he has been anticipated, at all events in seeming. All the carriages seem full! The racks are crowded with bags and rugs. The seats are apparently taken! At last he cries " Eureka, I have found it!" and he jumps into an empty carriage, arranges his goods and chattels, settles down comfortably, and after a while resolves to descend and walk about a little. He does so, but shortly he sees two French officials gesticulating and, as he terms it, jabbering in front of the compartment of which he had taken possession. What means this? he asks himself. Walking up to the spot, looking inside, and proceeding to mount for fear some one should be intending to dispute his rights, he is vigorously addressed in French. At once his peace of mind departs; his confusion returns; all he can manage to make out is that for some reason or other he must not occupy that carriage, he must dismount and locate himself elsewhere. Meanwhile, the train is perhaps ready to depart; so he is hurriedly thrust into the nearest compartment which is all but full already, and has there to settle down in a state of mind easier to imagine than describe. He now regards himself, of course, as a man who has been somehow or other grossly deluded and ill used, and as the inmates of the compartment look upon him for a considerable time as a disgusting intruder, they stare at each other with something more than the proverbial stoney British stare.

Well, at any rate I am settled down now for Brussels! he thinks. Yes, my friend, say I; but how? Wait awhile. He is sitting with his back to the engine, holds of course a middle seat, and is one of eight -all the eight having bags and rugs, and he having had to fight for a share of the rack before finally getting to rest. Not long has he sat before he begins to find it warm; warmth is succeeded by heat; heat is followed by broiling heat; one of the windows, being under the control of a nervous passenger, is kept carefully closed for fear of the draught; then the dust begins to invade the carriage. One window is still open : but the question arises-Shall we choke or shall we broil? It is a miniature case of the alternative set before the passenger on board a ship on fire. At last, after that far too rare grace of patience has been greatly exercised, Brussels is reached; and as our Britisher is bound for Heidelberg he determines not to break his journey till he reaches Cologne. On therefore he rushes and by midnight reaches his first goal. With what satisfaction does he cast off his dust-filled clothing and stretch his weary limbs on the comfortable bed of one of the excellent Cologne Hotels, resolved inwardly that at all events for once he will take his fill of rest. And so he does with the happy result that next day the thought of Heidelberg has regained all its brightness.

After seeing a few of the sights of Cologne, especially the Cathedral, that Cathedral of Cathedrals, so dignified in its simplicity, so impressive by its magnitude, he betakes himself to a Rhine steamer, and there at last, for a time, his enjoyment commences. The only interruption is when the unhappy man goes down below to the table d'hote, where, after a continuous struggle, he succeeds in getting little or nothing to eat, and that little embittered by the reflection that meanwhile he has

lost some of the finest views and has to pay dearly for the privilege. Having rested a night at Bingen, the last stage of the journey is entered on, and our traveller goes on to Heidelberg-Heidelberg, the very mention of whose name awakens the mood of romance. If one have an hour or two to spare at Mainz it will be well spent in visiting its Cathedral-built in the Roman style, a grand edifice, whose full impressiveness is however sadly neutralised by the houses which have been built close up to it—and in a ramble through some of its narrow, crooked

streets.

Between Darmstadt-dull, riverless, yet clean and neat Darmstadt-and Heidelberg, the country is very charming and amply deserves a ramble of a few days. Its towns are quaint and old-fashioned; the forests are grand; and the wines, though rarely sent to the great markets, at all events under their own name, are very drinkable, especially in hot weather. No sooner does the traveller arrive in Heidelberg than he begins to feel himself rewarded for the toils of the journey. How refreshing is the glimpse he gets of the mountain slopes covered with forests, of the avenues of trees, of the beautifully laid out grounds, of the Neckar, and last, but not least, of the Castle! As soon as he has got lodged in one of the cheerful inns and has performed his ablutions, he is prepared for the enjoyment to which he has looked forward under the burning sun and through the choking clouds of dust, which took so much of his attention en route.

Heidelberg, occupying a narrow valley between high mountains, is a very hot and a very wet place. It is called the Giesskanne, or Wateringpot of Baden. I remember feeling almost roasted, even in the month of April; but I must add that it was whilst passing under the wall, the other side of the Neckar, on the road to Handschuchsheim, whither I was being conducted to a celebrated Student's restaurant. However, what is heat when one is not shut up in a railway carriage with a number of human chauffoirs, and not obliged to look as though one were dressed for a ball ?

Our first visit is naturally paid to the ruins of the castle. As has been well remarked, "it is a perfect mosaic of castles and towers. It has been called the Alhambra of Germany. Founded towards the end of the 13th century, the vicissitudes, demolitions, and reconstructions would fill a volume. It combines almost everything." What an idea of strength of building do we get from the blown-up tower. A tower blown up and yet not blown to pieces! What Victor Hugo says of other parts of the castle is so thoroughly characteristic that I will venture to quote some of his words. "Entering the court-yard by the grand avenue, we see before us the two lofty triangular pediments of the tufted and gloomy façade of Frederick IV. (1583-1610) with entablatures projecting beyond its four rows of windows, on which stand out nine Counts Palatine, two Kings, and five Emperors, all finely carved. On the right we have the exquisite Italian front of Otho Henry's (1553-1559) palace, with its divinities, its chimaeras, and its nymphs, which seem instinct with breath and life and are fretted with soft shadows-its Roman

Cæsars, its Grecian demigods, its Hebrew heroes, and its porch, which is Ariosto in sculpture. On the left we catch a glimpse of the Gothic façade of Louis the Bearded, cracked and riddled as by the blows of a gigantic bull. Behind us, under the ogives of a porch, beneath which is a half choked up wall, we have the four grey granite columns, given by the Pope to the great Emperor of Aix-la-Chapelle, which after travelling in the 8th century from Ravenna to the borders of the Rhine, and in the 15th century, from the borders of the Rhine to those of the Neckar, and after witnessing the fall of the palace of Charlemagne at Ingelheim now watch the decay of the Palatines at Heidelberg. The pavement of the court is blocked up with broken perrons, dried-up fountains, and crumbling vases. Strange fate for stone and marble masterpieces.*

One portion of the Schloss may be regarded as specially interesting to us English-the so-called English Palace, built by Frederick V., King of Bohemia (1610-1621) in honour of his wife, Elizabeth of England, daughter of James I., and grand-daughter of Mary Queen of Scots. An unfortunate king he was. A weak man, led by an ambitious wife, he accepted a crown surrounded with perils, and after wearing it for a single winter-hence nicknamed "The Winter King "-fled, and lost all he had. But our business is not with the historical reminiscences of which Heidelberg is so redolent, otherwise we shall never get to an end.

We cannot, of course, leave the Schloss without visiting the Museum and the celebrated Fass. The attention of most visitors will be first drawn to the portraits of Melanchthon, Luther, and Luther's wife, the good Catherine; art students will be interested in the paintings by Crannach and Wohlgemuth; the lovers of the sensational will gaze at the hair of Sand who murdered Kotzebue, and at the cast taken of his victim immediately after death. Luther's ring will set some a speculating, whilst the admirers of porcelain and ancient documents will find something to their taste in the specimens from the factories of the Palatinate; the Diploma of Arnulp, dated 896; and the Bull of Pope Alexander VI., of 1255.

Shall it be called a less noble curiosity that draws the visitor next to the Great Tun? Well, whatever it is, it must be "done," as our American cousins say. The cellar where it lies contains also a smaller tun. The large one is said to be capable of holding 236,000 bottles of wine, but has only been filled three times-the last in 1751. Its top is reached by two flights of steps. If it be true that the Elector and his court danced on the platform at the top, the first time the great tun was filled with wine-one's notion of their dignity is not heightened. The grotesque wooden figure of Perkes, the old court jester of the Elector Charles Philip-the same height as himself is sure to attract notice; and not less the wooden timepiece constructed by him-an embodied joke; for if the string which hangs from it be pulled, the clock opens,

* Quoted in Hachette's pleasant " Diamond Guide to Baden and the Black Forest."

and a fox's tail springs out suddenly and strikes the meddler in the face. The gardens of the Schloss are very pretty, one of its finest points is the so-called Great Terrace, from which a good view is gained of the castle itself. The town, the river, and the opposite mountain, with the Philosophenweg are overlooked from the platform in front of the castle; and from the Stückgarten, into which we enter through the Elizabeth Gate, a triumphal arch erected by Frederick in honour of his bride Elizabeth of England; there is a fine look-out down the Neckar towards Mannheim and the Haardt mountains.

At any other time of the year than August and September, the traveller would be reminded of the fact that Heidelberg is an university town by the number of students with particoloured caps perched on their heads and particoloured ribbons across their chests, whom he must meet in the streets. So many odd things have been told by others about their clubs, and duels, and dogs, and drinking bouts, and swaggerings that I need not trouble the readers of this Magazine with descriptions or stories. The University buildings have no features worthy of special notice, but the corporation itself is one of the most celebrated in Europe, and is the oldest except Prague and Vienna, having been founded by the Elector Ruprecht I. in 1386. Time would fail to tell of the famous Theologians, Philosophers, Philologists, Jurists, Physicians, Physicists, Historians, and so forth who have been among its teachers. At present it is considered one of the strongholds of Rationalism, but strangely as some think, or naturally, as others maintain, the number of theological students is exceedingly small. Whatever explanation may be given of the fact, fact it is, that those theological faculties at the German Universities which are most rationalistic attract the fewest theological students; whilst, other things. being equal, those which are the most orthodox have the most students. But I must not go off into that exhaustless theme the Theological and Ecclesiastical circumstances of Germany. It deserves mention, however, that the principal church, the Church of the Holy Ghost, is divided between the Roman Catholics and the Protestants, the former worshipping in the Choir and the latter in the Nave-not a very common occurence in these days of violent separation.

As a town Heidelberg has not much to boast of. Most of it is neither new nor old, and to say the least is neither imposing nor beautiful. The new town is a great improvement on the old in every respect. Protestants should, however, pay its meed of honour to the beautiful church of St. Peter, on whose door Jerome of Prague, companion of the never-to-be-forgotten John Huss, fastened his theses, and in whose immediate neighbourhood he explained and defended them to the assembled citizens in the year 1406. Perhaps the oldest house is the St. George's Hotel, which is said to have been built in 1592, by a Frenchman from Tournay, who escaped from the massacre of St. Bartholomew. Heidelberg consists chiefly of two or three long streets running parallel to each other on the narrow strip of ground between the foot of the Kaiserstuhl, on whose lowest slope stands the castle and the river, with of course connecting lanes. With

the opposite side of the Neckar the town is connected by a handsome bridge, decorated with a statue of the Elector Charles Theodore, who caused it to be built towards the close of the last century.

But let us leave behind us bricks and stone and hasten where we can breathe God's free air, and get a view of the beauties of God's glorious world. For the sake of seeing Heidelberg and its castle in all their picturesqueness-and where else is such a realization of the idea of the picturesque to be found?-we will go first to the Philosophenweg—the Philosophers' Walk. After crossing the bridge we can either turn to the right or to the left. Turning to the right, we go up the Hirschgasse, first passing the house in which Baron Bunsen lived for several years, and soon find ourselves among vineyards and under trees, whilst every now and then exquisite glimpses and views are caught not only of Heidelberg but also of more distant points, on clear days even of the Cathedral of Speyer. After about an hour's walk-just the distance for a body tenanted by a philosophical mind-we can either descend at once to Neuenheim, famous as the place where Luther found shelter in 1521 after the Diet of Worms, and return, or we can first ascend the Heiligenberg, one of Germany's most noted mountains. On it the Romans are said to have built a fort called Pirus, which having been destroyed by the Barbarians, the Frank Kings built a palace on its ruins. Between 863 and 875 the Abbot of Lorsch in the Odenwald erected a convent and a Church on the site, and the name Pirus was then changed to Abermesberg. This convent was destroyed in 1622 during the thirty years war, when Tilly occupied it for the purpose of bombarding Heidelberg. After eight days of fruitless effort he passed over to Königsstuhl leaving the buildings on the Heiligenberg a complete ruin. Only a few traces of them now remain.

Our next excursion will be to the Wolfsbrunnen a favourite restingplace of Frederick and his English queen Elizabeth in their day, and still one of the most frequented resorts of the inhabitants of Heidelberg. It owes its name-Wolfsspring-to the tradition that an enchantress, Jetta, was there devoured by a wolf. There is, of course, a Restaurant on the spot, and a favourite dish, especially with visitors from a distance, consists of trout taken from one of the small ponds supplied by the fountain. But the bonne bouche remains to be enjoyed-the Königstuhl or Kaiserstuhl-which latter name it owes to the visit of the Emperor Francis in 1815. There are two proper roads, one for carriages another for foot passengers. I myself was tempted into taking a short cut, but I would not advise anyone else to climb up the slope, slippery with dry pine needles, through small fir trees which scratch and tear one at every step. The ascent in hot weather is a little tug for weak pedestrians; but well repays the toil. From the tower on the summit an unexpectedly extensive and beautiful view is gained. We are able to trace the course of the smiling, babbling Neckar till it joins the majestic Rhine. At our feet on one side stretches the Odenwald whose western slope we skirted on our way from Darmstadt, on the other, the Schwarzwald; whilst in the distance we catch a