ch 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 h