Chapter 1

PHILADELPHIA:

J. B. LIPPINCOTT AND CO.

1877.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1877, by

J.B. LIPPINCOTT & CO.,

In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.

LIPPINCOTT'S PRESS,

_Philadelphia_.

CONTENTS.

PAGE

Abbeys and Castles _H. James, Jr._ 434

A Day's March through Finland _David Ker_ 116

A Few Letters _E. C. Hewitt_ 111

A Great Day. From the Italian of Edmondo de Amicis 340

A Kentucky Duel _Will Wallace Harney_ 578, 738

A Law unto Herself _Rebecca Harding Davis_ 39, 167, 292, 464, 614, 719

Alfred de Musset _Sarah B. Wister_ 478

Among the Kabyles (_Illustrated._) _Edward C. Bruce_ 265, 406

A Month in Sicily (_Illustrated._) _Alfred T. Bacon_ 649

An English Easter _Henry James, Jr._ 50

A Paduan Holiday (_Illustrated._) _Charlotte Adams_ 278

A Portrait _Ita Aniol Prokop_ 698

A Summer Evening's Dream _Edward Bellamy_ 320

A Venetian of the Eighteenth Century _H. M. Benson_ 347

Baden and Allerheiligen (_Illustrated._) _T. Adolphus Trollope_ 535

Brandywine, 1777 _Howard M. Jenkins_ 329

Captured by Cossacks. (_Illustrated._) Extracts from Letters of a French Officer in 1813 _Joseph Diss Debar_ 684

Château Courance _John V. Sears_ 235

Chester and the Dee (_Illustrated._) _Lady Blanche Murphy_ 393, 521

Communism in the United States _Austin Bierbower_ 501

Days of my Youth _M. T._ 712

Down the Rhine (_Illustrated._) _Lady Blanche Murphy_ 9, 137

Edinburgh Jottings (_Illustrated._) _Alfred S. Gibbs_ 28

English Domestics and their Ways _Olive Logan_ 758

Folk-Lore of the Southern Negroes _William Owens_ 748

"For Percival." (_Illustrated._) 416, 546, 665

In a Russian "Trakteer" _David Ker_ 247

Irish Society in the Last Century _Eliza Wilson_ 183

Léonie Regnault: A Study from French Life _Mary E. Blair_ 61

Little Lizay _Sarah Winter Kellogg_ 442

London at Midsummer _H. James, Jr._ 603

Madame Patterson-Bonaparte 309

Ouida's Novels _Thomas Sergeant Perry_ 732

Our Blackbirds _Ernest Ingersoll_ 376

"Our Jook" _Henrietta H. Holdich_ 494

Primary and Secondary Education in France _C. H. Harding_ 69

Some Last Words from Sainte-Beuve _Sarah B. Wister_ 104

The Bass of the Potomac _W. Mackay Laffan_ 455

The Chef's Beefsteak _Virginia W. Johnson_ 596

The Church of St. Sophia _Hugh Craig_ 629

The Doings and Goings-on of Hired Girls _Mary Dean_ 589

The Flight of a Princess _W. A. Baillie-Grohman_ 566

The Marquis of Lossie _George Macdonald_ 81, 210, 355

The New Soprano _Penn Shirley_ 249

The Paris Cafés _Gilman C. Fisher_ 202

Verona. (_Illustrated._) _Sarah B. Wister_ 155

Vina's "Ole Man." (_Illustrated._) _Lizzie W. Champney_ 194

LITERATURE OF THE DAY, comprising Reviews of the following Works:

Avery, Benjamin Parke--Californian Pictures in Prose and Verse 775

Baker, M. A., James--Turkey 135

Burroughs, John--Birds and Poets 516

Dodge, R. I.--The Plains of the Great West and their Inhabitants 262

Doudan, X.--Mélanges et Lettres 646

Field, Marie E.--The Wings of Courage 776

Gill, W. F.--The Life of Edgar Allan Poe 518

Concourt, de, Edmond and Jules--Madame Gervaisais 388

Gréville, Henry--Les Koumiassine 519

Hoffman, Wickham--Camp, Court and Siege 261

Kismet 392

McCoan, J. C.--Egypt as it Is 774

Mazade, de, Charles--The Life of Count Cavour 772

Migerka, Catherine--Briefe aus Philadelphia (1876) an eine Freundin 643

Nimport 642

Parkman, Francis--Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV 641

Price, Major Sir Rose Lambart--The Two Americas 132

Procter, Bryan Waller (Barry Cornwall)--An Autobiographical Fragment and Biographical Notes 133

Reid, T. Wemyss--Charlotte Brontë 390

Robinson, Leora B.--Patsy 776

Sherwood, Mary Neal--Jack. From the French of Alphonse Daudet 645

Squier, E. George--Peru 259

Synge, W. W. Follett--Olivia Raleigh 518

Wheaton, Campbell--Six Sinners; or, School-Days in Bantam Valley 776

OUR MONTHLY GOSSIP, comprising the following Articles:

A Cheering Sign, 258; A Crying Evil, 771; A Day at the Paris Conservatoire, 512; A Missing Item, 770; A Neglected Branch of Philology, 385; Another Defunct Monopoly, 386; Artistic Jenkinsism, 640; Brigham Young and Mormonism, 514; Fernan Caballero, 761; Foreign Leaders in Russia and Turkey, 765; François Buloz, 382; Friend Abner in the North-West, 254; How shall we Call the Birds? 256; Katerfelto in Repose, 387; "Les Naufragés de Calais," 637; Miridite Courtship, 253; Notes from Moscow, 509; Punching the Drinks, 130; Realistic Art, 639; Russian and Turkish Music, 636; The Coming Elections in France, 127; The Dead of Paris, 122; The Departure of the Imperial Guards, 768; The Education of Women in India, 515; The Modern French Novelists, 379; The Nautch-Dancers of India, 132; The Octroi, 763; The Religious Struggle at Geneva, 125; Von Moltke in Turkey, 129; Water-Lilies, 384.

POETRY:

A Wish _Henrietta R. Eliot_ 308

Fog _Emma Lazarus_ 207

For Another _S. M. B. Piatt_ 405

From the Flats _Sidney Lanier_ 115

"God's Poor" _E. R. Champlin_ 711

Heine (Buch der Lieder) _Charles Quiet_ 354

Selim _Annie Porter_ 755

Song _Oscar Laighton_ 545

Sven Duva. From the Swedish of Johan Ludvig Runeberg _C. Rosell_ 611

The Bee _Sidney Lanier_ 493

The Chrysalis of a Bookworm _Maurice F. Egan_ 463

The Dream of St. Theresa _Epes Sargent_ 565

The Elixir _Emma Lazarus_ 60

The Marsh _S. Weir Mitchell_ 245

The Sweetener _Mary B. Dodge_ 49

To Sleep _Emilie Poulsson_ 201

LIPPINCOTT'S MAGAZINE

OF

_POPULAR LITERATURE AND SCIENCE_.

JULY, 1877.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1877, by J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO., in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.

DOWN THE RHINE.

THIRD PAPER.

Wiesbaden (the "Meadow-Bath"), though an inland town, partakes of some of the Rhine characteristics, though even if it did not, its notoriety as a spa would be enough to make some mention of it necessary. Its promenade and Kurhaus, its society, evening concerts, alleys of beautiful plane trees, its frequent illuminations with Bengal lights, reddening the classic peristyles and fountains with which modern taste has decked the town, its airy Moorish pavilion over the springs, and its beautiful Greek chapel with fire-gilt domes, each surmounted by a double cross connected with the dome by gilt chains--a chapel built by the duke Adolph of Nassau in memory of his wife, Elizabeth Michaelovna, a Russian princess,--are things that almost every American traveler remembers, not to mention the Neroberger wine grown in the neighborhood.

Schlangenbad, a less well-known bathing-place, is a favorite goal of Wiesbaden excursionists, for a path through dense beech woods leads from the stirring town to the quieter "woman's republic," where, before sovereigns in incognito came to patronize it, there had long been a monopoly of its charms by the wives and daughters of rich men, bankers, councilors, noblemen, etc., and also by a set of the higher clergy. The waters were famous for their sedative qualities, building up the nervous system, and, it is said, also beautifying the skin. Some credulous persons traced the name of the "Serpents' Bath" to the fact that snakes lurked in the springs and gave the waters their healing powers; but as the neighborhood abounds in a small harmless kind of reptile, this is the more obvious reason for the name. I spent a pleasant ten days at Schlangenbad twelve or thirteen years ago, when many of the German sovereigns preferred it for its quiet to the larger and noisier resorts, and remember with special pleasure meeting with fields of Scotch heather encircled by beech and chestnut woods, with ferny, rocky nooks such as--when it is in Germany that you find them--suggest fairies, and with a curious village church, just restored by a rich English Catholic, since dead, who lived in Brussels and devoted his fortune to religious purposes all over the world. This church was chiefly interesting as a specimen of what country churches were in the Middle Ages, having been restored in the style common to those days. It was entirely of stone, within as well as without, and I remember no painting on the walls. The "tabernacle," instead of being placed _on_ the altar, as is the custom in most churches now, and has been for two or three hundred years, was, according to the old German custom, a separate shrine, with a little tapering carved spire, placed in the corner of the choir, with a red lamp burning before it. Here, as in most of the Rhine neighborhoods, the people are mainly Catholics, but in places where summer guests of all nations and religions are gathered there is often a friendly arrangement by which the same building is used for the services of two or three faiths. There was, I think, one such at Schlangenbad, where Catholic, Lutheran and Anglican services were successively held every Sunday morning; and in another place, where a large Catholic church has since been built, the old church was divided down the middle of the nave by a wooden partition about the height of a man's head, and Catholic and Protestant had each a side permanently assigned to them for their services. This kind of practical toleration, probably in the beginning the result of poverty on both sides, but at any rate creditable to its practicers, was hardly to be found anywhere outside of Germany. I remember hearing of the sisters of one of the pope's German prelates, Monsignor Prince Hohenlohe, who were Lutherans, embroidering ecclesiastical vestments and altar-linen for their brother with as much delight as if he and they believed alike; and (though this is anything but praiseworthy, for it was prompted by policy and not by toleration) it was a custom of the smaller German princes to bring their daughters up in the vaguest belief in vital truths, in order that when they married they might become whatever their husbands happened to be, whether Lutheran, Anglican, Catholic or Greek. The events of the last few years, however, have changed all this, and religious strife is as energetic in Germany as it was at one time in Italy: people must take sides, and this outward, easy-going old life has disappeared before the novel kind of persecution sanctioned by the Falk laws. Some persons even think the present state of things traceable to that same toleration, leading, as it did in many cases, to lukewarmness and indifferentism in religion. Strange phases for a fanatical Germany to pass through, and a stranger commentary on the words of Saint Remigius to Clovis, the first Frankish Christian king: "Burn that which thou hast worshiped, and worship that which thou hast burnt"!

Schwalbach is another of Wiesbaden's handmaidens--a pleasant, rather quiet spot, from which, if you please, you can follow the Main to the abode of sparkling hock or the vinehills of Hochheim, the property of the church which crowns the heights. This is at the entrance of the Roman-named Taunus Mountains, where there are bathing-places, ruined castles, ancient bridges, plenty of legends, and, above all, dark solemn old chestnut forests. But we have a long way to go, and must not linger on our road to the free imperial city of Frankfort, with its past history and present importance. Here too I have some personal remembrances, though hurried ones. The hotel itself--what a relief such hotels are from the modern ones with electric bells and elevators and fifteen stories!--was an old patrician house ample, roomy, dignified, and each room had some individuality, notwithstanding the needful amount of transformation from its old self. It was a dull, wet day when we arrived, and next morning we went to the cathedral, Pepin's foundation, of which I remember, however, less than of the great hall in the Römer building where the Diets sat and where the "Golden Bull" is still kept--a hall now magnificently and appropriately frescoed with subjects from German history. Then the far-famed Judengasse, a street where the first Rothschild's mother lived till within a score of years ago, and where now, among the dark, crazy tenements, so delightful to the artist's eye, there glitters one of the most gorgeously-adorned synagogues in Europe. A change indeed from the times when Jews were hunted and hooted at in these proud, fanatical cities, which were not above robbing them and making use of them even while they jeered and persecuted! The great place in front of the emperor's hall was the appointed ground for tournaments, and as we lounge on we come to a queer house, with its lowest corner cut away and the oriel window above supported on one massive pillar: from that window tradition says that Luther addressed the people just before starting for Worms to meet the Diet. This other house has a more modern look: it is Goethe's birthplace, the house where the noted housekeeper and accomplished hostess, "_Frau Rath_"--or "Madam Councilor," as she was called--gathered round her those stately parties that are special to the great free cities of olden trade. Frankfort has not lost her reputation in this line: her merchants and civic functionaries still form an aristocracy, callings as well as fortunes are hereditary, and if some modern elements have crept in, they have not yet superseded the old. The regattas and boating-parties on the Main remind one of the stir on the banks of the Thames between Richmond and Twickenham, where so many "city men" have lovely retired homes; but Frankfort has its Kew Gardens also, where tropical flora, tree-ferns and palms, in immense conservatories, make perpetual summer, while the Zoological Garden and the bands that play there are another point of attraction. Still, I think one more willingly seeks the older parts--the Ashtree Gate, with its machicolated tower and turrets, the only remnants of the fortifications; the old cemetery, where Goethe's mother is buried; and the old bridge over the Main, with the statue of Charlemagne bearing the globe of empire in his hand, which an innocent countryman from the neighboring village of Sachsenhausen mistook for the man who invented the _Aeppelwei_, a favorite drink of Frankfort. This bridge has another curiosity--a gilt cock on an iron rod, commemorating the usual legend of the "first living thing" sent across to cheat the devil, who had extorted such a promise from the architect. But although the ancient remains are attractive, we must not forget the Bethmann Museum, with its treasure of Dannecker's _Ariadne_, and the Städel Art Institute, both the legacies of public-spirited merchants to their native town; the Bourse, where a business hardly second to any in London is done; and the memory of so many great minds of modern times--Börne, Brentano, Bettina von Arnim, Feurbach, Savigny, Schlossen, etc. The Roman remains at Oberürzel in the neighborhood ought to have a chapter to themselves, forming as they do a miniature Pompeii, but the Rhine and its best scenery calls us away from its great tributary, and we already begin to feel the witchery which a popular poet has expressed in these lines, supposed to be a warning from a father to a wandering son:

To the Rhine, to the Rhine! go not to the Rhine! My son, I counsel thee well; For there life is too sweet and too fine, and every breath is a spell.

The nixie calls to thee out of the flood; and if thou her smiles shouldst see, And the Lorelei, with her pale cold lips, then 'tis all over with thee:

For bewitched and delighted, yet seized with fear, Thy home is forgotten and mourners weep here.

This is the Rheingau, the most beautiful valley of rocks and bed of rapids which occurs during the whole course of the river--the region most crowded with legends and castles, and most frequented by strangers by railroad and steamboat. The right bank is at first the only one that calls for attention, dotted as it is with townlets, each nestled in orchards, gardens and vineyards, with a church and steeple, and terraces of odd, over-hanging houses; little stone arbors trellised with grapevines; great crosses and statues of patron saints in the warm, soft-toned red sandstone of the country; fishermen's taverns, with most of the business done outside under the trees or vine-covered piazza; little, busy wharfs and works, aping joyfully the bustle of large seaports, and succeeding in miniature; and perhaps a burgomaster's garden, where that portly and pleasant functionary does not disdain to keep a tavern and serve his customers himself, as at Walluf.

At Rauenthal (a "valley" placed on high hills) we find the last new claimant to the supremacy among Rhine wines, at least since the Paris Exhibition, when the medal of honor was awarded to Rauenthal, which has ended in bringing many hundreds of curious connoisseurs to test the merits of the grape where it grows. Now comes a whole host of villages on either side of the river, famous through their wines--Steinberg, the "golden beaker;" Scharfenstein, whose namesake castle was the refuge of the warlike archbishops of Mayence, the stumbling-block of the archbishops of Trèves, called "the Lion of Luxembourg," and lastly the prey of the terrible Swedes, who in German stories play the part of Cossacks and Bashi-Bazouks; Marcobrunnen, with its classical-looking ruin of a fountain hidden among vineyards; Hattenheim, Hallgarten, Gräfenberg; and Eberbach, formerly an abbey, known for its "cabinet" wine, the hall-mark of those times, and its legends of Saint Bernard, for whom a boar ploughed a circle with his tusks to show the spot where the saint should build a monastery, and afterward tossed great stones thither for the foundation, while angels helped to build the upper walls. Eberbach is rather deserted than ruined. It was a good deal shattered in the Peasants' War at the time of the Reformation, when the insurgents emptied the huge cask in which the whole of the Steinberg wine-harvest was stored; but since 1803, when it was made over to the neighboring wine-growers, it has remained pretty well unharmed; and its twelfth-century chapel, full of monuments; its refectory, now the press-house, with its columns and capitals nearly perfect; its cellars, where every year more wine is given away than is stored--_i. e._, all that which is not "cabinet-worthy"--as in the tulip-mania, when thousands of roots were thrown away as worthless, which yet had all the natural merit of lovely coloring and form,--make Eberbach well worth seeing.

Next comes Johannisberg, with its vineyards dating back to the tenth century, when Abbot Rabanus of Fulda cultivated the grape and Archbishop Ruthard of Mayence built a monastery, dedicated to Saint John the Baptist, which for centuries was owner and guardian of the most noted Rhine vintage; but abuses within and wars without have made an end of this state of things, and Albert of Brandenburg's raid on the monks' cellars has been more steadily supplemented by the pressure of milder but no less efficient means of destruction. When Napoleon saw this tract of land and offered it to General Kellermann, who had admired its beauty, he is said to have received a worthy and a bold answer. "I thank Your Majesty," said the marshal, "but the receiver is as bad as the thief." The less scrupulous Metternich became its owner, giving for it, however, an equivalent of arable and wood land. The Metternich who for years was Austrian ambassador at Paris during the brilliant time of the Second Empire, and whose fast and eccentric wife daily astonished society, is now owner of the peerless Johannisberg vineyards, among which is his country-house. Goethe's friends, the Lade and Brentano families, lived in this neighborhood, and the historian Nicholas Vogt lies buried in the Metternich chapel, though his heart, by his special desire, is laid in a silver casket within the rocks of Bingen, with a little iron cross marking the spot. At Geisenheim we are near two convents which as early as 1468 had printing-presses in active use, and the mysterious square tower of Rüdesheim, which brings all sorts of suppositions to our mind, though the beauty of the wayside crosses, the tall gabled roofs, the crumbling walls, the fantastically-shaped rocks, getting higher and higher on each side, and the perpetual winding of the river, are enough to keep the eye fixed on the mere landscape. At the windows, balconies and arbors sit pretty, ruddy girls waving their handkerchiefs to the unknown "men and brethren" on board the steamers and the trains; and well they may, if this be a good omen, for here is the "Iron Gate" of the Rhine, and the water bubbles and froths in miniature whirlpools as we near what is called the "Bingen Hole."

As we have passed the mouth of the Stein and recollected the rhyme of Schrödter in his _King Wine's Triumph_--

Wreathèd in vines and crownèd with reeds comes the Rhine, And at his side with merry dance comes the Main, While the third with his steady steps is all of stone (Stein), And both Main and Stein are prime ministers to the Lord Rhine--

so now we peer up one of the clefts in the rocks and see the Nahe ploughing its way along to meet the great river. Just commanding the mouth is Klopp Castle, and not far warlike Bingen, a rich burgher-city, plundered and half destroyed in every war from those of the fourteenth to those of the eighteenth century, while Klopp too claims to have been battered and bruised even in the thirteenth century, but is better known as the scene of the emperor Henry IV.'s betrayal to the Church authorities by his son, who treacherously invited him to visit him here by night. A little way up the river Nahe, where the character of the people changes from the lightheartedness of the Rhine proper to a steadiness and earnestness somewhat in keeping with the sterner and more mountainous aspect of the country, is Kreuznach, (or "Crossnear"), now a bathing-resort, and once a village founded by the first Christian missionaries round the first cross under whose shadow they preached the gospel. Sponheim Castle, once the abode of Trithemius, or Abbot John of Trittenheim, a famous chronicler and scholar, reminds us of the brave butcher of Kreuznach, Michael Mort, whose faithfulness to his lawful lord when beset by pretenders to his title in his own family won for the guild of butchers certain privileges which they have retained ever since; and Rheingrafenstein, where the ruins are hardly distinguishable from the tossed masses of porphyry rock on which they are perched, tells us the story of Boos von Waldeck's wager with the lord of the castle to drink a courier's top-boot full of Rhine wine at one draught--a feat which he is said to have successfully accomplished, making himself surely a fit companion for Odin in Walhalla; but his reward on earth was more substantial, for he won thereby the village of Hüffelsheim and all its belongings. In a less romantic situation stands Ebernburg, so called from the boar which during a siege the hungry but indomitable defenders of the castle paraded again and again before the eyes of the besiegers, whose only hope lay in starving out the garrison--the property of the Sickengens, whose ancestor Franz played a prominent part in the Reformation and gave an asylum in these very halls to Bucer, Melanchthon, Oecolampadius and Ulrich von Hütten. Past Rothenfels, where towering rocks hem in the stream, like the Wye banks in Arthur's country on the Welsh borders; the scattered stones of Disibodenberg, the Irish missionary's namesake convent, which afterward passed into the hands of the Cistercians; Dhaum Castle and Oberstein Church, these two with their legends, the first accounting for a bas-relief in the great hall representing an ape rocking a child, the heir of the house, in the depths of a forest, and giving him an apple to eat,--we come to a cluster of castles which are the classical ground of the Nahe Valley. The very rocks seem not only crowned but honeycombed with buildings: chapels stand on jutting crags; houses, heaped as it were one on the roof of the other, climb up their rough sides, and the roofs themselves have taken their cue from the rocks, and have three or four irregular lines of tiny windows ridging and bulging them out.

Taking boat again at Bingen, and getting safely through the Rhine "Hell Gate," the "Hole," whose terrors seem as poetic as those of the Lorelei, we pass the famous Mouse Tower, and opposite it the ruined Ehrenfels; Assmanshausen, with its dark-colored wine and its custom of a May or Pentecost feast, when thousands of merry Rhinelanders spend the day in the woods, dancing, drinking and singing, baskets outspread in modified and dainty pic-nic fashion, torches lit at night and bands playing or mighty choruses resounding through the woods; St. Clement's Chapel, just curtained from the river by a grove of old poplars and overshadowed by a ruin with a hundred eyes (or windows), while among the thickly-planted, crooked crosses of its churchyard old peasant-women and children run or totter, the first telling their beads, the second gathering flowers, and none perhaps remembering that the chapel was built by the survivors of the families of the robber-knights of Rheinstein (one of the loveliest of Rhine ruins) and three other confederated castles, whom Rudolph of Habsburg treated, rightly enough, according to the Lynch law of his time. They were hung wherever found, but their pious relations did not forget to bury them and atone for them as seemingly as might be.

Bacharach, if it were not famed in Germany for its wine, according to the old rhyme declaring that

At Würzburg on the Stein, At Hochheim on the Main, At Bacharach on the Rhine. There grows the best of wine,

would or ought to be noticed for its wealth of old houses and its many architectural beauties, from the ruined (or rather unfinished) chapel of St. Werner, now a wine-press house, bowered in trees and surrounded by a later growth of crosses and tombstones, to the meanest little house crowding its neighbor that it may bathe its doorstep in the river--houses that when their owners built and patched them from generation to generation little dreamt that they would stand and draw the artist's eye when the castle was in ruins. Similarly, the many serious historical incidents that took place in Bacharach have lived less long in the memory of inhabitants and visitors than the love-story connected with the ruined castle--that of Agnes, the daughter of the count of this place and niece of the great Barbarossa, whom her father shut up here with her mother to be out of the way of her lover, Henry of Braunschweig. The latter, a Guelph (while the count was a Ghibelline), managed, however, to defeat the father's plans: the mother helped the lovers, and a priest was smuggled into the castle to perform the marriage, which the father, after a useless outburst of rage, wisely acknowledged as valid. The coloring of many buildings in this part of the Rhineland is very beautiful, the red sandstone of the neighborhood being one of the most picturesque of building materials. Statues and crosses, as well as churches and castles, are built of it, and even the rocks have so appealed by their formation to the imagination of the people that at Schönburg we meet with a legend of seven sisters, daughters of that family whose hero, Marshal Schomburg, the friend and right hand of William of Orange, lies buried in Westminster Abbey, honored as marshal of France, peer of Great Britain and grandee of Portugal, and who, for their haughtiness toward their lovers, were turned into seven rocks, through part of which now runs the irreverent steam-engine, ploughing through the tunnel that cuts off a corner where the river bends again.

Now comes the gray rock where, as all the world knows, the Lorelei lives, but as that graceful myth is familiar to all, we will hurry past the mermaid's home, where so much salmon used to be caught that the very servants of the neighboring monastery of St. Goar were forbidden to eat salmon more than three times a week, to go and take a glimpse of St. Goarshausen, with its convent founded in the seventh century by one of the first Celtic missionaries, and its legend of the spider who remedied the carelessness of the brother cellarer when he left the bung out of Charlemagne's great wine-cask by quickly spinning across the opening a web thick enough to stop the flow of wine. A curious relic of olden time and humor is shown in the cellar--an iron collar, grim-looking, but more innocent than its looks, for it was used only to pin the unwary visitor to the wall while a choice between a "baptism" of water and wine was given him. The custom dates back to Charlemagne's time. Those who, thinking to choose the least evil of the two, gave their voice for the water, had an ample and unexpected shower-bath, while the wine-drinkers were crowned with some tinseled wreath and given a large tankard to empty. On the heights above the convent stood the "Cat" watching the "Mouse" on the opposite bank above Wellmich, the two names commemorating an insolent message sent by Count John III. of the castle of Neu-Katzellenbogen to Archbishop Kuno of Falkenstein, the builder of the castle of Thurnberg, "that he greeted him and hoped he would take good care of his mouse, that his (John's) cat might not eat it up." And now we pass a chain of castles, ruins and villages; rocks with such names as the Prince's Head; lead, copper and silver works, with all the activity of modern life, stuck on like a puppet-show to the background of a solemn old picture, a rocky, solitary island, "The Two Brothers," the twin castles of Liebenstein and Sternberg, the same which Bulwer has immortalized in his _Pilgrims of the Rhine_, and at their feet, close to the shore, a modern-looking building, the former Redemptorist convent of Bornhofen. As we step out there is a rude quay, four large old trees and a wall with a pinnacled niche, and then we meet a boatful of pilgrims with their banners, for this is one of the shrines that are still frequented, notwithstanding many difficulties--notwithstanding that the priests were driven out of the convent some time ago, and that the place is in lay hands; not, however, unfriendly hands, for a Catholic German nobleman, married to a Scotch woman, bought the house and church, and endeavored, as under the shield of "private property," to preserve it for the use of the Catholic population of the neighborhood. Last summer an English Catholic family rented the house, and a comfortable home was established in the large, bare building attached to the church, where is still kept the _Gnadenbild_, or "Grace image," which is the object of the pilgrimage--a figure of the Blessed Virgin holding her dead Son upon her knees. These English tenants brought a private chaplain with them, but, despite their privileges as English subjects, I believe there was some trouble with the government authorities. However, they had mass said for them at first in the church on weekdays. A priest from Camp, the neighboring post-town, was allowed to come once in a week to say mass for the people, but with locked doors, and on other days the service was also held in the same way, though a few of the country-people always managed to get in quietly before the doors were shut. On Sundays mass was said for the strangers and their household only in a little oratory up in the attics, which had a window looking into the church near the roof of the chancel. One of them describes "our drawing-room in the corner of the top floor, overlooking the river," and "our life ... studying German, reading and writing in the morning, dining early, walking out in the evening, tea-supper when we come home.... There are such pretty walks in the ravines and hills, in woods and vineyards, and to the castles above and higher hills beyond! We brought one man and a maid, who do not know German, and found two German servants in the house, who do everything.... It is curious how cheaply we live here; the German cook left here does everything for us, and we are saying she makes us much better soups and omelettes and souffles than any London cook." Now, as these three things happen to be special tests of a cook's skill, this praise from an Englishman should somewhat rebuke travelers who can find no word too vile for "German cookery."

The time of the yearly pilgrimage came round during the stay of these strangers, "and pilgrims came from Coblenz, a four hours' walk (in mid-August and the temperature constantly in the nineties), on the opposite side of the river, singing and chanting as they came, and crossed the river here in boats. High mass was at half-past nine (in the morning) and benediction at half-past one, immediately after which they returned in boats down the stream much more quickly. The day before was a more local pilgrimage: mass and benediction were at eight, but pilgrims came about all the morning." Later on, when the great heat had brought "premature autumn tints to the trees and burnt up the grass," the English family made some excursions in the neighborhood, and in one place they came to a "forest and a large tract of tall trees," but this was exceptional, as the soil is not deep enough to grow large timber, and the woods are chiefly low underwood. The grapes were small, and on the 22d of August they tasted the first plateful at Stolzenfels, an old castle restored by the queen-dowager of Prussia, and now the property of the empress of Germany. "The view from it is lovely up and down the river, and the situation splendid--about four hundred feet above the river, with high wooded hills behind, just opposite the Lahn where it falls into the Rhine." Wolfgang Müller describes Stolzenfels as a beautiful specimen of the old German style, with a broad smooth road leading up over drawbridges and moats, with mullioned windows and machicolated towers, and an artistic open staircase intersected by three pointed arches, and looking into an inner courtyard, with a fountain surrounded by broad-leaved tropical water-plants. The sight of a combination of antique dignity with correct modern taste is a delight so seldom experienced that it is worth while dwelling on this pleasant fact as brought out in the restoration of Stolzenfels, the "Proud Rock." And that the Rhinelanders are proud of their river is no wonder when strangers can talk about it thus: "The Rhine is a river which grows upon you, living in a pretty part of its course:... its less beauteous parts have their own attractions to the natives, and its beauties, perhaps exaggerated, unfold greatly the more you explore them, not to be seen by a rushing tourist up and down the stream by rail or by boat, but sought out and contemplated from its heights and windings.... In fact, the pretty part of its course is from Bingen to Bonn. Here we are in a wonderfully winding gorge, containing nearly all its picturesque old castles, uninterrupted by any flat. The stream is rapid enough, four miles an hour or more--not equal to the Rhone at Geneva, but like that river in France. One does not wonder at the Germans being enthusiastic over their river, as the Romans were over the yellow Tiber."

Other excursions were made by the Bornhofen visitors, one up a hill on the opposite side, over sixteen hundred feet high, whence a fine distant view of the Mosel Valley was seen, and one also to the church of St. Apollinaris, at Remagen, at some distance down the river, where are "some fine frescoes by German artists covering the whole interior of the church. One artist painted four or five large ones of the Crucifixion, Resurrection and other events relating to the life of Our Lord; a second several of the life of St. Apollinaris, and two others some of Our Lady and various saints, one set being patron saints of the founder's children, whom I think we saw at Baden--Carl Egon, Count Fürstenberg-Stammheim.... The family-house stands close to the church, or one of his houses, and seems to have been made into a Franciscan convent: the monks are now banished and the church deserted, a _custode_ (guardian) in charge. We went one day to Limburg to see the bishop of this diocese, a dear old man who only speaks German, so E---- and C---- carried on all the conversation. The cathedral is a fine old Norman building with seven towers: it is undergoing restoration, and the remains of old frescoes under the whitewash are the ground-work of renewed ones. Where an old bit is perfect enough it is left."

Camp, a mile from Bornhofen, is an insignificant place enough, but claiming to have been a Roman camp, and having an old convent as picturesque as those of far-famed and much-visited towns. The same irregular windows, roofed turrets springing up by the side of tall gables, a corner-shrine of Our Lady and Child, with vines and ivy making a niche for it, mossy steps, a broken wall with trailing vines and steep stone-roofed recess, probably an old niche,--such is a sketch of what would make a thoroughly good picture; but in this land there are so many such that one grows too familiar with them to care for the sight. Nearly opposite is Boppard, a busy ancient town, with a parish church beautiful enough for a cathedral--St. Severin's church, with carved choir-stalls and a double nave--and the old Benedictine monastery for women, now a cold-water cure establishment. Boppard has its legend of a shadowy Templar and a faithless bridegroom challenged by the former, who turned out to be the forsaken bride herself; but of these legends, one so like the other, this part of the Rhine is full. The next winding of the stream shows us Oberspay, with a romantic tavern, carved pillars supporting a windowed porch, and a sprawling kind of roof; the "King's Stool," a modern restoration of the mediæval pulpit or platform of stone supported by pillars, with eighteen steps and a circumference of forty ells, where the Rhenish prince-archbishops met to choose the temporal sovereigns who were in part their vassals; Oberlahnstein, a town famous for its possession in perfect repair of the ancient fortifications; Lahneck, now a private residence, once the property of the Templars; Stolzenfels, of which we have anticipated a glimpse; the island of Oberwörth, with an old convent of St. Magdalen, and in the distance frowning Ehrenbreitstein, the fortress of Coblenz.

Turning up the course of the Lahn, we get to the neighborhood of a small but famous bathing-place, Ems, the cradle of the Franco-Prussian war, where the house in which Emperor William lodged is now shown as an historic memento, and effaces the interest due to the old gambling Kursaal. The English chapel, a beautiful small stone building already ivied; the old synagogue, a plain whitewashed building, where the service is conducted in an orthodox but not very attractive manner; the pretty fern- and heather-covered woods, through which you ride on donkeyback; the gardens, where a Parisian-dressed crowd airs itself late in the afternoon; all the well-known adjuncts of a spa, and the most delightful baths I ever saw, where in clean little chambers you step down three steps into an ample marble basin sunk in the floor, and may almost fancy yourself a luxurious Roman of the days of Diocletian,--such is Ems. But its environs are full of wider interest. There is Castle Schaumburg, where for twenty years the archduke Stephen of Austria, palatine of Hungary, led a useful and retired life, making his house as orderly and seemly as an English manor-house, and more interesting to the strangers, whose visits he encouraged, by the collections of minerals, plants, shells and stuffed animals and the miniature zoological and botanical gardens which he kept up and often added to. I spent a day there thirteen years ago, ten years before he died, lamented by his poor neighbors, to whom he was a visible providence. Another house of great interest is the old Stein mansion in the little town of Nassau, the home of the upright and patriotic minister of that name, whose memory is a household word in Germany. The present house is a comfortable modern one--a _château_ in the French sense of the word--but the old shattered tower above the town is the cradle of the family. At the village of Frücht is the family-vault and the great man's monument, a modern Gothic canopy, somewhat bald and characterless, but bearing a fine statue of Stein by Schwanthaler, and an inscription in praise of the "unbending son of bowed-down Fatherland." He came of a good stock, for thus runs his father's funeral inscription, in five alliterative German rhymes. I can give it but lamely:

His nay was nay, and steady, His yea was yea, and ready: Of his promise ever mindful, His lips his conscience ne'er belied, And his word was bond and seal.

Stein was born in the house where he retired to spend his last years in study: his grave and pious nature is shown in the mottoes with which he adorned his home: "A tower of strength is our God" over the house-door, and in his library, above his books and busts and gathering of life-memorials, "Confidence in God, singleness of mind and righteousness." His contemporaries called him, in a play upon his name which, as such things go, was not bad, "The foundation-_stone_ of right, the stumbling-_stone_ of the wicked, and the precious _stone_ of Germany." Arnstein and its old convent, now occupied by a solitary priest: Balduinenstein and its rough-hewn, cyclopean-looking ruin, standing over the mossy picturesque water-mill; the marble-quarries near Schaumburg, worked by convicts; Diez and its conglomeration of houses like a puzzle endowed with life,--are all on the way to Limburg, the episcopal town, old and tortuous, sleepy and alluring, with its shady streets, its cathedral of St. George and its monument of the lion-hearted Conrad or Kuno, surnamed Shortbold (Kurzbold), a nephew of Emperor Conrad, a genuine woman-hater, a man of giant strength but dwarfish height, who is said to have once strangled a lion, and at another time sunk a boatful of men with one blow of his spear. The cathedral, the same visited by our Bornhofen friends, has other treasures--carved stalls and a magnificent image of Our Lord of the sixteenth century, a Gothic baptismal font and a richly-sculptured tabernacle, as well as a much older image of _St. George and the Dragon_, supposed by some to refer to the legendary existence of monsters in the days when Limburg was heathen. Some such idea seems also not to have been remote from the fancy of the mediæval sculptor who adorned the brave Conrad's monument with such elaborately monstrous figures: it was evidently no lack of skill and delicacy that dictated such a choice of supporters, for the figure of the hero is lifelike, dignified and faithful to the minute description of his features and stature left us by his chronicler, while the beauty of the leaf-border of the slab and of the capitals of the short pillars is such as to excite the envy of our best modern carvers.

LADY BLANCHE MURPHY.

EDINBURGH JOTTINGS.

Whenever Scott's landau went up the Canongate, his coachman knew without special instructions that the pace must be a walk; and no funeral, says Lockhart, ever moved more slowly, for wherever the great enthusiast might turn his gaze there was recalled to his mind some tradition of blood and mystery at which his eye would sparkle and his cheek glow. How by the force of his genius he inoculated the world with his enthusiasm about the semi-savage Scotia of the past is a well-known story: thousands of tourists, more or less struck with the Scott madness, yearly wander through the streets of old Edinburgh; and although within the quarter of a century since Sir Walter's death many memorials of the past have been swept away under the pressure of utility or necessity, the Old Town still poses remarkably well, and, gathering her rags and tatters about her, contrives to keep up a strikingly picturesque appearance.

The Old Town of Edinburgh is built upon a wedge-shaped hill, the Castle occupying the highest point, the head of the wedge, and the town extending along the crest, which slopes gradually down toward the east, to Holyrood Palace in the plain. Lawnmarket, High street and Canongate now form one continuous street, which, running along the crest of the hill, may be considered as the backbone of the town, with wynds and closes radiating on each side like the spines of the vertebræ. The closes are courts, culs-de-sac--the wynds, thoroughfares. These streets--courts where, in the past, lived the nobility and gentry of Edinburgh--are now, for the most part, given up to squalor and misery, and look like stage-scenes perpetually "set" for melodramatic horrors. The late Dr. Thomas Guthrie, whose parish included a large portion of this Egypt, used often to illustrate his eloquence with graphic word-pictures suggested by his experiences in these dark places. "The unfurnished floor," he writes, "the begrimed and naked walls, the stifling, sickening atmosphere, the patched and dusty window--through which a sunbeam, like hope, is faintly stealing--the ragged, hunger-bitten and sad-faced children, the ruffian man, the heap of straw where some wretched mother in muttering dreams sleeps off last night's debauch or lies unshrouded and uncoffined in the ghastliness of a hopeless death, are sad scenes. We have often looked on them, and they appear all the sadder for the restless play of fancy excited by some vestiges of a fresco-painting that still looks out from the foul and broken plaster, the massive marble rising over the cold and cracked hearthstone, an elaborately-carved cornice too high for shivering cold to pull it down for fuel, some stucco flowers or fruit yet pendent on the crumbling ceiling. Fancy, kindled by these, calls up the gay scenes and actors of other days, when beauty, elegance and fashion graced these lonely halls, and plenty smoked on groaning tables, and where these few cinders, gathered from the city dustheap, are feebly smouldering, hospitable fires roared up the chimney."

These houses are built upon the "flat" system, some of the better ones having a court in the centre like French houses, and turrets at the corners for the circular staircases connecting the different flats. Fires and improvements are rapidly sweeping them away, and the traveler regrets or not their disappearance, according as his views may be sentimental or sanitarian. They are truly ill adapted to modern ideas of hygiene, or to those cunning modern devices which sometimes poison their very inventors. While we may smile at our ancestors' free and easy way of pitching things out of the window, we should at least remember that they knew nothing of the modern plague of sewer-gas stealing its insidious way into the apparently best-regulated households. But without entering upon the vexed question of hygiene, the fact is that where there is no reason for propping up a tottering roof except that it once sheltered some bloody, cattle-stealing chieftain of the Border, utilitarian sentiments carry the day; nor ought any enthusiast to deny that the heart-shaped figure on the High street pavement, marking the spot where the Heart of Mid Lothian once stood, is a more cheerful sight than would be presented by the foul walls of that romantic jail.

The modes of life in old Edinburgh have been amply illustrated by many writers. Among the novel-writers, Scott and Miss Ferrier have especially dwelt upon them. The tavern-haunting habits of the gentlemen are pleasantly depicted in the "high jinks" in _Guy Mannering_, and the depth of potations may be estimated by Burns's "Song of the Whistle." As to the ladies, we should not have found their assemblies very hilarious, where partners for the dance were obtained by drawing tickets, and the lucky or unlucky swain danced one solemn minuet with his lady, and was not expected to quit her side during the evening--

Through a long night to watch fair Delia's will, The same dull swain was at her elbow still.

The huge stack of buildings called James's Court is associated with the names of Boswell and of Hume. Half of it has been destroyed by fire, and precisely that half in which these two worthies once dwelt, but there is quite enough of it left to show what a grim monster it was, and, for that matter, still is. In Boswell's time it was a fine thing to have a flat in James's Court. Here Boswell was living when Dr. Johnson came to visit him. Boswell, having received a note from Johnson announcing his arrival, hastened to the inn, where he found the great man had just thrown his lemonade out of the window, and had nearly knocked down the waiter for sweetening the said lemonade without the aid of the sugar-tongs.

"Mr. Johnson and I walked arm-in-arm up the High street," says Boswell, "to my house in James's Court: it was a dusky night: I could not prevent his being assailed by the evening effluvia of Edinburgh. As we marched slowly along he grumbled in my ear, 'I smell you in the dark.'"

Mrs. Boswell had never seen Johnson before, and was by no means charmed with him, as Johnson was not slow to discover. In a matrimonial aside she whispered to her husband, "I have seen many a bear led by a man, but I never before saw a man led by a bear." No doubt her provocations were great, and she wins the compassionate sympathy of all good housekeepers when they read of Ursa Major brightening up the candles by turning the melted wax out on the carpet.

Many years after this, but while Boswell was still living in James's Court, a lad named Francis Jeffrey one night helped to carry the great biographer home--a circumstance in the life of a gentleman much more of an every-day or every-night affair at that time than at present. The next day Boswell patted the lad on the head, and kindly added, "If you go on as you have begun, you may live to be a Bozzy yourself yet."

The stranger who enters what is apparently the ground-floor of one of these houses on the north side of High street is often surprised to find himself, without having gone up stairs, looking from a fourth-story window in the rear. This is due to the steep slope on which the houses stand, and gives them the command of a beautiful view, including the New Town, and extending across the Firth of Forth to the varied shores of Fife. From his flat in James's Court we find David Hume, after his return from France, writing to Adam Smith, then busy at Kirkcaldy about the _Wealth of Nations_, "I am glad to have come within sight of you, and to have a view of Kirkcaldy from my windows."

Another feature of these houses is the little cells designed for oratories or praying-closets, to which the master of the house was supposed to retire for his devotions, in literal accordance with the gospel injunction. David Hume's flat had two of these, for the spiritual was relatively better cared for than the temporal in those days: plenty of praying-closets, but _no drains_! This difficulty was got over by making it lawful for householders, after ten o'clock at night, to throw superfluous material out of the window--a cheerful outlook for Boswell and others being "carried home"!

At the bottom of Byre's Close a house is pointed out where Oliver Cromwell stayed, and had the advantage of contemplating from its lofty roof the fleet which awaited his orders in the Forth. The same house was once occupied by Bothwell, bishop of Orkney, and is associated with the memory of Anne, the bishop's daughter, whose sorrows are enbalmed in plaintive beauty in the old cradle-song:

Baloo,[A] my boy, lie still and sleep, It grieves me sair to see thee weep: If thou'lt be silent, I'll be glad; Thy mourning makes my heart full sad. Baloo, my boy, thy mother's joy, Thy father bred me great annoy. Baloo, Baloo, etc.

Baloo, my boy, weep not for me, Whose greatest grief's for wranging thee, Nor pity her deservèd smart, Who can blame none but her fond heart; For too soon trusting latest finds With fairest tongues are falsest minds. Baloo, Baloo, etc.

When he began to court my love, And with his sugared words to move, His tempting face and flutt'ring cheer In time to me did not appear; But now I see that cruel he Cares neither for his babe nor me. Baloo, Baloo, etc.

Baloo, my boy, thy father's fled, When he the thriftless son has played: Of vows and oaths forgetful, he Preferred the wars to thee and me; But now perhaps thy curse and mine Makes him eat acorns with the swine. Baloo, Baloo, etc.

Nay, curse not him: perhaps now he, Stung with remorse, is blessing thee; Perhaps at death, for who can tell But the great Judge of heaven and hell, By some proud foe has struck the blow, And laid the dear deceiver[B] low. Baloo, Baloo, etc.

I wish I were into the bounds Where he lies smother'd in his wounds, Repeating, as he pants for air, My name, whom once he call'd his fair. No woman's yet so fiercely set But she'll forgive, though not forget. Baloo, Baloo, etc.

The tourist finds much to read, as he runs through old Edinburgh, in the mottoes on the house-fronts. These are mostly of a scriptural and devout character, such as: "Blissit.Be.God.In.Al.His.Giftis;" or, "Blissit.Be.The.Lord.In.His.Giftis.For.Nov.And.Ever." If he peeps into Anchor Close, where once was a famous tavern, he will find it entirely occupied by the buildings of the _Scotsman_ newspaper, but the mottoes have been carefully preserved and built into the walls. The first is, "The.Lord. Is.Only.My.Svport;" a little farther on, "O.Lord.In.The.Is.Al.My.Traist;" and over the door, "Lord.Be.Merciful.To.Me." On other houses he may read, "Feare.The.Lord.And.Depart.From.Evill;" "Faith.In.Chryst.Onlie.Savit;" "My.Hoip.Is.Chryst;" "What.Ever.Me.Befall.I.Thank.The.Lord.Of.All." There are also many in the Latin tongue, such as, "Lavs Vbique Deo;" "Nisi Dominvs Frvstra" (the City motto);

"Pax Intrantibvs, Salvs Exevntibvs."

Here is one in the vernacular: "Gif.Ve.Died.As.Ve.Sovld.Ve.Mycht.Haif.As.Ve.Vald;" which is translated, "If we did as we should, we might have as we would."

Near the end of the High street, on the way to the Canongate, stands John Knox's house, which has been put in order and made a show-place. The exterior, from its exceedingly picturesque character, is more attractive than the interior. The house had originally belonged to the abbot of Dunfermline, and when taken by Knox a very snug little study was added, built of wood and projecting from the front, in accordance with an order from the magistrates, directing "with al diligence to make ane warm studye of dailles to the minister John Knox, within his hous, aboue the hall of the same, with light and wyndokis thereunto, and al uther necessaris." The motto of this house is "Lvfe.God.Abvfe.Al.And.Yi.Nychtbovr.As.Yi.Self." A curious image at one corner was long thought to represent Knox preaching, and probably still does so in the popular belief; but others now think it represents Moses. It is an old man kneeling, with one hand resting on a tablet, and with the other pointing up to a stone above him carved to resemble the sun, and having on its disk the name of the Deity in three languages: "[Greek: THEOS].Deus.God."

Of the style of Knox's preaching, even when he was enfeebled by ill-health, one gets a good idea from the following passage in James Melville's diary: "And by the said Rickart and an other servant, lifted up to the pulpit whar he behovit to lean, at his first entrie; bot or he had done with his sermon, he was sa active and vigorous, that he was lyk to ding that pulpit in blads and flie out of it."

Passing on down Canongate, once the court suburb, we come to Moray House, the former residence of the earls of Moray, and at one time occupied by Cromwell. It is now used for a school, and is in much better preservation than many of its neighbors. At the very bottom of the Canongate, not far from Holyrood House, stands the White Horse Inn. The house has not been an inn for many years, but was chosen by Scott as the quarters of Captain Waverley: its builders probably thought little of beauty when they built it, yet squalor, dilapidation and decay have given it the elements of the picturesque, and the fact that Scott has mentioned it is sufficient to nerve the tourist to hold his nose and admire.

A black, gaunt, forbidding-looking structure near at hand was once the residence of the dukes of Queensberry. Charles, the third duke, was born in it: it is his duchess, Lady Catherine Hyde, whose pranks are so frequently recorded in Horace Walpole's letters--"very clever, very whimsical, and just not mad." Their Graces did not often occupy their Scottish residences, but in 1729, the lord chamberlain having refused his license to Gay's play, _Polly_, a continuation of the _Beggar's Opera_, the duke and duchess took Gay's part so warmly as to leave the court and retire to Queensberry House, bringing the poet with them.

The duchess was much sung by the poets of her day, among them Prior, who is now so little read that we may recall a few of his once well-known verses:

"Shall I thumb holy books, confined With Abigails forsaken? Kitty's for other things designed, Or I am much mistaken. Must Lady Jenny frisk about, And visit with her cousins? At balls must she make all the rout, And bring home hearts by dozens?

"What has she better, pray, than I? What hidden charms to boast, That all mankind for her should die, Whilst I am scarce a toast? Dearest mamma, for once let me, Unchained, my fortune try: I'll have my earl as well as she, Or know the reason why.

"I'll soon with Jenny's pride quit score, Make all her lovers fall: They'll grieve I was not loosed before-- She, I was loosed at all." Fondness prevailed, mamma gave way: Kitty, at heart's desire, Obtained the chariot for a day, And set the world on fire!

On the death of Duke Charles, Queensberry House came into the possession of his cousin, the earl of March, a singular man-about-town in London, known as "Old Q.:" he stripped it of all its ornaments, without and within, and sold it to the government for a barracks. It is now used as a house of refuge. On its gate are the following notices: "White-seam sewing neatly executed." "Applications for admission by the destitute any lawful day from 10 to 12." "Bread and soup supplied from 1 to 3, afternoon. Porridge supplied from 8 to 9, morning, 6 to 7, evening." "Night Refuge open at 7 P.M. No admission on Sundays." "No person allowed more than three nights' shelter in one month." Such are the mottoes that now adorn the house which sheltered Prior's Kitty.

A striking object in the same vicinity is the Canongate Tolbooth, with pepper-box turrets and a clock projecting from the front on iron brackets, which have taken the place of the original curiously-carved oaken beams. Executions sometimes took place in front of this building, which led wags to find a grim joke in its motto: "Sic.Itvr.Ad.Astra." A more frequent place of execution was the Girth Cross, near the foot of the Canongate, which marked the limit of the right of sanctuary belonging to the abbey of Holyrood. At the Girth Cross, Lady Warriston was executed for the murder of her husband, which has been made the subject of many ballads:

My mother was an ill woman: In fifteen years she married me. I hadna wit to guide a man: Alas! ill counsel guided me.

O Warriston! O Warriston! I wish that ye may sink fire in: I was but bare fifteen years auld When first I entered your gates within.

I hadna been a month married, Till my gude lord went to the sea: I bare a bairn ere he came hame, And set it on the nourice knee.

But it fell ance upon a day That my gude lord return'd from sea: Then I did dress in the best array, As blythe as ony bird on tree.

I took my young son in my arms, Likewise my nourice me forebye, And I went down to yon shore-side, My gude lord's vessel I might spy.

My lord he stood upon the deck, I wyte he hail'd me courteouslie: "Ye are thrice welcome, my lady gay: Wha'se aught that bairn on your knee?"

She turn'd her right and roundabout, Says, "Why take ye sic dreads o' me? Alas! I was too young married To love another man but thee."

"Now hold your tongue, my lady gay: Nae mair falsehoods ye'll tell to me; This bonny bairn is not mine; You've loved another while I was on sea."

In discontent then hame she went, And aye the tear did blin' her e'e: Says, "Of this wretch I'll be revenged For these harsh words he said to me."

She's counsel'd wi' her father's steward, What way she cou'd revenged be: Bad was the counsel then he gave: It was to gar her gude lord dee.

The nourice took the deed in hand: I wat she was well paid her fee: She keist the knot, and the loop she ran Which soon did gar this young lord dee.

Another version has:

The nurice she knet the knot, And oh, she knet it sicker: The ladie did gie it a twig, Till it began to wicker.

The murder was committed on the 2d of July, 1600, and with the speedy justice of that time the punishment followed on the 5th. The lady was sentenced to be "wooried at the stake and brint," but her relatives had influence enough to secure a modification of the sentence, so that she was beheaded by the "maiden," a form of guillotine introduced by the Regent Morton. The original sentence was executed upon the nurse, who had no powerful relatives.

Directly opposite the Canongate Tolbooth is a very antiquated dwelling, with three gables to the street, which converses with the passer-by on envy and backbiting. It begins: "Hodie.Mihi.Cras.Tibi.Cur.Igitur.Curas" ("To-day, mine; to-morrow, thine; why then care?"). As if premising an unsatisfactory answer, it continues: "Ut Tu Linguae Tuae, Sic Ego Mear. Aurium, Dominus Sum." ("As thou of thy tongue, so I of my ears, am lord"), and finally takes refuge in "Constanti Pectori Res Mortalium Umbra" ("To the steadfast heart the affairs of mortals are but shadows").

In the plain at the foot of the Canongate stands Holyrood Abbey and Palace, which, with the exception of one wing containing Queen Mary's apartments, has been rebuilt within comparatively modern times. The abbey church is a crumbling ruin, although a power amid its decay, for it possesses still the right of sanctuary. This refuge offered by the Church was a softening and humanizing influence when private feuds were settled by the sword and the Far-West principle of death at sight generally prevailed: later on, it became an abuse, and gradually disappeared. The Holyrood sanctuary is the only one now existing in Great Britain, but is available for insolvent debtors only: it includes the precincts of the palace and the Queen's Park (five miles in circumference), but it contains no buildings except in that portion of the precincts extending from the palace to the foot of Canongate, about one hundred and thirty yards in a direct line. Within this limited district the debtor seeks his lodging, has the Queen's Park for his recreation, and on Sundays is free to go where he likes, as on that day he cannot be molested. It was a curious relic of old customs to read in Edinburgh newspapers in the year 1876 the following extract from a debtor's letter, in which he makes his terms with the sheriff: "However desirous I am to obey the order of the sheriff to attend my examination, I am sorry to be obliged to intimate that in consequence of the vindictive and oppressive proceedings of some of my creditors I cannot present myself in court at the diet fixed unless protection from personal diligence be granted. I will have much pleasure, however, in attending the court in the event of the sheriff granting a special warrant to bring me from the sanctuary, which warrant shall protect me against arrest for debt and other civil obligations while under examination, and on the way to and from the place of examination." The sheriff granted the warrant.

From Holyrood we fancy the traveler next remounting the hill into the Old Town, and seeking out the churchyard of Greyfriars, whose monuments, full of interest to the student and the antiquary, are in themselves an epitome of Scottish history. The church has been ravaged by fire and rebuilt, so that it retains but little antiquity: the churchyard, on the other hand, has seen few changes except in the increase of its monuments as time has passed on.

Here the Solemn League and Covenant was entered into. It was first read in the church, and agreed to by all there, and then handed to the crowd without, who signed it on the flat tombstones.

Among the most conspicuous monuments in this churchyard are, on the one hand, that to those who died for their fidelity to this Covenant, and on the other the tomb of Sir George Mackenzie, king's advocate and public prosecutor of the Covenanters.

On the Martyrs' Monument, as it is called, one reads: "From May 27th, 1661, that the most noble marquis of Argyle was beheaded, until Feb. 18th, 1688, there were executed in Edinburgh about one hundred noblemen, gentlemen, ministers and others: the most of them lie here.

"But as for them no cause was to be found Worthy of death, but only they were sound, Constant, and steadfast, zealous, witnessing For the prerogatives of Christ their King, Which truths were sealed by famous Guthrie's head."

And so on.

Dr. Thomas Guthrie, who, as we have seen, found much inspiration in the scenes of his daily walks, sought to trace his origin back to this Guthrie of the Martyrs' Monument. "I failed," he wrote, "yet am conscious that the idea and probability of this has had a happy influence on my public life, in determining me to contend and suffer, if need be, for the rights of Christ's crown and the liberties of His Church."

The learning and accomplishments of Sir George Mackenzie were forgotten amid the religious animosities of his day, and he came down to posterity as the terror of nursery-maids and a portentous bugaboo under the name of Bloody Mackenzie. It is related that the boys of the town were in the habit of gathering at nightfall about his tomb and shouting in at the keyhole,

Bluidy Mackenzie, come out if ye daur: Lift the sneck and draw the bar!

after which they would scatter, as if they feared the tenant might take them at their word. The tomb is a handsome circular Roman temple, now much dilapidated by weather and soot, and so dark and sombre as to make it very uncanny in the gloaming, especially to one approaching it with the view of shouting "Bluidy Mackenzie" through the keyhole. This popular superstition was once turned to account by a youth under sentence of death for burglary. His friends aided him in escaping from prison, and provided him with a key to this mausoleum, where he passed six weeks in the tomb with the Bluidy Mackenzie--a situation of horror made tolerable only as a means of escape from death. Food was brought to him at night, and when the heat of pursuit was over he got to a vessel and out of the country.

The New Town of Edinburgh is separated from the Old Town by the ravine of the North Loch, over which are thrown the bridges by which the two towns are connected. The loch has been drained and is now occupied by the Public Gardens and by the railway. The New Town is substantially the work of the last half of the past century and the first half of the present one--a period which sought everywhere except at home for its architectural models. In some of the recent improvements in the Old Town very pretty effects have been produced by copying the better features of the ancient dwellings all around them, but the grandiloquent ideas of the Georgian era could not have been content with anything so simple and homespun as this. Its ideal was the cold and pompous, and it succeeded in giving to the New-Town streets that distant and repellent air of supreme self-satisfaction which makes the houses appear to say to the curious looker-on, "Seek no farther, for in us you find the perfectly correct thing." The embodiment of this spirit may be seen in the bronze statue of George IV. by Chantrey, in George street: the artist has caught the pert strut so familiar in the portraits, at sight of which one involuntarily exclaims, "Behold the royal swell!"

But the New Town has two superb features, about whose merits all are agreed: we need hardly say these are Princes street and the Calton Hill. Princes street extends along the brow of the hill over-hanging the ravine which separates the two towns, and which is now occupied by public gardens: along their grassy slopes the eye wanders over trees and flowers to the great rock which o'ertops the greenery, bearing aloft the Castle as its crown, while from the Castle the Old Town, clustering along the height, streams away like a dark and deeply-colored train. The Calton Hill offers to the view a wide-spreading panorama. At our feet are the smoking chimneys of Auld Reekie, from which we gladly turn our eyes to the blue water and the shores of Fife, or seek out in the shadow of Salisbury Crags and Arthur's Seat the tottering arch of Holyrood Abbey. The hill is well dotted over,

All up and down and here and there, With Lord-knows-what's of round and square;

which on examination prove to be monuments to the great departed. A great change has taken place in the prevalent taste since they were erected, and they are not now pointed out to the stranger with fond pride, as in the past generation. The best one is that to Dugald Stewart, an adaptation, the guide-books say, of the Choragic Monument of Lysicrates. The all-pervading photograph has made it so familiar that it comes upon one as an old friend.

The Burns Monument is a circular edifice with columns and a cupola. It has all the outward semblance of a tomb, so that one is rather startled to find it tenanted by a canny Scot--a live one--who presides with becomingly sepulchral gravity over a twopenny show of miscellaneous trumpery connected with Robert Burns. Everywhere in old Edinburgh we have seen going on the inevitable struggle between utility and sentiment: at Burns's Monument it ceases, and we conclude our ramble at this point, where the sentimentalist and the utilitarian shake hands, the former deeply sympathizing with the sentiment which led to the building of the monument, while the latter fondly admires the ingenuity which can turn even a cenotaph to account.

ALFRED S. GIBBS.

FOOTNOTES:

[A] Baloo is a lullaby, supposed to be from the French _Bas, là le loup_--"Lie still, the wolf is coming."

[B] The "dear deceiver" was said to have been her cousin, the Hon. Alexander Erskine, brother to the earl of Mar. He came to a violent death, although not in the manner suggested in the ballad. While stationed at Dunglass Castle, engaged in collecting levies for the army of the Covenanters, an angry page thrust a red-hot poker into the powder-magazine, and blew him up with a number of others, so that there was "never bone nor hyre seen of them again."

A LAW UNTO HERSELF.