But my further stay at Reiche- sive measures. I retired to the nau was destined to be cut prema- house, and to bed; and, in the turely short, and from an unlooked- night, with my head upon my pilfor quarter. When I returned, and low, was seized with an irresistible before retiring to my room, I natu- desire to pursue my journeyings. rally strolled towards and in the I arose betimes in the morning, garden, where I had enjoyed so partook of a light breakfast, settled many pleasant moments. Well, my reckoning, and, before the sun Mr. P., what do you suppose I saw cast his beams over the Roth-horn, there, besides trees and flowers? was well advanced on my way, with What do you suppose I saw em- my back to Reichenau and the bracing, in my favourite seat, be- faithless Schwalbenschwanz. side vines? Why, sir, my Gretschen herself, as I live, sustaining those kissing and embracing relations, of so perplexing and provoking a nature, with an athletic young Swiss of threatening aspect, and filled, I suppose, with all the blood and fury of the League. Here was an entente of the most cordial kind. Here was a matter for deci I have no spirit left to talk of the Via Mala; this only will I remark, never again will I accompa ny a lady "part of the way." My motto shall be, all the way to Ortenstein, or none. Let us mix, my Paul, and drink, confusion to that Switzer. I am yours, very truly, S. G. NO. XXI. MAGNOLIA CABIN, Dec., 185. tions: Happiness at eventide My Good Simon, high, coffee aromatic, muffins If earthly sympathy can be of delicious. Slight family jars, any avail to you in assuaging the coffee weakish, muffins fairish. sorrow called up by your reminis- Heavier shocks in the domestic cence over the Schwalbensch- firmament, accompanied by thunwanz, allow me to tender it to der and lightning, coffee insiyou. Take all you need. By pid, muffins detestable. See the way, has Mrs. Grunter seen whether your experience justithose letters about the maid of fies these somewhat MicawberWesen and Mrs. Swallow-tail? ish deductions. If such results and if yea, has your coffee been obtain, how are they to be exas good, and your muffin quite plained? How are the subtle as much to your taste as former humours conveyed from the misly? I have sometimes been led tress to the maid, and thence to to suspect, that there was some- the muffin-ring? Is there an inhow a connexion between the visible lightning-rod which towbeatitude of last evening and ers up about our heads, and terthe breakfast of this morning; minates in the cooking-stove? and a friend, to whom I have And do the clouds that wrap mentioned the subject, agrees (rap?) our domestic heads, diswith me that they are correlative charge their lightning into the functions, and he has gone so tea-kettle? Are these of those far as to digest these practical mysteries which are too subtle rules founded on his observa- to be solved by our limited fa culties; or is it, after all, a vast delusion founded on mistaken or, at least, insufficient data? I am free to acknowledge, that your confession that you "are too much out of spirits to talk," is a suspicious circumstance, and did I not know Mrs. Grunter so well, I might draw sinister conclusions. After a storm, there is usually a tendency to quiet and repose, the natural consequence of undue excitement. Had there been a derangement of that domestic harmony, which I have so often admired and sometimes lauded, you would, I know, have been "low-spirited;" but it does not follow that because you do feel so, such was the cause. With the knowledge I have, not only of Mrs. G., but of yourself, I scout the suggestion. Your lamentation over "bruised feet" by the Ziegel Brücke was not the only instance in which there was question of that wisdom which had first prompted our wanderings, or disposition to revise the resolutions which had sustained us in prosecuting them. The ways of the traveller are not always paths of pleasantness. I know you have not forgotten how, before we had quite lost sight of the fading outline of our native land," one of us (I will not specify which, for reasons you will doubtless appreciate,) reverted with longing eyes to that solid earth which had so lately afforded him a firm footing, but which was now floating hopelessly away, and dwindling to a black speck on the broad disk of the setting sun. Oh, for one yard of unflinching rock to stand steady on; one little tree, were it no bigger than a gooseberry bush, to hold on by! Maladie du mér! What is it but the severing of those ties VOL. VI. 6 which have subsisted between us and the green earth; the disruption of delicate and voiceless, but sensitive ligatures passing from our inner selves to the nutriment we derive from our common mother. Does not a tree sicken and drop its leaves, and even die, when it is transferred ever so carefully from the soil it loves? How then can man, of a higher and more delicate organization, hope to escape from similar treatment, with impunity? The filaments which have bound us to our earth-born friends potatoes, cabbages, beans, lettuces, &c., and their finer compeers, cauliflowers, strawberries, asparagus, &c., rudely ruptured in a moment, return to the depths of that womb, our stomachs, whence they came, and curling themselves up there complain to us of love so suddenly snapped, and of friendships so haplessly terminated. Is it not the plaints of these unhappy little tendrils, and their longings after their other (perhaps better) halves, which constitute sea-sickness? Such is my theory. Restore the relations which subsistedthe status ante quo bellum-and harmony and joy at once ensue. But I am to speak of the annoyances of travelling; the occurrences which cause one to look back with regret at the home-circle he has left for these aimless wanderings, and to look forward with something akin to joy at their prospective termination. The maladie du mér is but the disagreeable threshold which all must cross in the gratification of their curiosity; the introduction to a multitude of annoyancespetty and consequential, great and small. Arrived on the shore of Old England, if that be your . route, elate with joy at your release from that "cradle of the deep," in which you have been mercilessly rocked, you are at once the victim of all sorts of impositions, from custom-house officials to extortionate landlords, and snobs generally. Such is the pure air of these islands, that if a negro slave touches them, his fetters, by the miraculous operation of the common law, at once drop from him. "A slave cannot breathe our air," says the bold Briton, with elevated head and defiant crest. But let a white freeman but disembark in any one of his ports, and by universal practice, if not by common law, he is set upon on all sides. Leeches are not more tenacious, nor vampires more merciless. The fleecing is both thorough and systematic. Art, literature and science, are alike under the ban of an English custom-house. Have you books? they are probably entirely confiscated. Have you a flute, or a fiddle, for your personal use? a heavy duty consecrates the little companion of your leisure hours to your future regard and consideration; for what one has paid tax on at a custom-house becomes, doubly dear. Have you a revolver for your protection, and because you are an American? your purse bleeds freely under the British lancet, before you can possess the privilege of practising phlebotomy on an English highwayman. In short, if England expects each and every one of her sons to do his duty, she demands that every foreigner who visits her dominions shall pay her duties. It is inconvenient, annoying, perplexing; but it is one of the discomforts of travelling. Pay your money, shrug your shoulders, swear a little for the bile's sake, and pass on. Yes, the way of the traveller is not always, nor indeed generally, parsemeé des fleurs. If he plucks here and there a rose, he not unfrequently pays his drop of blood for it. Pains, and penalties, and "bruised feet," wait on him. To labour is no less the lot of the traveller than that of others in the pursuit of information But if he labours in earnest, he has his reward, not only in current gratification, but in after-years of satisfactory retrospection. Travel is an education all the more needed that the want of it is not always felt; and in spite of adverse opinions, I maintain that it is better to travel whilst young, when impressions are vivid and durable, than to wait until graver years shall have sobered the fancy and corrected the judgment. To delay, that years may mature the understanding, and thus furnish a safe guide to new scenes, is often to substitute prejudice for inexperience; and it is easier to inform the inexperience of youth than to modify the prejudices of age. It is not so much the multitude of things seen as the deductions that we make from them that are valuable. It is the broad mantle of charity that travel should weave for us, that is its richest gift. He who has visited other climes and people, than the one where he was born, will more fully understand how it is, that "one touch of nature makes the whole world kin." Long after most of the incidents of our travel shall have faded from our memories, will be left the impression of the various acts of goodness, cheerfulness, and hospitality we have seen everywhere. But this is a digression from my text. legs pendent outside of the window-sill. I could see nothing, save the legs; but, Simon, there was a peculiar motion about the heels attached to those legs which I never observed there, except when there was something good very near your lips. How the recollection of the pleasant days passed at the Hague are modified by the remembrance of those pervading stenches from its lifeless canals. What a pleasant house was I ought, perhaps, to apologize Thuis in de Bosch, where Dutch to you for the topics I have fashion most did congregate of touched on, in this which must a sun-shiny afternoon! What necessarily, for a time, close our smells, what breeches, what a correspondence. I might have language! You saw the "Dra- selected a pleasanter theme than chenfels," from under an um- the traveller's annoyances. It brella, with an accompaniment was your "bloody Brummaof clattering knives, forks and gems " that set me on the scent. crockery from the steamer's (Do you think Lucie hoards them decks. Poetry and pottery! as a memento?) And now, SiAt Coblentz, the sourest of Mo- mon, what shall I say to you, by selle wine caused you to take to way of valedictory. I am loath Cognac; and at Mayence, the to say that word "which makes cigars were so mephitic, that you us linger;" and 1 cannot help smoked a pipe and bought a to- thinking, that a shadow has falbacco-pouch stored with all sorts len on my sheet as I pen the of implements of fire. These closing lines of a correspondence are, however, trifling annoyan- which has so often cheered my ces, and I introduce them only loneliness. The air of this as a running commentary on bright December day does not my text. seem as bouyant as it did when I sat down to the pleasant task of writing to you. Let me, at least, delude myself with the hope, that some future day will again permit us thus to renew our impressions of days interwoven with the palmiest period of our lives. As we grow older, we look back oftener and more fondly. If youth gilds the future with the hues of the rainbow, the meridian sun of manhood throws on the objects it leaves behind it a radiance no less splendid. A more tangible annoyance was the riding in those German diligences, with half a dozen smoking, cabbage-eating natives not especially neat in their persons. Happily that mode of transit is now nearly obsolete. Once in a while, the company was pleasant enough, being enlivened and perhaps refined by a pretty damsel or two. As for example, between Frankfort and Berlin. Don't blush, Grunter, I'll pass that little matter over lightly. But what was your head doing inside of that window of the house where the damsel stopped while the horses were changing? Fearful that you might be left, I went in search of you, and found your Happy gift of memory! What wealth may be garnered in its store-houses in an ordinary lifetime, when intelligence, virtue and industry have united to repleuish them; and what poverty |