St. Gilgen was also interesting to me from that beautiful chapter in “Hyperion”—­“Footsteps of Angels,”—­and on passing the church on my way back to the inn, I entered the graveyard mentioned in it.  The green turf grows thickly over the rows of mounds, with here and there a rose planted by the hand of affection, and the white crosses were hung with wreaths, some of which had been freshly laid on.  Behind the church, under the shade of a tree, stood a small chapel,—­I opened the unfastened door, and entered.  The afternoon sun shone through the side window, and all was still around.  A little shrine, adorned with flowers, stood at the other end, and there were two tablets on the wall, to persons who slumbered beneath, I approached these and read on one of them with feelings not easily described:  “Look not mournfully into the past—­it comes not again; wisely improve the present—­it is thine; and go forward to meet the shadowy future, without fear, and with a manly heart!” This then was the spot where Paul Flemming came in loneliness and sorrow to muse over what he had lost, and these were the words whose truth and eloquence strengthened and consoled him, “as if the unknown tenant of the grave had opened his lips of dust and spoken those words of consolation his soul needed.”  I sat down and mused a long time, for there was something in the silent holiness of the spot, that impressed me more than I could well describe.

We reached a little village on the Fuschel See, the same evening, and set off the next morning for Salzburg.  The day was hot and we walked slowly, so that it was not till two o’clock that we saw the castellated rocks on the side of the Gaissberg, guarding the entrance to the valley of Salzburg.  A short distance further, the whole glorious panorama was spread out below us.  From the height on which we stood, we looked directly on the summit of the Capuchin Mountain, which hid part of the city from sight; the double peak of the Staufen rose opposite, and a heavy storm was raging along the Alpine heights around it, while the lovely valley lay in sunshine below, threaded by the bright current of the Salza.  As we descended and passed around the foot of the hill, the Untersberg came in sight, whose broad summits lift themselves seven thousand feet above the plain.  The legend says that Charlemagne and his warriors sit in its subterraneous caverns in complete armor, and that they will arise and come forth again, when Germany recovers her former power and glory.

I wish I could convey in words some idea of the elevation of spirit experienced while looking on these eternal mountains.  They fill the soul with a sensation of power and grandeur which frees it awhile from the cramps and fetters of common life.  It rises and expands to the level of their sublimity, till its thoughts stand solemnly aloft, like their summits, piercing the free heaven.  Their dazzling and imperishable beauty is to the mind an image of its own enduring