From a hill twelve miles off we had our first view of the spires of Munich, looking like distant ships over the sea-like plain.  They kept in sight till we arrived at eight o’clock in the evening, after a walk of more than thirty miles.  We crossed the rapid Isar on three bridges, entered the magnificent Isar Gate, and were soon comfortably quartered in the heart of Munich.

Entering the city without knowing a single soul within it, we made within a few minutes an agreeable acquaintance.  After we passed the Isar Gate, we began looking for a decent inn, for the day’s walk was very fatiguing.  Presently a young man, who had been watching us for some time, came up and said, if we would allow him, he would conduct us to a good lodging-place.  Finding we were strangers, he expressed the greatest regret that he had not time to go with us every day around the city.  Our surprise and delight at the splendor of Munich, he said, would more than repay him for the trouble.  In his anxiety to show us something, he took us some distance out of the way, (although it was growing dark and we were very tired,) to see the Palace and the Theatre, with its front of rich frescoes.

END OF PART I.

VIEWS A-FOOT; OR EUROPE SEEN WITH KNAPSACK AND STAFF.

BY J. BAYARD TAYLOR.

WITH A PREFACE BY N.P.  WILLIS.

“Jog on, jog on, the foot-path way,
And merrily hent the stile-a;
A merry heart goes all the day,
Your sad tires in a mile-a.”

Winter’s Tale.

IN TWO PARTS.

PART II.

CHAPTER XXVI.

MUNICH.

June 14.—­I thought I had seen every thing in Vienna that could excite admiration or gratify fancy; here I have my former sensations to live over again, in an augmented degree.  It is well I was at first somewhat prepared by our previous travel, otherwise the glare and splendor of wealth and art in this German Athens might blind me to the beauties of the cities we shall yet visit.  I have been walking in a dream where the fairy tales of boyhood were realized, and the golden and jeweled halls of the Eastern genii rose glittering around me—­“a vision of the brain no more.”  All I had conceived of oriental magnificence, all descriptions of the splendor of kingly halls and palaces, fall far short of what I here see.  Where shall I begin to describe the crowd of splendid edifices that line its streets, or how give an idea of the profusion of paintings and statues—­of marble, jasper and gold?