imaginable solemnity, but I made haste to decline
it, and he had too much native good breeding to press his suggestion.

He was a civil man, and in offering to purchase my fishing-rod, meant
to do me a kindness, while, at the same time, he gratified himself; so
I gave him a fly, with which he was greatly delighted; I told him
likewise how to use it. But if my unfortunate fly has since come into
play, at the end of such a line and such a rod as the keeper of the
Black Eagle produced, I am quite sure that it has caught no fish, if,
indeed, it be not long ago "fathoms deep" under water. One of Mrs.
Finn's red hackles would cut but a sorry figure as an appendage to some
six yards of whip-cord, more especially after the said whip-cord should
have been fastened, as my friend's was, to the extremity of a hazel
wand, as thick and inflexible as the horn of a roebuck.

With us, however, the great question was, not whether the host of the
Black Eagle was ever likely to become an expert fly-fisher; but how,
with our scanty means, we were to reach Schandau, and at the same time,
pay a visit to Hernhut, one of the principal points of observation
which we had in view from the outset. The landlord assured us that we
need be under no apprehensions, that a diligence went every day from
Hirschberg, the chief town of the circle, which was distant from
Warmbrunn not more than an hour's walk, and that we should both be
conveyed to Hernhut, that is to say, sixty-five English miles of road,
for the sum of three dollars at the utmost. This was cheering
intelligence enough, but could we depend upon it? We feared not, and it
was well for us that we listened to the advice of prudence, rather than
to the whispers of inclination. We thanked him for the information
which he had given us, paid our bill, and marched off to ascertain, at
the post office in Hirschberg itself, how far it might or might not be
authentic.

Though the route from Warmbrunn to Hirschberg conducted us over a dusty
main-road, and the heat of the day was overpowering, we could not help
stopping, from time to time, to look back upon the magnificent scene
which we were leaving behind us. Viewed from this side, the
Riesengebirgen offer a much bolder and grander outline than when looked
at from Bohemia. Here, the mountains, instead of forming the
back-ground and termination to numerous lesser ranges, spring, sheer
and abrupt, out of the plain, and when loaded, as they happened to b