comparatively small, but of
various dimensions, sweeping round the solar focus in an orbit which
periodically cuts that of the earth. These two theories are in substance
the Chladnian hypothesis, first started to explain the observed actual
descent of aerolites. Though great obscurity rests upon the subject, the
fact may be deemed certain that independently of the great planets and
satellites of the system, there are vast numbers of bodies circling
round the sun, both singly and in groups, and probably an extensive
nebula, contact with which causes the phenomena of shooting stars,
aerolites, and meteoric showers. But admitting the existence of such
bodies to be placed beyond all doubt, the question of their origin,
whether original accumulations of matter, old as the planetary orbs, or
the dispersed trains of comets, or the remains of a ruined world, is a
point beyond the power of the human understanding to reach.

A FIVE DAYS' TOUR IN THE ODENWALD.

A SKETCH OF GERMAN LIFE.

BY WILLIAM HOWITT.

The Odenwald, or Forest of Odin, is one of the most primitive districts
of Germany. It consists of a hilly, rather than a mountainous district,
of some forty miles in one direction, and thirty in another. The
beautiful Neckar bounds it on the south; on the west it is terminated by
the sudden descent of its hills into the great Rhine plain. This
boundary is well known by the name of the Bergstrasse, or mountain road;
which road, however, was at the foot of the mountains, and not over
them, as the name would seem to imply. To English travelers, the beauty
of this Bergstrasse is familiar. The hills, continually broken into by
openings into romantic valleys, slope rapidly down to the plain, covered
with picturesque vineyards; and at their feet lie antique villages, and
the richly-cultivated plains of the Rhine, here thirty or forty miles
wide. On almost every steep and projecting hill, or precipitous cliff,
stands a ruined castle, each, as throughout Germany, with its wild
history, its wilder traditions, and local associations of a hundred
kinds. The railroad from Frankfort to Heidelberg now runs along the
Bergstrasse, and will ever present to the eyes of travelers the charming
aspect of these old legendary hills; till the enchanting valley of the
Neckar, with Heidelberg reposing amid its lovely scenery at its mouth,
terminates the Bergstrasse, and the hills which stretch onward, on the
way toward Carlsruhe, assume anoth