There

flower-pot, and the mother takes it down; and mother, child, and flower, seem to me all equally wan. was something inexpressibly sad in this picture, and I could not help remarking it to the doctor, who just then came in. He cast a glance at the group and smiled.

"You do not seem to sympathize with yon poor mother sorrowing for her child," observed I.

The doctor looked somewhat sceptical. may be she's sorrowing for the fête," said he.

"It's

I recollect a popular Austrian song, wherein a woman is told by a friend to go home, for her husband is ill. ("Weib! du sollst Heimath gehen" it is called). "One other dance!" cries she: "Noch

a' Tanzerl! Noch a' Tanzerl !"

"Your husband is dying," says the friend"Noch a' Tanzerl !"-"Your husband is dead," says at last the monitress.

"Then he will not be impatient," replies the Valseuse, and off she flies: "Noch a' Tanzerl! Noch a' Tanzerl!'

CHAPTER III.

TO VIENNA !

GREAT were the hand-kissings in Scherding on the morning of the 16th of December, and manifold the recommendations to take care, and not catch cold again, and numerous the warnings to Hans'l (I will tell you by-and-bye who was Hans'l) not to forget the inn at Peuerbach, where the Herrschaften would have the best chance of dining; and then came the prayer, "not to be forgotten," sent forth in every variety of tone from gruff to shrill, parting from every lip, from the septagenarian hostess down to the wee errand-boy of nine years old. "Think of us sometimes!"-"If we could but know how you get to Vienna !"—" If it were not too great a liberty if one word could be written one word!"

. just to say...

...

only

"We will write directly we arrive," was the unanimous answer; and I added, "We will come back some day!" At this announcement, if I had had a dozen hands, they would hardly have sufficed for all the kisses that were rained upon them. Jacobine made a desperate plunge, and mastered the little finger of my left hand, whilst the old Hausknecht had secured to himself the other three, the right one being, whole and entire, absorbed by the urchin of nine years old, who held on to it tenaciously, kissing it in downright earnest, and not by any means pour la forme.

Hans'l cracked his whip and off we drove, in the midst of the thousand-fold repeated exclamations of sympathy of these gentle-hearted, affectionate-natured, simple friends.

The Austrians have more of this cordiality than any nation I know of, and "a way with them," as the Irish say, that is quite and inimitably their own They are creatures of impulse to the full, as much as the French, and possess quite as much of what our neighbours term spontaneity; but with them the impulse is always a good one, and what is more, the act it may have occasioned is never regretted.

An Austrian has that one great mark of a really guileless, noble nature, that he is not sorry for having been "taken in ;" and were he duped ninety-times,

would not, for any consideration in the universe, change places at the hundredth with the duper. It is here that he differs from the Prussian, in that his intellect (though by no means, as has been too-often misrepresented, of an inferior order) is not sharp.

Talk to an Austrian peasant upon the subjects he understands (for he does not burthen himself with any of the loose luggage which the so-called "high degree of intellectual cultivation" in our day drags after it), and you will find his perceptions quick, and his judgment sure, besides which, there is a method, a regularity about all he does, which strikes you forcibly, after you have come from Northern Germany. His intelligence is neither lofty nor dazzling, but it is broad and deep, and, like most things both profound and large, presents a flat surface to the eye. Thence is it so often misjudged by those who do not care to penetrate beyond the mere surface. It is an eminently practical intelligence, useful as a corn-field without poppies in it; but "'cuteness," is a quality it ignores.

I should never end if I were to enumerate the thousand and one marks of affectionate sympathy which we everywhere met with, and which await every traveller in this country, when he chooses to put himself en rapport with the inhabitants, and not treat them as though their existence were to him a

matter of erfect indifference.

But keep aloof

There is another mark of the gentle nature of the Austrian-his dignity. He will make no importunate advances to you, but if you take but one step towards him, he will bound forward to meet you. He is not servile, but really anxious to please you, and, above all, desirous that you should know it. from him, and he is uncommunicative as a frozen fountain, and if you try to put him, as it is called, "in his place," the odds are but he will keep you still more effectually in yours. The Austrian peasant* is both proudly honest and honestly proud, and there is in him such sterling worth, coupled with such infinite delicacy of feeling and purity of heart, that, as I have said, there is no gentleman really worthy of the name, who should not feel at his ease with him as with an equal.

As an instance of "the way they have with them,” I will cite the following little anecdote; it is illustrative of a whole race:

When we arrived at Peuerbach, the hour for dinner was passed, and it did not appear to be

* I use here the word Austrian to designate really the native of Austria Proper the inhabitant of the banks of the Danube and of the country under and above the Enns. The Tyrolese, Styrians, Moravians, Bohemians, have their separate characteristics.