e Isar
is partly turned from its bed above, and made to turn wheels, and drive
machinery. At the lower end the street expands into a handsome platz,
with young shade trees, plats of grass, and gay beds of flowers. I look
out on it as I write; and I see across the Isar the college building
begun by Maximilian for the education of government officers; and I
see that it is still unfinished, indeed, a staring mass of brick, with
unsightly scaffolding and gaping windows. Money was left to complete
it; but the young king, who does not care for architecture, keeps only a
mason or two on the brick-work, and an artist on the exterior frescoes.
At this rate, the Cologne Cathedral will be finished and decay before
this is built. On either side of it, on the elevated bank of the river,
stretch beautiful grounds, with green lawns, fine trees, and well-kept
walks.

Not to mention the English Garden, in speaking of the outside aspects of
the city, would be a great oversight. It was laid out originally by the
munificent American, Count Rumford, and is called English, I suppose,
because it is not in the artificial Continental style. Paris has nothing
to compare with it for natural beauty,--Paris, which cannot let a tree
grow, but must clip it down to suit French taste. It is a noble park
four miles in length, and perhaps a quarter of that in width,--a park of
splendid old trees, grand, sweeping avenues, open glades of free-growing
grass, with delicious, shady walks, charming drives and rivers of water.
For the Isar is trained to flow through it in two rapid streams, under
bridges and over rapids, and by willow-hung banks. There is not wanting
even a lake; and there is, I am sorry to say, a temple on a mound, quite
in the classic style, from which one can see the sun set behind the many
spires of Munich. At the Chinese Tower two military bands play every
Saturday evening in the summer; and thither the carriages drive, and the
promenaders assemble there, between five and six o'clock; and while
the bands play, the Germans drink beer, and smoke cigars, and the
fashionably attired young men walk round and round the circle, and the
smart young soldiers exhibit their handsome uniforms, and stride about
with clanking swords.

We felicitated ourselves that we should have no lack of music when we
came to Munich. I think we have not; though the opera has only just
begun, and it is the vacation of the Conservatoire. There are first the
military b