dropping from the woodland cliffs, seen only, but unheard, the fluted columns breaking into mist, and fretted with frequent spires and ornaments of foam, and not unlike the towers of a Gothic church inverted.  There, in one white sheet of foam, the Riechenbach pours down into its deep beaker, into which the sun never shines.  Face to face it beholds the Alpbach falling from the opposite hill, “like a downward smoke.”  When Flemming saw the innumerable runnels, sliding down the mountain-side, and leaping, all life and gladness, he would fain have clasped them in his arms and been their playmate, and revelled withthem in their freedom and delight.  Yet he was weary with the day’s journey, and entered the village of Meyringen, embowered in cherry-trees, which were then laden with fruit, more like a way-worn traveller than an enthusiastic poet.  As he went up the tavern steps he said in his heart, with the Italian Aretino; “He who has not been at a tavern, knows not what a paradise it is.  O holy tavern!  O miraculous tavern! holy, because no carking cares are there, nor weariness, nor pain; and miraculous, because of the spits, which of themselves turn round and round!  Of a truth all courtesy and good manners come from taverns, so full of bows, and Signor, si! and Signor, no!”

But even in the tavern he could not rest long.  The same evening at sunset he was floating on the lake of Brienz, in an open boat, close under the cascade of the Giessbach, hearing the peasants sing the Ranz des Vaches.  He slept that night at the other extremity of the lake, in a large house, which, like Saint Peter’s at Joppa, stood by the water’s side.  The next day he wasted inwriting letters, musing in this green nest, and paddling about the lake again; and in the evening went across the beautiful meadows to Interlachen, where many things happened to him, and detained him long.

CHAPTER III.  INTERLACHEN.

Interlachen!  How peacefully, by the margin of the swift-rushing Aar, thou liest, on the broad lap of those romantic meadows, all overshadowed by the wide arms of giant trees!  Only the round towers of thine ancient cloister rise above their summits; the round towers themselves, but a child’s playthings under the great church-towers of the mountains.  Close beside thee are lakes, which the flowing band of the river ties together.  Before thee opens the magnificent valley of Lauterbrunn, where the cloud-hooded Monk and pale Virgin stand like Saint Francis and his Bride of Snow; and all around thee are fields, and orchards, and hamlets green, from which the church-bells answer each other at evening!  The eveningsun was setting when I first beheld thee!  The sun of life will set ere I forget thee!  Surely it was a scene like this, that inspired the soul of the Swiss poet, in his Song of the Bell!

“Bell! thou soundest merrily,

When the bridal party

To the church doth hie!