An Episode OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY AND OTHER TALES. IN THREE VOLUMES. VOL. I. LONDON SAUNDERS AND OTLEY, CONDUIT STREET. 1843. PREFACE. In the autumn of 184-, a party of friends, male and female, started from Manheim, on an expedition up one of the lovely valleys that shelter those mountain-streams, whose beauties scarcely yield the palm to the proud Rhine, whose tributaries they are. The party was numerous; and for the first two or three days, all went right. But just as they were about to escape from the worst roadside-inn it had yet been their ill luck to fall in with, a mountainstorm broke overhead with such fury, and of such duration, as to render the narrow, precipitous road-bad enough in fair weatherperfectly impassable for a few days, especially for the ladies, whose fears magnified the inconveniences of the venture. Thus weather-bound, in the fullest meaning of the word—an incessant cold rain alternating with a high sharp wind by day, and early biting frosts by night, that made the smoky stoves of mine host, crammed full of greenwood, and his unswept, uncurtained rooms, a luxury the spirits of the society, and the general stock of patience, was much tried. Passing under silence those nameless privations, whose enumeration would fill a volume, but which any traveller whom chance or caprice has led into the more unfrequented parts of Germany will have no trouble in calling back to his remembrance, I will barely hint at the blue-devils that seized upon and tor mented each in turn; and though to record the sighs, and yawns, and sundry exclamations, were a hopeless task, I will declare, that a more complete specimen of immeasurable ennui -ennui of the deepest, darkest hue-was never seen. There was not a musical instrument in the whole house! Not one of the ladies had strung her blue or pink ribboned guitar on the top of a bandbox-bandboxes having been most ungallantly prohibited by the male portion of the society. Not one of the gentlemen had with him so much as a flute-cane, or had smuggled even a Jew's-harp into his pocket! The heavy, iron-tipped oak, that helped to climb the rocks, was alone à l'ordre du jour; and the gentlemen's shooting-jackets boasted little more in the way of musical resources than pocket-combs. Draught or chess board— nay, even the very oldest pack of cards-would |