awful harmonies, suffers little or no abatement from the most intense or prolonged contemplation.*

On quitting our station in front of the cataract, we proceeded along the right bank of the river, and passing through some iron-works, climbed up to a mill, the windows of which command a still nearer view of this great river's tide rushing down the precipice in a torrent of foam. The sound of unnumbered surges, lashing the rocks and plunging into the gulf, was there so overpowering that we could scarcely hear ourselves speak. Though the building is of stone, and erected on the solid rock, it experiences a perpetual trembling from the concussion of so prodigious a weight of waters, whose furious action increases in the ratio of the accelerated velocity with which they fall.-In the train of ideas which this truly superb and fascinating sight suggests, none perhaps are more absorbing than those that arise, as one regards the three enormous pieces of rock, at the top of the cataract, which, narrowed at their bases, make a singular display of small trees and shrubs on their more widely spreading tops. When one witnesses the impetuous force, and recollects the constant friction of the current, it is impossible to avoid being affected by a strong feeling of astonishment, that these insulated pillars should so long have withstood the rage of such terrible assaults, and at the same time being impressed with the belief that they will in time be undermined and

overthrown.

It is at the foot of this Fall that the goods and merchandise are reloaded which are obliged to be landed at Schaffhausen, as well on account of the cataract, as of the difficulty and even the impossibility of navigation between that town and Lauffen, whence the cargoes of vessels are conveyed by land carriage.—Robert.

August 16th.-Placed on the northern bank of the Rhine, Schaffhausen serves (but without any other garrison than its own citizens) as a bulwark to Switzerland on the side of Germany. And had it been the first, instead of the last capital town of the Helvetic Confederation, which came within our notice, we should in all probability have been more struck than we were with it as a well-built and cleanly one, which it really is. The streets have a certain degree of old fashioned consequence about them; and there is no want of commercial bustle and of concomitant opulence in the place. The houses, large and lofty, bear every where the marks of antiquity: the irregularity of their construction and the peculiar nature of their decorations are well calculated to engage a stranger's notice. Every secular edifice, domestic as well as public, has its inscriptive, and in numerous instances its pictorial, distinction. Over the door of one house you may see the words Zum Ritter (The Knight's); over that of another, Zur Hoffnung (The Hope); of a third, Zur Geduld (The Patience); of a fourth, Zum Kercker. This last-mentioned term Kercker, or Bow-window, refers to the most conspicuous external feature of their architecture. All the larger buildings, with very few exceptions, have one or more of these peculiar projections either by way of flanking turrets to their castellated fronts, or as vedettes, which, jutting out from the first and sometimes from the second story in octagonal shape, rest upon a cul-de-lampe, and form boudoirs,

* The canton which bears its name is in fact beyond the natural boundary of Switzerland, being on the opposite side of the Rhine and inclosed within the limits of Suabia. It is only seven leagues in extent from north to south and about four leagues from east to west.

full of glass windows. Many of these appendages are sculptured and carved with great elaborateness of ornament. The custom of covering the stuccoed façades of their houses with paintings and reliefs, of various designs and colours, is another characteristic of the Schaffhusians. That which is called "the Knights" is perhaps the best, as it is certainly the most florid specimen of these frescoes. The subjects of the work are a mixture of the historical and emblematical. You have Marcus Curtius on horseback leaping into the gulph of the Roman forum-a head of Cicero with a Latin, and another of Demosthenes with a Greek, inscription. One tier is filled with an equestrian procession of ancient warriors: in another the symbolic personification of the Virtues and the Vices fill different compartments, accompanied with appropriate groups of figures.-The edifice in question has the date of 1597, upon one of the beams; but the paintings, it is evident from the vivid hue of their colours, must have been restored long since that time. Other houses are decorated in a similar manner with incidents from Swiss history; and the fountains, which here as in the principal towns of all the other cantons numerously adorn the streets and open places, are according to custom surmounted with the figures of Tell and the other favourite heroes of Helvetia.

The Hotel-de-Ville, a ponderous structure of the fourteenth or fifteenth century, is to be distinguished chiefly by the effigies of the three brave and generous mountaineers of Schwitz, Uri, and Underwald, who laid the foundation of their country's liberty.

The Public Library is but a small collection, chiefly consisting of theological works. In the principal room

are portraits of the Burgo-masters of the canton. Under one picture is inscribed-"Joh. Jacobus Ruegerus, Ecclesiasticus et Historicus Schafhusianus." Under another are the words "Martinus Pyer, Aetatis sume L. Anno Domini, MDLXV:" a very good portrait, much in Holbein's manner. Here they preserve the model of Grubenmann's* celebrated bridge over the Rhine at this place, begun in 1753, finished in 1757, and destroyed by the French in 1799. The structure was of wood, a single arch, covered in at the top and sides like that at Eglisau, and the carriage-way through, instead of resting on the arch, was let into the middle of it, and there hung. The strength of this extraordinary piece of mechanism seems to have been chiefly owing to the dovetailed manner in which the timbers were laid one into the other. The centre formed a very obtuse angle, the inside of which was opposed to the current.

The present bridge is not of so complicated a piece of carpentry as Grubenmann's: its well constructed platform of timber rests upon eight supports of the same

* Grubenmann was a native of the canton of Appenzell. The bridge which constitutes the sole medium of communication between Schaffhausen and the rest of Switzerland having several times been carried away by the floods of the Rhine, this man, a simple carpenter, without theory, without mathematical study, undertook to unite the two banks of the river, three hundred and forty-two feet apart, by a bridge of so bold a construc. tion that it should embrace the whole width of it with a single arch. By an effort of genius which well deserved to pass for one of the wonders of the age, Grubenmann accomplished this magnificent enterprise; for it appears that, although by direction of the Magistrates, advantage was taken of a pile of the ancient bridge, situated in the middle of the river, to give some additional support to the carpenter's bridge, yet its preservation by no means depended upon that circumstance. The construction cost 200,000 French livres; it used to tremble under the lightest burthens, and yet sustained uninjured the weight of the most heavily loaded vehicles.

material. From the south end of this bridge (where the territory of Zurich commences) we had a good view of the old castle, which serves as a depôt of artillery, and commands the town.-We walked to the promenade of Fessenstaub in the immediate environs: it is surrounded by pleasant gardens and vineyards, from whose elevated position we surveyed the fortifications of this ancient town:* its cone-roofed towers, and curtain walls with loop-holes, reminded us of such topographical representations as are to be found in the works of the early German painters.

The church, called the Münster, at Schaffhausen, is both outside and inside the plainest and most simple in its appearance of any that we have seen even among the Calvinistic Protestants. The arches of the nave are supported on twelve large columns, of a single block of stone each, seventeen feet high and nine in circumference. The stone pulpit in the middle, bears the date of 1594; but the surrounding architecture shews the church itself to be of a very early foundation. The ceiling is flat; and the pews are so arranged as to hold a vast number of people. The lofty square tower contains a bell, nine feet round, on which is the following inscription:-Vivos voco, mortuos plango, fulgura frango.

It is recorded that, in days of yore, troops of pilgrims used to flock to the Münster, attracted by a colossal figure twenty-two feet in height placed there under an

*The citizens of Schaff hausen are divided into 12 tribes, of which each elect five members for the great couucil, and two for the senate. The government is in the hands of the two councils, over which presides a burgo-master. The town contains between five and six thousand inhabitants.-Ebel.