Descent of the Danube, from Ratisbon to Vienna, during the autumn of 1827
Date: 2026-04-17T00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Danube River -- Description and travel

The Project Gutenberg eBook of Descent of the Danube, from Ratisbon to Vienna, during the autumn of 1827

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.

Title: Descent of the Danube, from Ratisbon to Vienna, during the autumn of 1827

With anecdotes and recollections, historical and legendary, of the towns, castles, monasteries, etc., upon the banks of the river, and their inhabitants and proprietors, ancient and modern

Author: J. R. Planché

Release date: April 17, 2026 [eBook #78472]

Language: English

Original publication: London: James Duncan, 1828

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/78472

Credits: Richard Illner and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images made available by The Austrian National Library)

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DESCENT OF THE DANUBE, FROM RATISBON TO VIENNA, DURING THE AUTUMN OF 1827 ***

DESCENT OF THE DANUBE,
FROM
RATISBON TO VIENNA,
DURING THE
AUTUMN OF 1827.

WITH

ANECDOTES AND RECOLLECTIONS,

HISTORICAL AND LEGENDARY,

OF THE

TOWNS, CASTLES, MONASTERIES, etc., UPON THE BANKS OF THE RIVER,

AND THEIR INHABITANTS AND PROPRIETORS, ANCIENT AND MODERN.

By J. R. PLANCHE,

AUTHOR OF “LAYS AND LEGENDS OF THE RHINE,” “OBERON,” AN OPERA, etc.

Ye glorious Gothic scenes! how much ye strike
All phantasies, not even excepting mine:
A grey wall, a green ruin, rusty pike,
Make my soul pass the equinoctial line,
Between the present and past worlds, and hover
Upon their airy confine, half-seas-over.

Don Juan, Canto X.

LONDON:
PRINTED FOR JAMES DUNCAN, PATERNOSTER-ROW.

MDCCCXXVIII.

On Stone by L. Haghe. W. Day Lithog. 17 Gate St.

SCHLOSS BÖSENBEUG.

The Summer Residence of the Emperor of Austria and the Town of Ips on the Danube.

LONDON:
Printed by William Clowes,
Stamford Street.

TO
SAMUEL RUSH MEYRICK,
OF GOODERICH COURT, HEREFORDSHIRE,
ESQUIRE,
LL.D., F.S.A., etc. etc.
THIS VOLUME
IS INSCRIBED
BY HIS VERY SINCERE AND MUCH OBLIGED FRIEND,

J. R. PLANCHE.

Brompton-Crescent, July 1, 1828.

PREFACE.

It appears rather surprising that, while our printshops teem with views on the Rhine, and the shelves of our booksellers groan with the weight of Tours in its neighbourhood, no English pen or pencil should have been hitherto employed in illustration of the magnificent Danube. Captain Batty, it is true, in his beautiful work entitled “German Scenery,” has three or four views upon the river, and one or two modern tourists have slightly mentioned a town or so, which, lying on the post-road to Vienna, as well as on the banks of the Danube, they have passed through on their way to the Austrian capital. But, with the exception of the translation of Baron Riesbeck’s travels in Germany, published in the fifth volume of Pinkerton’s collection, which contains a very brief but faithful description of the river from Passau to Vienna, I am aware of few works in our language from which the slightest idea of its beauty and interest can be drawn, and of none absolutely dedicated to its history and illustration[1]. That the Danube should be so little known to our rambling countrymen is the more remarkable, as Vienna—voluptuous Vienna! is one of the points to which it leads, and the ease, pleasure, and velocity with which its stream may be descended, render, in commonly fair weather, the passage by water considerably preferable to the journey by land, though performed in the traveller’s own post-chariot; and as by land he must return, he thus secures to himself the advantage of entirely new scenery, even if compelled by time or circumstances to retrace his line of route.

The road from Frankfort to Ratisbon is replete with interest—the beautiful banks of the meandering Mein; the battle-field of Dettingen; the fine chateau and gardens of Aschaffenburg; Wurtzburg with its splendid palace, its rich conservatories and rock-throned citadel; Nürnberg, the birthplace of Albert Durer, with its fantastic buildings, and gorgeous cathedral, all tempt the wanderer on to the heights of Hohen-Schambach, where the plain of the Danube bursts upon his view. The return from Vienna, by Salzburg and Munich, or through the Tyrol to the Lake of Constanz, and so down the Rhine home, leaves nothing to be wished for in point of scenery; while six weeks or two months, provided the traveller be not ensnared by the gaieties of Vienna, are amply sufficient, in fair weather, for the whole of the journey.

Having sought in vain, on my departure from England, for a book which would serve me as a guide and companion down the Danube, I was induced to take a few notes and sketches during my little voyage, in the hope that, when thrown, at my leisure, into something like a readable shape, they might become useful to future travellers, by at least standing in the gap till some abler hand should supply the desideratum. In the pursuance of this object, I was greatly assisted by a copy of Professor Schultes’ Donau-Reise[2], the best foreign guide down the Danube; but which is yet incomplete, and suppressed in Austria on account of its political and religious opinions. At the same time, however, that I acknowledge my obligations to this work, from which I have gleaned much information on points that could only have been explained by a native, or one long resident in the country, I must take the liberty of expressing my objection to its style, which renders its perusal a task to Germans themselves, and must make it almost a sealed book to a foreigner. Herr Schultes’ prolixity, and love of inversion, are enough to drive an English reader crazy. The latter, indeed, he carries to such an extent, that the waggish description of “the-in-general-strewed-with-cabbage-stalks-but-on-a-Saturday-night- lighted-up-with-lamps-market of Covent Garden” must hide its diminished head. The learned Professor sometimes keeps his inquisitive victim on the rack for pages, before he deigns to disclose the word which solves the enigma of his apparently interminable sentence. He seems to glory in this species of mystification, and, like poor dear innocent Dogberry, were he “as tedious as a king,” he would “bestow it all upon your worship.” Still, however, “there is matter in this madness,” and the Professor has been a diligent digger. The list of German authors, both ancient and modern, who have written upon the antiquities, history, and natural productions of the towns and shores of the Danube, was invaluable to a stranger like myself, as it enabled me at once to lay my hands upon authorities ‘pour vérifier les dates,’ etc. ‘Die Burgvesten und Ritterschlosser der Oestreichischen Monarchie, 4 T. Brunn, 1820,’ is another work, which has afforded me much curious legendary material; as have also the ‘Taschenbuch zur Geschichte verfallener Ritterburgen,’ etc., Wien, 1826, and other similar publications.

The Danube, whose waves have witnessed the march of Attila, of Charlemagne, of Gustavus Adolphus, and Napoleon; whose shores have echoed the blast of the Roman trumpet, the hymn of the Pilgrim of the Cross, and the “wild halloo” of the sons of Islam, whose name is equally dear to history and fable; to him who, in fancy, sees the lion-hearted Richard of England languishing for his native land, or follows the beautiful widow of Siegfried to the “rich King Etzel’s court,”—that such a theme was worthy of being treated by the first writers in our language, was an awful consideration for one of the humblest; that it had not been touched upon by any was the only encouragement. “You have often scribbled successfully for the stage,” said my friend ——, “why should you fear to write for the passage-boat?” The joke was a vile one, but the argument was conclusive. Gentle reader, this is my first appearance in the character of a tourist. I have taken the part at a short notice, no one else having appeared to sustain it, and respectfully solicit the usual indulgence.

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I.

Page

First View of the Danube and Ratisbon — Description of Boats on the Danube — The City of Ratisbon — The Cathedral — The Heide Platz — Church of the Scotch Benedictines — The Bridges — The Rath-haus — The Abbey of St. Emmeram — Story of Frederick von Ewesheim — Church of the Dominicans — The Neue-Pfarre-Kirche — Ober and Nieder Münster — Karmeliten Kloster — The Horses’ Church — The Promenades — Unterhaltungs Haus — Maximilian Joseph Gasse — David and Goliath — Embarkation — Wörth — Donaustauf — The Dunkel-boden — Sossau 1

CHAPTER II.

Straubing — The Bridge — The Hauptstrasse — The Stadtthurm — The Pfarr, or Collegiat Kirche — Story of Agnes Bernauer — The Ramparts — The Atzelburg — Ober Altaich — Bogenberg — Kloster Metten — The Natternberg — Deggendorf — The Gnade Zeit — Confluence of the Isar and the Danube — Rafts from Munich to Vienna — Nieder Altaich — Hengersberg — Osterhofen — Hoch-winzer — Hofkirchen — Kinzing — Hildegartsberg — Vilshofen — Collegiat Stift — The Sandbach — New Road to Passau — Maximilian Joseph I., late King of Bavaria — Louis I., the present Monarch — Statue of a Lion — Approach to Passau 32

CHAPTER III.

Passau — The Inn-stadt — The Fair — The Cathedral — The Bridge — Fortress of Oberhaus — Celebrated View — Mariahilf — The Ilz-stadt — The Sword Cutlery — Present Manufactures and Commerce of Passau — Talismans — Goitres — Excursions into the Environs of Passau — Confluence of the Inn and the Danube — Krempenstein — Hafner Zell — Its Manufactories — Fichtenstein — The Jochenstein — The Ruin of Ried 77

CHAPTER IV.

Engelhard’s-zell — Rana-riedl — Marsbach — Wesen Urfar — Waldkirche — Hayenbach — The Schlägen — The Rhine and the Danube contrasted — Ober Michl — Neuhaus — Aschach — The paper-money of Austria — Castle of Schaumberg — Environs of Aschach — Ober Walsee — Story of Hans von Eschelberg — Sketch of the Insurrections in the Seventeenth Century 96

CHAPTER V.

Efferding — Ottensheim — Kloster-Willering — Linz — The Platz — The Landstrasse — The Schlossberg — The Landhaus — The Theatre — The Bridge — The Pöstlingberg — View on leaving Linz — Steyereck — The River Traun — Ebelsberg — Luftenberg — Monastery of St. Florian — Tillysburg — Spielberg — Mauthausen — Ens — Origin and History of the City — Antiquities discovered in its neighbourhood 137

CHAPTER VI.

Nieder-Walsee — Castles of Clam and Kreuzen — Ardagger — Grein — The Strudel and the Wirbel — Mistakes of various Authors concerning them — St. Nikola — Sarblingstein — Freystein — Hirschau — The Isper — Bösenbeug — Story of Bishop Bruno and the Lady Richlita — Ips — Gottsdorf 180

CHAPTER VII.

Marbach — Maria-Taferl — Pechlarn — Wiedeneck — Mölk — Lubereck — The Valley of the Wachau — Schönbühel — Aggstein — The Teufel’s Mauer — Spitz, and the Ruin of Hinterhaus — Church and Village of St. Michel — Castle of Dürrenstein — Narrow escape of Marshal Mortier during the Campaign of 1805 — Mautern — Stein — Krems — Kloster Göttweih — Trasen-Mauer — Arrival at Tuln 217

CHAPTER VIII.

Tuln — Langenlebern — Greifenstein — Story of Etelina — Korneuberg — The Bisamberg — Kloster Neuburg — Leopoldsberg, and the Khalenberg — A glimpse of the capital — Nussdorf — Arrival at Vienna — Bird’s-eye View and Description of the Environs from the Temple of Glory in the Brühl 267

A MAP of the DANUBE from RATISBON to VIENNA.

Common passage-boat from Ratisbon to Vienna.

CHAPTER I.

First View of the Danube and Ratisbon — Description of Boats on the Danube — The City of Ratisbon — The Cathedral — The Heide Platz — Church of the Scotch Benedictines — The Bridges — The Rath-haus — The Abbey of St. Emmeram — Story of Frederick von Ewesheim — Church of the Dominicans — The Neue-Pfarre-Kirche — Ober and Nieder Münster — Karmeliten Kloster — The Horses’ Church — The Promenades — Unterhaltungs Haus — Maximilian Joseph Gasse — David and Goliath — Embarkation — Wörth — Donaustauf — The Dunkel-boden — Sossau.

I believe it is Doctor Clarke who advises travellers never to see a mountain without going to the top of it. I should rather say, never see a river without following the course of it. One very extensive prospect too nearly resembles another, particularly in the same country, to give additional gratification, and I have not unfrequently, like the celebrated King of France, “marched up a hill, and then marched down again,” to about as little purpose. But never did I follow the course of a stream, however insignificant, without being surprised and delighted. Without water, the loveliest prospect is incomplete. Lakes and rivers are the eyes of the earth; the want of them cannot be atoned for by the beauty of its other features, however exquisite.

The formidable account of some friends who had made the voyage, backed, as it seemed to be, by a twaddling notice in a German Guide-Book, had nearly dissuaded me from descending the Danube to Vienna. But the first glimpse of its magnificent flood, rolling through the broad and fertile plain, in the centre of which the ancient city of Ratisbon rears its sombre cathedral, and winding away into the horizon amongst the shadowy mountains of the Böhmer-wald, renewed my original determination; and my first care, on finding myself safely deposited in the excellent hotel, Das Goldene Kreutz, on the Heide Platz, was to make the necessary inquiries how, when, and where I should embark on the “thundering river[3].”

The regular passage-boat from Ratisbon to Vienna was to start on the following morning at eight o’clock, and for the very moderate sum of five florins, not quite ten shillings English, would have landed me in the Austrian capital in about five or six days, according to the weather. But as neither I nor my companion was willing, for a slight pecuniary consideration, to risk a serious diminution of the pleasures of the voyage by a crowded deck, a filthy cabin, bad company, and miserable fare, I applied to a Schiffmeister of Stadt-am-hof, the little fauxbourg of Ratisbon, on the left bank of the Danube, who agreed to furnish us with a boat, steersman, and crew for the sum of twenty ducats, about ten pounds sterling, and to assure our arrival at Vienna in four days, or four and a half at farthest.

The boats on the Danube, though of various names and sizes, are nearly all of one shape. That which I hired is called, in the peculiar patois of the Bavarian boatmen, a Weitz-zille, and is the sort of conveyance particularly appropriated to private travelling. It is about forty feet long, and composed of rough deal planks, nailed rudely together, the ribs being of natural branches, and caulked with moss. In the centre is a kind of awning, or rather hut, of the same unpretending materials. It is flat-bottomed, as are all the craft upon this river, and, in short, is little more than a large rude punt. Sails are unknown upon the Danube; it is therefore rowed by two men, and steered by a third, with long clumsy-looking paddles, tied to upright posts, upon which every now and then water is flung to make them work easy, and avoid ignition. The Coche d’eau, or common passage-boat, is rather larger, and is called a Gamsel, or a Kellhaimer. Those used for the conveyance of merchandise, are known by the names of Hochnauen, Klobzillen, (facetiously termed vessels of the line by Professor Schultes,) Nebenbeys, Schwernmern, etc., all of the same fashion, keelless, sailless, their plain deal sides daubed with broad perpendicular stripes of black paint, their only ornament. Some of the larger are nearly one hundred and fifty feet long; and, in ascending the river, are towed, four or five together, by from thirty to forty horses. The drivers are called Jodelen, and a more singular set of beings can scarcely be imagined. In appearance they are something between the English dustman and drayman, but the lowest of either of those worthies might pass for a scholar and a gentleman by the side of a real Jodel. From the moment the Danube becomes navigable, till it is again chained up in ice, these fellows never enter the humblest hovel, or mix with men of other callings, but even sleep upon the river’s bank beside their horses. A miserable superstition exists amongst them. They believe that some of their number must every year be sacrificed to the Spirit of the Waters, and, consequently, when an accident occurs, they all scramble for the drowning man’s hat, but never think of stretching out a finger to save him, whom they look upon as a doomed and demanded victim. Professor Schultes declares that he once saw five jodelen, with their horses, precipitated into the river, when their companions hastily cut the ropes, to prevent the rest of the team from following, and drove on, leaving the poor wretches to their fate.

Before I step into my little bark, however, the old city of Ratisbon, or, more properly Regensburg, claims a few moments’ attention. The Regina Castra of the Romans has had twenty different names[4], and, according to Günther, owes that of Ratisbona, or Ratispona, to its convenience as a landing place.

“Inde Ratisbonæ vetus ex hoc nomen habenti
Quod bona sit ratibus, vel quod consuevit in illa
Ponere nauta rates.”

Near it, the little river Regen falls into the Danube, from whence its German appellation of Regensburg. One of the chief towns on the Illyrian frontier, here the Roman merchant traded for furs, and the eagle of the “Legio tertia Italica” long glittered in the sight of the humbled barbarians. From Regensburg the “furious Frank” rushed, beneath the banners of Charlemagne, to his Pannonian victories. Under Arnulph the Bastard, it became a flourishing commercial and manufacturing town. In 1106, the unfortunate Emperor Henry IV. here resigned his crown and sceptre to his unnatural son. In 1193, Richard Cœur de Lion was sent hither a prisoner to the Emperor Henry VI., who re-delivered him to his sworn foe and captor, Leopold Duke of Austria. Here, on the 12th of October, 1576, expired the Emperor Maximilian II., in whose favour Germany revived the surname of Titus, or the Delight of Mankind. No stronger proof of his great and amiable qualities can be given, than the concurring testimony of the historians of Germany, Hungary, Bohemia, and Austria, both Catholics and Protestants, who vie in his praises, and in representing him as a model of impartiality, wisdom, and benignity[5]. “It excites a melancholy regret,” says Wraxall, “to reflect that the reign of so excellent a sovereign as Maximilian was limited to the transitory period of twelve years, while Philip II., the scourge of his own subjects and of Europe, occupied the throne during more than forty. The Romans might, with equal reason, have lamented that the tyranny of Tiberius lasted above twenty years, when the benign administration of Titus scarcely exceeded as many months[6].” In 1633, Ratisbon was taken by Bernhard, Duke of Saxe-Weimar, and retaken by the allied Bavarians and Austrians, commanded by Ferdinand King of Hungary, in the following year. In 1641, the Swedes, under the famous General Banner, cannonaded it; and on the 21st of April, 1809, it was taken by the French, after a desperate conflict, being the fourteenth time, in the course of nine hundred years, that this unfortunate city has been visited by the united horrors of war.

Its grand but gloomy cathedral contains some curious sculpture, and some richly painted windows, the blues in which are remarkable for their brilliancy. The date, 1482, is upon the upper part of an angular porch; but the façade of the building, the singular well, the richly ornamented canopies on columns, in various parts of the interior, and the equestrian statues of Saint Martin and another, are all of an earlier period.[7] In the chancel, near the altar, is deposited the heart of the Emperor Maximilian I.; and in a chapel on the south side of the chancel, within a glass case, is the recumbent effigy, in wax, of Saint John of Nepomuck, the celebrated confessor of the wife of Wenceslaus, king of Bohemia, who refusing to divulge the secrets of his royal penitent was thrown into prison, tortured, and, finally, flung over the bridge at Prague and drowned, by the king’s order. His statue, in the habit of the Jesuits, is to be seen on nearly every bridge in the south of Germany; he, who perished by water, being curiously enough selected from the list of saints as the protector of all who travel on that element. On an altar-tomb, in the nave, is a splendid bronze effigy of a Bishop of Ratisbon and Duke of Bavaria kneeling to a crucifix. On the Heide Platz, or Place of the Pagan, a terrible combat is said to have been fought, between a gigantic Hun named Craco, who had flung forty knights out of their saddles, and Hans Dollinger, a valiant burgher of the town, during the reign, and in the presence of Henry the Fowler. The emperor crossed the panting champion twice upon the mouth, and to the virtue of these holy signs the defeat of the Pagan is principally attributed[8]. Craco’s sword, measuring nearly eight feet, and his ponderous helmet, hung for some time in the choir of Nieder Münster. The sword is now at Vienna, whither it was taken in 1542. On the side of a house, in the Kohlen-markt, is a representation of this combat; and the square itself, I have little doubt, formed originally part of the Heide Platz, from which it is at present separated by a row of comparatively modern erections. The church of the Scotch Benedictines, near the Jacobs-Thor, has a fine portal, of apparently the twelfth century. There is a tragical story told of its last abbot, Gallus, who was compelled to see a beloved brother torn to pieces without daring to acknowledge him; but I was not able to learn the particulars, though, Schultes says, they are of general notoriety. The celebrated bridge across the Danube is a clumsy-looking affair, and sadly disappoints the expectant traveller: the honour of its erection is hotly disputed between Henry the Proud and——the Devil[9]! Their imperial and satanic majesties have each their zealous partisans, but the proofs are in favour of the earthly potentate, who, in conjunction with the town of Ratisbon, commenced the work A.D. 1135. It was finished in 1146. It is of free-stone, supported by piles of oak driven to a considerable depth in the bed of the river, consists of fifteen arches, and is one thousand and ninety-one feet in length. Of the three principal bridges of Germany, that of Dresden is said to be the most elegant; that of Prague, the longest; and that of Ratisbon, the strongest. Besides this stone bridge there are two wooden bridges, one very small, connecting the stone bridge with a long island in the middle of the river, and another of larger dimensions, which leads from the island to the city near the Nieder Münster. In the Kohlenmarkt stands the Rathhaus, or Hotel de Ville, where from 1662 to 1806 the diet was held. Justice and Fortune have inherited the building. The Tribunal of Police is established in one part of it, and the Lottery is drawn in the other. Its curious old gate and bay-window are in excellent preservation. Their arches and crocketted pinnacles are of the thirteenth century, and greatly resemble those of the monument of our Edward I. at Westminster. The two figures above the gate, one bearing a martel de fer, and the other in the act of flinging a stone, are of the close of the fifteenth century: beneath each is a shield with the arms of the city. The Abbey of Saint Emmeram is now the residence of the Prince of Thurm and Taxis: his gardens are kindly thrown open to the public from six in the morning to six in the evening. Saint Emmeram was a Frenchman, a native of Poictiers, who, having visited the court of Theodo, was suspected of an illicit amour with the princess his daughter, and murdered by her brother at Helfendorf, A.D. 652. In the vaults of this building lie Childeric, the deposed king of France, the Emperor Arnulph, and his son Ludwig IV., the celebrated historian John Aventine, Saint Wolfgang, and Saint Dionysius, the Areopagite. The body of the latter saint is said to have been purloined from the Abbey of Saint Denis, in France, in the year 893; and Pope Leo XI., in a particular bull, absolutely threatened with excommunication all who dared doubt the genuineness of the holy corpse[10]: “notwithstanding which,” says Keysler, “the monks of Saint Denys, near Paris, insist that the body of that saint is actually in their possession; and his head is shown in the third shrine of their treasury. On the other hand, the monks of Saint Emmeram maintain, that the only part wanting in their relique, is the middle finger of the right hand. However, an entire hand of this saint is shown at a chapel in Munich. His head is also devoutly worshipped in the cathedral of Bamberg; and at Prague another head of that saint is kept in the Church of Saint Vitus in the Castle[11].” This abbey formerly possessed an altar of solid gold, a fine manuscript of the Gospels, written in gold, the cover ornamented with precious stones, and presented by Charles the Bald to the monks of Saint Denis; another copy, said to have been written in 751 by a bishop, in the ninetieth year of his age, and many other valuable curiosities. The MSS. are, I believe, still in existence[12]. Gemeiner, in his chronicle, has a story connected with the edifice, sufficiently illustrative of the period of its action to merit insertion; besides which I doat upon old stories, and fairly warn that “gentle reader,” who may not have the same predilection, to lay down the book in time, as it is only when, like the Knife-grinder, “I have none to tell,” that he has the slightest chance of escape from them.

A certain worthy Bishop of Regensburg, not contented with fleecing his flock, according to the approved and legitimate method, made it a point of conscience to waylay and plunder his beloved brethren whenever they ventured near the Castle of Donaustauf, in which he resided upon the banks of the Danube, a little below the town. In the month of November 1250, says the chronicle, tidings came to Donaustauf, that, on the following morning, the daughter of Duke Albert of Saxony would pass that way, with a gorgeous and gallant escort. The bait was too tempting for the prelate. He sallied out upon the glittering cortege, and seizing the princess and forty of her noblest attendants, led them captives to Donaustauf. The astonished remainder fled for redress, some to King Conrad, and others to Duke Otho, at Landshut, who immediately took arms, and carrying fire and sword into the episcopal territories, soon compelled the holy highwayman to make restitution and sue for mercy. Conrad, satisfied with his submission, forgave him; in return for which the Bishop bribed a vassal, named Conrad Hohenfels, to murder his royal namesake; and, accordingly, in the night of the 28th of December, the traitor entered the Abbey of Saint Emmerams, where the king had taken up his abode, and stealing into the royal chamber stabbed the sleeper to the heart; then running to the gates of the city, threw them open to the bishop and his retainers, exclaiming that the king was dead. The traitors were, however, disappointed. Frederich von Ewesheim, a devoted servant of the king, suspecting some evil, had persuaded the monarch to exchange clothes and chambers with him, and the assassin’s dagger had pierced the heart, not of Conrad, but of his true and gallant officer. The bishop escaped the royal vengeance by flight; but the abbot of Saint Emmeram’s, who had joined the conspirators, was flung into chains; and the abbey, the houses of the chapter, and all the ecclesiastical residences, were plundered by the king’s soldiery. The pope, as might be expected, sided with the bishop and excommunicated Conrad and Otho; but the murderer Hohenfels, after having for some time eluded justice, was killed by a thunderbolt!

In the church of the Dominicans is a chapel where Albertus Magnus, Bishop of Ratisbon, the successor of his unworthy namesake, is said to have given his lectures. This great philosopher and excellent prelate is reported by the ancient chroniclers to have possessed the accommodating but rather extraordinary faculty attributed to the Irishman’s bird, viz. that of being in two places at once. It is asserted that, at the very moment he was holding forth to his attentive pupils from the chair still exhibited in the chapel, he was to be seen busily employed in his study at Donaustauf, about twelve miles off. For despatch of business this must have been an invaluable accomplishment, and accounts most satisfactorily for the magnitude and research of his literary and scientific labours. The Neue-Pfarre-Kirche was formerly famous for a shrine of the Virgin called the Schöne Maria, to which from ten to twelve thousand pilgrims frequently repaired at a time from different parts of Bavaria. The Ober Münster and the Nieder Münster were both convents, the abbesses of which alone were obliged to take the vow of chastity. Otto II. and his Empress Adelheid are buried in the latter, which was founded in the tenth century by Judith, daughter of Arnold, Duke of Bavaria, and wife of Duke Henry I. The Ober Münster was founded by Hemma, Queen of Louis the German, who is buried here. The Karmeliten Kloster, founded by the Emperor Ferdinand in 1641, is now the custom-house and the town-jail. In Ratisbon, formerly, even the horses went to church! On Saint Leonard’s Day the peasantry of the neighbourhood brought their whole stud gaily caparisoned, and indulged each animal with a peep into the Maltheser-Kirche, a pious precaution, which was supposed to preserve them the year round from the staggers, and indeed every other disorder that horse-flesh is heir to.

I had nearly forgotten the promenades. They are pretty, and run all round the town. The remains of an old cross are pointed out in them, as having once been the centre of the city. In another part is a temple to the memory of Keppler, the astronomer, who died here in 1630, and of whom, says Prof. Schultes, it may be said as of our English poet Butler, “He asked for bread, and they gave him a stone.” A monument has also been erected to a M. Goertz, “parcequ’il étoit assez riche,” said our domestique de place, an excellent reason, and one which has justified many a more extraordinary proceeding. Then there are the Unterhaltungshaus, (a handsome building, which combines the theatre, the assembly-rooms, and heaven knows what besides)—the new Maximilian-Joseph-Gasse, which has risen upon the ruins of 1809, and the nearly effaced figures of Goliath and David upon the wall of a house, the work apparently of the sixteenth century.

And now farewell, old Regensburg! The Roman, the Vandal, the Frank and the Hun, the Bohemian, the Austrian, and the Swede, the ancient and the modern Gaul, have, by turns, besieged, stormed, plundered, and burnt thee. Thy air of gravity becomes a city that hath suffered and survived so many disasters; and the antique gold and silver coifs that glitter on the braided locks of thy fair daughters, harmonize well with the Gothic glories of thy cathedral and the romantic interest of thy Turnier-Platz. I confess it grieves me to notice the gradual disappearance throughout the Continent of those distinctions of dress which have hitherto seemed, as strongly as language and countenance, to mark out the natural boundaries of nations and provinces: but I console myself with the hope, that Europe may, with its old habits, fling off its old prejudices, and that its millions will finally become as much like one great family in affection, as they promise to look, shortly, from the uniformity of their costume.

On Monday, September 9, about eight in the morning, having completed our simple preparations, and safely stowed away under the benches of our little cabin a hamper containing some eatables and a few bottles of excellent Rhenish and Austrian wines, we stept into our weitz-zille, which awaited us just above the stone bridge, and having shot through an arch of it where there is a fall something like that at old London at half-flood, and struggled a few moments with a strong eddy, occasioned by an island and some corn-mills, we passed under the wooden bridge, and commenced our voyage, a strong wind blowing unfortunately right in our teeth. The sky was however cloudless, and the day, as it advanced, proving exceedingly warm, the wind was only unwelcome as it threatened to retard, in some measure, our progress, and prevent our making the proposed landing and resting-places in due time. The average depth of the Danube between Donauworth and Passau, according to H. von Riedl, is ten feet; near Regensburg it is about eleven feet deep, and something broader than the Thames at Putney. The right bank of the river, nearly all the way to Straubing, is low, sedgy, and Dutch like. St. Niklas, Einhausen, Irl, Ober, and Unter Bärbing or Barbling, are the names of the little old villages that are scattered along it; but, on the left bank, the eye is soon attracted by the bold mountains which, abruptly rising behind the villages of Regenhausen, Weichs, Schwabelweiss, and Dergenheim, or Tegenheim, follow the windings of the flood in an almost unbroken chain to within a few miles of Vienna. The ruins of the castle of Donaustauf, cresting a round, bluff rock, having at its foot the little market-town of the same name, are the first interesting object that presents itself on approaching them. The great strength and commanding situation of this fortress, anciently called Toumstouphen, rendered it an object of considerable importance during the middle ages; and many are the tales of the “Battles, sieges, fortunes, it hath past.” Henry the Proud having taken it from the cathedral and chapter of Regensburg in 1132, the citizens invested it in the following year so closely, that the garrison, driven to extremities by hunger, set fire to the building, and sallying forth, cut their way through the besiegers. In 1146 it was again taken; and in 1159 again besieged. In 1250 it was the scene of that outrage which has already been related in the story of Frederich von Ewesheim. After the death of Albertus Magnus, who, in 1260, succeeded his notorious namesake, and here pursued his studies, Donaustauf was again snatched from its holy masters, and once more restored to them, through the assistance of Bavaria, in 1343. In 1355 it was pledged to the counsellor Ruger Reich for eleven thousand eight hundred and thirty-five florins, and sold afterwards to Charles IV. of Bohemia for five thousand. In vain did the holy fathers protest against the sale, and denounce spiritual as well as temporal vengeance against the purchaser. Charles was too shrewd and too powerful to fear either; and so long as he lived, Donaustauf remained the barrier of Bohemia. Under his feeble successors, however, the chapter recovered its fortress, and in 1486 it was again pledged to Bavaria. Bernhard, Duke of Saxe-Weimar, took it, and reduced it to its present condition in 1634. The Prince of Thurm and Taxis, who bought the lordship of Worth, in which it is situated, keeps, if I may be allowed the expression, the ruin in repair, and bestows some care on the gardens, which clothe the eastern side of its mountain seat. From the ramparts, the view extends eastwards over Wörth to Straubing and Bogen; and westward, over Ratisbon, to the mountains of Abach. On either side, the eye traces the bright Danube, now flowing majestically right onwards, now boldly sweeping round some rocky point, or gracefully winding amidst large tracts of meadow land—here almost doubling itself by a sudden and unexpected curve, and, lost for a short time amongst groves and hamlets, glittering again like a broad lake, where it resumes its eastern course far in the blue distance. Directly beneath lie the little market-town of Donaustauf; the church of Saint Salvator, which was built, according to Schultes, in expiation of the crime of some soldiers who dishonoured the Host; the wooden bridge, said to be one of the longest on the river, and which is partially destroyed every year in order to give passage to the ice; and below it, on the left bank, numberless gardens and vineyards, spotted with the white villas of the wealthy citizens of Regensburg, who, escaping from commercial cares, on a fine summer Sunday evening, look back through the smoke of their pipes upon the dusky towers of their cathedral with, no doubt, similar feelings of satisfaction to those with which the London tradesman observes from his retreat at Highgate, or Hornsey, the distant dome of Saint Paul’s rising above the smother of our huge metropolis. Leaving Donaustauf, we passed the small village of Sulzbach, Demling, Bach, (celebrated for the mines in its neighbourhood,) Frenkhofen, Krukenberg, Oberach, Kirchkirfen or Kirfen-holz, and Wisent, on the little stream of that name, on the left bank; and those of Sarching, Friesheim, Ilkhofen, Auburg, Eltheim, Saissling, and Seppenhausen, on the right, some of them consisting of scarcely half a dozen houses, their humble, white-washed churches roofed with shingles, and the little Kremlin-looking cupolas of their steeples painted a deep red. We now rapidly approached Wörth, the chateau of the Prince of Thurm and Taxis, which had been visible from the time of our passing Kirfenholz, but, from the extraordinary sinuosities of the river, appeared, at one moment, to have been left entirely behind us. The exterior is anything but prepossessing, recalling to the mind of a cockney, like myself, the dead walls and extinguisher-capped towers of the Penitentiary at Milbank. The dark firs that rise beside it, and the rich meadows that gently slope from its terrace wall to the water’s edge, are, it must be confessed, infinitely more romantic and ornamental than the rows of cabbages and stunted willows that form the foreground to its inglorious likeness,—still the idea of a prison would, I think, be with any stranger the predominant one. Wörth is, however, a palace, and, no doubt, handsome enough when you are in it. It has been, like most of the castles and palaces in this part of the world, bought and sold, pledged and redeemed for all sorts of sums by all sorts of people. Those who wish to know the exact number of florins it was valued at during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, will find them scrupulously set down by Prof. Schultes; but, as no matters of historical or romantic interest are connected with its various transfers, I shall content myself by merely stating, that it was anciently the property of the bishops of Ratisbon, and came to Bavaria in 1809, shortly after which period it was bought by its present possessor. Nearly opposite Wörth, upon the right bank, is the small town of Pfätter, or Pfada, as it is called in the dialect of the country, the first post-station from Ratisbon. A little streamlet of the same name falls into the Danube beside it. A dozen small villages, remarkable only for appellations that would cost an untutored Englishman as many teeth to speak them—Gmünden, Tiefer-thal, Hochdorf, Stadeldorf, Niederachdorf, Sinzendorf, Hünthofen, Kirchenroth, Ober and Unter Motzing, Kessnach, Hartzeitdorn, etc., are scattered along the banks, both now exceedingly flat and uninteresting, the mountains on the left having retreated from the river, which here winds and doubles like a hunted hare. My companion and I therefore landed, and leaving the boat to thread the mazes of this watery labyrinth, strode forward at a good round pace across the fields towards Straubing, the tin-capped steeples of which were flashing back the rays of the setting sun. The great plain extending from the gates of Ratisbon, as far as Pleinting, is supposed to have been once a large morass, which, on being drained, has left a rich black soil several feet deep (the celebrated Dunkelboden.) The peasantry of this favoured district are exceedingly proud, and fond of all kinds of finery. The finest Swiss and Dutch linen, silk and satin kerchiefs of the gayest hues, Brabant lace, and gold and silver stuffs of all descriptions, are in constant requisition. The men wear gold rings, and generally two gold watches. The black velvet or embroidered silk boddices of the women are laced with massive silver chains, from which hang a profusion of gold and silver trinkets, hearts, crosses, coins, medals, etc. The custom of tying a black silk handkerchief round the neck, with the bow behind, and the ends hanging down the back, is, I think, peculiar to Bavaria. A wedding here is a scene of great extravagance and uproar; many tables, accommodating at least a dozen persons each, are set out with all manner of good things, and the feasting continues for several days, all day long. Ignorant, however, as they are wealthy and luxurious, few even of the most respectable amongst them can either read or write, and are therefore, says Schultes, entitled in every respect to the appellation by which they are generally distinguished, i. e. “Bauern vom Dunkelboden”—“Peasants of the dark earth.” Sossau, on the left bank, shortly after you enter the Landgericht of Straubing, is celebrated for a picture of the Virgin, which, in 1534, the angels brought here in a boat, from a village where the doctrines of Luther had taken root, to the great indignation of the holy portrait. Those who are sufficiently sceptical to doubt the veracity of this story, may consult the account of the monks of Kloster Windberg[13], (to which Sossau belonged,) printed “cum licentia superiorum,” and illustrated by a fresco-painting on the walls of their house at Straubing. The whole angelic crew are there to be seen equipped in sailors’ dresses, tugging away with “a long pull, a strong pull, and a pull all together,” (the last pull, by the way, must have been an extra miracle on the Danube, the advantage of such unanimity never entering the heads of the honest boatmen), and having on board not only the offended picture, but the outraged church itself!—I have heard of a worthy enactor of old Capulet, who, by a curious transposition of his prepositions, commanded the astonished Juliet to prepare

To go to Paris with St. Peter’s church.

Now, however extraordinary this paternal injunction might appear to a modern heretical London audience, it is obvious, upon due consideration, that the speech, being placed in the mouth of a Roman Catholic of the sixteenth century, was not so much out of character as might be imagined at the moment. The chapel of Loretto and the church of Sossau had set a noble example of locomotion, and Saint Peter’s of Verona could have no rational reason for refusing to follow it upon a proper occasion.

Ainhausen, the property of Count Liebelfing, on the high road to Rinkheim and Kagers, an old village from which the Lords of Kagers formerly took their title, are the last villages on the right bank of the river before you arrive at Straubing, the first town of consequence on the Danube after leaving Ratisbon.

CHAPTER II.

Straubing — The Bridge — The Hauptstrasse — The Stadtthurm — The Pfarr, or Collegiat Kirche — Story of Agnes Bernauer — The Ramparts — The Atzelburg — Ober Altaich — Bogenberg — Kloster Metten — The Natternberg — Deggendorf — The Gnade Zeit — Confluence of the Isar and the Danube — Rafts from Munich to Vienna — Nieder Altaich — Hengersberg — Osterhofen — Hoch-winzer — Hofkirchen — Kinzing — Hildegartsberg — Vilshofen — Collegiat Stift — The Sandbach — New Road to Passau — Maximilian Joseph I., late King of Bavaria — Louis I., the present Monarch — Statue of a Lion — Approach to Passau.

Straubing is pleasantly situated on the right bank of a small arm of the river, or, as it might be called, a canal, through which part of the noble stream has, of late years, been conducted to the very walls. In front of it, the mountains, which, as I have already mentioned, have retreated from the left bank, form a fine amphitheatre, in the centre of which, the insulated Bogenberg rises like a pyramid. Like most cities of any size and antiquity in Germany, Straubing is divided into an Alt-Stadt and a Neu-Stadt. The old town is conjectured by some to have been the Serviodurum Augusti of the Romans, the seat of the Castra Augustana, etc., and traces of some entrenchments, supposed to be Roman, are still to be seen just without the walls. The name of “Straubinga” (“Curtis Regia”) first occurs in an instrument, dated A.D. 902. About forty years afterwards, we hear of the deeds of the noble knights of Straubing and Stein. At the latter end of the tenth century, Henry III. obtained the surname of Pious, by presenting Straubing to his brother Otto, Bishop of Augsburg, who left it to the cathedral and chapter of that place. It was governed by an officer called a Vice Dom, till the commencement of the thirteenth century, when New Straubing was built, and the old town re-annexed to the Duchy of Bavaria. Frederick the Handsome, of Austria, besieged and took it in 1319. In 1332, Louis the Bavarian lay before the town from the 4th of July till the 24th of August, when, provoked by its obstinate resistance, he threw a bridge over the Danube, by Kagers, and, making a desperate assault at the Spital-gate, succeeded at last in carrying the place by storm. His son, Duke William, first husband of Matilda of Lancaster, built the castle on the Danube, A.D. 1356. It is now converted into barracks. In 1393, Straubing was entirely destroyed by fire, and the conflagration having begun at a joiner’s, no person of that trade was permitted to reside in the city from that time till the year 1540. It was most vigorously defended against the Duke of Saxe-Weimar, in 1633. The burgomaster, Höller, an excellent marksman, shot upwards of thirty of his best officers from the ramparts. In 1635, Straubing was visited by a dreadful pestilence. In 1704, it was taken by the Austrians, and, in 1780, the best half of it fell a second time a prey to the flames. The loss was estimated at more than a million of florins.

Straubing in its present state is cheerful and tolerably regular, but more like a Dutch than a Bavarian town; the bridge across the Danube is pretty, and the gate which terminates it fantastic. On entering the Hauptstrasse or High-street, the eye is attracted by a quadrangular tower, forming part of the Rath-haus or Guildhall, and much prized by the Straubingers, who consider it the most ancient relic in the place; but it seems to have been a terrible annoyance to Professor Schultes, who neglects no opportunity of expressing his antipathy to it, and astonishment that any reverence for its antiquity should prevent the removal of a building, which hinders people from looking through the town like a telescope. This Stadt-thurm as it is called is two hundred feet high, and is now surmounted by a tin spire, with four smaller pinnacles at the corners. There are two Latin inscriptions upon it, one proclaiming its erection in 1208, and the other its renovation in 1783. The largest building in the town is the Pfarr, or Collegiat Kirche, commenced about 1432, and finished in 1512. In a small chapel in the churchyard of St. Peter’s, in the Alt-stadt, is a red marble tablet, on which reclines the effigy of a female surrounded by the following inscription, “Anno Domini, MCCCCXXXVI, XII Die Octobris, Obiit Agnes Bernauerin. Requiescat in pace.”

The fate of this unfortunate lady has furnished the subject for a tragedy to the Count of Torring Seefeld, and one more deeply affecting is scarcely to be found in the page of history.

Albert, the only son of Duke Ernst of Bavaria, was one of the most accomplished and valiant princes of the age he lived in. His father and family had selected for his bride, the young Countess Elizabeth of Würtemberg. The contract was signed and the marriage on the point of taking place, when the lady suddenly eloped with a more favoured lover, John Count of Werdenberg. The tidings were brought to Albert at Augsburg, where he was attending a grand tournament given in honour of the approaching nuptials, but they fell unheeded on his ear, as his heart, which had not been consulted in the choice of his bride, had just yielded itself, “rescue or no rescue,” to the bright eyes of a young maiden whom he had distinguished from the crowd of beauties that graced the lists. Virtuous as she was lovely, Agnes Bernauer had obtained amongst the citizens of Augsburg, the appellation of “the angel:” but she was the daughter of a bather, an employment considered at that period, in Germany, as particularly dishonourable. Regardless of consequences, however, he divulged his passion, and their marriage was shortly afterwards privately celebrated in Albert’s castle at Vohberg. Their happiness was doomed to be of short duration. Duke Ernst became possessed of their secret, and the anger of the whole house of Munich burst upon the heads of the devoted couple! Albert was commanded to sign a divorce from Agnes, and prepare immediately to marry Anna, daughter of Duke Erich of Brunswick. The indignant prince refused to obey, and being afterwards denied admission to a tournament at Regensburg, on the plea of his having contracted a dishonourable alliance, he rode boldly into the lists upon the Heide Platz, before the whole company declared Agnes Bernauer his lawful wife and duchess, and conducted her to his palace at Straubing, attended as became her rank. Every species of malice and misrepresentation was now set at work to ruin the unfortunate Agnes. Albert’s uncle, Duke Wilhelm, who was the only one of the family inclined to protect her, had a sickly child, and she was accused of having administered poison to it. But the duke detected the falsehood and became more firmly her friend. Death too soon deprived her of this noble protector, and the fate of the poor duchess was immediately sealed. Taking advantage of Albert’s absence from Straubing, the authorities of the place arrested her on some frivolous pretext, and the honest indignation with which she asserted her innocence, was tortured into treason by her malignant judges. She was condemned to die, and on Wednesday, October 12th, 1436, was thrown over the bridge into the Danube, amidst the lamentations of the populace[14]. Having succeeded in freeing one foot from the bonds which surrounded her, the poor victim, shrieking for help and mercy, endeavoured to reach the bank by swimming, and had nearly effected a landing, when a barbarian in office, with a hooked pole, caught her by her long fair hair, and dragging her back into the stream, kept her under water until the cruel tragedy was completed. The fury and despair of Albert on receiving these horrid tidings were boundless. He flew to his father’s bitterest enemy, Louis the Bearded, at Ingolstadt, and returned at the head of an hostile army to his native land, breathing vengeance against the murderers of his beloved wife. The old duke, sorely pressed by the arms of his injured son, and tormented by the stings of conscience, implored the mediation of the Emperor Sigismund, who succeeded after some time in pacifying Albert, and reconciling him to his father, who, as a proof of his repentance, instituted a perpetual mass for the soul of the martyred Agnes Bernauer. Albert afterwards married Ann of Brunswick, by whom he had ten children.

The ramparts of this town are now almost entirely demolished, and the fosses turned into kitchen-gardens. The former were once planted with mulberry-trees, but they were destroyed during the late war, when Straubing, though not absolutely stormed or invested, suffered considerably from the constant passage of troops, and the skirmishing in its neighbourhood. The Straubingers are more celebrated for good living than hard work.

“On y mange et digére
Compère, compère;
On y fait bonne chere
Voilà tout le mystère!”

is the quotation of Prof. Schultes, and may with great propriety be applied to many bodies corporate, of more pretension than the humble one of Straubing.

The whole country was lighted up by a glorious sunset as we entered the town to satisfy our curiosity and our appetite, and some time before we returned from those important occupations, the “twilight grey” had “in her sober livery all things clad.” We had determined on passing the first night on board, in order to reach Vilshofen by breakfast-time the following day, as from that place we understood the scenery would become too interesting to admit of haste, or travelling after dark, and preparations had been accordingly made by our little crew. The sides of the zille were boarded up, and straw and boat-cloaks so arranged as to make us a very comfortable couch, upon which we had no sooner stretched ourselves than the word was given, and by the light of the stars we dropped gently down the river, passing the Atzelburg and Hockstetter-hof on the right bank. The former, also called the Aciliusburg, is conjectured by some to have been the retreat of the Roman Consul Acilius, when exiled for the crime of Christianity, and originally named from him Acilia Augusta. In its neighbourhood are some entrenchments believed to be Roman. Reibersdorf, Kleinau, and Ebling are villages on the right bank. Near the latter the small stream of the Aitrach joins the Danube. On the left is Lenach, remarkable only as having been purchased by the monks of Altaich in 1139, for ninety-five Pf. Pfennige, about five shillings, English.

Notwithstanding the precautions we had taken, I was too cold as well as too curious to sleep; and as the moon got up so did I, and, seating myself by the cabin door, looked on the gradually brightening landscape, and listened to the songs of the boatmen who, as they lazily plied their unwieldy paddles, warbled in their own peculiar style—a style rendered familiar to London ears, by the interesting “Rainer family,” for it is not confined to the Tyrol—several wild but pleasing melodies. It is very provoking that the English should be, perhaps, the only people who have no idea of singing in parts; an untutored boatman, peasant, or soldier of almost any of the continental nations will suddenly strike in with an extemporary and very creditable bass, though the air be led off by an utter stranger to him. On the banks of the Main at Aschaffenburg, and at Möhdling in the Wienerwald, I was particularly struck with this pleasing talent, and have noticed it repeatedly both in France and Switzerland. The complaint that the English are not a musical nation is in my opinion better borne out by this circumstance, than by the alleged deficiency of celebrated composers, or the want of taste in the mixed audiences of our Concert Rooms and Theatres. There is certainly no comparison between “the native wood-notes wild” of a Devonshire ploughman, and those of a Bavarian bauer.

We soon came in sight of Ober-Altaich, a celebrated Benedictine kloster. A Druidical altar is said to have been destroyed here by the holy Parminius, who, with his own hand, cut down the oak under which it stood, and caused a chapel to be erected upon the spot. The convent was founded by Duke Uttilo II. A.D. 731, who brought thither twelve Benedictine monks and an abbot from Reichenau, in the Lake of Constance. The Hungarians destroyed it in 907, and it was a ruin for nearly two hundred years, when Count Frederick of Bogen rebuilt it, and, with his wife and sons, so liberally endowed and patronised it, that in the thirteenth century there were no less than one hundred and eighteen monks here, most of them of noble birth; and the dignity of prince was granted to its abbots by Louis the Brandenburgher. In 1634, Ober-Altaich was burnt by the Swedes, but shortly afterwards rose from its ashes, more magnificent than ever,—a circumstance, says Schultes, not at all surprising when you consider that, in spite of their vow of poverty, the holy brotherhood enjoyed an annual income of thirty thousand florins (between four and five thousand pounds sterling,) an immense sum for this part of Germany, where a florin in the hands of a native will go nearly as far as a pound in England. Passing the mouth of the little Kinzach, and the villages of Saut and Hundersdorf, we at length approached the long-seen Bogenberg. Upon its summit lie the last crumbling relics of an old fortress, the Stammschloss[15] of the once-dreaded Counts of Bogen. Germany in the times they flourished was, as the Legate Cupanus described it in his letters to Rome—a den of thieves. The deplorable state into which the whole empire was plunged by the quarrels between the popes and the house of Swabia, the almost total annihilation of the imperial power by the death of Conrad IV., and the interregnum that followed the death of Richard King of the Romans, in 1271, is vividly described by contemporary writers, one of whom, in the language of scripture, exclaims, “In those days there was no king in Israel, and every one did that which was right in his own eyes.” “The earth (says another) mourned and languished, Mount Lebanon was shaken from its foundations, and the moon was turned into blood[16].” The terms noble and robber were synonymous, and the higher the rank the more lawless and rapacious were the deeds of the titled ruffian. The castle of Bogen was admirably adapted for a bandit’s hold. Seated upon the apex of a pyramidical rock, inaccessible but by one narrow pass on its eastern side, which a handful of determined men might keep against a host, and commanding a view over nearly half the dukedom of Bavaria, its lawless lord watched from its battlements, like a vulture, the approach of his unsuspecting prey, and, pouncing upon it, bore it up in triumph to his mountain eyrie, where he feasted at his leisure in security. The domains of the Counts of Bogen extended from Regensburg to the Ilz, and from the shores of the Danube far into Bohemia. Their friendship and alliance were sought by King and Kaiser, by the Dukes of Bavaria, and the Markgraves of Austria; and their feuds with the Counts of Ortenburg deluged the land repeatedly with blood. But bigotry and superstition lost them what rapine and murder had won. Their revenues filled the coffers of greedy abbots, and their castles were gradually transformed into convents. An image of the Virgin was one day seen floating upon the Danube, and drifting ashore near the little market-town of Bogen, which lies at the foot of the mountain, on its western side, rested on a stone on the bank. Count Answin, struck with so miraculous an occurrence, presented the castle of Bogen to the kloster of Ober Altaich, which his brother Frederick had founded. Forty years afterwards, Count Albert I. of Bogen was wheedled out of the castle of Windberg by another holy fraternity; and about the middle of the thirteenth century the family became extinct, by the death of Count Albert IV., who had followed the unfortunate Emperor, Frederick II., to the Holy Land. Ludmilla, the mother of this last Count of Bogen, was a Bohemian Princess; and, on the death of her husband, Albert III., Louis II., Duke of Bavaria, becoming enamoured of her from report, offered her marriage, provided, says the chronicle, he should like her upon a personal acquaintance. Ludmilla consented to this proposition, and the duke visited her accordingly. Suspecting, however, the sincerity of his protestations, she one day requested him, as in a joke, to plight his troth to her in a tapestried chamber, and to consider the figures of three knights, worked in the hangings, as witnesses of the contract. The duke, to humour this apparently childish fancy, smilingly held up his hand, and took the oath required of him, when, to his utter astonishment, three living knights, “good men and true,” stepped out from behind the tapestry, where they had been purposely concealed by the cunning Bohemian, and compelled the ensnared potentate to ratify his pledge[17]. The church of our Lady of Bogen, erected in honour of the miraculous image before-mentioned, stands beside the ruins of the castle, and from six to eight thousand pilgrims have been known at one time to congregate about its far-famed shrine. It has been several times injured by lightning, and its roof carried away by the high winds, a natural consequence of its exposed situation. A thunderstorm burst over it on Whit-Tuesday, A.D. 1618, during one of these meetings, and the lightning having fired the steeple, such confusion ensued, that fourteen persons were crushed to death[18]. The Bogenberg and its vicinity have been fertile in miracles. A ridiculous story is told by Æmilius Hemmauer, a prior of Ober-Altaich, about a moving altar, and in the little market-town is shown a tooth of St. Sebastian, over which water is poured into a goblet; and it is gravely asserted that whoever drinks of this water, need fear no infectious disorder for twelve months to come. The little rivers Bogen and Menach join the Danube near this spot, and on the opposite shore are the villages of Absam and Hermansdorf.

As the Danube approaches its confluence with the Isar, its banks become bolder and more interesting; a crowd of villages present themselves, amongst which the most important are Pfelling, whence a considerable quantity of wood is sent to Vienna; Irlbach, the principal depôt for the corn of the Dunkelboden, before the Danube washed the walls of Straubing; and Wischelburgh, on the site of the Roman Bisonium, destroyed by the tremendous Attila.

Kloster-Metten, on the left bank, according to the legend, owes its foundation to the following circumstances: A herdsman of Michaelbuch, named Gamelbert, awaking from a deep sleep, in which he had been indulging beneath a tree, found, to his surprise, a book lying upon his breast. On examination he found it was written in English, and, though he knew just as much of the language as the beasts that were grazing before him, he immediately commenced reading it, and was so edified by its contents, that he abandoned his flocks and herds, and, repairing to Rome, became a Christian priest. On his way thither he baptised a boy, whom he named Utto, and desired his parents to send the lad to him when he became a man; they did so, and Gamelbert made over to him the care of the souls of the worthy inhabitants of Michaelbuch. Utto, however, had no great affection for his new calling, and leaving the poor souls to take care of themselves, crossed the Danube, and wandered into the Waldes, where he built a hermitage, in honour of the Archangel Michael, near a spring, which is still called Utto’s Spring, and amused himself with sundry curious pranks, amongst which was the rather difficult one of hanging his axe upon a sunbeam! Charlemagne, hunting in the neighbourhood, caught the holy hermit in the fact, and, astonished, as well he might be, by so extraordinary a performance, promised to grant him any boon he might be pleased to ask. Utto requested that a convent might be built on the spot, and Kloster-Metten was erected at the command of Charlemagne.

On the opposite side to Kloster-Metten, suddenly rises the remarkable Natternberg the only rock on the right bank from Prufening to Pleinting, a distance of upwards of eighty English miles. It is nearly three hundred feet high; and on its summit are the ruins of another castle, which belonged to the Counts of Bogen, who made it their residence in 1232. The curious appearance of this mass of granite, standing in solitary majesty upon this extensive plain, and cut off, as it were, from its giant brethren of the Böhmer-Wald by the bright and trenchant Danube, has given rise to many speculations amongst the geologists of Germany; but while the learned are at loggerheads respecting this natural phenomenon, the honest people who reside in its neighbourhood, and who, therefore, surely have a right to a voice on the subject, have settled the question completely to their own satisfaction. The Devil, say they, hating the Deggendorfers, for their piety, determined to destroy them outright; and, with that intention, brought a rock from Italy, (none in the neighbourhood, I presume, being suitable to his purpose,) with the malicious intention of hurling it upon the devoted town of Deggendorf, and crushing it, with all its inhabitants, into the Danube. Passing opposite to Kloster-Metten, “half flying, half on foot,” with this formidable missile under his arm, the bells of the convent rang for the Ave Maria! The virtue of the holy sounds was immediately felt by the arch apostate. “Gnashing for anguish, and despite, and shame,” he dropped the mountain “like a hot potatoe,” and there, where it fell, it stands to this day; an immutable proof of the power of bell-ringing, and a monument of the piety and narrow escape of the Deggendorfers. In the castle, on its crest, Duke Albert of Austria besieged his faithless favourite Peter Ecker, A.D. 1347; and Henry of Landshut was educated within its walls, from which circumstance he obtained the additional sirname of the Natternberger. The castle was reduced to its present ruinous state by the Swedes, and now belongs to a Count of Preising. From the little place, called Fischerdorf, at the foot of the mountain, the town of Deggendorf is seen lying in a beautiful valley, surrounded by hills that rise in circles, each above the other, and having in front the Danube; here broader than in any other part of Bavaria, (nearly one thousand two hundred feet,) across which is a wooden bridge, supported by twenty-six piers, but built so slightly, in order that it may be easily removed to give an annual passage to the ice, that Schultes says, it shakes under the curvetting of a single horse. Of the ancient history of Deggendorf very little is known, its records having been all destroyed; some by the Swedes, under Bernhard von Weimar, and the rest by fire, in 1638.

Pilgrims, from all parts of Germany, flock to Deggendorf upon Saint Michael’s eve, which is a celebrated Gnade-zeit, (time of grace,) when absolution is granted to all comers, in consequence of some miraculous circumstances that, in the year 1337, attended the purloining and insulting of the Host by a woman and some Jews; who, having bought the consecrated wafer from her, scratched it with thorns till it bled, and the image of a child appeared; baked it, vision and all, in an oven; hammered it upon an anvil, the block of which is still shown to the pilgrim; attempted to cram it down “their accursed throats,” (I quote the words of the original description,) but were prevented by the hands and feet of the vision aforesaid; and finally, despairing to destroy it, flung it into a well, which was immediately surrounded by a nimbus, etc. I should not have noticed these disgusting falsehoods, but for the melancholy fact, that the circulation of this trumpery story was considered a sufficient cause, by the pious Deggendorfers, for the indiscriminate massacre of all the wretched Jews in the place; which infamous and bloody deed was perpetrated the day after St. Michael, sanctioned by Christian priests, who, in grand procession, carried back the indestructible wafer to the church, and solemnly approved, in 1489, by Pope Innocent VIII., who issued his bull for the general absolution abovementioned[19]. Above fifty thousand pilgrims assembled here in 1801; and as late as 1815, so considerable were their numbers, that the greater part of them passed the night in the streets of the town, and in the fields in its neighbourhood.

The moon had set before we passed Deggendorf, but the night was light enough to see the “Isar rolling rapidly,” through its many mouths, to join the mighty Danube; and the spire of Plattling in the distance, a tolerably sized market-town, where there is a bridge across the former river, and the post-house, between Straubing and Vilshofen. Below this bridge, the raft-masters of Munich, who leave that city every Monday for Vienna, unite their rafts before they enter the Danube. They descend the Isar upon single rafts only; but upon reaching this point they lash them together in pairs, and in fleets of three, four, or six pairs, they set out for Vienna. A voyage is made pleasantly enough upon these floating islands, as they have all the agrémens without the confinement of a boat. A very respectable promenade can be made from one end to the other, and two or three huts erected upon them afford shelter in bad weather and repose at night.

Isargemünd, situated in one of the many islands, at the confluence of the rivers, is the only village on your right till you reach Thundorf, where there is a ferry over to Nieder Altaich; on the left are the Halbe-meile-kirche, and two or three small hamlets.

Nieder Altaich, another Benedictine convent[20], and, at one time, the most important that the order possessed in Bavaria; its annual income being not less than one hundred thousand florins; stands at the foot of the frowning Böhmer-wald, which here again bends its bushy brows upon the bright river. Saint Parminius is said to have acted the same scene here which has already been described in the notice of Ober Altaich. And Uttilo II., not contented with having founded that kloster, brought hither an equal number of monks from the same monastery of Reichenau, and established them in a like manner. Its abbot soon became the richest in Bavaria; but the Hungarians, in the tenth century, ravaged the country with fire and sword, and Nieder Altaich suffered the fate of its prototype. In 990, however, it was rebuilt, and still more richly endowed by the Emperor Otto, and Henry Duke of Bavaria. Saint Gotthard came barefooted from Reichersdorf, where he was born in 965, of humble parents, and from a monk became abbot, and lastly, bishop of Hildesheim, where he died, A.D. 1035. The monks of Nieder Altaich, it appears, gradually forgot the pious lessons and fair example of Saint Gotthard; which, during his life, had materially improved the reputation of the community; for in 1282, we find them making a riddle of their abbot with arrows, from an ambush on the river side, as he is crossing the ferry to Thundorf[21]. The abbots, themselves, also, were many of them unworthy successors of that holy man. One of the last superiors of this kloster, for instance, by name Augustin Ziegler, not contented with expending annually upwards of ninety thousand florins, ran the fraternity into a debt of nearly one hundred thousand before he was invited to retire from the cares of office, and live in peace at Straubing, upon a slender annuity. In the “Topographischen Lexicon von Baiern,” 2s., 508., is the following account of this worthy prelate, who seems to have formed a very tolerable idea of the “otium cum dignitate,” which should bless an abbot of Benedictines. “Besides his valet he had two pages. On his name-day all the principal persons of the government of Straubing assembled in the grand refectory of Nieder Altaich. A band of trumpets and kettle-drums was in attendance, from daybreak, facing his chamber window, and the moment his Excellency (for he had purchased the title of a privy councillor) opened his eyes, the pages undrew the curtains of cloth of gold, amidst a flourish from the trumpets and kettle-drums without, while a battery of small mortars proclaimed in thunder to the surrounding country, the dawning of the name-day of this important personage.” His conduct, however, soon became so notorious that he was compelled to resign, and retire upon an annual allowance of two hundred ducats and ten eimers of wine. Ten times has this kloster been burned down, and rebuilt each time more magnificently; till at last, if we may believe Lackner’s account, the very oxen of the community eat out of marble mangers—“pecora fecit in marmore pabulari!”

A little beyond Nieder Altaich, upon the same bank, is the town of Hengersberg, with its old castle, given, in 1212, by Altnann von Helingersberg to Saint Mauritius, then abbot of that kloster. The Danube formerly flowed over part of the bank, and, what is now the lazzar-house, was, at that time, the river toll-house. At Hengersberg, the Danube again turns from the Bohemian mountains, as wearied with its unavailing efforts to penetrate the giant line; but the gentle eminences which still skirt its left bank are enough to preserve its superiority to that of the right, which, all the way from Ratisbon, with the solitary exception of the Natternberg, had not presented one hillock to break the long, low line of shore, more in keeping with the sluggish stream of a Dutch canal, than with the rapid waves of the “boiling Danube,” an epithet, by the bye, more descriptive than any other of its singular current, which, whether running fast or slowly, keeps up a constant whirling, eddying, and bubbling, accompanied by a low hissing sound which (pardon, gentle reader, the humble comparison) reminded our English ears of nothing so much as the singing of a tea-kettle. After passing a handful of villages, whose almost unpronounceable names shall be presented hereafter, in their due order, to the curious in consonants, we glided by Osterhofen, a little town on the side of a small hill, a short distance from the shore. It is one of the oldest towns in Bavaria, and was the site of the Castra Petrensia. The Avars, who desolated the banks of the Danube during the sixth, seventh, and eighth centuries, here suffered a serious defeat; and the victory having been gained on an Easter Sunday, the town took the name of Oster-hofen, and still bears in its arms a Paschal lamb. In the meadow where the battle was fought, and named from that event, “Oster-wiese,” stood Kloster Oster-hofen, erected in honour of, and gratitude for, the defeat of the barbarians. Hither Uttilo II. brought some more of his friends, the Benedictines; but the barbarians returned in 765, thirsting for vengeance, and gratified it by razing the Kloster to the ground. It was rebuilt, but the rest of its history is neither clear nor interesting. The indefatigable Uttilo is supposed to have been buried here, where also lie, according to report, which may be said to lie also, nine of the eleven thousand virgins who suffered martyrdom with Saint Ursula at Cologne.

Below Osterhofen, on the left, are the picturesque ruins of the Castle of Hoch-Winzer, or Ober-Winzer, over the little town of the same name. Both town and castle received this appellation from the considerable vineyards which flourished here; but who the Lords of Winzer were, or what feats they achieved, Schultes says he has not been able to discover: all that is known about them is, that they lie buried at Osterhofen. The Pandours reduced the castle to its present ruinous condition in 1741[22]. Flinschbach, built, in 1230, by the Counts of Bogen, and three or four other villages of still less note, on each side of the river, enliven the scene, till the ruins of the Castle of Hofkirchen rise on the left bank; in the fourteenth century, the residence of the powerful Counts of Ortenburg, the sworn enemies of the Counts of Bogen, and the terror of all navigators of the Danube. What, with barefaced plundering, and the exercise of a self-erected right, called “grundruhr,” which literally signifies grounding, scarcely a vessel escaped the clutches of these robber lords. This right of grundruhr entitled them to take possession of every vessel, with its crew and cargo, that grounded upon any bank, shoal, or island, within their domain. If it but grated on the sand, or brushed the shore, it was immediately pronounced “grundrürhrig” by the armed vassals of the noble bandit, who were continually on the watch, and who made no scruple of chasing the unfortunate schiffers till they drove them aground, and then coolly laid legal claim to their property.

Nearly opposite Winzer is Kinzing, or Kinzen, the Castra Quintana, or Augusta Quintanorum Colonia of the Romans, upon a small height, from whence a little brook leaps into the Danube. Several miracles are related of Saint Severinus, who resided here during the fifth century, how he saved the place from inundation, by planting a cross on the river’s bank; how he brought his dead friend Sylvin to life again, in the wooden church that stood outside the walls, and how Sylvin took it in exceeding ill part, and insisted on dying again immediately. “I beg of thee, I conjure thee,” exclaimed the indignant Sylvin, “not to rouse me from the rest which God has appointed for me! Why hast thou awakened me? Why hast thou brought me back into a world, into which I never more wish to return?” The Saint, I suspect, looked uncommonly silly on receiving this unexpected rap on the knuckles: his apology, if one he made, has not come down to us. The fact is related on the authority of a young peasant girl, who hid herself in the church, on purpose to witness the miracle which she suspected was about to be performed; and it would be the height of impertinence, under such circumstances, to inquire into particulars.

By the time we had reached Kinzing,

“Morn, her rosy steps in th’ orient clime,
Advancing, sowed the earth with eastern pearl;”

And as we made the point which brought us in view of the fine old ruin of Hildegartsberg, the sun rising immediately behind it shot his glorious rays, like golden arrows; through the loop-holes and windows of its bare and blackened walls, that frowned still darker from the blaze of light behind them. It was a scene in which the spirit of that daring artist, Turner, would have revelled. My companion, who had given me tolerable proofs during our passage from London to Ostend; that he could “sleep in spite of thunder,” was awakened by my raptures; and we stood, at the head of the boat, gazing at the beautiful picture, and basking in the welcome beams of “the great lamp by which the world is blest,” till the river, suddenly taking a new direction, brought us again into the shadow of the left bank, and showed us Vilshofen, with its long light bridge and pretty gardens laughing in the sunshine, at the farther extremity of the valley we had now entered. Little appears to be known about Hildegartsberg further than that it was like so many other castles on the Rhine, the Danube, etc., the hold of some robber knight, noble, or priest, of the middle ages, and destroyed by Duke Albert of Austria, in 1346.

That most delightful of all chroniclers, Froissart, who commenced his interesting annals shortly after this period, gives a lamentable account of the brutality and avarice of the nobility and clergy of Germany. “When a German hath taken a prisoner,” (says he,) “he putteth him into irons, and into hard prison, without any pity, to make him pay the greater finance and ransom.”[23] Again, “They are a covetous people above all other. They have no pity if they have the upper hand, and they demean themselves with cruelty to their prisoners. They put them to sundry pains, to compel them to make their ransoms greater; and, if they have a lord or a great man for their captive, they make great joy thereof, and will convey him into Bohemia, Austria, or Saxony, and keep him in some uninhabitable castle. They are people worse than Saracens or Paynims; for their excessive covetousness quencheth the knowledge of honour;”[24] and Schmidt[25] tells us, that an archbishop thought he had a fair revenue before him, when he built his fortress on the junction of four “roads.”

Nearly facing Hildegartsberg is Pleinting, a small market-town, at which the plain stretching from the gates of Regensburg, along the right bank of the Danube, at last terminates, and the beauty of the river really commences. The road from Straubing runs beside it, upon a sort of terrace, and the sight of a post-chariot whirling along, recalled our wandering thoughts from the dark but interesting ages into which the contemplation of ruined tower and cloister grey had led them, to the less romantic, but, in our situation, equally interesting prospect, of a good inn and a capital breakfast. Alas! it seemed as if neither were to be found in Vilshofen, or, at least, that it was decreed we should not meet with them. Gilt lions, red stags, white horses, and blue bulls; apples and orange trees, as a herald would say, “proper;” crowns and coronets, and heads every way worthy of them; suns, moons, and stars, “yea, the great globe itself,” swung to and fro in the morning breeze, in every direction, and in endless variety; but in vain, from spot to spot, “with courteous action, they waved us to a more removed ground.” The exteriors of these caravanserais alone were promising. If “houses of entertainment” they were, that quality seemed entirely restricted to the outside. Their newly white-washed walls, and neatly painted green doors and shutters, surmounted by one of the glittering ensigns aforesaid, but served to make the dark gulf of the long, low-roofed, rambling, unfurnished, smoky speise-saal, appear more dreary, dirty, and uncomfortable; and it was some time before even hunger, that least ceremonious of all sensations, could induce us to make the plunge. Having at last screwed up our courage to the sticking-place, we rushed into—the Moon, I believe; made the hostess stare, by drinking four or five “portions” of coffee, which turned out better than we expected, and ate a most respectable quantum of tolerable “butter brod” and half a dozen eggs; for the whole of which we paid twenty kreutzers (about sixpence English) each, being then charged at least double what would have been demanded of their own countrymen.

Vilshofen was the Villa Quintanica of the Romans, and is situated at the confluence of the river Vils with the Danube. Rapoto, Count of Ortenburg, fortified it in the eleventh century; and its history from that period is little more than an unbroken narrative of takings and retakings, plunderings and burnings, down to the end of the last war. Its principal trade is in beer; for a particular sort of which beverage it has been long celebrated: and its principal building is an ecclesiastical establishment, for which I cannot find an English name to my liking, that owes its foundation to the following circumstance:—Heinrich Tuschl, knight of Saldenau, upon ocular proof of his wife’s infidelity, condemned the miserable woman to be walled up alive, abjured the company, and shunned the sight of females, and left the greater part of his property in 1376 to found this establishment. Upon the charter was written:

“2 Hund an ain Bain;
Ich Tuschl bleib allain.”

“Two dogs to one bone;
I Tuschl bide alone.”[26]

Having re-embarked and passed under the wooden bridge, on the centre of which is a crucifix, we passed by Hacheldorf, which forms a kind of suburb to Vilshofen, and the market town of Windorf, famous for boat-building. Near Hansbach the little Wolfach falls into the Danube; and below this spot the river boils over numberless sunken rocks, many of which show their white heads above the water, studding the stream in all directions. Shortly afterwards the river narrows, and a slight fall, or what our sailors call a race, ensues. The watermen, who magnify the little difficulties of this navigation into the most astounding dangers, call this “das gefürchtete Sandbach!” The cottages on the banks now assumed a Swiss appearance, being all of wood, with galleries across their gables, and far-projecting roofs. A slight change was also perceivable in the costume of the women; the little black silk cap, with its long ribbon streamers, had given place to a dark-coloured cotton handkerchief, bound closely round the head, and tied in a knot behind, the ends hanging down. The impetus given to the current by the little fall now carried us merrily along, to the great delight of our lazy boatmen, who made it a point of conscience not to wag a finger when they could possibly avoid it, past Gaishofen, where a small stream called the Gaisach joins the Danube, and Heining on the right bank, and Dobelstein (formerly called Engelberg) on the left. For a new road cut through the rocks on the very brink of the river, by which nearly six English miles are saved in posting to Passau, Bavaria and its visiters are indebted to Maximilian-Joseph, the father of the present monarch, Louis I. who, treading in the footsteps of his excellent sire, inherits not only his crown but the affection of his people; and by his unbounded kindness and liberality to the professors of the fine arts, has obtained throughout the continent the honourable addition to his style, of “the King of the Learned.” In the tour, of which this descent of the Danube formed a part, I travelled nearly all over Bavaria, and had the gratification of hearing the praises of its king from all lips and in all places; not the mere mouth-homage which betrays itself by the cold precision of the language in which it is couched, but the ebullition of feeling rushing pure from the heart, and leaping the barriers of ceremony in its honest ardour. “Our king is a good fellow,” is the homely but expressive phrase in which his character is invariably summed up by all who speak of him. Shortly after he came to the throne, he disbanded an expensive body-guard, and on being questioned as to the policy of the act, he replied, “We are at peace; why should I burden my people with an unnecessary expense? as for myself, I want no regiment to protect me, my fellow-citizens are my body-guard.” In a very handsome new street erecting in Munich by his order, there is an unseemly gap occasioned by an antique isolated house standing edgeways in the centre of the modern buildings. On expressing our surprise that it was allowed to remain there, we were told that it belonged to an old general, who had resisted every proposal for its demolition, and it having been suggested to the king to compel him, his answer was, “No, no, let him have his way; he is an old man, and has perchance but a few years to live; I will not abridge their number by annoying him.” His majesty frequently takes a country walk alone, or with but one attendant, and, dressed like a farmer, chats freely and jocularly with the peasantry; never leaving them, however, without some mark of his bounty.

I cannot be expected to vouch for the truth of these anecdotes as far as regards their details or the exact expressions used, but they are amongst the many in general circulation; and an excellent modern tourist has justly remarked, that “an anecdote in general circulation, even though not strictly true in point of fact, will commonly be accordant to the character of the person of whom it is related, and will thus be a correct, though perhaps a fictitious illustration of his mode of acting.” The person of Louis is worthy his noble character; intelligence and spirit are visible in every line of his countenance; a high forehead, large and deeply-set dark eyes, to which a profusion of black hair, pushed carelessly off the temples, and dark upturned mustachios, would give something like an expression of fierceness, were it not for the benignant smile which plays about his mouth when addressing you. His queen, too, is renowned for her beauty and affability; and, in short, a more handsome and deservedly popular pair never graced a continental throne.

But to return to the Danube, from whence I have wandered to pay my humble tribute of praise to one of the best of monarchs. By the side of the new road before mentioned is the statue of a lion-couchant upon a pedestal, and placed upon a jutting rock, with an inscription beneath it stating the chaussée to have been made by command of Maximilian-Joseph I., King of Bavaria. In a few minutes after you have passed this monument, the towers of the church of Maria-hilf appear above the hills, and shortly afterwards the cathedral of Passau, and the old fort of Oberhaus on the opposite height, are seen rising over the foliage of an island in the centre of the river. The approach to the city between the island and the left bank is most beautiful; and whoever is acquainted with the scenery of the Rhine will immediately acknowledge, that it has not improperly obtained the appellation of “the Coblentz of the Danube.”

CHAPTER III.

Passau — The Inn-stadt — The Fair — The Cathedral — The Bridge — Fortress of Oberhaus — Celebrated View — Maria-hilf — The Ilz-stadt — The Sword Cutlery — Present Manufactures and Commerce of Passau — Talismans — Goitres — Excursions into the Environs of Passau — Confluence of the Inn and the Danube — Krempenstein — Hafner Zell — Its Manufactories — Fichtenstein — The Jochenstein — The Ruin of Ried.

A spot where three rivers meet, amidst a quadruple chain of mountains, rising four hundred feet above the level of the water, was not likely to escape the notice of the ancient lords of the world, and consequently the Romans built, upon the promontory between the Inn and the Danube, their “Castra Batava.” The Inn-stadt, on the right bank of the Inn, and which is connected with Passau by a bridge across that river, was the Roman Bojodurum. In St. Severin’s time it was called Boitro. The saint saved the city from the wrath of Gibuld, King of Swabia, but it was destroyed by Chunimund, the successor of Gibuld, while Severin was at his kloster near Vienna, A.D. 475. Bibilo, Bishop of Lorch, flying from the destroying Avars, was received with open arms by Uttilo II., who built for him here, at the eastern end of the city, the Nonnen-kloster of Nidernburg, A.D. 739. About one hundred and fifty years later, the successors of this bishop modestly laid claim to the whole city; and kept it in defiance of king and kaiser, till the year 1802, shortly after which period it was secularized and given to the Grand Duke of Tuscany. The bishopric of Passau, under its ecclesiastical princes, included (besides the city of Passau, the Inn-stadt, and the Ilz-stadt,) the castles of Marsbach and Rana-riedl, the market-towns of Ebersberg and Ips, the towns of Mautern, Amstetten, Greifenstein, Stockerau, St. Andre, and many other places in Austria, nearly the whole of the present bishopric of Linz, and a large portion of Bohemia. One of these sovereign prelates, of the family of Hohenloe, ran the bishopric; notwithstanding its immense revenues, into considerable debt, while, with great affectation of piety and contempt for the pomps and vanities of this life, he caused to be inscribed on the walls of his palace, “O Welt! O böse Welt!” (“O world! O wicked world!”) upon which a waggish dean wrote under, as in continuation of the sentence, “Wie übel verzehrst Du des Hochstifts Geld!” (“How ill dost thou consume the chapter’s gold!”) At the same time let us not forget that we are, perhaps, indebted to a Bishop of Passau for the preservation of that most interesting, as well as most ancient, specimen of Teutonic romance, the Nibelungen-lied. Pelegrin, or Pilgerin, Bishop of Passau, who died in 991, collected the then current legends of the Nibelungen, which he committed to writing in the favourite Latin tongue, with the assistance of his scribe Conrad, whose name has occasioned the Swabian poem to be sometimes ascribed to Conrad of Wurtzburg, who lived long after.[27] On the 2d of August, 1552, was signed here the celebrated treaty, or pacification of Passau, by the Archduke Ferdinand of Austria, as representative of his brother, the Emperor Charles V., and Maurice of Saxony, in the name of the Protestant party.

In 1610, the Emperor Rudolph raised a body of troops in the diocese of Passau, which, on his reconciliation the same year with his brother Matthias, he affected to disband, at the same time purposely withholding their pay, in order to afford them a pretext for invading Bohemia. The troops accordingly, under the command of their leader Ramée, burst into Upper Austria, spreading themselves over the country beyond the Danube, and after committing every species of devastation, passed into Bohemia, where they were at last defeated near Prague, after they had extorted three hundred thousand florins from the Emperor[28].

On entering the city we found it was fair time, and the square before the cathedral was filled with booths, and gay with peasantry in their holiday dresses. Prints and pipe-heads, cotton handkerchiefs of the most staring colours, and the splendid gold and silver caps worn by the women of the neighbourhood, amongst which we saw, for the first time, the magnificent and tasteful Linzer Haube, were the principal articles for sale; but it did not appear to us that there were many purchasers. The cathedral has nothing to boast of in the way of architecture or painting. The present building dates from the year 1662, the former edifice having been destroyed by fire. Not having much time to spare, we hastened across the bridge over the Danube into the Ilz-stadt, on the left bank, and ascended the winding staircase cut in the rock, to the fortress of Oberhaus, the Ehrenbreitstein of Passau. It was a broiling business, under a vertical sun, but we were told the view from the summit would amply repay us for any fatigue we might endure in the ascent; and breathless with expectation, as well as exertion, we stood at length upon the brow of the mountain. But little was to be seen from that spot, except the tops of the towers, and the houses of Passau, and we walked on through ploughed fields, a curious sight in such a situation, to the fortress, from the walls of which we expected to realize our excited hopes. But though permitted to enter the building, sentinels at each angle checked every attempt to gain a commanding situation, with their eternal “es ist verboden;” and hot, weary, and disappointed, we prepared to “march down again,” when a fortunate chance led us to the wished-for spot. Whether it was not the right one, or that our previous annoyances had rendered us captious and discontented, I cannot pretend to say, but certainly the view, though extraordinary enough in character, fell woefully short of our expectations in point of extent and beauty. The Inn is seen writhing through its mountain gorge, to join the Danube, which at this point it much exceeds in width, and the church of Maria-hilf, on its bluff rock above the Inn-stadt, forms a fine object in the fore-ground. But the hills are too lofty, notwithstanding the elevation on which one is placed, to permit the eye to follow the windings of the two rivers to any distance, and the view from the water, at the point of their confluence, is, in my opinion, far preferable. The old fort of Oberhaus was built in 1219, by Bishop Ulrich, to keep the citizens of Passau in awe[29]. Maria-hilf was once, and I believe is still, a celebrated place of pilgrimage; and here is the miraculous image of the Virgin, up to which the pilgrims used to crawl upon their knees. The infant Jesus is clasped to one breast, and from the other, water flows out of a little silver pipe, into the mouth of the pious votary. The image of the Virgin in the church of Maria-hilf at Vienna, was made from this model; but the Viennese have had the good taste to dispense with the water-pipe. In 1781, a vessel, with two hundred pilgrims, was wrecked on the Inn, and one hundred and fifty unfortunate beings perished.

Descending into the Ilz-stadt, (the suburb of Passau, on the left bank, so called from the Ilz, that rolls its dark waves into the Danube, beneath the fortress of Oberhaus,) we hailed a little market-boat that was just leaving the shore, and were speedily ferried over by a stout wench to the eastern end of Passau, where our bark lay moored while the passports of ourselves and crew were undergoing the regular inspection, etc. Notwithstanding it was fair time, there was little bustle either on the banks or in the town. Commerce, which once flourished so greatly at Passau, has of late years, from various circumstances, sadly declined. Its sword-cutlery, celebrated as early as the thirteenth century for the famous Wolfs-klingen (i. e. Wolf-blades,) was destroyed by religious persecutions, about the close of the sixteenth, when nearly all the workmen, two hundred of whom lived in the Inn-stadt alone, sought refuge in Austria. At the beginning of the seventeenth century a manufactory of striped paper was established, which supplied, in some degree, the loss of the sword-cutlery; and Passau is still the stapel-platz, or principal depôt for the salt of Bavaria, which is brought down the Salza and the Inn, from the works at Hallein; but the benefit which now accrues to the inhabitants from this privilege is little or nothing, compared with what the salt trade produced to them in the middle ages, when they carried it on, on their own accounts. During the thirty years’ war, talismans were sold here, which the venders professed would render the wearers invulnerable. A safer speculation could scarcely have been imagined, as, until they had tried them, no one had a right to complain of imposition, and those who did try them and found them ineffectual, generally made the discovery too late to expose or punish the impostor. The people of Passau and its neighbourhood might be considered particularly good-looking, were it not for the hideous goitre, which is exceedingly common in this part of Germany. The appearance of this excrescence is most disgusting to the eye of the unaccustomed traveller, but the natives take no measures to prevent or to conceal it: and, indeed, both here, as in some parts of Switzerland, it is considered by many a beauty, instead of a deformity. Schultes recommends, to those who have the time to make them, excursions to Formbach, Wernstein, and several other places in the environs of Passau, and a ramble up the wild valley of the Ilz, to the ruins of the old castle of Halz, the seat of an ancient family, that, rising into fame through the deeds of Albert the Valiant, in the time of Rudolph of Hapsburg, became extinct with the death of Count Luitprand, in 1375. We, however, had too long a journey in perspective to venture on including ourselves in that number, so late in the season, and with particular objects in view; and as our steersman made his appearance a few moments after we returned to the boat with our papers “en régle,” we were soon in the middle of the stream again, and rapidly bidding adieu to the Coblentz of the Danube.

The view down the two rivers, (the Inn and the Danube,) from the point of their confluence, is, as I have already mentioned, in my opinion, far more beautiful though not so extraordinary as that obtained from the heights above them. Standing in the stern of the boat, and looking back on the too rapidly disappearing scene, on our right arose the long walls and round towers of Oberhaus, upon a range of precipices richly hung with wood, and full four hundred fathoms high; on our left stood the Maria-Hilf-berg, crowned with its church, and the houses of the Inn-stadt picturesquely grouped at its foot,—in the centre, the town of Passau, forming a salient angle upon a plane of water, nearly two thousand feet in width, and standing like an island between two of the noblest rivers in Germany. The time allowed us to contemplate this lovely scene, was as brief as the enjoyment was exquisite. The Danube, reinforced by the waves of the Inn and the Ilz, rushes, with redoubled speed round a rocky cape, and presto! your boat is gliding between banks so savage and solitary, that you can scarcely believe some necromantic spell has not transported you, in the twinkling of an eye, thousands of miles from that “peopled city,” the hum of which still lingers in your ear. In its eccentric course, the river now forms itself, as it were, into a chain of beautiful lakes, each apparently shut in on all sides by precipitous hills, clothed with black firs that grow down to the very water’s edge, while from amongst them peeps out, here and there, one of the little Swiss-looking cottages I have before mentioned, with perhaps a rustic bridge thrown across a small cleft or chasm, through which a mountain rivulet falls like a silver thread into the flood below. On doubling one of the abrupt points which produce this lake-like appearance, we came suddenly upon the chateau of Krempenstein, or Grampelstein, perched on a mass of rock, jutting out from a fir-clad precipice, that rises majestically behind it. It belonged, for nearly four hundred years, to the bishops of Passau, who, in conformity with the general practice of the time, levied contributions upon the passing vessels, translating the awkward term of robbery into the more legal epithet of toll. The peasantry and schiffers in the neighbourhood call it the Schneider-Schlossel, and tell a story of some poor tailor who, in flinging a dead goat into the river from the walls of the building, fell over with it and was drowned, a circumstance which they think exceedingly comical. The age of the building, and the terrific beauty of its situation, deserve a more interesting tradition. On turning another sharp corner,—forgive, gentle reader, the unnautical expression, for I know of none other that will so well describe the acute angles that present themselves at almost every thousand yards upon this extraordinary river,—you perceive Bürnwang, or Birchenwang, with its mill; and in the distance, on the left bank, the small market-town of Hafner or Oberzell. Little would a traveller imagine, on looking at this unpretending town, that its manufactures have been, from time immemorial, eagerly sought throughout the civilized world—that, from the banks of the Ganges to the Gulf of Mexico, from St. Petersburg to Peru, there are no articles of commerce more generally circulated and esteemed, than those which are fabricated in this sequestered nook by the hands of a few German potters. The famous crucibles, known by the name of Ipser or Passauer-Tiegel, are all made at Hafner-zell. About three hundred persons are constantly employed in this manufacture; but as the towns of Passau and Ips are of greater consequence in the map, their names have been connected with the ware; and the goldsmith and chemist, while reaping the benefit of its industry, are ignorant probably of the existence of such a place as Hafner-zell. There are also here manufactories of black-lead pencils, and a particular sort of black earthenware, the materials for both of which are found in the neighbourhood, which is rich in mineral and other productions, worthy the attention of the geologist and natural historian.

Not far from Hafner-zell, on the right bank, stands the chateau of Fichtenstein, on the summit of a stupendous hill, clothed, like the rest of its giant brethren, with forests of pine and fir. A modern mansion is near it; and at the foot of the hill are a few poor cottages, with a little church, the spire of which is just visible above the trees. Fichtenstein belonged anciently to the Counts of Wasserburg, another race of knightly plunderers. Conrad, Count of Wasserburg and Fichtenstein, on quitting Germany for the Holy Land, pledged this stronghold to Ulric, Bishop of Passau, in 1218, who advanced a considerable sum of money on the extra condition that the castle should be forfeited entirely if the Count did not return from Palestine. Conrad, however, did return, and, dying soon afterwards, left his castle to his lady. Bishop Gebhard, the successor of Ulric, immediately set up some claim to the property, and declared war against the countess. He was defeated, however, and taken prisoner by a gallant knight, upon which he proceeded to excommunicate the whole party. The spiritual weapon had considerably more effect than the temporal, and the unfortunate countess was obliged to surrender her castle to the bishopric of Passau, A.D. 1226[30]. Further on, a rock rises out of the middle of the river, and upon it stands a small building like a sentry-box. It is called the Jochenstein; and from the arms of the town of Passau and those of the empire being cut on the sides of it, is generally considered by the Schiffers, the Gränze, or boundary stone between Bavaria and Austria. Schultes, however, denies this, and tells us, that the real Gränze is the old tower of Ried, upon a rock facing Engelhard’s-zell. Be this as it may, we considered ourselves, upon the faith of our steersman, entering the Austrian dominions as we passed the rock; and, accordingly, drank three bumpers of excellent Stein-wine to their imperial and royal majesties of Austria, Bavaria, and England, with the sincere wish that no mistaken policy might disturb the friendship so happily existing between the three nations, or the general peace and prosperity of Europe. We soon came in sight of Engelhard’s-zell, where the Austrian custom-house is established; and opposite to which rises the old tower already mentioned, upon the end of a long fir-clad hill. Nothing is known of the ancient history of this little ruin; which, according to the peasantry of the neighbourhood, was reduced to its present state by the Swedes. The whole district from Marsbach to this spot is called the Riedermark, and is supposed to have been, in the ninth century, the seat of the Rheadarii.

AUSTRIA.

CHAPTER IV.

Engelhard’s-zell — Rana-riedl — Marsbach — Wesen Urfar — Waldkirche — Hayenbach — The Schlägen — The Rhine and the Danube contrasted — Ober Michl — Neuhaus — Aschach — The paper-money of Austria — Castle of Schaumberg — Environs of Aschach — Ober Walsee — Story of Hans von Eschelberg — Sketch of the Insurrections in the seventeenth Century.

No sooner had our boat touched the land, beside the little white-washed custom-house at Englehard’s-zell, than it was surrounded by a swarm of officials, one of whom, in the uniform of the Austrian police, which is, I believe, the same as that of the customs, viz. grey with green facings, etc., desired us to land; and, at the same time, we were hailed from the shore by a gentlemanlike personage, in plain clothes and a foraging cap, with “Messieurs, parlez-vous Français?” On our answer in the affirmative, he requested us to follow him into his bureau. Having inspected our passports, he asked us if we had anything to declare: I replied, not to our knowledge. Had we any snuff or tobacco? Neither of us smoked or took snuff. Had we any almanacks, or sealed letters? No. Had we any wine, or beer? “Monsieur, nous avons fini tout ça en buvant à la santé de sa Majesté l’Empereur.” (Off went his cap; the Austrians never mention, or hear mentioned the title of their sovereign without uncovering.) Bread, butter, etc.? We had finished that too, and would be obliged to him if he would inform us where we could get some more. The catechism ended, he returned us our passports properly countersigned, and we concluded that we should be spared the trouble of unpacking. But, upon returning to the bank, we found our portmanteaus and sacs-denuit, with the bundles and knapsacks of our crew, spread out in awful array along a bench, in front of the Wirths-haus or inn, facing the landing-place. Our friend soon reappeared, and the portmanteaus, etc. being opened, he inspected their contents very closely; but with none of the rudeness which generally characterizes persons in his situation. He looked very suspiciously at our little travelling library, and examined the title-page of nearly every book; my papers and drawings were also glanced at, but no questions were asked. He seemed amazingly pleased with our English dressing-cases, upon the razors in which, particularly, he looked with a covetous eye. “Ah! messieurs, vous avezlà des jolies choses!” and, courteously bowing, he wished us a pleasant journey, and retired.

Having replenished our basket of provisions, and re-embarked our baggage, we bade adieu to Engelhardszell. Its environs are very beautiful, and there was formerly here a Cistertian monastery, to which its inhabitants gave the name of Angelorum Cella, from whence probably its present appellation. This monastery was founded A.D. 1293, by the wealthy and powerful House of Schaumberg. In 1571, the whole community died of the plague, and the building remained uninhabited nearly one hundred years. Shortly after its re-establishment, it suffered from a fire that broke out in the kitchen, and was rebuilt at the beginning of the seventeenth century. The old Pfarr-kirche, or parish church, was built as early as 1230. In 1551, another church was erected for the same purpose, apparently, as that to which the Maltheser-kirche was formerly applied in Ratisbon. The horses were here brought annually to the door of the church, and allowed a peep at Saint Pancras, whose effigy graced the altar. This sight, and a few oats at the same time administered, were supposed to preserve them from all disorders for a twelvemonth. Napoleon gave Engelhardszell to the Prince of Wrede, who still possesses the domain, and hunts here occasionally. In 1626, the revolted peasantry cast chains and ropes across the Danube here, to prevent the Bavarians from assisting Herberstorf at Linz. In 1703, the Bavarians built here a small flotilla, with floating batteries, and threw a bridge of boats across the river to facilitate their communication with Bohemia.

On the left bank, before we had entirely lost sight of Engelhardszell, the chateau of Rana-riedl appeared in the distance, on the ridge of a lofty mountain, its white and peaked turrets beautifully backed by the deep blue sky. Beside the hill is a ravine, through which the Rana-bach brawls into the Danube, turning a mill, and bringing down firewood from the mountain forests of Bohemia. The name of this chateau first appears in some deeds of the fourteenth century, towards the close of which it belonged to a lady of the Rana family, who married a knight, named Stephen von Schweinbach. Shortly afterwards, it became the property of the grasping Bishops of Passau. Göllinger, Governor of Scharding, besieged it in 1486, in the name of the Duke of Bavaria, but was compelled to raise the siege by Hans Oberhaimer, the lord of the neighbouring Castle of Falkenstein, who reinforced the garrison. Two years afterwards, he returned and assaulted it with success. It was recovered by the Bishopric in 1490, and lost to it entirely in 1501, when it was taken by the Emperor Maximilian I., and pledged by him to Henry von Preuschenk. Rudolph II. gave it to the Lords of Salburg in 1591; at the extinction of which family, it became the property of the Counts of Clam, A.D. 1728. The villages of Ober-Rana and Nieder-Rana lie one on each side of the Danube, a little below this spot; and the river then making a sudden bend to the north, you come in sight of the Castle of Marsbach, similarly situated to Rana-riedl. Otto of Marsbach, in 1268, dispossessed, by force of arms, his father Ortulph, of this castle, and declared war against the Bishop of Passau. Ortulph bought it from his unnatural son, at the heavy price of four hundred talents, which so reduced his finances that he was compelled to give up the castle after all to Passau, in order to relieve himself from his difficulties. In 1486, it came into the hands of the Lords of Oberhaimer, who carried on a desperate system of plunder against all unfortunate travellers, whether by land or by water. One of these Oberhaimers attacked the boat of a counsellor of Steyer, Valentine Rottenburgher, and carried off booty to the amount of seven hundred florins, a considerable sum in those days. In 1610, the castle was surprised by the Passauer-volk under Ramée; and, in 1626, Spatt, the famous peasant chief, attacked it suddenly, and put the garrison to the sword. Opposite to Marsbach, on the right bank, is Wesen, or Wesen-Urfar, with its ferry. The family of Wesen became extinct in 1230, by the death of Erchinger von Wesen, who was captain-general of the province of Enns, and lies buried at Engelhardszell. There is a famous cellar here, hewn in the rock, by command of the chapter of the cathedral of Passau, in which, it is said, you can turn a coach and four. In 1626, Adolph, Duke of Holstein-Gottorp, hastening with several thousand men to the relief of Herberstorf, landed unfortunately near this celebrated cellar. The temptation, I suppose, was too great for poor human nature; and the armed peasantry, descending from the hills before day-break, fell on the fuddled Swabians, as they lay “somno vinoque sepulti,” and slaughtered the greater part of them. The Duke himself narrowly escaped in his doublet, and with the loss of all his property. On the same bank, but on the ridge of the mountain, and half hidden by the dark firs that surround it, stands Waldkirche, with its crumbling ruins, which some call the Castle of Waldeck, and others the fortress of Wesen. The indefatigable Schultes has been able to gain no information respecting it, except that it was bought some time ago by a farmer from the Prince of Wrede, most likely with the view of demolishing it, and building new huts with the old materials.

Nearly facing Waldkirche rises the ruin of Hayenbach, or Kirchbaum, as it is called by the schiffers, upon the ridge of the long, lofty, and nearly perpendicular mountain, which terminates the chain on this side the valley, and forms a promontory, round which the river, suddenly and rapidly wheeling, completely doubles itself, and enters a narrow defile, the romantic, and I may say awful, beauty of which surpasses all description. So acute is the angle here made by the Danube, that the ruin of Hayenbach, though consisting of only one quadrangular and not very lofty tower, now presents its northern side to the eye in apparently the same situation that it did its southern side scarcely ten minutes before. Enormous crags, piled one upon the other, to the height of from three to four hundred fathoms; their weather-blanched pinnacles starting up amongst the black firs and tangled shrubs, that struggle to clothe each rugged pyramid from its base to its apex, form the entrance to this grand and gloomy gorge through which the mighty stream now boils and hurries, winding and writhing, till at length you become so utterly bewildered, that nothing but a compass can give you the slightest idea of the direction of its course. The Castle of Hayenbach, which seems to guard this extraordinary pass, belonged, in the fifteenth century, to the Oberhaimers, the Lords of Falkenstein and Marsbach, of whom I have already spoken, and who, no doubt, found it admirably situated for the prosecution of that predatory warfare in which they “lived, moved, and had their being.” Falkenstein, with which this Castle of Hayenbach, or Kirchbaum, is confounded, lies above Rana, and is not visible from the Danube, and the same vague tradition is attached to each ruin; namely, that it was originally built by a knight of the thirteenth century, who, having slain his brother, passed the rest of his days with an only daughter in that castellated hermitage[31].

For upwards of an hour we glided through scenes increasing in sublimity, and calling forth exclamations of wonder and delight, till my companion and I mutually confessed that we had exhausted our stock of epithets, and stood gazing in far more expressive silence on the stupendous precipices which towered above us, almost to the exclusion of daylight, their jagged sides

“Horrid with fern, and intricate with thorn;”

and on the rapid stream that, like Milton’s Fiend,

“. . . Through the palpable obscure toiled out
His uncouth passage . . .
. . . plunged in the womb
Of unoriginal night and chaos wild.”

The pencil of a Salvator Rosa could alone do justice to these wondrous scenes. The grandest views upon the Rhine sink into insignificance, when compared with the magnificent pictures which the Danube here presents us at every turn. The two rivers would have admirably illustrated Burke’s ‘Essay on the Sublime and Beautiful.’ Nature has contrasted them precisely according to the rules he has laid down in the twenty-seventh section of his Third Part. “Sublime objects,” says he, “are vast in their dimensions, beautiful ones comparatively small: beauty should be smooth and polished; the great, rugged and negligent: beauty should shun the right line, yet deviate from it insensibly; the great, in many cases, loves the right line, and, when it deviates, it often makes a strong deviation: beauty should not be obscure; the great ought to be dark and gloomy: beauty should be light and delicate; the great ought to be solid, and even massive.” The substitution of the words “Rhine” for “Beauty,” and of “Danube” for “great,” is nearly all that is necessary to change his general comparison into individual portraits of these rival floods, if rivalry may be said to exist between two opposite species of perfection.

The ruins on the banks of the Rhine, thickly interspersed as they are with smiling villages, busy towns, and sunny vineyards, swarming with holiday tourists, and echoing to the whips of Prussian postilions, and the rattle of Prussian schnel-wagens, are more like modern antiques erected on the confines of some gentleman’s park, than the bona fide relics of that truly iron age, “the days of the shield and the spear.” From Mayence to Cologne there is scarcely one mile of uninterrupted wild scenery; and even if there were, the charm would be broken by some pert galley, with its white awning and gaudy flag, some lumbering Dutch beurtschiff, or, worse than all, the monstrous anachronism of a steam-boat, splashing, sputtering, and fuming along at the rate of twelve miles an hour. The mouldering towers that totter upon the crags of the Danube, on the contrary, are surrounded by scenery rude as the times in which they were reared, and savage as the warriors who dwelt in them. Nothing seems changed but themselves. The solitary boat that now and then glides by them, is of the same fashion as that on which their marauding masters sallied down, perhaps, three hundred years ago. The humble cottages that here and there peep through the eternal firs, and the church that rears its dusky spire upon some neighbouring hill, are of the same age. The costume of the poor straggling fishermen and woodcutters around them is scarcely altered; and, indeed, one cannot look upon their own walls, blackened by fire, and crumbling in the blast, as they mostly are, without conjuring up the form of their ancient lord newly returned from Palestine, and finding his mountain-fastness burnt and pillaged by some neighbouring knight or prelate, with whom he was at feud, and on whom he now stands meditating swift and bloody retribution. For hours and hours the traveller may wind through these rocky defiles without meeting one object to scare the spirit of romance, which rises here in all her gloomy grandeur before him. From Passau to Vienna there is but one city, Linz, where the glare of modern uniforms, and the rumbling of modern vehicles, would dissipate the spell; and, much as I admire convenient and expeditious travelling, I should almost weep to see a bustling post-road cut beside the lonely Schlägen[32], or a steam-boat floundering and smoking through the Strudel and the Wirpel[33].

At the mouth of a small opening on the left bank, through which the Kleine-Michl ripples into the Danube, stands Ober-Michl, the only village of any consequence in this wilderness. In 1809, the Bohemian landwehr, under Colonel Hartman, took many of the French boats laden with provisions, near the spot. The Bavarian flotilla, under cover of the night and by dropping silently down the stream, escaped their notice. After passing two or three small groups of huts, another whirl of the river to the north-east brought us in front of the remarkable chateau of Neuhaus. Ranged along the brow of a perpendicular rock that seems to bar your further progress, stand three distinct buildings, (at least so they appear from the river,) giving you more the idea of a town than a castle. Far beneath them, but still at a considerable height from the water, upon a ledge of the rock, is perched a quadrangular ruin, the Toll-tower, no doubt, where the retainers of the Counts of Schaumberg, to whom Neuhaus belonged in the fourteenth century, were stationed to exact the tribute from the trembling schiffers.

In one of the many quarrels between the Counts of Schaumberg and the Duke of Austria, Neuhaus fell into the possession of the latter, but it was subsequently recovered, and many of the first nobles of Upper Austria were Castellans of Neuhaus for the House of Schaumberg. In 1510 it was annexed to the empire by Maximilian I., and pledged, in 1536, by Ferdinand I., for eight thousand silver pfennings, to the Baron of Springenstein, to whose heir it was afterwards presented as a free gift by Rudolph II. When the Turks, during the reign of the Emperor Charles V. burst into Hungary, and threatened Austria with invasion, Neuhaus was the asylum to which the women and children flew from all quarters. In the war between Rudolph II. and his brother Matthias, the troops raised by the former at Passau threw two chains across the Danube at this spot, one of which was forged at Steyer, and the other brought from Vienna, weighing not less than nine hundred pounds, and secured them with eight anchors, and a guard of armed boats. During the insurrections in 1626 also, the same measures were taken by the peasants, who ill treated the Countess of Springenstein, and made her a prisoner in her own castle. Neuhaus is at present, I believe, the property of the Prince of Thurm and Taxis.

It is only on arriving at the very foot of the rocky wall, which forms an impenetrable barrier to the further progress of the Danube northward, that you perceive the outlet from this valley of precipices. A beautiful lake opens to the right near the point where the Grosse Michl disembogues itself from a woody ravine; and the mountain chain gradually sinking on each side, the river widens and widens till the passenger would almost fancy it had completed its seaward course, and that he was entering upon the broad and fathomless ocean. From the time we had entered the gorge at Hayenbach to the period of our passing Neuhaus, a passage of at least two hours, we had never caught even a momentary glimpse of the sun. He now burst upon us in all the glory of his setting, and we seemed absolutely to breathe more freely as we emerged from between the stupendous galleries of granite and pine, which had imprisoned us nearly all the way from Passau. The mists of evening were fast settling upon bank and stream, as the lights of Aschach began to twinkle in the distance; and before we could reach the village on the opposite bank, where it was our steersman’s intention we should sleep, it was quite dark. On going ashore, we found the little inn, or rather public-house of the place, completely occupied by the passengers and crew of the regular boat, that left Ratisbon the morning before we did, and which our night’s voyage from Straubing to Vilshofen had enabled us to overtake. On crossing the threshold, however, of the dirty vault that “served it for parlour and kitchen and all,” we blessed our stars that there was no room for us; and feeling our way out again, for the clouds of smoke that rose around rendered it impossible for us to rely solely on our visual faculties, we intimated our intention of crossing the river to Aschach, where indeed we ought to have been originally landed; but our pilot was either afraid of the sandbank in front of it after nightfall, or there was some understanding between him and the master of the public-house on the left bank, postillions and boatmen generally getting their own board and lodging gratis as a reward for bringing “grist to the mill,” enough being invariably ground out of the said grist to indemnify the miller for any liberality he may have been guilty of towards the bearer. A lad soon made his appearance with a small boat, into which we jumped with our portmanteaus, and were ferried over to the end of a jetty, that has been thrown out from the bank, in consequence of the sand deposited by the river, which has within the last few years receded considerably from the town. Here we found tolerable accommodation, and I lost no time in atoning to the drowsy god for the hours of which I had defrauded him, the previous night, upon the water.

Aschach was a place of some importance, as early as the times of Charlemagne. Thassilo, Duke of Bavaria, gave in the year 772, some vineyards at Aschach to the monks of Krems-Münster. In the eleventh century the knights of Aschach begin to be celebrated. The Counts of Schaumberg possessed it during the middle ages, from whom it passed to the Lords of Jörger. At present, as well as the lordship of Stauf, it belongs to the Counts of Harrach. The history of this little market-town, for nearly the two last centuries, is one uninterrupted series of misfortunes. In 1626 it was not only taken and plundered by the revolted peasantry, but was for some time their head quarters. They endeavoured to chain up the Danube at this place, and obliged the town of Steyer, which they had taken at their first rising, to furnish them with a chain one hundred fathoms long, every link weighing twenty pounds. Besides this chain, they threw across three other, and a couple of stout ropes, trusting thereby to intercept the provisions and reinforcements for the relief of Herberstorf’s troops at Linz. But the Bavarian boats broke through this barrier, as they had already done through a similar one at Engelhards-zell. In the second insurrection, in 1632, the rebels surprised and plundered Aschach again, and remained there till Colonel Traun burnt their camp at Landshaag and dispersed them. In the contest with Bavaria, in 1809, Aschach suffered considerably both from friend and foe; and the removal of the custom-house back to Engelhards-zell in 1819, from whence it had been brought at the commencement of the present century, was a severe blow to the trade, which had begun to recompense the inhabitants for their losses during the war. The extensive sandbank which is yearly increasing before it, is an additional obstacle to its commerce, and Schultes indulges in melancholy predictions respecting the ultimate fate of this unfortunate little town. The wine made in its neighbourhood, is remarkable only for its badness, and is the standing joke of the inhabitants themselves; we must suppose, therefore, that it has either sadly degenerated since Thassilo made the vineyards a present to his friends at Krems-Münster, or that the fraternity were in want of an immediate supply of vinegar. Aschach is the most northerly point, on the Austrian Danube, where grapes are cultivated for that purpose. But there is another piece of information respecting this place, which is of more consequence than any I have yet mentioned, to the modern traveller. The paper money (papier-geld) of Austria here first comes into play, and the unapprised foreigner is astonished at being apparently charged for his bed, supper, breakfast, or what not, about four times as much as he has been in the habit of paying since he entered the country of florins and kreutzers.

The gold ducat also, which has passed throughout Bavaria for 4 fl. 54 k., and even 5 fl. in some places, here falls to its regular value of 4-1/2 florins only; and this sudden change is exceedingly perplexing to the stranger who has but just become acquainted with the Bavarian standard, in time to find it of no use to him.[34]

At day-break, after a hasty cup of coffee, we re-trod the jetty, and found the boat waiting to take us over to our weitz-zille, which lay moored besides the smoky wirtshaus before mentioned. We were soon aboard and afloat again, and gliding by the mouth of the little river Aschach that joins the Danube close below the town. By its side, on a small hill, stand the scarcely visible remains of the castle of Stauf, once the property, as indeed was, at that time, the whole surrounding country, of the mighty Counts of Schaumberg, who have been already so often mentioned; and, as the sun rose, his earliest beams fell upon the splendid ruins of the cradle of that great and ancient family—the once strong and beautiful castle of Schaumberg—still beautiful in decay,—on a gentle acclivity, and backed by the finely wooded mountains, on whose precipitous sides we had the previous day gazed so long with mingled awe and admiration. Nor were its picturesque white towers the only objects of attraction in the magnificent scene which gradually expanded upon our sight, as the morning mist rose like a curtain from before it. The broad river lay gleaming like a sheet of burnished gold beneath us; before us a number of richly wooded islands divided the glittering stream into twenty different channels to the right and left. Looking westward, the mountains of Bavaria and Bohemia stretched out their giant arms, as in despair at the escape of the flood they had so long held in thrall. At the mouth of the defile from which we had issued, stood the little town of Aschach. Still more to the south, the ruined castles of Stauf and Schaumberg, and, far away in the south-east, but clearly defined against the blue horizon, towered the Alps and Glaciers of the Steyer-Mark, their snowy and fantastic peaks alternately tinted with pink and purple, and gold, by the changeful glories of sunrise. It was, indeed, a most exquisite panorama, and fully justifies the heroics of Professor Schultes, though, in his enthusiastic admiration of the Danube, he is unjust to the really beautiful Rhine. “An Englishman,” says he, “who had often made the voyage of the Danube, and also that of the Rhine, from Mainz to Utrecht, in search of the picturesque, showed me his journal of the Rhine voyage. It contained only two words, ‘Toujours perdrix[35].’” But to return to the Castle of Schaumberg. The picturesque ruins which formed so fine a feature in the prospect before us, were, as I have already said, the cradle and principal seat of the once terrible Counts of that name. In the twelfth century, their signatures appear to many deeds, spelt indifferently Schoumbergh, Schowenberch, and Schawenberch. As late as 1548, the Schaumbergs were free counts of the empire, and their names are entered in the Reichs-Matrikel, (the roll or register of the empire,) as bound to furnish six horse and twenty-six foot men at arms,—a slender contingent for a family that could, by lifting a finger, have brought thousands into the field. Their domains extended from the Bavarian frontier, beyond Linz, and included the market towns and castles of Baierbach, Stauf, Aschach, Efferding, Neuhaus, Flayenbach, Ober and Unter Wesen, Fichtenstein, Weidenholz, Mistelbach, nearly the whole of the Donau-Thal, from Passau to Schaumberg, and farther inland, in the old Traun-gau, Kammer upon the Attersee, Frankenberg, Wildeneck, etc. etc. Wilhelm, son of Wernhard, Count of Julbach, a descendant of one of the thirty-two children of Babo of Abensberg, was the first lord of the castle who assumed the name of Schaumberg, A. D. 1161. His successor, forming alliances with the families of the Landgraves of Leuchtenberg, the Burggraves of Nürnberg, and the Dukes of Austria, became gradually more and more powerful, exacted heavy tolls on the Danube, at Neuhaus and Aschach, plundered travellers, took their less powerful neighbours prisoners, for the sake of extorting ransom, or compelling them to join their league, and, in short, were worthy supporters of the famous “faust-recht” of Germany.[36]

Sometimes, a twinge of conscience made them endeavour to propitiate heaven, by letting its servants share a little in the plunder; and, with this view, they founded, in 1325, the Kloster of Saint Niklas by Passau, and, in 1323, the Convent at Baumgartenberg; and by degrees permitted the boats, etc. appertaining to most of the surrounding monasteries and convents, to pass Aschach toll free.

Notwithstanding their alliance by marriage, terrible feuds were continually springing up betwixt the Counts of Schaumberg and the Dukes of Austria; and the assistance which Henry of Schaumberg, in 1319, gave to Frederick the Handsome, against Louis the Bavarian, is almost a solitary instance of the families siding together in warfare. So much were their valour and influence dreaded by the principal potentates of Germany, that Albert II., Duke of Austria, surnamed the Lame, and Louis the Bavarian, entered into a solemn contract at Passau in 1340, by which they bound themselves never to make offensive or defensive league with the Counts of Schaumberg.

In 1366, Albert III.[37], having made war upon Henry Count of Schaumberg, the latter appealed to the Emperor Charles IV., who appointed the Burggraves of Nürnberg and Magdeburg umpires between the parties. The Burggraves decided in favour of Albert, and the Count of Schaumberg and his descendants were declared subjects of Austria, and the castles of Kammer, Neuhaus, and Fichtenstein forfeited to the duchy, besides the immense sum, for that period, of twelve thousand florins. Henry, enraged at this heavy sentence, took the first opportunity of renewing the war with Albert, who in 1379 in person besieged the castle of Schaumberg; and the contest was carried on with great fury and bitterness, till Stephen, Duke of Bavaria, reconciled the parties and induced Count Henry to hold the castles of Neuhaus and Stauf, and the market town of Efferding, as fiefs of Austria. This peace, however, was, as might have been expected, of no long duration. The Counts again declared themselves independent, and the struggle continued with alternate success, till the church stept in out of pure charity, scandalized to see such a waste of treasure, and like the lawyer in the old story, settled the matter by swallowing the oyster and leaving the shells to the disputants. One by one the contested estates became the property of this and that kloster, till at length, in 1548, the family of Schaumberg became so straitened for means, that it could no longer defend the little that was left of its once immense dominions, and acknowledging the feudal sovereignty of Austria, became extinct in 1559 by the death of Count Wolfgang.—The castle of Schaumberg at present belongs to the Prince of Starrhemberg, an ancestor of whose family married one of the last female descendants of the line of Schaumberg. There is a tradition that the Danube originally ran beneath its walls, but there appears no foundation for such a belief. The chapel and two watch-towers are still tolerably perfect: on the walls of the former there are said to exist some paintings of the fourteenth century; I regret exceedingly that my ignorance of the fact, when I was in the vicinity, prevented my inspecting them. If they really be of the date assigned to them, and in tolerable preservation, they would be worth a pilgrimage.

A stone pillar near a brook, in the valley before the castle, is said to record the fate of a Count of Schaumberg, who, though invincible in battle or tournament, could not resist the charms of a fair maiden, “armed at both eyes,” the daughter of a miller, in the valley of Aschach. One night as he was riding to a rendezvous, his horse started (as well he might) at the sudden appearance of a fiery dragon that rushed out of a thicket before him, became unmanageable, plunged at last with his master over a precipice into the swollen torrent below; and the first object that met the unfortunate maiden’s sight when she opened her casement in the morning, was the floating corses of her noble lover and his favourite steed.

Nearly facing Aschach, on the left bank, is the poor little market-town of Landshaag, formerly belonging to the convent of Niedernburg at Passau, but now, of course, to Austria. This little place suffered terribly during the insurrections of 1626 and 1632, from the rebels, who in the latter year had their camp in its neighbourhood.

About half an hour’s walk to the eastward of this little town stands, on the top of one of the Klausberge, in a forest of fruit-trees, the ruin of Ober-Walsee. A castle was originally built here by the Schaumbergs, but it was most probably destroyed by the celebrated Ulrich of Walsee, governor of Styria, who suppressed the rebellion which had broken out in these districts during the absence of Frederick the handsome, Duke of Austria, in 1309, and repelled Otto Duke of Bavaria, who attempting to profit by the intestine commotion, had invaded Frederick’s dominions; Ulrich, before Frederick could hasten to his assistance, had already subdued the refractory, and ravaged their property with fire and sword. In return for this and other services rendered to the Dukes of Austria by the family of Walsee, Rodolph IV. gave permission to Eberhard von Walsee, in 1364, to build a strong fortress on the Klausberge, a permission which, while it had the appearance of a favour conferred upon the Lords of Walsee, furthered the views of the Duke, inasmuch as it placed a strong curb upon the neighbouring Counts of Schaumberg, the implacable enemies of the House of Hapsburg. The descendants of Eberhard possessed this castle, which received the name of Ober-Walsee, till the extinction of the male branch in 1485, when the last female of the family, Barbara of Walsee, in obedience to that power

“Qui tient sous son empire
Le genre humain les ânes et les Dieux,”

gave her hand to Count Siegmund of Schaumberg, one of the sworn foes of her own house as well as that of Austria, and added both Ober and Nieder-Walsee, a castle lower down on the Danube, to the possessions of the Schaumbergs. In 1559 the family of Schaumberg became also extinct; and Ober-Walsee, after passing through several hands, descended to the Princes of Staremberg, who were also Lords of the neighbouring castle and domain of Eschelberg.

Respecting one Hans of Eschelberg, Schultes has a rigmarole story, which (unless he be jesting, and there is nothing to lead one to such a conclusion) proves him, however well acquainted with the history of his own country, unaccountably deficient in information regarding that of others. This said Hans, who commenced his military career under Louis the Bavarian, at the siege of Lindau, and received the honour of knighthood from that Emperor, for his valiant exploits therein, followed John, King of Bohemia, into Poland, and shared in the victory of that monarch at Cracow; not finding himself sufficiently recompensed for his services, accepted an invitation from Edward III. of England, who was then besieging Calais, and assisted him in the reduction of that place. So far so good; but not contented with claiming these probable services for his hero, Herr Schultes, upon the strength of a fragment of an old ballad, quoted by Hoheneck, makes him the bearer of the English standard at the battle of Cressy, where, “mirabile dictu,” he took the French king prisoner with his own hand (at Cressy!), while his knightly companions slew John, King of Bohemia, and Peter, King of Navarre! At a feast given on the field, in honour of the victory, Edward III. paid Sir Hans of Eschelberg the distinguished compliment of seating him between himself and the captive king, presented him with one hundred marks of silver, etc. etc. He afterwards returned to Germany, beat the Bohemians, became the champion of dukes, princes, and bishops; flew back to his old friend Edward, when again investing Calais, who rewarded him with more money and honours; returned again to his native land, and, after thirty years of battle and victory in all parts of Europe, died captain of the lands upon the Ens. The Professor seems quite heart-broken that this doughty warrior has never been mentioned by any historian, and perfectly unconscious of the way in which the author of the old ballad, with the license or ignorance of most of the romantic writers of the middle ages, has mixed up the two perfectly distinct battles of Cressy and Poictiers, confounding incidents, leaders, and periods, with the utmost sang froid and complacency.

The banks of the Danube, from Aschach to Linz, witnessed the greater part of those bloody struggles between the two principal sects of a religion revealed for the beneficent purpose of promoting “peace on earth, good will towards men,” which convulsed the provinces of Upper Austria during the seventeenth century; and as the actors in them have already been mentioned more than once, and will be frequently named hereafter, I shall venture to give, in as few words as possible, a sketch of the insurrections of 1626 and 1632, particularly as they have been merely alluded to by Schiller, in his history of the thirty years’ war, and Coxe, in his history of the House of Austria, the two most elaborate works upon that period familiar to the English reader,—the deeds of a Gustavus, a Wallenstein, and a Tilly, having naturally occupied their attention, to the exclusion of all less generally important circumstances.

The object which Ferdinand II., Emperor of Germany, had most at heart, from worldly as well as spiritual motives, was the extirpation of the reformed religion. The battle of Prague had no sooner decided the fate of Bohemia, than he tore, with his own hand, the memorable letter of majesty extorted from Rudolph II. by the states of the kingdom, in favour of the Protestants, and burnt the seal; and proceeded not only to the revocation of the privileges granted to them by his predecessors, which he had not confirmed, but even of those which had received his own unqualified approbation. He intimated to all the Protestants in his dominions, that they must either abandon their religion or their native country,—a bitter and terrible choice, which excited the most violent commotions amongst his Austrian subjects, and particularly in the district above the Ens. Upper Austria had been, for some time, held in pledge by the Elector of Bavaria, for the indemnification promised him by the Emperor for his assistance against the Evangelic Union; and Count Adam von Herberstorf, who commanded the Bavarian troops at Linz, had been guilty of unnecessary severities towards its unfortunate inhabitants. On the 17th of May, 1626, the flame, which had been long smothering, burst into a sudden and terrible blaze, in consequence of some excesses committed by a straggling party of Herberstorf’s soldiery. The Protestant peasantry flew to arms, and, in two days, took and plundered the towns of Aschach, Grieskirchen, and Baierbach, and the strong fortress of Velden. On the 20th of May, Herberstorf marched against the rebels at Baierbach, with twelve hundred men and some artillery, but was repulsed with great loss; and, after having two horses killed under him, retreated in confusion to Linz. The peasantry were now headed by one Stephen Fadinger, a hatter; and, in about ten days from their first rising, mustered full seventy thousand men, and possessed a park of thirty cannon. Within the first eight days, Fadinger had made himself master of Wels, Kremsmünster, Vöglabruch, and Gmünden, and in six more, with the exceptions of Freystadt, Ens, and Linz, the whole of Upper Austria was overrun, and subdued by the insurgents. Flushed with victory, Fadinger invested Linz on the 25th of June, and would most probably have succeeded in reducing it, had he not received a shot in the thigh from one of Herberstorf’s musqueteers, in violation of a short armistice agreed upon between the leaders, June 28th, of which wound he died in the beginning of the following month[38]. His successor, Achaz Willinger von Katterhof, a nobleman, had neither his talent nor his good fortune. Steyer and Freystadt, which had fallen just before Fadinger’s death, were retaken, fifteen hundred soldiers dispersed twelve thousand peasants, in the neighbourhood of Ens; and, in two assaults upon Linz, the Protestants were repulsed with terrible slaughter. The Austrian commissioner had nearly succeeded in his charitable endeavours to restore peace, when some fresh cruelty of Herberstorf’s, or the soldiers under his command, kindled anew the torch of discord, and, by another change of fortune, the peasantry cut to pieces the troops of the Duke of Holstein-Gotton, at Wesen-Urfar, and successively defeated the Bavarian general Lindlo, at Geyersberg, Count Preuner, at Haslach, Herberstorf, near Gmünden, and even the valiant Löbel, at Wels. The celebrated Pappenheim, however, whose mother Count Herberstorf had married, retrieved the fortunes of his party, by beating the rebels in three following battles at Efferding, Gmünden, and Vöglabruch, but not without considerable difficulty, as he himself acknowledges in a letter to Herberstorf. “It was,” he writes, “as if my cavalry had to combat the massive rocks; for these peasants fought not like men, but like infernal furies!” These reverses decided the fate of the insurgents; and, though the Imperial commissioner himself declared that the peasantry had not risen with treasonable intentions against the Emperor, but were goaded into the act by the severity of Herberstorf, nearly the whole of the prisoners were hung and quartered, or impaled. Achaz Willinger, as he was a nobleman, was beheaded, and his body delivered to the Jesuits, who had not been the least important actors in this terrible tragedy.

Six years had not elapsed before the continued persecution they experienced, stirred up the Protestants again to resistance. In 1632 a second rising of the peasantry on the Ens was accompanied by the same slaughter, and the same devastation; and in these two contests alone, which are but trifling episodes in the sanguinary history of the thirty years war, upwards of fifty thousand subjects of Austria, upon a moderate calculation, were sacrificed to the childish superstition and inveterate bigotry of its ruler. “The victory of the White Mountain,” says Schiller, “put Ferdinand in possession of all his dominions. He even received them with greater powers than his predecessors; since their allegiance had been unconditionally pledged to him, and no letter of majesty now existed to limit his sovereign authority. The war was ended, if justice was his object; and if magnanimity was to be united with justice, so was the punishment. The fate of Germany was in his hands; the happiness and misery of millions were dependent on his resolution. Never was a more important trust placed in a single hand; never was the blindness of one individual productive of more fatal consequences.” The barbarities committed on both sides, during these conflicts, were horrible beyond description. The peasantry had treasured up the recollection of the cruelties they had suffered at the hands of Herberstorf and his soldiery, and now repaid them with dreadful interest. Once goaded over the line of legal authority, their ferocity knew no bounds: nor did they glut their lust of vengeance upon the soldiery only; those of their own class and sect who did not immediately gather round the standard of insurrection, were mutilated or slaughtered without compunction. On the other hand the prisoners taken by the Catholic party, were tortured and executed with a horrid ingenuity, that might have edified a Sioux Indian, or a Spanish inquisitor. Ferdinand would only remember that the inhabitants of Upper Austria had risen seven times in thirty-seven years, and would make no allowances for the provocations which had driven a naturally loyal people to desperation. He had been told by his jesuits, that Protestantism and rebellion were synonymous terms, and to Ferdinand II. “the voice of a monk was the voice of God.” “Nothing on earth,” writes his own confessor, “was more sacred in his eyes than the priesthood. If it could happen, he used to say, that an angel and a clergyman were to meet him at the same time and place, the clergyman should receive his first, and the angel his second obeisance[39].” Gracious God! for what wise purposes are men permitted to make Thy holy name a signal for butchery, to turn the manna of Thy word into poison, and sow with the brier and the thorn Thy “ways of pleasantness and Thy paths of peace.”

CHAPTER V.

Efferding. — Ottensheim. — Kloster-Willering. — Linz. — The Platz. — The Landstrasse. — The Schlossberg. — The Landhaus. — The Theatre. — The Bridge. — The Pöstlingberg. — View on leaving Linz. — Steyereck. — The River Traun. — Ebelsberg. — Luftenberg. — Monastery of St. Florian. — Tillysburg. — Spielberg. — Mauthausen. — Ens. — Origin and History of the City. — Antiquities discovered in its neighbourhood.

From Aschach to Ottensheim is one labyrinth of islands, through which few boats venture without a pilot, as the current of the river is continually changing its course, and the deep channel or ditch (Graben) as the boatmen here call it, through which they have safely steered a few days before, may upon their second visit be transformed into a sandbank, or blocked up with trunks and branches of trees, washed into it by the floods that so frequently occur in this part of the country. While passing through this archipelago, the banks of the river are seldom visible, but fortunately there is nothing upon them to make that circumstance a matter of regret. The whole country between Aschach and Willering is said to have been formerly the basin of one vast lake, cradled amongst the mountains of Bohemia, Moravia, and Upper Austria, and the name of Ilmersee, which appears in the thirteenth century, is quoted in confirmation of the tradition. The White Tower of Hartkirchen is shortly seen on the right bank. The Catholic minister of this church, and his cook-maid, were cruelly murdered here, by the revolted peasantry in 1626. Pupping, celebrated for a dead saint, and Bergheim for a beautiful breweress[40], whose strong beer and bright eyes distracted the heads and the hearts of her customers, and might have sorely tempted the holy St. Otmar himself, had the good man been living at the time.—Waschpoint, Wörth, and two or three other small villages on the same bank all passed, were ached Efferding, one of the oldest places on the Danube. The beautiful Chrimhilt, the heroine of the Nibelungen-lied, is said, in that poem, to have rested here upon her journey into Hungary. One of the Schaumbergs bought the little town from the Bishop of Passau in 1367, for four thousand florins; and at the extinction of that family, it came to the Starrhembergs, who built a castle here, still called the Burg. A rich and valiant family, of the name of Schifer, founded and liberally endowed an hospital here, as early as 1325, and expressly commanded that, when there was not a sufficient number of sick and poor in the town of Efferding to fill the hospital, the governor should send out “into the highways and hedges, and compel them to come in.”

On the 1st of September, 1632, the combined peasantry burned the suburbs, and, on the 25th, defeated the nephew and namesake of the great and merciless Tilly, but, shortly afterwards, were themselves defeated by the Imperial troops with great slaughter. Upwards of three thousand of the unfortunate men, who fell at various periods in this neighbourhood, lie buried here, as did also their leader, Fadinger, till Herberstorf had the body disinterred, and carried to Seebach, where it was flung into a hole beneath the gibbet. The historian Kurz has preserved the receipt for the money paid to the ministers of this paltry vengeance. The Bavarians plundered Efferding in 1704 and 1742, and it suffered considerably during the last war, from the continual fighting in its neighbourhood. A dozen small villages are scattered on each bank, between Efferding and Ottensheim; and the Ihn, the Bösenbach, and the Rodel, wind amongst them to the Danube. At one of these little places, named Hartheim, dwelt in 1620 a lady of the family of Aspan, the fame of whose wealth, according to Hoheneck, determined a Prince of Saxony to make a personal proposal of marriage. Travelling incognito with only two attendants, he fell, near Efferding, into the hands of the rebel peasantry, who, taking the unfortunate suitor for a spy, put him and his domestics instantly to the sword. At length, we approached the square white tower, which had been for some time gleaming above the intervening islands; and as we issued from amongst them, the little market town of Ottensheim, with its chateau and church, all grouped as with an eye to effect, upon a gentle eminence projecting into the Danube, gradually glided into view. On a house in the market-place, is the figure of a child in a cradle, surmounted by a canopy, and underneath it are the following lines:

“Im 1208 Jahr.
Da Ottensheim noch nicht genannt war,
Ist Kaiser Otto Auserkohren
Alhier in diesen Haus geboren.”

What Emperor Otto, the worthy composer of this distich intended us to believe was born here in 1208, I cannot pretend to determine, as the fourth and last emperor of that name was elected as early as 1197; and that the place was not called Ottensheim before that period, appears to be another equally unfortunate assertion.

Leopold II., Duke of Austria, who died in 1194, sold Wechsenberg, Ottensheim, Grein, and Hartenstein, to Otto von Schleung, “mit leuth und gut,” (with people and property,) for six hundred pounds of silver. In the fourteenth century, Heinrich von Neuhaus, Peter von Sternberg, and Ulrich von Landstein, laid waste this part of the country to the walls of Ottensheim, and began a feud, which desolated Upper Austria for upwards of one hundred years. In 1626, a body of the insurgents, under a leader named Christoph Zeller, established their head-quarters at Ottensheim; and the French plundered the town, both in their disastrous retreat in 1742, and their victorious march to Vienna in 1809. Ottensheim, however, has recovered from its many disasters, and drives a tolerably brisk trade in linen, wood and fruit, pit-coal and alum. Between Ottensheim and Kloster-Willering, which faces it, there is another rapid race of the river, that forms quite a little sea of billows. Kloster-Willering lies at the foot of the fir-crowned Kirnberg, which, rising on the right bank, extends its forest-covered masses as far as Linz. The Kloster was originally the castle of the Knights of Willering, descended from the old Counts of Kirnberg. Cholo and Ulrich of Willering, Barons of Weremberg, established some Cistertian monks here in 1146. Ulrich went to Palestine, from whence he never returned. With him his family became extinct, and the whole of his great possessions fell to the fortunate monks of Willering. They soon wheedled themselves into the confidence and favour of all the noblest and richest families of Upper Austria, many of the heads of which joined their fraternity. The Archdukes of Austria themselves highly patronized this Kloster, and freed it from all tolls and taxes; and it shortly became so powerful, that it assumed a species of jurisdiction over all the other establishments of its order, upon the banks of the Danube, as far as Engelhardszell. One of its abbots, in 1544, played it a scurvy trick. He was a Nürnberger by birth, and named Erasmus Villicus. Scarcely had he been raised to this enviable dignity, when he took unto himself a wife, and one fine night disappeared with the lady, and all the jewels of the Kloster! From that period, a chain of misfortunes seems to have attended it. It was twice or thrice plundered during the insurrections; nearly burned to the ground in 1733; suffered in an action between the French and Austrians, in 1742; and by an inundation in 1787, when the Danube overflowed its banks to the height of full seven fathoms.

After washing the walls of Kloster Willering, the Danube enters another beautiful valley, skirted on one side by the dark forests of the Kirnberg, and on the other by groves of a lighter green, interspersed with cottages and gardens, over which, in the distance, rise the spires of Pöstlingberg, announcing to the traveller the vicinity of Linz. On the brink of each bank runs a carriage-road, the one on the right being the high post-road to Regensburg and Nürnberg, and that on the left leading to Ottensheim, Grammetstetten, and Landshag. This beautiful valley is the favourite promenade of the Linzers, who flock on a fine summer afternoon through the woods on the right bank, to a hunting lodge in the Kirnbergerwald, near which stand the ruins of Helfenberg, the cradle of the old Counts of Kirnberg; and in the winter go in sledges to Willering, and the neighbouring places, to drink wine, beer, and coffee, smoke, knit, and hear music.

Having rounded the point of land overlooked by the lofty Pöstlingberg,—the city of Linz,—the capital of Upper Austria,—with its long wooden bridge, gradually makes its appearance. Beneath the rocks on the right bank, stands a long line of houses and chapels, some romantically situated in little clefts of the rocks, and surrounded by firs and pines. This place is called the Calvarienberg (Mount Calvary), and is the scene of numberless processions and religious ceremonies of the Catholic inhabitants of Linz.

Linz is a handsome, clean, and cheerful looking city, and the inhabitants may be said to partake the good qualities of their town. The Linzer women are famed for beauty, if we may believe the guide-books, and who would dare to doubt them upon such a subject?—honestly, however, I cannot say I remarked any extraordinary difference between the lasses of Linz, and their Bavarian neighbours. The young females of the lower and middling classes, throughout the south of Germany, are in general plump, good-humoured looking girls, with florid complexions, large laughing blue eyes, snub noses, and light hair. Amongst the nobility and gentry, indeed, are some of the loveliest creatures I ever saw, and more resembling our own sweet countrywomen than the females of any other nation in Europe. But, as honest Cowley says:

—“Beauty, thou wild fantastic ape,
Who dost in every country change thy shape:
Here black, there brown, here tawny, and there white,
Thou flatterer, who comply’st with every sight:
—Who hast no certain what nor where;
But vary’st still, and dost thyself declare
Inconstant as thy she-professors are!—”

Who shall define thee?—

Amongst the men a very visible alteration in person had taken place, even before we arrived at Linz. There appeared to me considerably more of the Greek and Italian than the German cast of feature in the Austrian countenance. Long aquiline noses, dark eyes and swarthy complexions were new objects to me in German faces. Civility, kindness, and good humour, however, reigned in the hearts and manners of both sexes; and after the gloomy pictures I have seen so frequently drawn in England, of the degraded and miserable condition of the people of Austria, it was curious enough to mark the content and gaiety that, at least, appeared to pervade every class of his Imperial Majesty’s subjects. Having tasted nothing since our single cup of coffee at Aschach, we hastened to the Golden Lion, the best inn we saw upon the Platz, and made a capital breakfast, in an apartment on the first floor, fitted up precisely like an English coffee-room, the windows commanding a good view of the Platz, which (it being a market morning) presented a lively and interesting appearance. It is a fine, spacious, oblong square, between eight and nine hundred feet in length, and upwards of three hundred broad[41], surrounded on three sides by handsome houses built of freestone, (some of these five stories high,) and ornamented with a twisted column, surmounted by a gilt glory, erected by the Emperor Charles VI., in 1713, in memory of a great plague. South of this column, the square was filled with market-people and purchasers. The ground was covered with their large flat baskets, containing all kinds of provisions. By the side of each stood the vendor, in his or her provincial costume; and amongst the motley crowd moved the mistresses and maidens of Linz, the former dressed “à la Française,” with the exception of short sleeves, and long gloves tied above the elbow, a fashion peculiar to Germany; and the latter in their little jackets, coloured petticoats, and splendid caps of gold brocade, entitled “Linzer hauben,” modelled, one would suppose, from the gorgeous crest of a Chinese or golden pheasant. Exactly facing our windows was a large house, where, over the porte cochère, the Austrian Eagle (that “rara avis in terris, nigroque simillima cygno” with two necks) sprawled upon a yellow board, all legs and wings, like a bird of prey on a barn door, and under it paraded a tall mustachoed Austrian grenadier sentinel, in white and black uniform, black gaiters, and portentous bear-skin cap, while half a dozen soldiers of other regiments lounged about the gateway of the Kaiserlich,—Königlich,—something or other, that I could not exactly make out, and added considerably to the picturesque effect of the whole scene.

Breakfast over, we repaired to the polizey, to reclaim our passports, exchanged on landing for a printed paper containing, in German, French, and Italian, an injunction, under certain pains and penalties, to present yourself to the police, within twenty-four hours after your arrival; those secured, we rambled over the town, which has nothing particularly worth notice in the way of buildings. There is a tolerably handsome church near the post-office, and polizey-direction; in a long airy street, (the landstrasse) that runs right out into the country; for, unlike continental towns in general, Linz has no gloomy gateways or frowning barriers; a light turnpike a little way out of the town on the high-road, painted, as they all are in Germany, with the colours of the empire or kingdom, and resembling, exceedingly, the now nearly exploded barber’s pole, alone indicates the spot where the land-traveller must exhibit his passport and pay the little weg-geld or road-toll, to an officer stationed for that purpose at a neighbouring cottage. A little arch, under which you pass into the Platz from the bank of the Danube, is dignified by the name of the Wasser-thor; and you are directed to the Haupt-thor, the Schmidt-thor, and the Land-haus-thor, as you might in London be directed to Ludgate, or to Holborn-bars, but the Thor itself has long vanished. Riesbeck, who travelled through Germany in 1780, speaking of Linz, says, “the city is open on all sides, and the town and country seem so united, that if my spirit of knight errantry would allow it, I would pitch my tent, and lay my travelling staff up, here;” and gives honourable testimony to “the industry, happiness, and prosperity of the eleven thousand inhabitants who dwell in it.” If the late wars have occasioned any decrease of its prosperity, they have either not had that effect upon its population, or the inhabitants have been singularly fortunate in repairing damages, since the peace. Their number is now, by two different accounts, estimated at sixteen, and twenty thousand. From the Schlossberg, on the west of the city, you have a fine view over the Danube and the surrounding country. Upon this rock anciently stood the citadel of Linz, in which Richard Cœur de Lion, it is said, was feasted as he returned from his long Austrian captivity. The Archduke frequently resided here, and Rodolph II. considerably enlarged it. The Emperor Ferdinand I. still further enlarged and beautified it. It was afterwards converted into barracks, and, finally, into an hospital, which was burned down in 1800. Upon its site a commodious workhouse has been erected; and the poor now eat their crumbs upon the spot where formerly stood “the rich man’s table.” There are many charitable establishments[42] and public schools in Linz, as well for Catholics as Protestants, and some considerable manufactories, one of which (the Imperial and Royal Woollen Cloth Manufactory) is a little town in itself.

The Landhaus, the Guildhall of Linz, (or rather, the Government House of Upper Austria, where the president and eight counsellors appointed for the administration of justice in the country above the Ens, hold their sessions,) stands on the promenade, and was originally a Franciscan convent, built, in 1287, by Eberhard von Walsee. From a window of this building, the shot was fired that mortally wounded the rebel captain, Stephen Fadinger. Near the Landhaus is the new theatre. The old one was destroyed by the fire in 1800, which reduced to ashes the greater part of this quarter of the town. The erection of the present building cost ninety-six thousand florins. Under the same roof, is the Redouten-Saal, or Assembly Room for masquerades, balls, etc.

The old chroniclers are not agreed as to the origin and foundation of Linz. Lazius would trace it to the Roman Lentium, or Lentia, destroyed by the Huns. Bruschius, in his rhyming panegyric, says,

“Hanc quis condidit primus, quo tempore et anno,
Nominis aut hujus quæ sit origo vetus;
Vix poterit dici: siquidem Germania fustos
Non tantâ scripsit religione suos,
Quanta vel Græci fecerunt laude, vel ipsi
Ausonii proceres Romuleique patres.”

Under Louis the Child, Linz was known as a toll-place on the Danube, and the seat of the Counts of Kirnberg. The last of this family sold, according to Lazius, the whole of his dominions to the Markgraves of Austria. When the Emperor Frederick II., “the pupil, the enemy, and the victim of the church,” was excommunicated by Pope Gregory IX. the second time, in 1236, Linz was besieged by the powers of the King of Bohemia, the Duke of Bavaria, the Patriarch of Aquileia, and the Bishops of Bamberg, Freysingen, and Passau. Frederick, however, assisted only by Albert, Count of Pogen, relieved the good city, and took one of the church militant, the Bishop of Passau, prisoner. During the reign of Rodolph of Hapsburg, Linz was plundered by Henry, Duke of Bavaria; and, in 1335, the Emperor Louis the Bavarian here invested the Dukes of Austria with Carinthia and the Tyrol, and entered into an offensive and defensive alliance, to secure the succession of those countries against the pretensions of the King of Bohemia and his heirs[43]. In 1481, the whole city was destroyed by fire, with the exception of the castle and one street. The Emperor Frederick III. caused it to be rebuilt and considerably enlarged, and declared it, in 1490, the capital of Upper Austria. He bought the village of Urfar, till then only inhabited by fishermen, and, flinging a wooden bridge over the Danube to it from Linz, it, in a short time, became a kind of suburb to the city. On the 19th of August, 1493, Linz lost its imperial benefactor. Frederick died in this city, of which he may almost be called the founder, at the advanced age of seventy-eight, and after a reign of fifty-three years, the longest of any emperor since the days of Augustus. He had been afflicted with a cancerous ulcer in his leg. As the only means of relief, he submitted to amputation; but, from the unskilfulness of the surgeon, and the vitiated state of his blood, a second amputation was necessary. He bore these painful operations with extreme fortitude, and gave a singular proof of his characteristic phlegm. Taking the severed limb in his hand, he said to those who were present, “What difference is there between an emperor and a peasant? or rather, is not a sound peasant better than a sick emperor? Yet I hope to enjoy the greatest good which can happen to man: a happy exit from this transitory life.” He seemed to be in a fair state of recovery, but his rigid observation of a fast, during which, in opposition to his medical attendants, he would take nothing but melons and water, brought on a dysentery, which, in his debilitated condition, became fatal. I agree with Schultes in thinking that an equestrian statue of this benefactor of Linz would be a more handsome and appropriate ornament for its principal square, than the column before mentioned. In 1521-2, the Archduke Ferdinand, afterwards emperor and founder of the German branch of the House of Austria, solemnized, at Linz, his nuptials with Anne, Princess of Hungary and Bohemia. Thrice, during the remainder of that century, was Linz visited with the awful scourge of pestilence. In 1620, the whole of Upper Austria was pledged to Bavaria; and, during the insurrections as already related, Linz was invested by the peasants under Fadinger, and its suburbs were reduced to ashes. Keppler, the famous astronomer, who at that time resided in them, lost some valuable MSS. in the flames. Linz was thrice stormed during those disturbances. In 1741, Linz was taken possession of by the allied French and Bavarian army, under Marshal Bellisle and the Elector, and in the three unsuccessful struggles of Austria against Napoleon in 1800, 1805, and 1809, it suffered, in common with other towns upon the Danube, the various misfortunes of war.

The wooden bridge across the Danube, I have already said, was first built in 1490, but there is mention made of a bridge as early as 1106. It is conjectured, however, that it must have been a bridge of boats only, as the first regular bridge across to Urfar was certainly that thrown over by Ferdinand[44]. A stroll across this bridge, which is upwards of one thousand feet in length, through the little town of Urfar, (for though it merely looks like the suburb of Linz, it has risen to the dignity of a markt[45],) and up the steep Pöstlingberg, to the church and observatory on its summit, would, no doubt, repay any one for the trouble if he could afford the time, as far as an extensive and beautiful view goes; but, as my object was to travel through Austria, and not merely look over it, as a certain respectable personage is said “to look over Lincoln,” nothing but a view being to be gained by it, I declined the invitation; and having revictualled our bark, for we always dined on board, about twelve o’clock, we

“All got under weigh,
And bude a long adieu to”—
the capital of Upper Austria.

The retrospective view, after we had left Linz about a quarter of a mile behind us, was exceedingly beautiful, as beautiful, perhaps, as the view on leaving Passau, but of quite a different character. The city lay on our left, the beach before it crowded with people, and piled with merchandise,—a regiment of infantry marching out of the Wasser-thor, drums beating and colours flying; the bridge, alive with passengers, stretched across the gulf, from whence the Danube rushed panting out, and then spread itself, right and left, like a calm bright lake before us. In front, gradually rising from the water’s edge, and spotted with the white straggling buildings of the little town of Urfar, towered the majestic Pöstlingberg, cultivated to its summit, and crowned by its church and observatory. More to the right arose the Pfenningberg, equally lofty, and similarly chequered with corn and meadow land. Between them, lay a soft green valley, in the bosom of which nestled the old village of Magdalena, the spire of its ancient church just peeping above the trees. A cloudless deep blue sky formed the back ground of this rich and laughing picture, that gladdened the heart, and filled it “almost to overflowing” with love and gratitude to that ineffable spirit, the Great Architect and

“Author of this Universe,
And all this good to man! For whose well-being,
So amply, and with hands so liberal,
He hath provided all things.”

Looking forward on our course, a crowd of little villages appeared on the left bank of the river, which again meandered amongst woody islands, and received, just below a small hamlet called Furth, the tiny stream of the Kitzelbach. Farther on, upon the same bank, rose the half burned chateau of Steyereck, upon a small hill, in front of the forest-covered mountains which again line that side of the river. The little market-town of Steyereck is hidden behind the poplars of an island close to the shore. Steyereck was formerly a place of some commercial importance[46], but the Danube has receded of late years considerably from its walls; and the large sand-banks it has left behind it, prevents the lading or unlading of vessels, which now seek some more fortunate town. A little trouble and expense would, it appears, remove the sand, and restore the Danube to its original channel, thereby not only greatly benefiting Steyereck, but all the surrounding country, which is now, from the new course of the river, subjected to continual inundations, disasters that this work would greatly diminish in number, if not entirely prevent. No measures have as yet, however, been taken to effect this desirable purpose. The worthy Austrian would be considerably improved, could a little of the persevering industry of the Hollander be infused into his composition. Steyereck belonged originally to the monks of Kremsmünster, but, as early as 1136, it had fallen into the power of a family named Khuenringe, who lorded it over the greater part of the Nordwaldes. Albert, of Khuenringe, sold the Castle of Steyereck, in 1280, to Ulrich von Kapell, surnamed “The Long,” who, in the famous battle of Marchfield, between the Emperor Rudolph I. and Ottocar, King of Bohemia, rescued the valiant founder of the House of Hapsburg from a gigantic Thuringian knight, named Valens, who had unhorsed and wounded him, and, by his courage and exertions, decided the fortune of the day.

“Terra Rudolphus hostium cinctus globo
Multorum, et unus jam pedes vim sustinet.
Ulricus alis advolans Capellides,
Ceu sæva raptis ursa pro catulis nova
Irrumpit acie, ferro iter per inimicos secat,
Alio reservat Cæsarem statuens equo, etc.”
Calaminus in Rudolpho Ottocaro.

It remained in the family of the Kapellers till the extinction of the male branch in 1409, when the last daughter of that house married Heinrich von Lichtenstein. In 1569, one of the Lichtensteins sold Steyereck to Christopher Jörger, of Tolleth; and, in 1635, the town and castle were given as a dower with Elizabeth Jörger, to David Ungnad, Count of Weissenwolf, who built the present chateau. In 1770, the lightning fired the building, and a valuable library and collection of pictures were utterly consumed.

Nearly facing Steyereck, is the mouth of the green and beautiful river Traun, which, rising out of the Grundel-See in the romantic Steyermark, flows through the lakes of Hallstädter and Gmünden, and swelled by the Ager, the Alben, and the Krems, hurries, foaming under the bridge of Ebelsberg, into the Danube. Ebelsberg, or Ebersberg, which lies on the right bank of the Traun, and is visible from the Danube, is a place of great antiquity[47], and the scene of a desperate battle between the French and the Austrians, fought on the 3d of May, 1809. General Claparede’s division stormed Ebelsberg from the bridge across the Traun, under a tremendous fire of artillery directed against the bridge, by the Austrian Field-Marshal Hiller. Claparede succeeded in carrying the place, but with dreadful slaughter. Another column of French, who had passed the river higher up, upon entering the town, revenged the death of their comrades most fearfully upon the Viennese volunteers who had so bravely defended it, three hundred of whom were burned alive in the castle, the town having taken fire during the assault, and the rest cut to pieces, From twelve to sixteen thousand men fell in this terrible conflict; and the banks of the Traun, from Ebelsberg to the Danube, were literally covered with slain[48].

The Emperor Arnulph gave Ebelsberg, then called Eporesburg, to the monks of Kremsmünster, A.D. 893, together with the confiscated property of a Count Engelschalk, who carried off the Emperor’s natural daughter. Arnulph feigned forgiveness, and luring the Count back from Zwentibold, whither he had fled with the Princess, delivered him over to the diet at Ratisbon, who condemned him to lose his eyes, and his nephew Wilhelm, his head. In the year 900, Count Sighard (whose name is handed down to the modern traveller, by the little post town of Sighardskirchen, near Vienna) built a castle at Ebelsberg, which was destroyed on the defeat of the Germans by the Hungarians in 993. A new castle was built shortly afterwards on the same spot, and destroyed by Frederick of Austria in 1242, in consequence of the excesses committed by Rudiger, Bishop of Passau, who, in conjunction with the Lords of a castle at Obernberg on the Inn, kept the whole intervening country in a state of terror. It was again rebuilt, and Rodolph of Hapsburg defeated here one hundred and twenty knights, previous to his battle with Ottocar. In 1586, this third castle was destroyed by fire. Stephen Fadinger established his head-quarters here in 1626, and arrested the Imperial Commissioners. In the August of that year the peasants were defeated at Ebelsberg, with the loss of two thousand men.

Below Steyereck, the left bank alone is hilly; the right resumes the flat, sedgy appearance it presented from Regensburg to Straubing. Luftenberg, an old place upon the left bank, commanding a fine view over the opposite country, is principally remarkable as the spot where the fanatical visionary Laimbauer held forth in 1635-36. He entrenched himself, with the wretched enthusiasts who followed him, in the church of Frankenberg, and after wounding and killing many of the officers sent to apprehend him, from its windows, left his disciples to be burnt alive. He was, however, taken in his attempt to escape the flames, and executed at Linz. The monastery of St. Florian now appeared on our right, and shortly afterwards the chateau called Tilly’s Burg. St. Florian, to whose honour the monastery was erected, suffered martyrdom A.D. 303, at Lorch on the Ens, where, by order of a commander named Aquilinus, he was thrown from the bridge into the river, with a stone round his neck. His spirit appeared to a matron, and directed her where to find and where to bury his body; and over his grave, as the story runs, an altar was first erected, then a church, and lastly a kloster. Stephen Fadinger had his head-quarters here in 1626.

Tilly’s Burg is a large square building with four towers, and said to contain as many windows as there are days in the year, a peculiarity attributed to at least a dozen places in England, and I believe generally reported of every mansion with more windows than one would take the trouble to count. On the spot where this chateau now stands, once arose the tower of the castle of Volkerstorf, the seat of one of the most ancient and powerful families in Austria. Some warriors of that name fought at Constanz as early as 948. In 1146 a Volkerstorf accompanied Duke Leopold to the tournament at Zurich. Ortolph von Volkerstorf stabbed Henrich Wittigo, secretary to the Emperor Frederick II., in the monastery of St. Florian, for which deed he and his brother were banished, their property confiscated, and their castle destroyed. In the Diet of Augsburg, A.D. 1275, Bernhard von Volkerstorf spoke vehemently against Ottocar, King of Bohemia, whom he openly accused of attempting to poison his own wife, and of tyrannising over Austria. Under the protection of the House of Hapsburg, the Volkerstorfs returned to their native country, and rebuilt their castle in 1331. In 1558 it suffered materially by fire, and the last of the family having embraced the Lutheran faith, the whole of his property was confiscated in 1620, and the castle given, three years afterwards, by the Emperor Ferdinand, to the famous Count Tserclas von Tilly[49]. In 1630-32, he built the present chateau, on the site of the old castle, and in the appellation of Tilly’s Burg buried all recollection of the ancient Lords of Volkerstorf, whose once dreaded name is now only known to the peasant of Austria, as that of a little insignificant village in the neighbourhood of Ens. The last female of Tilly’s family, the Countess Montfort, sold the Burg in 1730, to the Bavarian Baron von Weichs.

Near Tilly’s Burg is the old village of Kronau, known as early as the times of Thassillo, Duke of Bavaria, by the name of Kranesdorf, and on the left bank lie Hof-im-Schlag, Himberg, Auwinden, St. Georgen, and two or three other small places, remarkable only for their great antiquity. To the north of St. Georgen lies Frankenstein, where the miserable followers of Laimbauer met their horrible fate.

We now approached the old square tower of Spielberg, which, together with the steeples of the city of Ens, we had for some time seen in the distance, backed by the glittering and rugged line of the Styrian Alps. The ruin of Spielberg stands upon an Island near the right bank of the Danube, and just in the angle formed by the stream, which, having stretched away boldly to the south-east, here turns sharply off to the north, and washes the walls of the market town of Mauthausen, which is seen through a vista of islands at the extremity of a distant point of land. Spielberg is admirably situated for a Raub-schloss, which was of course its original character. Otto and Eckbert von Spielberg were slain in Frederick Barbarossa’s Italian expedition, A.D. 1156, and one Dittmar von Spielberg was present at the siege of Milan in 1158. In 1328, the family of Spielberg became extinct, the last of that name, Eberhard, having previously sold the city and castle of Ens to the Emperor Rudolph I., for six hundred marks. Reinprecht von Walsee possessed Spielberg in 1329, and after passing through several hands, it finally formed part of the dower brought by the Countess of Weissenwolf to her husband in 1635. There is a small fall of the river here, which was at one time considered dangerous by the timid boatmen on the Danube, and has been confounded by some writers with the celebrated Strudel, probably from one of the names given to it by the schiffers, viz. Der Saurüssel[50]. It is also called by some, the Neubruch: small boats seldom venture through it, though a slight tossing would, I should imagine, be the only consequence. My companion and I often laughed, to think how a smart English six-oared cutter would astonish the natives here, who are certainly the clumsiest and most fearful navigators in Europe. Mauthausen is said by the boatmen to be half of Aschach, which, carried away by an inundation of the Danube, floated with the current down to this spot,—a strange tradition, which it is supposed has arisen from a fancied resemblance between the two towns. Howsoever it came, it stands in a very pleasant situation, directly opposite to the mouth of the Ens, and looking up that river upon the city of Ens, and the far-distant peaks and glaciers of the Styrian Alps. There was a bridge of boats here in 1809, but it was destroyed by the Bavarians. The neighbouring tower of Pragstein was occupied by the French in 1742. Mauthausen suffered severely in the war between Rudolph and Matthias, and in the insurrections during the reign of Ferdinand. There is a woollen-stocking and a leather manufactory here, a dye-house of some celebrity, and a salt-market, from whence the greater part of Bohemia is supplied.

The city of Ens is supposed to have been originally constructed out of the ruins of the Roman Lorch, (indifferently called Laureacum, Lavoriacum, Blaboriacum, Loriacte,) the station of the second Italian legion, upon the site of which is still a little village of the name. Ammianus Marcellinus is the oldest historian who makes mention of Laureacum. Bruschius, Hansiz, and Aventine assert, that Lorch was destroyed by Attila, on his march to Gaul; but the biographer of St. Severin states, that two years after the passage of Attila, that holy person arrived at Lorch from the neighbourhood of Vienna, and found it flourishing, and a Christian priest established therein. The Huns might have taken the left bank of the Danube, particularly as it was their nearest road. From an inscription on the walls of Ens, it would appear that two of the holy Evangelists themselves took the city under their especial protection, and converted the people to Christianity[51].

St. Peter himself is also said to have preached the gospel here in the year 49. In 454, Lorch is reported to have been preserved by the prayers of St. Severin, but was afterwards destroyed by the Barbarians, according to his own prediction in 737, when Bibilo, bishop of Lorch, fled with his monks to Passau, as I have already mentioned in my notice of that city. The authentic history of Ens, however, commences during the reign of Charlemagne, when that Emperor, aware of the importance of such a situation, pitched his tents at the mouth of the Ens, which formed at that time the line of demarcation between Bavaria and the lands of the Avars or Huns of Pannonia, that people having, during the sixth and seventh centuries, “spread their permanent dominion from the foot of the Alps to the sea-coast of the Euxine [52].” Here, on the 5th of September, 791, he encamped, and, after fasting and praying for three days, proceeded on his expedition. The troops on the left bank of the Danube were commanded by the Counts Thederich and Meginfried; those on the right by the Emperor in person; and between the two hosts upon the river floated a third body, with provisions and necessaries for the whole army. In fifty-two days he penetrated to the river Rab, destroying the rings or wooden fortifications of the Avars, the first of which he found upon the Riederberge, by Tuln; and would have carried his victorious arms still farther, had not a contagious disorder killed nearly all his horses. In 805, we still hear of Lorch, which, under the names of Lorahha and Loracha, is designated as a villa regia, and mention is made of its market-place and of an imperial judge, one Warner or Warnhar. After the death of Arnulph the Bastard, the Hungarians burst into the country, and devastated it beyond the Ens. The Bavarians rallied, and beat them back; and Leopold, then Grenz-graf, or Count of the frontier, in the year 900, slew upwards of 3000 of them on the left bank of the Danube. In the same year, as a stronger check to their inroads, he erected on the Ens a strong fortress[53] which he called Ensburg (Anasiburgum.) Buildings gradually rose around it; and in proportion as the old Roman city of Laureacum declined, its rival prospered, till their names became confounded, and that of the new city predominating, a small village, probably on the actual site of the Roman town, alone retains the ancient appellation of Lorch. Richar, bishop of Passau, persuaded Louis the Child, that the fortress of Ensburg stood upon ground belonging to the monastery of St. Florian, and it was consequently ceded by the sovereign to that establishment. The Hungarians snatched it from its holy possessors in 907, when they defeated Louis, and slew the valiant markgraf Leopold, brother-in-law to Carloman, the bishops of Salzburg, Freysing, and Seben, three abbots, and nineteen counts. Leopold’s son, Arnulf, defeated the Barbarians on the Inn, in 912, and Conrad I. bribed them back over the frontiers in 918. After Arnulf’s death, the Barbarians again invaded Bavaria, but were ultimately, at the close of the tenth century, driven out of the country by the Markgraves, Leopold the Babenberger, and Burkhard, who carried the war into the enemy’s territories as far as Krems and Mölk. In a deed of the time of Otho II., Ensburg is still spoken of as distinct from Lorch or Lorach, and mention is made in the same deed of the church of St. Laurentius, situated without the walls of Lorch. Now there is a church of St. Laurence standing to this day, within ten minutes’ walk of the city of Ens; and though it was built as late as the time of Maximilian I., it is not improbable that it stands upon the site of the ancient edifice [54]. In the important deeds by which Ottocar VI. made over the steyermark to Leopold of Austria, Ens is called by one party a markt, and by the other a village; and it is asserted by some writers that Ens was first made a fortified town by Leopold, who built its walls with the ransom of Richard Cœur de Lion![55] However this may be, and if true, it is a very interesting circumstance, Ens certainly dates its existence as a city from somewhere about this period, as, at the close of the twelfth century, the Enser-fair was almost as much celebrated in Germany as that of Leipzig is at present. Rudolph of Hapsburg received the keys of Ens from the hands of a lord of Sumerau, and afterwards bought the city, for six hundred marks, of Eberhard von Spielberg.

Duke Albert the Lame concluded here, in 1336, the peace with John, king of Bohemia, which gave Carinthia to Austria, and the Tyrol to Charles, the son of that monarch, afterwards Charles IV. The victorious army of Matthias Corvinus, king of Hungary, penetrated as far as Ens during the war with the Emperor Frederick III., and in 1532, the Turks, who had burst into Hungary and Austria, headed by the Sultan himself, pushed forward some troops to the walls of this city, between whom and the burghers a desperate conflict took place upon the bridge. In the insurrections of 1624, Stephen Fadinger summoned the town, and another rebel-chief, named Wurm, cannonaded it, but it stood out against both till relieved by Colonel Löbel, who defeated the peasants, and burned their camp. In 1683, while Cara Mustapha lay before Vienna, several flying parties of the Turks scoured the country around Ens, and penetrated nearly to Linz. On the 4th of May, 1809, Napoleon had his headquarters here, and received a deputation from the townspeople of Mauthausen, which place he had threatened with bombardment.

In the centre of the Platz stands a tall bell or clock tower built by Maximilian I. Some years ago a rib-bone was shown in it as that of a giant. It had most probably formed part of the stock in trade of an elephant, and was thought sufficiently curious to be removed to Cuvier’s museum in Paris. Many Roman antiquities have been discovered in Ens and its vicinity; some gold coins of the Emperor Probus, several marble busts, and inscribed stones. Some of the latter are still to be seen in the old Burg of Enseck.

Two large stone coffins without any inscription were dug out of the Aichberg, a short distance from the town, in 1808. Some monumental busts were also found, but they had been cut out of very bad sandstone, and were much injured by time.

CHAPTER VI.

Nieder-Walsee — Castles of Clam and Kreuzen — Ardagger — Grein — The Strudel and the Wirbel — Mistakes of various Authors concerning them — St. Nikola — Sarblingstein — Freystein — Hirschau — The Isper — Bösenbeug — Story of Bishop Bruno and the Lady Richlita — Ips — Gottsdorf.

After washing the walls of Ens, the river from which it takes its name hurries through several channels, into the Danube. In the time of Charlemagne it divided Bavaria from the lands of the Avars or Huns of Pannonia.

—“Ad fluvium venit Anasum
Qui medius Bajvarios sejunxit et Hunnos.”
Saxo Poeta. T. II. p. 155.

From the point of its confluence with the Danube, the latter is again studded with islands, sandbanks and sunken rocks as far as Nieder-Walsee; and the history of the small market towns and villages upon its flat banks, is as uninteresting as their appearance. On the left, below the village of Nieder-Sebing, the little river Aust, formerly the boundary between the Slavi and the Bohemians, flows round an island, formed in its mouth, into the Danube; and on the right, above the rippling Erla-bach, stands Erla-Kloster, a convent founded by Otto of Machland in the tenth century, and suppressed by the Emperor Joseph II. Our old steersman had been for some time complaining of illness, and now lay groaning upon some straw, having given up the paddle, by which the boat was steered, to the care of a lad who had joined us at Linz in the place of his son, an exchange which we had protested against at the time, as it was arranged at Ratisbon, that the same people should row us the whole way to Vienna, and the father and son were evidently the only persons who knew anything about the navigation of the river. The old man growing apparently worse every moment, we looked rather anxiously about for a place where we could land, and obtain some assistance, but none presented itself before our arrival, in sight of Nieder-Walsee; and therefore, although a mere group of huts, above which arose the old wall and curious tower of the Schloss, promised little in the way of accommodation, we determined to land there, and see what could be done to set our poor pilot on his legs again. Nieder-Walsee stands perched upon a rocky point of land, on the right bank of the Danube, and behind it the mountains again rear their forest-clothed heads. Upon the summit of one of the nearest stands Strengberg, a post station, through which the high road runs to Vienna, and from whence we enjoyed a splendid view of the Danube on our return by land to Linz. The castle of Nieder-Walsee was built by the same Eberhard, who erected Ober-Walsee on the Klausberg near Aschach, and stands on the site of the old castle of Sumerau, After the death of Reinprecht von Walsee in 1483, the castle was bought and sold, pledged and redeemed, by various families, till, in the Seven Years’ war, it became the property of the famous Field-marshal Daun, from one of whose descendants it was bought in 1810, by Count Wimpfer. A strong current runs round the point, and few boats, except those belonging to the inhabitants, approach the shore at this place, as there is considerable difficulty in getting back into the main stream, out of which one is aground every two minutes upon the gravelly shoals that rise in all directions in this part of the Danube, and can only be avoided by keeping in the middle of what the boatmen call the Graben (the trench or channel) of the river. Not aware, however, of this circumstance, and anxious to alleviate the sufferings of the old steersman, we directed his locum tenens to run into the shore, a business that was speedily effected, for we had no sooner come within the influence of the current, than round went the head of the boat, and in a few seconds we were brushing the bushes that hung over the steep bank, and hurried along it far beyond the proper landing-place. Two unfortunate discoveries were made together. The offer of a dram to the steersman cleared up the mystery of his malady. He had had a few too many already, and had laid down in the boat for the most excellent of all reasons, his inability to stand; our second discovery was equally annoying. We had got out of the stream, and the only person who was capable of getting us cleverly back into it was hors de combat. The rest of the crew knew as little about the matter as ourselves. As soon as we had escaped one current we found ourselves in the power of another, and with such force was the heavy, flat-bottomed punt we were in driven upon the shoals, that, with all the strength we could muster amongst us, we were sometimes ten minutes or a quarter of an hour before we could get her afloat again; and when we had at last effected it, round she spun, and there was her stern as fast as a church within a dozen yards of the spot where her head had been similarly situated two minutes before. At least an hour and a half was lost in this amusing exercise, during which we had the gratification of seeing the regular packet-boat that we had gotten the start of at Aschach, pass us far to the left, and, steering clear of all obstacles, vanish into the valley which opened between the wooded mountains in the distance. At last, when our strength, our patience, and the reproaches we poured rather unceremoniously on our drunken steersman were just exhausted, and we had begun to calculate upon the probability of passing the afternoon and evening at least upon the shoals, we found ourselves by accident, but to our unspeakable satisfaction, once more impelled forwards by a gentle and properly behaved current, which promised, in the course of time, to lead us into the stream we had in evil hour deserted.

On the left bank of the Danube below Nieder-Walsee, stand the village of Saxen, and the Castles of Clam and Kreuzen. Saxen is mentioned as early as 823, in which year Louis the Debonair gave to Reginhard, Bishop of Passau, two churches at “Saxina in terra Hunnorum.” The towers of Clam rise above a forest of pines a little behind Saxen. It was anciently the seat of the Lords of Machland. The brother of Otto of Machland, who founded the kloster of Baumgartenberg, was the first of the family who signed himself “Chlamme,” A.D. 1156. On the extinction of the family of Machland, this Burg came to the Preuschenks, and in 1487, the troops of Matthias Corvinus besieged and took it. The family of Perger bought it in 1524, enlarged it in 1636, and took the title of Barons and afterwards of Counts of Clamm. The great white castle of Kreuzen, far away upon the summit of a hill to the north-west, also belonged to the Lords of Machland, and in the twelfth century was called Croucen and Chrutzen. In 1334, it came to the celebrated Volkerstorfs, The Counts of Meggar bought it in 1523, and when the Turks were devastating Upper Austria in 1526, its walls were filled with fugitives of all ranks and ages. In 1701, it was bought by a Count Cavariani, who sold it again almost immediately to the Count of Salburg. The market-town of Ardagger, upon the right bank, was given by Charlemagne to the bishopric of Passau. The Emperor Conrad III., when setting out on his unfortunate crusade, landed here on the 29th of May, 1147, to make the necessary preparation for passing with his fleet the then much-dreaded Strudel and Wirbel. Seventy thousand knights, completely armed, an equal number of foot-soldiers, a troop of females “in the armour and attitude of men,” the chief of whom, from her gilt spurs and buskins, obtained the epithet of “The golden-footed dame[56]”, passed down the Danube under the banners of Conrad. Two years afterwards, a few boats, principally filled with priests who had followed the army, returned to these shores; all that treachery, battle, and disease had left of the mighty host that had so lately marched in full confidence to the conquest of Asia!

A sudden bend of the river near this spot, brought us again amongst the mountains, and in a moment we seemed shut out from the world by the craggy barriers that rose on each side of us,—the counterparts of those I have attempted to describe in the wild gorge of the Schlägen. After passing a few lonely huts, perched here and there amongst the masses of rock and forest, the chateau and town of Grein started at once into view, on turning a sharp and craggy point, cradled amongst the precipices which, opening behind the town, form a vista, terminated by the castle of Kreuzen on its distant hill. Grein is one of the poorest and smallest towns in Upper Austria, and the chateau is a large, gloomy building, originally built by Heinrich von Chreine, in the twelfth century. Frederick the Handsome, Duke of Austria, pledged Grein for five hundred and sixty-two silver pfennige, to Albert von Volkerstorf, May 14th, 1308. The valiant Bernhard von Scherffenberg beat the Bohemians here twice, during the fifteenth century; at the close of which it was bought of the Emperor Maximilian by one of the family of Prueschenk. Heinrich von Prueschenk rebuilt the chateau, and from this circumstance it received the name of Heinrichsburg.

The traveller now approaches the most extraordinary scene on the long Danube, from its source in the Black Forest, to its mouth in the Black Sea. As soon as a bend of the river has shut out the view of Grein and its chateau, a mass of rock and castle, scarcely distinguishable from each other, appears to rise in the middle of the stream before you. The flood roars and rushes round each side of it; and ere you can perceive which way the boat will take, it dashes down a slight fall to the left, struggles awhile with the waves, and then sweeps round between two crags, on which are the fragments of old square towers, with crucifixes planted before them. It has scarcely righted itself from this first shock, when it is borne rapidly forward towards an immense block of stone, on which stands a third tower, till now hidden by the others, and having at its foot a dangerous eddy. The boat flashes like lightning through the tossing waves, within a few feet of the vortex, and comes immediately into still water, leaving the passenger who beholds this scene for the first time, mute with wonder and admiration. These are the Scylla and Charybdis of the Danube, the celebrated Strudel and Wirbel. The passage is made in little more than the time it takes to read the above brief description, and I could scarcely scratch down the outlines of these curious crags and ruins, before I was whirled to some distance beyond them. I must beg my reader, however, to return with me, and repass them more leisurely, than the impatient stream would permit us. The Danube, checked in its northern course at Grein, and driven unwillingly towards the east, vents its fury against the opposing crags on the left bank, and having broken down part of the barrier, rides over the ruins in triumph, forming what is called, by the boatmen, the Grein-Schwall. After this ebullition of anger, the stream appears to sink into sullen indifference, and slowly and silently pursues its way through a gloomy gorge of precipices, that rise higher and higher on each side of it, till it arrives within a few yards of the Wörthinsel, an island, about four hundred fathoms long, and two hundred broad, surrounded by sand-banks on all sides except the north, where a perpendicular crag starts up, bearing on its crest the ruins of the Wöther-Schloss, or Castle of Werfenstein[57]. From this island to the rocky shores of the Danube, which here open and form a kind of circle around it, run several chains of crags beneath the water; some indeed peering above it, over and through which the stream rushes right and left, with considerable violence and uproar. The right arm is called the Hössgang, and is only passable when the water is very high, by the smallest and lightest craft. The main body hurries round the northern or left side of the island, and boiling over the first chain of rocks, falls through three separate channels, a depth of three feet in a distance of four hundred and eighty. This fall is called the Strudel; but the boatmen have a name for each channel, and call that one in particular the Strudel which is nearest to the north shore of the island: the centre channel is called the Wildriss; and the third, nearest the main bank, the Waldwasser[58]. The three principal crags which, standing in the entrance of these three channels, form part of the bank or bar, over which the water falls into them, have also their particular names; that in the entrance to the Strudel is called the Bomben-Gehäkel, or Buma-G’hachelt; the next, the Wildriss-Gehäkel, and the third, the Wald-Gehäkel,—the term Gehäkel or G’hachelt distinguishing the crags, the points of which generally appear above the surface, from those which lie beneath it, and which are called Kogeln or Kugeln. There are nearly a dozen of these Kogeln in the passage of the Strudel, the principal of which are named the Marchkugel, the Wolfskugel, and the Maisenkugel; and one, from its particular formation, the Dreyspitze. These lie in various directions, in the entrance and middle of the channels. At the outlet of the Wildriss there is a reef of rock called the Ross, the principal crag in which is named the Rosskopf; another reef, called the Felsengelander, lies at the end of the Waldwasser, beside which are two rocks called the Keller and the Hute. Some of these, at low water, are not more than two feet beneath the surface, and impassable, of course, by a boat of any size or burden.

It may easily be supposed that a stream like the Danube does not flow very quietly over so rugged a bed, and though considerable masses of rock have been blown up, and the channels otherwise much widened and deepened within the last fifty years, there are still obstacles enough to fret and agitate the river to a degree which gives at least an appearance of danger to the passage, if even there be not a little in reality. At the end of the fall, or Strudel, on the left, and of the Hössgang on the right, the rocky shores again approach each other, and the river, uniting its currents, sweeps rapidly round to the north beneath a jutting crag, upon which stands the ruins of the castle of Struden, and washes the walls of the little town of the same name. The castle belonged anciently to the lords of Machland, and after them to the Archdukes of Austria. In 1413, the Archdukes Leopold and Ernest gave the “Feste haus ze Struden” to one Hans Greisenecker, who already possessed the Castle of Werfenstein, for “a consideration;” and in 1493, the brothers Heinrich and Sigmund Prueschenk bought both castles from the House of Austria, to which they had reverted.

About a thousand yards below Struden, but near the right bank of the river, rises the large block of stone called the Hausstein, upon which are the ruins of the tower of the same name; round the southern side of this block struggles a small arm of the Danube, called the Lueg, and navigable like the Hössgang, when the water is very high, by small boats only. On the northern side is the celebrated whirlpool (Der Wirbel), formed most probably by the violence with which the two currents of the Danube are hurled against each other on leaving the Wörthinsel, and again checked and divided by the Hausstein. This whirlpool measures sometimes nearly fifty feet in diameter; but when we passed it, it did not, I should think, exceed fifteen. In the centre the water forms a perfect funnel, and a large branch of fir was whirling round and round in it, as if some invisible hand were stirring the natural cauldron, and making it “boil and bubble.” All sorts of extravagant stories have of course been circulated respecting this dreaded vortex, which is gravely affirmed by some of the old writers to have no bottom. Munster, in his Kosmographie, printed at Basle in 1567, says, “They have often sounded in this place, but the abyss is so deep that they can touch no ground. It is bottomless. What falls therein, remains under and never comes up again.”—b. III. sam. 965. This writer also confounds the Strudel with the Wirbel.[59]

Father Kircher vows there is a hole underneath the Wirbel, which sucks in the waters of the Danube, and a subterranean channel connected with it, by which the said water is conveyed into Hungary, where it rises again, and forms the Plattensee or Lake of Balaton! Others claim the same origin for the Lake of Neusiedle[60], and to clinch the fable, which is still reverently believed by the Hungarians, assert, that a travelling cooper, who lost some of his tools in the Wirbel, absolutely found them again floating on the surface of the Neusiedler-see.

Happelius, as in support of this hypothesis, says, “it is well known that the Danube loses a considerable quantity of its waters in the Wirbel, so that its flood is of much less consequence from that spot down to Vienna,” a falsehood which a glance at the river is capable at once of refuting.

There can be no doubt that, in earlier ages, there must have been considerable danger in passing these falls and eddies; and even now, when the water is low, an inexperienced or careless steersman might easily get the bottom of his boat knocked out in the Strudel, or its side staved in by the crags of the Hausstein, under either of which circumstances the passengers would stand a very fair chance of being drowned. I cannot help thinking our own rather a narrow escape, for my readers will recollect that, on leaving Nieder-Walsee, our worthy pilot was lying dead drunk in the stern of the boat. To our utter astonishment, however, upon approaching the Grein-Schwall, he managed to get upon his legs, and, as if sobered for the moment by a sudden sense of his own situation, snatched the rudder from the boy (who in a few minutes would certainly have had us upon the rocks), steered us manfully and cleverly through the Strudel and Wirbel, and then flung himself down again on his straw as drunk and insensible as before. Had we been aware of the vicinity of these places, we should certainly have taken a pilot on board at Ardagger, but we had no idea we were so near them, and the poor fellows who rowed us were altogether ignorant of the river, and merely working their way to Vienna. The passage was, however, made before we had time to think of our danger, almost indeed before we knew where we were; and absorbed in contemplation of the romantic beauty of the scene, nothing short of absolute foundering could, I believe, have distracted our attention from it. Riesbeck, after a brief description of this spot, says, “a great variety of circumstances concur to excite an idea of danger in both these parts of the Danube. Low mechanics are fond of speaking of them, and magnifying the danger, that they may increase their own importance in having gone through it. Others, more simple, who come to the place with strong conceits of what they are to meet with there, are so struck with the wildness of the prospect, and the roaring of the water, that they begin to quake and tremble before they have seen any thing. But the masters of the vessels are those who most effectually keep up the imposition. They make the passage a pretence for raising the price of the freight, and when you are past them the steersman goes round with his hat in his hand to collect money from the passengers as a reward for having conducted them safely through such perilous spots. When our master (who yet very well knew how much it was for his interest to keep up the credit of his monsters) saw how little attention I paid to them, he assured me in confidence that during the twenty years he had sailed the Danube, he had not heard of a single accident.” This account was written in 1780, and yet only three years before, (on the 31st of October 1777,) two vessels struck, one on the Wolfs-Kugel, and the other on the Maisenkugel, and went to pieces. In 1749, a Schiffmeister of Passau, named Freidenberger, perished with his daughter in the whirlpool, and another Schiffmeister, Martin Beyerl, of Vienna, was drowned in it, at the commencement of the century.

The danger has certainly, however, been much diminished by the exertions of the Austrian government, which, besides having considerably widened and deepened the channels of the Strudel and Hössgang, by blowing up the rocks and removing the sand, has instituted sundry prudent regulations respecting the navigation of this part of the Danube. All boats ascending the river when the water is only of a certain height, are obliged to stop at the little town of Struden till information is sent to Grein and the Saurüssel, at both which places a flag is immediately hoisted to give notice to any vessels descending the stream, that one is coming up through the Strudel, and so prevent the collision that would be likely to take place should they attempt to pass it in contrary directions at the same time, the descending vessel being compelled, under a heavy penalty, to lay to, above the rock called the Rabenstein, till the other has passed. Also when the water is of a sufficient height to enable the ascending boats to pass through the southern channels of the Lueg and the Hössgang, the horses keep the towing-path on the right bank from Ips to Wiessen, a small place facing Grein. But when the water is low, the horses are ferried three times across the river in the short distance of 1200 yards; first below the Wirbel, from the right bank over to the left; then from the town of Struden to the Wörthinsel; and lastly, from the western end of that island over the Hössgang, back again to the right bank, under the Rabenstein.

As soon as you have passed the Wirbel, a boat puts off from the little town of St. Nikola on the left bank, and paddling alongside, a man holds out a box with the figure of the saint in it for the “voluntary contributions” of the passengers, who are expected to drop a few kreutzers in acknowledgment of the protection that has been so kindly afforded them by his saintship. On board the regular passage-boat, money is also collected by the steersman as Riesbeck describes, and another ceremony likewise takes place, something similar to that customary on board a ship when passing the line. The steersman goes round with the wooden scoop or shovel, with which they wet the ropes that bind the paddles to their uprights, filled with water; and those who have never before passed through the Strudel and the Wirbel must either pay or be well soused with the element, the perils of which they have just escaped.

In 1144, Beatrix of Klamm founded an hospital at St. Nikola for travellers on the Danube, which she so richly endowed, that Albert of Austria, two hundred years later, found it only necessary to provide for the spiritual welfare of its visitants, and therefore established a daily mass with the money collected on the river from Ardagger to Ips, in the manner above mentioned.

There were formerly two other towers or fortresses in the neighbourhood; the ruins of one still exist on the northern bank of the river, nearly facing the Wirbel, on the rock called the Langen-Stein. The other was, as early as the twelfth century, spoken of as “the ruined castle of the noble Lady Helchin,” and not a fragment of it is now remaining. An old story, which I shall shortly have occasion to transcribe, speaks of the tower called “Der Teufelsthurm,” (the Devil’s Tower) but whether either of the four still standing have a claim to that respectable appellation or no, is a question at present undecided. It is accorded by some writers to the Castle of Werfenstein.

The gorge through which the river now flows calmly and silently as it had never been ruffled, is of the same description as that from Hayenbach to Neuhaus, but the mountains that line its shores are still higher, and often

“Their lofty crests are capped with snow,
While blossoms deck the vale below.”

So deep is the water, and so steady the stream, that boats of any burden may drift down it in the darkest night with perfect safety. We now floated past the old round tower of Sarblingstein, standing on a pedestal of granite, above a little group of houses, beside which the rivulet of Sarbling brawls through a woody ravine over the rocky bank into the Danube. The tower is all that remains of a fortress built by the Monks of Waldhausen in 1538, with the permission of the Emperor Ferdinand, upon the express condition that it should be considered an asylum for the inhabitants of the neighbourhood in case of invasion or civil war. Hirschau, close under Sarblingstein, is the last hamlet in Upper Austria, or Austria on the Ens. Opposite it on the right bank are the scarcely visible remains of the castle of Hirschau, and further east, upon the mountain top, lie the extensive ruins of Freystein, formerly one of the largest and strongest castles in Austria. At the close of the fourteenth century, it belonged to the famous Reinprecht von Walsee, and after him to the families of Preuschenk and Zinzendorf. The Prince of Starrhemberg also once possessed it. Near this spot two valleys open to the south-west, and from thence the granite is brought with which the streets of Vienna are paved. The labourers employed to blast the rocks and work the quarries live close by in the little village of Dörfel; beside which the rivulet Isper, the Hyspere of the middle ages, rippling through a narrow valley, forms the line of boundary northward between Upper and Lower Austria.

The sun went down and the mountains seemed to sink with it, or melt into the mists that crept around them. The valley of the Danube widened,—a large building rose on the left bank, upon the end of a rocky promontory, throwing a deeper gloom over the darkening waters, its lofty tower piercing through the low vapours and soaring into the clear, star-spangled sky above them—it was Schloss Bösenbeug, the summer residence of the Emperor, and one of the oldest buildings in Lower Austria, though the alterations made during the last century by its then possessors, the Herren von Hoyos, have taken much from the antique appearance of its exterior[61]. Nearly facing it on the right bank stood the small chateau of Donaudorf, and beyond these two buildings, the river opened to the right and left, in the same manner that it did below Neuhaus. A multitude of lights glimmering amidst a black mass of houses and huts, and reflected in long trembling lines upon the water, pointed out to us the town of Ips, similarly situated to that of Aschach. The Castle of Bosenbeug or Persenbeug belonged in the ninth century to that Count Engelschalk who carried off the daughter of Arnulph the Bastard, and afterwards lost his eyes and his estates by the sentence of the Diet at Ratisbon, as has been already described in the notice of Ebelsberg near Linz: Nearly all the confiscated property of Engelschalk was given by Arnulph to the monks of Kremsmünster; but, curiously enough, this Castle of Bösenbeug, by a train of circumstances, eluded for a long time the clutches of “holy mother Church,” who laboured indefatigably, “by hook or by crook,” to get it into her possession. How it escaped her grasp in the ninth century is not clear, but it certainly did do so, and became the property of the valiant Bavarian Sieghart von Sempt, to whom probably it was given as a stronghold, that would enable him better to defend the duchy against the inroads of the Hungarians. Sieghart fell gloriously in the execution of his trust, A.D. 907, in the terrible battle fought between Theben and Haimburg. To work of course went the monks, and at length so wrought upon the mind of one of his weak descendants, Albert III.; that he bequeathed to them at his death “the strong castle of Bösenbeug,” in despite of the entreaties of his wife Richlinde, or Richlita, who strove to preserve it to the next male heir, her nephew Welf von Altorf. The breath was scarcely out of the body of Albert, when a desperate struggle ensued between his widow and the monks of Ebersberg. The lady had taken up her residence in the castle, which she claimed as part of her jointure, with reversion to her nephew Welf, and refused to acknowledge the title of the church, which she contended had been fraudulently acquired. In the midst of this dispute, a circumstance took place which shall be related as nearly as possible in the words of the old chronicler Aventine. “The Emperor” (Henry III. surnamed the Black) “departed from Regensburg and came by water to Passau: there he tarried during the Passion week; and till the holy feast of the Ascension. The next day after which he again took water; and journeyed into Lower Bavaria, as Austria was then called. There is a town in Austria by name Grein; near this town is a perilous place in the Danube, called the Strudel by Stockerau[62]. There doth one hear the water rushing far and wide, so falls it over the rocks with a great foam, which is very dangerous to pass through, and brings the vessel into a whirlpool, rolling round about. The Emperor Henry went down through the Strudel; in another vessel was Bruno, bishop of Wurtzburg, the Emperor’s kinsman; and as the bishop also was passing through the Strudel, there sat upon a rock that projected out of the water, a man blacker than a Moor, of a horrible aspect, terrible to all who beheld it, who cried out and said to bishop Bruno, ‘Hear! hear! bishop! I am thine evil spirit! thou art mine own, go where thou wilt, thou shalt be mine, yet now I will do nought to thee, but soon shalt thou see me again[63].’ All who heard this were terrified. The bishop crossed and blessed himself, said a few prayers, and the spirit vanished. This rock is shewn to this day; upon it is built a small tower all of stone, without any wood: it has no roof, and is called the Devil’s Tower. Not far from thence, some two miles journey, the Emperor and his people landed, purposing to pass the night in a town called Pösenbeiss, belonging to the Lady Richlita, widow of the Count Adalbero von Ebersberg. She received the Emperor joyfully; invited him to a banquet, and prayed him, besides, that he would bestow the town of Pösenbeiss and other surrounding places (that her husband had possessed and governed) on her brother’s son, Welforic III. The Emperor entered the banquet-room, and standing near Bishop Bruno, Count Aleman von Ebersberg and the Lady Richlita, gave the countess his right hand and granted her prayer. At that moment the floor of the apartment fell in, and the Emperor fell through into the bathing-chamber below it, without sustaining any injury, as did also Count Aleman, and the Lady Richlita, but the bishop fell on the edge of the bathing-tub, broke his ribs, and died a few days afterwards.” Other writers say, that the Count and the Lady Richlita both died from the hurts they received; but be that as it may, the right heir was, according to the Emperor’s promise, established at Bösenbeug, A.D. 1045, in spite of the intrigues and plots of the monks, whose agents had frightened and killed the poor bishop, he having, as it appears, spoken a good word for the lady, who is supposed also to have fallen a victim to the same scandalous trick, copied most likely from a similar tragical farce played off by the celebrated St. Dunstan, about seventy years before, in England. Some time afterwards the monks renewed their claim in applications to the Markgraves Albert I. and Leopold III., but without success, the latter, in 1096, giving the castle to his youngest daughter, Richardis. Thus foiled, they went on a new tack, and managed to persuade the husband of this Princess, Count Stephaning, to join the first crusade, in the hope that he would never return, and that Bösenbeug would at length become their property. Half of the charitable wish was granted.

“Audiit, et voti Phœbus succedere partem
Mente dedit: partem volucris dispersit in auras.”

The bones of the poor crusader whitened the deserts of Syria, but his castle reverted to the Markgraves of Austria. Ottocar, king of Bohemia, gave it in 1271 to the patriarch of Aquileia; but in the reign of the Emperor Albert I. we find it again in the possession of the house of Austria. The Emperor Frederick IV. took possession of it as guardian of Ladislaus, but he was ejected by force of arms in 1457, and the castle given back to Ladislaus. Rudolph II. pledged and afterwards sold it, with Rohreck, Weinberg, and the whole Isperthal, to the Barons of Hoyos, from which family it was repurchased by the present emperor in 1801. The tilt-yard is still in good preservation, and the gardens are beautiful. His Majesty is very partial to the spot, and makes frequent excursions by land as far as the Strudel and Wirbel, from whence he returns in the boat of a schiffmeister at Bösenbeug of the name of Feldmüller, whom he patronizes highly, and who is considered the richest man of his calling in Lower Austria. He builds yearly about twenty of the boats called kellheimers, and employs one hundred horses and three hundred men. Most of the inhabitants of the little markt of Bösenbeug have, as may be supposed, considerably benefited from its becoming an Imperial residence.

The town of Ips or Yps, as it is indifferently spelt, on the opposite bank, is supposed by some old geographers to be the Usbium of Ptolemy, by others the Pons Isidis. It is seated at the confluence of a river of the same name with the Danube; and, in the time of Charlemagne, appears under the name of Ibesse and Isebruch, as the property of the Counts of Sempt and Ebersberg. In 1275, Ips threw open its gates to Rudolph of Hapsburg; and, in 1741, the Bavarian and French armies here formed a junction: its name has, however, become familiar to foreign lands, not from the deeds of arms done in its neighbourhood, but from its having shared with Passau the trade in the crucibles made at Hafner-zell; and which, as I have before mentioned, are distinguished throughout the world by the names of the places where they are sold, instead of that of the spot where they are fabricated. Immediately below Ips, the river forms a reach, which, from the difficulty of its navigation, obtained the appellation that has eventually attached itself to the point of land at which it commences,—Die Böse-Beug, literally, “the bad corner.” Before we turned this corner, however, night had sunk down upon land and flood, and our crew began to be clamorous for rest and refreshment. Our drunken beast of a steersman, whom we had now begun cordially to detest, insisted upon proceeding as far as Marbach; and accordingly the men, who knew nothing of the river, pulled away again for a quarter of an hour rather sulkily; when, having lost sight of the lights of Ips, and seeing none appear in the distance, they again expressed symptoms of impatience, and upon receiving from a passing boat the information that Marbach was yet “eine starke stunde” (a long hour) distant, they became outrageous, and vowed they would run the boat ashore, at the first village they could discover. Neither my companion nor myself much objected to their determination, as there was every probability, from their utter ignorance of the river, the inability of the steersman to direct them, and the heavy fog that was fast rising, that in the course of a few minutes we should go bump ashore somewhere, whether we would or no; and therefore a hovel, where bed and supper might be procured, was certainly preferable to a sandbank without either. Two or three tapers glimmering above the fog through something like windows, attracting our notice on the left, the men pulled towards it, and our boat soon grated on the sand, under what first appeared a lofty wall, but which turned out, on examination, a steep bank, upon the ridge of which stood half a dozen poor cottages. Up we clambered on all fours, dragging our cloaks and portmanteaus with us; and a man making his appearance with a lantern, we followed him into an old crazy-looking hovel, which, by the outward and visible sign of a dead bush dangling over its door, too plainly indicated the miserable state of its inward and spiritual grace, though dignified by the title of a gasthaus[64]. Several sufficiently ill-looking fellows in jackets of undressed black sheep-skin, caps of the same material, and high boots, each with a formidable clasp-knife, worn as an English carpenter wears his rule; two brawny, bare-armed, masculine wenches in similar jackets, with dark handkerchiefs bound round their brows in the Austrian fashion; and an old hag, whose habits and person were equally indescribable, formed the rather startling group to which our guide introduced us. Our application for beds appeared to astonish them. They had no such thing; there was plenty of straw. They had no coffee, no butter;—the poor fellows who had rowed us sat down on a bench, and began to gnaw some dry bread, the only refreshment the hotel seemed capable of furnishing. On a sudden it occurred to us that a basin of boiled milk might be procurable, and sure enough half a gallon, at least, of delicious milk was in ten minutes smoking in two glorious wooden bowls, upon the long oaken table before us. Our host now entered with one or two helpers laden with straw, which they spread all over the floor, and our crew, having finished their crusts, stretched themselves out in a row, their knapsacks under their heads, and soon commenced a nasal symphony, more powerful than harmonious. The company and the family having one by one withdrawn, with the exception of the old beldame, who waited to take away the solitary candle, we betook ourselves also to our portion of the straw, and never in my life did I enjoy a sweeter, sounder sleep than that which bound up my senses in the humble gasthaus of Gottsdorf till six o’clock the next morning.

CHAPTER VII.

Marbach. — Maria-Taferl. — Pechlarn. — Wiedeneck. — Mölk. — Lubereck. — The Valley of the Wachau. — Schönbühel. — Aggstein. — The Teufel’s-Mauer. — Spitz, and the Ruin of Hinterhaus. — Church and Village of St. Michel. — Castle of Dürrenstein. — Narrow escape of Marshal Mortier during the Campaign of 1805. — Mautern. — Stein. — Krems. — Kloster Göttweih. — Trasenmauer. — Arrival at Tuln.

We had now been three days upon the water, during which time scarcely a cloud had speckled the deep blue of the sky. As the first light of morning, however, struggled through the little dingy casement of our humble hotel, we were disagreeably surprised at finding that the fog, which had risen the previous evening after sunset, still rolled heavily along the river, and threatened to continue the greater part, if not the whole of the day. We were still nearly two days’ journey from Vienna, and a change of weather, which might be portended by this unwelcome visitant, would probably make it four, five, or even six, before we could reach the capital, to say nothing of the disagreeables it would bring in its train. At the risk of losing the beauty of the prospect, therefore, we urged our immediate departure, but here we were met by a new difficulty. Our drunken steersman, who had lain all night in the boat, was now ill in sober sadness, and quite incapable of steering us. A new pilot was to be found, and, after much parley and delay, our host of the gasthaus signified his consent to take the helm; but the fog, instead of dispersing, as we had faintly hoped, with the rising sun, appeared to increase in density; and not one of our boatmen could be prevailed on to trust himself afloat in it. After at least another hour’s delay, and considerable altercation, by dint of a little money, and promise of more, we induced three out of the four to venture on board, and, about eight o’clock, pushed off into the fog, by this time quite as thick, though not so yellow, as that which pervades Lombard Street on a November afternoon. Fortunately this part of the Danube is not fertile in fine views. The small village of Barthub and Mössling, on the left, and Hinterhaus, and the two Agens, on the right, have nothing to recommend them, either in a picturesque or historical point of view; and the distant prospect of Maria-Taferl we had afterwards an opportunity of enjoying. The river, from Bösenbeug and Ips, makes a bold sweep to the south as far as Säusenstein, that stands on a small promontory on the right bank, round which its waters boil and foam, and form what, in earlier times, was called the Charybdis Pogica. The ruin here is of a very late date. It was a mansion belonging to some ecclesiastic, and burned by the French in the last war. The Cistercian convent near it, called St. Lorenz in the Gottesthal, was founded by Eberhard von Walsee, in 1336. In the fifteenth century, it was attacked and plundered by some of the knightly robbers who infested the neighbourhood, and who are termed “fratres hostiles” in the old chronicles. The tombs of the family of Walsee, which became extinct in 1483, are still in existence here. On that of Reinprecht, the last of his race, is simply his motto, “Thue Recht,” with the words beneath it, “periisti amor,” in allusion to the termination of the feud between the Houses of Walsee and Schaumberg. All this; at least, says Herr Schultes, who had the advantage of visiting this spot in clearer weather—we saw neither ruin nor convent, nor tombs; but what we did see near this place was equally picturesque and striking. The sound of voices chaunting a kind of hymn, stole faintly on our ears, and, as it became more distinct, a boat appeared, like a phantom, in the fog, crowded with pilgrims, on their way to Marbach and Maria-Taferl. They were principally women, and sat huddled together round a priest, who, bare-headed, supported a crucifix, and occasionally chimed in, in a deep bass voice, with the quavering trebles of his companions. For a few minutes, they floated beside us, and then gradually melted again into the mist, as though they had been creatures of it, the hymn dying away in the distance.

Before we reached Marbach, the fog, to our great gratification, had evidently begun to disperse. It still covered the face of the water, but the blue sky was visible above it; and the sun, occasionally breaking through it, gave us a glimpse of this or that bank, according to the situation of the boat. The

Markt of Marbach existed as early, at least, as the thirteenth century, as, in 1208, we hear of the Knights of Marbach. Almost every house in the place is an inn, as, lying under the lofty mountain, on which stands the most celebrated place of pilgrimage in Lower Austria—the church of Maria-Taferl, it is of course the place of rendezvous for the countless devotees who swarm from all parts of the empire to that holy shrine. The inhabitants of Vienna, in the middle of September, come on horseback, in every kind of vehicle, and even on foot, hundreds in a day, and return by the Danube. A great traffic is also carried on with these pious personages in crosses, amulets, rosaries, and holy images, pictures and books of all descriptions, by the inhabitants of Marbach; besides which, a number of beggars reside here, each of whom has his or her regular standing upon the path winding up the hill to the Maria-Taferl; and spend duly every evening, in eating and drinking, the large sums they have collected during the day. It has been calculated that upwards of a million and a half of florins are annually expended here; and the minister of the place told Herr Schultes that one year he himself had counted 135,000 pilgrims. A proverbial rhyme tends also much to the well doing of the inhabitants of Marbach:

“Wer nach Maria Taferl ein Wallfahrt maken thut
Diess ihm Maria Taferl macht aller wiedergut:”

which may be rendered,—

Who to Maria Taferl a pilgrimage hath ta’en,
To him Maria Taferl shall make all good again.

Expense, therefore, is the last thing considered; and the spirit of extravagance extends itself even to the townspeople, who lavish, in the pride of their well-filled purses, ridiculous sums upon the decoration of their houses, so that, according to another German proverb, says Schultes,—

“Was durch das Pfeifchen kommt, geht durch die Trommel davon.”

What comes through the fife goes away through the drum.

Our new steersman put into this little markt to buy some beer and bread; and the fog now rolling off in broken masses, enabled us to get a peep at the town, which seemed a strange jumble of alehouses and chapels, signs and crucifixes, all very gaily and fantastically painted, and forming, in short, a most consistent trysting-place for “publicans and sinners.”

Maria-Taferl is to the pious Austrian what Maria-Einsiedel is to the Roman Catholic Swabian, and Maria-Oetting to the Bavarian of the same persuasion. The lovers of an extensive and beautiful prospect may, for an hour’s climbing, enjoy, from the summit of the mountain on which it stands, a splendid panorama of the Danube and great part of Lower Austria, the Alps of the Steyermark, and the whole chain of mountains from the lofty Schneeberg in the Wiener-Wald, to the frontier of Bavaria. The history of this celebrated place of pilgrimage may be bought for two kreutzers, a great deal more than it is worth, but that it is amusing and instructive to see how grossly the Roman Catholic priesthood are yet permitted to gull an ignorant, and consequently superstitious people.

The precious document sets forth with stating the well-known fact of the existence, from time immemorial, of a venerable oak-tree on the top of the mountain, in which was placed a figure of the crucified Redeemer. To this spot the inhabitants of Klein-Pechlarn, a small village in the neighbourhood, used to repair every Easter Monday to put up their petitions for a fine harvest, and, after hearing the service chaunted, sat down at a stone table before the church-door, and ate, drank, and were merry; from whence arose the name of Maria-Taferl, or Mary of the Table. In 1662, a herdsman, either from ignorance or wantonness, attempted to hew down the sacred tree, on which age had already heavily laid its withering and deforming hand. At the first blow, however, the axe recoiled so violently, that it sprung from his grasp and wounded one of his feet severely. Unchecked by this warning, however, he made a second blow, when it again recoiled with still more violence, and desperately wounded his other foot[65]. The profane herdman, now lifting up his eyes in agony, observed the crucifix, and struck with remorse, craved pardon of God for his impiety; upon which the blood stopped of its own accord, and his wounds healed immediately, without surgical or any human assistance! Ten years after this miraculous occurrence, a man named Alexander Schinnagel, who suffered under a deep and distressing melancholy, which he could not shake off, came, by heaven directed, to the house of a schoolmaster, who had in his chamber an image of the Virgin, called a Vesperbild. Schinnagel bought the image, and carried it home. In the middle of the night, he heard “a still small voice,” saying, “Wouldst thou be cured, take the image, and place it in the oak at Maria-Taferl.” Accordingly, at day-break, up rose Alexander, and proceeded with his purchase to the mountain-top, where he placed it as directed, taking down at the same time the crucifix, which age and exposure to the weather had nearly destroyed.. Immediately his melancholy left him, and he returned home a merry, and, we hope, a grateful man. Since that period the angels themselves have frequently visited the sacred spot. On the 17th of June, 1658, a most credible (credulous?) personage saw a snow white and luminous apparition, in mid-day, before the holy effigy. In 1659, three persons, equally worthy of belief, saw a whole troop of angels, in white garments, and in processional order, on their way to the Vesperbild. Another time, when forty people were collected together in its neighbourhood, three of them saw an angelical procession in the air, and three bright stars of remarkable magnitude immediately above the figure. Again, a procession of white-clothed personages was seen by eight or ten people, the leading apparition bearing a red cross; and shortly afterwards a wax taper was suddenly observed burning before the Vesperbild. In 1661, many other angelical phantoms were seen by sometimes thirty, and once by a hundred people at a time, all of them most respectable and credible witnesses, whose testimonies were registered, signed, and sworn to before the competent authorities! [66]

As the vapours, which had till now enveloped us, began rapidly to yield to the power of the sun, and were swept in masses by the fresh breeze of morning from the bright face of the river and the fair hills beside it, disclosing the rich and beautiful prospect that opened upon us with the widening valley, smiling in warmth and light; it was impossible to suppress the remark, commonplace as it may be considered, that, thus, at no very distant period, would the mists of error and superstition fly before the increasing influence of knowledge and truth, and man, awaking to the contemplation of the sublime paths they enlighten, “Look,” full of hope, joy, and gratitude, “through Nature, up to nature’s God!”

Albert IV., Duke of Austria, whose journey to the Holy Land gave rise to so many romantic stories, that he obtained the appellation of the “wonder of the world,” resided for some time at Marbach, in the valley of All Saints, with the Carthusians: “with them,” says a contemporary, “he attends matins, reads the lessons, makes inclinations, genuflexions, observes ceremonies, confessions and prayers. He not only joins them in the performance of divine service in the choir, but affords an example of humility by frequenting the Chapter-house. In a word, he calls himself brother Albert, and considers himself in every respect as one of the order[67].”

So few travellers ever think of taking a boat to themselves, that we were hailed at Marbach, as an ordinari-schiff[68], by three poor women who wanted to go to Vienna. Having plenty of room to spare, we consented to their coming on board, which they accordingly did with their baskets and bundles sans cérémonie, imagining that they should have to pay the usual fare for their passage; and with this accession of company and cargo we again set forward. Below Schelmenbach and Krumpen-Nussbaum falls the mountain-stream called the Erlaf, into the Danube, named in deeds of the time of Charlemagne, and long the boundary between Bavaria and the Land of the Huns. At the mouth of the Erlaf, is a Rechen or Grate, where the wood collects that is floated down this stream from the forests in the neighbourhood of Maria-Zell, in the Steyermark, near which it takes its rise. It is customary in Germany to place one of these gratings at the mouth of any tributary stream, or in the bed of any river where a line of demarcation is drawn naturally or artificially between two kingdoms, two provinces or even two parishes. So that the branches and trunks of trees blown down by high winds, and swept away by inundations into the current, should not be carried beyond the frontiers or boundaries of the state or property to which they belong, and which derives from them no inconsiderable portion of its revenue.

The timber, also, regularly felled by the wood-cutters, is thrown thus carelessly on the mountain-streams of Germany, and floats down to the Rechen or Grate, where it is afterwards collected by its owners, who are thus saved the trouble and expense of land carriage; and the drifting property is protected from plunder by the severity of the laws relating to it.

Before us now lay the two Pechlarns; Great Pechlarn on the right, and Little Pechlarn on the left bank. At the first we determined to breakfast, were it only to feast where the fair Chrimhilt had feasted, in

“Die Burg zu Bechelaren.”

No relics of the “Burg” itself, however, exist; but an old gateway, some round towers, and here and there a few feet of crumbling wall, attest the early grandeur of the place, and fancy fills up the chasms which time has made, with court and keep, buttress and battlement, crowded with fair damsels and fierce soldiery, “all, all abroad to gaze” at the advancing pageant.

There, round that point of land, comes the royal fleet, the banners of Hungary, Burgundy, Bavaria, Pechlarn, and Passau, flinging their blazoned glories on the breeze, and proudly announcing to the admiring burghers the rich freight of rank and beauty which the swelling Danube is wafting to their port. Five hundred “Kemps of Hungary,” their bright hauberks glittering in the sun, crowd the decks of the first vessels. On the prow of the foremost stands the valiant Markgraf, Rudiger of Pechlarn, than whom

“A truer soldier never
Was in this world yborn, [69]”

bending eagerly forward to distinguish, amongst the bevy of beauties at “the open windows[70]” of the castle, the fair forms of his beloved wife and daughter. Beneath the rich canopy that shades the deck of yonder bark, with the gilded oars, now doubling the little promontory, sits the peerless bride of the mighty Etzel, but she hears not the shout of welcome that rises on the shore; she marks not the gay multitudes that crowd to pay her homage. Her brow is clouded, her ruby lip quivers, tears like liquid diamonds tremble upon the long dark silken lashes of her downcast eyes; the form of the noble Siegfried is constantly before her. She hears but the voice of her murdered champion calling for vengeance; she sees but the ghastly wound which treachery dealt, bleeding afresh at the approach of the dark and deadly Haghen. Yet, passing beautiful is she even in sorrow, and still warrants the glowing description of the old minnesænger, Henry of Ofterdingen. [71]

“From out her broidered garments
Full many a jewel shone,
The rosy red bloomed sweetly
Her lovely cheek upon.
He who would in fancy
Paint that lady fair,
In this world has never
Seen such beauty rare.

As the moon outshineth
Every twinkling star,
Shedding careless splendour
From out her cloudy car;
So, before her maidens,
Stood that lady bright,
And higher swelled the spirit
Of every gazing knight. [72]”

By her side stands a venerable figure, clad in the gorgeous and sacred vestments of his office. The flowing stole of embroidered silk, the pallium of cloth of gold, the jewelled mitre, the “gilt shoon,” and the massive but richly wrought cross and crosier, borne by two of his attendants, distinguish him as the holy Pilgerin, the wealthy and powerful Bishop of Passau, uncle to the queen, and related also to the noble Rudiger. The pale youth near him, his hands reverently crossed upon his bosom, is his clerk Conrad, who afterwards assisted him to write, in “the Latin tongue,” the adventures of the Nibelungen. On the other hand of the lovely Chrimhilt, stands the faithful Duke Eckewart, who has sworn to escort his liege lady to Hungary; and the remainder of the flotilla bears the five hundred chosen Knights of Burgundy, who follow his standard. The vision is over, the airy castle has vanished—

“The knights are dust,
Their good swords are rust,
Their souls are with the saints we trust.”

And a rude and solitary boat is rocking under the windows of a poor white-washed wirthshaus, which, with half a dozen humble cottages and some mouldering walls, now marks the site of the once strong and gay burg of Pechlarn!

Rudiger of Pechlarn, as well as his kinsman, the Bishop of Passau, is an historical personage. He was Count of the frontier during the reign of Arnulph, Duke of Bavaria, and died in 916. His son, Markgraf Rudiger II., died in 943, and with him the direct male line became extinct. The little town of Pechlarn is now principally inhabited by potters.

Beyond Pechlarn, the river keeps still widening, till, on the left bank, rises the fine old Castle of Weideneck, which receives its name from a neighbouring rivulet, and is supposed to have been built by the elder Rudiger of Pechlarn. The Emperor Frederick IV., and the famous Matthias Corvinus, King of Hungary, both beleaguered Weideneck. The former twice won and lost it. But the eye has scarcely caught sight of Weideneck, before it is attracted by the distant domes of the magnificent Convent of Mölk, that appear over the willows of an island, in the centre of the river. Gradually, the entire façade of the convent, upon its granite rock, and the little market-town beneath it, glide from behind the island, and complete one of the most imposing and beautiful pictures upon the river. The present splendid structure was built in 1720-32, by an architect, named Prandauer; but the rock on which it stands, once supported, not only a more ancient convent, but also a Roman fortress. Under the name of Medilke, it appears in the Nibelungen-lied,

“At Medilke were the goblets
Of costly gold, filled high,
And the wine went gaily round
Mid that noble company.”

But the authentic history of Mölk commences apparently in the sixteenth century, when the Markgraf Leopold I., surnamed the Illustrious, made it his residence after wresting it from the power of the Hungarians. This valiant prince founded here a kloster, and was here interred after his murder at Wurzburg, as were likewise his wife, Richarde, his sons Henry and Albrecht, and their wives, Mechthilde and Frowiza, Adelheid, Countess of Leopold the Strong, the Margraf Ernest III., surnamed the Valiant, and his lady Schwanehild, Leopold III., surnamed the Handsome, and many other noble Austrian and Bavarian knights and ladies. Saint Colomanus, or Saint Colman, descended, according to the story, from the early Kings of Scotland, was also buried at Mölk. This saint, travelling through Austria to Jerusalem, was seized, at Stockerau, by some rebellious peasants, A.D. 1012, who, taking him for a spy, hung him upon a tree, where his body remained a year and a half without putrefaction, and afterwards worked many miracles! Leopold III., in the year 1089, established some Benedictines from Lambach in this Kloster; and his son, Leopold IV., who was born here in 1073, and here celebrated his marriage with Agnes, daughter of the Emperor Henry IV., and widow of Frederick of Hohenstaufen, gave up his palace to them, and retired to the Khalenberg, near Vienna. The Kloster of Mölk soon became proverbial for its wealth, and its superior was the Primate of Lower Austria. In 1619, the insurgents of Upper Austria besieged Mölk for upwards of a month, as did also the Turks in 1684. Napoleon had his headquarters here in 1805, and again in 1809; and a mark is shown upon the floor of one of the apartments in the Kloster, which he is said to have made in a passion. While a few monks inhabit this splendid palace, their sovereign, one of the most powerful monarchs in Europe, passes a considerable portion of his time in an humble wooden building, upon the opposite bank of the Danube. At Lubereck, a little below the Castle of Weideneck, beside a romantic waterfall, is a small edifice, built entirely of wood, and formerly the country residence of the Baron von Führenberg, postmaster of Mölk. Between this place and Bösenbeug, Francis I. divides nearly all the hours which, during summer, he snatches from the cares of empire. In his plain, domestic habits, and in the kindness and affability with which, in such moments of relaxation, he listens or chats to his humble neighbours, the present Sovereign of Austria greatly resembles our own late venerable monarch, King George III., and, like him, has compelled his bitterest political enemies to acknowledge that, in all the private virtues of life, as a husband, a father, and a master, he is an example, not only to his own subjects, but to mankind.

On the left bank, beyond Lubereck, is the markt of Emmersdorf, at the point of a narrow neck of land, round which the Danube wheels to the north-east, and enters the romantic valley of the Wachau. Emmersdorf, like so many other places on the Danube, was formerly the seat of some powerful robbers, who levied contributions upon the passing vessels, and blotted the page of history with such bloody deeds that, to use the expression of a modern German writer, the hand of a common executioner alone could steadily transcribe them. At the mouth of the Bielach, a little river that empties itself into the Danube nearly facing Emmersdorf, and over which there is a ferry, the celebrated district called the Wachau commences, and extends itself as far as the castle of Dürrenstein, some say as far as Mautern and Krems. The view from this point, either looking up or down the river, is exceedingly beautiful. The western prospect is enriched with the castle of Weideneck, the Palace-convent and markt of Mölk, and the noble mountains of Upper Austria, which here you gaze on for the last time. Turning and looking into the mouth of the yawning gorge, the eye is first attracted by the castle and kloster of Schönbühel, picturesquely situated on the brink of the precipitous right bank, behind which rise some gigantic mountains. On the left, a crescent of bold craggy hills, towering one over the other, checks the northerly inclination of the mighty flood, and bends it again eastward, while upon one of them the fine ruin of Aggstein glimmers white in the distance.

Charlemagne, in the year 803, gave the whole valley of the Wachau (in terra Avarorum) from the Bielach as far as Tuln, Zeizelmauer and Perschling, (Tulna, Zysenmurus et Bierstlinga,) to the Bishop of Passau, and it belonged to Bavaria, at least “in spiritualibus,” till 1805. Schloss Schönbühel stands, as I have before said, at the entrance to the valley, upon a wall of granite, from which its own walls are scarcely distinguishable. Schultes calls it a ruin, but to me it had the appearance of an inhabited château in excellent repair. It is a singular-looking building, with a tall, square, but narrow tower, shooting up from the centre of its western front, more like a chimney than a turret. Its situation, however, is exceedingly fine and commanding, and it has the reputation of being haunted by no less a spirit than Lucifer himself, a circumstance which would alone render it interesting to the romantic tourist. A little beyond it stands an old chapel or kloster, belonging to the Schloss. In the fourteenth century this place belonged to the family of Starrhemberg. Having now fairly entered the valley, we perceived the markt of Aggsbach on the left bank, and facing it, Klein, or little Aggsbach. In a chasm behind the latter, Haderich von Meissau, the Kuenringer and marshal of Lower Austria, founded, in 1386, a convent for thirteen Carthusian Monks, which was suppressed by Joseph II. in 1782; and on the mountain top, a little beyond the former, stand the before-mentioned ruins of the Castle of Aggstein. There is a tradition respecting this castle, of a peculiarly German cast, and which would work up well in “a tale of terror.” It is said that it was anciently the hold of a robber knight named Schrekenwald, who, after seizing and plundering the unfortunate travellers on the Danube, thrust his wretched captives through an iron door over the rocks into a deep abyss behind the castle, which he called his “Little Rose Garden,” and from which (even if by a miracle they were not dashed to pieces in their fall) the chance of escape was next to impossible. The tradition is preserved in an Austrian proverb; when any one is in such a strait as to preclude all hope of extrication, he is said to be “in Schreckenwald’s Rose-garden.” The story, however, goes on to say, that, by some extraordinary chance, one of his intended victims did effect his escape, and with the help of his friends, who returned with him in arms, surprised, made prisoner, and hung the monster.

In the year 1232, Hadmar, the Kuenringer, who was also lord of Dürrenstein, possessed this castle, and ravaged, in company with his brother Heinrich von Weitra, the whole country as far as Stein and Krems. The trembling inhabitants called them “the Hounds,” and Frederick, the last of the Babenbergers, in vain endeavoured to subdue and destroy them. A merchant, named Rudiger, at length suggested a ruse de guerre to the Emperor. “I will freight,” said he, “a vessel at Regensburg, laden with the most costly merchandise: the tidings will soon reach the robbers at Aggstein. Thirty stout knights shall lie concealed in the vessel, and when Hadmar rushes down from his castle, and boards us with a few of his vassals, thinking to plunder some peaceable merchants, the knights shall rush out upon and overpower him, while I push off from the shore.” The plan was adopted, and succeeded. The vessel was freighted at Regensburg, and stopped at Aggstein. Hadmar flung himself into the snare set for him, and Rudiger and his people, rowing off at the same moment, brought the robber prisoner to the feet of Frederick.

In 1277, Luitold Kuenring possessed the castles of Aggstein and Dürrenstein, but lost them both, with many others, in rebellion against Albert I., and was banished the country in 1291. From that period its history is a mere record of bargains and sales, which terminates with its purchase by a Count of Beroldingen, in 1819.

The castle is finely situated on the crest of a conical hill, and the path up to it lies through a thick forest which affords a pleasing shelter to the noontide traveller, whom curiosity leads to inspect the ruins. The keys are kept in the little wirthshaus on the bank below it. Great part of the castle is in tolerable preservation, at least as far as regards the bare walls; and the date over the gateway, if Prof. Schultes have rightly copied it, (for I did not see it myself,) appears to me rather apocryphal. The inscription runs thus:—

“Das Purkstall hat ange
vangen tze pauen her Jo
rig der Schektvon w
ald der nachten montag
nach unser Frauventag
nativitatis, da von Crist
gpurd waren ergangen
MCCXXVIII Jar. [73]”

Below Schwallenbach, a small markt on the left bank, a rude mass of barren crags has received the name of the Teufel’s mauer (Devil’s wall.) This busy “old gentleman” is said to have taken it into his head to block up the Danube at this spot, but, through some special intervention of Providence, a sudden stop was put to the infernal masonry. An echo slumbers here, which, waked by a pistol-shot, resents the impertinence in a voice of thunder. Having passed the villages of Ober or Schloss-Arnsdorf, and Mitter-Arnsdorf, we at length arrived before the markt and castle of Spitz, the towers of which had been visible from Schwallenbach. Both town and castle belonged anciently to Bavaria, and they have been in turn the property of most of the ecclesiastical and lay robbers we have already heard so much of—the bishops of Passau and Salzburg, the monks of Nieder Altaich, the Margraves Burkhard and Leopold, Hansen the Kapeller, Hadmar the Kuenringer, etc. etc. In 1805, Marshal Mortier, who had narrowly escaped destruction near Dürrenstein, was glad to cross the Danube at this place by means of a bridge of boats. The old castle above the little markt is called the Hinterhaus, and is one of the most picturesque ruins on the river. The rock it stands upon is of an extraordinary form, black, rugged, and bare, a gigantic pedestal, worthy of supporting this fine monument of the middle ages. The church and village of St. Michel, with their old round towers and crumbling walls, are the next interesting objects. The precipices upon both banks now assume the most fantastic forms. The vine has here again made its appearance. Its light green is beautifully contrasted with the dark firs and pines, and the white barren peaks that Nature seems to have fashioned in her most eccentric moods.

As the valley narrows, the rocks rise higher and higher, and the wild scenery of the Schlägen is for the last time repeated. This savage glen has long been considered by the peasantry of the neighbourhood as the haunt of witches and evil spirits; and about thirty years ago a poor little old woman, who was feeding her goat upon one of these precipices, was absolutely shot with a glass bullet, for a wetter-hexe (weather-witch,) a violent thunder-storm which had unfortunately arisen being “charged to her account,” by the superstitious marksman. On emerging from this gorge—the crowning glory of the romantic scene—the magnificent ruin of Dürrenstein presents itself on its stupendous rock. Language cannot do justice to the sublimity of this view, which might task the united pencils of a Claude and a Salvator Rosa. Independently of its beauty and grandeur, what recollections crowd upon the mind, as the splendid picture dawns upon the sight,—Richard Cœur de Lion!—Six hundred years have past, and the name is still a spell-word to conjure up all the brightest and noblest visions of the age of chivalry. What glorious phantoms rise at the sound! Saladin—the great, the valiant, the generous Saladin, again wheels at the head of his Cavalry—Frederick Barbarossa, the conqueror of Iconium—the brave but politic Philip of France—the gallant but unfortunate Marquis of Montferrat! The whole host of red-cross warriors—the knights of the Temple and St. John—start again into existence from their graves in the Syrian Deserts, and their tombs in Christian Europe, where still their recumbent effigies grasp the sword in stone. The Lion-hearted Plantagenet once more flourishes with a giant’s strength; the tremendous battle-axe, whereon “were twenty pounds of steel[74],” around the nodding broom-plant in his cylindrical helmet, while his implacable foe, Leopold of Austria, leans frowning on his azure shield; his surcoat of cloth of silver “dabbled in blood,” that terrible token of his valour at Ptolemais, which is to this day the blazon of his ancient house[75]. Yonder walls have echoed to the clank of the fetters with which his unknightly vengeance loaded Richard of England—to the minstrel-moan of “the Lord of Oc and No[76],” and (for who can coldly pause to separate such romantic facts from the romance they have inspired) to the lay of the faithful Blondel, which, wafted by the pitying winds to his Royal Master’s ear, soothed his captivity, and brightened his hopes of freedom. Many are the castles on the banks of the Danube pointed out to the traveller as the prison of Cœur de Lion. Aggstein, which we have not long passed, Greifenstein, which we are approaching, both assert a similar claim to our interest, our veneration; and it has been not improbably conjectured, that Richard was in turn the resident of each, being secretly removed from fortress to fortress, by his subtle and malignant captor, in order to baffle the researches of his friends and followers. Notwithstanding this dispute, Dürrenstein has by general consent, and long tradition, been established as the principal place of his confinement; and no one who, with that impression, has gazed upon its majestic ruins, would thank the sceptic who should endeavour to disturb his belief. They stand upon a colossal rock, which rising from a promontory picturesquely terminated by the little town of Dürrenstein, is singularly ribbed from top to bottom by a rugged mass of granite indented like a saw. On each side of this natural barrier, a strip of low wall, with small towers at equal distances, straggles down the rock, which, thus divided, is here and there cut towards its base into cross terraces planted with vines, and in the ruder parts left bare, or patched with lichens and shrubs of various descriptions. On its naked and conical crest, as though a piece of the crag itself, rises the keep of the castle, square, with four square towers at its angles, and not unlike the fine ruin at Rochester. Had the accomplished Hemans beheld the scene, her muse could scarcely have better described it.

“He hath reached a mountain hung with vine,

* * * * * * * * * *

The feudal towers that crest its height
Frown in unconquerable might;
Dark is their aspect of sullen state,
No helmet hangs o’er the massy gate,
To bid the wearied pilgrim rest,
At the chieftain’s board a welcome guest;
Vainly rich evening’s parting smile
Would chase the gloom of the haughty pile,
That midst bright sunshine lowers on high,
Like a thunder-cloud in a summer sky.

* * * * * * * * * *

Lingering he gazed—the rocks around
Sublime in savage grandeur frowned;
Proud guardians of the regal flood,
In giant strength the mountains stood;
By torrents cleft, by tempests riven,
Yet mingling still with the calm blue heaven [77].”

The celebrated Denon had a sketch made of this castle and rock, and sent to Paris expressly for a scene in Gretry’s well-known opera, “Richard Cœur de Lion.”

The circumstances of Richard’s quarrel with the Duke of Austria, and his subsequent arrest and captivity, are too well known to require insertion here; but, in the Chronicon Zwetlense, t. 1, s. 531, it is expressly stated that Richard was seized at Erpuch, near Vienna, (this Erpuch being the present Erdberg, one of the largest of its many suburbs,) and given, by Leopold, into the custody of Hadmar, the Kuenringer at Tyernstain (Dürrenstein). The old chronicler, Haselbach, also says that Richard came to Vienna as a pilgrim, in a company of cooks, and acted as turnspit one evening in the kitchen of the Duke of Austria. But a cook, recognizing his features, informed Leopold, who immediately commanded Richard to be brought before him, and addressed him in these words, “Domine Rex Anglorum, nimis nobilis estis, ut sitis assator in coquina ducis;” after which he delivered him into “Honesta Custodia.” According to the Chronicon Conradi Cœnobitæ Schyrensis, Richard, after suffering shipwreck at Aquileia, was betrayed to Leopold by the Duke of Carinthia. The story of his having betrayed himself, in his passage through Austria, by his expenses and liberalities, is, however, the most probable, as well as the best authenticated.

Dürrenstein is first mentioned about the year 1170, when, in some deeds, are found the names of Göttschalk and Regenbert von Tirnstain. In 1192, the year in which Richard was made prisoner, the castle is known to have belonged to Hadmar, the Kuenringer, who was likewise the possessor of Aggstein; and, in 1231, it was taken, and partially destroyed by Frederick, the last of the Babenbergers. No events of consequence are recorded to have taken place in it from that time to the year 1645, when the Swedes are supposed to have reduced it to its present ruinous condition. The little town at its foot, with its handsome church[78], is prettily situated; and when, in 1741, a party of French and Bavarian cavalry forded the Danube, in hopes to surprise it, the citizens hit upon a plan as novel as ingenious. They barred up their gates as well as they could, laid logs of firewood on the walls, in imitation of cannon, chalked the rims of their hats, to give them the appearance of being bound with white lace, according to the uniform of their troops at that time, and parading up and down the ramparts with much drumming and bustle, taking care that their hats only should be seen above the walls, absolutely induced the enemy to believe that the place was strongly garrisoned; and they accordingly wheeled to the right about without firing a shot, to the infinite joy and amusement of the cunning inhabitants, who certainly well deserved their escape.

On the 11th of November, 1805, the defiles behind Dürrenstein were the scene of a murderous conflict between the French, under Mortier and Dupont, and the Russians, under Doctorof and the Austrian general, Schmidt. Mortier, who had instructions from Napoleon to march upon Krems, and was anxious to prevent the Russians passing into Moravia, hurried forwards with Gazan’s division, and a brigade of dragoons, being followed, at some distance, by Dupont’s division, and some Dutch regiments. Below Dürrenstein, he encountered the advance guard of Miloradowich, which he drove back to the gates of Stein, making a few prisoners: but this slight success had nearly led to his ruin, for, at the same instant, another strong corps of Russians, led by Generals Schmidt and Doctorof, descended the mountains in his rear; and General Essen, having reinforced Miloradowich, and thrown himself before Loiben, the French were between two fires. Mortier had no remedy but to cut his way, if possible, through the column in his rear, and so effect a junction with Dupont, to whom he had, fortunately for himself, sent orders to quicken his march. Major Henriod, at the head of the 100th regiment, charged the Russians, and a horrible carnage ensued in the narrow defiles, crowded with infuriated soldiery. Two pieces of artillery, which Mortier had with him, decided the issue of the combat in his favour, his adversaries being destitute of cannon. The brave Austrian, Schmidt, fell at the first discharge; and Doctorof, endeavouring to withdraw his troops from the ravine, was suddenly attacked, in the rear, by the division of Dupont, and thus found himself, in his turn, between two fires. With much difficulty he effected his retreat over the mountain he had just descended; and the desperate troops of Mortier rushing into the defile, as they imagined, on the bayonets of their enemies, found themselves, before they were aware, in the arms of their friends and countrymen. From twelve to fifteen hundred men were lost on each side, and the allies received a terrible blow in the death of General Schmidt, the friend and companion in arms of the Archduke Charles[79].

Below Dürrenstein, the river widens, and a new and cheerful prospect dawns upon the sight. Three small towns, Stein, Mautern, and Krems, the two first connected by a bridge, about six hundred and thirty paces long, across the Danube, present themselves at once to the eye; and over Mautern, on the right bank, upon a finely-wooded mountain, rise the towers and cupolas of Kloster Göttweih.

Mautern was known as early as the time of Charlemagne, and in 898 was called the town of Mutarum, and fortified by Isanrich, the son of the Markgraf Arbo, when he rose against the Emperor Arnulf. Arnulf, though in the last stage of illness, laid seige to Mautern, and took it in the following year, a few months before his death; but Isanrich succeeded in eluding his conqueror, and sought refuge in Moravia. Rudolph of Hapsburg gave the same rights and privileges to Mautern as were enjoyed by Stein and Krems in reward for its early declaration in his favour. In 1347, the burghers, having joined their neighbours of Krems in a cruel persecution of the Jews, were severely punished by Albert II., and their Lord, the Bishop of Passau, whose Christian zeal had been rather exuberant, was condemned to pay a fine to the Duke of six hundred pounds. Matthias Corvinus, the gallant King of Hungary, gained a victory here over the Austrians in 1484. In 1805, the Russians under Kutusof retreated before Murat, Lannes, and Soult, over the bridge at Mautern, and immediately burnt it. It was destroyed again by the Austrian Field-marshal Hiller in 1809, on the second advance of Napoleon to Vienna. With the exception of the old gate, through which the road leads to St. Pölten and Göttweih, little remains to vouch for the antiquity of the town; and the same may be said of Stein, under the walls of which we landed,—the gate facing the water, and the ruins of some old building near the bridge, being all the relics that “Goth and Time and Turk have spared”—I might add, Hungarian and Swede, as Matthias Corvinus stormed it in 1486, and Torstenson in 1645. So exasperated was the latter by the opposition he met with, that when he at length entered the place, he took most sanguinary vengeance upon the brave citizens. Stein is little more than one long, rambling street, over the vile flints of which, as we entered it, half a dozen poor old women, nearly all upon crutches, were hobbling in ludicrous haste after a dirty little ragamuffin, who, bearing the banner of some Saint, very like a red pocket handkerchief, appeared to enjoy the fruitless attempts of the unfortunate cripples to keep pace with him. On the young rascal went, at a sort of hand gallop, while they, like Johnson’s “Panting Time,”

“Toiled after him in vain.”

Quitting Stein at the eastern extremity of this long street, a walk of about ten minutes conducts you through a pretty promenade, planted with trees, and called the little Präter, to the gates of Krems, the most considerable of these three small towns. It is first mentioned in the reign of Otto III. In the year 1347, its kennels ran with Hebrew blood. It was pretended that the Jews had poisoned the wells of the town; and as any report, however ridiculous, provided it afforded a pretext to insult and plunder that unfortunate people, was eagerly and implicitly believed by the brutal populace, an immediate slaughter took place of all who refused to acknowledge the divinity of Christ. Many wealthy Israelites being aware of the real motive of their persecutors, made their despair minister to their vengeance, and barring up themselves, their family, and their riches together, set fire to the building, and perished exultingly in the flames that anticipated the spoiler. The horrid frenzy extended to Stein, Mautern, and many other places in the vicinity, and was only allayed by the arrival of the brave Erbschenk von Meissau who, by command of Albert II., hurried with a considerable force into the disturbed districts. Krems and Stein were heavily mulcted, and the neighbouring villages, Loiben, Strassing, Rattendorf and Weinzierl, plundered by the soldiery of the blood-stained booty they had acquired. In the fifteenth century, Krems was twice besieged by Matthias Corvinus, the last time successfully. On the invasion of Austria by the Bohemian Protestants in 1619, a corps of the insurgents under their Colonel, Carpizan, having cut off the garrison of Krems, which had made a desperate sally from the town, immediately advanced to scale the now defenceless walls; but the women with one consent, seizing the first weapons they could find, rushed to the ramparts, and fought with such steady bravery, that the enemy were at length obliged to abandon the attempt. To this memorable achievement Ferdinand II. was in great measure indebted for the preservation of his empire; for Krems being thus relieved, General Dampierre detached a body of five hundred horse to Vienna, at that time closely invested by Count Thurn. The Emperor, reduced to the last extremity, the walls of his palace battered by the Bohemian cannon, and echoing the reproachful shouts of his disaffected subjects, had resigned himself to his fate, when the sudden blast of a trumpet announced the arrival of succour. The little squadron of horse having secretly descended the Danube, and entered the capital by the only gate unguarded by the enemy, was magnified into a mighty host by the fears of the malcontents, who dispersed in every direction. The friends of the Emperor took courage, six hundred students flew to arms; their example was followed by fifteen hundred citizens; additional succours arrived, and in a few hours all appearance of danger and discontent had subsided.

Krems is the seat of what is termed in Austria a kreis-amtes, or council, having the government of one of the circles of the empire. Its jurisdiction extends over a fourth of Lower Austria, called the Viertel, or quarter of Ober-Manhardsberg. The principal public buildings are the Pfarrekirche, built in 1464, the church of St. Katharine, remarkable as having been originally a residence of the knights-templars, a theatre, a gymnasium, and a cassino. The Austrian epicure is indebted to Krems for excellent mustard, and the sportsman for superior gunpowder; upwards of forty thousand florins worth of the former article is yearly made and sold in this town. The mustard is sent in its natural state from

Znaym, Rausenbruck, and various other parts of Moravia, and boiled at Krems with unfermented wine, which gives it its peculiar flavour. In a vineyard near Krems was formerly a well, the water of which was believed a sovereign specific for all disorders. The neighbouring capuchins of Und, who were the respectable vouchers for its efficacy, sold the pure element at a so large a price, that the Emperor Maximilian I. suddenly discovered the necessity for enacting a law, whereby the revenue arising from this traffic was transferred from the coffers of the church into those of the state, which, at the commencement of his reign, were not so likely to overflow from the addition.

Wandering beneath the walls of Krems and Stein, we gazed with delight upon the beautifully situated monastery of Göttweih. A short distance from the right bank behind Mautern, this immense building stretched itself along the brow of a lofty, isolated mountain, clothed with waving woods, in the rich liveries of autumn, its countless windows splendidly illuminated by the descending sun. It dates no further back than the commencement of the eighteenth century, when it was built upon the site of an ancient kloster, originally founded by Altmann, Bishop of Passau, in 1083. There is a spring shown at the foot of the mountain, where this turbulent prelate, then only a student in theology, entered into a compact with Adalbert, afterwards Bishop of Wurzburg, and Gebhard, afterwards Bishop of Salzburg, by which they bound themselves to rise against the Emperor Henry IV., so soon as they should be appointed to their several sees!—an extraordinary agreement which they religiously fulfilled; and having succeeded in stirring up his own son to rebellion, compelled the unfortunate monarch, after a desperate struggle, to resign his crown at Ratisbon. Altmann, however, was not permitted to witness the triumph of his party; the enraged Emperor deprived him of his bishopric in 1085, and he died six years afterwards in exile at Zieselmauer.

Below Stein the Danube forms another archipelago, and during the remainder of a lovely evening, we glided between the thickly-wooded islands, catching at long intervals a momentary glimpse of the red-tipped steeple of one of the many insignificant villages which here line the main banks of the river, now as flat and uninteresting as they were between Aschach and Ottensheim. The current at length leading us near the right bank, we passed the markt and ruin of Holenburg; the latter, during the fifteenth century, the stronghold of two redoubted pirates, named Frohnauer and Vettau,—Wagram, (not the famous Wagram, there are six Wagrams in Austria,) St. Georgen, where Ulrich, Bishop of Passau, in 1109-12, built a celebrated kloster called St. Georg auf der Insel and Trasenmauer, at the mouth of the river Trasen, where, according to the Nibelungen-lied, Etzel,

“—— The King of Hunnen-land
Had a Castle wide
Y called Traisenmauer [80].”

Nearly facing the mouth of the Trasen, the little river Kamp discharges itself into the Danube, and, on doubling a small point of land, the village of Zwentendorf appeared on the right bank, and the mountains of the Wiener-Wald, arising in the distance, announced the vicinity of the capital. It was impossible, however, to reach it that evening, and therefore making for the little town of Tuln that lay directly before us in a sort of bay, we landed under the walls of a spacious building, the mutilated colossal statues of saints, prelates, and monarchs, in front of which, bore testimony to its former grandeur, and groping our way through a narrow passage, emerged into the court-yard behind it, where stood the wretched auberge, in which our steersman informed us we must pass the night. To our great relief, however, a red-elbowed, yellow-haired, blue-stockinged, round-about mädchen, seizing a candle and a huge bunch of keys, recrossed the court with us towards the great building, and opening a postern door, which Mrs. Radcliffe would have worshipped, led the way up a winding staircase into a long gallery, hung with paintings of martyrdoms and miracles, fubsy virgins, and chubby cherubs, fat abbots, and fair nuns; and ushered us into a wilderness of a chamber, furnished with one table and sixteen beds! The astonishment of our guide must be imagined when my companion requested yet another room. The idea of separate chambers never entering her head, she naturally enough supposed that sixteen beds would surely be sufficient for two persons. However, as there was no accounting for the whims of foreigners, and as no other travellers were likely to arrive, she found another apartment for my friend, containing nine beds, and, with a stare of amazement I shall not speedily forget, after furnishing us with some coffee and another candle, left us to sleep in any or all of our twenty-five beds, as we might eventually determine. On mentioning this circumstance afterwards to a Viennese, I was assured that, had a larger company arrived, the remaining fifteen beds in my chamber would have been unceremoniously occupied by men or women, as it might have happened; for, as he remarked to me, with the greatest coolness, “how would the poor people, who possess but two or three good rooms, be otherwise enabled to accommodate forty or fifty persons of both sexes, as they are frequently called upon to do?” Whether the building itself was the Nonnen-Kloster founded by Rudolph of Hapsburg, in gratitude for his victory over Ottocar, or the old Schloss, in which, every Monday, at midnight, the ghosts of a lady and her maid are in the habit of promenading[81], I am to this moment ignorant. If the latter, it being Thursday, the ghosts were not on duty. The Lady-Moon alone peeped through the long narrow casements; the murmur of the stream that ran rapidly beneath them, was the only sound that mingled with my dreams.

CHAPTER VIII.

Tuln. — Langenlebern. — Greifenstein. — Story of Etelina. — Korneuburg. — The Bisamberg. — Kloster Neuburg. — Leopoldsberg, and the Khalenberg. — A glimpse of the capital. — Nusdorf. — Arrival at Vienna. — Bird’s-eye view and description of the environs from the Temple of Glory in the Brühl.

The chronicler Hagen says, that before Vienna was built, Tuln was the capital of Austria. There is no doubt it was a place of some consequence even in the time of the Romans. In the year 1813, a great number of silver coins of the reigns of Vespasian, Domitian, Nerva, and Trajan, were found in its neighbourhood. Attila is said to have experienced a defeat here, and upwards of forty thousand Huns in one battle to have found “the way to dusty death.” Its authentic history commences, however, in the reign of Charlemagne, who gave the place to Passau in 803. Under the successors of Charlemagne, Tuln was the residence of their Grenz-Grafen, or Counts of the Border; and in 985, Henry II, Duke of Bavaria, held a Landtag or Assembly of the States at Tuln, at which the Duke of Carinthia, the Pfalzgraf Berchtold, the Markgraf of Austria, and the Counts of Bavaria, appeared, and decided the claim of the Bishop of Passau to a linn-fishery in the neighbourhood. The Hungarians, in the winter of 1042, surprised and burnt the town, but were, by the Markgraves Albert and Gottfried, repulsed and pursued over the Leytna; and the whole tract of country between Khalenberg and that river, was wrested from them for ever. In 1592, Tuln became the asylum of those who fled before the triumphant Botskai, on whose head the minister of Achmet had placed the ancient diadem of the despots of Servia, and who, though he refused the proffered titles of King of Hungary and Prince of Transylvania, terrified the feeble Emperor Rodolph by planting the victorious standards of those revolted provinces within sight of the walls of Presburg.

In 1683, the celebrated Sobieski joined, with his twenty-six thousand Poles, the troops collected here for the relief of Vienna, then invested by the Turks under Kara

Mustapha. The Emperor Leopold, driven to despair, wrote himself to the King of Poland, imploring him to hasten to his assistance, without waiting for his army. “My troops,” said he, “are now assembling. The bridge over the Danube is already constructed at Tuln, to afford you a passage. Place yourself at their head, however inferior in number; your name alone, so terrible to the enemy, will ensure a victory!” Sobieski, flattered by this entreaty, issued orders to his army to follow him; and, at the head of thirty-one thousand horse, traversed Silesia and Moravia with the rapidity of a Tartar horde, but, on his arrival at Tuln, found the bridge unfinished, and no troops, except a corps under the Duke of Lorraine. “Does the Emperor consider me as an adventurer?” exclaimed the disappointed monarch. “I quitted my army to command his. It is not for myself, but for him, that I fight.” Pacified, however, by the representations of the Duke of Lorraine, he awaited the arrival of his own army, which reached the Danube on the 5th of September, and the junction of the German succours was completed on the 7th. Eight thousand Swabians and Franconians, twenty thousand Saxons and Bavarians, led by their Electors, swelled the allied German army to the number of sixty thousand men. On the night of the 11th, the preconcerted signals revived the spirits of the garrison and citizens of Vienna; and, on the morning of the memorable 12th of September, they descried, with rapture, the Christian standards floating on the summit of the Khalenberg!

To the romantic traveller, Tuln is endeared as the spot where the mighty Etzel met his matchless bride. Four and twenty princes were in the train of this powerful monarch, and twelve of the noblest received the priceless guerdon of a kiss from the lips of Chrimhilt. Lances were shivered, and harps were swept, in honour of the day. A thousand marks rewarded the royal minstrels, Swemmel and Werbel, and the largess, to herald and serf, was worthy the hand of the richest and most powerful sovereign

“From the Rhone unto the Rhine—from the Elbe unto the sea.”

With spirits elevated by a morning of unequalled beauty, and hearts throbbing with expectation, as every dip of the oar brought us nearer and nearer to the Austrian capital, the spires of which, we fondly imagined, would rise to our view at each new bend of the river, we floated down the broad and glittering stream, now clear of islands, and hurrying to bathe the craggy feet of the advancing Wiener-Wald.

Passing the long straggling village of Langenlebern, or, as it is otherwise called, Ober and Unter Aigen, where there was formerly a considerable establishment of gold-washers, (the waves of the Danube, like those of Pactolus, rolling sands rich with grains of the precious metal,) the splendour of sunrise appeared to change the whole flood into molten ore, and realize the wildest dreams of those modern Chrysorrohæ[82]. Below Langenlebern, on the right bank, is the ancient village of Zeiselmauer, (supposed to be the Cetia of the Romans,) and celebrated as the birth-place of our old acquaintance, St. Florian. Here, in 1092, the rebel Bishop of Passau, Altmann, died, as I have before mentioned, in exile. We now rapidly approached the Riederberge, or mountains of the Wiener-Wald, as the forest-covered hills, that here overlook the Danube and Vienna, are indifferently called. Fragments of this rocky chain now lined the right bank of the river, which, for the first time since our leaving Ratisbon, surpassed the left in boldness and beauty. On one of these fragments rose the ruin of Greifenstein, one of the oldest castles in Austria, now the property of Prince Lichtenstein, who, having a great fancy for ruins, expends considerable sums in keeping up such as yet stand upon his estates, and in building new ruins, where there is a deficiency of old. In the Priel, or Brühl, near Vienna, are several of these modern antiques, on which the venerable pile of the old family castle of Lichtenstein looks down, with as much contempt, as a resuscitated Norman crusader would upon his tinsel-clad theatrical representatives. Greifenstein was last ruined by the Swedes in 1645, and is one of the castles named as having been the prison of Richard Cœur de Lion; nay, they even show an iron cage here, in which he is said to have been cooped. The ruins are reported to be haunted by an old white woman, and a legion of

“Black spirits and white,
Red spirits and grey,”

who do her awful bidding. This tradition has probably arisen from the circumstance of its last inhabitant having been an ancient gentlewoman, the Lady Bountiful of the neighbourhood, who devoted all her time to the cure of disorders, and was so generally successful in the treatment of her numerous patients, that she was at length suspected of possessing supernatural power. At her death, therefore, instead of canonizing her, as in duty bound, the ungrateful peasantry have converted the kind-hearted old lady, who was certainly “a spirit of health,” into “a goblin damned;” and they are less excusable, as the castle is not in want of such an attraction, the terrein being already occupied by as romantic a spectre as ever revisited “the glimpses of the moon, making night hideous!” The legend indeed attached to those venerable walls, is one of the most interesting on the Danube, and I cannot account for its omission by the diligent Schultes. Thus it runs:—

As early as the eleventh century the Lords of Greifenstein were famed and feared throughout Germany. One of the first knights who bore that name, lost his lady soon after she had presented him with a daughter, who received the name of Etelina. The dying mother, painfully aware how little attention would be paid to the education of a female by a rude and reckless father, half knight, half freebooter, however fond he might be of his child, had recommended her infant, with her last breath, to the care of a kind and pious monk, the chaplain of the castle; and under his affectionate guidance, the pretty playful girl gradually ripened into the beautiful and accomplished woman. Sir Reinhard of Greifenstein, though stern, turbulent, and unlettered himself, was, nevertheless, sensible to the charms and intelligence of his daughter; and often as he parted her fair hair and kissed her ivory forehead, before he mounted the steed or entered the bark, that waited to bear him to the hunt or the battle, a feeling of which he was both proud and ashamed would moisten his eye and subdue a voice naturally harsh and grating, into a tone almost of tenderness. On his return, weary and sullen, from a fruitless chase or a baffled enterprise, the song of Etelina could banish the frown from his brow, when even the wine-cup had been thrust untasted away, and the favourite hound beaten for a mistimed gambol. So fair a flower, even in the solitary castle of Greifenstein, was not likely to bloom unknown or unsought. The fame of Etelina’s beauty spread throughout the land. Many a noble knight shouted her name as his bright sword flashed from the scabbard, and many a gentle squire fought less for his gilt spurs, than the smile of Etelina. The minstrel who sang her praises had aye the richest largess, and the little-foot page who could tell where she might be met with in the summer’s twilight, clinging to the arm of the silver-haired chaplain, might reckon on a link of his master’s chain of gold for every word he uttered. But the powerful and the wealthy sighed at her feet in vain—she did not scorn them, for so harsh a feeling was unknown to the gentle Etelina. Nay, she even wept over the blighted hopes of some, whose fervent passion deserved a better fate; but her heart was no longer hers to give. She had fixed her affections upon the poor but noble Rudolph, and the lovers awaited impatiently some turn of fortune which would enable them to proclaim their attachment without fear of the anger and opposition of Sir Reinhard, who was considerably annoyed by Etelina’s rejection of many of the richest Counts and Barons of Germany.

Business of importance summoned the old knight to the court of the Emperor. His absence, prolonged from month to month, afforded frequent opportunities of meeting to the lovers; and the venerable monk, on whom the entire charge of the castle and its inhabitants had devolved at Sir Reinhard’s departure, was one evening struck dumb with terror, by the confession which circumstances at length extorted from the lips of Etelina! Recovered from the first shock, however, his affection for his darling pupil seemed only increased, by the peril into which passion had plunged her. In the chapel of the castle, he secretly bestowed the nuptial benediction upon the imprudent pair, and counselled their immediate flight and concealment, till his prayers and tears should wring forgiveness and consent from Sir Reinhard, who was now on his return home, accompanied by a wealthy nobleman, on whom he had determined to bestow the hand of his daughter. Scarcely had Rudolph and Etelina reached the cavern in the neighbouring wilderness, selected for their retreat by the devoted old man, who had furnished them with provisions, a lamp and some oil, promising to supply them from time to time with the means of existence, as occasions should present themselves, when the rocks of the Danube rang with the well-known blast of Sir Reinhard’s trumpet, and a broad banner lazily unfolding itself to the morning breeze, displayed to the sight of the wakeful warden the two red griffins rampant in a field vert, the blazon of the far-feared Lords of Greifenstein[83]. In a few moments the old knight was galloping over the drawbridge, followed by his intended son-in-law.

The clatter of their horses’ hoofs struck upon the heart of the conscious chaplain, as though the amimals themselves were trampling on his bosom; but he summoned up his resolution, and relying on his sacred character, met his master with a firm step and a calm eye, in the hall of the castle. Evading a direct answer to the first inquiry for Etelina, he gradually and cautiously informed Sir Reinhard of her love, her marriage, and her flight. Astonishment for a short space held the old warrior spell bound, but when his gathered fury at last found vent, the wrath of the whirlwind was less terrible. He seized the poor old monk by the throat, and upon his firm refusal to reveal the retreat of the culprits, dashed him to the earth, had him bound hand and foot, and flung into a pit beneath an iron grating in the floor of the donjon or keep of the castle[84]. Tearing, like an infuriated Pasha, “his very beard for ire,” he called down curses on Etelina and her husband, and prayed that, if ever he forgave them, a dreadful and sudden death might overtake him on the spot where he should revoke the malediction he now uttered! Upwards of a year had elapsed when, one winter-day, the knight of Greifenstein, pursuing the chase, lost his way in the mazes of a wilderness on the banks of the Danube. A savage-looking being, half clothed in skins, conducted him to a cavern, in which a woman similarly attired was seated on the ground, with an infant on her knees, and greedily gnawing the bones of a wolf.—Sir Reinhard recognised in the squalid form before him his once beautiful Etelina.—Shocked to the soul at the sight of the misery to which his severity had reduced her, he silently motioned to the huntsmen, who came straggling in upon his track to remove the wretched pair and their poor little offspring to the castle. Moved by the smiles of his innocent and unconscious grandchild, he clasped his repentant daughter to his bosom, as she re-crossed the threshold, bore her up into the banquet-hall, and consigning her to the arms of her faithful Rudolph, hastened down again to release with his own hands the true-hearted monk, who still languished in captivity. In descending the steep staircase, his foot slipped, and he was precipitated to the bottom—his fall was unseen—his cry was unheard—dying, he dragged himself a few paces along the pavement, and expired upon the very spot where he had just embraced and forgiven his daughter. Rudolph, now Lord of Greifenstein, restored the chaplain to liberty, and lived long and happily with his beloved Etelina; but the spirit of Sir Reinhard to this day wanders about the ruins of his ancestral castle, and will continue so to do till the stone whereon he expired shall be worn in twain. “Alas! poor ghost!” the very slight hollow which is at present perceivable in it, affords you little hope of its division by fair means previously to the general “crack of doom.”

Near the village of Höfelein, the river suddenly wheels to the south, and the last grand picture of the series opens before you. On the left is the little town of Korneuburg, backed by the vine-covered Bisamberg, and embosomed in beautiful groves and orchards. On the right, arise the gilded domes of Kloster-Neuburg, and far above them, in the blue distance, tower the colossal Khalenberge, “the watchmen of Vienna,” crowned with their churches, and terminating a chain of alps and mountains, that, stretching across Southern Europe, links the Danube with the Gulph of Genoa. There was something peculiarly exciting in the scene. I was floating upon waves that were rushing to the Euxine, and gazing upon a line of hills that extended to the Mediterranean. I could almost fancy the clash of Turkish cymbals, mingled with the murmur of the water, while the sound of mandolin and castagnet was faintly wafted on the breeze from the land. The former flight may, at least, be forgiven me in such a situation; for these shores have but too often echoed the wild marches of the Ottoman, and the trembling waves reflected the glittering crescent. The black horse-tails of many a proud Pasha have streamed insultingly from yonder heights, the sable heralds of death and desolation. The “high-capped Tartar” has here “spurred his steed away,” and the shout of

“God and the Prophet!—Allah hu!”

shaken like an earthquake the throne of the Cæsars.

Korneuburg is the seat of the Kreis-amtes for the quarter of Unter-Manhardsberg. In 1306, it was the scene of one of those horrid massacres, which invariably, during the middle ages, cancelled the debts of Christendom to the House of Israel. The same blasphemous falsehood, which thirty years afterwards deluged the streets of Deggendorf with Hebrew blood, was here made the pretence for burning alive all the unfortunate Jews in the place. The Emperor Frederick IV. here met his deliverer, George Podiebrad, King of Bohemia, A.D. 1462, whose prompt assistance compelled Albert of Austria, the Emperor’s brother, to raise the siege of Vienna, (in the citadel of which Frederick was shut up with only two hundred men,) to restore the towns, fortresses and countries he had taken possession of during this unnatural contest, and pay an annual sum of four thousand ducats to the Emperor for the government of Lower Austria. In 1477, Korneuburg was besieged by Matthias Corvinus; and the brave Austrian commandant, Enenkel, received his death-wound from an arrow that entered an embrasure through which he was reconnoitring the enemy. It was again besieged by Corvinus in 1484, and stood out till the very vermin of the town became the food of the famished garrison; and in the seventeenth century, the Swedes, who had taken and shut themselves up in the place, after an equally stubborn resistance, capitulated upon honourable terms. On the Bisamberg, which rises behind it, are the finest vineyards in the neighbourhood of Vienna. The wine they yield is considered the best of what are called the Danube wines; the next in celebrity are Kloster-Neuburger, Grinzinger, (a very pleasant wine,) Maurer, and Brunner, all grown on the right bank. On the summit of the Bisamberg, formerly stood the old castle of the knights of Pucinperche, or Busenberge, and near it rises the little Büsenbach, that ripples through three channels into the Danube. At its foot is Lang-Enzersdorf, the first post station from Vienna on the road to Prague. Part of Kara-Mustapha’s army crossed the Danube here during the siege of Vienna, and reduced the place to ashes. Nearly opposite to Lang-Enzersdorf, stands the unfinished but magnificent Kloster-Neuburg, and the little town to which it has given its name[85]. The Kloster was originally founded by Leopold the Saint, in consequence of his wife’s veil, which had been blown away as she was walking on the Khalenberg, being wafted to this spot, and discovered some time after, hanging on an elder-tree, by one of the Markgraf’s hounds!—So miraculous and interesting an occurrence was deemed worthy of commemoration. A convent was immediately built and endowed by the pious Markgraf; and the monks enshrined the elder-tree in gold wire-work, and imitated its blossoms with pearls[86]. Our boat now passed under the precipices of the Leopoldsberg. The two last mountains of the Wiener-Wald have both received the appellation of Khalenberg or Kalte-Berg. But the ancient Khalenberg is now known by the name of the Leopoldsberg, and by the Khalenberg is generally understood the former: Josephsberg, the second mountain from the bank of the Danube.

On the summit of the present Leopoldsberg, originally stood the Castle of Leopold the Saint; and from that castle, long before Vienna was built, the Markgraf issued to hunt in the neighbouring forests, and sometimes pursued his game over the plain whereon the capital of Austria now spreads its interminable suburbs. In 1291, Albert I., Duke of Austria, sought refuge in this fortress from the revolted citizens of Vienna; and summoning reinforcements from Swabia, cut off all aid and provisions from the rebels, and compelled them at last to an unconditional surrender. The principal magistrates came bare-headed and bare-footed, to his camp, and in their presence he tore up the charters of the city, and abrogated all those privileges which he deemed injurious to his authority. During the reign of Albert III., the castle fell into decay, and lay in ruins nearly fifty years, when it was rebuilt by Albert V. Ruined again by the wars of the fifteenth century, the Emperor Leopold I. determined to erect upon its site a chapel, in honour of his ancestor and patron. Before the work was completed, however, the Turks had burst into Austria, and during the siege of Vienna, destroyed the unfinished chapel as well as the few remaining walls of the old castle. The Saxons, who fought in the left wing of the army of relief, carried the Turkish positions on this mountain by storm, and drove them with much slaughter out of the ruins in which they had entrenched themselves. On the flight of the infidels, Leopold recommenced building his chapel, but it was finished by his son Charles VI., under the superintendence of the Italian architect Beluzzi, who also built a palace near it by the Emperor’s order, and twelve years afterwards erected the present church upon the site of the chapel. The monks of Kloster-Neuburg, who had installed themselves in these edifices, were afterwards expelled by Joseph II.[87], and the church and palace became the property of Prince de Ligne, the historian. His highness considerably improved the grounds about it, and it has become a favourite resort of the Viennese, who flock up the mountain on a fine summer day, to enjoy the magnificent prospect from its summit, or from the little Belvedere that overhangs the Danube. On the outside of the building in which the prince resided, are several inscriptions; amongst others his favourite motto,

“Quo res cumque cadunt, semper stat linea recta;”

and the words

“Château de mon refuge.”

On the side facing the Danube are the following truly French lines, in allusion to the various fortunes which have attended the building.

“Margraves, Polonais, Turcs et Saints, tour à tour,
Rendirent autrefois célèbre ce séjour;
C’est à présent celui de la philosophie,
Du calme de l’esprit, du bonheur de la vie.
Notre ame s’aggrandit par des grands souvenirs,
Mais la meilleure histoire est celui des plaisirs.
Sans remords, sans regrets, sans crainte et sans envie
La nature se montre en son bel appareil
Et l’on se croit ici favori du soleil.”

On the ceiling of the Belvedere is inscribed

“Optimis Vindobonensibus
Carolus Princeps de Ligne.”

On the Khalenberg, as the Josephsberg is now called, stands what was formerly a monastery, founded by Ferdinand II. in 1628. Leopold I. re-established it after the siege of Vienna; Joseph I. enlarged, and Joseph II. suppressed it. Like the building on the Leopoldsberg, it was purchased by the Prince de Ligne, and is a point of réunion for the holiday makers of the capital.

Below the Leopoldsberg, the Danube is divided into three large branches, and on entering the southern branch the great dark spire of St. Stephen’s suddenly appeared between the trees on the left bank, and other spires and domes gliding gradually into view, we looked at length upon Vienna! Impatiently did we pace the bank at Nussdorf, a little village on the right of the stream, about an hour’s journey from the walls of the city, where all boats are obliged to stop till passports are examined, and permission given to proceed to what is called the Schanzel landing-place, near the Ferdinand’s Brüche (Bridge of Ferdinand.) Nearly an hour and a half were we detained at this place, within sight of the goal we were burning to reach. The papers at length arrived; our crew once more plied their paddles, and through the crowd of boats moored on each side of the river, we advanced slowly, catching occasional glimpses of new buildings and towers, as they appeared between the tall stacks of firewood that line the banks of this arm of the Danube. Suddenly we found ourselves under the walls of the city, and about twenty minutes afterwards, having followed a custom-house officer to the mauth of the Schanzel, where our baggage underwent strict examination, we entered the gates, the way to our hotel being marshalled by a good-natured Italian, who had volunteered his services at the custom-house. Previously, however, to quitting the boat, the three poor women, whom we had taken on board at Marsbach, perceiving their journey ended, requested to know what they had to pay. On being, with some difficulty, made to understand that they were perfectly welcome to their passage, their joy was extravagant. They clapped their own hands, and kissed ours repeatedly, (the usual mode of expressing thanks in Austria,) and with a chorus of “Das ist schön! Das ist schön[88]!” shouldered their heavy bundles, and shuffled away in high glee.

Preceded by our Italian guide, and followed by the two steersmen and their crew carrying our luggage, we bustled through the crowded streets of Vienna, and crossing the square, in the centre of which stands the fine old cathedral of St. Stephen, entered the Weyburg Gasse, and were soon comfortably installed in the Hotel of the Kaiserinn von Osterreich (the Empress of Austria.) Gentle reader, I have now landed you, with myself, safely in Vienna. Do not imagine, because I have been, perhaps, tediously minute in my descriptions up to this period, that I am about to enter upon a long-winded geographical, statistical, historical account of “the habitation of the Cæsars.” We are now upon beaten ground, and even presuming that you are unacquainted with it, there are dozens of guides much better calculated to do the honours and show the lions of Vienna than your humble servant.

I shall therefore take the liberty, before I make my final bow, and hand you over to the acute Russel, the pleasant Ramblers in Germany, either military or musical—the caustic author of ‘Austria as it is,’ or any other intelligent tourist—to waft you at once to the pinnacle of a steep hill in that gorge of the Wienerwald called the Brühl or the Priel, behind the very ancient and picturesque little town of Möhdling. There you are—on the steps of the “Temple of Glory,” a handsome Doric building erected by the present Prince Lichtenstein to the memory of the brave hussars who rescued him, at the expense of their lives, from the French in the battle of Wagram. On the wall of a vault, beneath the building, where their bodies are deposited, is the following affecting inscription:—“Softly repose upon this height, precious remains of the valiant Austrian warriors, who fell, covered with glory, at Aspern and Wagram. Your friend is not able to reanimate the lifeless bodies. To honour them is his duty[89].”

As he turns from perusing these lines, as honourable to the dictator of them as to the brave men to whom they allude, the moistened eye of the stranger wanders over the immense prospect below him, and falls upon the very scene of their valour and their death. Yonder stretches the wide plain upon which the fate of Austria has been twice decided. Rudolph of Hapsburg, the founder of its noble house, there wrested the duchy and the crown: of the empire from Ottokar, king of Bohemia, on August 26th, A.D. 1278.

On the 5th of July, five hundred and thirty-one years afterwards, the descendant of Rudolph saw that duchy and crown at the mercy of an adventurer, who had, for the second time, driven him from his capital, and now threatened the utter extinction of his dynasty. There is the celebrated island of Lobau, out of which, after its critical escape, the French army crossed the Danube amid night and storm, by the dreadful light of the blazing town of Enzersdorf, into the plain of Morava, the destined arena of that decisive combat.

“All was prepared—the fire, the sword, the men
To wield them in their terrible array.
The army, like a lion from his den,
Marched forth with nerve and sinews bent to slay,—
A human Hydra, issuing from its fen
To breathe destruction on its winding way.
* * * * * * * * * * The night was dark, and the thick mist allowed
Nought to be seen save the artillery’s flame,
Which arched the horizon like a fiery cloud,
And in the Danube’s waters shone the same—
A mirrored Hell! The volleying roar, and loud
Long booming of each peal on peal, o’ercame
The ear far more than thunder, for Heaven’s flashes
Spare or smite rarely—Man’s make millions ashes!”

Don Juan, Canto 8, st. 2. 6.

There are the little villages of Essling, Aspern, and Wagram, whose names, like those of the still more insignificant hamlets of Blenheim and Waterloo, are ineffaceably inscribed on the tablets of Fame, though scarcely to be distinguished in the map of Europe. Do you mark that white building a little on this side of the city, looking, from the height on which we stand, like the card-house of an infant? The sun now falls upon something like a triumphal arch, on an elevation immediately behind it—that is Schönbrunn, with its well-known Gloriette. In that palace, is a fair-haired boy, the son of the victor in that terrible fight, and of the daughter of the vanquished. To that fight he owes his existence. Its issue enabled a low-born Corsican to dictate terms to one of the most powerful monarchs in the world, and mingle his blood with that of a line of emperors. Let us turn from these scenes of strife and “vaulting ambition, which o’erleaps itself,” to the forest-covered hills around, and the lovely vallies beneath us. At the foot of that mountain lie the sulphur-baths of Baden, and beside them opens the beautiful Helen-thal, at the mouth of which resides the brave and popular Archduke Charles, the gallant, though unsuccessful, opponent of Napoleon. His chateau is named Wildburg, in honour of his Archduchess, a princess of the House of Nassau-Wildburg. There is scarcely any garden-ground belonging to it, and he, therefore, good-naturedly makes a garden of the whole valley, and gives the public the benefit of it.

Every morning, during the season, the visiters of this fashionable watering-place flock by dozens to a farm-house, belonging to the Baron von Dopplehof, where they eat the best bread in Europe, and sip coffee, diluted with most delicious milk, furnished by fifty Styrian cows, all of that light dun colour which particularly distinguishes the race. The day is divided between the bath and the shades of the Helen-thal; and, as evening advances, the gay groups saunter back along the banks of the rivulet that brawls through this romantic glen, and drop leisurely into the pretty little theatre of Baden. Russel has drawn an animated and faithful picture of this spot. I shall, therefore, only mention a ridiculous circumstance which occurred here a few years ago. The old wooden bridge over the rivulet I have just mentioned, had been replaced by one of cast iron; and the completion of this work being an important era for the little town, a procession was formed to open the bridge, and the whole neighbourhood collected on and round it to witness the ceremony. One of the Archdukes (Anthony, I believe) headed the cortege, and, after it had passed over, the burgomaster, standing in the centre of the bridge, harangued the spectators. His speech was a model for succeeding burgomasters, to fashion their orations by. The crowd pressed nearer and nearer to listen, and be edified. The worthy officer warmed with his subject; he became absolutely figurative. “Our gratitude, our attachment (exclaimed he, in a transport of loyalty) to the illustrious House of Hapsburg, shall remain firm and unshaken as this bridge!” but, before he had well finished his sentence, down went bridge, burgomaster, and audience, into the water. Whether naturally sinking under the weight of the crowd, or kicked down by Lucifer himself, who, a rebel from the first, might have enjoyed the consternation attendant on so ominous a coincidence, remains to be determined. A clumsy bridge of stone now spans the little stream of the Schwächat. To the left, almost immediately beneath us, upon a green knoll, surrounded by gardens, stands the venerable ruin of Lichtenstein, the castle of the ancient princes of that name; and, facing it, the modern chateau of their descendants. The old walls are in good preservation, and the various apartments clearly distinguishable. The chamber of justice, into which the criminal was drawn up by a rope from the prison beneath it, through a hole in the floor; the prison itself, with its iron rings and staples; and the banquet hall, now hung with full-length portraits of the family, (none of them, by the way, painted earlier than the sixteenth century, though some profess to represent persons who lived in the fourteenth,) are all exceedingly interesting. Beyond it, on the bank of the river, lies the broad city, the huge cathedral shooting up its dark spire in the centre. From a grated window in that spire, the faithful Starrhemberg saw the sun rise every morning upon that vast plain, whitened with the tents of the Moslem, and watched night after night for the joyful signals of relief. They rose at length. From those heights, the gallant Sobieski rushed upon the panic-stricken Vizier, who, abandoning his camp and his treasures to the victorious Pole, fled like a tiger baffled in his spring. On the high road to Carinthia and Italy, that runs parallel with this chain of mountains, you may observe a slender Gothic cross, that is to say, one of those crocketted pyramids, surmounted with a small cross, which are so called, and to be seen in many of our own market towns. It is the Spinnerinn-am-Kreutz, and, according to the legend, marks the spot on which a maiden vowed to sit and spin till her lover returned from the holy land. Smile not so contemptuously; if you are proof against “a ballad in print,” there is also an historical interest attached to that lonely monument. It commemorates the retreat of Solyman the Magnificent, and the valour of an ancestor of the princely House of Schwartzenburg. For thirty days,

“Amid the vale below,
Tents rose, and streamers play’d,
And javelins sparkled in the sun,
And multitudes encamped,
Swarmed far as eye could follow o’er the plain;
There, in his war-pavilion, sat,
In council with his chiefs,
The Sultan of the Land!”

Foiled in every assault by the skill of the commandant, Nicholas Count of Salm, by the courage of the garrison, and the loyalty of the burghers, the advance of winter, and the dread of approaching succours, compelled him to raise the siege, and to retreat to Buda, A.D. 1529.

Still farther eastward lies the little village of Laxendorf, with the summer palace and gardens of Laxenburg, a favourite retreat of the Emperor, and something between the well-known Petit-Trianon at Versailles, and the grander Wilhelmshöe at Hessen-Cassel. Inferior to them both in situation, it combines many of their separate attractions: there are the rustic bridges, and Swiss cottages of the former, and the modern antique castle of the latter. Instead of the splendid waterworks of Wilhelmshöe, you must be contented, however, with the calm, clear lakes of Laxendorf, in which myriads of enormous carp battle for the large crusts flung to them by the guide, their scaly armour glittering in the sun, like

“Mingled metal damasked o’er with gold.”

In the centre of one of these lakes rises an island fortress. At a given signal a boat pushes off from the watergate, you are ferried over, and enter the court-yard of the building, which is fitted up in strict conformity to the taste of the middle ages. Like the Lowenburg at Wilhelmshoe, all the furniture of this fortress is really antique—the carved oaken ceilings and wainscots having been brought from suppressed monasteries and demolished castles. The beds, chairs, tables, etc., collected in a similar manner, are also extremely curious. Around the skirting-board of one of the apartments on the ground floor, is a most interesting painting of a procession to the lists, of the time of Maximilian I., and resembling in some degree the prints of his “Triumph” by Hans Burgmair. The heralds and pursuivants, habited alternately in the colours of the empire and the duchy, are followed by the Emperor himself, armed at all points for the tournament, and twenty or thirty knights, riding in couples, their ponderous tilting helmets crested and garlanded in the elaborate German fashion, and their horses splendid with engraved chanfrons and emblazoned housings. The procession is closed by the priest and the surgeon, and the Todtwagen, or hearse to carry away the slain champions! A long narrow gallery, on the highest floor of the building, hung with the costumes of all the European nations during the sixteenth century, leads to a dimly-lighted, unfurnished turret-chamber, the only ornaments of which are three small half-length portraits of Phillip II. of Spain, his queen Isabel, and his unfortunate son Don Carlos. The gloom of the chamber, its desolate appearance, so opposite to that of the other apartments, which are profusely decorated and furnished; the three pale faces of the principal actors in that most dreadful of domestic tragedies, glaring at one another from the opposite walls, send a cold shudder through your frame; and you hasten from the spot, as though murder had been freshly committed there, and the dark shadow of the retiring assassin was yet gliding along the floor of the adjacent gallery! The Knight’s Castle, as that building is called, has also its state apartments; its chamber of justice; its prison with a puppet prisoner, (the only piece of bad taste about it, [90]) and its armoury. The latter contains some handsome fluted and embossed suits, but nothing particularly ancient[91]; throughout Germany, the richest suit of armour, whatever may be its date, is invariably appropriated to the Emperor Maximilian, though in the same collection; and standing next to it, is a suit which probably did belong to him, or, at least, is of the same period. From the Knight’s Castle, you are led to the Knight’s Chapel, his tilt-yard, and his farm; the upper apartments of the latter are filled with ancient cabinets, paintings, and curiosities of every description. Laxendorf is first mentioned by old Minnesänger Tanhuser, who, having wandered from land to land, and from court to court, and seen, as he himself informs us, Crete, Jerusalem, Cyprus, Normandy, Antioch, Coblenz (!), Rome, and Pisa, came to Vienna during the reign of the Emperor Frederick II., who highly patronized him, and gave him a residence in the capital, and other property in its neighbourhood.

“Zu Wiene hat ich einen Hof
Der lag so rechte schöne;
Lupolzdorf was darzuo min
Das lit (liegt) bi Luchse nahen;
Ze Hinperg hat ich schöne guot,” etc.

Laxendorf, lying close by Leopoldsdorf and Himperg, is evidently the Luchse of our fortunate Minnesänger; and, towards the close of the thirteenth century, we find the name of one Pertold, of Lachsindorf. In 1330, Albert II., surnamed the Lame, Duke of Austria, possessed a castle at Lachsindorf, and Duke Albert III., “with the tress,” built a new castle upon the site of the old one, and had the magnificent furniture and valuable antiquities which had previously adorned Saint Leopold’s castle on the Khalenberg, removed to this place, which became his favourite residence; where, shaking off as much as possible the cares of sovereignty and secular pomp, he worked in the garden with his own hands, and, studying Palladius on rural economy, amused himself with planting and horticulture. Its marshy situation, however, is supposed to have shortened the life of this amiable prince. Seized, during an expedition into Bohemia, with a mortal disorder, of which he had here laid the foundation, he was conveyed back in haste to Laxendorf, and died on the 29th of August, 1395, aged forty-six, amid the lamentations of the citizens of Vienna, who crowded round his corse, exclaiming, “We have lost our friend, our true father!”

In 1683, the Turks laid Laxendorf in ashes. It was rebuilt by the Emperor Leopold I.; and his son Charles IV., in his brown surtout and bag-wig, here delighted to “bait the heron.” Joseph II. turned the old blaue-haus[92], which was formerly the falconry, into the imperial residence. The Gothic toy on the lake owes its existence to a whim of the late Empress of Austria.

But the sun is fast descending behind us—his last rays are lighting up the boundless prospect. Let me take advantage of them to point out to you the only remaining object of interest in the picture: on that gray conical hill, that, dimly looming on the verge of the horizon, might almost be mistaken for a cloud, stands the castle of Presburg; at its foot lies the capital of Hungary, and past it hurries the broad Danube, widening, deepening, and strengthening, as it flows, wheeling to the south round the walls of Buda, washing those of Belgrade, and bearing the tributes of the Save, the Drave, the Teiss, and the Pruth, through the swamps of Bess-Arabia into the dark Euxine. At the moment I am speaking, the eyes of all Europe are bent in the same direction. The cannon has been fired that may shake the peace of the world. The flames that are kindling on the shores of the Black Sea may spread to the mouths of the Mississippi. But I have neither the talent nor the ambition to be a politician or a prophet; and so farewell, gentle reader: the bugles of the peaceful herdsmen, saluting some returning visiters of Baden, shall “sing truce” to our warlike speculations, for

“The night cloud has lower’d,
And sentinel stars set their watch in the sky.”

It is time to hurry down from the Temple of Glory, and return to the gay city. Go lounge upon the bustling and brilliant Graben—gaze upon the pyrotechnics of the Prater, or laugh in the little theatre of Leopoldstadt—seek the Glacis, the Volksgarten, or the Opera. I leave you with this conviction, that if I have only been fortunate enough to induce you to descend the Danube to Vienna, there is little doubt of obtaining your pardon for any failure in my attempt to amuse you on your way.

NAMES
OF THE
CITIES, TOWNS, VILLAGES, CASTLES, MONASTERIES, etc.
ON THE
BANKS OF THE DANUBE,
FROM RATISBON TO VIENNA.

RIGHT BANK. | ⇓ | LEFT BANK.
Regensburg or Ratisbon. | ⇓ | Stadt-am-Hof.
| ⇓ | Reinhausen.
| ⇓ | Weichs.
St. Nicola. | ⇓ | Schwabelweiss.
Einhausen or Bürgelut. | ⇓ | Tegernheim.
Irlmauth. | ⇓ |
Kreuzhof. | ⇓ | Donaustauf. (Ruin.)
Barbing. | ⇓ | Reifelding. St.Salvator.
| ⇓ | Sulzbach.
Sarching. | ⇓ |
| ⇓ | Demling.
Nassenhart. | ⇓ | Bach.
Friesheim. | ⇓ | Frenghofen.
Ilkhofen. | ⇓ | Kruckenberg. Ettersdorf.
Altach. Auburg. | ⇓ | Kirfenholz.
Eltheim. | ⇓ |
Gaissling. | ⇓ |
| ⇓ | Gieffen.
Seppenhausen. | ⇓ |
| ⇓ | Oberachdorf. Wiesent.
1st Post Station from Regensburg} Pfätter. | ⇓ |
| ⇓ | Wörth (Chateau.)
| ⇓ | Hungerdorf.
| ⇓ | Tiefenthal.
Griefau. Gmund. | ⇓ | Keesel. Hochdorf.
Herrfurt. | ⇓ |
Irling. | ⇓ | Heiligen Blut or Niederach.
| ⇓ | Bogen or Hagenhof.
Aholfing. | ⇓ |
| ⇓ | Sinzendorf.
| ⇓ | Pondorf.
| ⇓ | Zeitsdorf or Zeitlarn.
| ⇓ | Weihern.
| ⇓ | Beichsee. Kirchenroth.
(Ruin.) Ober and Unter Motzing. | ⇓ | Pittrich. Neidau.
Landersdorf. | ⇓ | Kössnach. Pfaffenmünster.
Breitenfield. | ⇓ | Hartzeitdorn.
Einhausen. Rinkheim. | ⇓ | Sossau.
Eberau. | ⇓ |
Moosklagers. | ⇓ | Sossauer Beschlacht.
| ⇓ | Hormannsdorf or Hornsdorf
2nd Post Station from Regensburg} Straubing. | ⇓ | Thurmhof.
Atzelburg. | ⇓ | Ober and Unter Parkstetten.
| ⇓ | Reibersdorf.
Hochstätter Hof. | ⇓ |
| ⇓ | Lenach.
Aiterhofen. Ittling. Ober and Unter Ebling | ⇓ |
| ⇓ | Ober-Altaich. (Kloster.)
Hundersdorf. Saut. | ⇓ |
| ⇓ | Bogen and the Bogenberg. (Ruin.)
Absarn. | ⇓ |
Hermansdorf. | ⇓ |
| ⇓ | Hüttenhof. Hofweinzier.
| ⇓ | Holzkirch.
| ⇓ | Anning. Dörfl.
Einbrach or Kinbrach. | ⇓ |
| ⇓ | Pfelling.
Mitterdorf. Hindeldorf. | ⇓ |
| ⇓ | Linzing. Esper. Weichenberg.
Endau or Zengau. | ⇓ |
| ⇓ | Allkofen.
| ⇓ | Albertskirchen.
| ⇓ | Petzendorf.
Strasskirchen. Irlbach. | ⇓ | Wallendorf.
Loche. | ⇓ | Rafer or Asperhof.
Wischelberg. | ⇓ | Aichach.
Stephan-Posching. | ⇓ | Maria-Posching.
Uttenkofen. | ⇓ | Hundeldorf.
Steinfurt. | ⇓ | Sommersdorf.
Steinkirchen. | ⇓ | Klein-Schwarzach.
Bergheim. | ⇓ | Ziedeldorf. Offenberg.
| ⇓ | Neuhausen.
| ⇓ | Himmelberg.
Metten Ufer. | ⇓ | Metten. (Kloster.)
(Ruin) Natternberg. | ⇓ | Helfkam.
Fischerdorf. | ⇓ | Schäching.
| ⇓ | Deggendorf.
| ⇓ | Deggenau.
3d Post Station from Regensburg} Plattling on the Inn. | ⇓ | Halbe-Meile-Kirche.
Isragemünd. | ⇓ | Seebach.
| ⇓ | Reit.
| ⇓ | Helmdorf.
| ⇓ | Unter Schwarzach.
| ⇓ | Hengersberg. (Ruin.)
Thundorf. | ⇓ | Nieder Altaich. (Kloster.)
| ⇓ | Alten Ufer.
| ⇓ | Gindlau.
Aicha. | ⇓ |
Haardorf. Kreuzberg. | ⇓ |
Säge. Münchsdorf. | ⇓ |
Osterhofen. Mulheim. | ⇓ | Winzer. Hochwinzer.(Ruin.)
Rockessing.  Pockessing. | ⇓ | Loh. Kinschbach.
Rossfelden. | ⇓ |
Guscherdorf. | ⇓ | Mittau.
Endsau. | ⇓ | Nesselbach.
Biflez. | ⇓ | Leiten.
| ⇓ | Hofkirchen. (Ruin.)
Kinzing.  Langenkinzing. | ⇓ |
Herzogau. | ⇓ |
Pleinting. | ⇓ | Ober and Unter Schöllenbach
| ⇓ | Gelbersdorf.
Euröde. | ⇓ |
| ⇓ | Hildegardsberg. (Ruin.)
Reif. | ⇓ |
| ⇓ | Albersdorf.
Wisbauer. | ⇓ |
| ⇓ | Schmelz.
U. L. Frau. | ⇓ |
4th Post Station from Regensburg} Vilshofen. | ⇓ | Winkel
| ⇓ | Hacheldorf.
Witzling. | ⇓ |
| ⇓ | Windorf.
Hannsbach. | ⇓ |
| ⇓ | Eglsee.
Ottenham. | ⇓ |
| ⇓ | Gerharding.
Sandbach. | ⇓ |
| ⇓ | Fisching.
Kötzing. | ⇓ |
Leestätten. | ⇓ | Deichselberg.
Einöd. | ⇓ | Kling.
Biberach. | ⇓ | Geishofen.
Schalding. | ⇓ | Iring.
| ⇓ | Söldern.
Reit. Ord. Hof. | ⇓ |
| ⇓ | Alaning.
| ⇓ | Donauhof.
Dobelstein. Haining. | ⇓ | Wörth.
| ⇓ | Maierhof.
Steinbach. | ⇓ | Stölzel-hof.
| ⇓ | Freunde. Hain.
5th Post Station from Regensburg} Passau. | ⇓ |
| ⇓ | Ilz-stadt. Oberhaus.
Truckerheim. | ⇓ |
Achleiten. | ⇓ |
Parz. | ⇓ | Lindau.
Aich. | ⇓ | Aichet.
Schildbauer. | ⇓ | Leiten.
| ⇓ | Wingertsdorf.
Unter-Mitter-Esternberg. | ⇓ |
| ⇓ | Schergendorf.
Deitzendorf. Hetzmannsdorf. | ⇓ |
(Chateau.) Krempenstein. | ⇓ |
Pirawang. | ⇓ |
Unter Schacha. | ⇓ | Mazenberg.
Ober Hütt. Hochleiten. | ⇓ | Ober or Hafner-Zell. (Bavarian Custom-House.)
Kasten. | ⇓ | Ober & Unter Grunau.
(Chateau.) Fichtenstein. | ⇓ |
| ⇓ | (River middle: Jochenstein, or Grenzberg.)
| ⇓ | Gottsdorf.
(Austrian Custom-House.)} Engelhardszell. | ⇓ | Ried. (Ruin.)
Ober & Unter Leitner. | ⇓ | Rana-Riedl. (Chateau.)
| ⇓ | Rana-bach and Mühle.
Ober-Rana. | ⇓ | Ufer.
Kacher. | ⇓ | Nieder Rana.
| ⇓ | Marsbach (Ruin.)
Wesen Urfar. | ⇓ | Marsbach Zell, or Frey Zell.
Ober & Unter Wollmarkt. | ⇓ |
(Ruin.) Waldkirchen. | ⇓ |
Pulhof. | ⇓ |
| ⇓ | Kirschbaum, or Hayenbach. (Ruin.)
The Schlagen, or Schlägleiten. | ⇓ |
Lidritzhueb. | ⇓ | Lidritzhueb.
| ⇓ | Au.
Im-Zell. | ⇓ | Ob.
Fadenau-Hof. | ⇓ |
Ober & Unter Schwend. | ⇓ | Ober-Michel. Kirschberg.
Hinter-Aigen. | ⇓ | Dorf.
| ⇓ | Windberg.
| ⇓ | Neuhaus. (Ruin and Chateau.)
Schönleiten. | ⇓ |
Rosengarten. | ⇓ |
Stauf. Aschach. | ⇓ |
| ⇓ | Landshag.
Hartkirchen. Dorsham. | ⇓ | Ober Walsee. Eschelberg.
| ⇓ | Mülhachen. Bergheim.
(Ruin.) Schaumberg. | ⇓ |
Pupping. | ⇓ |
Gstettenau. | ⇓ | Hofham.
Au. | ⇓ | Auerdorf.
Waschpoint. | ⇓ |
Wörth. | ⇓ | Mohrhäusel.
8th Post Station from Regensburg} Efferding. Schab. | ⇓ |
Taubenbraun. Gablau. | ⇓ |
Raffolding. Ihndorf. | ⇓ | Bösenbach.  Bach.
Tratteneck. | ⇓ |
Strass. Emling. Aham. | ⇓ |
Stocköd. | ⇓ | Goldwarth.
Basleiten. | ⇓ |
Hartheim. | ⇓ | Waldinger.
Alkofen. | ⇓ |
Garderiener. Hagenau. | ⇓ |
Bergham. | ⇓ |
Gohbesch. | ⇓ |
Steger. | ⇓ |
Schwagen. | ⇓ | Rodel.
Schönering. | ⇓ |
Im-Fall. | ⇓ | Höflein.
Urfar. | ⇓ |
| ⇓ | Ottensheim. (Chateau.)
(Kloster.) Willering. | ⇓ |
| ⇓ | Buchenau.
| ⇓ | Hager Schloschen.
Calvarienberg. | ⇓ |
Margarethen. | ⇓ | Pöstlingberg.
9th Post Station from Regensburg.} Linz. | ⇓ | Urfar.
| ⇓ | Anhof.
| ⇓ | Pflaster.
| ⇓ | Harbarz.
| ⇓ | Bach.
| ⇓ | Furth.
Ober & Unter Rosenthal. | ⇓ | Magdalena.
| ⇓ | Dornach.
| ⇓ | Furtner.
| ⇓ | Katsbach.
| ⇓ | Plösching.
Kaufleuten. | ⇓ | Binneshäuser.
Blankenreit. | ⇓ | Spital.
Zitzelau. St. Peter. | ⇓ | Dörfl.
Ebelsberg on the Traun. | ⇓ | Steyereck. (Ruin.)
| ⇓ | Pulgarn.
Traundorf. | ⇓ | Reichenbach.
Bosch. | ⇓ | Luftenberg.
Unger Bichling. | ⇓ | Hof-im-Schlag.
Monastery of St. Florian and Markt.} Fosterau. Fischau. | ⇓ | Himberg.
Rafferstetten. | ⇓ | Auwinden.
Asten. | ⇓ | St. Georgen.
(Chateau.) Tilly’s Burg. | ⇓ | Gusen. Wirthshaus. Frankenberg.
Kronau. | ⇓ |
(Ruin.) Spielberg. | ⇓ | Langenstein.
10th Post Station from Regensburg} Ens. | ⇓ | Urfar.
Ensdorf. St. Lorenz. Lorch. | ⇓ | Mauthausen. Pragstein.
Enghazen. | ⇓ |
Tabor. | ⇓ |
Windpassing. Biburg. | ⇓ | Reissersdorf.
Albing. | ⇓ | Albing.
Albern. | ⇓ | Niedersebing.
Stein. | ⇓ | Au. Berg. Auhof. Mitterberg.
Wagram. | ⇓ | Hartschlössel.
St. Pantaleon. | ⇓ | Naarn.
Erla Kloster. | ⇓ | Anhäusel. Strass. M. Lab. Arbing.
| ⇓ | Baumgarten.
Breitfeld. | ⇓ | Stafling.
Weinberg. | ⇓ | Holzleiten.
| ⇓ | Starzing.
Oberau. | ⇓ | Rupertshofen. Münzbach.
| ⇓ | Windhag. Allerheiligen.
| ⇓ | St. Thomas.
Engelberg. | ⇓ |
Engelthal. | ⇓ |
Mitterau. | ⇓ |
Lin. | ⇓ |
Unterau. | ⇓ |
Eck. | ⇓ |
Gersberg. | ⇓ | Langacker. Wagerhof.
Achleiten. | ⇓ |
| ⇓ | Gang.
11th Post Station from Regensburg.} Strengberg. | ⇓ | Weisching.
| ⇓ | Inzing.
Haag. | ⇓ | Hördorf.
Stauding. | ⇓ | Hulting.
Hörling. Sindburg. Niederwalsee. (Chateau.) | ⇓ | Mitterkirchen.
Ober & Unter Sumerau. | ⇓ | Menschdorf.
Leitzing. | ⇓ |
Im Brüch. | ⇓ |
| ⇓ | Eizindorf. Froschau.
| ⇓ | Saxen.
| ⇓ | Dornach.
| ⇓ | Klam. (Chateau)
| ⇓ | Hofkirchen.
Hagenauer. | ⇓ | Petzeldorf.
Bocksreiter. | ⇓ |
| ⇓ | Rinzenhof.
Ardagger. | ⇓ | Saurüsselleiten.
Winkling. | ⇓ |
Mayherhof. | ⇓ | Tiefenbach.
| ⇓ | Wies.
Wies. | ⇓ | Grein. (Chateau.)
| ⇓ | Giesenbach.
| ⇓ | Struden. (Ruin.)
Strudel and Schloss Werfenstein.} Wirbel. | ⇓ |
(Ruin.) Haustein. | ⇓ | St. Nikola.
| ⇓ | Sarblingstein.
(Ruin.) Hirschau. | ⇓ | Hirschau.
(Ruin.) Freyenstein. | ⇓ |
Dörfel. | ⇓ |
| ⇓ | Isper.
| ⇓ | Weins.
| ⇓ | Marhof.
(Chateau.) Donaudorf. | ⇓ | Kiernholz.
| ⇓ | Bösenbeug. (Chateau)
Ips. | ⇓ |
Hinterhaus. | ⇓ | Taberg.
Ober & Unter Agen. | ⇓ | Gottsdorf.
Säusenstein. | ⇓ | Barthub.
| ⇓ | Mötzling.
| ⇓ | Rohberg.
| ⇓ | Rosenbühel.
Idersdorf. | ⇓ | Loja.
| ⇓ | Thümling.
| ⇓ | Auratsberg.
| ⇓ | Kranz.
| ⇓ | Marbach. Maria-Taferl.
| ⇓ | Schelmenbach.
Krumnussbaum. | ⇓ | Krumnussbaum.
Pechlarn. | ⇓ | Klein Pechlarn.
Wörth. | ⇓ | Ebersdorf.
| ⇓ | Lehen.
| ⇓ | Urfar.
| ⇓ | Weideneck. (Ruin.)
| ⇓ | St. Georgen.
| ⇓ | Hain.
14th Post Station from Regensburg} (Kloster) Mölk. | ⇓ |
| ⇓ | Emmersdorf.
Hueb. | ⇓ | Schall-Emersdorf.
| ⇓ | Gosam.
| ⇓ | Urfar. Grinzing.
Schönbühel. | ⇓ |
Schönbühelhof. | ⇓ | Markt Aggsbach. Aggstein. (Ruin.)
Dorf Aggsbach. | ⇓ |
| ⇓ | Willendorf.
| ⇓ | Groisbach.
St. Johann. | ⇓ | Schwallenbach.
Ober Arnsdorf. | ⇓ |
Hof Arnsdorf. | ⇓ | Erlahöfe.
Unter Arnsdorf. | ⇓ | Spitz. Hinterhaus (Ruin.)
Bach Arnsdorf. | ⇓ | St. Michael.
Ober & Unter Kienstock. | ⇓ | Wesendorf.
St. Lorenz. | ⇓ | Joching.
| ⇓ | Weissenkirchen.
Ruhrsdorf. | ⇓ |
Rossaz. | ⇓ |
| ⇓ | Dürrenstein. (Ruin.)
Hundheim. | ⇓ | Ober & Unter Löben.
Mautern. | ⇓ | Stein.
| ⇓ | Krems.
Kloster-Göttweih. | ⇓ |
Palt. | ⇓ | Weinzierl.
Brunnkirchen. | ⇓ | Landersdorf.
Thalern. | ⇓ | Röhrendorf.
Angern. | ⇓ |
Wolfsberg. | ⇓ | Weidling.
| ⇓ | Neu-Weidling.
| ⇓ | Teiss.
(Ruin.) Holenburg. | ⇓ |
Wagram. | ⇓ | Schlickendorf.
St. Georgen. | ⇓ | Donaudorf. Grunddorf.
Rittersfeld. | ⇓ |
Trasenmauer. | ⇓ |
Stollhofen. | ⇓ | Jedtsdorf.
Frauendorf. | ⇓ | Grafenwörth.
Preiwitz. | ⇓ | Wasen.
| ⇓ | St. Johann.
| ⇓ | Ober & Unter Lebern.
Bodensee. | ⇓ | Sachsendorf.
| ⇓ | Kollersdorf.
Kleindorf. | ⇓ | Altenwörth.
Berndorf. | ⇓ | Gugging.
| ⇓ | Winkel.
Zwentendorf. | ⇓ | Frauendorf.
Erpersdorf. | ⇓ | Birnbaum.
Klein Schönbuhel. | ⇓ | Urzenlaa.
Kronau. | ⇓ | Möllersdorf.
Aspern. | ⇓ | Neuaigen.
| ⇓ | Triebensee.
Tuln. | ⇓ |
| ⇓ | Perzendorf.
| ⇓ | Ober Schmidabach.
| ⇓ | Zana.
Ober & Unter Aigen, or Langenlebern. | ⇓ | Schmida.
Muckendorf. | ⇓ | Ober & Unter Zeyersdof.
Zeiselmauer. | ⇓ |
Wörten. | ⇓ | Stockerau.
St. Andre. | ⇓ |
Altenberg. | ⇓ |
(Ruin.) Greifenstein. | ⇓ |
| ⇓ | Spillern.
Hoflein. | ⇓ | Alt-Kreutzerstein.
Ober Kritzendorf. | ⇓ | Korneuburg.
St. Veit. | ⇓ |
Unter Kritzendorf. | ⇓ | Bisamberg.
Kloster-Neuburg. | ⇓ | Tuttenhof. Dorf.
Weidling. | ⇓ | Lang-Enzersdorf.
Josephsberg, Leopoldsberg, both called the Khalenberg. Dorfel. | ⇓ | Jetelsee.
Nussdorf. | ⇓ |
Heiligen Stadt. | ⇓ | Gedlersdorf am Spitz.
Döbling. | ⇓ |
Wien or Vienna. | ⇓ |

19th Post Station, and 27 Posts from Regensburg, or 243 English miles. Distance by water about 300 English miles.

THE END.

Printed by William Clowes, Stamford Street.

Speedily will be published, in illustration of this Volume,

FORTY VIEWS ON THE DANUBE,
DRAWN ON STONE BY L. HAGHE,
FROM
SKETCHES MADE ON THE SPOT BY J. R. PLANCHE.
* * *
No. I. will contain:

1. Ratisbon, from Höhen-Schambach.

2. Donaustauf.

3. Schloss Wörth.

4. Straubing.

FOOTNOTES

[1] While this volume was passing through the press, “A Summer’s Ramble amongst the Musicians in Germany” appeared, in which pleasant book, a dozen pages are allotted to an equally brief and spirited notice of the banks of the Danube from Passau to Vienna. Upwards of one hundred years ago, Lady M. W. Montague descended the Danube from Ratisbon to Vienna, a voyage of which she dismisses her account, in a dozen lines. “We travelled by water from Ratisbon,” says the fair writer, “a journey perfectly agreeable down the Danube, in one of those little vessels that they very properly call wooden houses, having in them all the conveniences of a palace, stoves in the chambers, kitchens, etc.” (I do not know what exertions might have been made for the accommodation of a British Ambassador, his Lady and suite, but the Danube, I suspect, has not seen such another boat during the last century.) “They are rowed by twelve men each, and move with such incredible swiftness, that in the same day you have the pleasure of a vast variety of prospects; and within the space of a few hours, you have the pleasure of seeing a populous city, adorned with magnificent palaces, and the most romantic solitudes which appear distant from the commerce of mankind, the banks of the Danube being charmingly diversified with woods, rocks, mountains covered with vines, fields of corn, large cities, and ruins of ancient castles.”—Letter to the Countess of Mar, dated Vienna, September 18th, o. s. 1716.

[2] Ein handbuch für Reisende auf der Donau. Von J. A. Schultes, M. Dr. etc. Wien, 1819. Stuttgart, 1827.

[3] Etymologists have squabbled as much over the name of the Danube, as geographers over its source, which some contend to be near the village of St. George, and others in the court-yard of the palace of the Prince of Fürstenberg, at Donaueschingen. This mighty flood, the grandest in Europe, and the third in consequence in the Old World, was known to the Romans by the double name of the Danube, and the Ister. “Ortus hic in Germaniæ jugis montes abnobae ex adverso Raurici Galliæ oppidi multis ultra alpes millibus, ac per innumeras lapsus gentes Danubii nomine, immenso aquarum auctu et unde primum Illyricum alluit Ister appellatus, sexaginta amnibus receptis, medio ferme numero eorum navigabili, in Pontum vastis sex fluminibus evolvitur.”—‘Plin. Nat. Hist.’ iv. 24. The ancient Germans named it Döne and Tona; the Sclavonians, Donava. The Hungarians call it Tanara, or Donara, and the Turks, Duna. Its modern German appellation is Donau. Some of the earlier writers would derive this name from Deus Abnobius, or Diana Abonbia, or Abnopa, to whom a temple was dedicated near the source of the river. Others deduce it from Thon, clay, and contend it should be written Thonau. Others again would find its origin in the words Ton, sound, or Donner, thunder; and Reichard, indeed, gives the latter as the received derivation. Breuninger, however, proposes Tanne, a fir, and speciously enough, the river rising in the Schwarz-wald, of which fir is the distinctive character, and its banks being clothed with forests of the same tree, along nearly the whole of its course; while Nikolai would have us seek it in the Keltic words Do, Na, which signify two rivers, and may either apply to its double name, “Binominem Istrum,” or to the two sources which dispute the glory of its birth.

[4] Vide ‘Gemeiner’s Reichs-stadt Regenburgische Chronik.’ 4to, Regensburg, 1805.

[5] Coxe’s ‘Hist. of the House of Austria,’ 8vo. London, 1820, Vol. ii. p. 335.

[6] “History of France,” 8vo. Vol. ii. p. 146.

[7] From a wood-cut in the Nürnberg Chronicle of 1493, it appears, however, that the towers were even at that time unfinished; one being represented a story shorter than the other, and with a crane upon it raising a stone. The author, Hartmann Schedel, in the text of the book, describes the edifice as “yet incomplete.”

[8] Vide ‘Ausführliche relation desjenigen wunderthätigen Kampfes, welcher anno 930, den 23 Januar, zu Regensburg zwischen Hannss Dollinger einem Burger daselbst und einem unglaubigen hunnischen Obristen Craco, vorgegangen.’ 4to Regensburg, 1710.

[9] The legend tells us, that the Infernal Architect was sadly worried, during his labours, by a cock and a dog. A cock and a bull would have figured with more propriety in such a story.

[10] ‘Des Churbayer Atalantis, von A. W. Ertel.’ 8vo. Nurnberg, 1815.

[11] ‘Travels through Germany, etc.’ 4 vols. 4to. London, 1757, vol. iv. p. 212. The saint must surely have been like Mrs. Malaprop’s Cerberus—“Three gentlemen at once.”

[12] Yet I do not find them noticed by Mr. Dibdin, in his curious ‘Bibliographical Tour.’

[13] Kloster Windberg was originally a castle belonging to the Counts of Bogen. Albert of Bogen and Hedwig his wife founded the monastery in 1145. In the neighbourhood, two hermits are said to have resided, one of whom murdered the other.

[14] Professor Schultes says, the date on the tombstone is incorrect, and that it should be October 12th, 1435, as Albert married again 1436. The bridge from which she was precipitated, was that which crossed the old arm of the Danube, and no longer exists. The present bridge passes over the new branch of the river, that washes the town and connects its northern side with the Island called the Donauwiese, in which the famous Sossau fair, which began on the Sunday after Michaelmas, and lasted eight days, was formerly held.

[15] The original castle of a particular family—the cradle of the race. Schloss is, however, a most convenient word, as it not only stands for a castle or a palace, but for those buildings which are both or neither. The chateaux of France, and the seats or mansions of England.

[16] The Archbishop of Cologne, in a Letter to the Pope.

[17] Henry Döring has a ballad on this subject, entitled, “Die Zeugen,” (the Witnesses.) Vide ‘Ruinen oder Taschenbüch zür Geschicte verfalener Ritterburgen und Schlosser, etc. Wien, 1826. 1 Sammlung.’ One might be pardoned for supposing the proverb of “Walls have ears,” to have arisen from this adventure.

[18]

“Tausend sechs hundert zehn und acht,
Am dritten Pfingstag, nach Mittnacht.
Schlug das Wildfeur oben ein,
Lief aus dem Thurm in d’kirch hinein;
Die kirch gesteckt voll Kirchfarther war
Der brennets viel: zwey sturben gar.
In diesem Schreken, Strauss, und Brauss
Drang alle welt zur Kirchen auss;
Der gross Gewalt erdruckt ohnverschon
Vier manns und zehen weibsperson
Da liegn ihr in zwey Grabern todt
Drey Mann, sibn Weiber: tröst sie Gott.”

‘Hemmauer,’ a. a.O. 357.

[19] The whole of these circumstances, from the stealing of the Host to the granting of the Bull, are represented in paintings on the walls of the church. Nearly the same story is told at Bruxelles of three miraculous wafers, which were stolen and stabbed by Jews, in 1369; and for which imputed crime, several of that persecuted people were burnt alive, by order of Duke Wenceslaus. The author of ‘Les Délices des Pays Bas’ tells us, that, “Les hosties et les marques durent encore aujourd’hui, et ne souffrent pas qu’on les approche sans je me sçai quelle horreur toute sainte. On les garde pour un gage particulier de la protection divine envers la ville de Brusselles.” Vol. i. p. 121. It appears that the Deggendorfers owed the Jews a considerable sum of money; it is, therefore, most probable that the story was got up to enable them, as the debt grew troublesome, to wash it out in blood. Vide ‘Das obsiegende Glaubenswunder des ganzen Christl. Churlandes Baiern willsagen unlaugbarer Bericht, etc.’ 8vo. Deggendorf, 1814.

[20] “So soon another,” says Schultes, “I think I hear the traveller and the reader exclaim, who may not be acquainted with the magnitude of this order.” And then he proceeds to give, from Hemmauer, the following list of popes, priests, emperors, kings, etc. who had, up to that time, embraced the Order of Saint Benedict: viz. “Sixty-three popes, two hundred and twenty-three cardinals, two hundred and fifty-five patriarchs, sixteen thousand archbishops, forty-six thousand bishops, twenty-one emperors, twenty-five empresses, forty-eight kings, fifty-four queens, one hundred and forty-six imperial and royal children, and four hundred and forty-five sovereign princes and dukes!” Donaufahrten, tom. i. 8. 374. note.

[21] Memoriale, seu Altachiæ inferioris memoria superstes, ex tabulis, annalibus, diplomatis, etc. 6. Joan. Bapt. Lackner etc. Fol. Passavii, 1779.

[22] Schultes says, in 1740; but this must be a mistake, as Maria Theresa was not crowned Queen of Hungary till the 25th of June, 1741; and it was after that ceremony that, clad in deep mourning, with the crown of St. Stephen on her head, and the scimitar at her side, she made the affecting address to the Diet, which, rousing the whole nation, brought its numerous tribes from the banks of the Save, the Drave, the Teiss and the Danube, to the royal standard. These troops, under the names of Croats, Pandours, Sclavonians, Warasdinians, and Tolpaches, exhibited a new and astonishing spectacle to the eyes of Europe. By their dress and arms, by the ferocity of their manners, and their singular mode of combat, they struck terror into the disciplined armies of Germany and France. Vide Coxe’s ‘History of the House of Austria,’ 8vo. vol. iv. p. 442.—Baron Riesbeck, who also dates the circumstance 1740, says, “When the Hungarian nobility took the field for their king Maria Theresa, the first sight of such troops struck the French army with a panic. They had, indeed, often seen detachments of these ‘Diables d’Hongrie,’ as they used to call them; but a whole army, drawn up in battle array, unpowdered from the general to the common soldier, half their faces covered with long whiskers, a sort of round beaver on their heads instead of hats, without ruffles or frills to their shirts, and without feathers, all clad in rough skins, monstrous crooked sabres, ready drawn and uplifted, their eyes darting flashes of rage sharper than the beams of their naked sabres, was a sight our men had not been accustomed to see.” (It must be remembered that Riesbeck, though a German, writes in the character of a Frenchman.) “Our oldest officers still remember the impression these terrible troops made, and how difficult it was to make the men stand against them, till they had been accustomed to their formidable appearance.” Pinkerton’s Collect. vol. vi. p. 112.

[23] Liv. i. ch. 433.

[24] Liv. ii. ch. 125.

[25] Geschichte der Deutschen.

[26] The canons or prebends of this establishment have the word “allain,” (“alone,”) inscribed upon their arms, their clothes, and their houses. Schultes tells us that a wag Latinised it “Solus cum sola.”

[27] Vide ‘Lays of the Minnesingers, or German Troubadours.’ 12mo. Lond. 1825, p. 113, and the Appendix to the ‘Nibelungen-lied’, called “Die Klage,” i. e. the Lament.

[28] Coxe’s ‘History of the House of Austria,’ vol. ii. pp. 419, 20. I have mentioned these circumstances, as the devastations committed by these troops, who are called by the German writers the Passauer Volk, are still but too visible upon the banks of the Danube, and will be alluded to hereafter.

[29] The Austrian commander Plantini was beheaded at Ingolstadt, in 1743, for delivering this fortress up to the Bavarians, without firing a shot.

[30] Mr. Russel, in his tour in Germany, speaking of the number of abbeys, monasteries, etc., has taken up the cause of these holy locusts, and contends, with all that ingenuity and talent which characterize his excellent work, that it is wrong to accuse the princes, or pious individuals who endowed them, of having been imprudently liberal to the church. "Thousands of acres were given, but they were acres of wood and water, utterly unproductive to the public, and which would probably have remained for centuries in the same wild state, if they had been the property of a quarrelsome baron, instead of belonging to the peaceful sons of the church. The monks, though idle themselves, were not encouragers of idleness in their subjects. Their leisure allowed them to instruct, and their love of gain led them to aid, their vassals in agricultural science, rude as it was, while, at the same time, the sacred character which they enjoyed, placed their peasantry beyond the reach of the oppressions practised by feudal nobles. It has long been a current proverb in Germany, 'Man lebt gut unter dem Krummstab [30a].' It is true that one is apt to feel provoked when he is told that these fruitful vallies and the pasture hills which rise along their sides, belong to a congregation of idle monks. But monks were the very men who made the vallies fruitful, and the hills useful. They received them covered with trees, and rocks—no very liberal boon [30b], and it was they who planted them with corn and stored them with sheep." This is all very true, as far as regards the benefits which mankind has eventually received from these establishments; for we have likewise to thank the cowl and crosier, for much if not all the valuable information respecting the days of our fathers and "the old time before them," which the chronicles, written and illuminated in abbey and convent, contain. But let the praise be given to that Providence, "from seeming evil still producing good," in whose hands these monks were the unconscious instruments of spreading that very light and information which it was their constant study and employment to extinguish and contract. The hypocrisy and cupidity of these self-elected saints are far less pardonable than the brutal ferocity of the barons, whose pitiable ignorance and superstition; the roots of the evil, they fostered for their own advantage. Instead of employing the influence which their superior education and sacred character gave them over the minds of these uncultivated men, in the truly Christian task of curbing their passions, enlightening their understandings, and bringing them to a sense of the folly and wickedness of their ways, they meanly exerted it for the purposes of self-aggrandizement, utterly careless of the pitiable state of destitution and degradation in which, by their rapacious demands and disgusting mummeries, they were daily sinking their poor, besotted, bigoted, but often truly noble benefactors. The knave who swindles a silly heir out of his property may wonderfully improve the estate and build an hospital with the money; but he is no less a knave because the poor and the sick are eventually gainers; nor is the folly of the unfortunate dupe an excuse, in the eye of honour and honesty, for his crime; which is, on the contrary, aggravated by the advantage taken of the victim's imbecility. Avarice and ambition, however, sowed the seeds of their own destruction. The Church of Rome might have flourished to this day, had not its grasping hand pressed so heavily upon its subjects, as at length to rouse them from their trance and open their eyes, not so much to its errors as to its wealth. Truly does Schiller remark, that "Had it not been closely backed with private advantages, and state interests, the arguments of theologians, and the voice of the people, would never have met with princes so willing to espouse their cause, nor the new doctrines have found so numerous, so brave, and so obstinate champions!"... "The desire of independence, the rich plunder of monastic institutions, gave charms to the Reformation in the eyes of princes, and strengthened not a little their inward conviction of its necessity."... "Without the imposition of the tenth and twentieth pennies, the See of Rome had never lost the United Netherlands." The question, "Why the Pope, who is richer than several Crœsus's, cannot build the Church of Saint Peter with his own money, but does it at the expense of the poor?" was more staggering than that of his infallibility. The sale of indulgences first induced men to inquire into the power of the Church to grant them. The heavy coffers of the abbots, and the glittering ornaments of their shrines and altars drew the swords of such adventurers as Christian, Duke of Brunswick, who issued a coinage composed of church-plate, and bearing the motto—"A friend to God and an enemy to the priesthood." "Woe unto them," says the inspired Isaiah, "that join house to house, that lay field to field, till there be no place, that they may be placed alone in the midst of the earth.

"Which justify the wicked for reward, and take away the righteousness of the righteous from him.

"Therefore is the anger of the Lord kindled against his people, and he stretched forth his hand against them, and hath smitten them, and the hills did tremble, and their carcases were torn in the midst of the streets. For all this his anger is not turned away, but his hand is stretched out still."

Such were the crimes of the Church of Rome; such has been its punishment, and "His anger," indeed, "is not turned away"—"His hand is stretched out still." Who can look upon its fallen state, and listen to the cry of its unfortunate remnant, without exclaiming in the words of Jeremiah, "How is she become as a widow; she that was great among the nations, and princess among the provinces! How is she become tributary!"

[30a] “One lived well under the crosier.”

[30b] No very liberal boon, Mr. Russel! What! In a country where wood is to this day the staple commodity? where the greater part of the revenue of many of the nobles, and the entire incomes of thousands of the peasantry, are derived from the sale of the trees with which nature has so lavishly clothed the land? from the produce of those very “acres of wood,” which you, from some strange slip of memory, describe as “utterly unproductive to the public.” The “peaceful sons of the church,” amongst whom, of course, you number the warlike bishops of Passau, Strasburgh, Bamberg, Freysingen, Ratisbon, et hoc genus omne, knew uncommonly well the value of those unproductive acres.

[31] Vide Baron von Schmidtburg’s ‘Tagebuche einer Donau-Reise.’

[32] The remarkable gorge from Hayenbach to Neuhaus is called by the peasantry of the district, “In den Schlägen,” or Schlagleiten.

[33] The Strudel and the Wirpel are a fall and whirlpool in the Danube, between Linz and Ips, of which hereafter.

[34] As soon as you reach Frankfort, the Prussian dollars and groschen cease to circulate generally, and your bill is made out in the money of the empire, that is, in florins or gouldens and kreutzers. The florin, or goulden, is a mere nominal coin of the value of sixty kreutzers, and the silver pieces in circulation are those of 3, 6, 10, 20, and 30 kreutzers each, so marked on the reverse. In Bavaria, the 10, 20, and 30 kreutzer pieces go for 12, 24, and 36 kreutzers; so that the gold ducat, the real value of which is 4-1/2 florins, will, in Bavaria, pass for 4 fl. 54 k., and sometimes five florins. In Austria, however, the silver coins pass for no more than they are marked, and the ducat drops to 4 fl. 30 k. The Venetian ducat, which is frequently met with in Austria, is worth a few kreutzers more than the German ducat. The paper florin, or goulden, is two-fifths, or, as the Austrians calculate, four-tenths of a good or silver florin.

[35] The remark does not say much for the taste or discrimination of the Englishman, whoever he might be. There is an endless variety upon the Rhine, which yields to the Danube only in points of grandeur—in breadth, extent, and boldness of scenery. In variety, it quite equals the Danube, and, I should almost say, surpasses it.

[36] Literally “fist-right,”—the right of the strongest arm,—

“The good (?) old plan,
That they may take who have the power,
And they may keep who can.”

[37] Called, in the chronicles of the times, “Albert with the tress,” because he wore a lock of hair, which he received either from his wife, or from some other distinguished lady, entwined with his own, and formed a society of the Tress, not unlike the commencement of our order of the Garter: he was likewise called the Astrologer, from his fondness for judicial astrology.—Coxe’s ‘History of the House of Austria,’ chap. 10.

[38] Fadinger was a strong fatalist. Upon his standards were inscribed, by his order, the words, “Es muss seyn!” “It must be.”

[39] And yet, as was most just, this poor weak bigot was condemned to see some of his dearest hopes frustrated by the treachery of one of his vaunted saints. “A Capuchin friar,” exclaimed the deceived Emperor, when the duplicity of the celebrated Father Joseph became apparent, “has disarmed me with his rosary, and covered six electoral caps with his Cowl.”

[40] Our language is sadly off for feminine terminations. The German, brauerinn, köchinn, gartnerinn, etc. are most badly translated by female brewer, cook-maid, and woman gardener.

[41] The old rhyming chronicler, Bruschius, says,

“Passibus in longum patet area tota trecentis,
In latum centum passibus atque decem.”

[42] A tailor of Linz, named Kellerer, established an asylum for thirty orphans; and in 1734, another tradesman, named Adam Pruner, bequeathed one hundred and eighty-one thousand florins to the poor of the town, the interest of which supports twenty-seven children, twenty-seven men, and twenty-seven women. The Emperor Joseph II. and the Empress Maria Theresa have also founded charities here.

[43] The Dukes of Austria were afterwards compelled to cede the Tyrol, but Carinthia has ever since that period continued in the possession of their House. Coxe’s Hist. i. 155, Pelzel, Schmidt, Struvius, etc.

[44] Bruschius tells us of a capuchin, named Waltherus,

“Qui nondum vinclis conjunctum aut pontibus Istrum Emensus sicco dicitur esse pede.”

Perhaps the river was frozen at that time.

[45] In the campaign of 1809, damage was done in this little town alone to the amount of 1,326,621 florins.

[46] Steyereck was once famous for its potteries; but the manufactories have fallen to decay, notwithstanding the fine clay which is still to be found in its neighbourhood.

[47] In 1787, a stone coffin was dug up in the neighbourhood of Ebelsberg, five feet long, and one foot two inches wide. On the breast of the skeleton within lay a golden ring, of rather an oval shape, and rude workmanship; at its feet was a drinking glass, which had contained some clear liquid, but it was unfortunately broken, and the liquid spilt, in the opening of the coffin. Vide Kurz’ Beträge, 3 Th. S. xvii.

[48] General Jominy gives the following account of this sanguinary affair, in his Political and Military Life of Napoleon. “Hiller had abandoned the barrier of the Inn without fighting, but he resolved to defend the passage of the Traun at the formidable position of Ebersberg. A wooden bridge, thirty fathoms long, presented a more fearful obstacle than that of Lodi, it being terminated by a walled town, commanded by a castle, and crowned by heights of very difficult access. To cross this bridge, in the face of thirty thousand men and eighty pieces of cannon, was not an easy matter. Massena was not ignorant of Napoleon’s intention to turn this impregnable post by Lambach, but the impetuous valour of General Cohorn hurried him into a sanguinary enterprise. Three Austrian battalions, that had been imprudently left in front of the bridge, were overthrown, and driven, at the point of the sword, to the gates of the town, which were closed against them. Cohorn forced the gates, and penetrated into the principal street. Massena supported him first by the rest of Claparede’s division, and then by that of Legrand. A desperate conflict was kept up from street to street, and from house to house. Claparede had just possessed himself of the castle, when Hiller threw four fresh columns into the town, who opened themselves a passage with the bayonet. A horrible slaughter ensued; several houses took fire that were filled with wounded and with combatants, whom the crowded state of the streets prevented from escaping. War never presented a more cruel scene. At length, tired with carnage, the Austrians abandoned Ebersberg, and our troops debouched against the heights, where a still more unequal combat commenced. The arrival of Durosnel’s division of cavalry by the right bank, and the certainty that his position would be turned by Lannes, decided Hiller at length to fall back with all speed upon Enns.... This vigorous blow was still more honourable to the French troops, as the greater part engaged in this business was composed of soldiers who had never before seen a battle. It cost Hiller from six to seven thousand men. We had to regret the loss of from four to five thousand brave fellows, a great number of whom had fallen a prey to the flames.”—Vie Politique et Militaire de Napoléon. 8vo. Paris, 1827, tom. iii. pp. 181-3.

[49] This extraordinary man, the founder of the Bavarian army, and the terror of the Protestants, used to boast before the battle of Leipsig, of three things—viz. That he had never known woman, never been drunk, and never lost a battle. “His strange and terrific aspect,” says Schiller, “was in unison with his character. Of low stature, thin, with hollow cheeks, a long nose, a broad and wrinkled forehead, large whiskers, and a pointed chin, he was generally attired in a Spanish doublet of green with slashed sleeves, with a small and peaked hat on his head, surmounted by a red feather, which hung down his back. His whole aspect recalled to recollection the Duke of Alba, the scourge of the Flemings, and his actions were by no means calculated to remove the impression.”—Thirty Years’ War, book ii. The author of L’Histoire de Gustave Adolphe gives a similar account of his dress and person, and adds, that the Maréchal de Grammont, going to see him out of curiosity, met him at the head of his army, attired as described, and mounted on a little grey hackney, with one pistol only at his saddle-bow. “Lorsque le Maréchal s’approcha pour lui faire la révérence, Tilly, croyant remarquer qu’il s’étonnoit de le voir dans cet équipage, lui dit, Monsieur, vous trouvez peut—être mon habillement extraordinaire; j’avoue qu’il n’est pas tout à fait conforme à la mode de France, mais il est a mon gré, et cela me suffit. Je pense aussi que ma haquenée, et ce pistolet tout seul, vous surprennent pour le moins autant que mon accoûtrement; pour que vous n’ayiez pas mauvaise opinion du Comte de Tilly, à qui vous faites l’honneur de rendre une visite de curiosité, je vous dirai que j’ai gagné sept batailles décisives, sans avoir été obligé de tirer une seule fois le pistolet que vous voyez là; et mon petit cheval ne m’a jamais abandonné et n’a jamais balancé à faire son devoir.”—p. 173.

[50] There being a place so called in the vicinity of the Strudel.

[51]

“Zu Enns St. Marx und Lucas lehrt
Das volck zu Christi Glaub bekehrt.
Hie ward versenkt St. Florian
In D’Enns der edle Rittersmann,
Maximilian da Bischoff war,
Mild gegen Armen immerdar;
Diess langt zu sondern Ruhm der Stadt
Die Gott also begnadet hat.”

[52] Gibbon, when speaking of this expedition, calls it “the triple effort of a French army that was poured into their (the Avars’) country, by land and water, through the Carpathian mountains, and along the plain of the Danube.” Decline and Fall, vol. ix. p. 184.

[53] This building is still standing in the north-east quarter of the city. It is now the property of Baron Rumeskirchen.

[54] In the Niebelunglied, which was compiled about this period, we find Ens mentioned, by its present name, as one of the places visited by Chrimhilt, on her journey into Hungary.

“Da sie uber die Traun kamen, bey Ense auf das feld.”

[55] According to an old German writer quoted by Schultes, Ens was a walled city as early as the year 900, and already of some consequence. “Bavari citissime in id ipsum tempus (A.D. 900) pro tuitioni illorum regni validissimam urbem in littore Anesi fluminis muro obposuerunt.” But, in this case, why is it called a village by Leopold, in the twelfth century?

[56] Gibbon.—William of Tyre and Matthew Paris reckon seventy thousand loricati in each of the armies led by Conrad and the French king, Louis VII. The light-armed troops, the peasant infantry, the women and children, and the priests and monks, swelled this swarm to an inconceivable extent. “It is affirmed by the Greeks and Latins, that in the passage of a strait or river, the Byzantine agents, after a tale of nine hundred thousand, desisted from the endless and formidable computation.”—Decline and Fall, vol. xl. p. 107.

[57] This little square tower, which is generally called, from its situation, the Wörther-Schloss, is described in several topographical works indifferently under the name of the Castle of Werfenstein, and the Castle of Struden. But it being clearly apparent from various ancient documents that the Castles of Werfenstein and Struden were two distinct buildings, Herr Schultes has, I think, with good reason, designated this the ruin of Werfenstein, and that which overhangs the little markt of Struden, on the left bank of the river, the Castle of Struden.

[58] The Waldwasser and the Wildriss, like the Hössgang, are never passable but when the water is very high, and then only by the lightest and smallest craft. The Strudel, though most studded with rocks, is the best, and consequently the general passage for all boats and rafts, either ascending or descending, and has therefore given its name to the whole fall.

[59] A singular ignorance of the true situation of these famous places is displayed by most of the German writers. Berckenmayer, in his Curiösen Antiquarius, carries the Wirbel below the town of Krems, and he is followed in his error by Strahlenberg, in his Beschreibung des Russichen Reiches, and Hübner, in his Vollständigen Geographie, who speak of the Wirbel as a waterfall near Krems. From Hübner this mistake has been copied into several geographical works, and amongst others into the old Zeitung’s Lexicon; and many of the modern German, and even some English travellers speak of the Strudel and Wirbel as one and the same thing, a confusion which nothing but utter carelessness could have created; the first being distinctly a fall, and the second an eddy, each remarkable in itself, and at some little distance from the other.

[60] “Inter alios (vortices) famosus ille est, qui aspicitur sub Lincio. Creditur vulgo origo esse lacus Neusidel in Hungaria Cis-Rahabanti. Aspicitur etiam alter sed hoc minor, prope pagum Almas infra Commaronium, qui perhibetur esse origo lacus Balaton.”—Marsigli Danubiani illustr. See also Herbinius de Cataract. Fluv., and Kircher’s Mundus subterraneus.

[61] Vide Frontispiece. The view was taken from a hill on the right bank of the river, on our return by land from Vienna.

[62] Here is another error respecting the Strudel. Stockerau is nearly two days journey from it, in the neighbourhood of Vienna.

[63]

“Brutus.  Speak to me what thou art?
Ghost.   Thy evil spirit, Brutus.
Brutus.   Why com’st thou?
Ghost.   To tell thee thou shalt see me at Philippi.
Brutus.   Well,
Then I shall see thee again?
Ghost.   Ay, at Philippi!”
Julius Cæsar, Act iv. Scene 3.

[64] A gast-haus is an hotel; a wirths-haus, a tavern, or ale-house.

[65] This prodigy will remind the classical reader of the punishment of the Amazons, who attempted to cut down the sacred grove that shadowed the temple of Achilles in the island of Leuce. At the first blows they struck, the axe-heads flew from their handles, and laid the impious wielders dead upon the spot.

[66] “Kurzer Bericht von dem Ursprung des wunderthätigen schmerzhaften Gnadenbildes Maria-Taferl.” There are numberless tracts of this description sold at Marbach to the pilgrims, who “hold each strange tale devoutly true.”

[67] Fragmentum Historicum de quatuor Albertis—apud Pez. vol. ii. p. 385.

[68] The regular weekly passage-boats from Ulm, Regensburg, and Stadt-am-hof, to Vienna, are called “ordinari-schiffe.”

[69] “Nie ward getreuer’r Degen geboren auf der Erde.” Nibelungen-lied.

[70] “Die Fenster in den mauern, die sieht man offen stahn.” Ditto.

[71] The supposed author of the Nibelungen-lied.

[72] Nibelungen-lied, V. 1116-23.

[73] “The castle was begun to be built by Jorig der Schekt-von-wald, the Monday after the nativity of our Lady, from the birth of Christ, the year 1228.” Herr Schultes remarks, that he may be mistaken in the date, and mentions that Petz, in his Chronicle of Mölk, (Part I. p. 261) speaks of a Baron Schekh, whose deeds were as black as those laid at the iron door of Schreckenwald, and who, in 1467, was besieged, and brought to such a pass, that “he,” says the chronicler, “who formerly was lord of six castles, perished in poverty.” This Schekh or Sheckt-von-Wald, as the name appears in the inscription, and the famous Schreckenwald, were, most probably, one and the same person; and from the state of the present building I should imagine it is more likely to have been built in the fifteenth than the thirteenth century.

[74] Matthias Prideaux.

[75] The present arms of the Archduchy of Austria, viz. Gules, a Fess argent, are derived from the circumstance of Leopold’s surcoat, which was of cloth of silver, being completely stained with blood at the siege of Ptolemais (Acre), with the exception of that part covered by the belt round his waist. The original bearings of Leopold were azure, six larks, or.

[76] “Yes and No,” one of the many titles given to Richard by the Provençal poets:—

“And tell the Lord of Oc and No
That peace already too long hath been.”

Bertrand de Born. Lays of the Minnesingers, p. 233.

[77] “The Troubadour and Richard Cœur de Lion.” Mrs. Hemans, though she mentions “the Danube’s wave” in the same poem, has chosen to lay the scene of Richard’s captivity on the Rhine. Her vivid fancy, however, has actually depicted the rock and castle of Dürrenstein.

[78] In the cliff upon which this church stands, it is reported that a cavern has been found, which is the mouth of a subterraneous passage, communicating with the vaults of the castle.

[79] Vie Politique et Militaire de Napoléon, par le Général Jominy. 8vo. Paris, 1827, vol. ii. pp. 151-3.

[80] Nibelungen-lied, V. 3533-5. It was the residence of his first Queen, Helke, a lady of incomparable virtue.

[81] I believe I should say were, for the Antiquary of the Danube informs us, that the lady’s maid was exorcised by a “barefooted monk,” and quietly, I presume, laid in the Red Sea. The ghost of quality alone was untractable. This spirit, it appears, had been dismissed from the body by an enraged husband, at the moment of an awkward discovery. The whole history, says the prudent antiquary, is to be found in the archives of a certain noble house; but as it would redound to the prejudice of the descendants, should the name be made known, it has been passed over in silence. Some time ago an attempt was made to pull down the building, but the indignant phantom raised such a racket, that the workmen beat a retreat, and the project was abandoned.

[82] Much gold has really been found in the sands of the Danube, the Inn, and the Iser, and several gold-waschereys, as they are called, have formerly existed on the banks of these rivers. The peculiar wealth of the sands at Langenlebern has been accounted for, by the peasantry, from the circumstance of Draculf, Bishop of Freysing, being drowned off this bank, A.D. 926, and carrying down with him forty pounds weight of gold, which he had smuggled out of the Kloster of Mosburg, and had secured in his girdle!

[83] On some old weapons in the Rüstkammer or armoury of the castle, the arms of the house of Greifenstein are yet to be seen so blazoned.

[84] A square hole in the earth with an iron grating over it is still shown here as the place of confinement of some clergyman, who shared his crust with a young snake, that thrived so wonderfully upon prison allowance, that self-preservation at last compelled him to kill it while asleep with a stick, that is also shown in the dungeon.

[85] It was originally called Neuenburg, Neuenburch, and Niwenburg, and appears to have been strongly fortified.

[86] Albert IV., Duke of Austria, died here on the 14th of September, 1404, in the twenty-seventh year of his age; and the Empress Wilhelmina Amelia, widow of Joseph I., also ended her days here in April 1742.

[87] This Emperor, who, to use his own words, “with the best intentions, never carried a single project into execution,” in his laudable attempts to purify religion from the dregs of superstition, reduced the number of convents in Austria from two thousand and twenty-four, to seven hundred. Vide Coxe’s History of the House of Austria. The learned Archdeacon has justly and eloquently described the character of the kind-hearted but inconsistent Joseph; but I am at a loss to know why a Christian minister should include the following ordinance amongst “the childish and ridiculous regulations” of the Emperor. “Thou shalt forbear all occasions of dispute relative to matters of faith; and thou shalt, according to the true principles of Christianity, affectionately and kindly treat those who are not of thy communion.” (Ord. October 24, 1781.)

[88] “That’s fine!” or, as we should say, “capital.”

[89] “Ruhet sanft auf diesen höhen edle gebeine tapferer Oesterreichs Krieger; Ruhm bedeckt bey Aspern und Wagram gefallen vermag euer freund nicht, die entseelten leichname zu beleben; sie zu ehren ist seine pflicht.”

[90] Yes, there is another. On the gates of the castle are daubed two sentinels armed cap à pied! Forcibly recalling to my memory the figures painted in the sentry-boxes, which were wont to delight and terrify me when an urchin, and cause many a clandestine expedition to Bayswater tea-gardens.

[91] The oldest piece of armour I have seen in Germany, is in the collection at the Lowenburg, at Wilhelmshöe. It is a moveable visor of the close of the fourteenth century; but both possessors and exhibitors are evidently ignorant of its value and antiquity.

[92] “Blue-House,”—this, however, is a corruption. The name of Blaue-Haus is derived, not from the ancient colour of its walls, as the vulgar suppose, but from the family of Plauenstein, its original possessors.

TRANSCRIBERS' NOTES

Spelling, including inconsistent usage and forms reflecting local, historical, or foreign-language usage, has been retained as printed. This includes apparent misspellings in German names or words (e.g. Thurm/Thurn), which have not been changed.

Minor inconsistencies in spacing and punctuation have been silently standardized.

Obvious typographical errors have been silently corrected (e.g. "astonishings pectacle").

New original cover art included with this eBook is granted to the public domain.

*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DESCENT OF THE DANUBE, FROM RATISBON TO VIENNA, DURING THE AUTUMN OF 1827 ***

Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions will be renamed.

Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to copying and distributing Project Gutenberg™ electronic works to protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG™ concept and trademark. Project Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you charge for an eBook, except by following the terms of the trademark license, including paying royalties for use of the Project Gutenberg trademark. If you do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the trademark license is very easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and research. Project Gutenberg eBooks may be modified and printed and given away—you may do practically ANYTHING in the United States with eBooks not protected by U.S. copyright law. Redistribution is subject to the trademark license, especially commercial redistribution.

START: FULL LICENSE

THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG™ LICENSE

PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK

To protect the Project Gutenberg™ mission of promoting the free distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work (or any other work associated in any way with the phrase “Project Gutenberg”), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project Gutenberg License available with this file or online at www.gutenberg.org/license.

Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg electronic works

1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property (trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy all copies of Project Gutenberg electronic works in your possession. If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project Gutenberg electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.

1.B. “Project Gutenberg” is a registered trademark. It may only be used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg electronic works even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project Gutenberg electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg electronic works. See paragraph 1.E below.

1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation (“the Foundation” or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project Gutenberg electronic works. Nearly all the individual works in the collection are in the public domain in the United States. If an individual work is unprotected by copyright law in the United States and you are located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg are removed. Of course, we hope that you will support the Project Gutenberg mission of promoting free access to electronic works by freely sharing Project Gutenberg works in compliance with the terms of this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg name associated with the work. You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project Gutenberg License when you share it without charge with others.

1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are in a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, check the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project Gutenberg work. The Foundation makes no representations concerning the copyright status of any work in any country other than the United States.

1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:

1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate access to, the full Project Gutenberg License must appear prominently whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg work (any work on which the phrase “Project Gutenberg” appears, or with which the phrase “Project Gutenberg” is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed, copied or distributed:

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg™ License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.

1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg electronic work is derived from texts not protected by U.S. copyright law (does not contain a notice indicating that it is posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees or charges. If you are redistributing or providing access to a work with the phrase “Project Gutenberg” associated with or appearing on the work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the Project Gutenberg trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.

1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg electronic work is posted with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms will be linked to the Project Gutenberg License for all works posted with the permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.

1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg.

1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project Gutenberg License.

1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary, compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access to or distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg work in a format other than “Plain Vanilla ASCII” or other format used in the official version posted on the official Project Gutenberg website (www.gutenberg.org), you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon request, of the work in its original “Plain Vanilla ASCII” or other form. Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.

1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying, performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg works unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.

1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing access to or distributing Project Gutenberg electronic works provided that:

- • You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from the use of Project Gutenberg works calculated using the method you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg trademark, but he has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax returns. Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the address specified in Section 4, “Information about donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.”

- • You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg™ License. You must require such a user to return or destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of Project Gutenberg™ works.

- • You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days of receipt of the work.

- • You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free distribution of Project Gutenberg™ works.

1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg™ electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the manager of the Project Gutenberg™ trademark. Contact the Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.

1.F.

1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread works not protected by U.S. copyright law in creating the Project Gutenberg™ collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg™ electronic works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain “Defects,” such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by your equipment.

1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the “Right of Replacement or Refund” described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project Gutenberg™ trademark, and any other party distributing a Project Gutenberg™ electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.

1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you with the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a refund. If you received the work electronically, the person or entity providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If the second copy is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further opportunities to fix the problem.

1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you ‘AS-IS’, WITH NO OTHER WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.

1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages. If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by the applicable state law. The invalidity or unenforceability of any provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.

1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone providing copies of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works in accordance with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production, promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works, harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees, that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any Project Gutenberg work, and (c) any Defect you cause.

Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg

Project Gutenberg is synonymous with the free distribution of electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It exists because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from people in all walks of life.

Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg’s goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg collection will remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure and permanent future for Project Gutenberg and future generations. To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4 and the Foundation information page at www.gutenberg.org.

Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation

The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non-profit 501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal Revenue Service. The Foundation’s EIN or federal tax identification number is 64-6221541. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state’s laws.

The Foundation’s business office is located at 41 Watchung Plaza #516, Montclair NJ 07042, USA, +1 (862) 621-9288. Email contact links and up to date contact information can be found at the Foundation’s website and official page at www.gutenberg.org/contact

Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation

Project Gutenberg™ depends upon and cannot survive without widespread public support and donations to carry out its mission of increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be freely distributed in machine-readable form accessible by the widest array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations ($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt status with the IRS.

The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any particular state visit www.gutenberg.org/donate.

While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who approach us with offers to donate.

International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.

Please check the Project Gutenberg web pages for current donation methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations. To donate, please visit: www.gutenberg.org/donate.

Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg electronic works

Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared with anyone. For forty years, he produced and distributed Project Gutenberg eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.

Project Gutenberg eBooks are often created from several printed editions, all of which are confirmed as not protected by copyright in the U.S. unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not necessarily keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.

Most people start at our website which has the main PG search facility: www.gutenberg.org.

This website includes information about Project Gutenberg, including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.

Table of Contents

- DESCENT OF THE DANUBE, FROM RATISBON TO VIENNA, DURING THE AUTUMN OF 1827.

- PREFACE.

- CONTENTS.

- CHAPTER I.

- CHAPTER II.

- CHAPTER III.

- AUSTRIA. CHAPTER IV.

- CHAPTER V.

- CHAPTER VI.

- CHAPTER VII.

- CHAPTER VIII.

- NAMES OF THE CITIES, TOWNS, VILLAGES, CASTLES, MONASTERIES, etc. ON THE BANKS OF THE DANUBE, FROM RATISBON TO VIENNA.

- THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG™ LICENSE