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it is strikingly observable in crossing from Zealand into Scania and something very like it we must all have witnessed on regaining our own shores after a residence of any duration in France. After all, any reasoning founded on such comparisons must be extremely fallacious. The change may sometimes be decidedly for the better, but yet the state of our feelings will not suffer us to allow it,-whilst, on the other hand, the gratification which novelty never fails to afford may lead us to see beauty and advantages in a state of things much inferior to that we had quitted.

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A Noble bard of ours, albeit unused to the cheerful mood, has painted the peasantry on the banks of the Rhine as a race with faces happy as the scene:' our present traveller, however, fir ds their looks sallow and unhealthy; which he attributes to the quantities of sour black bread which they devour, and to indulgence in unwholesome beverages.' From such opportunities of observation as we have enjoyed, we should have been inclined to agree with the poet, and pronounce that there is an air of content, a primitive simplicity and civility of manner, belonging to them, which perfectly harmonizes with the richness of the scene. The household comforts, which we find it stated the peasant may be inclined to neglect from a preference to externals in dress,' are not always within his grasp. The farmer is, generally speaking, in good circumstances, as the land (in the south of Germany especially) is turned to the best account; but the cultivators of vineyards are commonly poor, since the produce of their labours must always be precarious, and they seldom lay by against a bad season the superfluities of the good.

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A landlord of an inn is everywhere an important personage; from mine host of the Garter' to Boniface and his compeers of later date. In some parts of Germany, and still more so in the Tyrol, their consequence receives a great increase from much of the country traffic falling into their hands; and there is something extremely amusing in the stateliness and solemnity with which they are described as dispensing the honours of the table d'hôte. In spite of the unfashionable season, a pretty numerous party assembled at the table d'hôte, headed, as usual, by the substantial landlord and his pretty wife, who fed daintily, and looked and talked softly to the admiring convives. Her spouse was a complete German host, dignified, bulky, and stupid. On discovering my country, he recounted a long list of Englishmen who had lately visited Baden: but who might as well have been Hindoos, for any indication of their country conveyed by the names the good host assigned them. They were all, however, either lords or vornehme leute (people of distinction); but as to most of them he remarked, with some surprise, "Sie machten nicht viele aufwande, nicht viele pomp," they did not spend a great deal or make much show ; a circumstance which seemed not to accord with his notions of a Milord

a Milord Anglais. A German host presides at the table d'hôte, carves the dishes, and dispenses his politenesses to the guests with a sort of taci turn dignity which is sometimes highly amusing. The subaltern officers, and other regular frequenters of the table, court his conversation, and are pleased to be well with this important personage-generally a well fed portly man, who, especially if he happen to be a state employé, as Mr. Postmaster of the station, is well wrapped up in fat official selfcomplacency. His eldest son has, perhaps, held a commission in the army-Mrs. Postmistress has been, or is yet a beauty-or he has a fine family of little ones, who, in such case, frequently adorn the walls of the saloon, and whom I have seen appear in their best dresses after dinner, as if their company must be as interesting to the guests as that of the children of a friend. If the sons and daughters dine at table, they generally occupy, with their visitors, the best places round papa and mamma -rarely offering civility to any one, rather declining intercourse, talking easy among themselves, and showing, by their whole deportment, that they consider themselves to the full the equals of papa's guests. One of the sons frequently holds the office of Herr Ober Keller, (Mr. Upper Waiter,)-the Germans never cheating this useful personage of his title-who, after waiting upon his sisters and their beaux, in common with the company, during dinner, I have seen resign his official napkin, and take a hand at whist with the family friends, which he would not lay down though the bells rang, and “ Herr Kelier" resounded from all corners of the inn. I have not often met with any thing like real civility in a German inn.'-p. 208–211.

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The Herr Keller here appears the most defective part of the establishment, for his amusements speak him more of the Knight Templar than the waiter; but we are spoiled in this country by the civility and attention of our tavern and shop-keepers, and we shall be uniformly disappointed if we expect to meet with the same elsewhere. Contrast, for instance, the careless indifference of a Parisian tradesman with the obliging readiness of a London shopkeeper-the patience with which the one produces to his customers the various contents of his warehouse with the disregard which the other almost invariably testifies. Go still farther, and take up your quarter in an American inn. The landlord there,

with all the means of accommodation in his power, will be found a still more intractable and insolent being; his guests are only to be gratified in their wishes according to his received notions of equality and independence, nor will any superiority in pecuniary means be admitted as a claim to peculiar comforts.

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There is an almost unvarying uniformity of character in the Rhine scenery. The villages and towns, with a blue slated look, and balf constructed of the slate which abounds in the mountains, stand thickly at their base washed by the river. A narrow valley invariably opens behind them, out of which a little stream or river finds its way through the village into the Rhine, while the ruins of the old seignorial chateau VOL. XXIII. NO. 46.-Q. R.

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are

are perched on the vine-covered mountain above. Immediately beneath is the town or village, once inhabited by the knights' dependants, and now by the peasant proprietors of a few acres of the precious vineyard. The churches and walls of the town often appear nearly as ancient as the old towers on the mountains. They have no architectural beauty, but present generally plain round or octagon turrets and square massive walls, with a grotesque mélange of slated pinnacles, minarets, and spires, which give the general character of the massy Saxon foundation, embellished by a quaint detailed gothic of later date. You can easily conceive the singular and interesting character which the scene acquires from these well preserved vestiges of the days of knighthood. How is it that, in spite of their rudeness, their barbarity, and ferocity, the memorials of these our unpolished ancestors take a hold on the imagination perhaps even stronger than the influence exercised by the chaste relics of their classical predecessors? If you will be frank, you will confess that, in spite of school prejudices, and Addison, and Sir Christopher Wren, you care more about a gothic tower than a Roman pavement, and that the gloomy vaults of a gothic cathedral inspire you with a stronger interest than the chaste pillars of a temple. You know our friend insists that the dark ages

ought to be called "the light:" but without quite going this length, we are unquestionably beginning to think the mailed heroes of chivalry fine gallant fellows, and their mistresses nearly as peerless and as interesting as the Helens, the Andromaches, and the Didos, who used to monopolize all admiration. The associations of the classical ages are, in fact, now growing dim and obsolete. They relate to a people whose grandeur and refinement we must admire, but who belong to an age with which we have nothing in common, neither religion, ancestry, nor habits. But the more powerful cause is probably the highly coloured contrast which the rude manners of the days of chivalry present to the refined systems of modern society-a contrast which exists in a much less striking degree between the modern and classical times. The Romans and the Greeks were great and polished nations like ourselves-with wise governments, refined institutions, and settled social systems, like our own. There is nothing romantic in such a state of society; and its relics of magnificence only come near to what we are in the habit of observing daily in our own productions. But when we want, for the sake of poetical interest, something the farthest removed from the common-place refinement and every-day luxury of our own ultra-civilized system, the wild legends, the massy piles, the savage life, and the dark superstitions of the middle ages at once present themselves to the imagination.-pp. 446-449.

Every castle on the Rhine has its peculiar tradition, and many of the mountains and rocks along its banks have some romantic story connected with them. One or two are here given, and in the Common Guide for Travellers along this tract of country, will be found several others, whose beauties are worth preserving in a more enlarged shape. The castle at Baden is remarkable

for

for its subterraneous vaults, to which are ascribed an interest arising from a different source. They are said to have been the seat of one of those terrific institutions-the Secret Tribunala species of Inquisition which it is difficult to imagine should ever have existed in any country, but which was allowed to execute the tremendous powers which it assumed to itself throughout Germany, until its cruelties and injustice provoked a combination to repress its enormities; and on the introduction by Charles V. of a new criminal code, the court gradually fell inte disuse.

The Holy Vehm, or Bloody League, was a mysterious tribunal which existed, originally, in Westphalia, and from thence spread itself through out Germany. It was also called Frei Gericht, (Free Tribunal,) and the place of its sittings, Frei Stuhl, (Free Chair,)-and it is not uncommon in Germany to meet with a district (like that I have mentioned near Hanau) which still bears the name of Frei Gericht, derived from this source. The greatest secrecy pervaded their proceedings; all that was known of them was arbitrary, bloody, and terrific. The members of a tribunal consisted of a supreme Judge, or Stuhlgraf, and at least fourteen assistants, or free assessors, (Frei shcopper,) composed of all ranks, princes, nobility, and citizens-every one being eager to shield himself from the terrors of the tribunal by becoming a member. In the fifteenth century, when the tribunal was in its most daring power, there were about 100,000 free judges in Germany. The judges, who ordinarily went by the name of the wissenden, (the knowing or initiated,) recognized each other by a sign, discoverable by none but the fraternity. The court was thus the powerful instrument of ambition, private malice, and oppression. No one knew his accuser or his judge--both might be his neighbour or seeming friend. On their initiation, the members bound themselves by the most solemn oaths to bring all before the tribunals that deserved punishment, respecting neither friends nor relations; or, in the words of their terrible oath, to "uphold and conceal the Holy Vehm, before wife and child, before father and mother, before sister and brother, before fire and wind, all that the sun shineth on and the rain wetteth, before all that floats between heaven and earth."

The proceedings, as may be supposed, were very summary.-The officers of the tribunal stole in the night to a castle or a town, and affixed on the gates a judicial summons to this prince or that citizen to appear at the Frei Stuhl, at a given time and place, to be examined on a given matter. If the summons was repeated three times, without effect, the accused was condemned par contumace, once more summoned and if that proved fruitless, outlawed and hanged by the road side whenever caught. If he resisted, he was bored through the body, bound to the tree, and left with the executioner's knife sticking by him, to show that he was not murdered, but a convict of the Frei Gericht. The tribunal used to assemble at midnight in the churchyard of the place where they intended to hold a sitting. At break of

day,

day, the ringing of the bells announced to the inhabitants the presence of these formidable visitors. All were obliged to assemble in an open field, sitting down in a circle, in the middle of which sat the President and Judges of the Tribunal-the insignia of a sword and rope before them. When any one of bad reputation appeared in the circle, one of the judges would step up to him, and touching him with his white staff, say to him-"Friend, there is as good bread to be caten elsewhere as here.” If the conscience of the person was so clear that he did not choose to take the hint and go away, he might sit still and run the chance of accusation; but it was generally more prudent to decamp. When the judge touched any one three times with the formidable white wand, it was a signal that he was a hapless convict already secretly accused and convicted; and no time was lost in hanging him at the next tree or beam which presented itself. This was the invariable punishment of criminals of all ranks; although now it is out of use in Germany, and the meanest criminals have the honour of decapitation. The youngest judge generally performed the office, which was managed with so much secrecy that the hangman was rarely known. The crimes taken cognizance of by the Vehm Gericht, were chiefly heresy, infidelity, sacrilege, high treason, murder, incendiarism, rapes, robbery, and contumacy to the tribunal, its judges and messengers.'-pp. 219–222.

But in addition to her rocks and her castles, many of the extensive wooded tracts of Germany possess an historical and traditionary interest, which is powerfully felt by their present inhabitants. The Black Forest, a portion of the Sylvia Hercynia, has its fabled terrors; and the Odenwald, or wood of Odin-is still looked upon in some degree as a haunted region where 'strange noises are heard on the eve of battles, and where the approach of war is announced by the wild jager, who is seen traversing the air with noisy armament in his flight from one ruined castle to another.

There is a great deal of picturesque effect in the following de scription of the district of which we are speaking.

After proceeding up the valley for some distance, we crossed the fields, gradually ascending a hill, from whence the wild, rich scenes of the Odenwald, with their forests and mountains, lay before us as far as the eye could reach. We appeared now in an entirely new world. The interminable plain of sands and fir forests stretching on the west side of the Berg-strasse mountains, now gave place to a rich diversified scenepresenting a continual succession of abrupt mountain and dale, forest and corn country. With all its cultivated fertility, the rugged mountains, the luxuriance of the beech forests which cover them, the masses of granite stuck in the slopes of every hill, and the rough rocky roads impassable to any but pedestrians, give an air of sequestered wildness to the country which adds much to its interest. The whole scene for thirty miles each way has the air of a chaos of hills thrown one against another in picturesque irregularity. The valleys between them are

deep

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