vus Adolphus. We were advised by our merchants, by no means to venture ourselves in the duke of Bavaria's country, so that we had the mortification to lose the sight of Munich, Augsburg, and Ratisbon, and were forced to take our way to Vienna through the Tyrol, where we had very little to entertain us besides the natural face of the country.

TYROL, INSPRUCK, HALLE, ETC.

AFTER having coasted the Alps for some time, we at last entered them by a passage which leads into the long valley of the Tyrol; and following the course of the river Inn we came to Inspruck, that receives its name from this river, and is the capital city of the Tyrol.

Inspruck is a handsome town, though not a great one, and was formerly the residence of the archdukes who were counts of Tyrol: the palace where they used to keep their court is rather convenient than magnificent. The great hall is indeed a very noble room, the walls of it are painted in fresco, and represent the labours of Hercules. Many of them look very finely, though a great part of the work has been cracked by earthquakes, which are very frequent in this country. There is a little wooden palace that borders on the other, whither the court used to retire at the first shake of an earthquake. I saw here the largest menage that I have met with anywhere else. At one end of it is a great partition designed for an opera. They showed us also a very pretty theatre. The last comedy that was acted on it was designed by the Jesuits for the entertainment of the queen of the Romans, who passed this way from Modena to Vienna. The compliment which

the fathers made her majesty on this occasion was very particular, and did not a little expose them to the raillery of the court. For the arms of Hanover being a horse, the fathers thought it a very pretty allusion to represent the queen by Bucephalus, that would let nobody get upon him but Alexander the Great. The wooden horse that acted this notable part is still to be seen behind the scenes. In one of the rooms of the palace which is hung with the pictures of several illustrious persons, they showed us the portrait of Mary queen of the Scots, who was beheaded in the reign of queen Elizabeth. The gardens about the house are very large, but ill kept. There is in the middle of them a beautiful statue in brass of an archduke Leopold on horseback. There are near it twelve other figures of water nymphs and river gods, well cast and as big as the life. They were designed for the ornaments of a water-work, as one might easily make a great variety of jetteaus at a small expense in a garden that has the river Inn running by its walls. The late duke of Lorraine had this palace, and the government of the Tyrol, assigned him by the emperor; and his lady the queen dowager of Poland lived here several years after the death of the duke her husband. There are covered galleries that lead from the palace to five different churches. I passed through a very long one which reaches to the church of the capuchin convent, where the duke of Lorraine used often to assist at their midnight devotions. They showed us in this convent the apartments of Maximilian, who was archduke and count of Tyrol about fourscore years ago. This prince, at the same time that he kept the government in his hands, lived in this convent with all the rigour and austerity of a capuchin. His anti

chamber and room of audience are little square chambers wainscoted. His private lodgings are three or four small rooms faced with a kind of fretwork, that makes them look like little hollow caverns in a rock. They preserve this apartment of the convent uninhabited, and show in it the altar, bed, and stove, as likewise a picture and a stamp, of this devout prince. The church of the Franciscan convent is famous for the monument of the emperor Maximilian the first, which stands in the midst of it. It was erected to him by his grandson Ferdinand the first, who probably looked upon this emperor as the founder of the Austrian greatness. For as by his own marriage he annexed the Low Countries to the house of Austria, so by matching his son to Joane of Arragon he settled on his posterity the kingdom of Spain, and by the marriage of his grandson Ferdinand got into his family the kingdoms of Bohemia and Hungary. This monument is only honorary, for the ashes of the emperor lie elsewhere. On the top of it is a brazen figure of Maximilian on his knees, and on the sides of it a beautiful bas-relief representing the actions of this prince. His whole history is digested into twenty-four square pannels of sculpture in bas-relief; the subject of two of them is his confederacy with Henry the eighth, and the wars they made together upon France. On each side of this monument is a row of very noble brazen statues, much bigger than the life, most of them representing such as were some way or other related to Maximilian. Among the rest is one that the fathers of the convent tell us represents king Arthur, the old British king. But what relation had that Arthur to Maximilian? I do not question, therefore, but it was designed for prince Arthur,

elder brother of Henry the eighth, who had espoused Catharine, sister of Maximilian, whose divorce afterwards gave occasion to such signal revolutions in England.. This church was built by Ferdinand the first. One sees in it a kind of offer at modern architecture, but at the same time that the architect has shown his dislike of the Gothic manner, one may see very well that in that age they were not, at least in this country, arrived at the knowledge of the true way. The portal, for example, consists of a Composite order unknown to the ancients; the ornaments, indeed, are taken from them, but so put together that you see the volutes of the Ionic, the foliage of the Corinthian, and the uovali of the Doric, mixed without any regularity on the same capital. So the vault of the church, though broad enough, is encumbered with too many little tricks in sculpture. It is, indeed, supported with single columns instead of those vast clusters of little pillars that one meets with in Gothic cathedrals; but at the same time these columns are of no regular order, and at least twice too long for their diameter. There are other churches in the town, and two or three palaces which are of a more modern make, and built with a good fancy. I was shown the little Notre Dame, which is handsomely designed, and topped with a cupola. It was made as an offering of gratitude to the blessed virgin, for having defended the country of the Tyrol against the victorious arms of Gustavus Adolphus, who could not enter this part of the empire after having overrun most of the rest. This temple was therefore built by the contributions of the whole country. At about half a league's distance from Inspruck stands the castle of Amras, furnished with a prodigious quantity of medals, and many other sorts of rarities both in

nature and art, for which I must refer the reader to monsieur Patin's account in his letters to the duke of Wirtemberg, having myself had neither time nor opportunity to enter into a particular examination of them.

From Inspruck we came to Halle, that lies at a league's distance on the same river. This place is particularly famous for its salt-works. There are in the neighbourhood vast mountains of a transparent kind of rock not unlike allum, extremely solid, and as piquant to the tongue as salt itself. Four or five hundred men are always at work in these mountains, where, as soon as they have hewn down any quantities of the rock, they let in their springs and reservoirs among their works. The water eats away and dissolves the particles of salt which are mixed in the stone, and is conveyed by long troughs and canals from the mines to the town of Halle, where it is received in vast cisterns, and boiled off from time to time.

They make after the rate of eight hundred loaves a week, each loaf four hundred pound weight. This would raise a great revenue to the emperor, were there here such a tax on salt as there is in France. At present he clears but two hundred thousand crowns a year, after having defrayed all the charges of working it. There are in Switzerland, and other parts of the Alps, several of these quarries of salt, that turn to very little account, by reason of the great quantities of wood they consume.

The salt-works at Halle have a great convenience for fuel, which swims down to them on the river Inn. This river, during its course through the Tyrol, is generally shut up between a double range of mountains, which are most of them covered with