reached to the middle of the thigh. His neck and bosom were bare, for he wore neither stock nor kerchief; his guitar was slung upon one shoulder, and over the other a small bundle or wallet was suspended upon a handsome sword.

Till after he had passed Cornelimunster, about three leagues on his route, where the citizens of Aixla-Chapelle resort in pleasure-parties to drink out of the cup of Saint Cornelius, our traveller did not dare to approach the highway. After this, however, he had less fear of being made captive, which, in his present feelings, would have been like a sentence of death and he only deviated occasionally from the main-road in order to seek shelter in a reformed village, instead of passing the night in a Catholic

one.

The country soon became wilder and more solitary. Lofty hills, covered with forests that seemed eternal, gave a dreary magnificence to the scene: and in such places, for instance, as the narrow valley of the Roer, it was with surprise that he saw a congregation of human dwellings, deserving the name of a town, set down in the deepest recess of the ravine. This was Monjoye. From hence to Kaltenhenberg, the route lay through a succession of marshes and mountains, the most dismal that can be imagined, in the midst of which is placed a bell, to be rung during the dangerous mists which sometimes descend like the shadow of death upon the traveller's path. Carl sung his way through everything, and leaving the mountains of the Schneifel to the left, the most sterile district in all the Eifel, arrived at the little town of Prum, founded before the days of King Pepin. It was in the convent here that the son of Charlemagne did penance for his

rebellion, and that the Emperor Lothaire laid down the sceptre for the crucifix, and died a monk.

While wandering along the road he fell in with a peasant, to whom he took the opportunity of explaining the just downfall of the Catholic religion, as typified in the ruin of this famous convent. He had to do, however, with a man steadfast in the cause, who could give a reason for the faith that was in him; and from him he learnt the true cause both of the rise and fall of the establishment, as it is set forth in the following legend.

"In the days of Saint Ansband," said the peasant, "the fifth abbot of Prum, there was a young man admitted to the order under peculiar circumstances. He had gamed away his estate, and disgusted his father so much by his follies, that the old gentleman cast him off, and determined to leave his immense wealth to a religious house. In the meantime the son continued his addresses to a young lady, who really loved him, and by whose dowry he expected to retrieve his fortune. But she, hearing of his misconduct, in the irritation of the moment treated him no better than his father had done; whereupon the youth sunk into despondency, which ended in his assuming the cowl in the convent of Prum.

"This was followed, as might be supposed, by bitter repentance; for the young lady, who had stayed only for entreaty on the part of her lover, no sooner heard of his irremediable step, than she came a watching and praying about the convent, and wandering about the walls, wringing her hands, from morning till night. In vain the monk laid the matter before his abbot, with the view of obtaining a dispensation for his return into the world: the holv father only laughed at so silly an

affair, and told him jocosely that till he could bestow gifts upon the house equal to his own lost fortune and his mistress's dowry together, he must stay where he

was.

"The monk at last sickened, and, believing himself about to be dying, ordered that he should be carried in a litter to the house of his unrelenting father. The latter, however, would not admit him, but told him from the window that he had determined to bestow his fortune upon the church, and was that day going to a certain rock on the Schneifel to shoot an arrow from it, which would doubtless be carried by the angels of the Lord to whatever religious establishment was most deserving of the gift. Whereupon the young man, struck as if by death itself, desired that he should be carried to the house of his mistress, to take leave of her; and there he related, with many lamentations, the unnatural conduct of his father.

"This is no fitting place,' said she, after his story, 'for a young maid to take leave of a monk. Hie thee to the altar of thy convent, and await me there. Take care that thy soul quit not thy body till thou see me !' And straightway she ran to the rock on the Schneifel, and hid herself among the bushes at the bottom; and when the old man had shot his arrow, sacrilegiously anticipating the messengers of heaven, she picked it up, and ran with it to the altar of the convent, where her lover stood receiving the holy sacrament.

"There is thy father's arrow,' said she, handing it to him privily through the rails; thou hast fulfilled the conditions of the abbot.' And when the monk produced the arrow, bearing on the point his father's will describing the gifts- Senarchia, Custia, Hucquentia, et Morcorot, in pago Landunensi et villa

Hanapia,' all present were filled with joy and astonish

ment.

"Who gave thee this, my son ?' said the abbot. "An angel!' replied the monk. And so this young man was restored to life, to the world, and to his mistress; but although the convent enjoyed the bequest a certain time, that the piety of the father might not be unavailing, yet in punishment of the maiden's sin in acting the part of an angel, and of the abbot's imprudence in loosening the bonds of the church, it eventually fell into ruin."

There were some parts of this wild story so singularly applicable to his own case, and the conclusion was in itself so ridiculous, that, for the first time since he had serenaded his mistress in the garden, a smile stole over the grave and melancholy features of our adventurer. He passed on his way, wondering, almost with awe, at the highness of heart and readiness of hand of that sex which he had imagined, till he knew Ida, to have been intended merely for the plaything of lordly man. Nor was Liese without her share of his peripatetic meditations-this noble peasant-this essence and extract of woman, unadulterated by a single one of the thousand artificial compositions that modify the female character.

While admiring the ruins of the château of Schonecken, he saw the inhabitants of the village assembled at the performance of an annual ceremony not a little singular in its simplicity. Two young men were elected for the champions in the peaceful strite; one to run the distance of a league and back again, while the other, having placed a certain number of eggs at regular distances, carried them all back, one by one, to the starting post. He who finished his task first

was the winner, and the victory was celebrated by songs and dances, in which the vanquished party and his adherents partook, as well as the conqueror.

Throughout the whole of the Eifel, indeed, this disposition to make merry was conspicuously manifest. Carl's journey seemed a continual fête. He was no sooner out of one festival than, on arriving at the next village, he found himself in the midst of another. The tooth-ach, the head-ach, the stomach-ach, and the thousand other ills that flesh is heir to-all had their particular saints, and each saint his particular day, which must be celebrated by public rejoicings. The people, it is hardly necessary to say, were all poor; for the rich, when they would be thought to amuse themselves, stew themselves up in scores in an unwholesome room, taking good care to shut the doors fast, that the common people may not see what a set of miserable devils they are in reality. But it is not to the saints alone that the credit belongs of keeping the inhabitants of the Eifel in this enviable condition. The landed inheritance of each family is vested indivisibly in the eldest child, whether male or female; and the brothers and sisters remain with the heir in the quality of labourers. The latter, however, are not left entirely to the tender mercies of the other; for the farm, or stockhaus, although it cannot be partitioned, is burthened with certain provisions for the younger children, and is thus mortgaged, as it were, sometimes over head and shoulders.

Passing through the small town of Bitbourg, formerly a Roman station, Carl, after having performed a walk of twenty German leagues, arrived at Trèves, on the Moselle, supposed to be the most ancient city in Europe.