78 LIFE OF THE AUTHOR. 



berg, a pair of ravens came and soared over my head, and exercised 

 their various aerial evolutions for more than an hour, and then 

 winged their flight towards the Ardennes. As I watched their 

 risings and their lowerings, home rushed on my imagination, and 

 I bethought me of the rascally cobbler who desecrated the Sunday 

 morning by robbing the last raven's nest in this vicinity. A willow 

 wren, larger, and of brighter colours than our own, sang sweetly, 

 although the season was far advanced ; and the black redstart was 

 for ever flitting from stone to stone on the ruined walls of 

 the hotel, which had been consumed by fire during the preceding 

 year. 



"The sun had now descended into the southern world; whilst 

 the winds of autumn drove the falling leaves before them, and 

 showed us that it was time to leave the cloudy atmosphere of 

 Rhenish Prussia. The Rhine too, had but few of its summer 

 beauties left, although we found at Strasburg a warmer sun than 

 what we had expected. Indeed, it was here that old Boreas gave 

 up the pursuit ; for, had it not been that we encountered a keen and 

 cutting wind as we approached the summit of the Splugen, we should 

 have enjoyed, all the way from Strasburg, the genial warmth of a mild 

 and sunny autumn. 



"At Freyburg, where we passed a couple of days, the climate was 

 truly delicious ; and as the vintage had only just commenced on the 

 day of our arrival there, all was joy, festivity, and mirth. There was 

 a German waiter at the hotel, of extraordinary talent for acquiring 

 languages; he said he had never been in England, nor much 

 amongst Englishmen, but that he had written a description in Eng- 

 lish poetry of their own cathedral. On saying this, he offered me 

 a little pamphlet, containing an excellent engraving of that superb 

 edifice, by way of frontispiece. As I looked over the pages, I found 

 in their contents matter much superior to anything that I could have 

 expected from the pen of a German waiter at an inn. Having com- 

 plimented him on the successful study of a language by no means of 

 easy acquisition even to a native, I paid him the price which he had 

 asked for his work, and I put it in my portmanteau for future inves- 

 tigation ; but it now lies in the wreck of the Pollux at the bottom of 

 the Mediterranean Sea. 



