BADEN was perfect in its way, and we left reluctantly. We “did” it quite thoroughly—had a six mile drive to the Old Schloss, a fine old ruin, on top of a high hill, with beautiful views of bergs, valleys, and the town.

Then a visit to the New Schloss, one of the residences of the Grand Duke. We were shown through some noble apartments, which I’ll describe to you in detail when we meet. We went to the Trinkhalle and drank some of the streaming water. The others made faces, but I did not find it unpleasant. Then through the great Friedrichsbad, the principal bath-house. I believe it furnishes every kind known to science or desired by either suffering or luxurious humanity. And so on. At Strassburg, the Cathedral with that wonderful clock! “The half has not been told,” and it does not begin to come up to the reality. The way that cock flaps its wings, stretches its neck and crows is enough to make all created cocks die of envy. At St. Thomas Church, with its magnificent monument to Marshal Saxe; and its most singular chapel, containing the bodies of the Duke of Nassau and his daughter—the former embalmed, the latter a slowly crumbling skeleton—both dressed in the very clothes they wore! I cannot imagine a more ghastly and singular spectacle than that of each lying there in an air-tight coffin, the entire top of glass, thus allowing a full view.[B] Yet it was not revolting to me, except as the dead were made a spectacle of. I gazed at them with an equal fascination and reverence. We were much interested in the fortifications, great numbers of soldiers and their drilling.

And we did not fail to indulge in the Strassburg specialty of pates de foie gras. I was reminded of a criticism on a juvenile composition of mine by one who knew how not to withhold the wholesome truth: “Its individuality is not sufficiently palpable.” At Constance we held our “Council,” and the reports from Switzerland being very unfavorable, decided to put it off to a more auspicious season.

Constance is a most charmingly situated and attractive little city. We stayed at the Insel Hotel, the old monastery, in which Huss was imprisoned, you know; and I saw the cell in which he was confined. It was underground, and its walls were washed by the waters of the lake. I set my feet on that white spot in the slab of the nave of the Cathedral where he stood when he was condemned to be burned at the stake. You remember it is said to remain dry always, even when the rest is wet. Finally, we drove to the stone that marks the place where he and Jerome suffered that dreadful sentence. It is a pile of rocks, all overgrown with ivy and other vines, except where slabs show through bearing commemorative inscriptions.

From Constance to Lindau we had an enchanting sail over an emerald sea, with many a pretty village gleaming along its shore, “like a white swan on her reedy nest;” and then green hills, that soon turned into denser clouds, as it were, and directly, almost in a flash, the snow-covered Alps!

Railway from Lindau here; and such a succession of pictures! Long, green valleys, dotted with picturesque villages; chains of wooded knolls; ranges of dark, pine-covered mountains, overtopped in places with a vast jumble of cones; snow-covered Alps again, that shone in the sunlight like molten silver! Words avail little toward reproducing such a panorama. Only one’s own eyes can do it even the faintest justice. I hope you have seen it, or, if not, will some day soon, before you grow an old man. Have had a long, lazy, inconsequential, just-going-anywhere-I-pleased stroll this perfect afternoon. The sky is without a fleck; the air crystal clear; the sunshine just that happy mingling of warmth and bracing quality that makes mere animal existence an ecstasy. I could have walked to the uttermost ends of the earth in it. The streets are wide, clean, admirably paved, handsomely built; fine houses of beautiful designs in a soft, creamy-white stone. Parks, gardens, avenues, open squares, trees, flowers, grass, and grand monuments are innumerable. I felt as if I were under a spell of enchantment. What a place to shrink from was “indoors!” I stayed out till the very last moment.

What a city indeed is this MÜnchen, the capital of “pretentious little Bavaria!” Think of the days of delight before me in its vast halls of art! I am sure you will, and with an added invocation out of your kind heart for whatever else may be good for me.

L. G. C.

Munich, September 24, 1882.