a curious stranger arrives, and he passes with scarce a glance the palace of the old rulers on his way to the statue of the grand plebeian, Jean Paul Friedrich Richter. At least the latter was the only object in the city which I cared to see. It is of bronze, colossal, and from Schwanthaler's model. The poet is represented as leaning against a tree, with a pencil in one hand and a note-book in the other, while his head is slightly lifted, as if with the inspiration of a new idea. But it is by no means a great work. In spite of the heat (92° in the shade) I walked out to the Hermitage, a summer resort of the Margraves, about four miles from the city. The road thither is an unbroken avenue of magnificent lindens, from which, as the ground gradually rises, you have wide views of the surrounding country. On the summit of the ridge stands the famous coffee-house, formerly kept by Frau Rollwenzel. On a tablet beside the door are the words: "Hier dichtete Jean Paul." (Here Jean Paul wrote his works.) He had a garret room in the little low house, and it was his habit for many years to walk out from Bayreuth in the inorning, and write there all day, returning in the evening. I climbed the steep, dark stair. case, and entered his room, a narrow den, with two windows looking toward the Fichtelgebirge. Every thing is kept in precisely the same condition as during his life. There is the same old calico sofa, the same deal table and rude bookshelf which he used. In the table-drawer is one of his manuscript works: "Remarks About Us Fools." The custodian informed me that he had been offered 300 florins ($120) for it by an Englishman. Over the sofa hangs a portrait of Jean Paul, under which is a smaller one of Frau Rollwenzel. In a quarter of an hour more I reached the Hermitage, which I found entirely deserted. Laborers and loafers alike had fled from the unusual heat. In the deep avenues of the park, where the sunshine, passing through triple layers of beech-leaves, took the hue of dark-green glass, I found a grateful coolness; but the fountains, the sand-stone dragons, and rococo flowerbeds in front of a semicircular temple of rough mosaic, dedicated to the Sun, basked in an intense Persian heat. The god really had visited his altar. Here there are very remarkable jeux d'eau ; but I confess, with humiliation, that I had not sufficient energy remaining to find the person who had them in charge, and thus did not see their performance. The water, I was told, comes forth from all sorts of unexpected places; forms suns, moons, and stars in the air; spouts from the trees; spirts out of the bushes; and so envelops the beholder in a fountain-chaos that he is lucky if he escapes without a drenching. There is one seat in particular which the stranger is directed to take, in order to obtain the best view. Woe to him if he obey! All the trees and rocks around fling their streams upon him. The Hermitage is a good specimen of what is called in Germany the Zopf (Queue) style-the quintessence of formality. Its position, on the opposite side of, and equidistant from, Bayreuth, challenges a comparison with the Phantasie, and the difference is just this: in the Phantasie one sees that Nature is beloved-in the Hermitage, | me with beer, but took me to see another Berthat she is patronized with lofty condescension. necker, who had been in England, India, and Returning to Bayreuth, I took the railroad to China. Several "cure-guests" joined the coma little town called Markt-Schorgast, in order to pany, and I was obliged to give them a history enter the Fichtelgebirge from the most approved of the Southern Rebellion, which was no easy point. On the way I conversed half an hour in matter, as so much incidental explanation was German with a fellow-passenger before either necessary. In Berneck there is a frequented liscovered that the other was an American. whey-cure. In fact, there are few towns in GerThe discovery, however, enabled me to see a many without a "cure" of some kind. WheyNew York paper only fifteen days old, with a cures, water-cures, grape-cures, hunger-cures, cheering report of the good cause, and I left the cider-cures, pine-needle-cures, salt-cures, and train at Markt-Schorgast in the best of spirits. herb-cures flourish in active rivalry. In addi Here I tried to procure a man to carry my sack tion to all these the beer-cure is universally emto Berneck, some three miles distant, but only ployed. succeeded in obtaining a very small boy. "Really," said I, when the mite made his appearance, "he can never carry it.". "Let me see," said the station-master, lifting the sack; "ja wohl, that's nothing for him. He could run with it!" True enough, the boy put it into a basket, shouldered it, and trotted off as brisk as a grasshopper. The load was larger than himself, and I walked after him with a sense of shame. There was I, a broad-shouldered giant in comparison, puffing, and sweating, and groaning, finding even my umbrella troublesome, and the poor little pigmy at my side keeping up a lively quick-step with his bare feet on the hot road. IMPEDIMENTA. We crossed a burning hill into a broad, shallow valley, with a village called Wasserknoten (the water-knots). Beyond this the valley contracted into a glen, shaded with dark fir-woods, which overhung slopes of velvet rather than grass, they wore so even and lustrous a green. After a while the ruins of Hohen-berneck (High Bear's Corner), consisting of one square tower, 30 feet high, appeared on the crest of the hill. The town is squeezed into the bottom of the glen, which is only wide enough for a single street, more than a mile long. I was so thoroughly fatigued when I reached the post-inn at the farther end of the place that I gave up all thoughts of going further. The landlord made much of me on learning that I was an American. He not only regaled I had engaged a man to be ready in the morning to accompany me to Bischofsgrün, ten miles further; but the man turned out to be an old woman. However, it made little difference, as she walked quite as fast with her load as I was willing to walk without one. The same temperature continued; there was not a cloud in the sky, and a thin, silvery shimmer of heat in the air and over the landscape. We followed the course of the young Main, at first through a wide, charming valley, whose meadows of grass and flowers fairly blazed in the sunshine, while on either hand towered the dark blue-green forests of fir. Shepherds with their flocks were on the slopes, and the little goose-girls drove their feathered herds along the road. One of them drew a wagon in which a goose and a young child were sitting cozily together. The cuckco sang in all the woods, and no feature of life failed which the landscape suggested, unless it were the Tyrolean yodel. After an hour's hard walking the valley became a steep gorge, up which the road wound through continuous forests. The scenery was now thoroughly Swiss in its character, and charmed me almost to forgetfulness of my weak and bruised knees. Still, I was heartily rejoiced when we reached Bischofsgrün (Bishop's-green), a village at the base of the Ochsenkopf, one of the highest summits of the Fichtelgebirge. Here a rampant goldenlion hung out, the welcome sign of food and rest. Before it stood a carriage which had brought a gentleman and three ladies-very genial and friendly persons, although they spoke a most decided patois. They had just ordered dinner, and the huge stove at one end of the guests' room sent out a terrible heat. The landlord was a slow, peaceful old fellow, with that meek air which comes from conjugal subjugation. But his wife was a mixture of thunder, lightning, and hail. The first thing she did was to snatch a pair of red worsted slippers from a shelf; then she rubbed her bare feet against the edge of a chair to scrape off the sand, and, sitting down, pulled up her dress so as to show the greater part of a pair of very solid legs, and put on the slippers. "There!" said she, stamping until the tables rattled, "now comes my work. It's me that has it to do. Oh yes! so Imany at once, and nothing in the house. Man! and thou standest there, stock-still. Ach! here, thou Bärbel! See there! [Bang goes the kitchen-door.] It is a cursed life! [Bang the other door.] Ach! Haï! Ho, there!" she shouted from the street. Just then came a hay-wagon from Berneck, with thirteen additional guests. The thunders again broke heavily, and for half an hour rolled back and forth, from kitchen to stall, and from stall to kitchen, without intermission. The old peasants, with their beer-seidls before them, winked at each other and laughed. I was getting hungry, but scarcely dared to ask for dinner. Finally, however, I appealed to the meek landlord. "Be so good as to wait a little," he whispered; "it will come after a while." Presently his son came in with a newspaper, saying, Mammy, there's t' Ziting (Zeitung)." "Get out o' my way!" she yelled. "Ja, jo, I should read t' paper, shouldn't I? Ha! Ho, there! Man! Bärbel!" and the storm broke out afresh. I wish it were possible to translate the coarse, grotesque dialect of this region-which is to pure German what Irish is to English, and with as characteristic a flavor-but I know not how it could be done. Not quite so difficult would be the translation of an aristocratic poem, written in the Fremdenbuch, two days before, by a sentimental baron. It might very well compare with Pope's Lines by a Person of Quality." But no; we have an ample supply of such stuff in our own language, and I will spare my readers. Bischofsgrün is noted for its manufacture of bottles and beads for rosaries. There is a glass furnace here which has been in steady operation for eight hundred years. I doubt whether any thing about it has changed very much in that time. I peeped into it, and saw the men making bottles of a coarse texture and pale greenish color, but the mouths of the furnaces, disclosing pits of white heat, speedily drove me away. Although the village is at least 1800 feet above the sea, there was no perceptible diminution of the heat. The men were all in the hay-fields, and I was obliged to take a madel (maiden), as the landlord called her-a woman of fifty, with grownup children. As the last thunders of the landlady of the Lion died behind us, the "maiden" said, "Ach! my daughter can't stand it much longer. She's been there, in service, these five years; and it's worse and worse. The landlady's a good woman when she don't drink, but drink she does, and pretty much all the time. She's from Schönbrunn: she was a mill-daughter, and her husband a tavern-son, from the same place. It isn't good when a woman drinks schnapps, except at weddings and funerals; and as for wine, we poor people can't think o' that!" It was near three o'clock, and we had twelve miles through the mountains to Wunsiedel. Our road led through a valley between the Schneeberg and the Ochsenkopf, both of which mountains were in full view, crowned with dark firs to their very summits. I confess I was disappointed in the scenery. The valley is so elevated that the mountains rise scarcely 1200 feet above it; the slopes are gradual, and not remarkable for grace; and the bold rock-formations are wanting. Coming up the Main-glen from abled veteran, halting every now and then to rest and recruit. All things must have an end, and it is not every day's journey that winds up with a comfortable inn. I am not sure but that the luxury of the consecutive bath, beef-steak, and bed, which I enjoyed, compensated for all the pain endured. Berneck, the lack of these features was atoned for by the wonderful beauty of the turf. Every landscape seemed to be new-carpeted, and with such care that the turf was turned under and backed down along the edges of the brooks, leaving no bare corner any where. If the sunshine had been actually woven into its texture it could not have been brighter. The fir-woods had a bluish-green hue, purple in the shadows. But on the upper meadows over which I now pass-ity into my bruised muscles. It was a gala day ed the grass was in blossom, whence they took a brownish tinge, and there were many cleared spots which still looked ragged and naked. A shower the next morning freshened the air, diminished the heat, and put some little elastic for Wunsiedel. The Turners of the place, who had formed themselves into a fire company, performed in the market-square, with engines, ladWe soon entered the forest at the foot of the ders, hose, etc., complete. Early in the morning Ochsenkopf, and walked for nearly an hour un- the Turners of Hof and their female friends arder the immense trees. The ground was carrived in six great hay-wagons, covered with arches peted with short whortleberry-bushes, growing of birch boughs and decorated with the Bavarian so thickly that no other plant was to be seen. colors. There was a sham fire: roofs were scaled, Beyond this wood lay a rough, mossy valley, ladders run up to the windows, the engines played, which is one of the water-sheds between the the band performed, and the people shouted. The Black Sea and the German Ocean. The fount- little city was unusually lively; the inns were ains of the Main and the Nab are within Minié overflowing, and squads of visitors, with green rifle-shot of each other. Here the path turned boughs in their hats, filled the streets. to the left, leading directly up the side of the mountain. In the intense heat, and with my shaky joints, the ascent was a terrible toil. Up, and up we went, and still up, until an open patch of emerald pasture, with a chalêt in the centre, showed that the summit was reached. A spring of icy crystal bubbled up in the grass, and I was kneeling to drink, when a smiling hausfrau came out with a glass goblet. I returned it, with a piece of money, after drinking. "What is that?" said she. "No, no; water must not be paid for!" and handed it back. "Well," said I, giving it to her flaxen-headed boy, "it is not meant as pay, but as a present for this youngster." "God protect you on your journey!" was her hearty farewell. The ridge, I should guess, was about 2800 feet above the sea-level. The descent, I found, was a very serious matter. I was obliged to limp down slowly, with a crippled step, which in itself was no slight fatigue. When the feet have not free play it seems to tire some unused internal muscle-or, to judge by my own sensations, the very marrow of the bones. We had a tough foot-path through a dense forest for half an hour, and then emerged upon a slanting meadow, whence there was a lovely view of the country to the east of the Fichtelgebirge, with Wunsiedel away in the distance, a bright islandspot in the sea of dark-green firs. Down on the right was a broad, rich valley, in which ponds of water shone clear and blue; villages dotted the cultivated slopes, and the wooded heights of the Luisenburg and the Kösseine rose beyond. Here I began to find again the scenery of Richter's works, which had struck me so forcibly in the vicinity of Bayreuth. By the time we had reached the bottom of the mountain and left the forest behind us, I had almost touched the limits of my endurance. But there was still a good three miles before us. The "maiden," with twenty pounds on her back, marched along bravely; I followed, a dis After dinner I undertook an excursion to the Luisenburg, notwithstanding I felt so decrepit at starting that I would have given a considerable sum to any body who would have insured my coming back upon my own legs. A handsome linden avenue led up the long hill to the southward of Wunsiedel, from the crest of which we saw Alexandersbad, at the foot of the mountain, and seeming to lean upon the lower edge of its fir-forests. By a foot-path through fields which were beds of blossoms - harebell, butter-cup. phlox, clover, daisy, and corn-flower intermixed -we reached the stately water-cure establishment in three-quarters of an hour. I first visited the mineral spring, which, the guide informed me, was strongly tinctured with saltpetre. was therefore surprised to hear two youths, who were drinking when we came up, exclaim, "Exquisite!" "delicious!" But when I drank, I said the same thing. The taste was veritably fascinating, and I took glass after glass, with a continual craving for more. I This watering-place, once so frequented, is now comparatively deserted. But fifty guests were present, and they did not appear to be very splendid persons. The grounds, however, were enlivened by the presence of the youths and maidens from Hof. I visited the Kurhaus, looked into the icy plunge-baths of the Hydropathic establishment, tasted some very hard water, and then took the broad birchen avenue which climbs to the Luisenburg. On entering the forest I beheld a monument erected to commemorate the presence of Fred. Wilhelm III. and Louisa of Prussia, in 1805. "On this very spot," said my guide, "the King and Queen, with King Max. I. of Bavaria and the Emperor of Austria (!), were talking together, when the news came to them that Napoleon was in Vienna. They hired a man to go to Nuremberg and see whether it was true. The man-he is still living, and we shall probably see him this afternoon [in fact, I did see him]-walked all the way [nine ty English miles] in twenty-four hours, then rested twenty-four more, and walked back in the same time. Then the King of Prussia immediately went home and decided to fight against Napoleon, which was the cause of the battle of Leipzig!" The road slowly but steadily ascended, and in half an hour we reached the commencement of the Luisenburg. Huge, mossy rocks, piled atop of one another in the wildest confusion, overhung the way, and the firs, which grew wherever their trunks could be wedged in, formed a sun-proof canopy far above them. This labyrinth of colossal granite boulders, called the Luisenburg (or, more properly, the Lugsburg, its original name), extends to the summit of the mountain, a distance of 1100 feet. It is a wilderness of Titanic grottoes, arches, and even abutments of regular masonry, of astonishing magnitude. I have seen similar formations in Saxony, but none so curiously contorted and hurled together. Although this place has been, for the past eighty years, a favorite summer resort of the Bavarians, it has scarcely been heard of outside of Germany. Jean Paul, during his residence at Wunsiedel, frequently came hither, and his name has been given to one of the most striking rocky chambers. There is an abundance of inscriptions, dating mostly from the last decade of the past century, and exhibiting, in their overstrained sentimentalism, the character of the generation which produced "Werther," "Paul and Virginia," and "The Children of the Abbey." In Klinger's Grotto, the roof of which is formed by an immense block fifty-four feet long and forty-four feet broad, there is a tablet, erected in 1794 by a certain Herr von Carlowitz, on which he says: "My wish is to enjoy my life unnoticed, and happily married, and to be worthy of the tears of the good when I fearlessly depart!" This is all very well; but it can scarcely be expected that for centuries to come the world will care much whether Herr von Carlowitz was happily married or not. Climbing upward through the labyrinthine clefts of the rocks, we find every where similar records. The names "Otto, Therese, Amalie," deeply engraved, proclaim the fact that the present King of Greece met his two sisters here, in 1836. Just above them six enormous blocks are piled one upon the other, reaching almost to the tops of the firs. This was a favorite resort of Louisa of Prussia, and the largest rock, accordingly, bears the following description. "When we behold the mild rays of the lovely spring sun shining on this rocky colossus, we think on the gentle glance of blissful grace wherewith Louisa to-day made us happy: and the rock itself suggests our love and fidelity to her!" As a specimen of aristocratic sentiment, this is unparalleled. Beyond this point the immense masses lean against each other, blocking up the path and sloping forward, high overhead, as if in the act of falling. In 1798 somebody placed the inscription here, "Thus far shalt thou come, and no farther;" but under it is carved, "I made the attempt, and behold! I went farther. 1804." A ladder enables you to reach an opening, whence |