ooked to the right, where on a
level with ourselves fields of rye were waving, that the fact of our
not having wandered into some uncleared and uninhabited region was
demonstrated.

Stein Jena itself is a large, straggling, but remarkably neat village,
of which the street is on both sides shaded by rows of trees, and where
the houses can in many instances boast of being planted within the
range of well-kept and tasteful gardens. It was on the top of the
common beyond the village, however, that we paused to obtain our view,
and to make one of those rude sketches which in such situations the
most unpractised hand is induced to attempt; after which we again
pushed forward. Ten minutes' walk carried us over the ridge, and then
what a spectacle burst upon us! A huge plain was at our feet, green
with the most abundant crops of grass and corn, and here and there
broken in upon by a tall conical hill, which rose like a thing of art,
and stood alone in the level. Surrounding the plain on all sides, were
ranges of mountains, those near at hand resembling in their general
character the graceful hills upon which we had just turned our
backs,--those in the distance more precipitous and rugged, and above
all, white along their summits with snow. There needed, in short, but
some sheet of water,--a lake or a river winding through the valley, to
complete such a picture as Stanfield would love to copy, and the
humbler but not less enthusiastic worshipper of nature, gaze upon for
hours unwearied. For not only was there wood and pasturage, hill and
dale, rock and forest, in abundance,--but the haunts of man, without
which a cultivated scene is always incomplete, rose there in abundance.
There lay Hayde,--a compact and apparently well-built town; about three
miles to the right of it, and nestling back its own cliffs, was
Burgstein; while farther off Gabel, Reichstadt, with a countless number
of villages besides, told of the busy hands by which these fair fields
were tilled and kept in order. Heartily thanking our poetical friend
for the instructions which he had communicated to us, and charmed out
of all sense of fatigue for the moment, we continued our march, till
the shelter of a vast wood received us, at once shutting out the
glories of the panorama beneath, and screening us from the sun's rays,
which had for some time back beat with inconvenient violence upon us
from above.

It was six o'clock when we reached the inn at Hayde, faint,