is absolutely satiated with majestic old ruins; the imagination is wearied out with calling up the scenes of history and romance, peace and war, life and death, that have passed in them; one is exhausted and paralyzed by the burden and pressure of his thoughts and feelings; a day in riding through these scenes is as if one listened all day to inspiring and thrilling music; his musings are all sighings, and aspirations, and prayers; at every turn of the eye, he can scarcely repress his tears. The memories of a thousand years are around him at every step. At almost every great opening in the view of the banks of the Rhine, stupendous battlements and towers rise, from summit to summit, and upon one inaccessible crag after another-twenty or thirty in number, during the two days' ride-all, save one, in ruins; almost all, with one grand tower in the centre, so firmly built, that time has scarcely touched it; all built evidently for defence-upon heights so steep and stupendous, that it must have required strong heads to look down from their turrets and windows without shrinking.

These objects are indeed the most striking; but to complete the view, the hills are everywhere clothed with vineyards, the banks every now and then spread into little valleys, sometimes into broad ones, as in the Rheingau: and the noble stream, varying in width from one to two thousand feet, embosoms many islands.

There is one thing to detract from the beauty of the Rhine, as well as of all the other principal rivers in Europe that I have seen, and that is, that the waters are turbid-owing, doubtless, to the clayey soils through which they pass. They are of a whitish colour, and no sky, however pure its azure, can give them the rich hue of our American

streams.

In entering, at Bingen, the duchy of Hesse Darmstadt to-day, it was curious again to observe the immediate change in houses, countenances, circumstances, manners. The frame houses, filled in with brick or other materials, almost universal in Prussia instantly and almost completely disappear; beggars gather around the carriage again, and this, too, though the country appears just as well off, and even better; so that there must be a change of education and character to account for this, or else of police.

One thing in all these countries very much attracts our notice. All the people, literally all, live in crowded, and mostly dirty villages. Among all these rich fields and vine-clad hills, so beautiful for countryseats and cottages, there is not one house-not one. There are no fine

seats in the vicinity of the towns, with a little more space and decoration about them; but all habitation is confined to the dense, compact, crowded village. This, doubtless, was originally owing to the necessity of building for defence; and now, if the people had a taste for it, they are too poor to build for pleasure, abroad in the country. I should like to know what is the effect of this village life upon society. Is it as pure? Is it not more kind, more social, less reserved, less cold?

Το

Mayence has a very pretty entrance from the north, by a winding road through trees; but the town itself has very little attraction. my eyes, too, it is a very grievous annoyance, that every fifth, literally every fifth man you meet, is a soldier; there being six thousand troops quartered in a town of twenty-six thousand inhabitants.

We visited a gallery of paintings which has some original pieces by

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the masters. An "Assumption of the Virgin," by Annibal Carracci, in which the Supreme Being is represented as a venerable man-a conception quite shocking indeed; but when you throw away that idea, which you may easily do, for it is difficult to retain it, the painting of that countenance is very fine: also, a "Mary presenting to a Carmelite the habit of his order," by Carracci. The upward, reverent gaze of the old man, the loveliness of the virgin, were things to dwell upon for some moments at least. A very beautiful old painting of St. Appollonia, by Dominichino; a "Lot and his Daughters," by Michael Angelo-the fire, eagerness, and fondness of intoxication in the poor old man, with his hand outstretched towards the bowl-into which one of the daughters is pouring wine-and the beauty of the daughters, are the points of attraction: nor is the appearance of the outpoured wine to be forgotten. A "La Petit Jesus," by Jacques Jordan-i. e. Jesus teaching in the temple-nothing good but the appearance of the Jewish doctors, and that was very striking; some of them in the colouring of the flesh, by the bye, singularly like those heads of Jews by Alston, exhibited a year or two ago at the Boston Athenæum.

FRANKFORT ON THE MAINE is worthy of its old fame, of its historical associations, and of being the seat of the Germanic Diet. Some of the streets are gloriously ancient in their appearance; and the modern ones have very good buildings, and all are very neat. There are fine seats, too, in the environs, reminding us, for the first time, of the neighbourhoods of our own cities. The walls, too, and fortifications, like those of Brussels, are levelled; but instead of being planted with regular rows of trees, they are laid out in winding walks, interspersed with shrubbery and trees. The cathedral here is a very ancient-looking pile, and the tower with its pinnacles is very grand; the style pure Gothic. There are some old houses here of a very extraordinary appearance. They are very small on the ground, and at the same time very lofty; and being covered entirely, not only on the roof, but the sides, with small, black, shining pieces of slate, they look like giants clad in ancient armour.

DARMSTADT-a beautiful town, with fine avenues through rows of linden trees, on the road to Mayence, and also southward. The chief attraction to us, however, was the gallery of pictures (six or eight hundred in number) in the palace of the Duke of Hesse Darmstadt. Some beautiful ruins and landscapes, by Schonberger; two admirable winter pieces, by Fosci; a striking portrait, by Lanterre; animals, by Sneyder; a St. John, by Corregio. By Titian, a "Sleeping Venus"-the face particularly-the flush, the fulness of deep sleep-the something almost like delicate perspiration. By Dominichino, a "David and Nathan Thou art the man!"-the prophet standing above the king, who shrinks back in his chair, with a fear-stricken aspect-the prophet's dignity and fixed eye. By Schmidt, a "Diana and Nymphs bathing -exquisite beauty of form and softness of outline. “Adam and Eve," also by Schmidt-(German)-a painting of great power. Adam and Eve are flying from paradise; in the back ground the sky lowers with a tempest, and lightning flashes vengeance across the dark cloud. Adam's countenance and brow especially, are full of suppressed, sustained, and manly sorrow; Eve leans upon his breast, as they hurry along, with her face to the ground, and with such an expression of fear

in the eye-of fear, not agonizing, but clear, bright, spirituelle, subdued, modest, feminine, as, I think, I can never forget. The contrast of manly strength and female loveliness, in the picture, is very striking. But last and greatest of all, is Rembrandt's portrait of his second wife -so beautiful, so natural, so speaking, so heavenly, in the expression of the bright, calm, pure, and almost living eye, that I could have kneeled before it as a Catholic does before the Virgin Mary.

HEIDELBERG. The situation very delightful, on the banks of the Neckar. The ruins of the castle, on the brow of the hill southward, are more beautiful far than any castellated ruin I have seen in England; said by Scheiber's Guide-Book to be also the most beautiful in Germany. The walls are standing, in very good preservation, and are ornamented, I should judge, with not less than eighty or one hundred statues, also very perfectly preserved. These, with the niches and canopies, and the work in and over the windows, together with many armorial bearings, present a vast proportion of sculpture, though the building is not Gothic. An immensely deep fosse surrounds the castle; there is a fine paved esplanade in front, and another behind it, laid out with walks, and embowered with trees; and the views, up the Neckar, through richly wooded and vine-clad hills, and downward upon the town, and beyond, upon a broad and boundless plain, watered by the same river, also stretching towards the Rhine-are exceedingly fine.

HEPPENHEIM, on the road from Darmstadt to Heidelberg, is situated amid very charming scenery. The majestic ruin of Starkenburg Castle is on a neighbouring height. At Bensheim, not far from Heppenheim, we saw, for the first time in Europe, Indian corn.

OFFENBURG, September 5.-We are still in the valley of the Rhine, though at some distance from the river. The scenery for the last day or two more resembles that of our Connecticut river, than anything else; but the ruin of an old castle, now and then appearing on the neighbouring hills, is a feature which is never to appear in the landscapes of the Connecticut. The time of feudal sovereignties and castles has gone by in the civilized world. Princely dwellings, indeed, are built, and will be built; but they are no longer perched upon almost inaccessible crags and mountains, to be forsaken when the times of danger have passed away. The English castles now in ruins were not, indeed, so inconveniently situated; but still they were built for defence, and not for comfort, and have been given up, as much from their inconvenience as from their insecurity. We have been struck to-day with the picturesque and almost fantastic dress of the people; the men, and even young men, with the immensely broad-brimmed hat, which appears in many of Rembrandt's pictures, and the women showing a singular passion for the colour of scarlet. The throng, gathered in the village market-places, most of whom, by the bye, are women -they are the sellers in market-wears an appearance as strange and bizarre almost as would an assembly of Turks.

There is, in short, no business or labour, apparently, which the women of this country do not perform. In the morning, we always meet great numbers of them, either going to the fields with hoe and shovel in hand, or to the markets with the basket of vegetables or fruit upon their heads. This toil and exposure bereaves them of every

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feminine charm of person; though their countenances are not unamiable, nor more dull or coarse than might be expected in the circumstances. We learn from the attentive and sensible keeper of the Fortune Hotel here (to whom I commend all weary travellers passing through Offenburg), that women as regularly hire themselves out to work in the field, as men, and at nearly the same price-being eighteen sous for the women, and twenty-one sous for the men, per day-they providing partly for themselves-i. e. they take soup for breakfast at home; their employer provides bread and a pint of wine for their dinner, they adding meat and eggs if they choose; and they expect supper from their employer.

VILLENGEN, September 6.-To-day we have been passing through the Black Forest; by which is meant, not a continuous wood, nor a level country covered with forest, but a succession of hills, clothed with fir-trees principally, and looking dark enough justly to give its name to this extensive tract of country. Many of these hills wear a singular aspect; the foliage being bright and glossy, as well as dark; and the forms, bold and beautiful. The road, for thirty miles from Offenburg, leads up a small river, and through a delightful valley, which eventually becomes very picturesque and wild, and very much like what I expect in the scenery of Switzerland. The inhabitants, too, wear, I am told, the Swiss costume, and build their houses in the Swiss fashion: the former, that is to say, wearing large hats, and the latter an immense pent-house roof, much in the same style. They look-the houses very comfortable, though they must be very dark; and are delightfully scattered up and down among the hills and valleys-a thing we have scarcely seen before on our whole journey upon the Continent. We saw a funeral procession to-day, of a very singular appearance. The coffin-it was that of an infant-was borne by a woman, on her head. A boy came after her, with a crucifix, bound with ribbons and covered with flowers. Then followed a few men, and a considerable number of women, walking two and two-the women having black gauze caps on their heads, with a fringe of black lace, nearly covering the forehead, and singing a low funereal chant.

With regard to these large projecting roofs of the houses, and indeed the whole style of them-for they quite commonly embrace domicile, stable, woodhouse, carthouse, and barn, all under one roof- I cannot help again remarking how suddenly, just in passing from one village to another, this new scene presented itself. Certainly, these people cannot be like our countrymen; who, if they are about to build a house, or to do anything else, observe, as they pass through the country, how others are doing, and what improvements are to be made. The result, among us, is a great deal of variety, and a continual progress. the people here, either never travel, or they never think-never observe anything; else it would be impossible for them to settle down, each village for itself, into this unbroken uniformity. And, indeed, they have nothing like the look of intelligence, of alertness and inquisitiveness of mind, that are seen in America.

But

E

CHAPTER IX.

SWITZERLAND-SCHAFFHAUSEN-OBSERVANCE OF THE SABBATH ON THE CONTINENT-COMPARISONS OF THE GENERAL ASPECT AND MANNERS OF THE PEOPLE ON THE ROUTE, WITH THOSE OF OUR COUNTRY-FALLS OF THE RHINE -ZURICH- ZUG-RIGHI-WILLIAM TELL-LUCERNE

THUN.

SCHAFFHAUSEN (SWITZERLAND), September 8.-We entered Switzerland about ten miles north of this, and the entrance was most appropriate. We had scarcely passed the boundary stone, with Baden inscribed upon it, when there sunk down a deep and narrow valley on our right-deep as if it were placed out of this world, and looking calm, undisturbed, silent, and sequestered, as if it did not belong to this world. We soon descended into it; and with a glorious and gorgeous vista of autumn-painted hills constantly opening before us, we rode all the way to Schaffhausen.

To-day is Sunday, and we are resting at this place. The Sabbath, all over the continent of Europe, it is well known, is partly a holiday. I confess that I was extremely desirous of observing what was the character and effect of this holiday; what kind of relaxation was permitted by the usages of the European churches, both Catholic and Protestant, on Sunday. I had anticipated some modification of the common holiday. I had thought it likely, that relaxation for one part of the day, connected with religious services on the other, would possess a character of unusual decorum. And in this I am not disappointed, unless it be, that I find everywhere, in all the villages and cities which I have had an opportunity of observing on Sunday, a quietness and decorum quite beyond my expectation. The population is all abroad, indeed, after the hours of divine service, in the streets and the public places; but it seems to suffice the people to take a quiet walk with their families; and there is a remarkable restraint among the multitudes upon all noise, loud talking, and laughter.

There is

I state the fact as it is, and as a matter, certainly, of gratifying information. But I cannot conceal that it presents to me a very serious question. And the question is, how far it is desirable that our Sabbath-keeping should partake of the European character. much, doubtless, to be objected against the European mode. The day seems to be entirely spent in public-in public worship, or in the public walks. It seems to have no distinct moral object with the people around me. Now this is what, above all things, I would secure. But whether the object is best secured by the views and usages that prevail among us is the question.

We ought, on this subject, to look at the general principles on which time is to be used to the best account; or on which, in other words, time is to be devoted and hallowed to religious uses. Suppose I wish to set apart a day to any intellectual or moral use. How shall I best arrange it? And here let me say, that I know of nothing in the Scriptures that forbids the application of such general reasoning. To sanctify a day is, to set it apart for a religious purpose; and the ques