beleuchtetem Hause,"* objected the pretty Madame de W

"There is to be a concert at the Odéon, for the benefit of the soldiers wounded in the SchleswigHolstein campaign, and the whole Court will be there," added the Countess M

"But we must go to-morrow." "You will be snowed up."

"The carriage must be put upon a sledge." "You will be blown over a precipice."

"The wind may change."

"You will be overturned in a ditch."

"Ditches are dry."

"You had better go home through Italy," advised a worthy countryman of mine, who thought "comfort" the first consideration in life, and who was, besides that, a little "hard of hearing." "I am dying to see Radetzky."

"You could go by Roveredo and Milan . . . ." "But I want to make acquaintance with Jellacic." "Or by Venice and Bologna, and then, from Leghorn by sea, to Marseilles . . . .”

"But we have letters to Schlik."

"The land-road is the most interesting; but the steamers from Leghorn are so comfortable that they compensate for . . . ."

* What the Italians style an illumination a giorno.

"The Ban!" cried I, in my obstinate friend's ear, they won't compensate for not seeing him-demandez à ces dames." He was, as I found out afterwards, of north country origin, and might have gone maundering on till now if I had not stopped him. As it was, he shrugged his shoulders, pulled down his wristbands, settled his ruffled feathers, and decidedly "giving me up” as incorrigible, walked to the tea-table, remarking, in the sort of tone one would adopt to warn a man from "wicked courses:" "You may depend upon it, it is impracticable; you don't know what the inns are."

Bless Eothen! how his eternal "Oui! je sais," recurred to me.

I never met this excellent "borderer" before, and probably never shall meet him again; but he was not altogether wrong in representing the hostelries of the Austro-Bavarian frontier as places not to be imagined in this our civilized age.

Nevertheless, all things must have an end, and so it was with our pleasant stay in Munich. Our last day was employed in admiring the rare collection of drawings, medals, engravings, books and paintings, belonging to the Baron de Lotzbeck ;* and when, in

* M. de Lotzbeck is a Peer of Bavaria, and possesses one of the most valuable collections of the works of modern artists

the middle of the chilly night, I found myself rolling on towards Landshut, I could not chase from my mind's eye a certain delicate Spanish jessamine, whose branching tendrils I had seen in the morning wreathed round a table of Florentine mosiac. Flowers of stone! it was such a meet vegetation for the frozen earth around me! they might have clung to the icy trees, or climbed round the snow-laden casements of every cottage; I could fancy I smelt their perfume.

Snow! yes, this is snow!-the pure, unpolluted, diamantine crystallization of Heaven's damps, and not the dark, dingy, café-au-lait kind of looking mud, that we dignify with the name in more southern lands. How it glitters! how it shines! how it sparkles! You may walk upon it, nor leave more than a vague foot-print behind: it is hard, and crackles sharply as it is trampled down by the rolling wheel, or the horse's hoof. By the side of the road, the tall trees assume a ghost-like shape, and to every

throughout Germany. At his residence of Weyhern, he has the famous Sucontala of Riedl, and the Mignons of Aryscheffer, and at his house in Munich the dining-room is decorated with twelve illustrations of the Gospel, original drawings of Overbeck's. The table I have mentioned is a wonder of Florentine art, and cost five hundred guineas, besides taking ten years to make.

Toute proportion gardée, M. de Lotzbeck is the Duc de Luynes of Bavaria.

branch hang girandoles of nature's own manufacturing. I had not then seen that wondrous chandelier of the throne-room in Berlin, or I should have found its model in this frozen dew.

We have seventeen degrees and a half; and in one of the carriage pockets, a bottle, filled with vin de Bordeaux and water, presents nothing save a mould of ice!

The snow stretches over everything-fields, hills, and villages. Waggons standing in court-yards are but huge masses of snow, and the postilion's hat and cloak are white-white, and glistening; I wonder if his horn be frozen, that he does not blow it, but goes on, trot, trot, in silence, upon his steaming horses, as though he were a native of any other nation. I would ask him, only I have a kind of notion that his voice must be iced, like our wine.

And then, on we go again, through the still, deep, blue night; and the yellow stars in heaven are less numerous and less bright than those with which earth is spangled over.

The moon shines brilliantly, and throws over the whole a kind of azure splendour that is fantastical; and, ever and anon, the breath of the wind stirs the latest-fallen snow, and a cloud of dew-dust obscures, for a moment, the whole scene, and wraps it round in a mantle of frozen smoke. Upon the wide expanse

of what once were corn-fields, see how the hares assemble! Under the furry covering of their eternal pelz* they mock at winter's harshness, and skip, and spring, and bound about, after such an insane fashion, that it suggests to my mind the propriety of changing the proverb, and substituting, for "Mad as a March hare," the phrase, "Mad as a hare in December." Poor puss! she probably thinks that hunters and dogs are frozen too!

How Schubert's Winter Reise comes to one's memory; and as one clatters over the deserted street of some silent country town, how one remembers the lone traveller, who reaches his home in the nightthe home he has not seen since his boyhood,-and whom none are waking to welcome. He draws his cloak tightly around him, for the cutting wind whistles sharp, and takes his way to the village church; and on his road, he wonders what has become of the large pond which lay upon the green, and where, as a child, he had used for hours together to loiter away his time in launching boats he had made himself. The pond has disappeared-all is altered. What wonder? Fifteen years and more have passed-and he goes on; but, all at once, the

* No German exists, I believe, who has not one or more of these fur-trimmed douillettes, which often have very costly fur both in and outside.