The next, and not the least interesting class of Hartz tales, are those which picture in lovely colours the state of lawless outrage and petty violence, as well as the degraded superstition, in which Germany was involved during the 15th and 16th centuries. Upon these we cannot now enter, and can only refer our readers to the traditions concerning the wild hunter Hackel, and the more modern tales of which it became the basis; such as the interesting history of the persecuted Jacob Nimmernüchtern. Among the superstitions of this age is that of which the Brocken, a high mountain in this district, is the scene during Walpurgis tide, i. e. the night of Mayday. This has been in some measure rendered classical by the strange introduction of its revelries into Goëthe's drama of Faustus. It has lately been rendered still more familiar by its forming the subject of one of the beautiful outlines of Retsch, for the elucidation of which an indifferent translation of the passages referred to in the plates has lately been put forth, under the modest announcement of "A new Translation of Goethe's Faustus." We give a version of the old legend or ballad current on the spot, not for its merits, but because it is, we believe, the only poetic tradition of the district.

In Thuringen they know full well
A mountain, Brocken hight,
That for full sixteen miles around
Stands towering to the sight.

Saxon and Hess from far and near
That mountain's summit ken,
As high o'er all the hills it soars
Of Hartz and Thuringen.

Thither, as ancient records tells,
In crowds from far and wide,

The witches haste at dead of night
All at Walpurgis tide.

There young and old, the hellish band,
Their wicked gambols play,

For there the devil leads them forth

To hold their holiday.

And there in darksome glens they sport

With dance and revelry,

And goblin spirits bind them close
In spells of grammarie.

For full authority have they,

As learned Clerks have told,

The mightiest of the wizard crew
In bondage strict to hold.

But swift, when at the morning's dawn

They hear the cock's shrill cry,

Away o'er hill and valley deep,
All through the air they hie.

And, fearless, homeward one and all,

Each to his cell they fly;

There, as we know, they weave their work
Of spells and sorcery.

Here we must end our fire-side excursion into the forest. When we really set out on our travels, there is no spot we shall visit with more pleasant associations; and while our Journal records our rambles from one hill and valley to another, it shall faithfully register the simple and affecting tales of which each is the chronicle. We shall rouse the mountain-echoes with the mighty "hunter of the forest," join in the sports and taste the good wine of the ancient knights, grind our corn (if we have any) at the devil's mill, drown all our cares and tender crosses (if of them too we have any) at the fountain of Lora, and at night look out for shelter in what was once the humble cottage of Peter Claus, unless, indeed, we should be honoured by a ticket of admission to the Imperial court of the Kyffhauser.

THE TRAVELLER.

"Habet enim multum jucunditatis soli colique mutatio, ipsaque illa peregrinatio intersita." PLINII EPIST.

THERE is something exceedingly unpleasant in being obliged to answer "No," to a traveller's "Pray, Sir, were you ever abroad?" and to sit mum-chance all the time that he is running over the "grimoire" of outlandish technicalities. For my own part, I am perfectly convinced that man is, par excellence, a travelling animal; and that the Tartar race are the nearest in their habits to the natural and unsophisticated instincts of the untutored species. Philosophers have written largely on the degeneration which has resulted from social institutes, and especially from the establishment of the rights of property; but they have overlooked the great and leading inconvenience attached to the spirit of accumulation, its chaining men down in towns or on farms, checking their migratory propensities, and reducing them from a locomotive existence to the soil-fixed condition of a cabbage. One proof of man's innate disposition to rove, is the curiosity so generally manifested by the sedentary part of the world, and the respect it pays to those who, having broken through local ties, have explored remote and distant countries, and return to their native cities to communicate the results of their experience, and "prate of their whereabouts" in return for a good dinner and a bottle of claret. From my earliest youth I was deeply affected by the honours and attentions with which travellers are received at the fire-side of home-bred families; and I never heard a man say he had visited a countrytown to which I was a stranger, without a sense of inferiority that made me seriously uneasy. Having neglected to avail myself of the short peace to visit France under the Consulate, I felt a mortal aversion for all who had been more fortunate than myself; and, for some years after the breaking out of the war, I scrupulously abstained from all society where such persons frequented.

Being, however, thus "pent up in Utica," and unable to reach the Continent, I did not give way to despair; but, cutting my coat according to my cloth, I indulged my itch for travelling by visiting the principal places of notoriety in our own islands, and became an extensive home tourist. While yet a boy, I had laid a basis for my future peregrinations, by making the grand tour of the esculent topography of London. I ate fish at Billingsgate, whitebait at Greenwich, eel-pies at the aits at Brentford, and roast-pig in Porridge-island. I smoked at the cider-cellar, drank Burton-ale in Gray's-inn-lane, got oysters at Wright's and the best salads and beef à-la-mode at the Thirteen Cantons in the Seven Dials. Every Sunday I pushed my discoveries through the principal environs of the metropolis, and made myself acquainted with the most celebrated inns and ordinaries within twenty miles of "the great city;" so that I might boast of being able to give an opinion of all that had acquired a name from "Mother Red Cap's" and the very ancient "Three Pigeons" at Brentford, (which subsisted in the days of Ben Jonson,) to the "Star and Garter" at Richmond, and the "Bush" at Staines.

In one lucky summer I made the passage to Gravesend by sea, and travelled by land to be present at an Eton montem, dining at Salt-Hill, and walking in the evening on the terrace at Windsor with our then gracious sovereign, King George the Third. But if the world was not field enough for the ambition of Alexander, it is easy to conceive that my appetite for travel, growing with what it fed upon, was not to be satisfied with so circumscribed a sphere of action. Fortunately at this time Margate-hoys began to be the vogue. I was enabled to move en avant, and make my way even to the sea-shore. O! how my heart bounded with delight in setting out upon this expedition! With how contemptuous an indifference I passed by the Hospital at Greenwich! with what joy I beheld expanding Thames assume the extent and unsteadiness of its kindred sea! How delighted I was to be sea-sick! How enraptured I listened to the ceaseless flow of narrative, which the steersman poured forth from the helm, touching his voyages in whalers and Indiamen! On landing at Margate I almost fancied myself at Calcutta. The master of the ceremonies was, to my heated imagination, another Grand Turk, and the bathing machines more foreign and strange than the bucentaur at Venice.

On returning from this trip, I gave myself great airs among my City friends: I talked learnedly of the Reculvers, not unfrequently alluded to the Cinque Ports, was at home when Deal was introduced into conversation, had much to say concerning smugglers, and hit off a shipwreck on the Goodwin's to the life. Having on this occasion surveyed the coast of Kent, I made one successful expedition to Brighton and Worthing; and by a call of

business was fortunately obliged to go to Weymouth during a royal visit.

About this time, coming into a small but genteel independence, I left trade, took to the study of botany and mineralogy, and got myself elected an F.S. A. It is needless to add, that these steps were followed by a tour through Wales, a visit to the lakes of Cumberland, and a six weeks inspection of the western highlands of Scotland. Thus by dint of indefatigable exertions, I put myself upon a level with the generality of domestic travellers, became a sort of English Humboldt, and was seldom out-talked in company, except by a professional traveller, or, more technically, a "bagman" or "rider." I became acquainted with the distinctive characters of all the fashionable watering-places, made a hortus siccus, a collection of epitaphs, and another of inn-window inscriptions, from "Charming Harriet Winlove," to "In questa casa troverete" inclusive; could impose upon the ignorant with such cabalistical terms as mica slate, grey wacke, transition rocks, and coal formations; could describe the interior of a Cornish tin-mine, frighten the old women with extinct volcanoes, decypher a tombstone, (and, by turning it topsy-turvy, as was lately done in Ireland, convert the stone-mason's name into that of a Pagan deity,) or explain heather and rocks, and warlocks, for the benefit of the country gentlewomen who were reading the Scottish novels.

Upon the strength of these accomplishments, I began to be considered a personage in my neighbourhood, was never left out in an agreeable dinner-party, and was constantly applied to as one whose word was law, in matters of distant concernment, and who was a known contributor to the Gentleman's Magazine. But, out alas!

The glories of our earthly state

Are shadows, not substantial things.

The expedition to Russia took place, Napoleon fell from the throne of Europe, and I was dethroned from my village supremacy, to be out-talked and out-swaggered by every attorney's clerk or milliner's apprentice, who had made a fortnight's voyage to the French metropolis. When I mentioned John-Dories at Torbay, I was silenced by the matelote d'anguilles of St. Cloud; if I alluded to the turtle-soup at the Bush at Bristol, I was put down with "Les Frères Very," or the "Cadran bleu." If I expa tiated on a winter at Bath, I was driven out of the field by six weeks at Brussels; and my best story of the Druids on Salisburyplain was discountenanced by the narrations of some button-collector from the plains of Waterloo. Then I fell into arrears in all my accoutrements: I did not wear my watch-chain round my neck; I had neither a musical snuff-box to exhibit or describe, nor a snuff-box of another sort which admits of no description. But what was still worse, I was like one who reads history without a

foundation of geography. I was for ever puzzled between the French opera, the comic opera, and the Italian opera; I had no conception of the Boulevards, knew nothing of the Rue St. Honoré; the Palais Royal ranked in my fancy with Aladdin's palace, and the Gallery of the Louvre with the paradise of Mahomet. This was a condition of things not to be endured

"He is but a bastard of the time

That doth not smack of observation,"―

and the supremacy of my "piked man of countries" was to be overcome at all risks; so, learning that the Brown Bear in Piccadilly would set me down in Paris, without more trouble or expense than attend the booking my place, I determined to see with my own eyes, to enable myself to

"Talk of sciences and arts,

And knowledge gain of foreign parts."

Then it was that I felt truly grateful to my invaluable parents, who had not neglected to give me all the advantages of a "French and English boarding-school." For being able to conjugate the most useful tenses of the verb avoir, and being quite at home in my French dialogues, I could not conceive that I should not be able to make myself perfectly understood. A short experience, however, served to undeceive me: for not only did my fluency depend upon the catenation of sentences as they stand in the grammar; but “on a changé tout ça," the system of conventional phraseology is totally altered since the days of Chambaud.

No sooner had I landed at Calais, than, eager to show my knowledge of the language, I addressed Monsieur Messe Meurice with a familiar "Bon jour!" He replied with his habitual politeness, adding, "Monsieur parle François." Now this was to begin with the beginning; and I readily answered, as directed, “Je le parle un peu." Meurice then very naturally asked me, "Monsieur veut-il diner? Monsieur veut manger quelque chose." But here the influence of association was too much; the dialogue alone ran in my head, and I stammered out unconsciously, "Les Anglois mangent la plus part des mots François."" Plait-il?" said Mons. Meurice, whose excellent bill of fare exhibits much more substantial eating. "Plait-il?" said Mons. Meurice, and completely threw me out, who knew not that plait-il is an idiomatical phrase for " I don't understand a single word you say."

My next adventure was of a more serious nature. I had sent for a tailor, determined to dress myself à la Française, in order not to be taken for an Englishman. On his arrival, (having just shut up my French dialogues with that artisan) I commenced with the first phrase," Maitre Henri, j'ai un habit à faire." "Monsieur," he replied, "je ne m'appelle pas Henri, et on ne dit pas Maitre à un homme comme moi." "God d- - ce n'est pas that's not it," I exclaimed; "Il faut-you should