out of the question! my limbs are already dislocated. I was most rash in suffering myself to be decoyed into so harebrained an expedition. And this is called seeing the Rhine!"

66 'You rascal, what are you grinning at?" cried Captain de Rawdon, touching the traitor Birtsch on the shoulder with his whip.

"Only at this good lady," replied the man, pointing to Miss Vinicombe, "who is simple enough to inquire whether the old kloster, down yonder on the borders of the lake, is a chateau! Ho! ho! a chateau !"

"You say, then, that the magnificent structure is a convent?" persisted the Vinicombe.

"The greater part of the building is a ruin," replied Birtsch; "burnt by the troops of the French directory, under Custine. The rest is inhabited by the farmer." "What farmer?" cried Lady Maria, peevishly.

66

Did you never hear of my cousin, Farmer Anschutz? Why he accommodates a power of English ladies and gentlemen who come to see the Rhine."

66

Accommodates!" cried Lord Hampton-" with what -how-where?"

"With dinner, supper, beds-all the usual accommodations sought by travellers. Farmer Anschutz has often a good bit of venison in his larder, and always a good bottle of Rhine wine or Moselle in his cellar."

"The devil he has; then by heavens we will sup with Farmer Anschutz," cried De Rawdon, turning to the rest of the party for approval.

"How enchanting to pass the night in a ruined monastery!" cried Miss Vinicombe.

66

Anywhere rather than on the sand hills," sighed Lady Maria.

"We might despatch this fellow with the carriage back to Andernach for our dressing boxes," added Lord Hampton.

“And for Angélique and our night things."

"Our night things, I entreat, but no Angélique, dearest Lady Maria," interrupted Miss Wilhelmina. "Mrs. Delaval is independent of all service; permit me, therefore, for once, to officiate as your camériste."

66 Well, well, all that can be settled làbas," cried Lord Hampton, hungry and cross; and, following his advice and the guidance of Birtsch, we found ourselves, a quarter of an hour afterward, welcomed by Farmer

Anschutz into one of the spacious courts of the old monastery. The house was amply stocked with provisions, and the stoves were already lighted in a fine old suite of rooms formerly occupied by the superior of the convent and latterly by a noble family of Coblentz; and I am convinced the whole scheme was preorganized by the traitor Birtsch, who probably despatched a foot passenger across the mountains to forewarn his kinsman, as soon as he had succeeded in starting us from Andernach at so unseemly an hour.

We were, on the whole, better accommodated than at any inn since we left Brussels. Before dinner was over, our luggage (including Ma'mselle Angélique) made its appearance. The adventure amused us; and, in the delight of her soul, the fair Wilhelmina forgave our preceding barbarity in having refused to favour her with a day or night in "Nonnenwerder's cloister pale," lest she should overwhelm us with the "brave Roland," Campbell, Schiller, Byron, and Mrs. Arkwright.

This morning, at an early hour, we quitted our romantic retreat; the lake of Laach with its blue waters, and the convent with its white walls, glittered beautifully in the sunshine; and, guided by the cunning Birtsch, returned to Andernach, and from Andernach "got on" to Coblentz by dinner time.

Coblentz. This morning, while visiting Ehrenbreitstein, whose wall, no longer "shattered," has forfeited all its Byronic interest, I had the joy of hearing Miss Wilhelmina Vinicombe begged of me, by Lady Maria, to be her henchwoman. The plan had been settled between them during our night adventure at the Laachen monastery; and when the Vinicombe coaxingly entreated my forgiveness for having seized upon an occasion so golden to one devoted like herself to the cultivation of the fine arts, as that of visiting the sunny climes of Italy, I was all magnanimity. My consent and benediction on the petitioners were speedily bestowed; and here, at Coblentz, we part; for I have promised to join Clarence Delaval at Emms, in order to have a glimpse of the beautiful duchy of Nassau, while the De Rawdons, et cetera, are to dampschiff it up the Rhine to Mayence.

Rejoiced as I am to get rid of them, I almost regret that I shall lose the sight of Lady Maria's ineffable disdains in the steamboat, and her care to separate herself

from the olla prodrida of human nature likely to be brought between the wind and her nobility on its narrow deck. The rhapsodies of Wilhelmina, too, on finding herself actually embarked upon the exulting and abounding river would have been worth hearing. "Mais enfin, je leur ai fait mes adieux !”

Emmsbaden. Happy, thrice happy, that broadclothed moiety of the human species, which finds itself

"free to rove,"

free and unquestioned through the wilds and tames of the world, seeking amusement wherever it is to be found -by stage coach, malleposte, eil wagen, steam packet, ferry boat, or table d'hôte-unaccountable to that brocaded Cinderella, that sifter of diamond dust, Madame Etiquette-untrammelled by the galling harness of ropes, the scrutiny of the vulgar. A woman is like a schoolboy's pet, tortured by constant care. She must not set her foot there; she must not be exposed to contact here; she must step upon roses, not upon the common earth. She must not inhale the ordinary atmosphere, but be an ambrosia-fed, feeble, shrieveless, helpless dawdle, in order to merit the epithet of" feminine." Like the Strasburg goose, whose morbid merit consists in being all foie-gras, she must be "all heart," "a creature of the affections," sans sense, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.

The distinctions of my caste, for instance, have compelled me to travel en grande dame with the De Rawdons, fancying my comfort or my price affected by the superior appointments of a Lord Leicestershire, and pining after gunpowder tea and pineapple ice; while Clarence Delaval, who met me here on my arrival, has been roughing it to his heart's content, and visiting a thousand interesting spots, a thousand curious monuments, calculated to leave an indelible impression on his mind. I allow something for the lovelorn shepherd's mood of enthusiasm, but envy him, meanwhile, the independence of his tour.

This bathing village of Emms stands in a lovely valley on the Lahn; still higher on whose banks, we have this morning visited the fine old ruined castles of Nassau and Stein. But it is too late to proceed to Schwalbach and Schlangenbad. What an absurd mistake on the part of English fashionables, who love to loiter in London til

the first day of grouse-shooting gives a signal for the general clearance, to fancy that foreign bathing-places are within the scope of their enjoyment! Of these, the season begins, like that of London, in May, and ends (somewhat later) in the beginning of September. After that period, you find only a few Russians and an English family or so, mere birds of passage. The apartments have no stoves or fireplaces, the beds no curtains. All at Emms is prepared for summer scene and season; the bands of music are now departed cityward; the tents and awnings are furled, the fancy shops closed, and their divers-costumed tenants are vanished. To-morrow, therefore, we, too, depart through Coblentz towards the Rheingau, lest we should hazard the loss of this fine weather on the Rhine. We set forth under happier auspices than from Aix-la-Chapelle. The De Rawdons have escaped Lord Leicestershire; I, the Vinicombe, and them; and I have entered into a covenant with Clarence not to mention Alicia Spottiswoode's name above twenty times in the twenty-four hours. The pleasantest part of our tour is luckily before us.

ence!

Frankfort.-Oh! Seged, king of Ethiopia, how little have succeeding generations profited by thy sad experiHow often and how sanguinely have I anticipated the spectacle of the Rheingau with its vintagethe Rhine rocks with their castellated ruins-the grave. stones of departed despotism; and behold, three days ago, I reached in full exultation the confines of my promised land! But, lo! no sooner did I gain sight of the towers of Marksburg than down came a heavy mist -a drizzling rain-an incessant rain-a hopeless rain; till, like the hero of Coleridge's tragedy, we began to exclaim,

"Drip, drip, drip,

There's nothing here but dripping."

Neither Sternfels nor Lichtenstein, Bacharach nor the Pfalz, the Lurleyberg nor the Mänse-Thurm could we obtain a glimpse of! It rained throughout the night we slept at Bingen; it rained throughout the night we slept at Mayence. We departed for Wiesbaden in the rain; visited in the rain the deserted Kursaal; listened under an umbrella to the bubbling of the springs; gave up in despair an excursion to the palace of Biberich; submitted

to the nutmeg-gratishness of a bath incrusted with the sulphurous deposite of the Wiesbaden waters; set off at length in the rain for Frankfort; and at Frankfort (still in the rain) are we arrived.

"It may seem an impertinence on the part of English people to

⚫D-n the climate and complain of spleen,'

said Clarence, as we took up our desolate abode in the Hotel de Russie, "but when did one ever experience in England such a detestable month of September!"

We managed, however, to spend last night a tolerably agreeable hour at the theatre; in the box of Kocн the courteous British consul, and banker to the British. Frankfort has an excellent orchestra, but the theatre is plain, and the audience plainer. I discerned, and fancied I even "nosed in the lobby," symptoms of the synagogue; but the scatterings of Israel constituted, at all events, the best-looking portion of the spectators, The opera was Paer's "Sargines, or the Pupil of Love:" a fine fat pupil, a fubsy girl thrust into boy's clothes, much resembling Mrs. Charles K. at five-and-forty in the part of the "Blind Boy."

The fine arts are much cultivated in this moneymaking city. It has a fine gallery of pictures, bequeathed by a rich banker to the public; and to-day we visited Bethmann's collection, containing Danneker's far-famed Ariadne-which strikes me as a manifest plagairism from one of the most beautiful frescoes found at Herculaneum-a nymph reclining on the pack of a monster, to the lips of which she presents a patera, supposed to be allegorical of " Hope nourishing a chimera."

Heidelberg.-I forgave the weather for splashing and miring us in the streets of Darmstadt and Mannheim; for what was to be seen in either, saving the quaint courtliness one fancies to ourself in childhood, of those cities in fairy tales, where "Once upon a time there lived a king and queen ?" But here-here within view of a ruined castle, the last stronghold of chivalry, and judging from the little I can discern, a spot worthy to have been the original stage of "Love's Labour's Lost," with its fanciful prince and princesses, and still more fanciful clowns, I cannot forgive the sun for playing me false.