who not only manages his private affairs, but superintends the proceedings of the chancery, and who is, therefore, in the absence of the graff himself, by far the most important personage in the herschafte.

The grand bailiff's apartments, which formed part of the schloss itself, were both large and well furnished. There were no carpets on the floors, of course,—the Germans make very little use of carpets anywhere,—but his dining-room was amply stocked with chairs, sofas, tables, cabinets, and mirrors, and his cuisine, though plain, was excellent. We were so fortunate, moreover, as to meet at his table, not only the whole of the chancery, but the commissary of the circle, who happened to be going his rounds, and who proved a very agreeable addition to our party.

The supper was good, and the Hungarian wine of excellent flavour. The attentions of the bailiff and his lady were likewise unremitting; indeed, the latter was almost too kind, for she seemed anxious that we should eat of every dish, and drink out of every flask and bottle. We had a little music too,—for she played the piano; and the commissary, likewise a performer, paid us the compliment to dash off in very good style, "God save the King." But the circumstance which amused me most of all remains to be stated. I was asked if I played chess; and I replied in the affirmative, adding, however, as the facts of the case required, that I was no master of the game. Immediately a petition was brought forward, that I would play one game with the bailiff. He had heard much of the extraordinary skill of Englishmen in this noble game, and being a little of an amateur himself, it had long been his ambition to measure his strength with that of an Islander. Alas for my country! she had but a sorry champion to sustain her honour; for, if the truth must be spoken, though I get very much interested in chess after the game has fairly begun, I always sit down to it as Dr. Johnson says he did to Paradise Lost, as to a task. And the consequence is, that, avoiding it wherever I can, I have not yet entitled myself to pass muster in the first class of bunglers. But it would have been cruel to thwart the hospitable bailiff in his humours, so to it we fell. I don't think that he and his friends gave me quite fair play. With one accord they ranged themselves on the side of their countryman, and, complimenting my adroitness all the while, they assisted him in every difficulty with their counsels. However, the result would have been, I make no doubt, the same, had they remained silent. I was soundly beaten, and my worthy host rose up as much pleased as if he had conquered a province. I learned from the chancellor next day, that to have lost the game would have seriously affected his peace of mind. I am therefore heartily glad that fortune declared in his favour.

My tale of Starkenbach is told. We returned to the chancellor's to sleep, breakfasted with him and his interesting young wife next morning, and at seven o'clock took the road to Troutenau, which he recommended as a good halting-place. His last words at parting were, "Nous sons beaucoup triste," and when I added "Et nous aussi," I spoke but as I felt.

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CHAPTER VI.

THE ELBE, A MOUNTAIN-STREAM. WE FISH IT. DINE ON OUR FISH IN A VILLAGE INN. THE YOUNG TORPINDA. ARNAU. THE STATUES IN THE MARKET-PLACE. THE FRANCISCAN CONVENT. TROUTENAU. THE WANDERING MINSTRELS. MARCH CONTINUED. FISH THE RIVER. A VILLAGE INN, AND ACCOUNT OF THE TORPINDAS. OUR FIRST MEETING WITH THESE FORMIDABLE PEOPLE IN A WOOD. ANOTHER PEDESTRIAN TOURIST. ADERSPACH. EXCELLENT QUARTERS. MOST REMARKABLE ROCKS. THE MINSTRELS AGAIN.

Our journey towards Troutenau was for a while prolific in few events, with an account of which it is worth while to entertain my reader. In point of scenery, each new step that we took introduced us to new and constantly varying beauties; but on that head I have said as much, perhaps more, than was necessary. For who, after all, can so describe nature's handiwork, as to create in the mind of him who has never looked upon the original, anything like a correct idea of what it is? The painter may indeed accomplish this, though even he will accomplish it imperfectly; but the mere narrator,—in good sooth, his words, however appropriate, must ever fall comparatively dull upon the ear, which is not the organ through which to convey to the mind any notion, however incomplete, of external scenery. When, then, I have stated, that our path carried us over hill and dale,—that we threaded deep forests, and from time to time traversed an open plain, and that all this while the snowy ridges of the Riesengebirgen stood up like a wall upon our left hand, I have left myself nothing in the shape of description to add, out of which the reader could hope to derive an accession, either to his information or his amusement.

Of one occurrence that befel in the course of this day's pilgrimage, it is, however, necessary that I should take notice. At the distance of perhaps ten English miles from Starkenbach, we came upon the Elbe; how unlike to the lordly river with which we formed our first acquaintance at Hamburg, and which two months' residence at Schandau had latterly made so familiar to us! A narrow mountain-stream,—so narrow, indeed, and so shallow, that a mere rustic bridge sufficed to span it,—was all that reminded us of that prodigious body of water, which serves as a channel of communication between Dresden and the North Sea, and fertilizes in its course the plains of Bohemia, Saxony, Prussia, Mecklenburg, Hanover, and even Denmark. The fact is, as I need scarcely pause to state, that we were now but a short day's march from its source, which lies,—a mere fountain or well-head,—in the side of the mountain that overhangs Hoen Elbe. As our friend the chancellor had assured us, however, that at the well-head in question there was really nothing to see, we determined to leave it unexplored, and to push on, instead, as far as Aderspach, where we were given to understand that nature had accomplished many freaks well deserving to be noted.

Though the Elbe was by no means so promising as the Iser, we yet felt that to pass it by untried, while we had fishing-rods in our hands, would be disgraceful to us as anglers. The implements were accordingly screwed together, and for half-an-hour we threw our flies with all our accustomed skill, and more than our usual patience; but we gathered little by the exercise of these qualities. A few grayling, with a trout or two of meagre dimensions, alone rewarded our care; and these, we judiciously concluded, were not of sufficient value to compensate for the loss of time that would be sustained in adding to their numbers. Besides we found that our strange attire and gestures created much alarm among the junior branches of one or two small communities through which we passed. The children, wherever we came, ran from the water's edge screaming with fright; a pretty broad hint that our company was not desired, at least by them.

We dined this day in a clean tidy little ale-house, the landlady of which cooked our trout, and supplied us with bread and butter, and beer. She was a member of what seemed to be a remarkably happy, as well as primitive family, where three generations dwelt together in harmony; the oldest and the youngest being, as she informed us, dependant on the exertions of her husband, and the profits of the inn. Neither were we without a trifling adventure, such as it was. While we were smoking our pipes after dinner, a gypsy, or Torpinda, entered, and we had him up to our table forthwith, that we might reconnoitre and catechise him. He was a mere lad, apparently not more than sixteen or seventeen years of age, though in costume, complexion, and expression of countenance, a perfect specimen of his tribe. His dress was a broad-brimmed low hat, a dark brown cloak with sleeves, and a solitary under-garment, which, woven apparently without seam, served him for vest, pantaloons, and stockings. The only apertures in these curious looking pantoufles which we could detect, were from the heel to about midway in the calf of the leg, and these were carefully laced-up with brass wires.

Under his cloak the youth carried a calf's-skin pouch, which was suspended from a leathern belt that crossed his right shoulder; and we observed that this latter piece of dress was ornamented with exceeding care. It was indented all over with minute lines, not very unlike the tatooing on a South Sea islander's face; and it bore, just over the chest, a lion's head made of brass, from a ring attached to which were suspended about twenty or thirty brass pipe-pickers. His avowed object in entering the beer-house was to dispose of some of these latter, which he offered for sale at three kreutzers a-piece; and I need scarcely add that we became purchasers. But we were not content with the pickers. Having questioned him as to the value which he put upon his belt, I pulled out the money, and offered to purchase that too; but he would not part with it; and to all our questions touching the head-quarters of his tribe he turned a deaf ear. He either could not, or would not, understand us; and made his escape on the first lull that took place in our conversation.

There is no denying that the whole appearance of this youth was very picturesque, but it was a great deal more picturesque than attractive. His long shaggy hair and dark olive complexion were alike remarkable; but the expression of his countenance was decidedly bad, and he never looked you straight in the face. To be sure, the treatment which, in common with others of his class, he probably receives from the Bohemians, is not calculated to make him fall in love with them; for the people of the country seem to regard these wanderers with a mixture of contempt and loathing. Yet I imagined that I read in that downcast look, and in the stealthy air which attached to all his movements, marks of the sort of training which may be expected to produce an accomplished vagabond. I dare say that young fellow knew perfectly well how to silence the cackling of a barn-door fowl in a hurry, and might not be inexpert in the operation of removing quietly a knapsack, or other load, from beneath a sleeping man's head. But the thews and sinews of the boy, and I may add, of all of his tribe whom we encountered, were not such as to impress me with any very exalted ideas of their strength or prowess. I fancied that, with the aid of a good stick, I should not be afraid to give any three of them the knives of which I had heard so much, and then join battle.

When the boy was gone we proceeded to question our landlady as to the habits of his people, and we received from her an account corresponding in all respects with that which our first informant had given us. She added, over and above, that there was no trusting them; that they were deceitful to a degree unparalleled among men, and that no arts or offices of kindness ever won their forbearance. We listened to her statements more than half disposed to credit them, yet we adhered to our original determination, nevertheless, of joining the first gypsy camp on which, during the course of our tour, we might stumble.

By this time it was necessary to move; and I state the fact in consequence of a trifling incident, illustrative, I conceive, of the extreme honesty of this simple people. We had advanced, perhaps, a quarter of an English mile towards Arnau, a town through which our route lay, when we heard a female voice shouting behind us, and on turning round saw our landlady in full pursuit. I had left behind me on the table a penknife,—of very little value, inasmuch as one of the blades was broken,—and this good woman would not permit me to be the loser of it. When I add, that she was in a state during which running must have been both inconvenient and hurtful to her, the strength of the principle which urged her to bring me my knife will be better understood.

Arnau is an old-fashioned town, with a wide market-place, in the centre of which stand two colossal statues, representing two warriors in complete armour, each armed with a sword. The people told us they were of very ancient date, and represented the two knights, by whom, in old times, the town was founded. There is, besides, a convent of Franciscan monks in the immediate neighbourhood, which contains eighty brothers; a clumsy pile, evidently of modern construction, and resembling in its exterior a manufactory, much more than a house of religious persons. One of the brothers we met in the town, to whom the children seemed to pay much respect. His dress was a brown coarse frock, a bare head, with a shaven crown, bare legs, sandals for his feet, and a rosary of black beads fastened round his middle. I asked him the way to Troutenau, and received a very short, and somewhat unsatisfactory answer.

We did not halt in Arnau, neither were we tempted to solicit admission into the convent. I had been initiated into all the mysteries of such a place of abode long ago; and my young companion appeared more anxious to reach Aderspach and Schnee-Koppee as speedily as possible, than to take his first lesson in monachism here. It was well, too, that, retaining our resolution of passing that night at Troutenau, we had self-denial enough to pass the monastery by; for a long and toilsome way was before us, which we did not compass till past seven o'clock. No doubt the march was prolific in objects to charm the sense of sight. As we drew towards them, the snowy mountains assumed continually a bolder and more striking aspect; while, several of the villages, and one schloss, which was undergoing repair, drew forth our liveliest admiration. But the journey proved to be, upon the whole, both tedious and toilsome; and right glad were we, when, on gaining the summit of a steep ascent, we beheld Troutenau at our feet. We made directly for the inn, which was recommended as the best; and, except that the house was full of workmen, our chamber small, and our beds detestable, we have no right to put down the Gasthof zum Weissen Ross, as one of the bad places of call on the march to Schnee-Koppee.

The inn was in great confusion, for unfortunately for ourselves we arrived at a moment when bricklayers, carpenters, and plasterers were busy in counteracting the effect of time and rough usage almost everywhere, except in the coffee-room. This latter, however, proved to be comfortable enough; and we enjoyed it the more that it was divided into two compartments, one of which was allotted to the humbler classes of travellers, while the other, which commanded a view of the square, was assigned to gentlefolks. Moreover there occurred two circumstances, which, by furnishing us with objects of contemplation, contributed to make the evening pass lightly away. First, we saw from our window the completion of a ceremony similar to that which at Eisenhammer we had so cruelly interrupted by our fishing. A whole posse of peasants, male and female, with crucifix and mass-book at their head, marched in procession towards the market-cross; and, after chanting a hymn, fell down upon their knees, one after another, and covered the hands and feet of the stone statues that ornamented it, with kisses. This done, the larger number dispersed, and, as it seemed, retired quietly to their homes. But there were others who appeared to think that a work so pious as that in which they had been engaged merited, on the part of the body, some refreshment. These adjourned to the inn, and drank sundry flasks of beer with great relish.

In the next place we found that the outer portion of the coffee-room was occupied in part by a band of wandering musicians,—a sort of calling which is in Bohemia very frequent, and which, both there and elsewhere in Germany, holds a higher place in public estimation than among us. These men wore a sort of uniform, namely, high-crowned white hats, with flowers in the front, gray frocks, and half-boots; and their performance, I am bound to add, was by no means contemptible. They played one or two airs very sweetly under the burgomaster's window, which, as the said window looked out into the square, enabled us, as well as a multitude of the town's-people, to share in the treat.

We retired early to bed, for we were a good deal fatigued, and the cold,—an unusual ground of complaint with us ever since we set out from home,—was disagreeable. The truth indeed is, that we were now at a great elevation above the level of the sea, and that the wind happening to blow from Schnee-Koppee, the back of which, white with the deposit of a thousand storms, lay towards us, came keen and biting. So sharp, indeed, was the temperature, that the landlord, whom we consulted relative to the nature of a river which, with a broad clear current, flows past the town, assured us that it would be vain to think of fishing in it, because though it abounded with fine trout, the season was not sufficiently advanced to admit of their being taken with the rod and line. I took the liberty in this case, as in the case of the gypsies, to credit something less than half of the intelligence conveyed to me; and I found, on the morrow, when the question was tried on its own merits, that I had come to the right conclusion.

It was a fine bright bracing morning, and the clocks were striking seven when we quitted Troutenau; a very pretty clean town, well situated, on the slope of a hill, and commanding, as I have hinted above, a noble view of the snowy ridges of the Riesengebirgen. Aderspach was our point for the day,—a place represented to us as well worth visiting on account of the remarkable rocks and fells which abound in its vicinity. As it was said, however, to be no more than three or four stunden distant, we did not think that we were required to make any extraordinary exertions, and the river looked so tempting, that, in spite of the landlord's advice to the contrary, we resolved to try it. We cannot boast much of our success. Three or four grayling, with a trout of moderate size, were all the prizes that rewarded our toil, till we came to a deep pool, into which, not without a hope of better things, I threw my fly. A magnificent fish rose instantly, and I hooked him. We had a tough battle for it, inasmuch as my tackle happened to be light, and I was standing on an awkward sort of a weir when he took the fly; but victory declared for me. After ten minutes' pleasant manœuvring, I landed a trout, which would have done no discredit, in point of size and form, to the Iser itself.

By this time, noon was approaching, and as we had no disposition to burden ourselves with some tons' weight of fish, we wound up, and restored our rods to their cases. We then turned our faces steadily towards Aderspach, and following the chaussée, found that in proportion as we got involved among the numerous green hills which overlook it, all ground of complaint on the score of a sharp temperature, was taken away. The weather, in short, became intensely oppressive, and we, in consequence, on whom the exercise of fishing had not been without its effect, began to get excessively tired. We pushed on, however, with an occasional halt, till we could calculate that half our journey was accomplished; when having arrived at a comfortable-looking village inn, we carried our fish into the tap-room, and had them cooked for dinner. They were excellent, and sufficed not only for ourselves, but for the landlord and the whole of his family, whose mittagsmahl, as the Germans call it, had, by some extraordinary accident, been delayed full two hours beyond the customary period of noon.

We found our village innkeeper, as, indeed, was the case with almost all persons of his rank and calling, a good-humoured, obliging, and intelligent man. He had been twice married, was the father of five sons, from one of whom, a jager in the Austrian service, he had just received a letter, which, as it happened to be written remarkably well, he showed us with all a father's pride. He gave us, likewise, as much information touching the local affairs of the neighbourhood as we considered it worth while to require, and spoke freely about the Torpindas, with whom he seemed to be well acquainted. The prevalent tales of their blood-thirstiness he entirely confirmed, though he seemed to insinuate that they were more free with the lives of one another, than with those of strangers; and he warned us that we should look in vain for a camp. Nothing of the kind existed, nor was permitted by the police to exist, in this quarter of Austria. "As to the people themselves," continued he, "they are an idle, good-for-nothing set, exceedingly fond of money, and great hoarders of it when they can get it. I have seen, in this room, a Torpinda produce as many as a hundred guldens; and yet he would not disburse a single kreutzer for straw to sleep upon." We were more mortified by this man's account of the gypsies than by any which we had yet received; for it bore about it a greater air of truth, and, as a necessary result, tended more than any thing which we had yet heard, to dissipate into thin air the visions of gypsy life which up to that moment we continued to cherish.

Having rested an hour in the inn, we set out again, accompanied by our host, who volunteered to show us both a shorter and more pleasant path than that which we had heretofore followed. This was the more acceptable by reason of the discovery which we made, that in speaking of Aderspach as only four hours' walk from Troutenau, our host of the latter place had erred widely from the mark. It was still four good hours' ahead of us. Nevertheless, we had plenty of daylight before us; and the prospect of using it among green fields and umbrageous forests was not without its effect on the minds of persons who had toiled throughout the morning along a dusty and burning high-road.

Though I have, perhaps, said more respecting the scenery of this part of Bohemia than was necessary, I cannot omit to mention, that from the brow of a hill which we ascended soon after our host quitted us, we obtained as glorious a view of a cultivated mountain district as the eye of man will probably rest upon in any quarter of the world. The abundant wood of this fine country gives, indeed, to all its landscapes, a charm which there needs but the presence of water to complete, and to the particular scene on which we now looked down, water happened not to be wanting. From the bosom of the river which flows past Troutenau, the sun's rays were reflected; and as its course lay through groves and fells,—now hidden between overhanging rocks, now emerging again into a wide valley,—the effect was altogether very striking. Moreover, to a varied and picturesque extent of hill and vale, forest and green meadow, hamlet and town,—the latter either cast into the recess of some deep glen, or straggling upwards along the mountain side,—the Riesengebirgen formed the back ground; bald, and frowning in all the majesty of rocky shoulders and snow-clad summits. It was, indeed, a glorious view, and it tempted us to linger so long in the enjoyment of it, that we did not reach our quarters,—the comfortable inn at Aderspach,—till near eight o'clock.

There befel nothing during our progress from this beautiful spot, till we arrived at the place where we had resolved to pass the night, of which I need be expected to give a detailed account. All travellers on foot, through strange countries, must expect to lose their way occasionally; and we formed no exception to the general rule. Moreover, our mishaps, this day, were the more provoking, that we chanced to have penetrated into a comparatively thinly-peopled region, the two villages which we traversed lying far apart one from the other, and there being no hamlets nor detached houses to keep up the communication. Nor were we, as it seemed, the only pedestrians to whom the district was strange. As we were passing through a deep forest, at a point admirably suited to deeds of violence, we met a couple of Torpindas, who stopped us to inquire the way to the nearest town; at least I conclude that this was their object, from the peculiar gestures which they used, and the intonation which they gave to their voices; for as to their words, of these I could make nothing. Having just been stuffed with a tale of their lawless habits, the sight of these persons threw me, of course, on the alert. I grasped the butt of my gaff-stick,—an excellent weapon, about the length and weight of a policeman's staff,—and braced up my nerves for the melée. But when we stood face to face, all idea that they would venture to begin the fray vanished. Though they were young men, in the prime of life, probably not more than five or six-and-twenty, I verily believe, that with the weapons which nature has given me, I could have rendered them both incapable of molesting henroosts for ever, and been but little fatigued by the exercise.

The Torpindas passed on quietly enough when they found that they could not make themselves understood; and there followed them soon afterwards, another foot-passenger, whose style of travel amused us not a little. He was a stout, elderly man, arrayed in a brown frock coat, long and loose, and descending to his ankles, and he trudged forward with a good cudgel in his hand, as independently as need be. But he carried no load on his back. On the contrary, there followed him a peasant with a wheelbarrow, on which was laid the stout gentleman's trunk, and as they happened, when we encountered them, to be descending a hill, the strange vehicle kept up famously. How it would fare with them after they crossed the valley beneath, I do not know. But probably our friend had fixed stages, at each of which, instead of ordering out fresh horses, he ordered merely a fresh wheelbarrow and trundler. I dare say he journeyed with extreme satisfaction to himself; at least I am quite sure that he looked as if he did.

It was late in the evening, and our patience was well-nigh exhausted, when, on gaining the brow of an eminence, we beheld a straggling village at our feet; and were almost as much surprised as delighted to find that it was Aderspach. Let nobody form a judgment of the sort of quarters which he will find at the Trucktere-Gasthof, from the miserable appearance which the town of Aderspach presents. To be sure, he must pass through the town entirely, leave the schloss, a huge pile of brickwork, behind him, and penetrate into the fells ere the Trucktere-house becomes visible; but the first aspect of it will, unless I much deceive myself, excite in his mind anticipations, not only of good fare, but of clean apartments, and unpretending civility. Nor will such anticipations be disappointed. A nicer country inn I never inhabited, and I say this without excepting either the inn at Dalmally, near Loch Awe, nor its rival in comfort, if not in elegance, at Tyne-drom.

The Fells, or Felsen, at Aderspach, is justly accounted one of the most extraordinary productions of nature's handiwork in all Bohemia. Masses of rock, some of them two or three hundred feet in height, have, by some strange convulsion, been so tossed about, that now they stand on end like detached towers, or rather like the turreted walls of some gigantic labyrinth, through which a narrow path twists and turns in the most extraordinary manner possible. Very many of these rocks bear a striking resemblance, some to beasts, some to men, some to musical instruments, and others to different articles which we constantly meet either in our walks through the populous city, or within the domestic circle. As might be expected, the people of the country have called each image after the name of the original which it represents. Not far from the back door of the inn is an enormous inverted Sugar-loaf; a little way removed from it is the Chimney, and it must be acknowledged that the resemblance which both of them bear to the objects from which their names are derived, is very striking.

But this is the least of the wonders attaching to the place, in order to introduce which to the reader's acquaintance, it will be necessary that I should take him, as it were, by the hand, and join him to our little party as we make the tour of the labyrinth.

Suppose us, then, snugly housed in the Trucktere-house, well-fed, well attended, supplied with clean, tidy beds, and greatly refreshed by a sound night's sleep, such as monarchs might envy. We rise next morning at seven, to find that here, even more keenly than at Troutenau, the influence of an elevated situation is felt, and that over the long inclined plane which stretches upwards from us in the direction of the Riesengebirgen, a sharp, cold wind blows cuttingly. This circumstance, however, interferes, in no respect, with our breakfast, which, as far as the means furnished will allow, is eaten with great relish. After which, about nine o'clock, we sally forth in quest of adventures, under the guidance of a ragged youth, who is to officiate as our cicerone. From the inn-door we look abroad upon a mountain of basalts, covered on its summit by a forest of pines, and beautifully feathered along its face with birch-trees. That mountain, well nigh semicircular in the front which is turned towards us, constitutes the Felsen; and along its base we walk, following a narrow foot-path, which is bordered by a little stream, and leads, serpent-fashion, towards the rocks. We pass, in this brief progress, the Sugar-loaf; and observing the ravages which time is making on its inverted cone, we anticipate the hour, probably not very distant, when it will topple over, and fall flat upon the earth. But this is nothing. Our ragged guide conducts us across a wooden bridge, up a road, hollowed out by nature, through the rocks, till suddenly we reach what resembles the mouth of a mine, across which a door is drawn. The sum of four groschens, or sixpence a head, applies a key to the lock of that door, and we are immediately introduced into the giant's dwelling. For as the term Riesengebirgen signifies "The Giant's Mountains," so these fells are represented by tradition to have been the abode of the monster-man, after whom the range which separates Bohemia from Silesia has been named. Of this giant's personal history it is needless to say more, than that he is the same Number Nip with whose mischievous exploits we have all, from our early childhood, been familiar. His favourite haunts were here and in one of the ravines of Schnee-Koppee; and I must say this much for him, that in his choice of quarters, he exhibited not only a great deal of skill, but a very commendable share of taste into the bargain.

The door being opened, we find ourselves in a narrow passage, open to the heavens, perhaps a couple of hundred feet over-head, but walled in on either hand by rocks, perpendicular as the drop of the plummet. The passage being exceedingly tortuous, does not permit any extensive view to the front; but at each new turn some new wonder presents itself, either in the formation of some particular rock, or in the grotesque and striking combinations of masses. Here the guide stops us to point out a chimney most distinctly defined; by-and-by two enormous kettle-drums are exhibited; then comes a barrel-organ on one hand, and a pulpit on the other, beyond which lies the chancel of a church. Above our heads, meanwhile, on the very summits of detached peaks, stand the Burgomaster, in his full-bottomed wig, the Emperor Leopold,—an exact resemblance,—and John the Baptist preaching in the desert. This last is really a very curious specimen of what Dame Nature can sometimes accomplish, when she takes it into her head to become sculptor. On a lofty cone, yet little elevated above the surrounding masses, the very emblems of desolation, stands the image of a man, with a shaggy mantle thrown across his shoulders, and one arm raised as if in the act of speaking,—no inappropriate monument to him who, though the greatest of the prophets that lived under the Law, was in his day of mortality less than the least of those to whom the Gospel dispensation has been communicated.

After pausing awhile to examine these, as well as the form of a dog in a recumbent position, not far removed from them, we passed on; first, into the Giant's Mouth,—an enormous arch, armed, as it seems, with teeth,—and then into the Frauen Zimmer, or Giantess's Apartment. It must have been but a sorry lodging for a lady of so much personal weight in the world, and supposing her proportions to have resembled those of her husband, would not fail to cramp her exceedingly; for it is nothing more than a hole in the rock, measuring perhaps twenty feet in length, by six or eight in width. But giants and giantesses lived, it is presumed, chiefly in the open air, and this which is called her chamber, may have been, after all, nothing more than her couch. If such were the case, she must have had no taste for down mattresses and feather-bed coverings.

We were advanced by this time, many hundred yards into the bowels of the mountain, and stood at length on a fair open platform, surrounded as heretofore, by enormous cliffs, yet having room enough, and to spare. Here a small rustic arbour has been formed with rough-hewn pine logs, and close by is a sort of pantry, composed of similar materials, while facing them a little rivulet pours its water from a ledge of rock, causing the air around to reverberate with its ceaseless and most refreshing music. Our guide described the spot merely as the lesser waterfall, while he invited us to drink from a fountain which bubbled up close to the stream. I do not think that I ever tasted water more deliciously cool and limpid.

The phrase "Lesser Waterfall" naturally associated itself in our minds with something more wonderful, and we questioned the guide on the subject, who, instead of answering directly, invited us to follow him. We did so, winding round the corner of a huge column; but no cataract met our inquiring gaze. "Wait you here," said the boy, "or rather go on into that recess, while I run up the face of the cliff, and lift the sluice." The idea of a sluice, as connected with one of the most sublime of nature's productions, was too ludicrous. It reminded us of a miserable little affair, not far from Schandau, on the road to the Kuhstall, which the delighted Saxons exhibit to you as one of the wonders of their land, and for the display of which you are charged one groschen. For this Saxon cataract consists of a stream of water, a size or too more voluminous than that which may, at any time, be seen winding its way along the groved outsides of the streets in one of our fifth-rate boroughs in England. Yet the Saxons make the most of it. By means of a deal fence they dam it up on the top of a rock, perhaps twelve feet high, and so keep it till some pleasure-seeking stranger happens to approach the spot. Then, after exciting his curiosity to the utmost, an old man leaves the wanderer in the road to gaze about in vain, not only for the cataract, but for any place where a cataract might be expected to exist. Yet the stranger must not begin to murmur too speedily. All at once a cracked voice bids him attend. He turns round; the sluice is raised, and out comes a volume of water, of all things in creation most resembling that which in the old town of Edinburgh follows on the exclamation, "Garde loo!" I advise the astonished traveller not to indulge his admiration too long. If, in the intensity of his ardour, he keep the sluice open more than ten minutes, not only does the waterfall fade and disappear before his own eyes, but a month may elapse ere it shall be in a fit state to be exhibited again.

All these brilliant images took possession of our fancies as soon as the boy had uttered the unlucky word "sluice;" and smiling to one another, we made up our minds to rest contentedly where we were. But we did not adhere to this determination. In a few minutes there came upon us a noise like the growling of distant thunder; by-and-by the fall of water was loudly and fiercely distinct, and we knew, to our extreme surprise, that this was a very different affair from the cataract in Saxon Switzerland. We therefore hurried round the angle of the rock, and guided by the sound, came at last to behold what really was a very fine sight. From a ledge, perhaps thirty or forty feet high, a rivulet discharged a considerable body of water into a cavern, beneath the foundations of which, though it was impossible to say in what direction, the current held its course. I must confess that we stood and gazed upon the scene for some moments in great admiration,—a feeling which was probably heightened in consequence of the unlooked-for issue to an adventure, of the commencement of which we had augured so unfavourably.

Having thus witnessed the effect, we naturally enough desired to look upon the cause also; in other words, nothing would content us, except to ascend the cliff and watch the whole process of lifting and replacing the sluice. I am not sure that the sight recompensed us for the labour that was necessary to obtain it. The stream, to be sure, looked dark and deep, hemmed in as it was, between walls of rock, and to watch the descent of the mass of water from above, was quite as fine as to look up to it from below; but the process of climbing was both toilsome and hazardous, and I do not therefore advise others to undergo it, unless they be both strong of head and sure of foot.

The waterfall, like the general discharge of fire-works at Vauxhall, or the blowing-up of the beleaguered fortress in a melo-drama, was the last and greatest wonder which our guide had to show us, and the termination of the play was marked by the usual application for a little drinkgelt. This we gave, of course; but having heard something of a wonderful echo, we begged him at the same time to conduct us to the spot where it was to be heard. We were drawing, in this instance, too much either upon his goodnature or his powers. The echo was not in his department. A separate functionary called that forth at will, and to his care we were transferred. He was an old man, who played wretchedly on the French horn and clarionet, both of which, as well as a double-barrelled gun, were called into operation, and there is no denying that the effect was fine. Four reverberations followed each blast; all of them clear and distinct, as if four separate instruments had spoken. The last sounded like the voice of a trumpet, issuing from some dark woods, perhaps five or six miles distant.

Such were the wonders which we saw and heard at Aderspach,—a mighty show-place, as it appears, to Poles, Prussians, Bohemians, and even Saxons; yet strange to say, not often visited by our own more restless countrymen. Yet our adventures in the Trucktere-house did not end here. There arrived, soon after we came in, the identical travelling band which had delighted us with their music in Troutenau; and partly to conciliate us, partly to ensure for themselves a supper free of expense, they played some airs very sweetly in the passage. One of these took my fancy so much, that I begged to have a copy of the notes, and sent out a florin as the price of my purchase. But in thus paying for the goods before I got them, I had over-calculated the honesty even of Bohemian minstrels. The master of the band pronounced that the air should be ready for me next morning, but it never came; and when I inquired for the performers, they were gone. So much for paying beforehand for matters so light as the notes of music.

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CHAPTER VII.

WALK TO SHATZLAR. MAGNIFICENT SCENERY. EXTREME FATIGUE. OUR LANDLORD. EARLY ASSOCIATIONS AWAKENED BY A SCENE IN THE MARKET-PLACE. REST FOR A DAY. ASCENT OF SCHNEE-KOPPEE. HALT AT A VILLAGE ON THE SILESIAN SIDE.

All the wonders which I have inadequately described in the preceding chapter, having been investigated between the hours of nine and twelve, we made up our minds to dine like gentlemen at Aderspach, and to proceed that evening as far as Shatzlar, a town at the Bohemian foot of Schnee-Koppee. We were the more induced to adopt this course, because Shatzlar was stated to be only four hours' walk from Aderspach, and we believed ourselves sufficiently strong, not only to accomplish that over-night, but to undertake the ascent of the mountain himself on the morrow. The result proved that our calculations had rested on no solid basis. Instead of a four hours' walk, Shatzlar proved to be rather more than six hours' distant; and the way being mountainous and rugged, we came in thoroughly knocked up. I do not recollect that throughout the whole of our excursion we were, on any other occasion, so indifferent to the magnificent scenery that surrounded us; and probably the reader will not be displeased that the case was so, seeing that our indifference at the moment saves him the labour now of perusing what might very possibly be felt as a wearisome description of it.

Shatzlar is a large straggling burgh, destitute of manufactures, and apparently little visited by travellers; though the inn, which is kept by the burgomaster, can boast of very tolerable accommodations, and a host and hostess both well disposed to fall in with their guests' wishes. There is a schloss hard by, inhabited by certain officials, who, however, exercise no jurisdiction over the town; and a church, not remarkable for anything, except the good order of its charnel-house. This, a small building separated by the breadth of the churchyard from the main edifice, seems to be a place of deposit for all the skulls and other bones which may be thrown up in digging the graves; and they are arranged round the walls with as much taste as their ghastly character will allow.

We felt so tired, and our feet were suffering so much from blisters, that we resolved to give ourselves a day of total rest in Shatzlar; and in spite of the ennui attendant on such an arrangement, we adhered to it with laudable pertinacity. Rising at seven, and breakfasting at eight in the morning, we whiled away the time till dinner by strolling up the side of the hill, along which the town is built, and enjoying the exquisite panorama which, from various points, it opened out upon us. We visited likewise the fountain of the Bober, a well deep in the forest, and drank of its waters ere yet they had become polluted by flowing among the habitations of men. Our guide, the burgomaster's son, conducted us likewise to a corner of the wood which is set apart for bird-catching, and where every tree is armed with one or more gins, skilfully made of horse-hair and attached to the bark. The pencil also was appealed to, but in vain. This was too extensive, as well as too glorious a scene, to be copied by one so little skilled in the art as myself; so, after spoiling two or three leaves in my journal book, I desisted from the attempt; and we descended to the inn, where the smell of calf's-flesh in preparation warned us that the hour of dinner was not far distant. It came in due course, and the meal was discussed effectually; after which the burgomaster favoured us with his company, though he steadily refused to partake of the excellent wine which his own cellar produced. He was a man of some intelligence, and had an ambition to see his children rise upwards on the hill of life. Accordingly one of his sons, a delicate youth, is preparing himself for holy orders; another is studying medicine at the university of Vienna; and the third, the lad who accompanied us in our morning's ramble, had served his time with a cotton manufacturer. But the confinement not agreeing with his delicate constitution, the burgomaster had brought him home; and he now officiates as a sort of waiter in the hotel, with the understanding that at his father's decease, or perhaps before it, he shall succeed to the hotel itself.

In listening to such details one hour was spent. Another passed away in watching from the window such objects as this most quiet of quiet Bohemian burghs might produce. And of these there was one which, being associated with the memory of other days, interested me not a little. There is a fountain in the middle of the market-place, into which one stream of fresh water is continually flowing, while another drains off from it. Hither the women bring their clothes to be washed; not in the fountain itself, but in their own tubs, which they range round it; and the proceedings of one of these industrious damsels amused me much. She filled her tub to the brim, and then kilting her petticoats, set to work tramping with might and main, precisely as, in years long gone by, I have seen a Scotch girl do, on the Back-walk at Stirling, or the Calton Hill in Edinburgh. What a strange thing is association, and how easily is it called into play by the veriest trifles. The woman's legs had nothing to boast of in the way of symmetry, but I confess that I watched them, in their alternate rise and fall, with a degree of interest such as I have not for many a day bestowed on any other pair of understandings, whether male or female.

The legs at length disappeared, for the curtain of the petticoats was dropped, and with it fell all the bright and glowing visions of boyhood, in which I had been indulging. I felt once more that I was neither in life's prime, nor a denizen of "bonny Scotland;" so I listened to certain suggestions which my young companion had for some time been making, and agreed to accompany him a little way down the course of the Bober, while he tried to fish. We went accordingly, but to no purpose. The Bober does not become a trout-stream till long after it has lost sight of the source from whence it springs, and we had our walk, with the conversation of the young burgomaster and a friend of his, a learned baker in the village, as our reward. The historical researches of the latter gentleman had been very extensive, and he possessed a laudable zeal to make this known. He was very curious to know whether Lord Cromwell were yet alive, or the king of England's head put on again. I did my best to satisfy him on these interesting topics; but I doubt whether I succeeded; for on my assuring him that there was no Lord Cromwell, and that the head of William IV. had never been cut off, he eyed me with a glance of peculiar distrust.

Thus passed a day at Shatzlar,—heavily enough, it must be allowed; for, ardent as my admiration of Wordsworth's poetry is, I confess that I have not succeeded in imbibing so much of his philosophy as to feel as he would doubtless have felt in a similar situation. Both mine and my companion's overwrought limbs, however, derived no slight advantage from the halt, and well it was that they did so, for the task which awaited them on the morrow was a hard one. After repeated consultations with the burgomaster, which ended invariably, on his part, with an entreaty that we would not think of an enterprise so Quixotic as crossing Schnee-Koppee at this early season, and without a guide, we made up our minds to go in direct opposition to his counsels, and after gaining the summit, to descend by the other side, and sleep at Schmiedeberg, or some other town in Prussian Silesia. Just, albeit sharp and cutting, is the aphorism of Madame de Staël, that there is no country in the world where the expression, "It is impossible," comes so frequently into use as in Germany. Propose to a German any undertaking which he has either never tried, or which might break through his every-day habits, and he will assure you that the thing is not to be accomplished. Urge him to increased exertions, or accelerated speed, and he will tell you that to do more, or move faster, is impracticable. And as to learning any new method of performing a given task, be it even the dressing of a dish for dinner, I question whether you could prevail upon him to attempt that by any influence short of positive compulsion. Yet in war the Germans are an enterprising people, and among the arts of peace they can boast, with truth, that some of the most important discoveries ever effected were effected by their countrymen. How strange that their domestic habits should be so thoroughly in contradiction to such qualities as enterprise in war and ingenuity in the application of mechanics.

Of this strange predilection to create difficulties for themselves and others, which, beyond all doubt, attaches to the German character, we were well aware; and took, in consequence, the burgomaster's cautions at little more than they proved, in effect, to be worth. Some obstacles, with a good deal of fatigue, we made up our minds to encounter; but, as the Duke of Wellington said in his speech to the cadets at Addiscombe,—a speech which I had the good fortune to hear, and am not likely soon to forget,—nothing great was ever accomplished without labour; and labour we were content to bestow, and fatigue to endure, even in the ascent of Schnee-Koppee. Accordingly at six in the morning, and carrying the heir of the hotel along with us, to point out the direct path through a forest, which it was necessary to thread, we sallied forth; and by seven were once more left to our own guidance, with the steep but grassy side of one of the ramifications of the mountain under our feet.

I shall never forget, to my dying day, the effect produced upon me by the first half of this ascent. The day was as bright and beautiful as ever shone out of heaven. Hot it was, but not intensely so, for the sun's power was yet trivial; and as the winds were hushed, except when from time to time a light breeze rustled among the foliage of the pine-woods, the stillness that prevailed around struck me as something quite sublime. In proportion as we rose, likewise, above the level of the valley, every sight and sound appeared to acquire a new charm. Beneath were wreaths of mist, rolling themselves slowly up the sides of the opposite mountains. Under their canopy villages and hamlets were reposing, from the chimneys of which long thin streaks of smoke curled upwards as if to join the cloud; while here and there a solitary cottage, a chapel, and even a gilt crucifix, gleamed to peculiar advantage from its own quiet nook. I have spoken of the silence as being quite sublime. Not that it was unbroken; for up the mountain's side came, by fits and starts, the tinkling of the bells, which in this country are suspended to the necks of the cattle when they are feeding; intermixed with an occasional whoop, or snatch of a song, or merry whistle from the cow-herd; while the branches over-head,—for we sat down in the skirts of a low pine wood,—were crowded with little birds, whose sweet but not loud notes completed one of the most exquisite concerts to which, in any part of the world, I have ever listened. And then the landscape,—what a picture was there. Bold conical hills, swelling one over another like waves of the sea, overtopped and looked down upon a succession of valleys, each more striking, both for richness and beauty, than the first; and forming altogether such a scene as must be witnessed to be felt, or even understood.

We could not spare much time to repose, even in such a situation as this; so we quitted our lairs, not without regret, and plodded onwards. The whole day's journey was, as may be imagined, interesting in the extreme. Before us was the peak of Schnee-Koppee, sharp, to all appearance, as the apex of a bee-hive, yet supporting a round tower, which we understood the burgomaster to have described as a chapel. Round this peak large fields of snow were lying, but the summit itself seemed clear. This pleased us exceedingly; indeed, every step which we took in advance helped to dispel a portion of the gloom in which our host had endeavoured to envelope the enterprise; for though there was no path, points of observation could everywhere be taken; and the woods, of the depths and horrors of which he had spoken so much, all proved easy of passage. On, therefore, we tramped, nothing doubting, till, after repeated dips and renewed ascents, each of which opened out to us fresh glories, some of them almost, but not quite equal, to those that lay behind, we arrived, about twelve o'clock, at the village of Kleine Oupa; the most elevated of all the spots on which, in this country of Bohemia, men have ventured to establish their permanent dwellings; and raised, I should conceive, little, if at all, short of four thousand feet above the level of the sea. For round them, in patches, among the stunted firs, the snow was still lying; even while the sun beat warmly overhead, and thin crops of rye,—the only grain fit to be cultivated at such a height from the plain,—seemed advancing to perfection.

Kleine Oupa is rather a hamlet than a village. It contains, perhaps, thirty houses, of which one is a parsonage,—for there is a church,—one a school-house, one a caserne, in which a party of jagers are quartered, and one which fulfils the two-fold duty of mill and gasthof. To this latter we bent our steps, and found in its tap-room rather better than the customary fare, that is to say, good white bread, as well as eggs and butter. These furnished forth, for hungry travellers like us, an excellent dinner; at the completion of which our journey recommenced, not to be delayed again, except for a brief space, at remote intervals, till we had accomplished the avowed object of our excursion.

Nobody can have climbed a mountain so high as even the loftiest in the highlands of Scotland, without observing the effect upon vegetation of the increasing severity of the climate as you approach the top. The last forest, worthy of the name, through which we passed this day, overhung Kleine Oupa; and even the remoter portions of it were stunted and unhealthy. Next came the ascent of what is called Swartzen-Koppee; that is, of a long black table-land, overtopping, by a considerable altitude, the rest of the mountains near, but still far beneath the level of Schnee-Koppee. Here vegetation entirely ceased. First, there were some straggling firs, the uppermost branches of which reached to my middle. Then there was heath in abundance, out of which we scared an enormous black cock; and finally, there was the bare brown rock, unclothed even with moss, and lying about in fragments, as if a thousand sledge-hammers had been employed for a century, in the vain endeavour to flatten or beat down the mountain. Here, then, we paused to look round, and had the day been propitious, we should have probably obtained as fine a view as from the peak of Schnee-Koppee himself. But, as almost always happens when you have travelled far to ascend a mountain, the atmosphere had become thick and foggy; so that our vision was bounded by limits far more narrow than we had flattered ourselves with finding. Still the panorama was very fine, and we enjoyed it much; after which, having Schnee-Koppee himself before us, we pushed on.

We had been obliged to pass a barrier or two of snow, in order to reach Swartzen-Koppee; but the snow was perfectly firm, and we suffered no inconvenience from it. The valley between Swartzen-Koppee and the peak beyond was quite clear; neither did a single flake rest upon the indistinct track, which the feet of travellers has, in the course of ages, marked up the face of the stony ridge which is called Schnee-Koppee. We therefore entered upon the task of ascending cheerfully, and found that there were no real difficulties to overcome. But we met with a little adventure, if such it deserves to be called, which appeared at the moment to be curious, and which has not yet lost all its interest with us. We were mistaken in supposing that we should be the first of this year's tourists to stand upon the top of Schnee-Koppee. Other wayfarers had been before us, and we saw them now descending in such a direction as to ensure our falling in with them during our upward progress. They proved to be three Dutch gentlemen, with a guide, who had come direct through Silesia from Schandau, and were able to tell us, when they discovered who we were, that a few days previously our friends at the baths were all alive and well. I need scarcely add that we stopped and chatted together, and finally parted as if we had been acquaintances of ten years' standing; for your bleak mountain's brow, like your cabin of an Edinburgh steam-ship, is an admirable concoctor of mushroom intimacies.

Having parted from our friends, not, however, without receiving from them some useful hints as to the descent into Silesia, we proceeded on, till we gained the loftiest peak of all. It is a huge cairn of loose stones, among which an innkeeper from Warmbrunn has built a tower; whither in the summer months he conveys food, wine, and beds, for all of which he, as may be expected, charges enormously. We had a pint of indifferent Rhine wine from him, which cost us a dollar, and we purchased a couple of long sticks, for which we paid twenty groschens more. But we were not induced, by his suggestions that sunrise and sunset were both exceeding glorious when watched from such a situation, to spend the night under his roof. On the contrary, after looking about us only to ascertain that the view, intercepted by the fog, was not to be compared with what we had seen in the morning, we wished him farewell; and, beholding at our feet the town of Warmbrunn, we plunged down towards it.

The ascent had been tolerably fatiguing; the descent was scarcely less so; and it proved to the full as tedious. The snow lay in extensive fields, to cross which occasioned a good deal of trouble, and when that was accomplished, we found ourselves diving through the heart of a thick forest. A road there certainly was, but whither it would lead us we could not tell; and though the glimpses which, from time to time, we obtained of the bold corries that indent the Silesian sides of the mountains, were uncommonly grand, we became, by degrees, too tired to enjoy them fully. Vainly, too, did we look about for some one to direct us aright. Two or three cottages, just under the cone, were the only haunts of men which we passed in our progress from the top to the bottom; and the solitary individual who met us,—a youth with a heavy burden on his back,—seemed to be a stranger. He could not tell us how to proceed, so we were left to push at a venture towards the point where we believed that Warmbrunn lay, though our sole guide was the indistinct remembrance of the observations which we had taken from the summit of the hill.

It is not worth while to relate how provokingly we missed our way, or to describe the resolution which urged us at last to pass directly through the wood. The latter movement proved to be, in one respect, a judicious one; for it carried us to the plane in a much shorter space of time than must have been consumed had we persisted in following the pathway. But it cut us off, for that night, from Warmbrunn; for we discovered, to our horror, that the place towards which our eyes had been directed from the moment they were permitted to penetrate the thick screen of branches, was not Warmbrunn, but a village, six English miles removed from it. There, however, in such a hotel as it could furnish, we were glad to pass the night; and if our fare proved somewhat homely, our beds were clean, and we slept like tops.

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CHAPTER VIII.

WARMBRUNN. THE OBJECTS AROUND. A DILEMMA. HIRSCHBERG. HOW TRAVELLERS MAY MANAGE WHEN THEIR PURSES GROW LIGHT. PASS FOR RUSSIANS, AND DERIVE GREAT BENEFIT FROM THE ARRANGEMENT. LANG-WASSER. GREIFFENBERG. THE PRUSSIAN LANDWEHR. GOLDEN TRAUM. SCENE IN THE VILLAGE INN. BERNSTADT. HERNHUT. THE HERNHUTERS. SYSTEM OF AGRICULTURE IN BOHEMIA. SCHLUKENAU. SCHANDAU.

We rose next morning at our usual hour, five o'clock, and having eaten our breakfast, and paid our bill, set out on the road to Warmbrunn. The latter place, which though nominally a mere village, has about it the air and general appearance of a first-rate country-town, can boast of a handsome schloss in its principal street, the residence of Count Schaff-Koatch. It is distant from Phthedorf, the village where we slept, about an hour and a half's walk, and can furnish excellent quarters at the Black Eagle for travellers, who, not being in a hurry, may desire to investigate the many curious and interesting objects which abound in the neighbourhood. For this province of Silesia is particularly rich in the ruins of old castles, one of which, likewise the property of Count Schaff-Koatch, occupies a very striking position on a projecting rock at the foot of Schnee-Koppee. Before us, however, these, and sundry allurements of a similar description, poured out their sweets in vain. There was no lack of inclination to linger in the vicinity certainly; indeed, it had formed part of our plan to do so; but the diminished weight of our purse led us, while sipping a little wine in the coffee-room of the above-named excellent hotel, to examine into the state of our finances, and we ascertained, to our horror, that we were worth no more than six-and-thirty swanzekers,—that is, eight Prussian dollars,—or, computing by the standard of English money, just one pound, four shillings. Now when it is considered that we were at least a hundred miles from home, that in every sense of the word we were in the land of strangers, acquainted but imperfectly with the language of the people about us, and totally unknown to high or low, it will easily be understood that we did not feel perfectly at ease, whatever course might be adopted, and saw, at once, that to delay our march even for the laudable purpose of inspecting the fine ruin near us, would be an act of madness. When, therefore, the landlord, with the civility of his craft and country, urged us to halt, were it only for a single day, I told him frankly how we were situated, adding, that we had wandered about for a longer period of time than we had allotted for the purpose, and must now hurry home as fast as possible.

Previous to this interesting conversation, and ere the condition of our funds had been fully ascertained, the appearance of a most promising river, which flows beside Warmbrunn, had tempted us to put together our rods; and we were actually preparing, after beds and supper should have been ordered, to set out for a day's fishing. The appearance of the rods created here the same sort of astonishment which had been called forth by them elsewhere; and we of course gratified the natives still more by exhibiting our lines and flies. I observed that mine host had been prodigiously smitten with my rod. He took it up, wielded it in all manner of ways, and pronounced it to be the most perfect thing of the kind that ever was seen; nay, he even questioned me, indirectly, as to the amount of money which would be demanded for such an article in England, and when I told him, pronounced that I had made an excellent bargain. No great while elapsed ere decisive proofs were afforded, that his was no barren admiration. "You are in want of money," said he, "I will buy your rod." I hardly know how I looked when this proposition came forth with all imaginable solemnity, but I made haste to decline it, and he had too much native good breeding to press his suggestion.

He was a civil man, and in offering to purchase my fishing-rod, meant to do me a kindness, while, at the same time, he gratified himself; so I gave him a fly, with which he was greatly delighted; I told him likewise how to use it. But if my unfortunate fly has since come into play, at the end of such a line and such a rod as the keeper of the Black Eagle produced, I am quite sure that it has caught no fish, if, indeed, it be not long ago "fathoms deep" under water. One of Mrs. Finn's red hackles would cut but a sorry figure as an appendage to some six yards of whip-cord, more especially after the said whip-cord should have been fastened, as my friend's was, to the extremity of a hazel wand, as thick and inflexible as the horn of a roebuck.

With us, however, the great question was, not whether the host of the Black Eagle was ever likely to become an expert fly-fisher; but how, with our scanty means, we were to reach Schandau, and at the same time, pay a visit to Hernhut, one of the principal points of observation which we had in view from the outset. The landlord assured us that we need be under no apprehensions, that a diligence went every day from Hirschberg, the chief town of the circle, which was distant from Warmbrunn not more than an hour's walk, and that we should both be conveyed to Hernhut, that is to say, sixty-five English miles of road, for the sum of three dollars at the utmost. This was cheering intelligence enough, but could we depend upon it? We feared not, and it was well for us that we listened to the advice of prudence, rather than to the whispers of inclination. We thanked him for the information which he had given us, paid our bill, and marched off to ascertain, at the post office in Hirschberg itself, how far it might or might not be authentic.

Though the route from Warmbrunn to Hirschberg conducted us over a dusty main-road, and the heat of the day was overpowering, we could not help stopping, from time to time, to look back upon the magnificent scene which we were leaving behind us. Viewed from this side, the Riesengebirgen offer a much bolder and grander outline than when looked at from Bohemia. Here, the mountains, instead of forming the back-ground and termination to numerous lesser ranges, spring, sheer and abrupt, out of the plain, and when loaded, as they happened to be to-day, with a bank of white clouds, which obscured none of their features, but seemed to nestle on the snow along their summits, the effect is altogether so sublime as to defy either pen or pencil to describe it. It was not without a sense of bitter mortification that we felt ourselves compelled to flee, as it were, from objects so enticing, of which our parting glances showed us that we had not seen half the beauties, and which we were destined, in all human probability, never to behold again.

We reached Hirschberg about noon, and found it to be both a larger and a more bustling place than any which, in the course of our rambles, we had yet visited. An old wall, with towers at intervals, though in ruins, encircles it, and it can boast of several churches, and a still greater number of spires. The streets are narrow, and the houses lofty, as is the case in almost all places which are or have been fortified; and the population appears to be dense. But our stay in it was too brief to permit our making any minute inquiries into their mode of employing themselves, though we could perceive, from the clumsy buildings which here and there over-hung the river, that there was some sort of a manufactory in the town.

We made, at once, for the post office, an establishment very different, in all respects, from that at Gabel, where functionaries, in the Prussian uniform, received us with great civility, and gave us the information of which we stood in need. It was by no means so satisfactory as we had been led to anticipate; indeed, we found on calculating the amount, that our seats in the diligence, as far as Hernhut, would sweep away the whole of our disposable stock, with the exception, I think, of a dollar and a half. Now, as the diligences never hurry themselves in Germany, any more than other people, twenty hours would be required to perform the journey to Hernhut, during which we could not very conveniently fast; and after all, when Hernhut was gained, we should still be forty long English miles from home. What was to be done? We looked at one another ruefully enough for a moment, then burst into a hearty laugh, and adjourning to an inn hard by, ordered dinner. We ate it with excellent appetites, though our only beverage was beer, and made up our minds to work our way on foot, while, like prudent people, we regulated our style of living according to the standard of our finances.

There was seated in the room of the hotel, into which we were ushered, a well-dressed man, evidently a traveller like ourselves, but one who travelled by some public conveyance. We entered into conversation with him, of course, and ascertained that he was a Hernhuter. What the term Hernhuter means, I shall find an opportunity to explain by-and-by; but at present my business is with the individual. To this gentleman, as soon as we had felt our way a little, I explained the precise nature of our situation, and consulted him both as to the route which it would be advisable to follow, and the probability of our stock holding out till we should arrive at our journey's end. A route he gave us cheerfully. We were to proceed as far as Greiffenberg that night, that is to say, twenty-one miles beyond Hirschberg. Next day, we might reach Löwenberg, which was twenty-four miles further; and the third day, after compassing about as many more, we should find ourselves in Hernhut.

"All this is very plain," said I, "but you forget the state of our finances. How are we two to exist for three days on seven dollars and a-half? and remember that, at Hernhut, we are two good marches from Schandau."

"You will exist very well," replied our acquaintance, "if you will only act with prudence. Don't let people know that you are Englishmen; for the most honest man among us considers it quite fair to charge an Englishman at least one-third more for everything than he charges a German."

We thanked him heartily for this hint; and having paid for our dinner the odd half dollar, we resumed our progress with exactly seven of these precious coins in our pockets.

We had compassed nine good miles already; and under any other circumstances than the present, should have as soon thought of flying to Schandau through the air, as of marching one-and-twenty more; but as the old proverb expresses it, "Necessity has no law." Every approach of fatigue was accordingly resisted by the aid of reflection; which suggested, truly enough, that to loiter, would involve us in difficulties and embarrassments, which, however transient they might be, could not fail of annoying us while they operated. But as we drew towards Greiffenberg, we remembered that it had been described as a large and thriving town, and a large and thriving town, we conceived, would not suit with the low condition of our exchequer. We accordingly resolved to stop short at some village a mile or two on this side of it; and at a place called Lang-Wasser, we found precisely the sort of hotel of which we were in search. It was just one degree elevated above a pot-house; and its owner contrived to accommodate us with a chamber to ourselves. Here, then, in the character of Russians, we fixed our head-quarters, and right well and cheaply we fared and were attended to.

I have nothing to say about Lang-Wasser, except that it is a small straggling township, of which the keeper of our hotel was the burgomaster; and that the great majority of the inhabitants being Roman Catholics, a Romish priest was in possession of the benefice. I found, likewise, that there prevailed among his flock, that attachment to their own communion which the Roman Catholics are never ashamed to avow, even though it may subject them to the charge of bigotry. One of the first questions put to us was, whether we were Catholics? and on our taking advantage of the equivoque, and replying in the affirmative, the tongues of the whole family seemed to be loosed. They had no predilection for the creed, or the worship, or the persons of their evangelical neighbours. How different, in this respect, has been the bearing of all among the Protestant population of Prussia with whom I have conversed. If the subject of religion chanced to be introduced at all,—and unless introduced by me, this never once happened,—it was treated as something not only not interesting to the feelings of the speaker, but of the power of which to excite an interest in anybody, he could form no notion. Is it not a pity that, under a government avowedly Protestant, such a line of policy should be taken up, as to root out all zeal for the truth, among such as profess to be its followers, while the followers of error continue enthusiastically attached to it?

We fared well that night, both as to eating and sleeping. Our supper was excellent, our beds clean, and the charge for the whole barely two shillings,—a practical illustration of the soundness of the advice which we had received from our friendly Hernhuter. It was difficult, indeed, to conceive how, even in Silesia, the people could afford to treat us as they did, for so small a sum. Yet we paid our bill without expressing, even by a careless word, that its amount surprised us; and restrained our very mirth till a turn in the road placed us beyond the hazard of being detected in its indulgence.

There had been a considerable fall of rain while we slept; so that at seven o'clock in the morning, when our march began, we had every prospect before us of a pleasant journey. There was no dust to annoy; the hedge-rows, on either hand, (for it must be remembered that, in all the states of Germany, the highways are planted, at the expense of the government, with a double row of trees,) sent forth an unceasing concert of sweet sounds, and the very people whom we met, seemed by their joyous countenances to confess the influence of the balmy atmosphere. And by the way, I must not forget to observe, that the costumes of the country people, both male and female, had varied a good deal since we commenced our ramble. In the neighbourhood of Tetchen, the smock-frock made its appearance among wagoners and even labouring men, while the women wore, as in Saxony, short bodice jackets with long skirts, red or red and white striped petticoats, and round their heads either a flaring red handkerchief, or a cap adorned behind with two enormous flies. As we penetrated further into Bohemia, the smock-frock among the men gave place to a cloth or velvetine jacket, and the cap was supplanted by a coarse steeple-crowned hat. It strikes me that the female portion of the community exhibited less love of change, till we reached Silesia; and then I looked twice before I could persuade myself, that Queen Elizabeth, and the dames and virgins of her day, were not returned to upper air. Long waists, with hips famously padded, reduced the shapes of such as had any shape, to the symmetry of a wasp, while round their necks were enormous, stiffly-starched ruffs, which stuck out so far, and rose so high, as to give to the red, round, blowsy faces which protruded over them, a tolerably exact resemblance to so many field-turnips. More comical-looking animals I have rarely seen, though they were evidently of a different opinion.

We passed through Greiffenberg about eight o'clock, and found it by no means the formidable sort of place which our fears,—the offspring of our poverty,—had represented it to be. An old town, built irregularly along the side of a hill, it seems to possess neither trade nor manufactures; indeed, a flour-mill or two, planted by the river's side, sufficiently marked it out as the head of a purely agricultural district. The view from the eminence above, is, however, exceedingly fine. Sweeping over a vast and fertile plain, throughout which abundance of wood is scattered, and resting from time to time upon some old ruin, one of which, called Kreifenstein Castle, and the property of Graff Schaff-Koatch, presents a peculiarly striking appearance, the eye finds its powers of vision bounded at last by the Riesengebirgen, which have as yet lost no portion of the sublimity of character that belongs to them, though they are now removed to a distance, as the crow flies, of at least twenty miles. We took what we suspected would prove to be our last distinct view of the magnificent range, not without experiencing a portion of that melancholy which never fails to arise out of a lasting separation even from inanimate objects, which may have gratified our tastes, or interested our imaginations.

We had met on the road as we trudged along, several small parties of soldiers; twos and threes, belonging to the landwehr, or militia of the country, of which the season for training was arrived. This was not, however, the commencement of our acquaintance with that remarkably fine-looking body of men. While we lingered in Hirschberg, doubtful what course to pursue, there marched past the window of the hotel about two hundred as superb infantry as I should desire to see; stout, well-made, soldier-like fellows, in the full vigour of manhood, well bearded and moustached, and altogether presenting the appearance of men who had served at least half-a-dozen campaigns, and were ready to serve half-a-dozen more. Their uniform resembled that of the Prussian infantry in general; that is to say, they wore blue, well-made coats, white trousers, chacos with small round white tufts, and hairy knapsacks on their backs. Their muskets were longer, and smaller in the bore than ours, and the barrels were fastened to the stocks by brass rings that encircled them. Nothing could exceed the order or regularity of their movements: their step, it struck me, was shorter than ours, but then it fell more rapidly; their equipments were decidedly neater; and above all, the load which each man carried was much less considerable. In one respect, however, and only in one, we have an advantage over them. They still adhere to the practice of carrying a large camp-kettle for each mess, whereas our tins suffice both for cooking and containing the meat when cooked, and with one of these each man is supplied.

I have elsewhere explained the process by which every male inhabitant of Prussia becomes in some shape or another, available for the military defence of the country. I need not now recur to the subject, further than by stating, that I have seen no portion of what is called the regular army, which would bear a moment's comparison with the half-battalion of landwehr, that passed me in the streets of Hirschberg. Neither is the circumstance greatly to be wondered at. Out of the two or three hundred men which composed that corps, one-half, perhaps, had done active duty, ere the new system of recruiting was introduced; when the term of service extended to fifteen instead of three years; and individuals were not, as they are now, turned over to the landwehr, with a military education still unfinished, and in many cases scarcely begun. The consequences were, that their carriage was more upright, their air more martial, and their style of march more orderly by far, than anything which I had an opportunity of observing, even in the garrison of Berlin. Something, too, is perhaps attributable to the more advanced ages of the landwehr. No one dislikes to see a frequent intermixture of beardless faces, either in a line or in a column; but an entire battalion of boys is not satisfactory. Now these men were in the full strength and vigour of their days. Their countenances were well bronzed, their moustachios rough, and the very dust that enveloped them told nothing against the general hardihood of their bearing. I looked upon them with unqualified respect, and said to my young companion, that if all the landwehr regiments be composed of similar materials, Prussia can have nothing to apprehend from any hostile movement on the part either of Austria, or of France.

We had received a route, as usual, from our host at Lang-Wasser, and corrected it in some trifling particulars, at the suggestion of a turnpike keeper,—an old soldier, as in Prussia these functionaries usually are, and a fine-looking, well-bred, and intelligent fellow. Among other places, we were to make, by the way, for a village called Golden Traum, where, as we hoped to reach it about noon, we proposed to eat our dinner. But we did not succeed in this point. Having been misdirected at an unlucky turn in a wood where two roads branched off from one another, we found ourselves, after an hour's toil, further from Golden Traum than ever, and were forced, not to retrace our steps, but to make our way as we best could, across the country, in order to reach it. We came in, accordingly, tired and somewhat out of humour, at one o'clock, to a poor but clean village beer-house, where the only viands produceable, were brown bread, butter, and sausages, a considerable quantity of which disappeared before persons whose appetites were a great deal too keen to be fastidious.

The situation of Golden Traum, overhanging the rocky and well-wooded bank of the river Queiss, is exceedingly striking, and the stream, being clear and rapid, held out to us the prospect of good sport. Encouraged, therefore, by the remembrance of the moderate charges at Lang-Wasser, we resolved to spend the remainder of the day here, provided our landlady could accommodate us with beds, and fare a little more delicate for supper. With respect to the latter of these points, it was soon and satisfactorily settled. We had our choice of beef and veal, and we chose of course veal's elder brother: but the report of the dormitory was not so satisfactory. There was no spare chamber in the house, but they would make up for us a couple of beds, with mattresses, sheets, &c., in the tap-room; and they assured us, that it would be entirely at our command by ten o'clock at the latest. As my companion appeared to think these dispositions excellent, and spoke vehemently in favour of the day's fishing, I consented to halt. We consigned our baggage to the care of the landlady, put our tackle in order, and descended to the stream.

Like many other things in creation, the Queiss was far from realizing the expectations which its flattering appearance had excited. There was little water in the channel, and that little contained few trout; but roach were there in abundance. Now a roach, either at the end of my line or on the table, happens to be my aversion, and finding that I was perpetually deceived by the avidity with which the scaly monsters seized my fly, I soon wound up. Not so my boy. With the most laudable perseverance he continued to flog the water, much to the detriment of the roach tribe; one of which, by the way, proved, when he brought him ashore, to be the largest of his species I had ever seen. The monster must have weighed a pound and a half at the least. But this was not all. Towards evening the trout began to show themselves, and the young Piscator caused some havoc among them. He caught about a dozen, the heaviest of which might have well nigh passed muster either at Troutenau or Eisenhammer.

We had been interrupted in our sport by a thunder-storm; the reverberations of which, as peal after peal smote against rock and fell, were very fine. The rain, however, which came down in torrents, was not quite so agreeable, and forced us to seek shelter in a mill, where I was a good deal amused by the sort of taste which the honest miller had displayed in ornamenting his best apartment. The walls were stuck round with engravings, one of which represented Jonah in two situations: first, smoking a pipe by the seaside, and afterwards working his way out of a huge fish's jaws; while close beside him was a ship, considerably less in point of size than the prophet. As to Nineveh, it stood upon a rock in the middle of the ocean, and had all its houses covered with bright red tiles. But that was nothing. There were several portraits of distinguished public characters here; and among others, Hawser Trunnion, a British admiral. I must say that the old commodore looked uncommonly well, with his flowing wig, just as Smollett describes it, and a pipe in his mouth.

We had ordered supper at seven; at half-past seven we reached the hotel, and found the meal ready. Alas! however, for the results of having issued our orders somewhat hastily. Instead of a substantial piece of roast beef, a basin of soup was placed before each, to which succeeded, sans potatoes, sans greens, sans any other vegetables of any sort, two small morsels of bouillie, boiled to tatters. We were not, however, to be put off with such sorry fare as this, so we begged our landlady to dress for us some of the fish which we had taken; and she set about it immediately. But long before the fish were ready, a multitude of new guests came pouring in, and we found ourselves in a situation which exceedingly amused us for a while, though in the end it grew tiresome.

The character of Russians had never sat upon us very easily. We were constantly afraid lest some one should address us in the Russian language, and we fancied that a demand for our passports, which might come at any moment, must inevitably convict us of an imposture. Seeing, therefore, that Golden Traum wore a singularly modest air, we resumed, on entering it, our proper lineage, and never laid it aside again till we reached home. Now, there happened to be in the village a bouerman, who had served under Blucher at Waterloo, and had seen, during the period of the occupation of Paris, a good deal of the English army. This man no sooner learned that two Englishmen were arrived, than he not only came himself, but brought all his neighbours to pay their respects to us. There was first the schoolmaster, a stout short man, highly impressed with the idea of his own dignity, and a determined smoker. There was the miller, the smith, the butcher, the sexton,—everybody, in short, who had a groschen or two to spend, and a stock of curiosity to be gratified. Nor did they come alone. Their wives and children followed them en masse, till the tap-room was crowded. What could we do? To devour our fish in the sight of the multitude, without offering to share it with them, might have impressed them with an unfavourable opinion of our country, while to afford even a morsel to each individual present, would have required thrice the amount cooked and even caught. We therefore adopted a middle course, seldom either a wise or a fortunate one, but in the present instance the only course within our reach. We distributed the trout among the parties who had occupied seats at our table; and won the hearts of the old soldier and his wife, the miller and his wife, the blacksmith and his wife, with all their children; who, seeing their mothers begin to eat, set up such a clamour that we were fain to hand over for their use all the bones, with such portions of flesh as chanced to adhere to them. Then followed sundry small flasks of schnaps, some cans of beer, and two or three bottles of sour country wine; under the influence of which the tap-room became, ere long, a scene of extraordinary hilarity. The old soldier raved about the "guten Anglesisch soldaden," and pronounced "der Hertoch von Wellington," worthy to take rank with Blucher himself. This, of course, drew from me sundry compliments to the valour and discipline of the Prussian army, till in a few minutes we were sworn brothers. "The French! what could the French do, or indeed all the world besides, against the English and Prussians united, who between them had restored peace to Europe, and dethroned Buonaparte;" but I am not quite sure that we decided the question by whom the battle of Waterloo was won,—a matter concerning which my friend appeared to be sensitive, and I, in the consciousness of having fact to fall back upon, felt altogether indifferent.

For an hour or two the scene was highly diverting, though I cannot say that it had the effect of confirming me in my opinions touching the constitutional sobriety of the German people. The good folks round me drank like fishes, and I must do the women the justice to observe, that in this sort of exercise they were by no means less alert than their husbands. The method of proceeding was this:—To some eight or ten persons a couple of liqueur glasses were allotted. These being filled, a sip was taken out of each, by the individuals who appeared to preside over the destinies of the bottle; they were then handed round, and drank in portions till drained dry. No time was, however, lost in replenishing them, so that the fire was both brisk and well sustained. Neither were the courtesies of civilised life omitted. At each separate sip the party sipping pledged the whole company; so that on a moderate computation, I had my health drunk that night at least a hundred and fifty times.

Ten o'clock struck, but the joyous rout exhibited no symptoms of moving; eleven came, and still they sat. This was rather too much of a good thing; for we must needs be a-foot by five in the morning, and we could not lie down till the chamber should be cleared. At last the schoolmaster, through the haze which his beer, and schnaps, and tobacco-smoke, had drawn around him, discovered that I was yawning with some vehemence, and looking tired. He accordingly rose, and suggested an adjournment; but his proposition was scouted. They must have one bottle more, and they had it; another, and they had that too; till I began to fear that they meant to favour us, as I recollect long ago favouring a delicate friend of mine at College,—that is, to sit up with us till the hour of march arrived, and then give us a convoy. But the memory of my poor friend's first letter, in which he described the misery of a mail-coach journey to Bristol, after a sleepless night, put me on my guard. I hinted that we had all better get to bed, and my hint was immediately taken. They went away in the best humour possible, after repeatedly shaking us by the hands, and wishing us all manner of prosperity, both abroad and at home.

I should flatter the good landlady at Golden Traum, if I were to say, that her beds were either clean or comfortable. In fact, we did not venture to undress; and we were up punctual to the moment which over-night we had fixed upon as convenient for starting. Again, however, the linen which we had committed to the care of the washerwoman, was to seek, and our journey, much to our chagrin, was delayed till past seven. Meanwhile, we got from the hostess as much information respecting her neighbourhood as she had to communicate. The appearance of the village had struck us, on entering, as singular. The houses, instead of wood, which is the material commonly used in the construction of German villages, were all built of brick, and they looked quite new. Moreover, there was no church; but only the ruins of some walls and a tower standing. On inquiring into the cause of all this, we learned, that four years ago, during the heat of the summer, when everything in the fields was parched up, and the very rivers dry, some woodmen incautiously set fire to the brushwood in a neighbouring forest, and all the efforts to extinguish it proved fruitless. The flame spread for miles around, consuming heath, dry grass, corn, and even trees, nor did the town of Golden Traum escape. It was burned to the ground, as well as all the detached cottages near it. From the effects of this disastrous conflagration, it had not yet, and probably never would, recover. Some houses were, indeed, built; and built of materials which seemed better suited to withstand a similar visitation, should it occur; but there were no funds wherewith to restore the church, and the lord of the manor was a great deal too poor to undertake such an enterprise. "An application has, indeed, been made," continued our informant, "to the authorities at Berlin, and we hope some time or another to have a new church; for we miss the bells sadly on feast-days, and it is a pleasant thing once a week to meet all one's neighbours, and see how they are dressed. But for the present, our pastor performs divine service in a room upstairs, and is not troubled with a crowded congregation."

It had rained hard during the night, and showers still continued to fall early in the morning, a circumstance which reconciled us, not a little, to our compulsory halt of two hours beyond our time. But by seven, the clouds dispersed, and our linen being restored and packed in our knapsacks, we begged to have the bill. It amounted to no more, in spite of all the beer and schnaps of the previous evening, than one dollar and four groschens. Here, then, we were relieved altogether from the apprehensions under which, up to that moment, we had laboured. Our point, to-night, was Hernhut, whence, with a little management, and some extra pressure, we expected to reach Schandau in one day; and we had still five dollars, and a little more, in our purse.

From Golden Traum to Hernhut, we were recommended to pass by way of Marklissa and Bernstadt, the former a manufacturing place of some note in Prussian Silesia, the latter one of the frontier-towns of Saxony. We followed those directions faithfully, and erring only once, to be put right again immediately by a very civil woman, we soon left our last night's quarters far behind. But we did not succeed in reaching our proposed point of destination. Fatigue gained the mastery over us while we were yet three hours' march from Hernhut, and at seven in the evening, we came reluctantly to the conclusion, that a halt in Bernstadt was necessary.

There had occurred no incident during our march that deserves to be recorded; neither had we passed any object that struck us as remarkable. The scenery, far more tame than we had been accustomed to in Bohemia, drew forth small admiration, and in Marklissa, a bustling, but irregularly-built town, we made no delay. In like manner, I may say of Bernstadt, that it contains little, which can, in any way, interest a stranger. A church, with a remarkably tall spire, is its chief ornament; and the inn, in the market-place, where we put up, was a fair one. A stroll through the streets, therefore, as well as a ramble in the churchyard, hardly compensated for the labour of effecting it; and we returned to supper at eight o'clock, well-disposed to cut the day as short as possible. But we were now in Saxony, and the Saxon police thought fit to convince us, that, however negligent their brother-officials in Austria and Prussia might be, they were not to be caught napping. I was sound asleep, when about twelve o'clock, a loud rapping at the chamber-door awoke me. I demanded the cause of so ill-timed an interruption, and was informed that the gendarmes had come to obtain a sight of our passport, and that I must get up and show it. The reader will easily believe that I obeyed this mandate, not quite in the placid temper of mind which is habitual to me. In fact, I was exceedingly angry, as I had reason to be; for we came in at seven, the police were perfectly aware of our arrival, and supposing that the national prosperity of Saxony had depended on us, there was ample time to ascertain that we were neither spies nor incendiaries, between that hour and bed-time. I, therefore, poured out upon the intruder,—the landlord of the inn,—a tolerable volley of abuse, and desired him to retail it all, in better German, to the gendarme below. In spite of my wrath, I could not keep my gravity, when after having desired him to deliver such a message to the policeman as an angry man is apt to convey, indicating, I am afraid, a wish, on my part, that the official would remove to less comfortable quarters than Bernstadt, the host, with all possible gravity replied, "Goot." There was no resisting this, and I laughed heartily.

The passport was correct enough, and the gendarme, after listening to sundry warm expostulations, delivered, not through the medium of the host, but directly by myself, stammered out some excuse on the score of duty, and hinted that they were obliged to be constantly on the alert, in consequence of the frequent inundation of fugitive Poles into the country. Alas, the poor Poles! Defeated in their attempt to free themselves from the yoke of the stranger, and driven to seek, in exile, the safety which is denied to them at home, they cannot find anywhere, throughout continental Europe, a resting-place for the soles of their feet. For even Saxony,—the child, a feeble one, doubtless,—but still a child, of the revolutionary mania of 1830,—is afraid to afford an asylum to men whose sole crime is, that they have struggled, or perhaps pined only in secret, to restore to their native land its place among the nations of Europe. I was not, of course, so imprudent as to take any notice of the gendarme's observation; but I thought within myself, that the government of a free country deserved little respect which could permit itself to be dragooned into the persecution of a body of men, from whom Saxony, at least, has sustained no injury.

The gendarme having departed, I returned to bed, and slept till six in the morning. We then breakfasted, and a little before nine, arrived at one of the most interesting places which the student of human nature will find in all Germany. Hernhut, in every sense of the term, a missionary settlement, offers to the eye of the curious and the reflecting, a spectacle as striking as can well be conceived. Here is no diversity of opinion on religious subjects, no indifference, real or pretended, to religion itself, no postponement of duty to convenience, no deference to police regulations which is not paid to a higher principle. Religion is in Hernhut, what law and custom are elsewhere, the main-spring of people's actions. They work and play, they associate together, or dwell apart, they go out and come in, rise up, and lie down; they perform every office of life strictly, or at least avowedly, under the sanction of the faith of which they are the professors. There may be hypocrisy in all this, though I could discover no traces of it, for human nature is a curious compound at the best; but at least there is a moral courage which commands our unqualified respect, inasmuch as everything is done without parade, without moroseness, without the utterance of a single expression which can convict them of a desire to be admired of men, far less of undervaluing or mistrusting the motives of others.

What the origin of the Hernhuters really is, seems to be a point as yet scarcely determined. Mosheim, in his Ecclesiastical History, speaks vaguely of them; and Dr. Maclaine, his English translator, has attributed to them practices and opinions which are quite contrary to fact. Confounding them with the Picards, whom John Ziska, the famous Hussite general, well-nigh exterminated, the latter speaks of them as practising all the absurd impurities of the Pre-Adamites, and he appeals for support to Stinstra's pastoral letter,—one of the most uncandid as well as impertinent productions that ever came from the pen even of an Anabaptist. For my own part, I see no reason to doubt that they are what they profess to be, the descendants of the Bohemian or Moravian brethren, whom the bigotry of the house of Austria drove from their homes, and of whom remnants are yet to be found, both in Poland and Hungary. Their church is episcopal in its constitution; their tenets agree with the Augsburg Confession of Faith; their ritual is plain and bare, almost like that of the Presbyterian church of Scotland; and their attention to psalmody very great. It has been much the practice of the surrounding townships, as well in Bohemia as in Silesia and Saxony, to speak slightingly of them. But a brief sojourn among them, sufficed to convince me that they were at least as honest as any of those by whom their honesty had been called in question.

The word Hernhut signifies "a seeker of the Lord;" and it was their excessive earnestness in the service of religion, that, according to one account, earned for them and their settlement the names which they still retain. Another tradition says, that Hut was the name of the individual by whom the first of the colony was led to this particular spot; and that as from him, Herr Hut, or Gentleman Hut, their village derived its appellation, so the inhabitants of the village came to be known as Hernhuters. Between these conflicting statements, (and both were communicated to me on the spot,) I do not pretend to decide. I only know that to Count Zinzendorf,—of well-established notoriety,—the fathers were in 1722 indebted for their settlement on the spot of ground which their sons still occupy; and that, grateful for the kindnesses which their sect received both from him and his children, they have ever held the name in the highest possible respect.

Count Zinzendorf was, beyond all question, partially insane. His opinions, wild and extravagant in the extreme, had a strong tendency to vitiate the moral principle; and the Hernhuters having derived from his bounty all that they possessed, would not refuse to listen when he chose to address them, even in their religious meetings. But it is a mistake to attribute to him the character of a leader. He was their protector in civil affairs, but he was not their bishop. He had a voice in their synods, but he was not supreme. In spite, therefore, of the obscene rhapsodies which were printed, and put into circulation, as his discourses, I see no reason to believe that his opinions were ever adopted as those of the community. On the contrary, they have all along professed to subscribe in sincerity to the Augsburg Confession; and surely their own assertions are more to be relied upon, than those of their enemies.

Hernhut is, as I have said, in the strictest sense of the term, a missionary settlement. The people inhabit a town, cleaner, neater, and in every respect more attractive, than any of a similar size, which I have visited in Germany. They own a considerable tract of country round it, which they cultivate with excellent skill; and they carry on among themselves all manner of trades and professions. Civil magistrates they have none, for the supreme government has not forced such upon them; but their affairs are regulated by a synod, in which all the clergy, with a certain number of lay-elders, have seats. The law, again, to which they profess to pay obedience, is that of God. Whatever contradicts the morality of the Gospel is, by them, accounted illegal, and they punish the guilty by spiritual censures, and at last by excommunication. This latter amounts, in fact, to expulsion from the place; for an excommunicated brother or sister finds no one with whom to maintain a correspondence. I found, indeed, by the presence of a gendarme among them, that the government did not leave them absolutely unobserved; but his duty seems to be very light, and his manner is singularly subdued and respectful.

In this place, remarkable everywhere, there are one or two points, to which the visitor is conducted, as more than others deserving his attention. Foremost among these are the Broder-house, the Schweister-house, and the Predecher-house,—the latter being the name which the Hernhuters think fit to bestow upon their church, or house of public worship. The Broder and Schweister-houses are, as their names denote, asylums, within which a certain number of men and women, members of the church of Hernhut, find shelter. Not that the inmates of these well-regulated abodes are all paupers. On the contrary, you meet in the Schweister-house persons belonging to every class of life, from the decayed or friendless gentlewoman down to the poor worn-out laundress; and the state of the Broder-house is, in every respect, the same. But one roof covers them all, and though their treatment beneath it may vary a little in regard to the lodging, diet, &c., afforded them, they are treated by one another, as well as by their fellow-religionists who visit them, strictly as brothers and sisters. When, for example, the portress opened the door of the Schweister-house to us, and found that we were foreigners, she stated that Sister Handman could speak French, and to Sister Handman's apartment we were forthwith conducted, nothing loth to follow. We found it furnished with great taste, and the lady herself, well-bred and intelligent; yet the humblest person in the house called her only schweister, and she did not appear to desire or to look for more.

The Schweister-house contains one hundred and thirty females, of all ages, from seventy and eighty down to twelve. For the younger members of the community, there is a school, where they are instructed in reading, writing, arithmetic, French, sewing, embroidery, and music,—of all which branches of education, members of the community are the teachers. The elders employ their time a good deal in needle-work, and knitting; chiefly in the fabrication of pretty little articles, such as purses, shirt-collars, tapestry covering for chairs, work-bags, &c., all of which are sold for the benefit of the institution, to visitors; or sent off from time to time, to London, Berlin, the United States of America, and other places where the Hernhuters have established missionary stations. There, it is said, they obtain ready customers, and the money so earned is faithfully applied to missionary purposes. Of course, the more essential, though less elegant departments in the management of a household, are not neglected. Among the sisters, there are matrons, housekeepers, cooks, chamber-maids, scullions, laundresses, and even errand-women;—all of them accustomed from their youth to more or less of manual labour, and all supported out of common funds of the institution. Such persons, as well as a large majority of those on whom they attend, pay no board. The Schweister-house is their home; which they are free to quit, however, at pleasure; and they all live on a footing of perfect equality. One large room serves as the common eating-hall; one, which engrosses an entire front of the building, is the dormitory; while a chapel, where there is an altar, sees them assembled every morning to sing a hymn, to the accompaniment of a harpsichord, and pray with one of the ministers who attends them.

Previous to our visit to the Schweister-house, we had inspected the church,—a plain unadorned hall, fitted up with benches, two galleries, and a sort of table or altar. There is neither desk nor pulpit, for the service stands in no need of such adjuncts, inasmuch as the devotional parts of it consist mainly of psalm-singing, and the exhortation is delivered, like a lecturer's address at the British Institution, from the table. Unfortunately for myself, I did not happen, on either occasion of visiting the place, to reach it on a festival; but the music, I am told, is exceedingly good, and the choir is led by an organ. It may be worth while to add, that the principle which has established a Broder-house and Schweister-house apart from one another, operates in the temple of the Hernhuters,—the men and women occupy distinct sets of benches, with a considerable space between them.

The pastors or clergy of this singular sect, inhabit apartments connected with the church, and adjoining to it. Not fewer than seven are always resident in the town, of whom three are bishops, and they are all family men. I do not know how they are accommodated in the sort of college which was pointed out as their common home; but I should think indifferently.

Our next visit was to the cemetery. To reach it we were obliged to traverse a considerable portion of the town, than which I have seen nothing in Germany so neat and clean, and what we should describe in England as thoroughly comfortable-looking. The streets were all wide and well-paved; the houses substantial, yet airy; and everything about them, from the glass in the windows to the brass knockers on the doors, clean as hands could make them.

The cemetery lies, perhaps, a couple of hundred yards beyond the outskirts of the town. You ascend to it,—for it occupies the elbow of a green hill,—by a broad gravel road, cut through the centre of luxuriant meadows, and shaded on either side by rows of lime-trees. This conducts you to a gateway, over the arch of which on the outer side, are inscribed in German, the words "Christ is risen from the dead;" while the corresponding side within the enclosure bears as its motto, "And is become the first-fruits of them that slept." And truly it would be hard to imagine a spot of earth, within which the enthusiast,—aye, and even the man who, without being an enthusiast, has ever so slight a tinge of romance in his nature,—would more desire to sleep out that last slumber.

A sort of oblong square, it is girdled round by a well-trimmed hedge of limes, from which, at intervals, pollarded trees shoot up; while the corners are thickly woven each into a shady arbour, where seats are arranged for the accommodation of the contemplative. It is, however, after you have passed beneath the arch, that the holy quiet of the spot strikes you most forcibly. Laid out with singular good taste into parallelograms, and having the paths which divide them one from another, shaded by limes, it presents to your gaze no confused heap of irregular mounds, overgrown with nettles and other noxious weeds, but well-kept, yet unornamented plains, where, side by side, each covered by a flat stone,—the record of their births, and death, and nothing more,—the deceased brothers and the sisters of this singular community lie at rest. Even here, however, in the grave-yard of a people studious to preserve, as far as such a thing is possible, the primitive equality of man with man, some distinction is paid to the ashes of the great,—not because in their season of mortality these ashes made up a noble family, but because the family in question have been mighty benefactors to the sect. In the centre of a wide road which separates the cemetery into two halves,—and on the right of which the males of the place are buried, while the portion on the left is devoted exclusively to women,—repose all that was once seen among men of Count Zinzendorf and his kindred, covered over by nine stone tombs, on the elevated lids of which their titles and designations are inscribed. The Count himself, to whom Hernhut owes its prosperity, and in some sort, its character, occupies the central position of all; and he is supported on either hand by the graves of his descendants. Nor will the number of these graves ever be increased. The family of Zinzendorf has become extinct; and no other relics of humanity may hope to be honoured as they were, by the simple, yet reflecting members of the Hernhut community.

We lingered in this beautiful spot a good half-hour, and quitted it, at the termination of that period, "wiser and better men," at least for the moment. Altogether different from the Père La Chaise, or any other cemetery which I had ever visited before, it struck me as constituting the very beau ideal of a burying ground,—grave, yet not severe,—neat, yet free from every approach to gaudiness,—well kept, yet bearing about it no impress of the hands that trimmed it, and in its situation and arrangements perfect. Here are no clumsy pillars, nor urns, nor sarcophagi, no, nor even crosses. Flowers are utterly unknown, and garlands tabooed. But the arrangement of the pollarded limes, which both surround and intersect the square, is, as it ought to be in such a place, at once formal and appropriate, casting each of the gravel-walks into a pleasant shade, while between them all lies open. With respect, again, to the graves, these are distinguished from the general level of the ground only by the small, flat, hewn stone, which is laid over each, and they seem to be about four feet apart from one another. I observed that the Hernhuters seem, from the first formation of the cemetery, to have observed, in conducting their funerals, the same regularity which appears to prevail in all their daily proceedings. The first of their community who paid the debt of nature,—after the burying-ground was laid out, and the colony put upon its present footing,—lies under his stone, close to the angle which is formed by the meeting of the central walk and that which passes along the side of the hedge next the entrance. In like manner, I observed that, far to the rear of the two lines which enclose, as it were, the tombs of the Zinzendorfs, there are blank spaces, which will doubtless be filled up, as the course of time sweeps away generation after generation from their hopes and their fears, their anxieties, their pursuits, and their follies.

On quitting the grave-yard, our guide,—an intelligent old man,—conducted us towards a sort of observatory, from which, as it occupies the summit of the hill, a fine view of the surrounding country is to be obtained. The scene was altogether very pleasing; for cultivation is carried on everywhere to a great extent, and there is no lack either of ornamental wood, or human habitations,—while, far in the distance, the mountains of Silesia and Bohemia are seen, forming a noble back-ground to the panorama. Nor was the effect of music, heard at a distance, as happened with us to be the case, out of keeping with the character of the things around us. A band of strolling minstrels chanced to be wending their way through a village, in the bottom of the vale far beyond Hernhut, and the air which they were performing, borne back upon the light breeze, sounded very sweetly. In a word, our visit to the tombs of the Hernhuters, with all its accompaniments of sight and sound, affected us at the moment with feelings singularly delightful, of which the recollection still abides by us, as Moore beautifully describes the odour of the roses, lingering about the fragments of the broken vase, which once contained the roses themselves.

After inserting our names, according to established usage, in a book which is contained in the wooden tower of the observatory, we returned to the inn, and offered our guide money. He would not accept a groschen, though he had too much good sense and good taste, to affect indignation at what he could not but perceive was not designed for an insult. We prevailed upon him, however, to eat his luncheon with us, and found him both an intelligent companion, and willing to impart his information freely.

He told us, what future inquiries have since confirmed, that the Church of Hernhut has branches in very many lands. At Berlin, there is an establishment on a small scale, which is managed after the model of that in Silesia. London has also its little germ, somewhere, according to him, in the neighbourhood of Fulham; and in North America the settlements are numerous. But all look to Hernhut as to the fountain-head of their church, and all receive from the synod there, periodical admonitions and instructions.

So much for the more spiritual and intellectual portion of our entertainment,—and now a word or two concerning that which was neither. I must not forget to record, for the benefit of all true lovers of excellent beer and excellent bread, that they will not find better than at Hernhut in all Germany. The claret, which was also good, held, in our estimation, a very secondary place to the clear, brisk, pale ale, which the waiter poured out for us from certain elegantly-shaped, green glass bottles, and the bread we pronounced to be beyond all praise.

We quitted Hernhut about one o'clock, hoping, as the result proved, in the face of physical impossibilities, to reach Schandau that night. The idea was the more preposterous, that we knew perfectly well how far, by the line of the main road, the one place is divided from the other; but being told of a footpath over hill and vale, and having examined upon the map, the situations of the villages through which it led, we came to the conclusion that we should be able to compress the usual forty English miles into half that number. We were entirely mistaken in this rash inference; for, independently of the risks which we ran of losing the way,—a misfortune which, it must be confessed, more than once overtook us,—we ought to have recollected that even travellers on foot cannot proceed with the precision of an arrow's flight; inasmuch as standing corn is not to be trodden down, morasses must be avoided, and through woods and over mountains, paths are, for the most part, tortuous. Neither did it greatly surprise, however much it mortified us, to find, that on halting at a village in that part of Bohemia which pushes itself deep into the heart of Saxony, between Seibnitz and Hernhut, that we had accomplished scarcely one-fourth of our pilgrimage; and that, with scarce four hours of daylight before us, it was utterly hopeless to think of compassing the remaining three-fourths. Having ascertained, therefore, that good quarters were to be had at Schlukenau, a considerable town through which it would be necessary to pass, we made up our minds to halt there for the night; even though by doing so, we should leave ourselves twenty good miles to walk on the morrow.

We dined in a village inn, the landlord of which was a jolly old fellow; who, having an only daughter, married her to a bouerman in the place, and now the three generations,—for there was a family by the union, of course,—dwelt together very happily under the old man's roof. I mention this trifling circumstance because it enables me to give the substance of certain statistical details which were communicated to me, in the course of our walk, by the son-in-law. This latter, a remarkably athletic fine-looking fellow, who volunteered to give us a convoy, and direct us the nearest way to Schlukenau, had seen something of the world. He was in Strasburg in the year 1813, when a corps of English artillery manned the works, and he spoke in high admiration of the appearance and perfect discipline of the men. Now, however, he cultivated with excellent skill a farm of eighty or an hundred acres, of which he was the proprietor; and while he led me over his land, and pointed out with honest pride, the order in which it was kept, and the enormous crops which it produced, he very readily answered such questions as I put to him on the subject both of the Bohemian system of agriculture and of the profits arising out of it. Wheat, as, indeed, my own previous observation had shown me, is not much cultivated in Bohemia. Here and there, where the soil is particularly favourable for it, the seed is sown; but rye is the staple commodity, with which, indeed, the fields were loaded. Out of rye, as I need scarcely mention, the Germans manufacture, not only the bread that is commonly in use among them, but almost all their ardent spirits, of which I have tasted very little, but which, whenever I did taste it, seemed to be execrable. Oats they likewise rear for their horses, as well as barley for malting; but these grains bear no proportion, in point of abundance, to the rye crops.

When the rye is removed, they sow the ground with clover; not, as with us, that they may feed it off, and so enrich the soil while they extract something from it, but for the purpose of securing a supply of dry fodder for their cattle, which, all the winter over, and throughout a considerable portion of the spring and summer, are kept in their stalls. Then come potatoes, then a season of fallow; after which a good coat of manure, to be followed by rye again. Whenever flax is grown, and next to rye it is, both here and in Saxony, more cultivated than any other grain, fallows are more frequent; for flax, as every child knows, drains the soil of all its nutritious qualities.

The implements used in agricultural operations seem to be ruder, and far more inefficient, than among us. The plough is precisely such an instrument as I recollect to have seen represented in my Delphin edition of Virgil's Georgics when I was at school; and it is drawn indifferently by horses, bullocks, or heifers. Bullocks and heifers are, however, more commonly used than horses, though it is no unusual sight to see a horse and a heifer yoked together. There is no boy to drive; but the ploughman, as in Scotland, at once holds the stilts of the plough, and with his voice, and a long halter, guides the cattle. With respect to the harrows, I saw little difference between them and our English implements, except that those in Germany are lighter, and never have more than one horse or one bullock attached to them.

The rest of their tools, such as forks, rakes, mattocks, spades, &c., very much resemble our own; with this difference, in reference to the last, that in Germany much less iron is wasted upon them than upon similar articles in England. The blade of a German spade, which, by the way, is pointed, or, rather, semicircular in form, is composed of wood to within a few inches of the edge, and there is no iron at all upon the handle.

I am not quite sure that I perfectly understood my intelligent companion, when we came to discuss the amount of crop raised from the land, and the prices fetched by the different kinds of grain in the market. His method of computing these matters was so different from any to which I had been accustomed, that I could only guess at a parallel between it and our English measures. Yet it struck me that he described the wheat lands as producing, on an average, between three and four quarters; of which the price varied from twenty-one to twenty-five shillings of our money. Concerning the price of the rye I had less curiosity, though that seemed to repay the farmer quite as abundantly as wheat; at least, my friend assured me that it would not answer his purpose to substitute wheat for rye, even now, when wheat was more than usually in demand, and therefore fetched a more than usually high price. For it is worthy of remark that the failure of the crops in America had affected the corn-market even in Bohemia; from which remote district people were transmitting quantities of wheat to supply the necessities of the squatters among the back woods of Kentucky.

From the subject of agriculture we passed on to its kindred topics, grazing and planting; the latter of which naturally led to a discussion on fuel. I learned from him, that here, as elsewhere in the north and centre of Germany, there is no such thing as grazing on a large scale. Such bouermen as happen to own a handful of sheep, send them in summer, under the charge of a lad, into the green lanes and roadsides, to feed; while in winter and spring they are, like the cattle, kept within doors, and fed from stalls. The consequence is, that you scarcely ever meet with lambs as an article of food in Germany; for the flocks are too scanty to authorize the practice of putting the rising generation to death. So also in reference to dairy farms, these neither are, nor can be, on the scale to which we are accustomed in England. Hence cheese, besides being both dear and bad, is very scarce; and butter, except in the very height of summer, is detestable.

The Germans, though exceedingly fond of their pleasure-gardens, are not skilful as horticulturists. Their fruits are poor, and they take little pains to render them otherwise; but of their forests they are very careful. This is the more necessary, because of their dependence upon the woods for almost all the fuel which they consume; and which, while it is not cheap anywhere, is here, in Bohemia and Silesia, among the most costly articles in use. A claughter of wood, sufficient for a month's supply for a kitchen stove, costs in this corner of Bohemia, five dollars. The same quantity, in the very heart of the Saxon forests,—that is, at Schandau, in Saxon Switzerland,—costs four dollars and four groschens. Nor would it be procurable even at this price, were not the proprietors of forest lands particularly zealous in protecting their woods from injury, and in replanting such spaces as the axe of the woodman may, from time to time, lay bare. I find, however, that here, as elsewhere, it becomes necessary, in the course of time, to vary the plant, so as to suit the caprices of the soil. In many places I observed that young birch and ash trees were coming up from among the roots and stems of decayed or removed firs; and I learned, on inquiry, that they had been substituted for the original stock, to which the earth had refused any longer to furnish adequate nutrition.

I have as yet said nothing of the size and general appearance of the horses, cattle, and sheep which, from time to time, crossed me. Of the first, I should say that the breed must be singularly mixed; for you meet, here and there, tolerable specimens of the animal, to be succeeded immediately afterwards by the merest rips. Generally speaking, however, the draught horses seem to be good,—slow, doubtless, and alike defective in the shoulder and hind-quarters, but strong, without being, like the Flemish breed, so heavy as to oppress themselves. The riding horses, and especially those taken up for the service of the cavalry, struck me as being, in proportion, far inferior. They are either all legs, which they do not seem to use either with dexterity or elegance, or mere punches. In like manner, the cattle, to the eye of one accustomed to the sleek coats and well-covered ribs of our Lincolnshire or Durham breeds, present a very sorry appearance. Each particular bone in each particular brute's carcase sticks up in melancholy distinctness, and in point of size the animals themselves are mere dwarfs. I have seen a man ploughing with a couple of heifers, positively neither taller nor stouter than a pair of Lincolnshire calves of three weeks old.

From such materials it would be vain to expect that good beef can be manufactured; indeed, the Germans have no notion of pampering themselves with good beef. Their system is, not to fatten the beast, and then kill him; but to work him as long as he is fit for work, and then to kill him lest he should become an incumbrance. Neither can their sheep boast much of the symmetry of their proportions, or of the high flavour of their flesh when it comes to table. The wool, as everybody knows, is, indeed, excellent; but the mutton is but sorry food, at least to an Englishman. As I stated some time ago, however, the English traveller need not distress himself too much on this account. He is very rarely troubled with the offer of mutton, inasmuch as calf's-flesh seems to be not only at hand all the year round, but to supply the place of every other species of animal food.

We parted from our civil bouerman about four o'clock, at the summit of a hill, whence he was enabled to point out to us, both the direction of the ground on which Schlukenau stood, and the course of the path which it would be necessary to follow in order to reach it. His instructions were communicated with so much accuracy, that we never deviated an inch from the right way; and so came in about seven, to just such a town as our experience of other agricultural stadts and burghs had led us to expect. At the Golden Stag we fixed our head quarters,—a large inn, and apparently well frequented,—where we spent the night, without either accident or adventure befalling of which I need pause to give an account. There is a schloss here, which, to our surprise, we learned, belongs, like the lordship of the manor, to the same graff who owns the land about Aderspach on the other side of the Riesengebirgen. I have forgotten both his name and his title; but he must be a wealthy nobleman, even for Austria; which, while it possesses many poor, can likewise muster some of the richest noblemen in the world.

We were not over-above delighted with Schlukenau; for the landlord had about him none of the politeness which we had invariably found in his brother craftsmen in Bohemia, and his domestics were all singularly slow and stupid. We therefore quitted the place without regret, at six o'clock next morning, and marched upon Schandau. Again we followed, both from choice and to shorten the distance, bye-paths, which carried us through some glorious scenery, quite different in character, but scarcely less attractive, than any which we had passed in our tour. For the rocks and precipices of Saxon Switzerland were once more around us, and never had they appeared to us more wild or more sublime. Through these, under the influence of a bright sunny day, we trudged along, crossing hill and traversing dale, in the highest possible spirits, till having gained the main road not far from the village of Tseidler, we followed it, without swerving, into the quiet glen of Schandau.

The tale of my pedestrian tour in the highlands of Bohemia, Silesia, and Saxony, is told. To the first of these countries I afterwards devoted a good deal more both of time and attention; but as my journey was performed, not on foot, but in carriages, the opportunities presented to me of becoming intimately acquainted with the habits of thought and fireside occupations of the people were necessarily less abundant than I could have wished them to be. My reader must, therefore, be content, for the remainder of this excursion, to accept, in lieu of a diary, a general outline of the route which I followed; and to pause with me, from time to time, while I relate to him such incidents as befel, or retail such fragments of information as I considered it worth while to treasure up when acquired, and have since judged it expedient to commit to writing.

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CHAPTER IX.

THE DILIGENCE FROM DRESDEN TO TÖPLITZ. THE FIELD OF KULM. THE BATTLE, AND THE MONUMENTS THAT RECORD IT.

There is a diligence, or eilwagen, which leaves Dresden for Prague twice in every week. It passes along the Schandau road as far as Pirna; whence, making a turn to the right, it traverses the lower slopes of the Erzgebirge, and so conducts, by the mineral baths of Berg-gieshubel, to Hollendorf, on the Saxon frontier. My young companion and I, having made all necessary arrangements, took our places in this vehicle on Wednesday, the 5th of July. We had previously wandered over a good deal of the country through which it was to carry us, our report of all that we had encountered and seen having excited a natural desire in others to see it also. And in the interval between the termination of one expedition and the commencement of another, the carriage was accordingly put in requisition. Töplitz, and various other points, replete with interest, were thus visited,—of which I have not yet spoken, because it would have been labour lost to describe them twice. Yet the fact of beholding it now for the second time, had no influence in lessening the pleasure which we derived from the scenery around us. Without partaking in any degree of the character of a mountain district, this mid-space between Saxony and Bohemia is highly picturesque; for it is one continued succession of valleys, with well-wooded hills enclosing them; and the bold summits of Lilienstein and Königstein are rarely out of sight.

A Saxon eilwagen is a machine nowise deserving of reprobation. It is a long, omnibus-looking affair, with a coupé in front for the conducteur, and seated within so as to contain not fewer than sixteen persons; yet are the chairs all so arranged that you have a comfortable rest for your back, while by keeping the numerous windows open, you suffer less from heat than might be expected. The rate of travelling, too, is much improved from what it used to be. I really believe that on level ground we compassed six miles an hour, and if we did creep as often as a trifling acclivity came in view, it must not be forgotten, that there were but four horses to drag the ponderous load. With respect, again, to our fellow-passengers, they seemed to me to be made up of individuals from many lands. There was an Austrian colonel, on his way to join his regiment in Prague; there was a Prussian merchant,—a traveller, like ourselves, for amusement's sake; there were a Saxon lawyer, a Moravian banker, and last, though not least, as perfect a specimen of the tribe John Bull, as the eye of the naturalist need desire to behold. Our worthy countryman understood not one syllable of German, and his French was lame to a degree. But he bore about him a portly person, a good-humoured, rosy, and rather large countenance, and looked round upon the company, amid which, after prodigious labour, he succeeded in establishing himself, with an expression of indescribable condescension, which said, "I know that you are all a set of very poor devils, yet I will suffer you." He was, as those of his kidney generally are, for ever on the alert lest the Germans should cheat him; and grumbled and complained, and ate and drank, and proved to be, after all, a kind-hearted and easy-tempered person.

Between Hollendorf, where the Saxon custom-house is planted, and Peterswald, the frontier village of Bohemia, there is an interval of perhaps an English mile in extent. Over that the Saxon diligence carried us; and at the door of the Austrian custom-house, both we and our baggage were deposited. Here passports were examined, trunks and knapsacks opened, and the other formalities attendant on the admission of strangers into a new country gone through, among which I observed that the custom was not omitted, of feeing the revenue-officer into good humour. Each passenger, as he presented his passport, to be viséed and approved, slid into the official's hand a piece of money; and I, as I consider it wise, in like cases, to do as is done by those about me, followed the example. The officer took the coin, smiled graciously upon me, affixed the stamp unhesitatingly to my credentials, and turned to somebody else. I really could not quite explain to myself why this act of extravagance had been committed, but I am not aware that I ever missed the douceur; and I heartily wish the individual who received it, much enjoyment in its possession.

We dined at Peterswald, on very good fare, which the landlady of the Post had provided for us; and had no reason to complain, as stage-coach travellers in England sometimes do, that we were hurried in its consumption. One full hour was spent in discussing the meal, and another in smoking after it. At length, however, intelligence was communicated, that the conducteur awaited us, and we descended to the road, where a change had come over "the spirit of our dream." The substantial Saxon eilwagen stood still in its repose, for it was not destined to proceed further; and in its room were provided three lesser carriages, into one of which, seated for four persons, I and my boy stowed ourselves. The opposite places were soon taken by our countryman and the Prussian, and away we went.

Our journey, in the early part of this day, had lain over the field of the great battle of Dresden; we were now about to traverse the scene of another conflict scarcely less desperate,—the affair, as by the French writers it is designated, of Kulm. It would have been strange indeed, had I failed to look round with more than common interest while traversing these scenes of mighty strife. I endeavoured also to look at them with a soldier's eye. I did my best to trace the positions of the several columns of attack and defence; and I think that I succeeded. At all events, I am certain that never till I saw the ground, was I able, from the accounts given, whether by French or German writers, to form any correct idea either of the battles themselves, or of their results. Let me endeavour to supply to others the deficiency of which I have myself experienced the pressure, by describing the localities, in connexion with a brief narrative of the events which have immortalized them.

The battle of Dresden, as well as the combats of Gross-Beeren, Katzbach, and Kulm were, as I need scarcely observe, the immediate consequences of the termination of the armistice in August, 1813. Napoleon, weary of the war, had yielded to the demands of the Prussians, and, evacuating Breslau, and abandoning the line of the Oder, had fallen back upon Liegnitz. He himself declared, that he made these sacrifices,—for such they unquestionably were,—in the hope that, out of the armistice, a treaty of peace would spring, and there is no great cause to doubt that he spoke sincerely. What could he hope to gain by a continuance of the struggle? France was exhausted in every pore; the best and ablest of her warriors were slain, such as survived longed for rest, and were ready to sacrifice even their national vanity in order to obtain it. On the other hand, the strength of the Allies seemed to accumulate from day to day; and Austria assumed such an attitude as to render her neutrality less than doubtful. I think, then, that we may give Napoleon credit for having spoken the truth once in his life, when he said, that he yielded much, by the evacuation of Silesia, from an earnest desire for peace; but his desire was not to be gratified. The Allies judged, and judged wisely, that a season of repose would, by him, be employed only to gather means for creating fresh troubles, and they determined,—the counsels of England prevailing with them,—to wage war à l'outrance.

On the 11th of August, the armistice came to an end. Its rightful term was the 17th; but the current of events swept over it. Napoleon was then in Dresden, which he held as the key and pivot of his position, and to cover it, he had constructed a large and formidable entrenched camp along the bases of Lilienstein and Königstein. Of the situation of these two enormous rocks I have spoken elsewhere. They stand about twelve English miles from Dresden, like giant sentinels, that guard the debouches of Bohemia and Silesia, while between them flows the Elbe, now passable only by a ferry, but by Napoleon's care, then bridged over. Here a position was marked out for not less than sixty thousand men, whence, as from a centre, it was competent for the French to pass either into Bohemia, where the Grand Army of the Allies seemed preparing to assemble, or to Silesia and Lusatia. But it was not on this side of the Saxon capital exclusively, that Napoleon fixed a vigilant eye. His real line was the line of the Elbe, from Hamburg to Dresden; his communications with France were kept open by Erfurth, and through the Thuringian forest; and he took care that all the approaches to Dresden should be so guarded, as that, while the city itself continued secure from insult, the force in possession might have free avenues through which to operate on any threatened point in this enormous circle. "Dresde," said he, "est le pivot, sur lequel je veux manœuvrer pour faire face à toutes les attaques. Depuis Berlin jusqu'à Prague, l'ennemi se develope sur en circonference dont j'occupé le centre; les moindre communications s'allangent pour lui sur les contours qu'elles devrient suivre; et pour moi quelques marches suffisent pour me porter partout ou ma presence et mes reserves son necessaires. Mais il faut que sur les points ou je ne serai pas, mes lieutenants sechent m'attendre sans rien commettre au hazard." It was mainly because they neglected to keep this latter injunction in view, that the reverses which deranged all his magnificent plans occurred.

Napoleon had formed, during the cessation of hostilities, a new corps-d'armée, which he put under the command of General Vandamme, and brought up from the mouth of the Elbe. It numbered, in all, about five-and-twenty thousand men, and had instructions to support General St. Cyr, who with fifteen thousand, was to occupy the fortified positions near Dresden. Meanwhile, the Duke de Reggio, from his camp at Dahme, was to march upon Berlin with five-and-thirty thousand men of all arms; the Prince of Eckmuhl, from Bagedorf, was to co-operate with him; while General Lemon, the governor of Magdeburg, was to keep open the communication between them with a corps of six thousand men. These movements were designed to accomplish a two-fold object. First, they were to find for the Prussians work enough at home; and to put Napoleon, if possible, in possession of the Prussian capital. Secondly, advantage might be taken of the distraction thereby caused in the counsels of the Allies, while Napoleon, in person, with the Guards, and the mass of his army, threw himself upon the Austrians. For Napoleon,—the armistice being virtually at an end,—became impatient of inactivity, and hoped, while retaining Dresden, and looking to it throughout as his pivot during the campaign, to find time, ere the Allies should have perfected their arrangements, to strike a blow both against Berlin and in Bohemia.

Napoleon had calculated less than he ought to have done on the activity of Blucher and of the Russians. The former, instead of waiting to be attacked, took the initiative in Silesia, and drove the French, with great loss, behind the Bober.