they reached the gates of Ellwangen
on Wednesday at vesper bells.

When Eva Koenig, Lessing's _fiancee_, was on her way from Brunswick to
Nuremberg in 1772, she wrote to him from Rattelsdorf (two miles north
of Bamberg), on February 28th, as follows:

You will certainly never in your life have heard of a village
called Rattelsdorf? We have been in it already twenty-four hours,
and who knows if we shall not have to stay four times as long! It
depends on the Maine, whether it falls or not; as it is now, one
could not cross it, even if one dared to. I have never in my life
met with so many hindrances, so many dangers and hardships, as on
this journey. I can hardly think of any misfortunes which we have
not already had.

She goes on to describe that in thirty-eight hours two axles and two
poles had been broken, the horses had bolted with them, one horse had
fallen and died, and so on; on March 2nd they were still prisoners in
the wretched village.

In 1750 a day's journey was still reckoned at five miles, two hours
to the mile; and when in July 1750 Klopstock travelled with Gleim
from Halberstadt to Magdeburg in a light carriage drawn by four
horses, at the rate of six miles in six hours, he thought this speed
remarkable enough to merit comparison with the racing in the Olympian
games. People of any pretensions shunned the discomforts of
travelling on foot--the bad roads, the insecurity, the dirty inns,
and the rough treatment in them; to walk abroad in good clothes and
admire the scenery was an unknown thing. (G. Freytag.)

It was only after the widening of thoroughfares, the invention of
steamboats (the first was on the Weser 1827) and railways (1835),
that travelling became commoner and more popular, and feeling for
Nature was thereby increased.

After the Swiss Alps had been discovered for them, people began to
feel interest in their native mountains; Zimmermann led the way with
his observations on a journey in the Harz 1775, and Gatterer in 1785
published _A Guide to Travelling in the Harz_ in five volumes.

In 1806 appeared Nicolas's _Guide to Switzerland_, in 1777 J.T.
Volkmar's _Journey to the Riesengebirge_, and before long each little
country and province, be it Weimar, Mecklenburg, or the Mark, had
discovered a Switzerland within its own boundaries, with mountains as
much like the Swiss Alps as a charming little girl is like a giant.

It was the opening of men's eyes to t