times the distance by land. Must one go rid Sarrebrück and Bingen to Coblenz ?"

"Certainly. There is no more direct way except by diligence."

"And what time does that antiquated conveyance start?" "At ten minutes past four."

In the afternoon?"

"In the morning, sir."

That is to say, in the middle of the night. What a comfortable land to travel in is this Prussia!

It is eventually decided that the best course to pursue is to take diligence on the following "morning," as they are pleased to call it (we are not inclined to start the same night), to Cochem, on the Moselle, from which place a small boat runs daily to Coblenz. This will give us one whole day in Treves, and still enable us to reach our destination in due time.

On the following day we explore the town, a quaint, curious and interesting old place, full of strange relics of antiquity, as beseems the oldest town in Germany. Our day's work is thus neatly condensed by Bradshaw :

"The cathedral of St. Peter, containing the highly venerated relic of the Holy Coat, attributed to our Saviour, and an object of devout pilgrimage; the Liebfrauenkirche, or Lady's chapel. The Palace of the Electors of Treves, now a barrack. The pillar of granite, surmounted by a cross, which stands in the market-place, commemorative of the appearance of the fiery cross in the sky in 958. Also the Roman baths and amphitheatre; and the black gate on Porta Nigra, sometime used as a church, but restored as a gate in 1817 (Schwartzes Thor), very interesting (A.D. 312); and a bridge over the Moselle (B.C. 28)."

These things we saw with due interest, and then ascended the hills at the back of the town, as one may say, to obtain a view of the surrounding country. Under a blazing sun and a clear cloudless sky we made our way up a hill some two thousand feet high, 'toiling up a steep and dusty path to a summit that seemed to ascend as rapidly as we were doing. Reaching the brow, however, a very fine panorama was opened before us. The silver strip of river winding through luxuriant fields verdant with crops of hay or cereals; the vine-clad hills rising majestically towards the blue vault of ether; and the town nestling, as it were, in a giant basin far below us: these

things combined formed a picture that well repaid us for the heat and toil of our walk.

Some cunning traveller, whom Bradshaw laconically describes as R. S. C., has made a note as follows :-" Ask for tischwein."

We adopted the hint both at Luxembourg and Treves, and for about a shilling received a bottle of light Moselle that really did credit to the recommendation of R. S. C.

Robert Samuel Collings, Richard Stephen Cumberbatch, Roger Sprules Crombleholme, he may be any of these; we made a mental note of him as Right Sensible Crusader-which is not likely to be his name.

About the most unwise thing to be done when one has to catch a diligence at ten minutes past four in the morning is to go to bed. In the first place, it is impossible to sleep with closed windows on account of the heat; and in the second place, it is impossible to sleep with them open on account of certain convivial roysterers, who insist that the streets were originally designed for night revellers to make noises in.

By half-past ten o'clock the traffic has almost entirely ceased, and all good citizens are seeking their virtuous couches; but a quarter of an hour later one bad citizen and one worse citizeness make night hideous with two songs which were never intended to be sung in duet. However true it may be that two negatives make an affirmative, two discords do not make a harmony, although they make a sleepy man very furious. There is plenty of time yet; no doubt by eleven o'clock the streets will be quite still.

Twenty minutes later two thick-booted wretches, whose feet ought to be tight in the stocks, clatter noisily down the street, disturbing every echo in the town, and making one as wakeful as a schoolboy examining the "mouse" on his palm.

The clock is chiming the quarter to twelve, when, thinking on King Henry's soliloquy, we are absolutely dozing off,

"Sleep, gentle sleep, nature's soft nurse."

Crack, crack, crack! This sweet music, like a series of pistolshots, only a trifle louder, proceeds from the whip of an unemployed, and consequently spiteful Jarvey, whose slow-going facre jolts lazily down the way, making sufficient noise to wake a town twice as large as Treves. It is twelve before the last tone dies away in the distance.

And so we go on dozing and waking again until at three

o'clock in the morning the effort to sleep is abandoned in despair, and we begin to prepare to get up. At half-past three comes the "boots," to mention the fact that it is about time to be "up and doing;" and at five minutes before four we make our way through gloomy passages, and down a dark staircase to the hall.

The streets are now perfectly quiet, the solitary cat that sits meditatively in the middle of the roadway having a whole strasse to itself. The air is chilly, and the aspect of the place dismal and gruesome at that untimeous hour.

Down at the post office, from which the diligence is to start, the heavy tread of a sentinel is distinctly audible, clattering with measured pace over the ill-paved courtyard. As we approach the dim oil lamp over the great yawning archway, a dismal and gloomy passenger appears suddenly, remarks on the chill state of the atmosphere, and as suddenly vanishes. In a moment four goodly greys are led forth and harnessed to an ancient and heavy vehicle, which is courteously termed a coach; two shivering women appear and take their places with the man whom we had seen before; a sleepy postmaster, or some other functionary, comes out, with whom we sit in the coupé; and all preparations made, the four very presentable horses are allowed to walk leisurely out of the town.

The thing on the box, muffled in an immense blue coat, with a horn slung round its shoulders and a long whip in its hand, is, by a curious misnomer, called a driver. Drive! why, the horses absolutely crawl, while we inside the musty coach fume at their slowness, wondering why we may not travel more reasonably as to pace.

Through the dark, cheerless streets, out under the grim, scowling Porta Nigra, black as a structure of coal, we crawl, finding ourselves in an intolerably dusty road, lined on either hand with tall trees. Cultivated fields stretch on both sides of us; in the one direction towards the hills which rise at no great distance from us, in the other towards the blue Moselle, which now attenuated, and indeed almost reduced to a continuous series of puddles, creeps languidly down towards the mighty Rhine.

As we crawl further along it is observable that the "thing" on the box guides its horses with all the malevolence of one "clothed in a little brief authority," in such a manner as to inconvenience equally both pedestrian and driver of wheeled vehicle, striving in the one case to force walker into the ditch by

the road-side, and in the other to compel driver to pull on one side. There is no remonstrance, for this Prussian brute belongs to the Royal Post; a nice animal for any post but that used for whipping. By the way, most drivers do hold a whipping-post; but this creature never uses its whip.

Over the dull grey hills dawn soon begins to break, and when a little light appears we see that the heavy clouds massed in every direction over the sky, whisper of rain before the day is out; there is none of the golden radiance and beautiful copper tinge usual at sunrise, nothing but cold, damp, grey cloud and misty hill, that seems to meet and even mix with the sympathizing cloud.

The postman, or whatever he may be, sleeps in his corner, but he is considerate enough not to snore. There is evidently nothing new to him in this early morning's journey out of Treves: he is quite accustomed to see the day break from his closed window, and on the stopping of the coach and the sounding of the driver's copper horn to jump from the coupé, and change the letter-bags at the village post-office. A very methodical, dull creature; unimaginative, uncommunicative, very Prussian. Let him sleep; let him snore if he like it; let him bestow his red shock head and ugly official cap in one of his own leather letter-bags, and smother himself in the dull, stupid, philosophical, atheistical correspondence. "Who drinks beer, thinks beer: one would imagine his thoughts to be remarkably small beer.

Here we are going to cross the stream of the beautiful Moselle, and, very calmly, the whole coach, team and all, is driven into the ferry-boat, which slowly swings to the opposite shore. What a slow, sleepy set these Prussian fellows appear! and how dull must be their existence!-one continual round of beer and tobacco, it would seem, unenlivened by even so small a joke as one sometimes hears amongst Frenchmen.

Once on the opposite bank we turn our backs to the river, and drive on direct to Wittlich. There is little of interest on the way, and we are not sorry to arrive in the dull and sleepy little town. It is ten o'clock in the morning only, but every one in the town has (metaphorically speaking) one eye shut, while the other lustreless orb winks winks that tell of drowsiness. The dogs are too sleepy to bark, and they gaze languidly at our team as the coach rattles-slowly, of course-over the hard round stones of the roadway; the stray fowls, with drooping, heavy

wings, stalk spectrally about, seeking something they evidently are not successful in discovering; while the old grey cat at the sign of the "Giant" (Gasthof zum Riesen) has given up all attempts at pretending to be awake, and quietly amuses herself with a sound nap. Why don't the people do the same, and, waking up afterwards, look as if they had the power of using brain and limb? There is no great echo in Wittlich to speak of, but there is sufficient to answer, why?

We change coaches, and off we go again. The dull, heavy clouds begin to melt, and drizzling rain comes at intervals to make more dismal a picture which already seems to have arrived at the acme of dreariness.

Nature, laughing at clockmakers, has invented a means of making forgetful man remember that time does not stand still. This ingenious and perhaps useful contrivance is known generally under the name of hunger. We, who rose at three o'clock and had partaken of nothing since six on the previous evening, were now becoming painfully conscious that the inner man needs occasional refreshment. No opportunity had hitherto offered of procuring any comestible that would be worth the trouble incidental to its acquirement; but at the next village we stopped at a small caravanserai, where one might obtain a slight refection. Bread and cheese seemed the most easy of attainment, and those we accordingly ordered. It proved to be black in the former, and Dutch in the latter, case. Fastidious palates would have pronounced the one coarse, the other rank. We who had tasted nothing for sixteen hours, were under the impression that the bread was delicious and the cheese divine. So much for what appetite can do!

In the coach we were not an especially cheerful party, and the conversation was as wanting in brightness as the weather, while it lacked interest as much as the coachman's horn did music. Of course among us was an old woman with a bundle. Who ever yet travelled in any wheeled conveyance open to the public in which was not an old woman with a bundle? We are of opinion that if an omnibus were started to-morrow to run from say Yarkand to Kashgar, the first passenger to enter the vehicle would be an old woman with a bundle. What, however, the travellers lacked was made up and compensated by the beauty of the scenery. The winding road, wending its way amongst these tall, vine-clad hills, was exceedingly picturesque; but with the drizzling rain and dull, heavy sky, an amount of sombreness