The Argosy — page 69: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

From London to Salsburg. 59 buildings, must have some influence upon their minds and character. Scarcely possible to grow up with a nature altogether hard, prosy, and unromantic. Yet no great men come from it now; the glory of the town has passed away. But the beauty and grandeur of its antiquity ; the strange impression of a past world, a dead age, that comes over you as you walk its streets, nothing can take away, and perhaps no other town can give, ) Time passes quickly when counted by days and hours. Soon, there- fore, we had bidden farewell to Nuremberg, and were once more en voyage, with faces turned towards Munich. _ That gay, lively, charming capital. The home of artists; that has not only nursed them, but cherishes and hands down to fame and pos- terity so many of their best works. A long drive in the clattering, spring- less omnibus landed us, about ten o'clock at night, at the Hotel des Quatre Saisons, a large, comfortable building, conducted, omnibus excepted, on excellent principles. Early the next morning, I was awakened by the tramp of soldiers marching past, and a splendid band, that caused me to spring up, even at the first moment of consciousness, with a feeling of being far away from England. But how different was the town at a subsequent visit ! Now all was quiet and peaceful ; people were going about their work as if nothing would ever occur to interrupt the even current of their lives ; no foreshadowing of evil was creeping into their hearts; no silent mes- senger whispering to the young maidens, wives, mothers, that ere long many of them would mourn a lover, husband, or child. But the change was coming ; at that second, later, visit the decree had gone forth. Then everything was hurry, and excitement, and emotion. The streets re- echoed with the tramp of soldiers, as regiment after regiment passed through them on their way to battle. Those who remember how the Bavanian troops distinguished themselves ; how they were invanably put in front of the fight, and thrown into all positions of danger—un- fair as it seems and reads—will realize how vast a number of those brave men never returned to the hearts and homes made desolate for ever. The town was all excitement. The faces of men and women had grown long ; eyes red with weeping ; hearts heavy and oppressed ; steps uncertain, here rapid and nervous, there slow and lingering ; the result of a trouble too great to bear. All speech, save on the one ab- sorbing topic, had been abandoned. But at ofr first visit to Munich none of these rumours and signs of preparations had not yet appeared; the storm-clouds then gathering, though not so very far below the horizon, were still unsuspected. Salzburg was to be the next and final destination before Gastein, and one hot, sunny morning we turned our faces thitherward, - The jourmey, most picturesque and interesting, lying amongst views differing from any yet encountered, lasted some hours, almost constantly ae jizaoot deco ee