graves; we were several times obliged to alight, in order to support the carriage on one side, whilst it crawled along the edge of a miry bank. The uncertainty of a German mile never fails to puzzle a traveller: there is a long and a short one; the former is as indefinite as a Yorkshire mile, which I believe is from steeple to steeple, sometimes it means five, six, and seven English miles, the latter I have already explained.

On the road every Prussian was at once equipped for his bed and for a ball, by having his head adorned with a prodigious cocked hat, and a night-cap under it. The Prussian farm-houses were either tiled or very neatly thatched: some of them were built of brick, and others of a light brown clay, but the favourite colour is that of vivid flesh, which were remarkably neat; the ground exhibited the marks of high cultivation, and the farmers looked rich and respectable, and perfectly English. Although the soil is sandy, yet from its fineness it is capable of bearing all sorts of vegetables for the kitchen: out of four grains of rye sown, the tillers calculate that one will rise. By the time I reached Stolpe, I had formed a little budget of current German expressions, which at the inn in that town enabled me to understand a man who said to me, 66 pray sir, are you a Frenchman?” "No, I am an Englishman,” “Ah, sir, so much the better for you,. "and so much the more agreeable to me," said he. I wondered to hear such language from Prussian lips: but I afterwards found the man who addressed me was a Dutchman.

The road to Berlin has, in one respect, a great advantage; there is à constant and rapid succession of towns and villages, but no scattered cottages: upon every acclivity the traveller commands six or seven spires rising from little clumps of trees, and clusters of houses; the road to each of these small communities for about a quarter of a mile is paved with large rough angular stones, which constitute the pride of the parish, and are brought from a great distance, and with considerable cost. Upon my wishing them at the devil one day, which I never failed to do as often as I had to contend with them, my driver turned round and said: "Do not wish them there: do you "know that each of those fine stones cost four good groschen?”

In Prussia, robberies very seldom happen: the Prussians only pilfer in the shape of extortion,

"And for a pistol they present a bill.”

Having seen many Englishmen travel through their country with a moveable arsenal of arms in their carriages, united to the received opinion that suicide prevails more in England than in any other country, they conclude that the preparation is not against robbers, but to furnish their owner with a choice of deaths, if his ennui is not dissipated by roving.

My adventures upon the road were few, and not worthy of relation, except that my driver was very fond of quitting the main road for every short cut, in which we were frequently obliged, carriage and all, to spring as well as we could over a small ditch; having repeatedly warned him that we should be overturned, at last my prediction was verified, the wheels were uppermost, and we lay sprawling in the road: as soon as I could look around me I found the driver in great agony, and concluded that he had at least shattered a rib or a leg: but the misfortune was a much greater one in his estimation, he had broken his pipe, which lay in the road by the side of scattered provisions and trunks; he lamented his loss bitterly, and frequently, as we were replacing matters, apostrophized the remains of this natural and inestimable source of German comfort. We frequently passed through the most beautiful avenues of majestic oak, stately lindens, and graceful beech and birch trees. I found the inns very poor: at Pinnow I slept upon a bed of straw. In the best room are generally the depot of the Sunday gowns, the best crockery, two or three filthy straw beds, a stove of black Dutch tiles, one or two corn chests, a chair with a broken back, jars of butter: adjoining there is generally a room for the daughter or upper servant of the host, who reclines her sweet person upon a bed placed upon a corn-bin, and surrounded by a winter-stock of potatoes. If a traveller fasten the door of his bed-room he will be under the necessity of rising to open it twenty times after he is in bed, that the master or mistress of the house may have access to something or another which is deposited in his chamber.

The winter was now rapidly setting in, and in every post-house the stoves were warmed: before one of them some peasant children were reposing upon forms, and their mother standing with her back against it, fast asleep. The peasants erect their ovens, which are made of clay, about seven feet high, in the shape of a dome, at the extremity of their orchards, removed as far as possible from any, thatch. All the roads and by-lanes in Prussia are abundantly suppli

ed with legible and intelligent directing posts, representing a negro's head, with large white eyes, and a pig-tail, whilst two long stiff arms point the wanderer on his way. The want of this species of attention to travellers in England is severely felt. It is scarcely necessary for me to observe that the universal language of Prussia is German.

The garrison towns are numerous, at which the traveller is obliged to furnish the officer of the guard with his name, condition, and motive of travelling. The soldiers looked to great advantage; they have a favourite, and much admired manœuvre, of forming hollow squares by sections, which at present is confined to the Prussian service; and by means of a hollow curve, at the bottom of the barrel of the Prussian musket, leading into the pan, through a large touchhole, no priming is necessary, or rather the loading primes, by which several motions are saved. With this improvement, and a heavy ramrod, an expert Prussian soldier, even with Prussian powder, far inferior to that of England, can load and fire twelve times in one minute. A soldier who had not long been enlisted, performed these motions in my presence ten times in that period by my watch.

At Konigberg, as I was sitting down to dinner, a portly soldier, in the Prussian uniform, opened the door, an addressed me in English. With much address and respect, under the venial pretence of my not having written my name legibly at the barrier, he introduced himself to me, and enabled me very soon to discover that he was one of those infatuated Irishmen, who having incurred the displeasure of the British government, had been plucked from a station of respectability, and the bosom of a beloved family, exiled from his country, and doomed to wear the habit, and endure the discipline of a Prussian soldier for ten wretched years, five of which he had already survived. The poor fellow acknowledged the fatal delusion which had thus torn him from all that was dear to him, and reduced him to the humiliation of gladly receiving a dollar from a stranger.

Between Gruneberg and Freyenwalde I passed the Oder, which flows to the walls of Olmutz, rendered eminently familiar to the memory by the cruel captivity of La Fayette, and the spirit of British generosity which restored him and his lovely marchioness to light and liberty.

Upon our leaving Freyenwalde, we ploughed our way through the dark forests and trackless sands of Brandenbourg, the latter of which Frederick the Great highly valued as a national barrier, capable of

impeding and embarrassing an approaching enemy. Of their depth and dreariness no one can judge, but those who have waded through them: we quitted them with great joy, to roll merrily along over a noble new royal road, of about ten English miles in length, lined with sapling lindens; and, early on the eighth day from my leaving Dantzig, I passed the gate of the wall which surrounds Berlin, and with forty-one ducats discharged my companion at the Hotel de Russie.

Having refreshed myself, I sallied into the Linden Walk, which is very broad, is formed of triple rows of the graceful and umbrageous tree from which it receives its name, and is situated in the centre of the street, having carriage roads on each side, from which it is protected by a handsome line of granite posts connected by bars of iron, and illuminated at night by large reflecting lamps, suspended over the centre by cords, stretched from corresponding supporters of wrought iron: its length is about an English mile, and presents at one end the rich portico of the marble opera-house and the palace, and at the other the celebrated Brandenbourg gate, designed by Monsieur Langhans from the Propylium of Athens, and raised in 1780. This superb monument of tasteful architecture is a stone colonnade, of a light reddish-yellow colour, composed of twelve grand fluted Corinthian columns, forty-four feet high, and five feet seven inches in diameter, six on each side, leaving a space for the gates to fold between, presenting five colossal portals, through which the park is seen in fine perspective. The wings composing the custom and guard houses are adorned with eighteen lesser columns, twenty-nine feet high and three feet in diameter: the whole is crowned by colossal figures of the angel of peace driving four horses abreast in a triumphal car, below which are rich basso relievos. This most elegant structure, and the Walk of Lindens, are unique, and would abundantly repay any traveller for the fatigues of an eight days' journey to behold them. In the walk, although the weather was very cold, several ladies were promenading without caps or bonnets, and others were riding astride on horseback, according to the fashion of the country, in a long riding habit, pantaloons, and half-boots. In the street scarcely any other objects were to be seen, than

"the soldier and his sword."

Upon ascending the gallery of the superb dome of the institution of the poor, in the grand market place, I commanded the wall of the city, the dimensions of which are small, I should not think larger than those of Bath; but having been the result of one design, and in a great measure built in one reign, it has the advantage of being regular. The river Spree runs through it, and is adorned by some handsome stone bridges. The streets are spacious, and, to the surprise of a stranger, are well paved for carriages and pedestrians, although nature has refused to furnish the country with a single stone: this denial has been supplied by the policy of Frederick the Great, who made all the vessels that came up the Elbe, the Hawel, or the Spree, take on board at Magdeburg a certain quantity of freestone, and disembark it at Berlin gratis. The houses are generally built of brick stuccoed, but some are of stone, in the Italian style of architecture. The palace of prince Henry, the brother of Frederick the Great, lately deceased, is built of stone; but, for want of ornament, possesses but little attraction for the eye: the royal palace is an enormous square pile of the same materials, whose massy and gloomy walls the reigning sovereign has wisely resigned to his courtiers, for a small plain mansion, opposite the common foundery. Mon-bijou, the residence of the queen dowager, is a palace, or rather a long gallery, nearly the whole being upon the ground floor, situated on the side of the river Spree, embosomed in a wood and gardens. The Rotunda, or Catholic church, partly designed by cardinal Alberoni, is a noble edifice, the grand altar of which was made at Rome, and is celebrated for its beauty. Soon after Frederick the Great ascended the throne, he conceived the sublime idea of building a vast Pantheon, in which every description of devotion might, at an allotted time, find its altar. Policy, if not genuine charity, induced that sagacious prince to think that tolerance was necessary to the interests as well as the dignity of a nation; and he was desirous of not only seeing his subjects and foreigners worship their God in their way, but that, like brothers, they should prostrate themselves before him in the same temple. On account of the state of the treasury, Frederick was successfully advised to drop this benign plan, and it was never afterwards resumed. The generality of the Prussians are Calvinists.

In the evening after my arrival I went to the New Theatre, a superb building, on the entablature of which the following elegant in