"justified" afterwards with extra wood and iron. Behind these nimble gentry trooped the whole Passau-world; the whole cavalcade, band, authorities, horses, jockeys, and public, as whity-gray with dust as a hedge on the Hounslow-road in August. That procession was the thing; for to see the poor bewildered horses urged along the high road for twenty minutes, for a first prize of twenty gulden, was a provocation that the least sporting of John Bull's could hardly bear. What then would the groom of Mrs. Dalkeith Holmes, mentioned in her pleasant "Ride to Florence," who, before starting, desired to be told what was the punishment in case an Englishman thrashed a Frenchman, have said to the whole turn out?

Passau, however, showed other sights which a John's master would regard even less complacently-the drawing of a state lottery, and the announcement of its prizes by drum and trumpet, which mingled oddly with the "point of war" from the stronghold on the opposite side of the stream. The "sporting man is too much thrown in our teeth by foreigners; as if Newmarket and the vale of Aylesbury could not tell of the feats of Matuschevitz, and Sandor and Bathyany-as if Grand Dukes did not allow hells to be advertised as attractions to their brunnen, and paternal monarchs foster so desperate a propensity among the poor as the spirit of gambling. Why we should allow ourselves to be called "a nation of shopkeepers" given to speculation, so long as Nassau and Bavaria and Austria display the sights they do, Common Sense would find it hard to prove. The excitement of enterprise, absolved from the painful condition of labour, pervades every land, save it be Tennyson's island of LotosEaters. But let those who trammel and discourage the honest ambition of the inventive and intelligent, and stir up the strongest passions of indolence, look to it! A crowd of lottery-ticket holders is many steps nearer a Jacquerie or a day of Barricades than a company of railway-share speculators, even if it include persons so unsuitable as the pot-boy and the waterman, whose idyllic dialogue about the state of the markets was the other day so laughably immortalized in "Punch."

So much for another common-place, thrown out flying for the meditation of the summer tourists. The Danube offers no lack of other texts to "point the moral" of its magnificent scenery; and as we have slipped unawares into the moralist's vein, one of these may as well be noted; since to enumerate all the "shows of the stream" would be impossible, and the list is sufficiently well drawn out by Müller and Murray.

Among the attractions which give the Austrian superiority over the Prussian river, in variety, are its monasteries. And in these

days, when Pugins are building up strongholds in St. George's Fields, and when poetesses' sons are taking the vows at Oscott, and when processions and pilgrimages are beginning to get ready their banners and practise their Aves for the thoroughfares of our Protestant island, the record of a recent visit to one of these may perhaps be admitted to possess a grain of value, as well as of entertainment.

For this again we shall draw upon the letters already quoted from. After a description of Linz,-including in its praise the "Hotel to the Archduke Charles," as the English advertisement styles the new traveller's rest," To encourage the military ardours of my companion," continues the writer,

"I went to see the troops turned out for the inspection of the Archduke Charles, who is here. The great square of Linz is not a bad locality for such expositions. A group of folk round a fountain was like the left hand group in the first tableau of La Juive' at Paris, which was one of the finest street pictures I ever saw. There was a little melancholy boy-parcel-tinker, parcel-gipsy-with banks of long hair tumbling over his face, and a round deep-brimmed hat, and coils of wire on his arm-a

Poor little foal of an oppressed race

of tinkers and china-menders. There were a few priests; a large gathering of the beautiful women of Linz; and several picturesque peasant heads to look at. And there were Hungarian troops, all blue and white; and Austrian artillery-men in dark-green and red, each man with a sprig of oak stuck in the pompon of his military cap; and there was Prince Schwartzenberg, and three or four other officers piaffing and caracoling up and down the square; till it seemed, to my ignorant eyes, that generals, not soldiers, were the paraders. And there was God save the Emperor' played as a war-tune, not a hymn, -but superbly played! music to make the heart swell, and the eyes fill (as, I know not why, but military music always will do). And there was The Archduke, a well-looking, courteous man, who walked round the square, to the immense comfort of the bystanders. In short-for the sun was out-the show was a good show. And yet, while I looked on, the thought uppermost in my mind was of that Prince P- I heard so much of in our coronation summer, whose fixed idea was the dressing of leaden dolls for soldiers, and manoeuvring the same; and whose army already amounted to thirty thousand. doubt not he had his troops in better order than even these excellentlydrilled machines. And I remembered what I had heard Count – say of the impoverishment of mind in this country, and how impossible it was for Austria to get her government worked without the aid of strangers-acute and rising Bohemians. These were very ill-timed thoughts for a military spectacle in Linz.

"Well: but mine were somewhat diverted to another subject by a mute witness of the pageant, who stands in a corner of the square all

day long, a sort of Amadis figure, such as you see in Gravelot's illustrations to Theobald's Shakspeare, in a minuet attitude, with a casque and a fluttering kilt, and something very like a Bavarian beer glass in his hand, from which a stone flame (for stream of water) is directed downwards towards a little polygon, just the size and shape of Mistress Vardon's collecting-box for the Protestant cause. It is St. Florian,' said my Panza, who saw that the effigy was interesting me more than the living beings; and he told me how St. Florian was the patron of fire extinguishers, &c. &c. He must then have especially bespoken this dripping summer!

"I had already conceived a languid wish to go to St. Florian's monastery, about seven miles hence; and this served as the last fillip. A fiacre was soon called; and we were on the way.

"For a few miles the way is along the post road to Vienna. At Eversberg you cross the Traun, a sea-green mountain stream, arrowswift, and ill to guide-now swollen by yesterday's cataracts of rain: and there a friendly guide-post warns the pilgrim to turn aside; and the path becomes narrower and more rural, and brings him into as fair a district of its kind as the world has to show. The road ascends slowly, among thickets rather than woods, embanked with sloping edges gay with strange flowers, and every now and then these recede, and make place for meadows, where huge white bullocks are grazing, and which are bordered with cherry, and apple, and pear, and plumtrees, undecayed and in full bearing. The one or two peasants we met were unusually sleek and civil. As we advanced, too, splendid openings were revealed of the hills of the Wienerwald on the one side, and far and blue in the distance on the other were the Salzburg Alps. Such is the way for some three English miles; till at length, after rising an unusually bare sweep of arable land, and turning the corner of a close and thriving wood, which crowns the hill,—the monastery— no, the palace-comes into view.

"A palace, in truth, without any strain of language, is St. Florian's: royal in architecture, royal in the rich serenity and wide scope of the prospect it commands! But these are no hard-working self-macerating monks, look you, who inhabit it. The Chorherren make up more of a college than of a pastorally religious community. Our Fellows of Oxford and Cambridge are also housed in a more lordly wise than the poor parish curates, whose virtue keeps the Church alive! The abode of these sumptuous Austrian clerici was built in the reign of the Emperor Charles the Sixth, by Prandauer of St. Pölten, the Palladio of Austria and whose skill is potent enough to reconcile one to Palladian building in Austria, when, as here, there is no old German work nigh to reprove it.

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Passing the Stifts-Apotheke, and a range of stables, immense enough, like the Foscari palace at Venice, to lodge the train of three kings at once, you enter, by a richly decorated portal, into a hall, and thence by a sumptuous double staircase of exquisite richness and harmony, into corridors paved with marble, stretching away in long perspective; the cielings floridly and boldly stuccoed, and the doors of

the cells-cells, St. Florian bless us! king's chambers rather-of the richest walnut wood, with solid brass locks. Till I saw this place I thought the luxurious and benevolent Austrian canon in Consuelo' one of George Sand's fancy figures. Here is the nest of such. The custos came with the look of a gentleman's valet-a man wearing an embroidered chemise, spotlessly clean (the huge seal ring was a matter of course), and doing the honours of St. Florian's most courteously. First, we must see the refectory, a noble and lofty room, with marble pillars and sumptuous plafonds, only by a little gilding and glass less magnificent than the Galerie des Graces at Versailles. But the side-tables struck me; verily huge ovals of porphyry, supported by grouped cupids, not cherubim. No mortification here! From the window the eye travelled over orchards, and meadows and woods full of game, and square pellucid fish ponds, and gardens rich with vegetables-all St. Florian's property-so that there was no fear of banquet being wanting conformable with banquet room. From the refectory we were shown into some fine rooms, containing a collection of pictures, commanding enchanting views, and the windows filled with stained glass collected from several dilapidated churches, Generally the pictures were rubbish. I thought a few a trifle too anacreontic, very few were scriptural. But some curious specimens of Byzantine art are there; a soi-disant Van Eyck, which may be by one of his scholars, and a nameless series of Calvary pictures, the greater part of which are at Vienna to be repaired. The two we saw are frightfully grim, vigorous and striking. I venture to guess at Hieronymus Bosch as their painter, from a lively remembrance of his hideous Last Judgment' at Berlin. Another series is devoted to St. Florian's beneficences and martyrdom. These also were by an unknown artist of the same date, and had belonged to the older monastery which existed before Prandauer's was built.

"Our poor custos yawned sadly while going through this part of his duty. He cared not a fig for the pictures, and as little for the view without; and to some one's warm expression of admiration replied, that it might be all very true, but he had had enough of the place.' Another part of the building contained the treasure where his heart was; the collections of Natural History. There was no use in beginning with these, even were they (as I suspect hardly the case) worth examining; but we must see the white cuckoo, and the white starling, and the white finch, curiosities on which our guide felicitated himself; and he was half vexed to think that we would see no more, save one treasure I must mention; a landscape hung against the wall, and done entirely in a sort of mosaic of butterflies' wings. This was the work of one of the brethren of St. Florian's, and had cost its artificer only four years. One could bear to think of the world of political strife and busy action after this doleful sight. What ennui, what concentration of attention on most frivolous objects did that coarse looking and dim picture tell of! There might be other machines, I felt, than the blue and white and the red and green ones in the square at Linz!

"From the museums we were led to the chapel. Though I had seen the building, it surprised me by its magnificence. Much, it is true, is left in white wood and stucco, which was meant to be gilt; but the stalls of the choir are there of richly-inlaid walnut wood, and the two organ galleries in the choir are about the richest specimens of carving I ever saw. The third organ, the pride of St. Florian, built by Chrismann, and surpassing even the more famous instrument at Mölk in extent and quality, stands above the grand entrance. But this is only used on high festivals; such as St. Florian's day, May the 4th, when thousands of pilgrims flock to the monastery from the most distant places.

"Our custos became very communicative, charmed by our obvious admiration. We should see his room; and truly many a nobleman's son is worse lodged, the German taste of not furnishing being taken into the account. Sheets of music were lying about, a fiddle, and a pair of drum sticks; his favourite amusement he said was drumming. Was there not a tale here, too, of the intolerable quiet of the place? Some one has said that a run-away Quakeress may be always known by her pink ribbons. But the wanton fellow owned to have had enough of fine scenery, and royal lodging, and dainty clothing, and pleasant fare (N. B. the remains of his dinner, a downy peach and a melting red plum were laid out on a Linz play-bill!) I suspect, were the gates of St. Florian once shut on him, he would sigh many a time and oft, not merely for such base things as the loaves and the fishes, but for the security from vicissitude, and the shelter from the storms which fall the hardest upon middle age, that is, when the resisting force is the greatest."

On visiting Mölk, the better known monastery whose magnificent façade rises like some fantastic Sicilian palace, at the very edge of a rock lower down the Danube, the pilgrim may hear whispers which will abate somewhat of the natural desire which middle-aged gentlemen like the writer of the above may be allowed to feel for ample cells, Sybaritic dinners, a splendid library to read in (as Dr. Dibdin will warrant), richly-carved stalls to pray in, and a land of corn and wine, flowing with milk and honey, to overlook. He will there possibly,-if he fall in, as our friend did, with one of the companionable brotherhood who comes down to drink his beer at "The Ox,”hear of the difficulty of keeping up the numbers of the community, and of finding tenants for even these luxurious retreats from active life. It was from Mölk that Staudigl broke loose, to "witch the world" with his incomparable bass voice. The principal of the Monastery is now a keen mineralogist; and might, had he lived some two centuries ago, have met a narrow chance of sharing the fate of poor Sister Renata, since he retains in his pay "a cunning man," a mixture of Scott's Peter Peebles, and Flibbertigibbet, and Miss Martineau's Daddy Harker, whose