pressed me was the inexpressibly wearisome air of constraint, of silence, of rigid precision. In all that dreary land, where "nor fosse nor fence are found," absolutely and interminably level, over which we clattered all that April day, we saw not a single "Wild and wanton herd, Or race of youthful and unhandled colts, Here, perhaps, was a great crooked-horned cow, led to pasture with a rope along the roadside, or a few sheep, nibbling the close-cropped grass on a flat as big as my hat, or some geese, guarded by a blue-cheeked, carrotyhaired child, everything rigidly watched and tended. How I wished that those poor, cribbed, cabined, and confined animals could break away somehow, leap, and jump, and stand on their heads, if they so desired, and throw up their heels without getting a permit therefor from the Prussian government ! There was not a singing bird to be heard anywhere. What heart had they to sing, or to do anything else whatsoever, in a land without trees, or containing only poplars, so absurdly straight and erect that they could not build in them? The whole face of the land, as far as our eyes could extend, was just like a checker-board, being divided into an infinite number of tiny plats, parti-colored with various grains and vegetables. But on that April day there was a "frown upon the atmosphere." It was not the frown of a leaden heaven, but of an old age, cheerless and saddened by penury. A single rich, creamy cloud would have been a mighty relief to the landscape, but they were all skimmed off, leaving the atmosphere indescribably bleak-looking, poor, and blue, like thin skimmed milk. But along the railroad the labor expended in ornamentation was wonderful. Now the train rushed, without slackening speed in the least, over a bridge embellished with elegant carvings in stone, and which trembled no more than the solid earth. Then it bowled along an embankment whose slopes were shaven like a lawn, and planted with diamond-work of boxwood rows. Then it whirled through a shallow cut, whose unsightly edges had been sodded, and ornamented with slender pavements of stone, in the shape of geometrical figures or of branching trees. Every half-mile, or oftener, the train rumbles past a tiny brick cottage, sometimes half hidden in ivy, and always surrounded by pretty parterres of vegetables and homely flowers. Here resides the patrolman, who takes his station with punctilious precision before his house, and presents arms with his baton. By an ingenious contrivance of telegraphy, a cleartoned bell, perched in a little isolated belfry, announces in measured strokes our arrival at a station. The same contrivance causes a tiny clock-hammer, fastened to the station, to give forth a rapid musical tinkle while we halt, and when we start again the bell tolls as before. Thus our humble journey becomes like the triumphal progress of a crowned and sceptered sovereign through his dominions. The patrolmen accord us military honors as our train sweeps majestically before them; watchful attendants make haste to bar all crossings against the pproach of vulgar vehicles, and even against irreverent curs, which might disturb the decorous and stately advance of our royal equipage. Even the lightning yields loyal obedience to our high behests, heralding our approach, recording the interval while we graciously deign to pause, and, when we take our departure, intoning us a sonorous and pompous farewell. But it is now almost time to relinquish the enjoyment of this fancied homage and these imaginary triumphs, for we are rapidly approaching the Prussian capital. The shadows of the night have long since settled calmly down around us, and the silvery flocks of heaven, in their noiseless march above us, look down in tranquil silence upon our noisy and tumultuous flight. Far before us, across an extended plateau, an uncertain and tremulous luster, as of the aurora in September, stretches in a long arch across the eastern horizon. But it is not until we sweep around the jutting skirt of a pinery that the great metropolis looms in midnight resplendence before us, across its enveloping waste of sand and swamp. Now our royal courser, as if he had husbanded his powers for his imposing entry into the capital-for does not everything belong to the king ?-neighs exultingly in the pride of his unsubdued strength. How his single great eye drinks up the darkness before him! Fiercely does he drag his burden after him, swaying to and fro in the gloom. Thus we entered at midnight into great Berlin, and poured out into a surging multitude, in which the gilded helmets of the gendarmes, glittering in the gaslight, are all that I remember. Out of this tumultuous and jostling throng some skillful hand caught us up into a drosky,-I know not how, I know not where, and we were whirled away through a long, silent, cavernous street. OLD FRITZ ON GUARD. Since these arms of mine hath seven years' pith, And little of this great world can I speak, More than pertains to feats of broil and battle. OTHELLO. ETURNING one afternoon from a visit to the Thier RE garten, I sauntered under the great Brandenburg Gate, and then along the magnificent boulevard, Unter den Linden. It was one of those indescribably sweet and sunny days of early spring, a kind of beatific accident, which sometimes, for a few hours, "breathes through the sky of March the airs of May," so grateful to the inhabitants of a great city. Along the middle track, the Rotten Row of Berlin, military officers reined their glossy, curveting Poles, leaning forward in the saddle with that distressing lack of ease and confidence which marks the German horseman. Hundreds of brilliant equipages glided along the flagged highways, with tops opened to scoop in the mellow sunshine. It was Corso day, and all the haughty nobility of Berlin was abroad, with many princes; and from out the landaus flashed those apple-red faces of the beer-drinkers, with that mottled white-and-red which seems to be daintily painted on, and not suffused from the blood beneath. Even the lordly merchant, slipping along the pavement with that easy, level gait of the German, relaxed a little his buttoned-up complacency and his upright neck, let out the business wrinkles from his brow, and glanced about him with a kind of retail satisfaction, as if he were almost apologizing to himself for smiling. How the sweet sunshine warms up even his soul, and makes him linger! All along the street, in front of the Conditoreien, the potted shrubbery fenced in from the pavement long, narrow retreats, whence the sippers of the bitter goat-beer glanced out through the green leaves upon the happy idlers. The winter haunts within were all deserted and silent, but there came out now and then a chilly puff of yesterday, mingling in the sunshine, and reminding them of January. How joyously they laugh and quaff-these witty Berlinese,-half hid in their leafy screens, and swig off mug after mug of that inexpressibly bitter beer! The Englishman, when he feels merry and wants to inform mankind of that fact, like the Fat Boy of Dickens, "likes eating best," but the German says with Wollheim, when he has a gala-day, A little beyond the university I stopped to admire, for the hundredth time, Rauch's magnificent equestrian statue of Old Fritz. There is not in all Europe such another noble, comprehensive, and imposing constellation of architecture— though not so brilliantly grouped as that one beholds in standing by the Egyptian obelisk in the Place de la Concorde-as that which surrounds the great Frederic. That university which is the greatest in the world, and that arsenal which is the mightiest; that academy of art and science which is the most learned; the palatial Old and New Museums; the Protestant and Catholic cathedrals, side by side; the vast, gray pile of the Schloss; the |