But why do I talk of monastic delights only in contemplation?  I have realized them.  I have paced the cloisters of St. Peter’s, the mother-convent of Austria:  have read inscriptions, and examined ornaments, upon tombstones, of which the pavement of these cloisters is chiefly composed:  have talked bad Latin with the principal, and indifferently good French with the librarian—­have been left alone in the library—­made memoranda, or rather selected books for which a valuable consideration has been proposed—­and, in short, fancied myself to be thoroughly initiated in the varieties of the Bavarian and Austrian characters.  Indeed, I have almost the conceit to affirm that this letter will be worth both postage and preservation.

Let me “begin at the beginning.”  On leaving Munich, I had resolved upon dining at Freysingen, or Freysing; as well to explore the books of Mr. Mozler, living there—­and one of the most “prying” of the bibliopolistic fraternity throughout Germany—­as to examine, with all imaginable attention, the celebrated Church to which a monastery had been formerly attached—­and its yet more celebrated Crypt.  All my Munich friends exhorted me to descend into this crypt; and my curiosity had been not a little sharpened by the lithographic views of it (somewhat indifferently executed) which I had seen and purchased at Munich.  Some of my Munich friends considered the crypt of Freysing to be coeval with Charlemagne.  This was, at least, a very romantic conjecture.

The morning was gray and chill, when we left the Schwartzen Adler; but as we approached Garching, the first stage, the clouds broke, the sun shone forth, and we saw Freysing, (the second stage) situated upon a commanding eminence, at a considerable distance.  In our way to Garching, the river Iser and the plains of Hohenlinden lay to the right; upon each of which, as I gazed, I could not but think alternately of MOREAU and CAMPBELL.  You will readily guess wherefore.  The former won the memorable battle of Hohenlinden—­fought in the depth of winter—­by which the Austrians were completely defeated, and which led to the treaty of Luneville:  and the latter (that is, our Thomas Campbell) celebrated that battle in an Ode—­of which I never know how to speak in sufficient terms of admiration:  an ode, which seems to unite all the fire of Pindar with all the elegance of Horace; of which, parts equal Gray in sublimity, and Collins in pathos.

We drove to the best, if not the only, Inn at Freysing; and, ordering a late dinner, immediately visited the cathedral;—­not however without taking the shop of Mozler, the bookseller, in our way, and finding—­to my misfortune—­that the owner was absent on a journey; and his sister, the resident, perfectly ignorant of French.  We then ascended towards the cathedral, which is a comparatively modern building; at least every thing above ground is of that description.  The CRYPT, however, more than answered my expectations.  I should have no hesitation in calling it perfectly unique; as I have neither seen, nor heard, nor read of any thing the least resembling it.  The pillars, which support the roof, have monsters crawling up their shafts—­devouring one another, as one sees them in the margins of the earlier illuminated MSS.