the magical effects of
this light, but find that only to-day the scales have really dropped
from my eyes. Seriously I believe that what we in the north call
_sunshine_ is only an imitation of it, a cheap mixture of light and
air, a sort of gilded bronze in comparison with the real solid
priceless gold which is lavished here.

I moved slowly up the cool and gloomy Laubengasse[5] where a shiver
always seizes me and a peculiar oppression stops my breath. Then I
reached the small Platz with the fine old church. The Platz appeared
all black and red with the costumes of the peasants of the
neighbourhood, and of the valley of the Passer. Their trim holiday
dress consists of a short dark jacket with red facings, red waistcoats,
and broad brimmed hats. Most of the people are fine-looking and
stately, the men however, much handsomer than the women. Of the latter,
I have only remarked since I came, two pretty faces with regular
features.

As it was a peasant's holiday, they stood about in dense groups and
none of them took the least notice of the suffering stranger who glided
past their clumsy elbows. Over the whole Platz hung a thick cloud of
acrid tobacco smoke, which gave me a fit of coughing, so I preferred to
go round the church rather than endeavour to push my way through the
uncivil crowd.

In the buttresses of the church, old tomb stones were immured. On one
of them I read an inscription so full of meek resignation that I was
greatly touched by it. One, Ludovica, was buried underneath it in the
year 1836. I will write down the inscription, I learnt it by heart:

"Separate they lived, and lonely,
Father, mother, and only child
Till death had them together bound.
In blessedness themselves they found,
For aye and ever now united.
So the early fading of the rose,
Is to be envied; it is repose."

The quiet and fervent tone of these verses accompanied me for many
hours. I walked pensively along the narrow streets up to an old gateway
which leads through a weather-beaten tower, scarred with French
bullets, into the valley of the Passeier. The view which from thence
suddenly opened before me filled me with awe, by its strangeness,
beauty, and grandeur. I sat down for half an hour on a large stone
beside the gateway, from whence a steep path leads to the Kuechelberg,
and up to an old tower, formerly a powder-magazine, which now
peacefully k