I am indebted to Mr. Muller, to whom I was introduced by an acquaintance with his friend, Dr. Rivinus, of West Chester, Pa., for many kind attentions.  He went with us this afternoon to the Jagerhaus, on a mountain near, where we had a very fine view of the city and its great black Minster, with the plain of the Briesgau, broken only by the Kaiserstuhl, a long mountain near the Rhine, whose golden stream glittered in the distance.  On climbing the Schlossberg, an eminence near the city, we met the Grand Duchess Stephanie, a natural daughter of Napoleon, as I have heard, and now generally believed to be the mother of Caspar Hauser.  Through a work lately published, which has since been suppressed, the whole history has come to light.  Caspar Hauser was the lineal descendant of the house of Baden, and heir to the throne.  The guilt of his imprisonment and murder rests, therefore, upon the present reigning family.

A chapel on the Schonberg, the mountain opposite, was pointed out as the spot where Louis XV., if I mistake not, usually stood while his army besieged Freiburg.  A German officer having sent a ball to this chapel which struck the wall just above the king’s head, the latter sent word that if they did not cease firing he would point his cannons at the Minster.  The citizens thought it best to spare the monarch and save the cathedral.

We attended a meeting of the Walhalla, or society of the students who visit the Freiburg University.  They pleased me better than the enthusiastic but somewhat unrestrained Burschenschaft of Heidelberg.  Here, they have abolished duelling; the greatest friendship prevails among the students, and they have not that contempt for every thing philister, or unconnected with their studies, which prevails in other universities.  Many respectable citizens attend their meetings; to-night there was a member of the Chamber of Deputies at Carlsruhe present, who delivered two speeches, in which every third word was “freedom!” An address was delivered also by a merchant of the city, in which he made a play upon the word spear, which signifies also in a cant sense, citizen, find seemed to indicate that both would do their work in the good cause.  He was loudly applauded.  Their song of union was by Charles Follen, and the students were much pleased when I told them how he was honored and esteemed in America.

After two days, delightfully spent, we shouldered our knapsacks and left Freiburg.  The beautiful valley, at the mouth of which the city lies, runs like an avenue for seven miles directly into the mountains, and presents in its loveliness such a contrast to the horrid defile which follows, that it almost deserves the name which has been given to a little inn at its head—­the “Kingdom of Heaven.”  The mountains of the Black Forest enclose it on each side like walls, covered to the summit with luxuriant woods, and in some places with those forests of gloomy pine which give this region its name.  After traversing its whole length, just before plunging into the mountain-depths, the traveler rarely meets with a finer picture than that which, on looking back, he sees framed between the hills at the other end.  Freiburg looks around the foot of one of the heights, with the spire of her cathedral peeping above the top, while the French Vosges grew dim in the far perspective.