fastnesses have proved the best and
last defences of that same Austrian Empire. Indeed, so well aware was
Napoleon of the united strength and resources of the Tyrol, that one
of his first measures was to partition the country between Bavaria,
Austria, and Illyria. And yet this Tyrol loyalty is inexplicable. They
are attached to the house of Haps-burgh, but they are not Austrian in
feeling. The friends of free trade need not go far in Meran to find
disciples to their doctrine. Every one remembers the time that an aume
of Meraner wine was worth seventy-five gulden, which now is to be had
for five; but then they were Bavarian, and might barter the grape-juice
for the yellow produce of the Baierisch corn-fields. At the present day
they are isolated, shut up, and imprisoned by custom-houses and toll;
and they are growing daily poorer, and neglecting the only source they
possessed of wealth."

We talked of Hofer, and I perceived that my companion was strongly
imbued with an opinion, now very general in the Tyrol, that his merits
were much less than foreigners usually ascribe to him. Sprung from the
people, the host of a little wayside inn, a man with little education,
and of the very roughest manner, it is somewhat singular that his claims
are most disputed among the very class he came from. Had he been an
aristocrat, in all likelihood they had never ventured to canvass the
merits they now so mercilessly arraign. They judge of his efforts by the
most unfair of tests in such matters--the result. They say, "To what
end has Tyrol fought and bled? Are we better, or richer, or freer than
before?" They even go further, and accuse him of exciting the revolt
as a means of escaping the payment of his debts, which assuredly were
considerable. What a terrible price is paid for mob popularity, when the
hour of its effervescence is past!

We fell to chat over the character of revolutions generally, and the
almost invariable tendency to reaction that ensues in all popular
commotions. The character of the Three Days and the present condition
of France, more despotically governed than ever Napoleon dared, was
too palpable an example to escape mention. I had the less hesitation in
speaking my opinion on this subject, that I saw my companion's leanings
were evidently of the Legitimist stamp.

From the Revolution we diverged to the struggle itself of the Three
Days; and being tolerably familiar, from various personal narratives,
with the eve