The next morning, I was true to the hour.  The Professor’s coffee, bread, butter, and eggs were excellent.  Having requested our valet to settle every thing at the inn, and bring the carriage and horses to the door of M. Schweighaeuser by nine o’clock, I took a hearty leave of our amiable and venerable host, accompanied with mutual regrets at the shortness of the visit—­and with a resolution to cultivate an acquaintance so heartily began.  As we got into the carriage, I held up his portrait which Mr. Lewis had taken,[2] and told him “he would be neither out of sight nor out of mind” He smiled graciously—­waved his right hand from the balcony upon which he stood—­and by half-past nine we found the town of Baden in our rear.  I must say that I never left a place, which had so many attractions, with keener regret, and a more fixed determination to revisit it.  That “revisit” may possibly never arise; but I recommend all English travellers to spend a week, at the least, at Baden—­called emphatically, Baden-Baden.  The young may be gratified by the endless amusements of society, in many of its most polished forms.  The old may be delighted by the contemplation of nature in one of her most picturesque aspects, as well as invigorated by the waters which gush in boiling streams from her rocky soil.

I shall not detain you a minute upon the road from Baden to this place; although we were nearly twenty-four hours so detained. Rastadt and Karlsruhe are the only towns worth mentioning in the route.  The former is chiefly distinguished for its huge and tasteless castle or palace—­a sort of Versailles in miniature; and the latter is singularly pleasing to an Englishman’s eye, from the trim and neat appearance of the houses, walks, and streets; which latter have the footpaths almost approaching to our pavement.  You enter and quit the town through an avenue of lofty and large stemmed poplars, at least a mile long.  The effect, although formal, is pleasing.  They were the loftiest poplars which I had ever beheld.  The churches, public buildings, gardens, and streets (of which latter the principal is a mile long) have all an air of tidiness and comfort; although the very sight of them is sufficient to freeze the blood of an antiquary.  There is nothing, apparently, more than ninety-nine years old!  We dined at Karlsruhe, and slept at Schweiberdingen, one stage on this side of Stuttgart:  but for two or three stages preceding Stuttgart, we were absolutely astonished at the multitude of apple-trees, laden, even to the breaking down of the branches, with goodly fruit, just beginning to ripen:  and therefore glittering in alternate hues of red and yellow—­all along the road-side as well as in private gardens.  The vine too was equally fruitful, and equally promising of an abundant harvest.