from our windows spread over a fair and wide expanse of chequered wood and wold, but the post-house of Simbach was un-heimlich, and the very creaking of the room-doors upon their hinges was more discordant than in other places.

We had but two posts more before we should cross the frontier, and we treated fatigue kindly, and rose late. But more snow had fallen towards four o'clock in the morning, and we were told we should not reach Scherding before nine or ten o'clock at night.

The weather was gloomy, unlike that of the previous day, and evening faded into night, the change being only marked by the absence of light, not by any difference of colouring. As the clocks of Neuhaus (the last Bavarian village) were striking ten, the tread of our horses' hoofs sounded hollow upon the great bridge connecting the two countries. The Inn had been too rapid in its headlong mountain course to allow of winter receiving its tribute perfectly; and its dark, rushing waves came roaring on, and angrily hurling against the piles of the bridge floating islands of ice, whose rude touch made the wooden arches shake.

Gloomy did that broad river look, as it rolled beneath the canopy of the sky, over whose surface

grey clouds swept heavily, and chased away the moon

or only let her pale rays struggle through, from time to time, making the dark water darker by their faint light. And the voice too of the flood, was a voice of wail-a moan of angry sadness; and the wind came down from the Tyrolean Alps, and lashed the Inn, and the Inn roared like a struck lion, and madly flung a frozen mass against the bridge, and the bridge shook as before.

The gates are opened, and, by the uncertain flare of a Custom-House officer's lantern, who is settling some point with the driver of a huge waggon before us, we see the double eagle of Austria.

I had for the last month been assailed by the usual predictions touching the vexatious spirit of the Austrian douane; made, it is true, by persons who had never crossed the Austrian frontier, and I began now to tremble, not for my bonnets and dresses (I knew I had nothing that could cause suspicion to the most fidgetty functionary in all Europe), but for the reputation of a politeness I had vouched for all along. I knew them of old, and thought they must be sorely changed if a spirit of vexation could have become infused into them.

We stopped at the door of the Custom-House, and entered the bureau. A veteran employé, looking very sleepy, fetched his chef, remarking as he

went, that he had rarely seen a carriage more heavily packed.

The head man came; he was tall, thin, and seemed somewhat stiff in manner. Whilst he seated himself at his office table, and prepared to examine the passports, the "Pelion upon Ossa" of trunks, cap-cases, and carpet bags, was built up in the outer bureau. Over the douanier's table hung a portrait.

Kaiser," said I, looking at the picture.

"Ja!" said he, going on examining the passports. "Ferdinand?" continued I.

"Na! Franzl," replied he; and this time he looked up through his spectacles.

"Ah! der alter Herr !"* I resumed.

At this, he not only looked up again, but he cordially smiled; and then followed that, without which, I affirm that no Austrian alive can talk five minutes to a woman-the compliment !

"Ja! der alter Herr !" repeated he; "but how can the gnädige Frau know that? She was not born at that time."

I laughed in turn.

*"The old gentleman" was the, to our ears, somewhat equivocal name given familiarly to the Emperor Francis by his subjects. It is about equivalent to "the Governor," and is to Austrian ears highly expressive of filial affection.

"If you are not a Wiener," I observed, "I have but small skill in discovering nationality."

"Born in the Leopoldstadt," he rejoined, and he rose and presented us with chairs.

He looked at his watch; it was half-past ten.

tr

Gnädige Frau," said he, after casting a glance over one huge receptacle for female finery. Upon your honour, have you nothing subject to duty in your luggage?"

I recapitulated as well as I could all the various objects contained in the formidable packing cases, and ended by a Nuremberger doll.

"The doll must pay," said the polite functionary, "but nothing need be touched."

There is one peculiarity about the Austrian race that I have never found in any other; namely, that what we term gentlemanlike feeling, is inborn in them, and not dependent upon education. The very last Austrian peasant bears indisputable marks of gentle blood, and is, morally speaking, a gentleman. The love of truth is so inherent in them, the respect for truth so profound, that it does not come into their heads to doubt an assertion earnestly given; besides which, they have that quality so eminently, a gentle one of recognizing gentility in others, and knowing instantaneously who are those who would not

descend to a false statement.

This, in some nations,

is called tact-with them it is honesty.

Try to induce a douanier in France, Belgium or Prussia (the three heads of one Cerberus), to take a lady's word of honour for what her luggage may contain, not only he will not take it, but he will not recognize a social position which shall impose, as an obligation, respect for truth; nor even, if he did recognize it, would he be able to distinguish the individual holding that position.

The superiority of the Austrian (and I shall be borne out by the testimony of all those who know them) lies therein, that even if ignorant and uneducated, belonging to no matter what class, he recognizes the necessarily honest and honourable-the gentlemanlike, in a word-by means of some kindred feeling within himself.

It would no more have entered into the imagination of the Chief Commissary of the Customs at Scherding, to doubt my word (particularly after I had told him I was English), than it would have entered into a French gend'arme's head to take it, if I had asked him.

Owing to the snow, the carriage could not mount the steep hill, leading to the town, and we were reduced to climb up it on foot.

As I have said, it was now between ten and eleven