As I walked across the Main, and looked down at the swift stream on its way from the distant Thuringian forest to join the Rhine, I thought of the time when Schiller stood there in the days of his early struggles, an exile from his native land, and looking over the bridge, said in the loneliness of his heart, “That water flows not so deep as my sufferings!” In the middle, on an iron ornament, stands the golden cock at which Goethe used to marvel when a boy.  Perhaps you have not heard the legend connected with this.  The bridge was built several hundred years ago, with such strength and solidity that it will stand many hundred yet.  The architect had contracted to build it within a certain time, but as it drew near, without any prospect of fulfilment, the devil appeared to him and promised to finish it, on condition of having the first soul that passed over it.  This was agreed upon end the devil performed his part of the bargain.  The artist, however, on the day appointed, drove a cook across before he suffered any one to pass over it.  His majesty stationed himself under the middle arch of the bridge, awaiting his prey; but enraged at the cheat, he tore the unfortunate fowl in pieces and broke two holes in the arch, saying they should never be built up again.  The golden cock was erected on the bridge as a token of the event, but the devil has perhaps lost some of his power in these latter days, for the holes were filled up about thirty years ago.

From the hills on the Darmstadt road, I had a view of the country around—­the fields were white and bare, and the dark Tannus, with the broad patches of snow on his sides, looked grim and shadowy through the dim atmosphere.  It was like the landscape of a dream—­dark, strange and silent.  The whole of last month we saw the sun but two or three days, the sky being almost continually covered with a gloomy fog.  England and Germany seem to have exchanged climates this year, for in the former country we had delightfully clear weather.

I have seen the banker Rothschild several times driving about the city.  This one—­Anselmo, the most celebrated of the brothers—­holds a mortgage on the city of Jerusalem.  He rides about in style, with officers attending his carriage.  He is a little bald-headed man, with marked Jewish features, and is said not to deceive his looks.  At any rate, his reputation is none of the best, either with Jews or Christians.  A caricature was published some time ago, in which he is represented as giving a beggar woman by the way-side, a kreutzer—­the smallest German coin.  She is made to exclaim, “God reward you, a thousand fold!” He immediately replies, after reckoning up in his head:  “How much have I then?—­sixteen florins and forty kreutzers!”