prosperous and secure, to me, far more interesting condition.

In this latter perambulation, then, Thady, it was my good fortune to be companioned with one of the foremost of the band of worthies which Scotland has given nto art. One, under whose conduct it was impossible to pass any thing admirable, unseeing, or look on, uninstructed; whose imagination seems equally regulated by truth, whether gaily luxuriating amongst the groves of the Bachtcha serai, or darkly brooding over the bleak muir of Maugus, where the Covenant was irrevocably sealed in the best blood of the hierarchy.

I stood in the chamber of Mary Stuart in Holyrood; rested by her very bed, in the warm early sunbeams, streaming full in at the same window through which her bright eyes had so often greeted them. Truly, Thady, one has need here of all the sun's warmth, for the place has but a chilly effect, backed by the recollection of the deeds enacted therein. I almost fancied, as the tapestry was lifted, and the low door heavily opened on the dark stairhead by which the murderers of Rizzio entered, that I had a glimpse of old Ruthven's scowling brows, blackened by the iron shade of his helmet; close to the door is the little closet where the Queen and the Countess of Argyle supped in company with the gentle musician. It is not above fifteen feet long, by twelve broad, and with the addition of the ruffians who burst in upon that happy party, must have been as fearfully filled as ever was the like space in any land or time. What has romance, my dear Thady, to offer, equal in horror to a tale like this, of whose verity such fearful evidences, such speaking proofs, yet exist to harrow up the blood, and make the looker-on wish for free breathing space, with his lungs panting, and his heart thumping against his ribs, as if himself under the very gripe of the noble bravoes, who so basely outraged nature, and disgraced true chivalry!

Faith, Thady, the envied privileges

of a lady's favourite were held by a desperate tenure in those days. The sword, film-sustained, was ever ripe for a fall; and, as poor Rizzio found, even the person of the sovereign was no safe shield, opposed to the will of such subjects, whose ears were as ears of adders to the commands of the Queen; their hearts, as hearts of marble to the tears of the woman.

In the Duke of Hamilton's apart. ments are some interesting portraits. One of Darnley, loutish, small-eyed, and brutal, affording no trace of that beauty for which he was remarkable. A smaller one of Mary, bearing every mark of authenticity. The features petite and regular; and the lines betraying the heaviness of mid-age, with a tendency to fat. Here, however, a likeness of our James the Second drew more largely on my notice than any other; it was most likely placed here by himself, when, as Duke of York, he held at Holyrood the most brilliant court probably that Scotland ever boasted, and won "golden opinions" from all sorts of people, laying the broad foundations of a love, which, cleaving to his ill-fated descendants, cost Scotland much of her best blood. It is impossible for the least imaginative person to look upon this portrait, and not marvel at the turn of fortune's wheel, which makes the once master of St Germain's a twice exiled lodger in the palace of the once master of Holyrood.

Anthony's Chapel was the next point I made; and in walking to it, I was truly surprised by the deep solitude into which five minutes plunges one. Look towards the city, and every object bespeaks the refinement of culture and civilisation; turn your back, and all is uncultured, natural, and savage. You might as well be in a desert: not a sound, not a soul; not a sign of husbandry, not a domestic animal within ken; dark glens and rocky heights stretch in unbroken lines as far as the sight can penetrate. The ruined Chapel only speaks of man, and looking on this, you might fancy it the mouldering altar of some Cenobite of the wilderness, and yourself the first modern discoverer.

of

THE traveller who looks for wonders always turns his face to the south. There he first finds among the Swiss hills, romance, and the Ranz de vaches. Still onward he finds Roman ruins, Etruscan fragments, the dust of the Scipios, and the living Lazaroni. Still onward, if he has the hardihood, which Horace professes that he had not, he throws himself and his curiosity on board a sparonaro, rests on his oars in the centre of the Bay of Naples, drinks in sea-air and sunshine, discovers that the sky "never produced such a sun before," nor the breeze filled his organization with such a superfluity aromas; and lingers there, sketching Vesuvius in his portfolio, recording his raptures in his tablets, or describing the undescribable, until he catches the night dew, which, to a novice, is as fatal as a cannon shot; or is carried out of the bay by the current that insidiously steals round Capræa, and finds himself at once in breakers, in the dark, and in the hands of a rowboat full of Algerines. All this many a Roman lover has enjoyed within the course of his first Neapolitan twelve hours; and all this he may enjoy still, notwithstanding the presence of General Savary and his French heroes in the ancient seat of the Dey. Piracy is too native to the Algerine, to be eradicated by even the vigor ous surveillance of the first police officer of Napoleon himself. The Algerines still launch their rowboats, sweep across the glassy Mediterranean, float along the Italian shores, and carry off priests and princesses in the original style. Whether the French braves are cognizant of this revival of the national habits, is not clear. But France is a nation of such infinite good-breeding, that, while it uniformly respected the manners of its allies in America too much to prevent them from roasting or eating each other, whenever they thought proper, we can scarcelyconceive that its legislators, who still honour the slave-trade, and its warriors, who wither in the fires of a land of the most intolerable sunshine and merciless ennui, that ever made

Frenchmen miserable, would altogether extinguish the only intercourse with European faces, which visits his soul with a recollection of human nature.

The more profound traveller pushes still to the south; mounts a camel, breakfasts with the Bashaw of Benin; is robbed by the majesty of the Mandingoes; is bastinadoed, flogged, starved and dungeoned, by a relay of kings, at every five miles, until he reaches the "empire of Timbuctoo;" finds, as usual, that there is no empire; gets a coup de soleil; finds his liver Bulamized, his pulses in the black fever; lives just long enough to see himself robbed to the last scrap of his journal and his wardrobe, and thus bequeathing his example to a posterity whom he is sure of finding blockheads enough to emulate his absurdity, and long to share a shred of his fame.

On setting out upon my travels, I neither looked for wonders, nor turned my horse's head to the south. My way was to the north, where I had some concerns of both study and business with St Petersburgh. I went through Mecklenburgh, famous for the best-humoured people and the worst highways in the world; and after seeing the Sovereign Prince and the other curiosities of the place, I followed the shore of the Baltic, through Pomerania, and in due time passed through Wismar, renowned for the best beer in Germany, and reached Rostock, equally renowned for having the worst; two characteristics which go a prodigious length in the land of the Cimbri and Teutones.

But Rostock had better things for me than its beer. I there found my excellent friend, Major Von Hermand, with whom I had made half a dozen campaigns in the Lichenstein hussars, in the Napoleon wars, and who, after gaining honours and wounds in very different proportion, had retired Major from the service of Mars to matrimony, and was now husband of a handsome Mecklenburgher, and father of a little corporal's guard of boys and girls.

My old Major welcomed me with soldierly hospitality; but it was soon clear enough that the household was in some state of confusion. And when we were left to take our bottle of Rhenish after supper, the story came out in the shape of a reluctant apology for the necessity of leaving me next morning. "The awkwardness of this breach of good fellowship is increased," said he, " by my being scarcely able to say where I am going, or for what object. But the truth is, that I think my family have been grossly insulted in the person of one of my sisters by an adventurer, as I pronounce him, but by a sort of angel in disguise, as all the women here have resolved, with one voice, including my unlucky sister, who took him for better for worse a year ago, and who will now probably have time enough to repent of relying on the plausible tongue, of what I must acknowledge to have been a very showy scoundrel."

"Where did he come from?" was my question.

"Oh, from Berlin, of course," was the answer; "all our Cupids in the north come from the German Paris." "His name?"-"Steinfort-a good travelling name. He gave himself out for a Captain in the Zieten hussars; knew every body every where received perpetual letters with fine names on them-talked as if he had been presented in every court of Europe-spoke half-a-dozen languages-fiddled, fluted, and sang, till he drew all the brains out of the women's heads; and when he led my sister to church, was reported to have left, I can't tell how many hundreds of our belles in a state of despair."

"But how went on the matrimonial year?" I asked.-" Nothing could be better," was the reply; "all adoration for the first month, as is the etiquette. Then came fondness; friendship followed; every thing was done with the regularity of a master of the whole ceremonial. Then came paternity; a new revival of his raptures; never was father fondernever was infant so caressed-never was wife so worshipped. It must be owned that the fellow performed his part to perfection."

"But the explosion, the catastrophe-How did they occur?" said I." That I can scarcely tell," said

the Major. "He received a letter by an odd-looking courier about a fortnight ago, and from that time he became prodigiously fond of staying at home. His wife at length urged him out, for the mere benefit of a morning's shooting in the fir groves round the town. He suffered himself to be persuaded; took his gun and his dog, and from that time to this no soul in Rostock has seen his face. The dog came duly home, the gun was found in the wood, but the sportsman was gone. We were about to send out our people to scour the country, but the knave, not to be deficient in politeness to the last, contrived, how I know not, to dispatch a letter to his unfortunate wife, apologizing, with the grace of a Berlin coxcomb, for the delay of his return, stating some nonsense about business, &c., promising that he should 'throw himself at her feet at the earliest opportunity, and in fact clapping his wings, and quitting his wife and the country for life, I suppose. There is the fellow's billet-doux. Itsmells so confoundedly of perfumes that I cannot bear to touch it. See if you can make any thing more of it than we can."

His note was produced; it had all the guilt of the perfumes strong upon it; but it was an eloquent, and, as I should have conceived, a strikingly sincere performance. It was long, and seemed to have been written under great depression of mind; but there was evidently some story in the matter which the writer had not the power to disclose. "And your journey is to find the letterwriter?" I asked. "I know of nothing else to be done," was the answer. "On gathering up a few scraps of his papers, for he seems to have spent all his late retired hours in destroying his correspondence, I found an account of some kind, Swedish, with the Scania postmark, and to Sweden I make my first movement, though probably the fellow is by this time fighting, fiddling, or marrying, among the heroes and heroines of South America."

For my part, I had nothing better to do in my three months' leave from my regiment; Sweden was new to me, and I might as well go there as any where else; I had also seen the bright eyes and pale cheeks of

the deserted wife; gallantry, novelty, and old friendship, were all engaged in the affair: I offered to accompany Von Hermand; and my offer, after some deprecatory civilities, was accepted.

Between soldiers who have stood the fire of a French battery together, there is not much ceremony; and the hussar, who is a wild man by profession, and sleeps oftener in a bush than a bed, seldom requires much preparation. Von Hermand and I were accordingly on horseback by six the next morning, and, with a pair of stout valets, if not very accomplished ones, they being old dragoons who had received their discharge and retired with the Major, we galloped off, followed by prayers, sighs, and tears enough to have wafted an army of crusaders.

Pomerania is, as but few of the world know, excepting the Baltic smugglers, a rough country, though as flat as a Tartar's face; its roughness consisting in roads axle-deep; in a most prodigious fertility of thorns and thistles, and in, I think, an unrivalled scorn of all civility among its people. I am not ultraaristocrat, but heaven defend me from eating, drinking, or sleeping, from living or dying, among a nation of peasants! After having tried the towns, from Demmin to Usedom, and being half starved in them all, our next experiment was the country. Here we had the barbarism of manners, united to the barbarism of solitude. And here we might have roved till the great day which finishes all things, without getting a civil word, or an ounce of white bread. The Major was beginning, I saw, to be rather weary of the adventure. The valets, honest fellows as they were, were all but in a state of mutiny; nothing but my military adroitness in supplying them with double rations of tobacco, on the first symptoms of discontent, could have prevented them from dropping the reins on their chargers' necks; which would, in that case, have inevitably turned their heads home. But what German, from the Tyrol to Holstein, could ever resist tobacco, the national ambrosia, the original temptation of the German Eve? They follow ed; I drew up our order of march,

put the Major in the centre, the dragoons in the rearguard, and took upon myself the parts of outpost, vidette, general patrol, and universal purveyor. In this campaigning style we ranged the whole coast of Swedish Pomerania, intending to make our next incursion into the Prussian part of the province, and then regularly proceeding over our human hunting-ground.

From time to time we had re.ceived some of those encouragements to pursue the chase, which, though the most frivolous things imaginable in the sight of common reason, yet, to men embarked in any peculiar pursuit, always seem to give such prodigiously solid encouragement for going on and continuing to be fooled. We seldom attempted to give a hint of our object without finding that shewy swindlers were a commodity rife in the coldest corners of the north; nor described our adventurer, without hearing that his very counterpart had " passed through the town the night before," and was at that moment supposed to be sitting at breakfast, dinner, or supper, at some village within the next half dozen miles. Of course, while we were yet novices, on these occasions we put spurs to our steeds, and had the simple advantage of the exercise for our trouble. It was, however, a season in which a gallop across a wild country might not be reckoned among the severest trials of human philosophy. It was the close of autumn; and the last days of autumn in the north are not to be undervalued beside its finest and fairest hours in the south. Even the weeds put on their robe of colours, the pines and thickets were regally invested with gold and purple, and the skies were all in grand gala. The Baltic is but a salt water lake at best, and in its days undisturbed by Odin and his chariot of the whirlwind, is as fine a mirror for the sunsets and evening stars of the Pole, as the waters of Italy for the hanging forest and the clustering vineyard.

Nature, rich, lovely, and luscious, in the south, is calm, solemn, and superb in the north; but, like the fair sex, she is fair every where: and the eye must be singularly dim that