of the Cesars, resting on the escutcheons of Bavaria and the Palatinate.  Over the windows and door-ways and chimney-pieces, are sculptures and mouldings of exquisite workmanship; and the eyeis bewildered by the profusion of caryatides, and arabesques, and rosettes, and fan-like flutings, and garlands of fruits and flowers and acorns, and bullocks’-heads with draperies of foliage, and muzzles of lions, holding rings in their teeth.  The cunning hand of Art was busy for six centuries, in raising and adorning these walls; the mailed hands of Time and War have defaced and overthrown them in less than two.  Next to the Alhambra of Granada, the Castle of Heidelberg is the most magnificent ruin of the Middle Ages.

In the valley below flows the rushing stream of the Neckar.  Close from its margin, on the opposite side, rises the Mountain of All Saints, crowned with the ruins of a convent; and up the valley stretches the mountain-curtain of the Odenwald.  So close and many are the hills, which eastward shut the valley in, that the river seems a lake.  But westward it opens, upon the broad plain of the Rhine, like the mouth of a trumpet; and like the blast of a trumpet is at times the wintry wind through this narrow mountain pass.  The blue Alsatian hills rise beyond; and, on a platform or strip of level land, between the Neckar and the mountains, right under the castle, stands the city of Heidelberg; as the old song says, “a pleasant city, when it has done raining.”

Something of this did Paul Flemming behold, when he rose the next morning and looked from his window.  It was a warm, vapory morning, and a struggle was going on between the mist and the rising sun.  The sun had taken the hill-tops, but the mist still kept possession of the valley and the town.  The steeple of the great church rose through a dense mass of snow-white clouds; and eastward, on the hills, the dim vapors were rolling across the windows of the ruined castle, like the fiery smoke of a great conflagration.  It seemed to him an image of the rising of the sun of Truth on a benighted world; its light streamed through the ruins of centuries; and, down in the valley of Time, the cross on the Christian church caught its rays, though the priests were singing in mist and darkness below.

In the warm breakfast-parlour he found the Baron, waiting for him.  He was lying upon a sofa, in morning gown and purple-velvet slippers, both with flowers upon them.  He had a guitar in his hand, and a pipe in his mouth, at the same time smoking, playing, and humming his favorite song from Goethe;

“The water rushed, the water swelled,

A fisher sat thereby.”