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THE MÄDCHENSTEIN.*

A TRADITION OF THE SAXON SWEITZ.

CHAPTER I.

THERE are few districts in Europe - I might, perhaps, have said in the whole world—which more deserve, in every point of view, the notice of the imaginative traveller than that to which a distinguished German writer, still alive, has given the name of the Saxon Switzerland. In expressing myself thus, I do not refer, at least exclusively, to the peculiar nature of the scenery which is there to be found. That, to be sure, is remarkable enough -so remarkable, indeed, as to have no parallel in any other country which it has been my good fortune to visit. But even scenery, if it stand alone, seldom makes a very deep or a very lasting impression on the mind of him who has beheld it. Such, at least, are my own feelings in reference to

From "Fraser's Magazine" for November 1838.

this point. What were the Tyrol itself, did not its bold and snow-clad mountains associate themselves with the memory of a thousand noble deeds ?the last and not the least touching of which throws a halo around the name of the peasant Hoffer. What were the Rhine, had it not been to a highminded people, in all ages, their "own imperial river ?" What were our own rugged hills of Scotland and Wales, could we forget that the feet of the gallant and the free have trodden them from age to age? And, finally, who would linger in fancy near the deep glens and precipitous crags of the Saxon Sweitz, had the eye alone taken an interest in them when they were actually present to it. It is not, therefore, because its pine forests wave deep and broad, and its rocks rise sheer, and bald, and abrupt, towards heaven - because its passes are dark and narrow, its corn-fields rich, and its river, the lordly Elbe, dark, and turbulent, and rapid, — these are not the circumstances that force me to speak of Saxon Switzerland as of a land which, once visited, can never be forgotten. Rich as Germany is in traditionary lore, there is probably no portion of it which more abounds with the tales of other days than this little corner. As I am going to repeat one of these tales, the nature of

which renders some knowledge of the whereabouts essential to a right understanding of facts, it will be necessary to attempt, what has never yet, as far as I know, been attempted successfully, - I mean the conveying by words, to the mind of the reader, something like a distinct notion of a spot of earth which he has not visited, and, it may be, never shall visit.

In the very heart of Saxon Switzerland there is a glen, through which the Kirnitsch pours its tiny waters—a tortuous, narrow, yet perfectly level pass hemmed in on either hand by bold hills, all of them covered from their bases to their brows with pine-trees. At the bottom of this glen lies the town of Schandau, occupying a tongue of land that juts forward into the Elbe. Not far from its summit, and perhaps ten or twelve English miles distant, stands a romantic village, of which I have forgotten the name. These are the extreme points; for at or near the village the glen imperceptibly blends with the more open country, while the river effectually closes it in at the base. Between them, again, the arrangements of nature have been very little interfered with, except that three mills

the least offensive to the eye of taste of all pieces of mechanism are erected along the

stream; each of them, too, at a point which, till he has seen the rest, the traveller is apt to exclaim that nothing could surpass it in beauty. Moreover, the Kirnitsch is spanned here and there by rustic bridges mere planks, or layers of planks, thrown across its channel; while the meadows which sweep down to its banks, whether broad or narrow, are all trimmed and dressed, and kept in the nicest order. In every other respect, however, the valley of the Kirnitsch offers to the eye of the wanderer in the nineteenth century precisely the same features which it offered to those of the wanderer in the fifteenth. For the everlasting hills are bold and unbending as they were at the beginning; and busy as man's hand may have been from age to age in felling, and clearing, and transporting timber to a distance, the woods wave as wide, and their foliage is as dense and dark, as if no interference with their sovereignty had ever been attempted.

Here, then, in part, lies the scene of my story; which must, however, be occasionally shifted, so as to carry the reader back into the recesses of the forests that sweep away to the eastward of the glen. How shall I describe these? Imagine, if you can, the uppermost of the three mills a

humble, yet neat structure with its little garden in front of the miller's dwelling, and the stream chafing and roaring from its place of confinement on one of its flanks. Behind is a small meadow; to which succeeds a wooded hill, completely interposing itself between your curiosity and all that may lie beyond; for the hill in question is but a portion of one of those rocky walls which leave to the wayfarer no wider range of view than is afforded by some sweep of the valeat the best, exceedingly narrow and the space that intervenes between earth and heaven. You will observe, however, nearly opposite to a wicker-gate that opens from the garden-fence, the commencement of a footpath protruding itself, as it were, from the forest. Advance towards it, for it will lead you to the point with which I am endeavouring, I fear vainly, to make you familiar. Now, then, go on. The woods are closed darkly round you. Their shade is so dense that the sun's rays cannot reach you from above. Their depth is so great that you strain your eyeballs in vain, yet see no object that is distant from you a space of fifteen yards. Your road, moreover, leads continually upwardsnow shooting ahead a little space, now twisting and turning as some rock or precipice intervenes,