In rambling through the eastern provinces of Bavaria, some few springs ago, I chanced to arrive one glowing afternoon at the post-house of an inconsiderable town; which, from the grass-grown tranquillity of its streets, and from a peculiar air of self-oblivion, appeared to be basking fast asleep in the sunshine.  There was little to admire in the common-place character of its site, or the narrow meanness of its distribution; yet there was something peculiar in its look of dreamy non-identity; and had it not been for the smiling faces of the fair-haired Bavarian girls, who were to be seen glancing here and there, with their embroidered purple bodices and coifs, and silver-chained stomachers, I could believe myself to have reached some enchanted realm of forgetfulness.

As I entered the Platz, or market-square, of the little town, chiefly with a view to the nearer inspection of the cunning workmanship of the aforesaid carcanets of silver, a light sprinkling of April rain began to moisten the pavement—­one of those unheard, unseen, revivifying showers, which weep the earth into freshness, and the buds into maturity.  I was anxious, however, to withdraw my mere human nature from participation in these herbaceous advantages; and looking about for some shelter which might preserve me from the mischiefs of the shower, without depriving me of its refreshing fragrance, I espied in the centre of the Platz—­a square of no mighty area—­a low, rotunda-like building, with slated roof, overhanging and resting upon wooden pillars, so as to form a sort of covered walk.

I settled with myself that this was the market-house of the town, and hastened to besiege so desirable a city of refuge.  But during my rapid approach, I observed that the external walls of the nameless edifice beneath the arcade were covered, and without a single interstitial interval, by small pictures in oil-colours, equal in size, and equal in demerit, and each and all representing some calamitous crisis of human existence—­a fire, a ship-wreck, a boat-wreck, a battle, a leprosy!  It occurred to me at the same moment, that this gallery of mortal casualties and afflictions must be a collection of votive offerings, and that the seeming market-house was, probably, a shrine of especial sanctity.  And so it was!—­the shrine of “The Black Lady of Altenoetting.”

Instigated by somewhat more than a traveller’s vague curiosity, I entered the chapel; the brilliancy of which, eternally illuminated by the reflection of a profusion of silver lamps upon the thousand precious objects which decorate the walls, forms a startling contrast with the dim shadows of the external arcade.  In most cases, the entrance to a religious edifice impresses the mind with a consciousness of vastness, and a sensation of awe:—­

“------the tombs
And monumental caves of death look cold,
And strike an aching dullness to the breast.”

But the chapel of the Black Virgin is diminutive as a boudoir, and yet retains the usual character of listening and awful stillness, the ordinary impression of local sanctity.  A few peasants were seen kneeling in utter immobility and self-abstraction beneath a lamp, which seemed to issue in a crimson flame from a colossal two-fold silver heart, suspended from the ceiling—­their untutored minds were elevated into the belief of a heavenly commune.