with a portfolio full of defiles, bridges, waters, and passes, which were to bring La Grande Armée headlong upon their cottages in the next war. But, luckily, the native love of tranquillity prevailed; and as I paid for my provisions with English punctuality, and without Austrian remonstrance at the little tax which they added to their price, as a cure for conscience in thus assisting the enemies of their country; as I made love to no man's female establishment, and shot no great lord's game, I was suffered, at pleasure, to ramble, draw, eat, and pay. Like the great globe itself, I was kept in my position by the "vis inertiæ.'

But one evening my solitude was pleasantly varied by the sight of some berlines straggling along the road below the Castle of Durrenstein. The German postillions had of course lost their way, or pretended that they had lost it, as is the custom, when they know that a tolerable inn lies within half a mile of them, and feel more disposed to enjoy themselves there than "be borrowers of the night" for ten miles further.

I hailed the travellers, and found that they were a party of attachés to the foreign ministers at Vienna, who, finding the world at peace, the capital hot as an oven, and the dinner and dancing season at an end, had come to kill the month of indolence among the wonders of the Danube. My services were accepted, first as a guide to their berlines, and next, as a cicerone to themselves. I showed them the famous "rose-garden" of Schreckenwold, a name whose very sound is descriptive of its ruthless bearer, to any who can pronounce it and live. I pointed out the precise locale of the iron door, where this mountain chief thrust his unlucky victims over the precipice, and where those who had not their necks broken at once, were sure to die of famine. And, after startling my makers of manifestos with the atrocity of a robber who destroy

ed mankind by one at a time, I relieved their humanity by showing the hole, at the foot of the rock, by which the knight had escaped from this living grave, who was to overthrow the power of the robber, and hurl Schreckenwold among the roses of his own garden.

With equal applause I showed them the hollow in the river side, where Rudiger, the merchant, entrapped the formidable brothers Hadmar the Kuenringer, and Heinrich van Weitra, both surnamed by the terrified peasantry, "the Hounds," and related to them the legend of these two brothers.

My hearers politely professed themselves charmed with the poetic justice of the story; and I should have probably proceeded to reap additional applause, and vindicate the dexterity of imperial robber-catchers on a larger scale, but for one of the customary incidents of mountain excursions-the settling of a mass of heavy clouds on the pinnacles above our heads. The sun sank sullenly under this purple veil. Murmurings were heard through the forest, with which mortals had nothing to do. Fires were seen glittering behind the solid shade of precipices, where never gipsy ventured to light them. The horses gave sensible signs of an inclination to find their way to the first stable; and the yawning postillions swore in twenty forms of imprecation against the crime of suffering themselves and their beasts to stay out sight-seeing, when all that could be got in exchange for supper and shelter was as thorough a wetting as ever drenched ambassadorial livery. We took their advice, seconded as it was by the gusty howlings of the forest, and the deeper volumes of vapor that now began to stoop from the pinnacles to the ravine. A dash of rain, the avant-coureur of a deluge, put us all in motion; and I had the honor of being appointed guide to the little Wirthhaus,* where I had pitched my tent

for the last week, and which its portly and pence-loving landlord, Herr Michael Squeezegelt, would have felt it as an affront of the blackest dye to hear called by a less title than Gasthaus.*

I invited my new visitors to make merry, ordered the best supper that our bustling and overwhelmed cook could give us on so brief a notice; produced some capital claret, a travelling companion, whose society I had often found indispensable to console me for the désagrémens of all other; and by the help of a large stowage of faggots on the hearth, and a bundle of wax tapers, which I fear had been consecrated at the shrine of "Maria Tapferl," the most famous sanctuary of this part of Austria, but now, in defiance of piety and pilgrimage, lighted for our profane supper-table, I contrived to make up a party as much disposed to be happy as if they were sitting round the gold plate, and under the silver chandeliers of his Serenity the Prince Lichtenstein.

The postillions had been perfectly in the right. The storm came on in full force before we had sent round the first bottle. Thunderclaps, bursts of rain, roarings of wind, and sheets of lightning, that made us all look blue, first followed each other with the rapidity of musket firing, then came all together, and at last, as they say of the compass in storms at sea, the land storm fairly stopped the rotation of the bottle. We left the feast upon the table, and crowded to the little casements to see the performance of the angry elements on so suitable a stage. Nothing could be The grim features of the mountains, under the changes of the light and the vapors, took the hue and aspect of every thing marvellous, and would have made the fortune of a new Goethe, or a new Retcsh. All the witcheries of the playmate hags of the Hartz, were peaceable and legitimate occupations to the furious fantasies that nature here disported before

finer or fiercer.

The hills seem

our wondering eyes. ed nervously alive: the torrents danced and sprang about in the most direct contradiction to the laws of gravity; the forest tossed, groaned, and flamed, as if the days of old necromancy were come again, and every tree contained its tortured spirit. All was fire, hail, water, and uproar.

But the rock of Durrenstein, with its ruined fortress on its summit, a fitting crown for this monarch of the realm of ravines, still held its superiority over the less renowned victims of the storm. It stood in the centre of the conflict, and, alternately lost and seen as the sea of cloud rolled by, looked like some mighty ship of a hundred thousand tons, some huge leviathan of war, plunging and rising, battling with and baffling an ocean of mad billows. With the shifting of the clouds came perpetual changes, and every gazer had his favorite comparison. But at last all agreed in one; and every voice almost at the same moment cried out" the sorcerer." The tempest had lulled for a moment, and suffered the vapors to gather in a heavy white fleece round the summit of the hill ; below this rolling turban the rocks were bare, and broken into the most striking resemblance of the withered and darkened visage that, from time immemorial, we attribute to the dealers in forbidden arts. While we looked, the costume was completed by a gush of waters which had forced its way through a hollow of the rock, and covered the magician's chin and front with a most venerable and sweeping beard of foam a hundred and fifty feet long.

The sight was curious enough to be worth some record. I had seated myself at the table, and taken out my crayon to sketch the outline, when a general cry from the window brought me back. I saw, to my astonishment, standing in the orifice, which we had established as the sorcerer's mouth, a figure which visibly moved--but whether man, bear or fiend, none could

ascertain. It lingered for awhile on this tremendous spot, apparently quite at its ease, in a tumult, which would have startled Eolus himself. The night was falling fast, and we began to fear that we should lose sight of the phenomenon before we had determined its species. But, as if it heard our wishes, it came forward, and stood gazing from the edge of the precipice at the play of the torrent, as it tumbled down the magician's black bosom. The spot would have turned the head of a chamois; yet there stood this imperturbable being like a piece of the rock itself. The adventurer now occupied us all; and to ascertain what he was, became the grand business of life for the next half hour. A German, once attaché to the Austrian embassy in London, offered to settle the point à-la-mode Anglaise, by a bet of six to four, that it was any thing that any body else thought it was not, and vice versa. An old Italian envoy of fered to make the discovery, by cutting the cards in the infallible way by which the Neapolitan ladies settle their affairs with destiny for the day, and are secure, from sunrise to sunset, against earthquakes, losses at play, the sickness of lapdogs, and the faithlessness of cavaliere serventi. A French colonel, who wore the croix of St. Louis, and the legion of honor, in amicable conjunction, at his button hole, proposed to settle the doubt by a long shot from his Tyrolese rifle; arguing, that" as it was utterly impossible that any man but a lunatic could venture to such a spot, no harm could be done by bringing him down, whom, if he escaped, it was so much gained, and if an end was put to him, it was but one madman the less in a world where there were so many besides.

If it was a bear, we should have a couple of capital hams to add to our stock, in a place where another day's confinement would see us starved, unless we should eat the fat landlord. And if a demon, our firing at it might be a merit in another place, and wipe out a thousand years of purgatory."

The brilliant Frenchman had heated himself into so strong a conviction of the reasonableness of his proposal, that in scorn of our doubts, whether firing even at a ghost might not be punishable by law in a country so strict in the preservation of its game as Austria, he was hammering his flint for action, when the figure made a sudden bound from the edge of the gulph, disappeared, was seen again standing on a lower shelf of the precipice, again darted down the torrent, re-appeared from the side of the ravine, and, rushing across the road, knocked furiously at our door, dripping like a water-god.

A little altercation heard without between him and the landlord, who probably thought that he was not likely to benefit much by such an arrival, or that his house already contained unmanageable guests enough, induced my interference in favor of the laws of hospitality. I went to the door, and with many an ominous frown of Herr Michael, invited the stranger to take shelter for the hour. He was all polite reluctance, but the storm allowed of no medium, and he, at last, followed me into the presence of my fellow naturalists. As he entered, bowing on all sides, and with the language of a man of the world, I saw the French sharpshooter blush, at least as much as a Frenchman ever does, quietly deposit the rifle in a corner, and give that curiously-expressive glance round the circle, which tells how close one has run to the edge of some blunder of the first magnitude.

But we kept his secret with honor; and a fresh bottle, a new bundle of faggots, and the loan of my surtout, soon made the circle and its new addition the gayest of the gay. We found this scaler of mountains and swimmer of torrents altogether a very striking personage, speaking the several languages of our miscellaneous company with native ease; evidently familiar with Europe and with a considerable extent of Asia, and giving now and then a piquant anecdote of the great, which made our diploma

tists raise their eyebrows in wonder at discoveries which they had treasured in their own bosoms as the "immediate jewels of their souls."

The hour flew, and the stranger was the first to remark that the storm had subsided. But to suffer him to take his leave for the night was out of the question. He at length consented, though with considerable difficulty, to remain. The Frenchman, who probably thought himself bound to make atonement for the favor which he had intended him, insisted on surrendering his bed, his wardrobe, or his bodily existence, for the benefit of his "bosom friend." While we were enjoying our cups, and enchanted into a round of pleasantries, which brought out every man, and promised to keep us from our beds till daybreak, I heard a heavy foot occasionally pass the door. Whatever might be our dialogue, there was no necessity for its being overheard; and I at length went out to put an end to the investigation. I found the landlord alone, in his nightcap and slippers, and seldom looked the Herr Michael less in good humor with the world."Twelve o'clock, Sir," he grumbled; "full time for all honest men to be in their beds."

I told him that there was nothing to prevent his honesty from its full indulgence in slumber, and that I would be responsible for the security of every iron spoon and wooden trencher under his roof.

The Herr's urbanity was not his most conspicuous virtue at any time. But I believe that he had due reliance on one who had so long resisted the temptations of his table equipage; and with some rough attempt at a bow, he set me at my ease on the point of honor, and said, that his only objection to our sitting up for the next twelve hours, or years, was the presumptuous nature of the thing. "This is an awful night, Sir," said he; "such storms seldom come for good. This is the 29th of September: St. Michael's night, my patron saint; and, heaven preserve us! the

night of the Red Woman of Durrenstein."

A burst of thunder, that tore the ear and shook the strong building round us, gave such authentic evidence to the Herr's opinions, that I could extract nothing more from him on the sacred subject; but, shrinking and startled, he left me, as he said, to examine what new damage had been done by the witch's annual visit, and implored me once more to get my noisy companions to bed as soon as possible.

But the landlord's beer-loving soul had never known the courage of Chateau Margot; and on my communicating his fears, my only answer was a general burst of laughter, and a pledge to see the adventure out, to defy St. Michael and his storms, and to receive the witch-queen of the mountain with bumpers, if she should honor us with a visit.

I had heard of her before, and the conversation turning upon the extraordinary propensity of the peasantry in all countries to add to the natural troubles of their station by imginary evils, I gave such details as occurred to me of the "Red Woman of Durrenstein." The stranger followed, but if his knowledge on other topics was striking, here it was unbounded. He poured out a ready heap of curious anecdote and incident of the mountain superstitions; some nearly monstrous of course, but some picturesque, and which would have been a treasure to the painter; and even some so like what we deem a power above nature, yet within reality, a so subtle entwining of things that perplexed belief with facts easily comprehensible, and of no unusual occurrence, that we all listened with an interest which we probably should not have been ashamed to acknowledge in our most composed hours. But now, with the thunder rattling over the roof, St. Michael's night, the "bell then beating one," and the very palace of the she-sorcerer showing from our windows its wild battlements edged with perpetual lightnings, and,

it must not be forgotten, with a dozen of excellent claret already discussed, we gave the homage of our ears to the man of legend, as if he was Simon Magus himself.

Yet, after all," said he, with a smile round the listening circle, as he closed a story whose strange mixture of oddity and horror had fixed us in silent attention; "what is this passion for being vexed and made hypochondriac by fancy, but an additional proof of the original foolery of man? the only fool, by the by, that creation exhibits. Every other animal has the due quantum of understanding. The bustard that betrays itself by its booming, the ostrich that leaves its eggs in the sand; all that we are in the habit of charging with want of brains, have a sufficient object in their contrivances even the ass is libelled. He knows what he is about infinitely better than hundreds of his riders, and if his natural taste be for thistles, and his back be made for blows and burthens, he has a much better claim to respect than many a showy personage, who for the glories of a ribbon or a place, is content to swallow the thistle and bear the blow and the burthen, without the excuse of nature."

:

This was plain speaking among so many chevaliers, with so many stars and crosses. But boldness, when it is seconded by truth, goes far; and we were too much in good-humor with ourselves to think of examining the point for the present. "But do you actually believe in those preternatural influences?" said the Frenchman, turning to some remark of mine. "I feel like Plato," was my reply; "the more I think on such subjects, the less I am able to come to a decision."

"For my part," said the German, palpably a student of the Helvetius school, what I cannot see, I cannot believe."

tears running down St. Catherine's cheeks, and the moving of the Magdalen's bosom."

"Those affairs make an exception to my maxim," replied the German, "for those I have seen, and cannot believe."

"But now for your opinion," said I to the stranger.

Why, then, if you will have it out, I side with the gentleman who has made the eye the judge. We have not got those faculties for the purpose of being led into absurdity by them. I do not believe that there is a word of truth in any legend of witchery, red, blue, or green, from Bohemia to Lapland.-But, ha! look there."

A broad blue stripe of flame darted through the crevice of the shutter, and rested on the opposite wall, throwing our candles into eclipse by its strong brilliancy, and what struck us as more singular still, giving a kind of motion to the figures of the fair dames and gallant knights that had, hitherto, lurked in the general dinginess of the court of the Emperor Charlemagne, on black paper, apparently as old as its theme.

And, certain

The stranger was delighted with the sight, which he protested was worth living even in a German Wirthhaus for a twelvemonth to see. ly, when the first surprise allowed us to look en philosophe, at the phenomenon, nothing could be more attractive. It seemed a phantasmagoria of the most vivid kind, not the puzzled and misty light that makes our magiclantern figures as hard to be traced as a hieroglyphic; but an intense and steady splendor, that actually rekindled the faded gilding and perished purple velvet of monarchs, plumed chevaliers, and dames of pride, beauty, and distended petticoats, glowing from hip to heel with every flower of the parterre, an embroidered paradise.

I glanced into the open air to ascertain from what meteor, or accidental firing of the woods, the light was produced. But, except an occasional