The Suabian Alb

I LEFT the railway from Stuttgard to Ulm at the little town of GÖppingen, in the valley of the Fils. The principal inn in the place was full of tumult, and two steady streams of beer and country wine flowed from the taps into the guests’ rooms. The same matter was discussed by the mechanics and farmers on one side of the entrance, and by the merchants and bureaucrats in their more elegant quarters opposite. There had been an election, accompanied by almost a riot, the previous day, and the liberal candidate had been elected, — which was a gain for the “ North German Bund ” (the Union party) and a defeat for the " particularists ” (States-Rights men). I found the latter as fierce and stubborn in Würtemberg as they are wont to be at home, but neither side has yet acquired outblessed habit of falling into peace and quiet after a hotly contested election. When the discussion rose into yells, and several of the broad-bottomed beerglasses had been smashed in the way of emphasis, I found the atmosphere of the Present less agreeable than that of the Past, which awaited me in a lonely chamber overhead.

Yet I did not wander so far back into Time as the lonely peak of Hohenstaufen, at the foot of which Göppingen lies, might have led. It was a personal, not an historic Past, which most concerned me. Just twenty-three years had elapsed since first, leaving the Danube behind me, I had crossed on foot the eastern extremity of the Suabian Alb, and descended into the valley of the Fils. Neither the ardors of the fierce June weather, nor the lean condition of my pocket, which threatened to become empty long before the chance of replenishment at Heidelberg, could divert my youthful fancy from the associations of Hohenstaufen, or the later poetical names which gave a luminous atmosphere to the fair scenery of Suabia. I was fresh from the reading of Schiller and Schubarth and Hauff and Schwab and Uhland, — all natives of this region, — and made the lonely parts of the road ring with the latter’s sounding prelude to Graf Eberhard: —

Of the five poets, Schiller is the only one who outgrew the influence of the picturesque mediæval stories among which he was cradled. The others have cut their names ineffaceably on the old stones of many a knightly ruin, and there is scarcely a valley falling to the Neckar between the green buttresses of the Alb, which has not a place in their songs. Yet even Schiller might have found grander dramatic subjects than Don Carlos or Wallenstein in the history of Frederick Barbarossa of Hohenstaufen, of Frederick II., of King Manfred of Benevento, and the young Conradin. As a school-boy, in the neighboring village of Lorch, he had the Hohenstaufen for years before his eyes, and his first impressions of history must have been derived from its legends. His voice never entirely lost the broad provincial accent which he there picked up.

The stately castle of Hohenstaufen was so entirely destroyed during the Peasants’ War, that only a few foundation-stones now remain. It is a two hours’ climb to the summit of the peak whereon it stood, and I found it preferable to mount the low hill beyond the Fils, whence I saw not only the mountain in its whole extent, but much of the landscape which it commands.

Hohenstaufen is imposing from its isolation. Its outline reminded me somewhat of Monadnock, but the summit is a more perfect cone. Lifted quite above the general level of the hill country of Suabia, it looks southward over the ridge of the Alb and the broad plains of the Danube to the Alps ; northward, to the Odenwald. Not often has an imperial race been cradled in so haughty a home. Here, where the richest regions of Southern Germany lie within the ring of the Hohenstaufen horizon, the future rulers of the “ Holy Roman Empire ” accustomed themselves to look broadly upon the world. Even as the villages below were only seen as glimmering specks in their material vision, so, afterwards, the interests of provinces, nations indeed, were considered by them only in their relation to the vast, incongruous realm which recognized their lordship. They travelled hither and thither, between Sicily and the Baltic, between Burgundy and the Carpathian Gates, marrying here, suppressing a too independent city there, bullying the Popes, using Saracen, Italian, or Saxon soldiers as was most convenient, and carrying a perambulating court with them wherever they went. Their lives were marches, splendid episodes of warlike travel, from the investiture of the crown to their deaths in the far Orient, or by poison, or on the block.

In whatever way we may judge the influence of the Hohenstaufens on the development of Europe, we cannot deny the heroic strain which one transmitted to the other. In some respects Frederick II. was the greatest ruler between Charlemagne and Napoleon. But he was a man too far in advance of his age to be understood by his contemporaries, or to be properly estimated even by the historians of this day. And there is nothing more tragic in all history than the fate of his descendants, Manfred, Enzius, and Conradin. Who will write a history of that splendid century (from 1152 to 1258), from which we date the revival of Art and Learning ? The knightly harp on Staufen was the morning-song of the modern world.

While looking on the soaring, sunlit mountain, the words which Uhland puts into the mouth of the Truchsess of Waldburg, on taking leave of Conradin, came into my memory : —

All these features exist, but a sudden popular tempest blew away the home of the Hohenstaufens, and the proud blood of the race runs, mixed and lost, in the common Italian and German stock. From my seat on the hill, looking westward, I saw the front of the Suabian Alb, — a series of headlands, point beyond point fading in the distance, almost to the fortress-crowned peak, which bears another noted historic name, — Hohenzollern. Further, in the same direction, and less than a hundred miles distant, on the banks of the Aar, still stands one tower of the ancestral castle of a third imperial family, — the Hapsburgs. One involuntarily contrasts the histories of these three families, and feels that a brief and brilliant career, crowded with achievement, though with a tragic close, is preferable to a gradual in-and-in breeding into imbecility. As for the Hohenzollerns, one is at a loss to say whether their history is closing or beginning afresh.

The Suabian Alb, the reader will by this time have guessed, is a range of mountains ; yet this term will hardly describe its peculiar formation. The northern bank of the Danube, west of Ulm, rises in a broad, steadily ascending slope for thirty or forty miles, until it attains an elevation of nearly two thousand feet above the sea-level : then it reaches a long, irregular brink, and falls away in a sudden escarpment, to the valley of the Neckar. Seen from the north, it presents a series of the boldest and most broken mountain forms. Deep winding valleys divide its headlands ; but when one has climbed through these to the summit, he finds himself on a broad, monotonous plain. It is a repetition, on a smaller scale, of the terraces by which one ascends to the table-lands of Mexico. In front ot the northern headlands of the Alb are several isolated, conical peaks, which some geologists declare to have been originally mud volcanoes. The whole region, as you follow the Neckar to Tübingen, seems to be set apart, in the character of its scenery, from the rest of Germany. It suggests a more southern latitude, in its atmospheric effects, as well as in the forms of its enclosing mountain walls.

The name “Alb” (occasionally written “Alp ”) is derived from one of two Celtic words, — alb, white, or al, high. The one explains itself : the fronting cliffs of Jura limestone might explain the other. The word Alp, among the inhabitants of the Alps, whether in Switzerland or the Tyrol, denotes a high mountain pasture, not a snowy summit ; and this Suabian range, therefore, comes honestly by its title. I do not believe, however, as some of the people would gladly establish if they could, that it is the 'Aλ��������à ö���� of Ptolemy.

Descending the hill beyond Göppingen I followed the main highway towards the Alb, but at the first village my companion (guide I could hardly call him, since none was necessary) proposed that we should take a foot-path across the country. My object being to reach the Lauter valley by following the bases of the mountains, all paths were alike, and the prospect of a ramble through the open fields and beside the scattered woodlands was in itself attractive. I met no adventures on the way. The farmers were mostly taking a little rest between reaping and sowing; the meadows were lorn of flowers, and the stubble-fields were not lovely, near at hand ; yet the Alb, before me, seemed to take quite another charm and character when seen over a lonely and secluded foreground. With the highway the rigid routine of travel had vanished ; the landscape became my own familiar possession. The son of the country beside me understood crops if nothing else ; and we discussed oats and barley and carrots, hemp, rapeseed, and potatoes, with as much interest as if both had been land-owners. Now and then I received a bit of gossip about the owners of certain properties we passed, — nothing very romantic, I assure the susceptible reader, — and occasionally we stopped to exchange a word with shepherd or herdsman. It was the most commonplace walk possible ; yet not a feature of it has faded in my memory. I can see every star of dew lingering in the shade of the alder-bushes, every sunburned crack in the banks of red earth, and remember each tree under which I stopped to take breath and contemplate the ever-beautiful landscape.

Three hours of an August morning passed in this free, delightful ramble, and when the sun began to shoot down stinging arrows, I reached the little town of Weilheim. Here there was an inn, and dinner came upon the table the moment the shadow on the dial announced noon. A chatty young fellow dined with me, and then set off in his own light wagon to secure patronage for a tobacco-firm in Stuttgard. I took the post-omnibus for the next stage, in company with a dowager of the place, who proved to be a very intelligent and agreeable lady. In the course of an hour we became so well acquainted that we shook hands on parting at Kirchheim.

I was obliged to wait two or three hours at the latter place, before a vehicle could be found to take me up the valley. The inn was deserted, the landlord was busy, the streets outside were baking in heat, and the only Schwäbische Mercur in the guests’ room did not furnish five minutes’reading. I endured solitude and flies with a feeling of savage impatience, and when, at longlast, the postilion came, I could have fallen on his neck and wept tears of gratitude. As my indolence was to his eyes the height of earthly felicity, this would not have been intelligible ; so I ordered a measure of wine instead, and secured his smile at the start.

It was a light vehicle, drawn by a single horse, and both belonged to the man who sat beside me. He entertained me with the complete story of his courtship, marriage, and subsequent life. I was inclined to feel a little complimented by so much confidence, until a certain glibness in the narrative made me suspect that it was a part of the man’s inevitable programme for the diversion of travellers. Assuredly I was not the first who had learned how hard it was for “ Lisel ” to make up her mind, until he said to her, plump, “There’s another will have me, if you don’t ! ” — but the story was none the less better than fiction, if not so strange.

On the left, as the valley enters between two opposing forelands of the Alb, a peak, partly separated from the main mountain mass, bears upon its summit the few remaining fragments of the ancient castle of Teck, — a name recently revived by its connection with the royal family of England. The original race of Teck, I believe, became extinct in the fifteenth century, but the title is still retained in the governingfamily of Würtemberg. When the castle was founded is unknown. Barbarossa once held it in pawn, and it belonged for a time to the Zähringen (Baden) family. It fell in the Peasants’ War, like Hohenstaufen. The last event which the old walls witnessed was an assemblage of the people in 1848, when they resounded with enthusiastic republican cheers for Hecker, — our Union soldier and Illinois farmer. And this, in the briefest space, is the history of Teck.

After passing the town of Owen (a name which one might suppose had strayed away from Wales, were it not a corruption of auen, meadows), the valley shrinks to a deep cleft or crack in the body of the Alb, and its meadows become an emerald ribbon, on which the stream braids its silvery rapids. Forests of deciduous trees ascend precipitously on either side, and above them gleam the topmost parapets of rock. The massy walnut-trees by the road, the wild-flowers heaping the banks, the colors of the soil, and the general character of the vegetation, belonged to Switzerland. They were no doubt carried hither by the geognostic birth which unites this region to the Jura.

It was a delightful drive into and through the lengthening shadows of the upper world. The length of the valley is not more than four or five miles, when it terminates in a cul de sac, enclosed with steep faces of rock, up one of which the highway is cut in zigzags to the level of the Alb. The sunset showed me two villages aloft, looking down from among their higher and colder fields upon the little hamlet of Gutenberg, where I resolved to stop for the night.

The inn and people were alike primitive. Although it was a post-station and likely to be frequented by strangers, there seemed to be no special accommodation for such. The landlady was busy with her ironing in the guests’ room, the landlord gave his two youngest children orders to take me into the garden, and then resumed his seat in front of the stable. When I had seen the gooseberry-bushes, and the radishes, parsley, and sweet marjoram, and exhausted the conversational powers of the children, I had recourse to a lame groom, who explained at great length the admirable points of the post-horses, and then supper was announced. I had one table, the landlord’s family another, and the servants a third. The oldest daughter of the house, a girl of thirteen, presided at the latter. Grace was said by the youngest child, and then each, in the order of authority, dipped a spoon into the single dish upon the table.

The first course was a kind of porridge, made slab with pieces of black bread. The people ate most deliberately and delicately, taking moderate spoonfuls, and always pausing after each, so that their communistic way of eating had a certain grace, after all. Each one dipped carefully from his or her side of the bowl, which presently seemed to be crossed by so many division lines. Before the porridge was half finished it was set aside, and a dish of salad took its place. This, with a piece of bread and a glass of beer for each, concluded the supper. At the close there was a moment’s silence, after which the youngest child repeated a short prayer. The summer twilight had hardly faded away before the children were sent to bed, and the servants followed. The former were required to bid me good night. Last of all, the landlord, taking a candle, looked at me significantly, and waited. Before I slept, the roar of the mountain streams was all the noise I heard in the village.

I arose early, in order to cross a spur of the Alb into the valley of Urach, which lies farther to the westward. An old weaver of the place, glad of the chance of stretching his bandy legs for something more than weaver’s wages, went with me. We turned into a side branch of the main glen, passing a village completely buried in forests, and then struck upon a road leading up the mountainside. The summits were covered with a canopy of rolling mists, through which, now and then, some wandering sunbeam penetrated to the bed of the valley, touching the meadows like a sudden flame.

The ascent occupied an hour. When I reached the top, half a dozen steps removed me from all view of the deep, picturesque vale, and I found myself on a cold-looking plain covered with fields of rye. On either side were dark woods of fir ; in front, a village, solidly but meanly built, and quite different from the cheerful little towns of the Under-land. It was a change from Suabia to Westphalia. Here, on the windy summitplain of the Alb, — the Upper-land, as the people call it,— one would never guess what a warm, rich region lies below, and so near that a stone might almost be flung into it.

Near the point where I ascended, the heads of two lateral valleys approach within half a mile of each other, and are united by a deep cleft, which is believed to be the work of human hands. It is called the Heidengraben (the Pagans’ Moat), and is so deep and narrow that some antiquarians conjecture that the plateau beyond was thus isolated by the Romans, in order to form a camp, fortified by nature. There is a tradition that the monarchs of the Carlovingian line afterwards used it as a natural menagerie for wild beasts.

The village was a dirty, dreary place. Most of the inhabitants were assembled in an open space before the tavern, watching the antics of a huge brown bear, which was in charge of a Pole and an Italian boy. The monster, whining an impotent protest, danced and whirled over in the mud, to the great delight of the women and children. The men stood a little farther off, that they might slip out of the way when the Italian went around with the hat. I asked the latter some questions in his own language, and I verily believe the people suspected, from that circumstance, that I was in some way leagued with the vagabonds, for they looked upon me with a shy, suspicions expression as I passed out of the place.

It was but a short distance to the western brink of the plateau, and the road then began to descend into pleasant glens, wooded with deciduous forests. The mists rolled away, the sun came out hot and sharp, and the deep valley of Urach quivered through the heat which brimmed it. I loitered down the easy road, resting in the shade, and indulging my eyes with the bold, bright picture of the old castle of Hohen-Urach, springing from the topmost cliff into the blue air. It was a visible knightly legend, even without a story.

This valley was deeper, broader, and grander in all its features than the former. From the stately old town of Urach, which lies in its bed, threaded by the little river Erms, five valleys diverge, star-fashion, and five bold headlands, between them, are thrust out from the body of the Alb. Looking southward, one sees, high over the deep blue gorges, the crowning summits of the region, nearly three thousand feet above the sea-level ; westward, behind Hohen-Urach, opens a lovely Alpine dell, a land of meadow, pasture, and waterfall ; and on the eastern side a rocky wall, bright against the sky, hides the airy site of the famous castle of Neuffen, which lies beyond. Some landscapes, like some human faces, assure you that they have a history worth the knowing, — and this was one of them. I felt it before I had looked into one of the scattered chronicles of Urach.

The castle on the height stood on a rock nearly detached from the cliff, and hung, when its drawbridge was raised, inaccessible, over the valley. Here Count Eberhard of the Beard — the Rauschbart of the poets — imprisoned his insane brother, Count Henry, whose faithful wife, Eva von Salm, remained with him and there bore him a son, George, from whom the present reigning family of Wiirtemberg is descended. But the fate of the poet Frischlin lends a more tragical interest to the spot. Crowned laureate by the hand of the Emperor Rudolf II. at the age of twenty-eight (in 1575), he created so many enemies by his merciless satire of the nobility—the “court-devil,” as he termed the order — and the class ol parasites, who guide and misuse “ the long arms of kings,” that even Duke Ludwig, who was favorably inclined, was unable to protect him. For some years he led a wandering life, driven from land to land, always discharging new Parthian arrows at the corrupt life of his day, — a premature reformer, yet doubtless a wave of that stream which finally sets the mills of the gods to grinding, — until, in 1588, he was caught and put into the castle of Hohen-Urach. He there wrote “ Hebrais,” a history of the Jewish kings, but, after two years’ confinement, determined to escape.

Having succeeded in twisting a long rope out of his bedclothes, he tried to let himself down from the terrible height. It was a bright moonlit night, and his eyes were probably deceived in regard to distances, for he chose the loftiest and most dangerous part of the rock by which to descend. The rope either gave way or was cut through by friction, and the unfortunate poet was dashed to pieces. In the year 1755 a heavy oaken coffin was accidentally exhumed in the churchyard of Urach. On opening it the mutilated body of Frischlin was found, still undecayed, clothed in his scholar’s gown, and with a roll of paper in the left hand.

Urach is a well-built, picturesque, cheerful town. Many of the high houses have the weight of two or three centuries upon them. The residence of Count Eberhard of the Beard, in which he celebrated his nuptials with Barbara di Gonzaga, of the ducal house of Mantua, is still standing, near the market-place. Tradition relates that fourteen thousand guests were entertained on that occasion. Over the entrance-gate the palm-tree of the famous count, and his motto “ Attcmpto,” are carved in wood. He was consecrated as a pilgrim to the Holy Land in a small chapel which then stood in the glen behind the fortress, and thence set forth on foot to undertake the long journey, wherefrom he returned with a staff of white-thorn in his hand, as it is related in one of Uhland’s ballads. One of the sons of the builder of Castle Urach, Kuno, became Cardinalbishop of Præneste, stood high in the favor of Pope Gregory VII., and was witness of the memorable humiliation of the Emperor Henry V . at Canossa. The histories of these old Suabian families belong almost as much to Italy as to Germany ; the theatre of their lives stretched beyond the Suabian Alb even to Apulia and Sicily.

An American is apt to forget that the picturesque, knightly past of the Middle Ages belongs as much to him as to those who are cradled with its legends. Possibly it is in greater degree his inheritance ; since so much of the blood that presses up towards some level of achievement, and which represents the best element of the knightly period, has been driven to us. The vital stream of character, like the veins from which brooks are born, runs underground, and genealogy is unable to trace it. It is generally bred out of the lines of kings, but assuredly does not perish with the founders of such lines. Qualities being inherited laterally as well as directly, and each man being the converging point of a pyramid, which, a few centuries back, embraces tens of thousands of ancestors, I think we should find the true currents of transmitted force and courage and intellect describing very meandering lines through the generations. Fortunately for us, our ancestors broke loose from the traditions that fetter and impede, when they came to America. The poetry of the Past did not perish, as we sometimes lament, but we receive it purified of all power to harm. The clear-sighted Goethe said, fifty years ago : —

I think I enjoyed the romantic episodes of Suabian history all the more from the feeling that it was a field which I was precluded from every attempt to illustrate. The heroic figures of knights and dames came up, passed and faded in leisurely review, and none of them said, as such figures sometimes will: “ Get into me and revive me, if you can ! See how your modern muscles will fit my armor, and your views of life be crammed into my brain ! ” I felt glad, at last, that the spectres had no such property in me as they acquire in the atmosphere of childhood. Knave and lord, prophet and robber, showed themselves alike through a clear, impartial medium. Some of them were certainly among my thousands of Suabian ancestors (in the twelfth century), and it was a matter of complete indifference as to whom the latter might have been. The only thing I felt sure of was, that they helped to tear down Hohenstaufen and Teck, three hundred years later.

After I had quietly enjoyed Urach, I went down from the mountains to the Neckar, and took the railway to the next station of Reutlingen, in order to reach another valley, farther westward, which attracted me with an interest drawn from later times. This enabled me to withdraw to a little distance from the highest portion of the Alb, and compare its external features with those of the view from Hohenstaufen. The general character remained the same,— bold headlands, faced with rock, dividing valleys which seemed to have been torn and rent into the heart of the mountain by some tremendous convulsion, and still the isolated volcanic cones posted in advance. Near Weilheim there was one, mantled to the summit with vines, near Metzingen a second, and near Reutlingen a third, the Achalm, which has given its name to a race often mentioned in the Suabian annals.

Reutlingen is also a noted place in the old histories, but its walls are now broken down, its moat turned into vegetable-gardens, and seventy manufactories are acquiring for it a different reputation from that once given by its warlike tanners and dyers. The latter, in a battle fought in 1377, cut a body of the Suabian knights to pieces. There is a line in Uhland’s descriptive ballad, which proves that a play of words much used in our late Presidential canvass is not so new, after all: —

I was already longing for the green valleys of the Alb, and remained no longer in Reutlingen than was necessary to procure a carriage and span of horses for the castle of Lichtenstein. Once out of the noisy town, the imposing cone of Achalm lay before me, in the fairest sunshine, warm with vines, and girdled, near its summit, with houses and groves. Part of the old castlewalls, with one massive tower, are still standing. The view therefrom is celebrated, and I have no doubt with justice.

At the inn in Reutlingen I tasted wine from the slopes of Achalm, and found it very palatable. Yet this is the region where the Germans fix their ancient joke of the “three-man wine,” — two being required to hold the one who drinks, lest it knock him over. The stories one hears of “ tangle-foot whiskey ” in the Western States are imitations of those which have been told for centuries about the Suabian wine. There is a song of the place, which says that when Prince Eugene of Savoy was presented (as was then the custom) with a cup of welcome by the city authorities, he answered : —

Half an hour’s drive, across the breezy valley, brought me to the town of Pfullingen, which lies in the throat of a deep crevice of the Alb. The scenery thenceforth was singularly wild and abrupt. The sheer walls on either side gradually contracted, until the western half of the dell lay in shadow, and the meadows and pastures along the brook diminished to a narrow strip. Somewhere away to the right was the Nebelhöhle (Cave of Mist), described, in Hauff’s romance of “ Lichtenstein,” as the hiding-place of the banished Duke Ulric. All the ground, indeed, was now familiar to me, and yet new, since it displaced the involuntary scenery which I had created as I read. " Lichtenstein” is one of the best German stories of the Scott school; very different, indeed, from those “ Pictures of the German Past,” which Freytag has since given us, but a tale so simply and frankly told, and invested with such a pleasant poetic atmosphere, that it has not yet ceased to be read.

At a little village called. Oberhausen my postilion stopped, and informed me that he must take an extra horse, unless I chose to mount to the castle on foot. I looked in the direction indicated by his whip, and saw what seemed a very toy of a castle, of warm yellow stone, high, high up, painted on the sky. Schwab says the rock on which it stands “shoots up like a sunbeam,” but I should rather compare it to a lance, planted but-end in the valley, with the castle as its lance-head, shining above the thousand feet of forest. In the August heat, I had no mind for the ascent thither on my own two feet, so I decided to go upon the twelve hoofs. Out came a vorspann, with a bareheaded maiden as groom, and we began our slow way upward through the beecheu woods.

Stopping frequently to breathe the horses, it was more than an hour before we reached the level of the Upperland, the views into the valley meanwhile growing deeper, richer, and more surprising. The girl informed me that Count Wilhelm of Würtemberg, to whom the restored castle belongs, was then residing in it, and that, consequently, strangers were not admitted. He was newly married (to a daughter of the Prince of Monaco, as I learned afterwards), and was understood to be very fond of a quiet, retired life. The postilion drew up at a hunting-lodge on the summit, unharnessed his horses, and called for wine ; so I set out to discover such views as were free to visitors.

The path led through a narrow belt of trees, and I found myself in front ot the castle. The portal was overhung with half a dozen flags, — the Würtemberg colors, — and no person was to be seen on the walls, neither was there any sound of life. I hesitated a moment, then crossed the moat by a drawbridge, and rang the bell. Presently the door opened, and a man who had the air of a servant and secretary in one made his appearance. Their Serene Highnesses, he said, were in the castle, and the rule was not to admit visitors. As his manner was by no means peremptory, I gave him my card for the Count, with the message that I only desired to see the view from the ramparts.

He came back in a few minutes with the announcement, “ His Serene Highness orders me to show you the castle,” and opened the door for me to enter. Crossing a small court-yard enclosed by buildings for the servants, I found myself in a small garden or pleasaunce, shaded by fine old lindentrees. Under one of these sat a gentleman with cigar and newspapers ; under another were two ladies sewing at a small table. The servant whispered, “ Their Serene Highnesses ” ; there were mutual rapid salutations in passing, and I was free to enter the castle, which lay beyond this shady realm. A second drawbridge spanned the natural chasm which separates the columnar rock from the mountain-wall. The former is not more than fifty feet in diameter, and the outer walls of the castle are simply a continuation of its natural lines. The building is an eyrie, — a diminutive, air-built nest, a thousand feet above the valley.

I never saw space so economized as in its interior arrangement. Hauft’s Castle of Lichtenstein disappeared long ago, and I doubt if even tradition enough of its structure remained for a modern copy. Count Wilhelm thereupon consulted his own taste, and he has admirably adapted mediæval apartments and furniture to the requirements of life in our day. None of the usual features of a Ritterburg are wanting ; the banquet-hall, the chapel, the armory, the ladies’ bower, so disposed that they suggest ample space. All the appliances of carved wood, stained glass, and arabesques in fresco have been used, with equal fitness of form and color. Old armor, a most interesting collection of pictures by old Suabian painters, ancient drinking-vessels, lion’s and leopard’s hides, cabinets of natural history, coins and medals, and an abundance of books, illustrated the taste of the princely owner.

The servant performed his office of custode so conscientiously that he introduced me into the bedchambers of the Count and Countess, really against my own wish. All the little signs of occupation — an open book, manuscript sheets on the library - table, a shawl tossed upon a chair — made my presence seem intrusive, and I passed through the charming chambers with a haste which my guide must have interpreted as indifference. Last of all I mounted the tower, which is one hundred and twenty feet high. The landscape was dim with heat and summer vapor, and I saw neither the Alps (which are visible in clear weather) nor the peak of Hohenzollern in the west. The depth of the dell below me, and the extent of the Neckar valley beyond, were magnified in the dim atmosphere ; but the finest feature of the view was the contrast between the gray rye-fields and dark fir-forests of the Upper-land, and the rich harvests, walnut-trees, vineyards, and gardens of the Under-land. It was my last and loveliest panorama of the Suabian Alb.

Their Serene Highnesses greeted me so pleasantly on returning, that I paused a moment and thanked them for the privilege they had allowed me. The Count replied in a few courteous words, and the servant conducted me to the outer gate. As Lichtenstein is one of the chief points of attraction to German tourists, its owner could have very little privacy if he were always so obliging ; and I confessed to myself that, under similar circumstances, I should hardly have been so ready to admit a stranger to the inspection of my house and household gods.

Returning to Reutlingen in the carriage, I took the evening train for Stuttgard, and once more passed along the front of the Alb, now fairer than ever in its sunset contrasts of light and shadow. Henceforth it will be the real, familiar background of Suabian legend to me, of the stories of Hauff and the ballads of Uhland, Schwab, and Kerner ; and its landscapes will arise beside those of the Apennines and the Campanian coast, with every page that tells the history of the Hohenstaufens.