young lady, and of the bloody tragedy."

I remember my passing thoughts were, should I, if I travelled in England, meet with many of my countrymen of the same class who not only would know so much of modern history, but would enter into it so feelingly. But in those days there were many living who had been eyewitnesses of the scenes to which he alluded; though great events followed so rapidly after wards, that the space which separated us from them seemed greater than it really was.

At this moment, at the end of the still ascending road, clear against the sky-line, and through a sort of avenue of pine, I again detected the singular form of Ulric, looking taller than his wont, as figures so seen generally do.

"But that man yonder," I said, "does he know my uncle?"

"He often sees him often is sent for by him.”

"Indeed! and my uncle likes him ?"

"We suppose so."
"And why?"

Fritz answered with a somewhat shrewd observation,-" People like those whom they benefit."

"And my uncle is his benefactor!"

"Oh! for that, Count Z. is a benefactor to all; but Ulric is much devoted to him: and they say, when he began his trade the Count did him much good."

"But Count Z. cannot always be wanting to have his clocks repaired," I rejoined with petulance; for I felt piqued that such a fellow as Ulric appeared to be should in any sense be connected with my uncle's household. "Why should he be often at his house?"

"He goes also to the Tower for other reasons; for example, he understands the organ, he can tune it

nay, sometimes the Count likes to hear him play."

66

Is the Count so very musical then?" I said, never having heard of any special musical gift in the family, and feeling that I myself knew nothing about music: though I really was able to distinguish good playing from bad playinglittle as I had heard hitherto except my mother's delicate performance on a piano, which my father, I had always perceived, tolerated rather than enjoyed.

"The Count is the best musician of our neighbourhood," returned my companion, somewhat fiercely. "When he plays the organ of an evening, many draw as near to the Tower as they can, and listen even when the snow is on the ground. It is like a charm."

"Why do you speak of Count Z.'s house as a tower? Surely he does not live in a tower?" I felt, after our bright English home, that such a residence might prove rather a gloomy one.

"There is a new house attached to the old Tower, but it is not very like other houses. You, sir, must see it for yourself."

And then again, suddenly-as if for a second time he hardly liked my cross-examination-he stopped our conversation by saying that he must go back and urge the youngster who had charge of the luggage not to linger, as we should hardly reach the top of the pass before the storm; and another growl from the dark thunder-cloud seemed to justify his precaution.

Again I was left alone. I have heard that the road by which modern travellers ascend this pass is very different from that by which I then mounted it. In one characteristic of the Black Forest I know that its appearance must have changed considerably, for at that time the real Forest scenery

was much more universally spread over the mountains than it is in these days, when every year adds to the extent of the clearings, and diminishes the number of the pines. I was then fairly in the forest, and sometimes the view was much confined. But gradually we had advanced to an unusual height for me, who had never scaled to the top of a Malvern hill, and I was more and more interested in the novelty of the whole scene. The weather was, as I have said, exceedingly close, and so I did not feel all the invigorating effect of the rarefied atmosphere; but I was conscious of a very great difference in the temperature during the last hour. I looked down glades which I fancied of a prodigious depth. I heard the far-off roaring of falling water with surprising clearness, for all nature seemed hushed as before a coming storm. I became also fully sensible for the first time of the aromatic scent of the pinea delicious odour, which was on that day and afterwards one of my principal enjoyments of the residence amongst the trees. And that afternoon, I remember, it was particularly delightful.

Suddenly I found that I had no higher ground to ascend. Turning round a huge lump of moss-covered rock, a new valley burst upon my view. On the right, a long narrow lake, dark and still under the summer cloud, seemed a few hundred feet below me. On the other side of it the precipices were so steep,

that one wondered how those stately pines found room to grow as they evidently did, and majestically-up to the top of a much higher acclivity than that on which I was placed. Straight before me was a long road winding hither and thither, and gradually losing itself in a ravine exactly opposite, following the course of a bold little river, which I fancied must issue from the lake, and of which the waters sooner or later, I justly supposed, found their way into the great Danube, for I was travelling in a direction decidedly eastward.

If the mountains had been more varied in size and shape, the scene would have been perfect. On the immediate left, about two hundred feet below us, appeared a few cottages, one of which, far larger than the rest, was apparently our haltingplace for the night. I confess, rude and rough as it probably was, I rejoiced to think it was so near. ready some heavy drops had begun to fall, and I urged my horse on to avoid a wetting.

Al

I was just in time myself. Though my rear-guard came up after me, mule and all, with accelerated speed, all looked damp and draggled when they reached their goal; and our landlord was already busied in thrusting fresh pine-logs on the stove fire. And I, having given a glance at the stabling of my horse, was delighting in an entirely new phase of life and manners. Indeed it will deserve some special consideration.

THERE is no design on this occasion to occupy the throne and exercise the prerogatives wielded by Jahn and Meyer for their several departments of Deutschland, and by our own Murray for half the world. It is the prerogative of the guidebook that it dictates to its passive subject the tourist with an absolute despotism. It would be at once indecorous and ungrateful to question the authority of these guides, philosophers, and friends, when we reflect on their heavy responsibilities, and the mighty services they have rendered to a helpless and confiding class of beings, by marshalling the way that they should go. There is no intention of here disputing their dominion. Perhaps, on the other hand, a hint or two to be distinguished by admission into their potent code of instruction, may be gathered from the following pottering details hoarded in the experiences of one who can look back on generations that have come and gone since he first felt a stirring and invigorating influence in "the power of the hills," the "spelunca vivique lacus;" yes, and even the "molles sub arbore somni," in places where there is far more of the frigida Tempe than in Mantua or Cremona.

Let us begin near home and encourage a gradual expansion of view. The Isle of Wight is in its way rich in beauty and interest. There are wildness and nature in abundance, while the insularity exempts the wanderer from the risks attending long rambles taken in fits of interest or oblivion that annihilate time and place, and, at the hour when he

should have been enjoying the repose of healthy exercise, appal him with the assurance that he is somewhere "in terra domibus negata," with a worse fate before him than the martyrdom courted by the worshipper of Lalage, since it is not in the inconveniently warm vicinity of the chariot of the sun that his terrors and miseries are aroused, but in its distance and obscuration. Even in such roughing, when it is survived, as it generally is, there is compensation in the mingled elements of endurance, courage, and caution communicated to the adventurer. So it is, then, that the novice in pedestrian adventure may discharge anxiety and "take his swing," to use an expressive vulgarism, in the Isle of Wight. Undisturbed he may enjoy sweet variety of rockiness and verdancy; and if he is one who does not presume to judge for himself on such high matters of taste, let him take the authority of Walter Scott, who seized at once the supreme rank of criticism in scenery by bursting on the world with a revelation of the glories of Loch Katrine and the Trossachs. He called the Wight "that beautiful island."

The visitor, if his curiosity is not limited to the surface of the soil, may here indulge in the examination of considerable fossiliferous deposits; but he will find this kind of treasure far more extensive and more remarkable in the neighbouring district of Portland. The stone known by the name of this district is so richly fossiliferous, that though it has furnished London and other parts of the world with building material of a beautifully uniform

colour, and signally free from nodules or other irregularities apt to disturb the purity and consistency of the cut blocks, yet its richness in fossil remains demands extreme skill and caution in the selection of the blocks, and people endowed with close powers of observation have detected small ammonites in the walls and pillars of St. Paul's. These, of course, have been so minute, or otherwise unobservable, as to have been unseen both by the excavator and the builder, or to have been considered too trifling for the sacrifice of an otherwise sound block. But there are fossil beds in the Portland district filled with wonderful forms, especially with the ammonite, extinct among us in the shape in which it has become fossil, but represented still in the water by the gay and beautiful nautilus.

The ammonite was naturally at first welcomed as a petrified snake. Some sceptic remarked that it was a snake never in possession of its head. We all know the cause assigned for this peculiarity in another district where the ammonite abounds, to justify in a wondrous manner the legend of St. Hilda tossing the snakes over the rock with the effect of breaking off their heads. At Portland, however, the headless snakes are more abundant and individually remarkable than even in St. Hilda's district. They are to be found from the size of a pin-head to that of a carriage-wheel, all exquisitely proportioned in the succession of cells or chambers enclosed by coil after coil in the circular range from the centre to the exterior.

If any reader shall suspect that we are here dabbling in the science of geology, he may perhaps be justified in denouncing it as geology of a very childish and scienceless kind. When the geological science

of the present day was in its shadowy development of the grand conclusions it now achieves, there dropped away from it a subordinate or auxiliary science called mineralogy or lithology. Through the vast generalisations bequeathed by Murchison and Lyell to their representatives, the chemical elements that distinguished certain earths and stones, as granite, porphyry, grey wacke, and the like, have been subordinated to an inquiry into the ever-active but seldom perceptible metamorphosing powers at work changing and readjusting the crust of the earth. Our tourist is in courtesy presumed to be a scholar and a gentleman, and therefore acquainted with the leading principles of geologic as of other sciences. But crediting him with these among his other accomplishments, he will probably find in lithology, and especially in one of the sub-departments of that branch called palæozoic entomology, an enlightened and instructive, and, let us hope, a not unpleasant source of amusement; and it is for the sake of helping him to amuse himself that we cheer him on to his vacation ramble.

It is a natural instinct with the traveller of every class to acquire and bring home some specific articles peculiar to the places where he has been. Among natural objects, he whose treasure of this kind is lithology possesses the most distinct and available reminiscences of the actual country whose surface he has trodden. There is the collecting of antiquities, of books, of works of art, and of objects representing the industries of the various parts of the world,-all noble objects of pursuit, but still leaving the fact that the lithologist has the best opportunity of showing items. of what the crust of the earth contains. The importation of specimens of animal life is a serious

and costly affair, to be accomplished only by men of large fortune or the patrons of public zoological collections. Let us not show discourtesy to the noble and beautiful science of botany, and the means of ministering to its wants; but it cannot be represented with the same realistic fidelity as lithology. A hortus siccus is but an impoverished relic of the flora of the Alps. That the beauties or rarities of lithology are a natural object of acquisition is known to those who track the tourist to minister in sordid manner to his wants; and he is apt to buy from them, or they would cease to stand in his path with their wares. And if the tourist were a more cunning man than he often is, he would have known that the cut gems offered for his purchase at Chamouni or Berchtesgaden-even in the Grampians had come from the great central workshop of such trinkets on the. banks of the Nahe in Germany.

All these casual remarks go to the support of the simple problem, that he should litholise for himself. If he is ambitious of becoming a geologist, this is a fair training for his object. The metamorphoses by upheaval, depression, or otherwise, that supply the geologist with sufficient causes for the phenomena that dignify his science, must have taken their character and their effective power from the lithological structure of their districts; and it is not to be regretted that, in acquiring a knowledge of this lithological structure, the wanderer has got possession of some fine specimens of fossils, crystals, or agates.

Another spot where the tourist, either unwilling or unable to go far from home, may find both scenery and lithology, is the highlands of Derbyshire, with its peaks and

caverns. Petrifying springs flow there, where the process of turning into stone is perceptible; so that the owner of the treasure may have had the fortune to see its completion. But this is a process vastly differing from the geological revolutions that peopled the fossiliferous rocks. The petrifying spring does its work by depositing a chemical mud called calc-tuff, having the faculty, when sparingly covering anything, of taking an impression of its form; while if it be abundant, and deposits itself in unlimited quantities, it obliterates all soft and ductile things by first rotting them, and then, in conjunction with the rotted remains, forming itself into stone, known as calc-tuff, or calcareous tufa. This stone is remarkable by becoming, from a soft substance, hard by degrees, and hardening through centuries of exposure. At home it may be found in small deposits here and there. In Italy it stretches in large masses through Terni, and by the banks of the Anio; and it is from its property of induration that the glorious pillars of Tivoli, originally supposed to have been cut out of a soft clay, have defied all the enemies that the lapse of time lets loose against the work of men's hands, retaining a perfection of finish and a freshness of beauty capriciously conferred on them by the power that is so hostile to architectural triumphs elsewhere.

If we suppose that in the process that created the original material of these close-grained pillars, with their sharp distinct cutting and fine colour, material to be petrified was a messy conglomerate of logs of timber, green branches, mosses, weeds, fruit, flowers, lizards, frogs, serpents,-every conceivable variety of elements to be found on the superficial covering of the