s visible, and, in a clear day, Strasburg
Minster, ninety miles away.

I have only to go a few steps up a narrow, steep street, lined with the
queerest houses, where is an ever-running pipe of good water, to which
all the neighborhood resorts, and I am within the grounds of the castle.
I scarcely know where to take you; for I never know where to go myself,
and seldom do go where I intend when I set forth. We have been here
several days; and I have not yet seen the Great Tun, nor the inside of
the show-rooms, nor scarcely anything that is set down as a "sight."
I do not know whether to wander on through the extensive grounds, with
splendid trees, bits of old ruin, overgrown, cozy nooks, and seats
where, through the foliage, distant prospects open into quiet retreats
that lead to winding walks up the terraced hill, round to the open
terrace overlooking the Neckar, and giving the best general view of
the great mass of ruins. If we do, we shall be likely to sit in some
delicious place, listening to the band playing in the "Restauration,"
and to the nightingales, till the moon comes up. Or shall we turn into
the garden through the lovely Arch of the Princess Elizabeth, with its
stone columns cut to resemble tree-trunks twined with ivy? Or go rather
through the great archway, and under the teeth of the portcullis, into
the irregular quadrangle, whose buildings mark the changing style and
fortune of successive centuries, from 1300 down to the seventeenth
century? There is probably no richer quadrangle in Europe: there is
certainly no other ruin so vast, so impressive, so ornamented with
carving, except the Alhambra. And from here we pass out upon the broad
terrace of masonry, with a splendid flanking octagon tower, its base
hidden in trees, a rich facade for a background, and below the town the
river, and beyond the plain and floods of golden sunlight. What shall we
do? Sit and dream in the Rent Tower under the lindens that grow in its
top? The day passes while one is deciding how to spend it, and the sun
over Heiligenberg goes down on his purpose.

ALPINE NOTES

ENTERING SWITZERLAND BERNE ITS BEAUTIES AND BEARS

If you come to Bale, you should take rooms on the river, or stand on the
bridge at evening, and have a sunset of gold and crimson streaming down
upon the wide and strong Rhine, where it rushes between the houses built
plumb up to it, or you will not care much for the city. And yet it is
pleasant on the high