mile in a belt of wood a few rods wide, and may fancy himself in a park of two thousand acres.  Ten years would suffice to bring such a promenade to perfection, and yet nothing like it exists in all America!  One can surely smoke cigars, drink Congress water, discuss party politics, and fancy himself a statesman, whittle, clean his nails in company and never out of it, swear things are good enough for him without having known any other state of society, squander dollars on discomfort, and refuse cents to elegance and convenience, because he knows no better, and call the obliquity of taste patriotism, without enjoying a walk in a wood by the side of a murmuring rill!  He may, beyond dispute, if such be his sovereign pleasure, do all this, and so may an Esquimaux maintain that whale’s blubber is preferable to beefsteaks.  I wonder that these dogged and philosophical patriots do not go back to warlocks, scalps, and paint!

The town of Wiesbaden, like all German towns of any consequence I have ever been in, Cologne excepted, is neat and clean.  It is also well-built, and evidently improving.  You may have heard a good deal of the boulevards and similar places of resort, in the vicinity of French towns, but as a whole, they are tasteless and barren-looking spots.  Even the Champs Elysees, at Paris, have little beauty of themselves, for landscape gardening is but just introduced into France; whereas, to me, it would seem that the Germans make more use of it, in and near their towns, than the English.

We left Wiesbaden next morning, after enjoying its baths, and went slowly up to Frankfort on the Maine, a distance of about twenty miles.  Here we took up our old quarters at the White Swan, a house of a second-rate reputation, but of first-rate civility, into which chance first threw me; and, as usual, we got a capital dinner and good wine.  The innkeeper, in honour of Germany, caused a dish, that he said was national and of great repute, to be served to us pilgrims.  It was what the French call a jardiniere, or a partridge garnished with cabbage, carrots, turnips, etc.

I seized the opportunity to put myself au courant of the affairs of the world, by going to one of the reading-rooms, that are to be found all over Germany, under the names of Redoutes, Casinos, or something of that sort.  Pipes appear to be proscribed in the casino of Frankfort, which is altogether a genteel and respectable establishment.  As usual, a stranger must be introduced.

LETTER XIV.

Boulevards of Frankfort.—­Political Disturbances in the town.—­Le petit Savoyard.—­Distant glimpse of Homberg.—­Darmstadt.—­The Bergestrasse.—­Heidelberg.—­Noisy Market-place.—­The Ruins and Gardens.—­An old Campaigner.—­Valley of the Neckar.—­Heilbronn.—­Ludwigsberg.—­Its Palace.—­The late Queen of Wurtemberg.—­The Birthplace of Schiller.—­Comparative claims of Schiller and Goethe.—­Stuttgart.—­Its Royal Residences.—­The Princess of Hechingen.—­German Kingdoms.—­The King and Queen of Wurtemberg.—­Sir Walter Scott.—­Tubingen.—­Ruin of a Castle of the middle ages.—­Hechingen.—­Village of Bahlingen.—­The Danube.—­The Black Forest.—­View from a mountain on the frontier of Baden.—­Enter Switzerland.