hill and dale picturesqueness of Bretten, and Beiligheim, and Esslingen with its Siamese twin towers. The prevalence of beard and moustache gives a very manly look to the people; I wish that we English had more real freedom in the matter of shaving: free as we boast ourselves, that iron rod-a pretty sharp one-the razor rules us still. The Wirtemberg railway is on the American plan, and this is nearly the best possible; the carriages being fine large long rooms with sofas, instead of our close cloth boxes; and by a good coincidence, wood being burnt instead of coal, the engines have American shapes in funnel, &c.

At Stuttgardt we got out, and staid two hours, thereafter going on by another train; in order to see the mighty capital of Wirtemberg; which was accordingly accomplished in an hour's walk. Remember the fine new palace, statue-topped, and golden crowned; and the bronze lion and stag; and the gardens lined with famous orange trees; and the large circular basin with its water-lilies and graceful statuary; and the nymph holding out her vase for fountain; and the Savoy-looking old palace; and the elegant column of granite, with its profuse bronze decorations of entablature, capital, and heroic figures; and Schiller's monument, with its tripods; and chiefly how

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we toiled up to the top of the cathedral tower, and saw all Wirtemberg at a bird's eye glance; —and how agreeably surprised I was to find in the choir in life-size stone the twelve ancestral Counts of the Royal house (curiously elaborate and modern-looking though antique and somewhat mutilated)—which I hear also exist in bronze at Inspruck,― Niebelungen heroes. This gigantic ancestral entablature, a sort of stone screen of mailed warriors in various attitudes all up one side of the choir, is well worth having stopt on our way to see. So also is the very light gothic stone pulpit, though stupidly gilt; and the decorated Lutheran communion table; and many monuments of noble houses, especially one of Hohenlohe. We were lucky enough just before setting off again at four in the railway to witness the arrival of a scion of German royalty, the reigning Duke of ; and

more fuss was being made about him by courtiers, and diplomates, and other flunkeys (I noted a most assiduous Russian there) than if he were great Cæsar himself. The poor little great man was all but publicly worshipped: German court etiquette is at its climax among these petty kingdoms: Darmstadt and Stuttgardt are head quarters of pride and vanity.

Off again, through a beautiful hill country,

morrow.

studded with ruined castles and pretty villages, to a high table-land, and thereafter Ulm,where I write this: an old Brugesish decaying town, full of architectural bits and gables with a splendid old gothic cathedral to be seen toTook two walks all about the town in the dusk, vainly looking for the Danube! and coming upon divers fountains, cloisters, and pictorial morsels. Our antique hotel, the Stag, is anything but attractive to our eyes, used to hostelry palaces; but it savours of monastic antiquity, and if not disturbed by ghosts (or fleas) I dare say we shall sleep well in it after our Danube trout. "To-morrow, for fresh fields and pastures new" that's the tourist's motto.

31st, Tuesday.-Notwithstanding dirty and smelly first appearances, our hostel is palatial in some respects: of the six rooms we occupy, three are each 35 feet long; and they are floored with boards a yard wide, ceiled with carving, and have inlaid bedsteads; moreover being hung with worked muslin, as usual. A noisy military band of Wirtembergers got me up by six; and we went off earlyish to the cathedral; which I am not going to describe: let views and guidebooks do that; all I meat. to remember are these: the gorgeously carved

and coloured alto circular hatchments, covering the walls multitudinously with the heraldic glories of noble families; exquisitely light and graceful aisle columns; the pulpit and reliquary running up a hundred feet in the lightest and airiest florid stone gothic; the curious baptistery; the benitoire, a traceried font built round a column; the iron-flowered doors, with hinges and locks disporting in Quentin Matsys fashion at their own hard will; the newlybuilding organ and its delicate gothic canopies; the severely beautiful coup d'œil of five hundred feet long by two hundred wide of plain white lofty arches and clustered columns; the extraordinary carved lining of the quire with life-size figures of bible worthies, executed in the fourteenth century; and strange coincidence here as to the division of the sexes in what is now a Lutheran cathedral; it appears that the sculptor's wife insisted upon appearing at the head of the women of the bible, and that her husband should head the men; so he has carved all one side men, and all the other women singularly appropriate to the custom in these reformed churches, and a sort of ecclesiastical prophecy. Then, remember those wondrous fourteenth century brasses, large as life, in strong relievo; and the carved triple altar screens; and the Nitrocht-family chapel, with

its trefoils and heraldry, and the wooden figure of Christ life-size on the Ass's foal: and chiefly that gem of a chapel, the de Besserer's, full of family honours and ancient glass windows, not forgetting those gloriously stained ones of the choir. Ulm Cathedral is well worth seeing and from the tower we had a grand panorama of the old town, clean, manygabled, and looking wide awake with scores of windows in the roofs; and of its cincture of fortifications with the citadel; and its fertile neighbourhood; and the Danube winding like a snake to the level horizon.

Thereafter, breakfasting on the tenchy trout of these parts with famous chocolate and other usuals, we left our cryptlike Salon at the Stag, and off by rail at 11:30 to Munich viâ Augsburg.

The country all day has been very English in its character, studded with neat villages clustering round simple turretted or cupolaed churches, and mapped out in fertile fields. Just where the wooded country ends, by a sort of providence peat begins; and it appears to have been only lately discovered to feed the otherwise useless Railway Engine: hundreds of acres are now being worked for fuel, and the trains are run by nothing else.

At 340 we reached Augsburg, and stayed