ened to bo in Leipsic or Dresden when we
should pass through, and spoke particularly of the fine music there. I
have rarely seen a man whose countenance bears so plainly the stamp of
genius. He has a glorious dark eye, and Byron's expression of a "dome of
thought," could never be more appropriately applied than to his lofty
and intellectual forehead, the marble whiteness and polish of which arc
heightened by the raven hue of his hair. He is about forty years of age,
in the noon of his fame and the full maturity of his genius. Already as
a boy of fourteen he composed an opera, which was played with much
success at Berlin; he is now the first living composer of Germany. Moses
Mendelssohn, the celebrated Jewish philosopher, was his grandfather; and
his father, now living, is accustomed to say that in his youth he was
spoken of as the son of the great Mendelssohn; now he is known as the
father of the great Mendelssohn!

CHAPTER XVI.

JOURNEY ON FOOT FROM FRANKFORT TO CASSEL.

The day for leaving Frankfort came at last, and I bade adieu to the
gloomy, antique, but still quaint and pleasant city. I felt like leaving
a second home, so much had the memories of many delightful hours spent
there attached me to it: I shall long retain the recollection of its
dark old streets, its massive, devil-haunted bridge and the ponderous
cathedral, telling of the times of the Crusaders. I toiled up the long
hill on the road to Friedberg, and from the tower at the top took a last
look at the distant city, with a heart heavier than the knapsack whose
unaccustomed weight rested uneasily on my shoulders. Being
alone--starting out into the wide world, where us yet I know no one,--I
felt much deeper what it was to find friends in a strange land. But such
is the wanderer's lot.

We had determined on making the complete tour of Germany on foot, and in
order to vary it somewhat, my friend and I proposed taking different
routes from Frankfort to Leipsic. He choose a circuitous course, by way
of Nuremberg and the Thuringian forests; while I, whose fancy had been
running wild with Goethe's witches, preferred looking on the gloom and
grandeur of the rugged Hartz. We both left Frankfort on the 23d of
April, each bearing a letter of introduction to the same person in
Leipsic, where we agreed to meet in fourteen days. As we were obliged to
travel as cheaply as possible, I started with but seventynine florins,
(a florin is forty cents American) w