poetical features of Munich life; it gives that heavy, sleepy, stupid look to the lower classes, and I fear, also, to the citizen class, which is so at variance with the spirituality and the intellectuality of all this Munich art!

CHAPTER III.

SCHWANTHALER'S CASTLE OF SCHWANECK.

BEFORE me lie a quantity of wild flowers drooping their poor weary heads over a quaint little terra-cotta vase. Both the flowers and I are just come from a long delicious ramble. An hour ago I was nearly as drooping and weary as the flowers, but a cup of tea has refreshed me as much as I hope the water in the little vase will refresh the flowerseven now I seem to see their heads visibly pricking themselves up.

I have been to Schwaneck, the Castle of Schwanthaler.

At nine o'clock, I met, by appointment, Baron von H., merry little Marie, and Signor L., on the other side of the Sendlinger Gate; and having passed the old Munich Cemetery, with its rows and rows of crosses rising above the low walls, and the new Cemetery inclosed by its imposing walls of dark red brick, built in a singularly beautiful manner, and its solemn round arched gateway surmounted by two simple, earnest statues, we were out upon the plain within sight of the Alps. It was a lovely morning, the larks carolling over our heads; we all felt gay at heart, yet still our conversation turned upon horrors, perhaps from the charm of contrast. Baron von H. told of an "interesting murder;" how the daughter of a French gentleman living in Munich, who was very handsome and just married, was murdered by the soldier servant of her

husband, because she would not give the wretch money to redeem his master's uniform which he had pawned; how he cut off her head, then quietly took the money, went and paid various debts which he had contracted in the city, and decamped! And how the poor old father and her husband were nearly brokenhearted when they discovered the tragedy. And various equally lively histories did we relate, till our conversation resembled a series of short chapters out of the Neue Pitaval; I relating, as my share, the history of Casper Hauser, which Signor L. and Marie had never heard, embellishing it with explanations out of a certain prohibited book which I once had read on the subject; and then, being in the midst of a horrible history of a woman near Magdeburg, who has just been imprisoned for having kept a little child of her own three years upon bread and water, in a cask in a cellar, till the poor little creature was crippled body and mind,—we found ourselves upon one of the steep banks of the Isar; below us a picturesque large white-washed house, its walls stained with innumerable fading frescoes.

It was a large public-house, and its garden, filled with benches and tables, was already sprinkled over with groups of townspeople come out this lovely summer morning. Peasants streamed along the road below us, which skirted the river and wound round the inn-garden, bearing in their hands little brooms of willow catkins, and mistletoe, and holly. They were bringing them from some church, where they had been blessed, as it was Palm Sunday, and these catkins were, as by the children in England, called palms; but why holly and mistletoe should be bound up with the palms I cannot tell: at Christmas here these plants have no significance.

Having sat down on the warm dry grass of the very steep bank, and admired the distant view of Munich, and listened to the rush of the river and the singing of the

larks, we pursued our way. And now we were in a birchwood; heath was in crimson bloom in the open parts of the wood; soft elastic moss beneath the trees; here and there a group of birches gleaming out like trees of silver; and sprinkled over a steep, mossy bank shining out among those red fallen birch-leaves, what can be those myriads of azure stars! blue hepaticas! our dear old English garden hepaticas! In myriads they rose from the mossy ground, staring up through the grey, leafless branches of the birch-trees, with wide open blue eyes, into a heaven as deeply blue. How lovely they are, and the whole woods are now brilliant with them! I shall love my blue hepaticas as Wordsworth loved his host of "Golden Daffodils."

The Baron and Signor L. were deep in a discussion about "high pressure," and about "what the Englishman had said on the subject;" and when I held up in triumph my handful of flowers, I fancy they thought me rather gone out of my mind.

And now, though we were in the midst of the wood, and close upon the steep bank of the river, we came upon a large house, or rather a group of buildings; one very like a quaint chapel. This was another Wirthshaus, with scores of benches and tables placed beneath the trees, with a pavilion for dancing, with rows of old-fashioned summerhouses, cr rather booths, along the edge of the river-bank for the distance of some hundred yards. The ground was undulating and very sylvan. Baron H. said that last May he witnessed a village fête here, which produced a capital effect among the trees; all was dancing, music, beer drinking, shooting, that day; now all was silent as death, or rather sleep,—a most peaceful sleep. The sun showered down beams as warm as in an English June. We were soon seated at a little table on the very edge of the steep

Isar-bank, the river murmuring as it rolled lazily over its sandy bottom, amid long, gravelly shoals. In front of us was the Alpine chain rising as though abruptly from the wild precipitous river-bank opposite, and mingling its jagged peaks with the silvery mountain-like clouds which crowded the heavens.

We hungry pedestrians saw a vision remarkably attractive upon the table before the bench on which we sat. Ham, bread, butter, delicious butter, and wine, capital Rhine wine, for my companions; and for me, of course, eternal coffee! And thus most pleasantly refreshing ourselves in sight of the Alps, the conversation naturally turned upon Italy, seeing that one of the gentlemen was an Italian, and Baron von H. had spent many years there. First Mariotti's new book was discussed; Signor L. defending Silvio Pellico warmly for the sake of all he had suffered in his youth. He spoke altogether so earnestly and eloquently about his unhappy, beautiful land, with a cloud of real grief ever and anon passing across his face, that I set him down as a good, worthy fellow,-different to some disgusting, dandified Italians I saw the other day, who made we almost wish that an Austrian bullet would put an end to their useless lives!

Pleasant and interesting as it was, sitting on this river's bank, listening to descriptions of laurel and orange groves, and of noble suffering patriots, still it was necessary to proceed to Schwaneck. We bade adieu, therefore, to this hamlet or inn, whichever it be, of Heselohe, and once more lost ourselves in the birch-wood. But first I might mention, that being decidedly of an exploring turn, I had dived into those booth-like summer-houses, and found to my astonishment a number of old English caricatures of the time of George IV., pasted upon the walls; several of the summer-houses were papered with prints,