476 ANNUAL REGISTER, 1818. 



sides of the mountains immedi- 

 ately round are laid out in shrub- 

 bery walks, with seats and sum- 

 mer-houses, from which one 

 catches a view of the village be- 

 neath, and, through the opening 

 of the valley, of the wide plain 

 of the Rhine. 



A fortnight ago I spent a de- 

 lightful day at Aucrbach, in com- 

 pany with a party of agreeable 

 friends. The chamberlain of the 

 Count lent us the keys of the 

 court buildings, in which we en- 

 joyed a merry pic-nic dinner. 



No traveller who passes tlie 

 Berg-strasse should omit explor- 

 ing the beauties of Auerbach — . 

 one of its most picturesque vil- 

 lages. The neat white church, 

 with its slated spire, stands on a 

 little grassy ledge, on one of the 

 vineyard mountains that overhang 

 the village. The mountain on the 

 other side rises more boldly — 

 covered half way up with vines 

 trained with the greatest care, 

 and crowned by a thick copse and 

 beech wood, out of which rise the 

 tall towers, and battlemented 

 ruins of Auerbach castle. The 

 castle, which tradition says was 

 built by Charlemagne, was, in 

 later days, the residence of the 

 counts of Catzenellenbogen, whose 

 territory came by marriage to the 

 Landgraves of Hesse Darmstadt. 

 The ruin is still black from the 

 storming by the French in the 

 last war. It resembles in archi- 

 tecture and situation those which 

 abound in the neighbourhood. 

 Tall round turrets, so thin as to 

 have the appearance of columns 

 at a distance, with a battlemented 

 head, sometimes round, sometimes 

 octangular, are the most pictur- 

 esque and perfect parts of the 



ruin. Almost every raountain on 

 the Berg-strasse, and many of 

 those in the Odenwald, are 

 crowned by one of these relics of 

 the da^^s of knighthood, wliich, 

 embosomed in the woods of beech, 

 or surrounded by vineyards, adds 

 the interest of its associations to 

 the charm of the landscape. 



We slept at Auerbach, at a 

 good inn — the scene of a grand 

 assembly every Sunday evening 

 of the Dadauds of Darmstadt and 

 the beaux and belles of the whole 

 neighbourhood — at which waltz- 

 ing and smoking are the never- 

 failing resources. 



Passing once on a Sunday 

 evening, the windows were open, 

 and the whole house appeared 

 alive. I descended and walked 

 up stairs — the saloon was one 

 cloud of smoke — some fiddlers 

 were playing in the little gallery 

 above, and twenty or thirty couple 

 of almost all ages, dresses, and 

 ranks, excepting the very low and 

 the very high, were in full whirl 

 to a quick waltz ; while several 

 couples were reposing from their 

 exertions in the windows — the 

 men wiping their faces and puffing 

 tobacco; the belles adjusting their 

 drooping curls. The first person 

 I saw was a little Pastor, whom I 

 knew, with a pipe as long as his 

 arm in his mouth — being the 

 walking-stick (convertible, at will, 

 into that indispensable compa- 

 nion) with which he had walked 

 four leagues after service from 

 his cure, to celebrate Sunday 

 evening, according to the German 

 manner. The fondness for the 

 pleasures of these assemblies some- 

 times even gets the better of that 

 aristocratic decorum for wliich 

 the higher Germans arc remark- 

 able ; 



