emy, which has been gratefully named after its founder, the
Wernerian Museum.

Freiberg holds up its head very high. The Mining Academy stands one
thousand two hundred and thirty-one feet above the sea, although this is
by no means the greatest altitude in the long range of mountains, which
form a huge boundary line between the kingdoms of Saxony and Bohemia.
The general name for the whole district is the Erzgebirg-Kreis--the
circle of ore mountains--and truly they form one vast store of silver,
tin, lead, iron, coal, copper, and cobalt ores; besides a host of
chemical compounds and other riches. The indefatigable Saxons have
worked and burrowed in them for more than seven hundred years.

We proceed to the Royal Saxon Mining Office, and request permission to
descend into the "bowels of the land." This is accorded us without
difficulty, and we receive a beautiful specimen of German text, in the
shape of a lithographed Fahrschein, or permission to descend into
Abraham's Shaft and Himmelfahrt, and to inspect all the works and
appliances thereunto belonging. This Fahrschein especially informs us,
that no person, unless of the Minerstand (fraternity of miners), can be
permitted to descend into the Zechen or pits, who is not eighteen years
old; nor can more than two persons be intrusted to the care of one guide.
We cheerfully pay on demand the sum of ten silver groschens each (about
one shilling), for the purpose--as we are informed in a note at the
bottom of the Fahrschein--of meeting the exigencies of the Miners'
Pension and Relief Fund.

The mine we are about to inspect, which bears the general title of
Himmelsfurst--Prince of Heaven--is situated near to the village of Brand.
How fond these old miners were of Biblical designations! and what an
earnest spirit of religion glowed within them! There is another mine in
the vicinity, at Voightberg, called the Old Hope of God; but we must
recollect that Freiberg was one of the strongholds of early
Protestantism, and that the first and sternest of the reformers clustered
about its mountains. They have a cold, desolate look; and we think of
the gardens we have left at their bases, and of the forests of fir-trees
which wave upon some of the loftier pinnacles of these same Erzgebirge.
Nor are the few men we meet of more promising appearance: not dwarfed nor
stunted, but naturally diminutive, with sallow skins and oppressed
demeanour. How different are the firm, lithe, sun-ta