holding long flambeaux in their hands.

Next came a double file

of priests in white surplices, with a missal in one hand and a lighted wax taper in the other, chanting the funeral dirge at intervals,---now pausing, and then again taking up the mournful burden of their lamentation, accompanied by others, who played upon a rude kind of horn, with a dismal and wailing sound. Then followed various symbols of the church, and the bier, borne on the shoulders of four men. The coffin was covered with a black velvet pall, and a chaplet of white flowers lay upon it, indicating that the deceased was unmarried. A few of the villagers came behind, clad in mourning robes, and bearing lighted tapers. The procession passed slowly along the same street, that in the morning had been thronged by the gay bridal company. A melancholy train of thought forced itself home upon my mind. The joys and sorrows of this world are so strikingly mingled! Our mirth and grief are brought so mournfully in contact! We laugh while others weep,-and others rejoice when we are sad! The light heart and the heavy walk side by side, and go about together! Beneath the same roof are spread the wedding feast and the funeral pall! The bridal song mingles with the burial hymn! One goes to the marriage bed; another to the grave; and all is mutable, uncertain and transitory!'

In a very interesting sketch, the writer describes an excursion which he made on foot in autumn through the delightful valley of the Loire. It was the season of the vintage; which, in addition to the beauty of nature, just before the hour of its temporary dissolution, brought many scenes of rural happiness to his view. These he has painted with abundant grace and skill; and his course presented to him yet another charm, in the hoary monuments of other times, on which he evidently loves to dwell. We copy his descriptions of the chateaux of Chambord and Chernanceau, so strongly associated with the recollection of Francis I., the most refined, if not the most glorious monarch of his day.

'I breakfasted at the town of Mer; and leaving the high-road to Blois on the right, passed down to the banks of the Loire, through a long, broad avenue of poplars and sycamores. I crossed the river in a boat, and in the after part of the day, found myself before the high and massive walls of the chateau of Chambord. This chateau is one of the finest specimens of the ancient Gothic castle, to be found in Europe. The little river Cosson fills its deep and ample moat, and above it, the huge towers and heavy battlements rise in stern and solemn grandeur, moss

grown with age, and blackened by the storms of three centuries. Within, all is mournful and deserted. The grass has overgrown the pavement of the court-yard,-and the rude sculpture upon the walls is broken and defaced. From the court-yard I entered the central tower, and ascending the principal stair-case, went out upon the battlements. I seemed to have stept back into the precincts of the feudal ages; and as I passed along through echoing corridors, and vast, deserted halls, stripped of their furni ture, and mouldering silently away, the distant past came back upon me, and the times when the clang of arms, and the tramp of mail-clad men, and the sounds of music and revelry and wassail echoed along those high-vaulted and solitary chambers.'

At Amboise I took a cross-road, which led me to the romantic borders of the Cher, and the chateau of Chernanceau. This beautiful chateau, as well as that of Chambord, was built by the gay and munificent Francis the First. One is a specimen of strong and massive architecture, a dwelling for a warrior;—but the other is of a lighter and more graceful construction, and was destined for those soft languishments of passion, with which the fascinating Diane de Poitiers had filled the bosom of that voluptuous monarch.

'The chateau of Chernanceau is built upon arches across the river Cher, whose waters are made to supply the deep moat at each extremity. There is a spacious court-yard in front, from which a draw-bridge conducts to the outer hall of the chateau. There the armor of Francis the First still hangs upon the wall;— his shield and helm and lance, as if the chivalrous but dissolute prince had just exchanged them for the silken robes of the drawing-room. From this hall a door opens into a long gallery, extending the whole length of the building across the Cher. The walls of the gallery are hung with the faded portraits of the long line of the descendants of Hugh Capet; and the windows, looking up and down the stream, command a fine reach of pleasant river scenery. This is said to be the only chateau in France, in which the ancient furniture of its original age is preserved. In one part of the building, you are shown the bed-chamber of Diane de Poitiers, with its antique chairs covered with faded dimask and embroidery, her bed, and a portrait of the royal favorite hanging over the mantel-piece. In another, you see the apartment of the infamous Catharine de' Medici;-a venerable armchair, and an autograph letter of Henry the Fourth ;—and in an old laboratory, among broken crucibles, and neckless retorts, and drums and trumpets, and skins of wild beasts, and other ancient Jumber of various kinds, are to be seen the bed-posts of Francis the First!-Doubtless the naked walls, and the vast, solitary

chambers of an old and desolate chateau, inspire a feeling of greater solemnity and awe; but when the antique furniture of the olden time remains, the faded tapestry on the walls,-and the arm-chair by the fireside, the effect upon the mind is more magical and delightful. The old inhabitants of the place, long gathered to their fathers, though living still in history, seem to have left their halls for the chase or the tournament; and as the heavy door swings upon its reluctant hinge, one almost expects to see the gallant princes and courtly dames enter those halls again, and sweep in stately procession along the silent corridors.

'Wrapt in such fancies as these, and gazing on the beauties of this noble chateau, and the soft scenery around it, I lingered, unwilling to depart, till the rays of the setting sun, streaming through the dusty windows, admonished me that the day was drawing rapidly to a close. I sallied forth from the southern gate of the chateau,-and crossing the broken drawbridge, pursued a pathway along the bank of the river, still gazing back upon those towering walls, now bathed in the rich glow of sunset, till a turn in the road, and a clump of woodland, at length shut them out from my sight.'

We offer one extract more, from the account of a journey into Spain.

'I passed by moonlight the little river Bidasoa, which forms the boundary between France and Spain; and when the morning broke, found myself far up among the mountains of San Salvador, the most westerly links of the great Pyrenean chain. The mountains around me were neither rugged nor precipitous; but they rose one above another in a long majestic swell, and the trace of the plough-share was occasionally visible to their summits. They seemed entirely destitute of forest scenery; and as the season of vegetation had not yet commenced, their huge outlines lay black and barren and desolate against the sky. But it was a glorious morning; and the sun rose up into a cloudless heaven, and poured a flood of gorgeous splendor over the mountain landscape, as if proud of the realm he shone upon. scene was enlivened by the dashing of a swollen mountain-brook, whose course we followed for miles down the valley, as it leaped onward to its journey's end, now breaking into a white cascade, and now foaming and chafing beneath a rustic bridge. Now and then we rode through a dilapidated town, with a group of idlers at every corner, wrapped in tattered brown cloaks, and smoking their little paper cigars in the sun. Then would succeed a desolate tract of country, cheered only by the tinkle of a mule-bell, or the song of a muleteer. Then we would meet a solitary trav

The

eller, mounted on horseback, and wrapped in the ample folds of his cloak, with a gun hanging at the pommel of his saddle. Occasionally, too, among the bleak, inhospitable hills, we passed a rude little chapel, with a cluster of ruined cottages around it; and whenever our carriage stopped at the relay, or loitered slowly up the hill-side, a crowd of children would gather around us, with little images and crucifixes for sale, curiously ornamented with ribbons, and little bits of tawdry finery.

'A day's journey from the frontier brought us to Vitoria, where the diligence stopped for the night. I spent the scanty remnant of day-light in rambling about the streets of the city, with no other guide but the whim of the moment. Now I plunged down

a dark and narrow alley,-now emerged into a wide street, or a spacious market-place, and now aroused the drowsy echoes of a church or cloister with the sound of my intruding footsteps. But descriptions of churches and public squares are dull and tedious matters for those readers, who are in search of amusement and not of instruction; and if any one has accompanied me thus far on my fatiguing journey towards the Spanish capital, I will readily excuse him from the toil of an evening ramble through the streets of Vitoria.

'On the following morning we left Vitoria long before daybreak, and during our forenoon's journey, the postillion drew up at a relay, on the southern slope of the Sierra de San Lorenzo, in the province of Old Castile. The house was an old, dilapidated tenement, built of rough stone, and coarsely plastered upon the outside. The tiled roof had long been the sport of wind and rain, the motley coat of plaster was broken and time-worn, and the whole building sadly out of repair though the fanciful mouldings under the eaves, and the curiously carved wood-work, that supported the little balcony over the principal entrance, spoke of better days gone by. The whole building reminded me of a dilapidated Spanish Don, down at the heel and out at elbows, but with here and there a remnant of former magnificence peeping through the loop-holes of his tattered cloak.

'A wide gate-way ushered the traveller into the interior of the building, and conducted him to a low-roofed apartment, paved with round stones, and serving both as a court-yard and a stable. It seemed to be a neutral ground for man and beast a little republic, where horse and rider had common privileges, and mule and muleteer lay cheek by jowl. In one corner a poor jackass was patiently devouring a bundle of musty straw,-in another its master lay sound asleep with his saddle-cloth for a pillow; here a group of muleteers were quarrelling over a pack of dirty cards, -and there the village barber, with a self-important air, stood

laving the alcalde's chin from the helmet of Mambrino. On the wall, a little taper glimmered feebly before an image of Saint Anthony; directly opposite these, a leathern wine-bottle hung by the neck from a pair of ox-horns; and the pavement below was covered with a curious medley of boxes, and bags, and cloaks, and pack-saddles, and sacks of grain, and skins of wine, and all kinds of lumber.

'A small door upon the right led us into the inn kitchen. It was a room about ten feet square, and literally all chimney; for the hearth was in the centre of the floor, and the walls sloped upward in the form of a long tapering pyramid, with an opening at the top for the escape of the smoke. Quite round this little room ran a row of benches, upon which sat one or two grave personages smoking paper cigars. Upon the hearth blazed a handful of faggots, whose bright flame danced merrily among a motley congregation of pots and kettles, and a long wreath of smoke wound lazily up through the huge tunnel of the roof above. The walls were black with soot, and ornamented with sundry legs of bacon and festoons of sausages; and as there were no windows in this dingy abode, the only light, which cheered the darkness within, came flickering from the fire upon the hearth, and the smoky sunbeams, that peeped down the long-necked chimney.'

There are several sketches, to which we have not yet adverted; among them, are two or three of a humorous character, from which we could not well take portions without impairing the general effect; but which, though spirited and entertaining, can hardly be said to exhibit the highest power of the writer. His rich and poetical, and yet graphic description, and the true feeling with which he looks on nature and on social life, are the qualities which most attract us in his writings, because they are not precisely those in which travellers are most apt to abound. The greater part of these worthies consider themselves as itinerant critics, whose vocation would be indifferently fulfilled, if they should admit that they find any verdure between Beersheba and Dan; and it is equally rare and grateful to encounter a pilgrim, who can enjoy the clear blue sky and sunshine of other countries than his own. This generous feeling and true philosophy charm us in the pilgrim of the Land beyond the Sea; they throw a mild, yet most attractive coloring over all the objects he encounters, and all the scenes he passes through; and, whether we walk with him through the valley of the Loire, take passage by