bourhood, and one of the companions of Dietrich, perhaps zealous in the observance of the Pagan religious rites of his age, and there.. fore, by the usual confusion of the Christian re-modellers of these tales, metamorphosed into a monk.

In this capacity he is, in "The Garden of Roses at Worms," placed in the Abbey of Isen-burg. The haughty princess Crimhilt, the owner of the garden, challenges Dietrich and his companions to combat with her warriors who guarded it, under the command of the giant Stauden-fuss, and promises that the conqueror should receive, as a trophy, a kiss, and a chaplet of the Roses. Dietrich accepts the challenge, and calls, among others, on Ilsan to accompany him, which he readily agrees to do, promising to bring back to each of the fifty-two monks who hated their warlike brother, a chaplet of roses. In this expedition Ilsan is wofully degraded from the high estate in which other accounts place him, and becomes the Friar Tuck of the party. He first accepts the challenge of the giant;

Among the roses there so gay

Leap'd forth the grisly Monk,
The ladies laugh'd to see his beard
And face so lean and shrunk.
As on with angry step he trod
Along the flowery green,
Full many a maiden laughed loud,
And many a knight I ween.

And out then lady Crimhilt spoke,
Oh Father, leave thine ire;

Go home, and with thy brothers chaunt
Thy matins in the choir.

"Nay, gentle lady!" cried the monk,

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Bright roses must I have,

To deck this dusky cowl of mine
With chaplet gay and brave.”

And loudly laugh'd the giant too,
To see his beard so rough;

"And should I laugh till morrow's dusk,
I had not laugh'd enough ;

Say, hath the warlike Kemp of Bern
Sent forth his fool to fight?"

"Giant, take heed, thy hide shall feel

That I have wits aright."

The monk, having at length triumphed over fifty-two warriors, exacts the full penalty of fifty-two kisses and fifty-two chaplets from the proud princess who made mirth of him.

And when Crimhilt the Queen

Gave the kisses fifty-two,
With his rough and grisly beard
Full sore he made her rue.

The party then separates, and Ilsan returns to his convent, and forces his envious brethren, not only to wear the trophies of his valour, but to set lustily to work to relieve him of the burden of his sins.

A few there were who would not pray

For brother Ilsan's soul,

So straight their beards together he tied,
And hung them on a pole.

If we are asked, what is the treasure which these confederate worthies guard within the mountain, it will, we conclude, be wisest to refer the inquirer to the treasures about which the heroes of the Niebelungen are so busy.

This is our theory of the origin of the Kyffhauser tradition; and we must beg the same indulgence for it that all theories have from time immemorial been considered entitled to. It is perhaps as good as many which have been started on equally important subjects, of the reputation of which the authors have been more jealous than we shall be of ours.

There is another and a surer period of history, though one involved in almost as much obscurity of detail, to which some of the Hartz tales relate; we mean those which concern the ancient Saxon mythology, whose altars the arms of Charles Martel, seconded by the pious exertions of the English Winfred (afterwards Saint Boniface) replaced by Christian superstitions, which have in their turn, too, given way to a more enlightened system of religion. Some of these stories are remarkably characteristic of the kind of conversion wrought among a half civilized people by a conquering army. Conviction of the inferiority of the ejected deity to that of the victor was doubtless produced by the most persuasive of all rhetorics; but the people retained their belief in the existence and power of the discarded objects of their worship, and an inclination still to afford them a portion of their allegiance.

Of this class is the account of the ancient shrine of the heathen Lora, the goddess of love, whose worship was indeed abolished, but not without some proofs of her power, which compelled Winfred to call for the active interference of the Virgin to save him from the vengeance of the slighted goddess.

Hers was the grove where the Saxon young men and maidens every spring brought the firstlings of the chase and garlands of flowers for the chief priest to crown the most faithful lovers; hers was the fountain to which the luckless lover made his pilgrimage, to drink in its waters oblivion of his sorrows; and hers was the awful task of punishing the inconstant. The whole tradition is worthy even of Grecian mythology.

"Winfred destroyed her grove, the Grove of Rest;'- then vanished her power, though still she struggled for vengeance on her enemies. As he hasted on his triumphant career, not far from Reinharts hill, his horses and carriages plunged suddenly, as it were, into a deep morass. And here would he have ended his mortal course, had not the holy Virgin heard his prayers. In memory of his peril he erected three crosses, even now to be seen, at the spot where the earth had opened to swallow him up; there, too, he dedicated to our Lady a chapel, for her mercy vouchsafed in Lora's Wood;' and hence the place is still called Elend (mercy)."

The next, and not the least interesting class of Hartz tales, are those which picture in lovely colours the state of lawless outrage and petty violence, as well as the degraded superstition, in which Germany was involved during the 15th and 16th centuries. Upon these we cannot now enter, and can only refer our readers to the traditions concerning the wild hunter Hackel, and the more modern tales of which it became the basis; such as the interesting history of the persecuted Jacob Nimmernüchtern. Among the superstitions of this age is that of which the Brocken, a high mountain in this district, is the scene during Walpurgis tide, i. e. the night of May-day. This has been in some measure rendered classical by the strange introduction of its revelries into Goëthe's drama of Faustus. It has lately been rendered still more familiar by its forming the subject of one of the beautiful outlines of Retsch, for the elucidation of which an indifferent translation of the passages referred to in the plates has lately been put forth, under the modest announcement of "A new Translation of Goethe's Faustus." We give a version of the old legend or ballad current on the spot, not for its merits, but because it is, we believe, the only poetic tradition of the district.

In Thuringen they know full well

A mountain, Brocken hight,
That for full sixteen miles around
Stands towering to the sight.
Saxon and Hess from far and near
That mountain's summit ken,
As high o'er all the hills it soars
Of Hartz and Thuringen.

Thither, as ancient records tells,

In crowds from far and wide,

The witches haste at dead of night
All at Walpurgis tide.

There young and old, the hellish band,
Their wicked gambols play,

For there the devil leads them forth

To hold their holiday.

And there in darksome glens they sport

With dance and revelry,

And goblin spirits bind them close
In spells of grammarie.

For full authority have they,

As learned Clerks have told,

The mightiest of the wizard crew
In bondage strict to hold.

But swift, when at the morning's dawn

They hear the cock's shrill cry,

Away o'er hill and valley deep,

All through the air they hie.

And, fearless, homeward one and all,
Each to his cell they fly;

There, as we know, they weave their work
Of spells and sorcery.

Here we must end our fire-side excursion into the forest. When we really set out on our travels, there is no spot we shall visit with more pleasant associations; and while our Journal records our rambles from one hill and valley to another, it shall faithfully register the simple and affecting tales of which each is the chronicle. We shall rouse the mountain-echoes with the mighty "hunter of the forest," join in the sports and taste the good wine of the ancient knights, grind our corn (if we have any) at the devil's mill, drown all our cares and tender crosses (if of them too we have any) at the fountain of Lora, and at night look out for shelter in what was once the humble cottage of Peter Claus, unless, indeed, we should be honoured by a ticket of admission to the Imperial court of the Kyffhauser.

THE TRAVELLER.

"Habet enim multum jucunditatis soli cœlique mutatio, ipsaque illa peregrinatio intersita." PLINII EPIST.

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THERE is something exceedingly unpleasant in being obliged to answer No," to a traveller's "Pray, Sir, were you ever abroad?" and to sit mum-chance all the time that he is running over the "grimoire" of outlandish technicalities. For my own part, I am perfectly convinced that man is, par excellence, a travelling animal; and that the Tartar race are the nearest in their habits to the natural and unsophisticated instincts of the untutored species. Philosophers have written largely on the degeneration which has resulted from social institutes, and especially from the establishment of the rights of property; but they have overlooked the great and leading inconvenience attached to the spirit of accumulation, its chaining men down in towns or on farms, checking their migratory propensities, and reducing them from a locomotive existence to the soil-fixed condition of a cabbage. One proof of man's innate disposition to rove, is the curiosity so generally manifested by the sedentary part of the world, and the respect it pays to those who, having broken through local ties, have explored remote and distant countries, and return to their native cities to communicate the results of their experience, and “ prate of their whereabouts" in return for a good dinner and a bottle of claret. From my carliest youth I was deeply affected by the honours and attentions with which travellers are received at the fire-side of home-bred families; and I never heard a man say he had visited a country-town to which I was a stranger, without a sense of inferiority that made me seriously uneasy. Having neglected to avail myself of the short peace to visit France under the Consulate, I felt a mortal aversion for all who had been more fortunate than myself; and, for some years after the breaking out of the war, I scrupulously abstained from all society where such persons frequented,

Being, however, thus "pent up in Utica," and unable to reach the Continent, I did not give way to despair; but, cutting my coat according to my cloth, I indulged my itch for travelling by visiting the principal places of notoriety in our own islands, and became an extensive home tourist. While yet a boy, I had laid a basis for my future peregrinations, by making the grand tour of the esculent topography of London. I ate fish at Billingsgate, whitebait at Greenwich, eel-pies at the aits at Brentford, and roastpig in Porridge-island. I smoked at the cider-cellar, drank Burton-ale in Gray's-inn-lane, got oysters at Wright's, and the best salads and beef à-la-mode at the Thirteen Cantons in the Seven Dials. Every Sunday I pushed my discoveries through the principal environs of the metropolis, and made myself acquainted with the most celebrated inns and ordinaries within twenty miles of "the great city;" so that I might boast of being able to give an opinion of all that had acquired a name from "Mother Red Cap's" and the very ancient "Three Pigeons" at Brentford, (which subsisted in the days of Ben Jonson,) to the "Star and Garter" at Richmond, and the "Bush" at Staines.

In one lucky summer I made the passage to Gravesend by sea, and travelled by land to be present at an Eton montem, dining at Salt-Hill, and walking in the evening on the terrace at Windsor with our then gracious sovereign, King George the Third. But if the world was not field enough for the ambition of Alexander, it is easy to conceive that my appetite for travel, growing with what it fed upon, was not to be satisfied with so circumscribed a sphere of action. Fortunately at this time Margate-hoys began to be the vogue. I was enabled to move en avant, and make my way even to the sea-shore. Oh! how my heart bounded with delight in setting out upon this expedition! With how contemptuous an indifference I passed by the Hospital at Greenwich! with what joy I beheld expanding Thames assume the extent and unsteadiness of its kindred sea! How delighted I was to be sea-sick! How enraptured I listened to the ceaseless flow of narrative, which the steersman poured forth from the helm, touching his voyages in whalers and Indiamen! On landing at Margate I almost fancied myself at Calcutta. The master of the ceremonies was, to my heated imagination, another Grand Turk, and the bathing machines more foreign and strange than the bucentaur at Venice.

On returning from this trip, I gave myself great airs among my City friends: I talked learnedly of the Reculvers, not unfrequently alluded to the Cinque Ports, was at home when Deal was introduced into conversation, had much to say concerning smugglers, and hit off a shipwreck on the Goodwin's to the life. Having on this occasion surveyed the coast of Kent, I made one successful expedition to Brighton and Worthing; and by a call of