tion artificial desires, and name it civilization. Where a powerful aristocracy has persecuted socially every politician who dares to discuss the rights of land, or where the ruling sex tries to crush all talk of the rights of women, Mr. Mill comes to the front on the side of the oppressed. Does he not hereby bid us hope that he will step out farther? We need his protest more distinct for simplicity, and against corrupting trades. In regard also to sexual purity, it is to be feared that every approach to Epicurean doctrine is highly sinister. To shield the male temperament from vice, we need not only that the female sex shall have high defensive power, but that a reverence for them, with a stern sense of justice, should lie deep in men's hearts. It is said that, a woman who hesitates is lost;' and why say less of a man? If a man once begins to compute (what is incomputable) the pro-and con of a special vicious action which he allows himself calmly to contemplate, it is ten to one that low instinct and base passion will carry him away. Every young man eminently needs an intuitional hatred of allowing carnal desire to be dominant, or to be gratified for its own sake: yet novelists, poets, and artists pander to voluptuousness without being disgraced and shunned. A powerful passion can only be encountered by a higher passion; and undoubtedly the spiritual passions are the strongest. The moralist's task whatever name he assume, to whatever school he refer himself— is to strengthen and purify the intuitions-the inward judgment, the inward desires: for these are the vital forces of action. Otherwise, only the despairing wail will be heard from those best taught in moral systems Video meliora proboque: Deteriora sequor.' FRANCIS W. NEWMAN. ST. A PILGRIMAGE ON THE AMMER. NT. JOHN'S Day is a favourite festival in Bavaria, and it is especially an occasion for pic-nics and excursions. This year it fell upon a Saturday, and the opening performance of the Passions-Spiel at Oberammergau having been announced for that day, the prospect of a two days' holiday drew a large crowd out of Munich into the highlands. The now famous village is about seventy-five English miles from Munich, and the little tour can now be made with what may be called, so far as the primitive character of the Play is concerned, fatal facility. One Herr Moesl acted as agent in the capital, and for somewhat less than one pound sterling placed in one's hand certain tickets which covered the round journey, securing a lodging at Oberammergau, and a reserved seat at the Play. A day is all that is required to reach the village, some twenty miles of it on the railway, as much again by steamboat, and the rest by diligence; but a more charming tour can be made if one has time to leave Munich a day or two beforehand, and to saunter through the ancient and picturesque villages and embowered paths which are strung along the way to WürmSee, and those which fringe the same. One can go partly in the old pilgrim fashion, and in part by means of the railway and the steamer, and will find nothing in Bavaria better worth his time. A very little way out of Munich bring us to the region where religious myths still preserve some of the religious sanctity of their origin. At Planeck, close to a grove of trees, stands a pretty little chapel, built near a holy oak, which holds a miraculous image of the Virgin and Child, before which the children of the neighbourhood perform their devotions on every festival day. For, more than one hundred and fifty years ago, Franz Thalmayer, a little boy, son of the village tailor, bought of a wandering seller of clay images, a span-long figure of the Virgin and Child-paying therefor a Landmünze (24 kreutzers)--which image he set up in the hollow of an oak tree. Daily did the boy go into the oak-grave to pay his devo tions to this image, and ere long other children of the neighbourhood began to do the same. The oak was covered with moss, and far gone in decay when Franz placed his holy image there; but nowwonderful to relate!-it renewed its youth, the parts about the hollow which enshrined the figure especially growing around and over it with such rapidity that the wood and bark had to be cut away in order that the heads might be seen. The oak is still green, and near its foot is a shelter with seats and table for the use of pilgrims, not now so indifferent to cakes and ale as they used to be; and there is also a pretty little chapel, called 'Maria Eich,' which was erected in 1762, by the proprietors of the neighbourhood, John Baptist and Johanna v. Ruffini. Special festivals are held here, in the open air, when the weather is good, on the second Sunday after Easter, and the twelfth after Whitsuntide, besides the regular festival of the Virgin. All along our way are little villages, unknown to gazetteers, but redolent of romance and framed in beautiful landscapes,-Mühlthal (in a vale lovely as a dream), Gauting, and others. At Gauting lived, grew blind, and, near ten years ago died, aged ninety-four, Baron Hallberg-Broich, the charming traveller and writer, his pleasant château passing to Baron Künsberg, who married the daughter of the venerable author, who was known as the Hermit of Gauting. Near his house one can see the remains of an old Roman station and fort. But this village, which has not five hundred inhabitants, is associated with a legend which has been as prolific of pretty stories as any in the lore of Germany. For here it was that King Pepin was wont to hunt in the old days when Bertha spann.' Dr. J. H. Wolf found in the old cloister of St. Stephen, near Freysing, an ancient MS., recording how Pepin, King of France, asked the hand of Bertha, the beautiful daughter of the King of Britain, and sent (anno 740), to bring her to his palace at Freysing, his retainers with the lord steward of his household at their head; how the said lord steward, anxious that the King should wed his own daughter instead of Bertha, resolved on her death; how he gave her to certain trusty servants of his to be slain in Gauting forest; how the servants pitied her, and left her alive in the wood. One day when the Kingwho had been deceived by some story trumped up about the disappearance of Bertha-had become weary of the hunt, he passed the night at the Old Reismühle, still pointed out hard by Gauting, and there he was startled at being waited on by a maid-servant more beautiful than any being he had ever beheld. On speaking to her, she told him that she was the daughter of the King of England, Bertha by name, and that she had been cruelly abandoned in the forest, where she had worked as a servant seven years. Pepin at once married her, and she bore him that boy who afterwards became Charle magne. There was something really charming in finding myself at the very fountain-head of the delightful old fairy tales that have flowed from this old story. There-in that very field it was that the Miller's Maid 'span' straw which became under her touch pure gold! In that wood the powerful gnome bore her away to his subterranean abode; and from the old house there, or its direct ancestor, the Prince came who rescued her! This was the same Bertha who was called 'Bertha with the large foot,' and who was celebrated in the old poem which Mr. Paulin Paris discovered in 1822, Berte aux grans pies. It is difficult to say whether the German and Italian proverbs about thriftiness-In der guten alten Zeit, wo die Königin Bertha spann,' and 'Berta non fila più,'refer to this royal servant-maid, or to her daughter, the mother of Roland, or the Queen of Hugo, in Italy, all of whom were celebrated for industry, and one or the other of whom appears on old coins seated on the throne with a distaff in her hand. Is it too sceptical for the writer hereof to suggest that these Berthas, one and all, have probably been successively invested with the symbols of the ancient Mother of German mythology-Frau Bertha, whose chief emblem was the distaff and that, for all these legends and proverbs, they may have been neither more nor less thrifty than other princesses of the period? But the legend of the large foot' connects the wife of Pepin at least with the Pagan myth. The American Encyclopædia says that she was called Berthrada with the large foot' with 'more truth than gallantry.' The reverse is the case, Bertha is Perchta (up) the shining; and in mythology the fleecy clouds of dazzling light were said to be her swans. As in later time the Devil was said to be revealed by his cloven foot, so the celestial beauty was revealed by a swan's foot. Mr. Karl Blind, who has explored the multitudinous Bertha legends, informs me that images of historical Berthas exist in which the wide and webbed foot of the swan is distinct, the object being, no doubt, to cele brate their right to be considered attendants of the holiest form in the German Pantheon. At Leutstetten one may see the little church which holds a picture of three holy sisters-Ainbeth, Fürbeth, and Gewörbeth, near an altar upon which rests a representation of Christ and the twelve Apostles, most skilfully carved by them from a single piece of wood, in an ancient time not fixed. It suggests how early was the enthusiasm of this region for those wood carvings for which Oberammergau is now so celebrated. And a quarter of an hour will bring you to St. Petersbrunn, whose mineral waters are still associated with sacred legends of healing. A beautiful chapel stands near on the spot where the genius of the fountain was perhaps invoked in ancient times. Then we come to the beautiful Starnburg Lake-twelve miles long by from two to four in width,-which the inhabitants of the region still prefer to call the Würm-See. This name they connect with a gigantic worm, a dragon or serpent, which in ancient times used the lake as its private residence, destroying all who came near, but which was destroyed by some legendary relative of St. George, and descendant of the Python-slayer. Starnberg is for the most a fine modern town, built about an older village which nestled near the old castle, which, in 1541, Duke William III. built on the site of an earlier structure. Beautiful villas are ranged along the shore of the lake and crown every height. Charming little chapels, representing every variety of architecture -though with a general leaning toward the Italian styles-lurk and hide in every wood. It seemed as if every Munich gentleman who built a summer residence on the lake regarded it as essential to have a little church on his grounds, if it were only for show, for sometimes they seemed too small to hold even a small family. I confess that the modern character of the houses in Starnberg rather shocked the antiquarian temper with which I had invested my mind when setting out to visit the Passion-Play, and I took more interest in the sight of a beautiful little island, called the 'Island of Roses,' which I had been credibly informed was anciently the seat of a pagan temple, subsequently of a very holy church, and had once been sought by many pilgrims for reasons now somewhat obscure. The waters around it are like crystal, and the fishermen of the neighbourhood claim that they can predict the weather from its movements and its appearance. In the depth of its clear waters there are to be seen strange knobs and blocks of carved stone, some of them apparently the remnants of some really fine building which formed the subject of an interesting paper, by Professor v. Siebold, read before the Royal Academy of Science at Munich in 1864. On the island are the ruins, now almost converted to trees and flowers, of an old church, which records show to have been yet standing in 1760, when it had but one little window, opening to the north. It was then quite roofless, and had been built precisely upon the site of a more ancient ruin. Formerly-until about twenty years ago, that is there lived on this tiny island a fisherman, with his family, who had inherited it from an ancestry that had dwelt here through two hundred years. These last ones lived in complete happiness, and in Arcadian simplicity, with their meadow, garden, and orchard around them. It was deemed a famous thing among the cultivated Munich people to secure lodgings in their pretty cottage during the hot season, and enjoy their fruit and delicious salmon, trout, and other fish, with which the Würm-See abounds. But, alas, one day--to wit, June 29, 1849when poor Kugelmüller and his wife had gone to church, to honour the festival of St. Peter and St. Paul, they returned to find their happy home a heap of ashes! These poor islanders went to the neighbouring village, and King Max, hearing of the incident, offered them a fair price for the island, which thus passed out of their hands. And now a fine mansion is there, and the whole island is planted with roses, only roses, and these of every variety, whence it has been called Rose Island. The fish of this lake are certainly very fine, especially the salmon, which is regarded as a different viand at three different stages of its existence, and called in its youth Züngel, after one year Niedling, and later (when it is apt to weigh seven or eight pounds) Bodenrenke. They have a way of dressing it and trout with vinegar and oil in cooking, which makes them delicious. The fishermen live in a sort of communistic way in Starnberg, and there prevail among them many of those customs which used to be well known at Bridport and other points of the Southern coast of England, but are even now not entirely obsolete. They fish toThey fish together (each paying a tax of thirtyfour kreutzers and three pennies as a See tax), and on a certain day of the year meet, and after a religious service divide their gains. The fishing of the lake is estimated at about 2,000 florins per annum, which is nearly equal to as many pounds in real value. By speaking early one manages to get a breakfast of fish on the pleasant little boat which voyages up and down the lake. The glory of the lake is the beautiful and historic villas which adorn its undulating and wooded shores. They are the villas not only of princes and princesses and barons, but also of artists and literary men. The first house that I observed with interest was a cottage close to the water, called the Villa Prestele. It was built by Mr. Carl Prestele, a merchant of Munich, an intimate friend of Richard Wagner the composer, who has often been his guest at this lake-side residence, in which he produced 'The Meistersinger.' Almost adjoining it, and also close to the water, is the Villa Ainmüller, which was until his recent death the home of Maximilian Ainmüller, the artist of stained glass who has made the celebrity of the Munich factory of which he was superintendent. Gleaming from an embowered hill, a little back from the water, is the villa of Prince Carl of Bavaria. But perhaps the most beautiful of these exquisite summer homes is the Villa Mayer von Mayerfels, on whose charming grounds stands a Gothic chapel of perfect architecture, and on the extreme left, near the water, a miniature church with doll-baby picta, built entirely of tree bark. Farther on yet is seen the more substantial and venerable château Possenhofen, its woody park enclosed with a low castellated wall. Here were born the exx-Queen of Naples, and the present Empress of Austria, and here now resides Duke Maximilian of Bavaria. Passing to the opposite side of the lake one sails up to the stately towers of the old summer residence of the Kings and Queens of Bavaria, where also the present king passes much of his time. It is at the foot of a beautiful hill around whose base a leafy glen stretches, wherein Lola Montes found her Paradise. Chasing every butterfly that shimmered on her wayward path-whether it were a bright-winged inseet, an alluring pleasure, or a doting king-disporting herself in the crystal waves, or darting over them in her slender boat, dashing through the forest on the wild steed that seemed to embody all the sparkling wickedness |