open-air speech from the bishop, uproariously applauded, and finally, by an alarming outpouring of beer. On the evening of this religious festival I saw at least a score of peasants who required to be lifted into their wagons, or steadied through the streets, mumbling and maundering like a calf-more than I saw in all Prussia besides !

In the village of Ober- Ingelheim there was also a festive occasion which was well illustrative of South German character (for these peasants here are no longer like those in Protestant Prussia). It was the birthday of a certain great man of the village, who died and was buried, and they assembled to do honor to his memory in the graveyard! A speech was made by an orator standing on his monument ! So great was the crush of the multitude to hear the eulogium that there arose a contention at the gate, wherein walking-sticks were freely used and broken over the people's heads, and when they were all at last well in, there was a most unseemly surging and swaying to and fro, right over the graves, which were shamelessly trodden and beaten down.

Then a band of music came in, and, standing before certain graves, discoursed some of the mellow, glorious music, the inexpressibly sweet and solemn threnodies, of Germany, as it were a mournful serenade to the spirits of the dead. Again the abominable desecrations and trampling of graves! It was not done by vulgar clowns, but by cultivated villagers, men and women who had in them the soul of music, even to intense devotion..

If there is one thing notable above another in a South German city, it is the studiously artistic, or rather artilized, nature of the ornamentation of the cemeteries. Great prices are paid for large pieces of coral, or stalactites and stalagmites, or fantastic shapes of Oriental alabaster, to place upon the graves, whereon ivy is taught t

climb in imitation of nature. And yet people of such finely artistic perceptions, so passionately fond of music, and so exquisitely capable of judging it, will tread thus ruthlessly over the grave, which the English or American child is taught so reverently to pass around. And yet English and American graveyards are gloomy as death compared with the South German ! It is a mystery, a contradiction, one of those innumerable paradoxes of the German character.

The graves are

The South German mind is utterly hollow and vain, sacrificing utility or noble reverence for gauds at any time. Why do not the multitudes tread over the grave beautiful with ivy and coral or natural alabaster? Simply because of their devotion to the form of beauty. not ornamented even because of affection, but because of a devotion to the gay, the brilliant, the beautiful in superficial things. Says Louis Ehlert: "The hasty demands of life do not stop to inquire whether it be Sabbath or not; they surprise man amid the worship of the Beautiful, and scarcely give him time to refrain from profanation of the altar." But the South Germans sacrifice everything upon the altar of the Beautiful, even piety to the dead, and worship there alway.

Between Bingen, "dear Bingen on the Rhine," and Ehrenbreitstein, the Rhine traverses a defile which, though far less sublime and elevated than Harper's Ferry, reminds the American of that historic pass. Wherever there is the smallest sunny bank or handful of earth amid the towering ledges, the industrious peasants have terraced it with walls and planted it with vines, so that the innumerable little zigzag walls and cross-walls have the appearance of an immense honeycomb.

Everywhere else are the somber pines, while

But

He who has never voyaged from Bingen down the Rhine, between these time-old walls, where it moves in majesty, may well believe that when a German cradled on its banks relates its natural glories, he does but speak with a fond and filial exaggeration; and that the artist who has labored to portray them has sought rather to repay a debt of gratitude than to sketch a truthful panorama. when he comes and beholds the object of these seeming adulations, his incredulity straightway vanishes. Whether gazing on the "walls of gray" which crown many a towering crest, or on the giant palisades in liveries of softest, richest brown, or on the sloping ledges and vast, overthrown boulders whose emerald tints seem only a deepened reflex of the silken, sea-green waves which glide beneath them, he declares in his rapture that these unhewn walls yield hues more noble than the artist ever spread upon his canvas. However bleak, and cold, and gray the hand of nature may have penciled ledges in drier and higher regions, here they seem warm, and soft, and glowing. However hard and grim may be the surroundings of the Rhine where it is cradled among the thundering avalanches and the savage granite of Alpine solitudes, it flows down at length in the tranquil majesty of its greatness, along exuberant and picturesque valleys which its own green waters have fructified, and through mountain gorges which its own humid influence has softened and green-limned with beauty.

THE KAISER'S RESOLVE.

I.

Sweet are the uses of adversity,

Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous,
Wears yet a precious jewel in his head.

SHAKSPEARE.

N 1848 three crazy words from France created such an earthquake in Austria that the imperial succession made a long skip. Uncle, father, were both set aside, in that year of rejuvenescence, and the boy Francis Joseph reigned Kaiser of Austria. The House of Hapsburg, however, did not skip as many traditions as years, and Hungary revolted. But the struggle of revolution went sore against her, through treachery and division, and the end was now daily awaited.

One evening the young Kaiser, unutterably disgusted and bewildered with the state business to which he was so little used, was reclining languidly in an easy-chair before the fire in a small private parlor of the old Burg. With his feet resting across a footstool cushioned like an ottoman, he slipped far down in the capacious chair, crossed his hands over the arms, turned his head wearily to one side, snuggled it deep into the rich downy velvet, and was soon lost in sleep. From this he was awakened by a messenger, bringing a telegram from Pesth, they having orders to bring him such at whatever hour. Muttering a petulant curse upon the lackey, he sleepily reached out his hand, took the message, dropped it, cursed the

lackey for his awkwardness, took it again, and laid it on the cushion, without once lifting his head.

Some time after the messenger went out, a brand of fire fell down, startling him a little, when he remembered the telegram, stretched it out with both hands, and read:

ARMY HEADQUARTERS, PESTH,
October 7, 1849.

TO HIS IMPERIAL MAJESTY the Kaiser.

Since Görgey's surrender at Világos, the whole province has been tranquilized. The rebel soldiers have been dispersed to their homes, and quiet prevails. Yesterday the nine generals were shot at Arad.

HAYNAU, FZM.

"So! then it is over. Pity nine had to be shot," soliloquized the young Kaiser half aloud; and then, after heavily and drowsily blinking at the paper three or four times, he rolled his head over again, snuggled it into the velvet, and slowly the uplifted hands drifted down, down, down, till they softly rested on the chair again, and the paper slipped from their nerveless grasp, and fluttered to the floor. Weariness prevailed, and he was slumbering again.

Whither wandered the dreams of the imperial sleeper? Did his roving imagination return to the hated workcabinet in the vast and lonely Burg, whence he had just escaped, to drag him again through the thousand arguments and cross-arguments with which his ministers and dispatches from his jangling provinces daily distracted his pampered young life?

No; the remembrance of the message still lingers, and he wanders in dreams far away to the battle-fields of unhappy Hungary. He gropes his way among the hideous and blackened ruins. The vultures, scared from the un