Fortress ditches, by the road. Orchard-growth
and meadow-growth are lordly (HERRLICH); a land rich in fruit,
and flowing with milk and honey. Much given to weaving, brewing,
stocking-making; and, moreover, trades greatly in these articles, and
above all in Wine. Yearly on St. Agnes Day, "21st January, if not a
Sunday," there is a Wine-fair here; Hungarian, of every quality from
Tokay downward, is gathered here for distribution into Germany and all
the Western Countries. While you drink your Tokay, know that it comes
through Neisse. St. Agnes Day falls but unhandily this year; and I think
the Fair will, as they say, AUSBLEIBEN, or not be held.

Neisse is a Nest of Priests (PFAFFEN-NEST), says Friedrich once; which
came in this way. About 600 years ago, an ill-conditioned Heir-Apparent
of the Liegnitz Sovereign to whom it then belonged, quarrelled with his
Father, quarrelled slightly with the Universe; and, after moping about
for some time, went into the Church. Having Neisse for an apanage
already his own, he gave it to the Bishop of Breslau; whose, in spite
of the old Father's protestings, it continued, and continues. Bishops of
Breslau are made very grand by it; Bishops of Breslau have had their own
difficulties here. Thus once (in our Perkin-Warbeck time, A.D. 1497), a
Duke of Oppeln, sitting in some Official Conclave or meeting of magnates
here,--zealous for country privilege, and feeling himself insufferably
put upon,--started up, openly defiant of Official men; glaring
wrathfully into Duke Casimir of Teschen (Bohemian-Austrian Captain of
Silesia), and into the Bishop of Breslau himself; nay at last, flashed
out his sword upon those sublime dignitaries. For which, by and by, he
had to lay his head on the block, in the great square here; and died
penitent, we hope.

This place, my Dryasdust informs me, had many accidents by floodage and
by fire; was seized and re-seized in the Thirty-Years War especially, at
a great rate: Saxon Arnheim, Austrian Holk, Swedish Torstenson; no end
to the battering and burning poor Neisse had, to the big ransoms "in new
Reichs-thalers and 300 casks of wine." But it always rebuilt itself, and
began business again. How happy when it could get under some effectual
Protector, of the Liegnitz line, of the Austrian-Bohemian line, and
this or the other battering, just suffered, was to be the last for some
time!--Here again is a battering coming on it; the first of a series
that are now imminen