otel de Ville, in Milan. It swarms with mice and fleas,
and if the rest of the world were destroyed it could furnish dirt enough
to start another one with. The food would create an insurrection in a
poorhouse; and yet if you go outside to get your meals that hotel makes
up its loss by overcharging you on all sorts of trifles--and without
making any denials or excuses about it, either. But the Hotel de Ville's
old excellent reputation still keeps its dreary rooms crowded with
travelers who would be elsewhere if they had only some wise friend to
warn them.

APPENDIX B.

Heidelberg Castle Heidelberg Castle must have been very beautiful before
the French battered and bruised and scorched it two hundred years ago.
The stone is brown, with a pinkish tint, and does not seem to stain
easily. The dainty and elaborate ornamentation upon its two chief fronts
is as delicately carved as if it had been intended for the interior of
a drawing-room rather than for the outside of a house. Many fruit and
flower clusters, human heads and grim projecting lions' heads are still
as perfect in every detail as if they were new. But the statues which
are ranked between the windows have suffered. These are life-size
statues of old-time emperors, electors, and similar grandees, clad in
mail and bearing ponderous swords. Some have lost an arm, some a head,
and one poor fellow is chopped off at the middle. There is a saying that
if a stranger will pass over the drawbridge and walk across the court to
the castle front without saying anything, he can make a wish and it will
be fulfilled. But they say that the truth of this thing has never had
a chance to be proved, for the reason that before any stranger can walk
from the drawbridge to the appointed place, the beauty of the palace
front will extort an exclamation of delight from him.

A ruin must be rightly situated, to be effective. This one could not
have been better placed. It stands upon a commanding elevation, it is
buried in green woods, there is no level ground about it, but, on the
contrary, there are wooded terraces upon terraces, and one looks down
through shining leaves into profound chasms and abysses where twilight
reigns and the sun cannot intrude. Nature knows how to garnish a ruin to
get the best effect. One of these old towers is split down the middle,
and one half has tumbled aside. It tumbled in such a way as to establish
itself in a picturesque attitude. Then all it lacked was