having been the scene of savage and sanguinary warfare. With the song of the bird in your ear, and the blue flowers purpling the turf at your feet, you strive in vain to realize the thunder of Tilly's batteries, or the rush of French batallions through the imminent. deadly breach; and yet ten times has this paradise been made a pandemonium by the deviltry of war- -ten times have the breaches been opened, the mines sprung, the woods mowed down, the summer gardens marred, and lo! the forgiveness of Nature. The ruinous strife once ended, her gentle work of healing begins over the shattered wall she trains her ivyalong the trampled sod her mosses creep-with her earth she covers the slain, and with her holy silence she hushes the discord both of victory and defeat. Not a wound, but she sears over; not a wreck, but her art makes graceful silently, but ceaselessly her work goes on, until at length she triumphs in a Paradise regained. But a truce to sentiment, let us descend from the airy regions of the poetic to the prosaic. Upon our returning to the town, we found that in lingering so long among the ruins, we should not have time to see the famous University, and we were forced reluctantly to hurry to the railway station, to take the cars for Mayence, where we arrived at an early hour in the evening.

The town of Mayence occupies an elevated site in a rich fertile country, opposite the confluence of the Rhine and Mein. The surrounding hills, which form a vast amphitheatre, produce a Rhine wine that is in great demand. The town was once a Roman station, as almost every town on the Rhine has been. Its Cathedral is worth a visitfilled with some very exquisite monuments of Bishops and Archbishops, and containing many splendid chapels-but

the monument that interested me most of all, was the monument to the last of the Troubadours, Heinrich Von Meissen, with whose history I was familiar, and who was borne to his grave upon the fair shoulders of the noblest ladies of Mayence, and over whose coffin they poured libations of wine:

"Sad o'er the flower-strown coffin
They cast their garlands fair;

The plume-crowned bier, which slowly
Eight noble ladies bear.

They bear it on with music

And weeping to the shrine;
And from the golden censors

They pour the sacred wine."

Von Meissen was one of those warrior pocts whose names are connected with all that is lovely and amiable in song-one who wreathed the graces of melody round proud and warlike spirits, and gradually softened down and refined them into all that was gentle, kind, and social in human nature. Let others dwell on the high doings of statesmen and warriors; I love to contemplate the quiet peaceful walk of those great benefactors of their race, who scattered abroad in the path of every-day life, some of the sweetest flowers of poetry and song. Centuries have rolled away since libations of wine were poured by fair hands, over the minstrel's tomb-empires have been lost and won; kingdoms blotted out from the map of nations, and the proud spirits of earth laid low, and their very names forgotten; but time has spared this gentler record, and the memory of the humble Troubadour-poet is still a treasured thing with the good people of his native city, and consecrates the tomb beneath which his ashes repose. Long may that memory exist, and deeply may it

be cherished by all who can appreciate, with true poetic devotion, the touching pathos, delicacy and grace with which chivalrous attributes were clothed by those who sang together in the early dawn of refinement and poetry. Peace to the ashes of the last of the Troubadours.

Mayence has an interest from its having been the cradle of the art of Printing. It was the birth-place and residence of John Gensfleisch, called Guttenberg, the inventor of moveable types. His native city treasures his memory, and about twenty years ago, a bronze statue by Thorwaldsén, was erected in one of the squares. Mayence belongs to the Grand Duke of Hesse-Darmstadt. It is the chief

and strongest fortress tower of the German Confederation, and is garrisoned by Prussian and Austrian troops in nearly equal proportions.

Q

CHAPTER XII.

PRUSSIA AND ITS CAPITAL.

The General appearance of Berlin- The Thier Garten - The Brandenburg Gate-The Unter den Linden Statue of Frederick the Great.

PRUSSIA as a nation, compared with those that surround her, has but a modern origin. The name that now attaches to this powerful and prosperous people, originally belonged to a desolate district in the north-eastern angle of the territory now embraced by the present kingdom. In this wild spot, a body of Teutonic adventurers, who had waged fierce fight with the Saracen for the possession of the Holy Sepulchre, having driven out the Pagans who infested it, settled themselves; and in due time waxed so powerful, that they managed to play an influential part for two centuries in the affairs of Europe. At the Reformation this military Brotherhood, renounced the Romish faith and embraced the doctrines of Luther. Soon after they effected a treaty with their feudal. superior, the King of Poland, by which their possessions were consolidated into an hereditary Duchy of Prussia, and settled on the Grand Master then ruling. That functionary was at the time, Albert of Brandenburg, a junior branch of the House, whose memory and great deeds are still cherished in the modern kingdom. About the year 1618, the Duchy was conveyed to the eldest branch of the House of Brandenburg. But it was not until Frederick William the Great succeeded to the

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Ducal Crown, sometime in the middle of the seventeenth century, that the Duchy ceased to be a feudality of Poland. The Revolutions produced in the Empire, by what is known in history, as "the thirty years' war," enabled him to emancipate his Duchy from the pretensions of Poland, and to obtain its recognition as a sovereign state, about the year 1657.

On the 18th of January, 1701, Frederick I. placed a royal crown on his own head at Koningsberg—and a King of Prussia then for the first time made his appearance on the field of Europe. Since that period constant accretions have expanded the Kingdom into its present bulk. Signoriescounties principalities - duchies-bishoprics and provinces have been gathered in from time to time, proving that annexation is by no means a vice of more modern times. By these successive additions, and by a policy in some respects admirably adapted to the condition of things -a petty Dukedom in an obscure corner of Europe, has been raised in the short space of a century and a half to a foremost rank among the powers of the world.

The Kingdom is thus, comparatively speaking, a thing of yesterday, and so is its metropolis Berlin. As a modern traveler remarks, "Berlin has no Gothic Churches — no narrow streets, no fantastic gables-no historic stone and lime no remnants of the picturesque ages recalling the olden time." It is this modern air about the city that first strikes the observer. Fishermen's huts constituted the nucleus of the future city not many years ago. In 1590, its population was but twelve thousand. Under the Fredericks it made rapid strides-and by the time of Napoleon's conquest, it had reached nearly two hundred thousand. By the last census, it is put down at