curred. These note-books (of which I possess many dozens) were emptied out on my return home, arranged in Routes, along with such other information as I could gather on History, Architecture, Geology, and other subjects suited to a traveller's need ; and, finally, I submitted them to my Father. He had known nothing of my scheme, but thought my work worth publishing, and gave it the name of " Handbook," a title applied by him for the first time to an English book. But these Routes would have been of comparatively little value, except for the principle and plan upon which they were laid down. I had to consult the wants and convenience of travellers in the order and arrangement of my facts. Arriving at a city like Berlin, I had to find out what was really worth seeing there, to make a selection of such objects, and to tell how best to see them, avoiding the ordinary practice of local Guide-books, which, in inflated language, cram in everything that can possibly be said-not bewildering my readers by describing all that might be seen-and using the most condensed and simplest style in description of special objects. I made it my aim to point out things peculiar to the spot, or which might be better seen there than elsewhere. Having drawn up my Routes, and having had them roughly set in type, I proceeded to test them by lending them to friends about to travel, in order that they might be verified or criticised on the spot; I did not begin to publish until after several successive journeys and temporary residences in Continental cities, and after I had not only traversed beaten Routes, but explored various districts into which my countrymen had not yet penetrated.

I began my travels not only before a single railway had been begun, but while North Germany was yet ignorant of Macadam. The high road from Hamburg to Berlin, except the first 16 miles, which had been engineered and macadamized by an uncle of mine by way of example to the departments of Ponts et Chaussées, was a mere wheel track in the deep sand of Brandenburg. The postilion who drove the miscalled Schnell-post had to choose for himself a devious course amid the multitude of ruts and big boulders of which the sand was full, and he consumed two days and a night on the dreary journey. In those days the carriage of that

country (the Stuhlwagen) was literally a pliable basket on wheels, seated across, which bent in conformity with the ruts and stones it had to pass over.

On reaching Weimar, having been favored with an introduction to Goethe, the great poet and philosopher of the time, I had the honor and pleasure of a personal interview with the hale old man, who received me in his studio-decorated with casts of the Elgin Marbles and other works of Greek art,-attired in a brown dressinggown, beneath which shone the brilliant whiteness of a clean shirt; a refinement not usual among German philosophers. On this occasion I had the honor of presenting to Goethe the MS. of Byron's unpublished dedication of Werner to him. Later on-after a brief interview with Prince Metternich, to whom I was presented by Baron von Hammer in Vienna, an acquaintance renewed afterward when the Prince was an exile in England-I set foot in Hungary, where I had the great pleasure of becoming acquainted with the enlightened patriot Count Szechenyi, who had just completed his grand design of steam navigation on the Danube. I was among the first to descend the Danube from Pesth to Orsova below Belgrade, near the spot where the river, having previously spread out to a width of five miles, is compelled to contract to 300 or 400 yards, in order to rush through a narrow gorge, or defile, split right through the range of the Carpathians, for its escape toward the Black Sea. In a timber barge I

swept over the reefs and whirpools in its bed, not yet fit for steamers to pass, admiring the wondrous precipices descending vertically to the water's edge, as far as to the Iron Gate. All this is described for the first time in my Handbook, as well as the "writing on the wall" left by the Romans under Trajan, in the shape of two rows of put-lock holes, continued for 12 miles along the face of the precipice, made for the wooden balcony road by which the invincible Romans had rendered this "impasse" passable and practicable for their armies. It is worthy of remark that from the days of Barbarian invasion which swept away the road, none other existed on this spot until 1834-35, when the Austrian Government blasted a highway through the limestone cliff along the left bank of the Danube. My explorations ended at the Turkish frontier of Wal

lachia, which was not to be overstepped in those days without the penalty of six weeks in quarantine. I had already passed the Hungarian military frontier, and its line of outposts like our coastguard, and had penetrated into Carinthia and Carniola, where I visited the almost unknown cave of Adelsberg, with its subterranean lakes and fish without eyes, and I descended the quicksilver mine of Idria, in which it is death to work more than six hours in a week underground. I have especial pleasure in remembering that the first description, in English, of the Dolomite Mountains of Tyrol, not a scientific one (Murchison and Sedgwick were before me), appeared in my "South Germany,' first edition. I explored those scenes of grandeur in company with a geological friend in 1831-32. Thousands of my countrymen now follow my advice and my footsteps yearly.

On another occasion, while travelling through Bohemia, I paid a visit to Konigswart, the family seat of Prince Metternich, partly for its owner's sake, partly on account of a Natural History Collection deposited in it, which I found described in one of Goethe's miscellaneous works. He became interested in it on account of its founder, one Huss, an intelligent, educated, and upright man, whose fate it was to be "The Headsman of Eger.' It was an hereditary office, handed down to him from a long line of ancestors, but it came to pass that Eger was stripped of its criminal jurisdiction, so the headsman's occupation was gone. The Prince hearing of this, not only generously purchased the collection, but in order not to separate the owner from his treasures when transporting it to Konigswart, made him its custodian with a pension for life. I was shown round the Museum by Mr. Huss himself, a mild-looking old gentleman, and found that besides specimens illustrating the geology and natural history of Bohemia, it contained many historic relics of the Metternich family of great interest, among them a series of wine-glasses rising from two to four feet each, blown on the elevation in rank of a member of the family, that his health might be drunk out of it. Here were flails and scythes, the rude weapons of the Bohemian peasants used in the Hussite War; the rings of John Sobieski and Matt Corvinus, and Napoleon's washhand-basin brought from Elba.

All these were pointed out to me by my guide; but I observed that he passed over a glass-case which attracted my attention, as containing three swords. I called him back, and was then informed that the central one was the dress-sword of Louis XVI., and the two broad blades which flanked it were the Eger executioner's official swords: one was made at Sohlingen and the other at Ratisbon, and they looked very sharp. Perceiving that I had not come to scoff at him and his profession, he became communicative, and reminded me that to die by the sword was a privilege of the noble Roman denied to the common herd of criminals.

The first of my Handbooks to the Continent, published 1836, included Holland, Belgium, and North Germany, and was followed at short intervals by South Germany, Switzerland-in which I was assisted by my good friend and fellow-traveller William Brockedon, the artist-and France. These were all written by me; but, as the series proceeded, I was fortunate enough to secure such able colleagues as Richard Ford for Spain, Sir Gardner Wilkinson for Egypt, Sir Francis Palgrave for North Italy, Dr. l'orter for Palestine, Sir George Bowen for Greece, Sir Lambert Playfair for Algiers and the Mediterranean, Mr. George Dennis for Sicily, &c. 'In 1839 appeared the first of Baedeker's long series of Guides, that for Holland and Belgium, written in German. The Preface contained an acknowledgment of the compiler's obligation to "the most distinguished (ausgezeichnetste) Guide-book ever published, Murray's Handbook for Travellers,' which has served as the foundation of Baedeker's little book.”*

He

I give a few extracts taken from one or two of Baedeker's Guides :

ausgezeichnetste Reisehandbuch, welches je "Aus Grundlage hat diesem Werkchen das erschienen ist gedient Murray's Handbook for Travellers on the Continent.""-Baedeker's "Handbuchlein: Holland,'' 1839.

"Die Brauchbarkeit der von dem Buchhän

dler Murray zu London herausgegebenen Reisehandbücher ist eine von den Engländern, Volke, so anerkannte Thatsache, dass man dem unter allen vorzugsweise Reisenden kaum einen derselben ohne das sogenannte 'rothe Buch' umherwandern sieht. Sie führte den Herausgeber des vorliegenden Handbuchs fruher Schon auf die Idee, zwei in Deutschland, trotz der Nachbarschaft, wenig gekannte Länder nach jenen Murray's chen Handbüchern für Reisende zu beschreiben

began his Guide to Germany, published 1842, by again referring to Murray's Red Book as having "given him the idea of his own, though as his work progressed, he found he could retain only the frame of his original." No doubt, with my book ready made to hand, he was enabled to use the plan and arrangement, to correct, enlarge, and fill in with such information as he thought useful to Germans, as for instance by sedulously pointing out where the best Bierstuben were to be found. The acknowledgment of obligation amounts to this: "in my first edition I copied, extracted, and even translated freely from Murray's books. As I proceeded I found I was able to do without them. Still fragments of translated passages long survived, and may be even now detected by such a blunder as the following. In one of the southern Swiss valleys Murray says "the slate rocks here are full of red garnets, ," rendered by B. " are overgrown with red pomegranates," a mistake which runs through many editions, but which I find corrected in that of 1873. Nineteen travellers out of twenty would have passed the garnets unnoticed; the accident of my having devoted some time to the study of geology caused me to notice the garnets, a not unusual occurrence in slate rocks. Throughout the Handbooks may be traced other results of my private reading, which stamp a special

character on these books. My taste, studies and predilections mark the originality of my writing, and it is impossible but that any one following and picking up my threads one after another should not betray himself as a copyist.

Messrs. Baedeker have long ago proved how easy it is with a book ready printed and published to produce another book on the same subject and identical in planavailing themselves of its information, sending them out in the same Red Cover, yet not infringing the laws of copyright. I do not complain of them-they were legally entitled to do what they have done; but after they have dogged my footsteps from one country to anotherthrough Holland, Belgium, Germany, Frafice, Switzerland, Italy (North and South), Greece, Syria, Egypt, England and Scotland-I was surprised to find one of their compilers sinking my name and existence altogether, and claiming for them the merit of originating this class of Handbooks.*

I will, therefore, in winding up my statement, content myself with this remark, that although Messrs. Baedeker have brought out some eighteen different Guide-books, every one of them has been preceded and anticipated by a Murray's Handbook for that particular country.Murray's Magazine.

all over the world, of that subsoil of human nature in which tradition takes root, but bearing a strong resemblance to one another, even in those minuter details which we might well expect to vary with the circumstances of time, place, and surroundings, or with the fancy of each narrator. Several explanations of this phenomenon have been suggested by the mythologists. Setting aside the theory of direct borrowing, which in many, perhaps in most, cases appears wholly untenable, the two most probable opinions are the following:-First, that human nature is every where essentially the same, and that this sameness appears in the products of the human intellect and imagination; secondly, that throughout the ages during which men have dwelt upon the globe, a constant interchange of traditions and beliefs has taken place among them, leading to the gradual but complete diffusion throughout all nations of the myths and traditions of each. Both of these agencies have, no doubt, been very largely at work; but, though sufficient to account for the sameness apparent in the broader features of these myths, they are altogether inadequate to explain that coincidence in point of detail to which we have before alluded—a phenomenon for which a satisfactory explanation yet remains to be found.

However, our present task is not to investigate the causes which have led to the universal diffusion of these world-myths, as they may be called, but to examine one single class of them, a class which yields to few, if any, in the favor it has enjoyed among all nations and in all ages. In every part of the world, and among peoples in every stage of civilization or barbarism, we find legends relating how some national hero or sage, at the end of his earthly career, is transported to some supernatural abode without having tasted of death. The story often concludes with a prophecy that the vanished hero shall some day come again to establish a reign of righteousness and prosperity among his people. This myth, in one form or another, exists among the Hebrews, Greeks, Romans, Hindus, Persians, Germans, Franks, Irish, Welsh, Cornish, Bretons, Danes, Finns, Aztecs, Algonquins, Hurons, and many other nations, both civilized and savage.

One of the best known or, at any rate,

most complete forms of this myth, is that of the German Emperor, Frederick Barbarossa, or Rothbart, who, tradition tells, is not dead, but dwells in a cavern in the heart of the Kyffhausen mountain, until the appointed time is come when he shall issue forth, and rule over a united Germany in power and might. He now sits within his mountain hall, asleep at the head of a massive stone table, through which his beard has grown, half waking, from time to time, to partake of food and drink, with which he is supplied by an old man, his attendant. His subterranean abode is not hermetically sealed; many have found it from time to time, or have been conducted thither by the old man who waits upon the slumbering monarch. These favored individuals generally seem to have been liberally treated, and dismissed with gifts of gold of ancient coinage, and wine such as they had never before tasted in the course of their lives. However, like most recipients of supernatural bounty, these persons oftener than not forfeited their gifts by their own misconduct. Whenever a stranger finds his way, or is led, into the hall, the Redbeard raises his head, and asks, "Do the ravens still fly about the hills?" And upon being told that they do, he rejoins, "Then I must sleep for another hundred years.

Mr. Patrick Kennedy * records an Irish legend, which bears a remarkable likeness to that of the German Emperor. Once upon a time," Gearoidh Iarla (i.e. Earl Gerald), a scion of the great house of Geraldine, was a mighty chieftain in Ireland-a lover of justice, and the mainstay of his countrymen in their resistance to English tyranny. He was also a great "medicine man,' ," and possessed the power of transforming himself into any animal he pleased. His wife often wanted him to let her see him in some of these shapes, but he always refused to comply with her desire, alleging that, if she experienced any terror at such a time, some calamity would befall him, from which he would not recover until many generations of men had passed away. At length, however, he yielded to her importunities, and assumed the form of a beautiful goldfinch. The lady, though startled at first, was highly pleased by this demonstration of

* Legendary Fictions of the Irish Cells.

her husband's power; when, suddenly, as the transformed Earl was charming his wife with his song and graceful flight, a hawk flew into the room. The Earl took refuge in his wife's bosom, pursued by the hawk, who, however, dashed against the table and fell dead; but the Countess, terrified by her husband's danger, uttered a loud scream. Immediately the Earl vanished from her sight and from the sight of men. "Himself and his warriors are now sleeping in a long cavern, under the Rath of Mullaghmast. There is a table running through the middle of the cave. The Earl is sitting at the head, and his troopers, in complete armor, down along both sides of the table, and their heads resting on it;" behind them stand their horses in their stalls, ready saddled and bridled. "When the day comes, the miller's son, that's to be born with six fingers on each hand, will blow his trumpet, and the horses will stamp and whinry, and the knights awake and mount their steeds, and go forth to battle." Then will the Earl rout the English in a great battle, and reign king of Ireland for twoscore years. One night in every seven years, Earl Gerald issues forth from his cavern, and rides round the Curragh of Kildare. On this night the door of the cave stands open, and any one who can find it may enter in. About a hundred years ago a drunken horse-dealer actually did so. Startled by the unexpected sight, he dropped a bridle which he carried in his hands, whereupon one of the sleepers half raised his head, and asked, "Is it yet time?" The fellow had the presence of mind to reply, “Not yet, but it will be soon," and the trooper's head dropped again upon the table. When the Earl began his septennial rides, his horse was shod with silver shoes, half an inch thick; when these are worn as thin as a cat's ear the day of Ireland's deliverance is at hand. The last time the Earl was seen, his horse's shoes were no thicker than a sixpence !

This grand legend is remarkable for combining with the heroic myth a story of a much more primitive cast, in which the hero is endowed with the usual sorcerer's power of transforming himself into animal shapes-a power which he shares, not only with the gods of the Greek and Hindu mythologies, but also with the Australian birraark and North American

boo-oën, and, indeed, with the medicine men of most rude tribes. In fact, the heroic legend would appear to have been grafted upon a story of much earlier date, a hypothesis which would explain the want of connection between cause and effect, apparent in the Earl's enforced seclusion, consequent upon the trivial incident of his wife's alarm.

According to another Irish legend, the giant Mahon McMahon, a contemporary of Finn MacComhal, sleeps with his followers in the recesses of Carrigmahon, county Cork. In this legend we find the incident of the sleeper's beard growing into the stone table, as in the Barbarossa story. *

Bruce's invasion of Ireland sowed the seed of a plentiful crop of legends, one of which is pertinent to our present subject. It tells how the hero is not dead, but sleeps, surrounded by his chief warriors, in a cave under a ruin upon Rathlin Island, known as "Bruce's Castle," the entrance to which is visible once every seven years, as in the case of Earl Gerald. A man once found his way in, and saw on the ground at his feet, in the midst of the sleeping warriors, a sabre half-unsheathed.

On his attempting to draw it, every man of the sleepers lifted up his head, and put his hand on his sword." The man fled, but heard them " but heard them "calling fiercely after him, 'Ugh! ugh! Why could we not be left to sleep?' and they clanged their swords on the ground with a terrible noise, and then all was still, and the gate of the cave closed with a mighty sound like a clap of thunder." When Bruce and his followers awake, they will unite Ireland to Scotland.†

Ireland is rich in traditions of vanished heroes. Of a different character from those just narrated is the story of the "Good O'Donoghue," a chieftain, who, in old times, ruled over the neighborhood of Killarney, renowned alike for prowess in war and for justice and beneficence in time of peace. The account of his disappearance is given by T. Crofton Croker as follows: At one of those splendid feasts for which his court was celebrated, surrounded by the most distinguished of his