off Gabel, Reichstadt, with a countless number of villages besides, told of the busy hands by which these fair fields were tilled and kept in order. Heartily thanking our poetical friend for the instructions which he had communicated to us, and charmed out of all sense of fatigue for the moment, we continued our march, till the shelter of a vast wood received us, at once shutting out the glories of the panorama beneath, and screening us from the sun's rays, which had for some time back beat with inconvenient violence upon us from above.

It was six o'clock when we reached the inn at Hayde, faint, hungry, and foot-sore. Our reception was not very cordial, nor did we this time, I am sorry to say, succeed in perfectly thawing the ice in which the landlady had encased herself; but we took her bad humour patiently, showed her that we were well disposed to be merry, and obtained in five minutes, first a very tolerable apartment, and by-and-by the best room in the house. Perhaps, indeed, it may be as well to state, that our first reception, even in Bohemia, was not always flattering. Yet somehow or another, it invariably came to pass, with the solitary exception of Hayde, where our usual tactics failed us, that before we had been ten minutes under the roof of a Bohemian innkeeper, not only he, but his whole household, were at our devotion. Neither was any marvellous art required to bring this result about. We acted merely as persons of common sense will always act in similar situations. We turned the landlady's ill-humour or stiffness into a joke, spoke bad German, mixed it with French and English, and won her heart by showing that we were neither sensitive nor fastidious. And the landlady's heart being fairly won, all the rest was easy. The husband, as in duty bound, fell into his wife's views, and the servants took their cue from their superiors. In Hayde, however, though we so far gained our end, that a good supper with a comfortable apartment were afforded us, we have no right to boast of our progress in the hostess's affections. She kept cruelly aloof from us during the whole of our sojourn, and made us pay at our departure just twice as much as, for similar fare, we were charged at any other gasthof in Bohemia.

CHAPTER II.

OUR LANDLADY AND WASHERWOMAN. THE EINSIEDLERSTEIN. ITS DUNGEONS AND HALL. ITS HISTORY. INSCRIPTION OVER THE HERMIT'S GRAVE. LOSE OUR WAY. GUIDED BY A PEASANT. HIS CONVERSATION. MISTAKEN FOR ITALIAN MUSICIANS. GABEL.

Hayde, which is a burgh town, having its burgomaster and other civic authorities, contains a population of between two and three thousand souls, and can boast of a large warehouse, or handlung, in which are exhibited and sold the mirrors and other articles in glass that are fabricated at Burgstein. Like most German towns of the same size which I have visited, it is exceedingly clean, and its environs are laid out with a good deal of taste. For the Germans, while in winter they shut themselves up in their houses, all the doors and windows of which are kept hermetically sealed, seem to live, during the summer months, only in the open air. Gardens are, therefore, their delight,—public gardens, where such things exist,—in which the men may smoke and drink their beer, the women sip their coffee, in society; or failing this, slips of soil, close to the highway side, from which they are separated only by a low railing,—so that the owners may behold from their open summer-houses every object that shall pass and repass. And truly it is a pleasant sight to see an entire population made happy by means so simple and so innocent. For of excesses the Bohemians are seldom, if ever, guilty. The men smoke incessantly, it is true, and some of them consume in the course of a holyday a tolerably large allowance of beer. But the beer is either very weak, or their heads are accustomed to it; for it is as rare to behold a Bohemian peasant drunk at a merrymaking or fête, as it is to find, under similar circumstances, an Englishman of the same class sober.

After adjusting our toilet, and giving some linen to be washed, with the distinct understanding that the articles so disposed of should be restored at seven o'clock next morning, we first ate our supper, and then strolled out. The graveyard, removed, as is usually the case in this country, some little way out of town, attracted our attention, and was admired for the extreme neatness with which it was planted and otherwise kept. From the top of an eminence behind the inn, likewise, we obtained a view of the surrounding country, which we should have pronounced fine, had we not previously looked down upon it from Stein Jena; and a public garden, as yet "alone in its glory," was traversed. But we were too much fatigued to attempt more. We returned, therefore, to our apartment; went to bed with the sun, and slept soundly till half-past six o'clock on the following morning.

Lovers' vows, it is said, are like pie-crusts, made to be broken. So I am sure are the promises of Bohemian washerwomen; at least our linen, which ought to have made its appearance at seven, did not arrive till nearly four hours afterwards, and we were compelled to prolong our halt accordingly. At last, however, the slender, but to us invaluable cargo, made its appearance, though still so imperfectly arranged, that the stockings, being quite wet, we were obliged to sling outside our knapsacks, while the damp shirts were left to dry, as they best might, within. But the precious time which our dilatory laundress had wasted, nothing could recall. We therefore felt ourselves under the necessity of confining our day's operations to the inspection of a hermitage, or einsiedlerstein, near Burgstein, with what was described to us as a short and pleasant walk afterwards, as far as Gabel.

We quitted Hayde without regret; and though still foot-sore with yesterday's travel, contrived to reach Burgstein, which is about three English miles distant, between twelve and one o'clock. It is an inconsiderable village, prettily situated under the felsen, or crags, from which it derives its name; and can boast of its schloss, the residence of Graff Kinsky, as yet a child. Like other buildings of the kind which we had passed in our tour, the schloss at Burgstein resembles a manufactory much more than a nobleman's palace; for it stands close to the high road, is roofed over with flaring red tiles, and shows in its dazzling white front a prodigious number of small windows. Connected with it by an avenue of umbrageous planes, which overshadow, perhaps, a couple of hundred yards of road to the rear, is the mausoleum of the late count,—a most ungraceful pile, evidently constructed after the model of an English dove-cot, and like the schloss, shining in all the splendour of white walls and a scarlet covering. But from such objects the traveller soon turns his eyes away, that he may fix them on the bold and isolated crag, the summit of which is crowned by what he naturally mistakes for masonry; but which, on a more minute inspection, he discovers to be, for the most part, the rock itself. There stands what is now described as the Einsiedlerstein,—that is, the stony dwelling of the hermit; a grievous misnomer surely,—for though the last occupant of that dwelling was doubtless a recluse, its original purpose, which for many ages it served, was that of a strong-hold, or castle. And perhaps nowhere, even in Germany, can a more perfect specimen be pointed out of the sort of nest which used, in the dark ages of feuds and forays, to shelter the robber-knights and barons, to whom forays were at once a business and a pastime.

The Einsiedlerstein, or Hermit's Rock, is a bold and isolated crag, which rises sheer and abrupt out of the plain to the height of, perhaps, one hundred and fifty feet. It is separated from the fells, or rugged hills, which form the northern boundary of the wide vale of Hayde, by a space of about two or three hundred yards; sufficiently wide to place it, in the days of cross-bows and ballistas, pretty well beyond