genuine, Hebel's—more restrained and refined—is rather perhaps a sly, good-tempered irony, than those blendings of mirth and mournfulness, laughter and tears, wit and simplicity, derision and kindheartedness, which delight us in our own more gifted poet. Burns's poems also include a much wider range of subjects than Hebel's. The author of the Alemanische Gedichte is a clever and benevolent country curate, who describes with true poetical feeling the scenery that surrounds him, and the lives and manners of his flock, while Burns is one of those original and powerful minds that never appear, with the same combinations, more than once in the history of a nation.

To translate Hebel into English would be merely to discharge a debt of gratitude; as Burns, with all the difficulties he presents even to many Englishmen, has found excellent translators in Germany. There are few who will not recognise the closeness and spirit of the following version, though they may be unacquainted with the language in which it is written:

Mein Herz ist im Hochland, mein Herz ist nicht hier!
Mein Herz ist im Hochland, im wald'gen Revier!
Da jag' ich das Rothwild, da folg' ich dem Reh',
Mein Herz ist im Hochland wo immer ich geh'. U. s. w.

It is almost verbatim,

My heart's in the Highlands, my heart is not here;
My heart's in the Highlands, a chasing the deer;
Chasing the wild deer, and following the roe,

My heart's in the Highlands wherever I go, &c.

And in another piece the difficult task of preserving the humour of the original seems admirably accomplished, though the translation is more free.

A few years ago there appeared in Blackwood a translation of some of Burns's poems into French; the last language-even amongst Mezzofanti's many tongues-in which we should ever have expected to see them. Those I have now given were published under an assumed name in a literary journal, edited by Dr. Wolfgang Menzel, and are attributed to Gutsav Pfizer, the author of an excellent Life of Luther.

And now, to descend. Though it is an abrupt transition, I cannot quit the subject of Carlsruhe without mentioning that its markets were

excellently supplied; and with the exception of bread (which was equal to about sixpence the quartern loaf, for the best), the prices of all ordinary articles of consumption were lower by one-half than they were in England. While, for the epicure, "an artful Italian" kept a constant supply of soles, salmon, codfish, oysters, dindons aux truffes, capons, poulardes de Brest, red-legged partridges, and game of all kinds. The fish was generally brought from Holland; but when the navigation of the Rhine was impeded by ice, we had supplies, by way of Strasburg, from Marseilles, and still deliciously fresh. Cookery, in a nation where the gratification of the appetite has never been unwisely disregarded, is considered so important a part of the education of every lady below the highest rank, that the daughters of most respectable people were sent to receive instructions in the kitchen of the hotel where we had often stayed; but they were confined to their place of study, and under the eye of the landlord's wife.

Even the waiters at such places are generally from a class much superior-in station at least-to ours. Instead of being drafts from our domestic helps, or disappointed aspirants to the honours of the stage, they are often the well-educated sons of comparatively wealthy parents, and are sent merely to learn their business previous to purchasing or inheriting a similar establishment. It is the consciousness of this

superiority that makes them so ready to repel-and sometimes, perhaps, with a good deal of insolence-the contemptuous tone assumed by many ⚫ of our young countrymen in addressing a class of persons who, in England, very rarely resent the insults of a liberal paymaster.

Of Carlsruhe I shall say no more. Should I return to my memoranda, it will be with reference to other parts of Germany, and to names which are held in honour.

A FESTA-DAY IN CAPRI.

ALL was sunshine and mirth in Capri on the day that claims S. Costanzo for its patron saint; and as the procession wound along the steep and narrow paths which here fulfil the office-though anywhere out of Syria or Dalmatia they would not be honoured with the name of roads, gaily fluttered the white veils in the light May wind, and brightly sparkled the black eyes, seldom seen to greater advantage than among the orange-groves and vineyards that bloom along the precipitous shores of the Bay of Naples. As we stood at the arched gateway of the little town, whose inhabitants were now passing before us, there were few among them who failed to receive a kindly smile or word of recognition from my friend, long a resident upon the island, and gratefully smiled they in reply, while their lips still chanted the praises of the saint whose festa they were assembled to honour. Mother and maiden, man and boy, there they were, decked out in their gayest; the elders among them pre

serving in their dress some few remaining traces of their graceful island costume, which the younger portion had, alas! discarded to make way for that which, in their innocence, they termed dress à la Franchays. I know not if it was accidental, or whether the remark made as to other parts of Italy applies here also, but it seemed to me that there were few among the fairer sex who were more than mere girls or less than old women-old, shrivelled up, emaciated women, whose features mingled in strong contrast with the plump, merry faces of the girls; and the same, though not in so great a degree, might be observed of the men.

As we turned to descend by a steeper path than that which the procession followed, so that we might again fall in with it, how beautiful was the scene that lay before our eyes! Immediately in front of us soared Vesuvius; not, as I had seen him five years before, with his swarthy head darkened by clouds of smoke, and vomiting forth at intervals, with sounds like distant thunder, huge masses of molten rock, amid flames which night made visible; but quiet and majestic like his brethren that rose around him, and peaceful as the blue, the bright blue sea that sued and sighed wistfully at his feet, and which seemed yet more beautiful in its contrast with the green vines and darker olives so plentifully spread along the shore. Among chesnut-groves to the right appeared the white walls that glisten in Castellamare, and to the left arose the darker palaces of Naples, while straggling between the two, and at this dis tance appearing to be connecting streets of one huge town, were seen the little villages of Portici, Torre del Greco, and Annunziata, through which, as though to remind us that we were not living in the days of Virgil, the railway-train was steaming. Further to the right, and at a distance of four or five miles, though the pure atmosphere made it seem much nearer to our English eyes, jutted the promontory that conceals Sorrento; and if we turned our eyes about as much in the opposite direction, they fell on Ischia and Procida, and the lower coast where Baiæ lies, though it was scarcely discernible from the place on which we stood.

I had remained in Capri longer than I had at first intended, on purpose to see this festa, enjoying the hospitalities of my good friend Pagani, whose inn is not nearly so well known as the primitive yet comfortable arrangements and the merits of its proprietor deserve; and I had no reason to regret the delay. For the Blue Grotto, though beautiful indeed, is the least of the things worth visiting in this delightful island, and I grew, I know not how, daily more enchanted with all that it contains; ay, even to the point of feeling my antipathy to Tiberius gradually melting away. And now as the scenes which he loved to look upon were rendered to me yet more fascinating by all that light and life confer I felt my heart glowing with a sense of enjoyment rarely experienced after the fairy days of childhood have passed away; and growing thereupon sentimental, I nearly missed my footing down the rough path by which we were hurriedly descending. My friend's ready arm probably saved me from broken bones.

We reached the point of intersection soon enough. The road here was strewn with rose-leaves and other flowers, of which enough grow wild to lead astray maidens wiser than Proserpine, goddess though she was; and not the road only, for as the procession came in sight we saw

that flowers had been showered on man and maiden, as they passed before their neighbours seated on the walls on either side of them. The gilt image of S. Costanzo was buried up to the chin. Truly their office can have been no sinecure to the four bearers in that burning sun; but it was a post of honour, and they did not mind the fatigue, but trudged merrily along under their burden, until they reached the little chapel to which they were bound. An ugly little building in truth it was, all whitewash and tinsel; but the good folks seem to love it notwithstanding; and now it was dressed out in all its festal drapery, and before the porch were gathered those whose laziness had kept them from joining the procession, and who now were waiting its arrival, chatting and smoking, or consuming their leisure and their bajocchi in the purchase of gingerbread and other comestibles at the stalls which had been set up on the little piazza.

The ceremonies of the day ended before twelve; and we separated to rest, during the hot noontide, under an engagement from my friend to meet again at his house half an hour after sunset, or, as they say here, at twenty-four o'clock, to be spectators of a "festa di ballo" (as it was rather magnificently termed) which he had organised on this occasion for the amusement of his simple neighbours. So, ere it was dusk, and while the horizon and Ischia were yet glowing in the brightness of a southern sunset, thither we went. We were the first to arrive; but not long afterwards came the parroco, and the medico, and the great commandante himself, and a troop of black-eyed maidens, their veils of ceremony laid aside, though they did not look the less pretty for that. And the band of the island, consisting of a tambourine and a guitar, having struck up, and the little difficulties concerning precedence and so forth, for which your Italian is a great stickler, having been happily surmounted, tarascone and tarantella followed in rapid succession. And then came wine and cakes, and tarantellas again, in which we took part to the best of our limited knowledge. And suddenly some one, bolder than the rest, proposed-what think you ?-a contredanse! Now, be it known to all who ignore the same, that a contredanse in civilised countries is nothing more than a quadrille. But oh, ye gods! what a quadrille was here! 'Twas a perfect olla podrida of Terpsichorean art

all dances mingled together, chassez, and waltz, and promenade, and galoppe, with a trifle of polka by way of variation, and all at the pleasure of our leader. And who so good a leader as our gallant Tenente ?—a sad and sobered man, indeed, was he on most occasions; for imprisonment and banishment for crimes of which he had never even heard the names had, in these days of revolution, worked their influence upon him, and turned the bright waters of his manhood into a well of bitterness; but now gay and lighthearted as on the day when first he had sported a new uniform in the frescoed salons of Naples, he footed it merrily under the awning through which the perfumed breath of night was wafted from the orange-groves.

After a second specimen of this new-fangled dance, prolonged somewhat beyond the common, I was not sorry to retreat for a while to my friend's sitting-room up-stairs, in order to enjoy uninterruptedly the scene from the window. "The night of cloudless climes and starry

skies" was glorious indeed to behold! Below, the fire-flies were flitting about, as though the stars had taken wing from above. The melody of a thousand plashing waves fell upon my ear. In spite of the music and mirth below, I could hear them as they rushed through the arched rocks of the Fareglioni, as they swept along the narrow channel which divides the mainland from the precipice on whose summit are the ruins of the palace of Tiberius, as they broke upon the shingles of the Marina. And once, while I sat there, from the tower of the ancient cathedral boomed forth the knell of another hour that had passed away never to return, bringing us nearer to a morrow not appointed to dawn upon one of those who were even now dancing below!

Suddenly the music ceased. The noise of hurried feet struggling up

the stairs succeeded to the measured cadence of the dance. The voice of eager inquiry, of sympathy, and of sorrow, supplanted the laughter that had reigned before. On inquiry, I learnt that the poor commandante, so lately full of life and spirits, had been seized with a fit of apoplexy, and was even now being carried up the stairs which he was never more to descend alive. They laid him on my friend's bed. At first he uttered a word or two thickly in answer to the questions of the anxious doctor; but gradually his breathing became more stertorous; veins were opened in his arms, in his hands, in his feet, but the blood would not flow. A messenger was sent for leeches, and none were to be got. I shall not easily forget the voice of the poor wife, when they asked her what they should pay for them, and she answered "Qualunque prezzo." It was the voice of poverty indignant to be niggardly in so great an extremity. No sum would be too great to give for the chance-it was, alas! but a faint one-of saving her husband's life. They had roused her from her sleep to hear that her husband was dying, but she gave way to no womanish grief, until the last sad offices had been performed by the priests who were waiting in the outer room. Then, at length, the voice of her sorrow burst forth. They led her down the stairs, on which a drop of his blood was still visible. She dipped her forefinger in it, and placed it to her lips. It was touching to observe the various ways in which she expressed her reverence for him who was no more, peculiar as they appeared to one at least of those who were present. Doubtless she was an affectionate wife-probably she was a good woman; for my friend told me that as she passed by the shrine of Our Lady, on the way to her desolate home, she flung herself on the ground, and implored on her knees that succour in her sorrow which an All-merciful God alone can give.

And thus ended our Festa-Day in Capri.